Punishing Russia With Sanctions
POSTED BY: THG
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 4, 2026 04:52
VIEWED: 33436
PAGE 28 of 63
Try to understand what is wrong with Russia, 6ix. The Russians’ lying, the Russians’ murdering, the Russians’ threats to nuke the world are there for you to see. Ukraine is working to keep Russian wrongness from spreading beyond Russia’s borders. There is an entire physics book on the science behind correcting wrongness:
David Deutsch
The Beginning of Infinity
Explanations that Transform the World
From the introduction:
Progress that is both rapid enough to be noticed and stable enough to continue over many generations has been achieved only once in the history of our species. It began at approximately the time of the scientific revolution, and is still under way. It has included improvements not only in scientific understanding, but also in technology, political institutions, moral values, art, and every aspect of human welfare.
Whenever there has been progress, there have been influential thinkers who denied that it was genuine, that it was desirable, or even that the concept was meaningful. They should have known better. There is indeed an objective difference between a false explanation and a true one, between chronic failure to solve a problem and solving it, and also between wrong and right, ugly and beautiful, suffering and its alleviation – and thus between stagnation and progress in the fullest sense.
In this book I argue that all progress, both theoretical and practical, has resulted from a single human activity: the quest for what I call good explanations. Though this quest is uniquely human, its effectiveness is also a fundamental fact about reality at the most impersonal, cosmic level – namely that it conforms to universal laws of nature that are indeed good explanations. This simple relationship between the cosmic and the human is a hint of a central role of people in the cosmic scheme of things.
Must progress come to an end – either in catastrophe or in some sort of completion – or is it unbounded? The answer is the latter. That unboundedness is the ‘infinity’ referred to in the title of this book. Explaining it, and the conditions under which progress can and cannot happen, entails a journey through virtually every fundamental field of science and philosophy. From each such field we learn that, although progress has no necessary end, it does have a necessary beginning: a cause, or an event with which it starts, or a necessary condition for it to take off and to thrive. Each of these beginnings is ‘the beginning of infinity’ as viewed from the perspective of that field. Many seem, superficially, to be unconnected. But they are all facets of a single attribute of reality, which I call the beginning of infinity.
Download the book for free at https://libgen.unblockit.llc/search.php?req=David+Deutsch+Beginning
Russia ought to read the book. It is country that needs good explanations, but it is not getting them from Putin or his government apparatus.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Try to understand what is wrong with Russia, 6ix. The Russians’ lying, the Russians’ murdering, the Russians’ threats to nuke the world are there for you to see. Ukraine is working to keep Russian wrongness from spreading beyond Russia’s borders.
It's not a question of understanding.
I don't believe your sources, or any of their sources. They've never given us a single reason to believe anything they say. And the fact that fucking WAR is the only goddamned thing that Democrats and most Republicans seem to agree on anymore in the 2020's should send up some pretty big fucking red flags for you too.
We've got more than enough problems to deal with right here in this country, and we're not doing a goddamned thing to address any one of them.
Don't worry about ME not voting Democrat in November. You already knew that was never going to happen.
Worry about everybody else who would have, had life not started to turn to shit for all of them in the last 2 years. You're already going to see a majority of Latinos vote against Democrats in 2022. It won't be long until a majority of blacks vote against Democrats too. I'd also be surprised if it weren't a 50/50 split with non-professional unions as well.
All that will be left voting for Democrats soon are rich people. And as you like to point out, there aren't a lot of rich people.
The rest of us don't give a single shit about Russia or Ukraine.
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Me: "Remember Covid?"
Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Try to understand what is wrong with Russia, 6ix. The Russians’ lying, the Russians’ murdering, the Russians’ threats to nuke the world are there for you to see.
SECOND, you are describing to Jack the qualities he looks for when he decides who to vote for. You should know this better than anyone.
T
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Try to understand what is wrong with Russia, 6ix. The Russians’ lying, the Russians’ murdering, the Russians’ threats to nuke the world are there for you to see.
SECOND, you are describing to Jack the qualities he looks for when he decides who to vote for. You should know this better than anyone.
T
Hey Ted. 90% of the shit that you've been spouting in here for the last two years has been debunked after the fact and it's been proven that Social Media and the Legacy Media have been lying about it.
