Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
VIEWED: 562266
PAGE 69 of 1104
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Yes, I knew about living standards in England. Cottagers thrown off the land, homelessness, workouses, poorhouses, beggar children and pauper children, flower girls, mtach girls, prostitution... it's been so widely portrayed (poverty is the in the background of Charles Dickens' and Jane Austen's stories) that I'm surprised you didn't know about it.
Sig is implying the living standards of the fictional characters of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield are comparable to modern day England? God Russians are stupid.
T
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Yes, I knew about living standards in England. Cottagers thrown off the land, homelessness, workouses, poorhouses, beggar children and pauper children, flower girls, mtach girls, prostitution... it's been so widely portrayed (poverty is the in the background of Charles Dickens' and Jane Austen's stories) that I'm surprised you didn't know about it.
THUGR: Sig is implying the living standards of the fictional characters of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield are comparable to modern day England? God Russians are stupid.
Speaking of stupid...
YOU went there first.
We were discussing living standards in England when Blake wrote that poem
Next time, wait until you have something intelligent to add before posting, m'kay?
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:It is easy to lie about anything.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
It's easy to lie about being rich and perfect dude.
I know it is. You do it every time you speak or type something.
Quote:
Easier still to disbelieve everything.
Trust is earned. There's no reason to trust anything you say.
Quote:
What is hard is beating the shit out of people who lie to you...
Not really. Come on over and I'll show you how easy it is.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Russia's war on the world's food supply
by Matthew Yglesias / June 06, 2022
https://www.slowboring.com/p/russias-war-on-the-worlds-food-supply?s=r
Russia’s war in Ukraine is taking a terrible toll on Ukrainians and promoting hardship within Russia and throughout the developed world. But the biggest economic casualties are almost certainly the poorer countries that aren’t involved in the proxy conflict at all but are facing potential devastation due to the run-up in global food prices deliberately provoked by Russian policy.
Russia is using its Black Sea Fleet and control over most of Ukraine’s coastline to blockade exports of Ukrainian grain.
The grain can, to an extent, make its way to market along other routes. But back in 1843, the Russian Empire decided to build their railroad tracks a bit wider than standard gauge railroads. (1520 