Oh... and you voted for Hillary in 2016 and she couldn't stop talking about how she'd nuke Russia.
You and Second ain't the good guys here.
And now you're finally losing.
The mail-in fraud election will be one of the best things that happened to our country in the long term.
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Me: "Remember Covid?"
Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"
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Russia grossly mis-assessed the level of support a Russian invasion would receive from the Ukrainian population. Their assumptions were not supported by contemporary social science research, which has found that Ukrainians strongly supported their homeland before the Russian-backed war in Donbas, which started in 2014, and did so even more after 2014. Russia’s current invasion has only further strengthened Ukrainian national cohesion and sense of identity.
Ukrainian citizens’ strong rejection of the Russian occupation spotlights how Russia’s war in Ukraine is one of attempted imperial expansion and certainly not one of national reunification. And, while imperial powers can adopt different techniques to rule their conquered territories, Russia’s current rhetoric and actions suggest that any Ukrainians in territory conquered by Russia will be subject to Russian attempts to extirpate their Ukrainian identity. In this regard, the Russian occupiers are likely to go even further than they did in Donbas, where the teaching of Ukrainian language has almost been wiped out. Indeed, the banning of symbols of Ukrainian identity, outlawing of Ukrainian language instruction in schools, and the covering historical narratives in the media and in education that fit Putin’s distorted version of the facts are likely to compose key elements of Russian occupation.
This kind of authoritarian rule is exactly the type of scenario Timur Kuran envisioned when he developed the idea of preference falsification. Given the possibility of harsh repression or even death under Putin’s regime, Ukrainians who currently share their opinions freely with the world will likely be forced to falsify their preferences under Russian occupation if Putin is able to consolidate his rule.
More at https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/roots-of-the-resistance-understandin
g-national-identity-in-ukraine/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Nobody cares.
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Me: "Remember Covid?"
Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"
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A full European ban on Russian oil is coming
After weeks of reluctance over banning Russian oil imports, German officials today (Apr. 29) reversed course, agreeing to a gradual, EU-wide embargo. Other European countries have recently grown more amenable to such a ban as well, as Russia’s war on Ukraine has persisted.
The EU’s 27 member states have to agree unanimously for a ban to come into effect. But Germany had been the major opponent to this measure, because it purchases so much Russian oil and gas. Last year, Germany bought 27 billion tons of Russian crude, a third of its overall oil consumption. “It was a mistake that Germany became so heavily dependent on energy imports from Russia,” Christian Lindner, Germany’s finance minister, told the New York Times earlier this month.
But like other European states, Germany has been scrambling to find alternative sources of fuel—to the extent that Russian oil now accounts for only 12% of domestic consumption. In all, the EU buys 3 million barrels of oil from Russia everyday. Countries like Germany can diversify their sourcing by buying instead from the US, Iran, Norway, and Canada, wrote Maciej Miniszewski, a climate and energy analyst at the Polish Economic Institute.
The two other big European customers of Russian oil, Poland, and the Netherlands, have both pledged to cut off all imports by the end of the year. Germany, too, wants time for a phased transition—a slow process, but still a significant shift from its earlier stance, in which German officials insisted that a ban on Russian oil would be too ruinous to European economies to be feasible.
Depriving Russia of oil revenues will ramp up the financial difficulties it already faces from a slew of Western sanctions. The EU will announce a sixth package of sanctions soon, possibly including proposals for the transition away from Russian oil.
Stopping imports of Russian gas, on the other hand, is still a more distant ambition. When Russia stopped supplies of gas to Poland and Bulgaria this week, other European countries stepped in to fill part of their needs. But last year, the EU imported 40% of its gas from Russia, and Brussels plans only to try to slash that by two-thirds by the end of this year.
https://qz.com/2160717/a-total-european-ban-on-russian-oil-is-coming/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Moscow depends on foreign middlemen to ferry its most strategic and lucrative export around the world: oil. Now the most-important middleman, Trafigura Group, is joining several competitors in cutting off Russian giant Rosneft Oil Co. from global oil markets.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Nobody cares.
In a high-stakes move that goes farther than official Western sanctions, the Swiss commodities trader plans to stop exporting Rosneft’s crude altogether. It will cut its business with the Russian oil producer to a sliver of prewar levels, supplying only some refined products such as diesel into Europe, according to a spokeswoman.
https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2022/04/29/oil-middlemen-fueled-putin
s-war-machine-but-now-theyre-getting-out/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Oil Middlemen Fueled Putin’s War Machine. Now They’re Getting Out.
Joe Wallace and Eliot Brown
Russia built a self-proclaimed fortress around its economy in the run-up to war—but there was a crack. Moscow depended on foreign middlemen to ferry its most strategic and lucrative export around the world: oil.
Now the most-important middleman, Trafigura Group, is joining several competitors in cutting off Russian giant Rosneft Oil Co. from global oil markets. In a high-stakes move that goes farther than official Western sanctions, the Swiss commodities trader plans to stop exporting Rosneft’s crude altogether. It will cut its business with the state producer to a sliver of prewar levels, supplying only some refined products such as diesel into Europe, according to a spokeswoman.
Trafigura and other traders were already poised to lose a big chunk of their Russian business on May 15, when sanctions go into effect that bar them from selling Rosneft oil to countries outside the European Union and Switzerland. In also deciding to cut exports to Europe, long the biggest buyer of Russian oil, they are getting ahead of EU countries that are discussing a full ban.
Vitol, Trafigura’s biggest competitor in oil, also plans to retreat from the Russian market, according to people familiar with the decision. Glencore PLC, a mining and trading giant with a long history in Russia, suspended its contract to export Rosneft oil in March, people familiar with the decision said.
It marks a shift for the traders, which have long done business where few other Western companies would dare, given that many of the world’s valuable commodities are found in places that have struggled with corruption, instability and war.
While the traders continued to ship Russian oil after war broke out, they faced mounting pressures from Western governments, financial institutions and Ukrainian officials. A huge drop in European demand, given the stigma of sending petrodollars to Moscow, made the decision easier.
“The world has changed,” said Jean-François Lambert, a consultant to the commodities industry and former head of commodities trade finance at HSBC. “We are not in a twilight situation. We are in a black-and-white situation.”
Their disengagement is forcing Russia to hastily rework its commodity-export business, the foundation of the country’s economic wealth and the feedstock for Vladimir Putin’s war machine. Rosneft accounts for about a third of Russia’s total oil production and about a fifth of the government’s revenues.
The retreat will also likely mean substantial losses on investments the traders made in the country as they sought to deepen their roots, such as a giant drilling project in the Arctic Circle partly owned by Trafigura and Vitol. On the core business of trading, the merchants face risks as they pull out, as a messy unwinding from Russia could stick them with millions of barrels of unsalable oil if they aren’t adroit.
Trafigura, like many traders, is privately held and offers less disclosure about its operations and financial results than public companies. Owned by its 1,000-odd partners, it competes with the likes of Vitol and Geneva-based Gunvor Group as well as the trading arms of oil producers including BP PLC and Shell PLC.
Headed by Australian Chief Executive Jeremy Weir, the firm is legally based in Singapore, though its top executives operate out of a bland seven-story office building in Geneva with a pharmacy on the ground level.
The company generates almost twice as much revenue as Facebook owner Meta Platforms. It churned out a profit of $3.1 billion in the year through last September.
Last month, Trafigura announced it had doubled the size of a credit facility with banks to more than $2 billion to weather extreme price moves sparked by the war in Ukraine. A set of Trafigura bonds issued late last year have fallen nearly 10% since just before the start of the war. Bonds of other commodity traders fell in price, too.
Trafigura dates back to a bust-up in 1993 at Marc Rich & Co., run
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
A full European ban on Russian oil is coming
After weeks of reluctance over banning Russian oil imports, German officials today (Apr. 29) reversed course, agreeing to a gradual, EU-wide embargo. Other European countries have recently grown more amenable to such a ban as well, as Russia’s war on Ukraine has persisted.
Yes, and the goal is to weaken Russia for generations. Many of these sanctions and boycotts are designed to hurt Russia long term. Weaning off Russian fossil fuels is designed to be permanent, and it is happening faster than could have been predicted. This time next year it will be a dramatically changed Europe. A change for the better for sure.
tick tock, thanks Putin
T
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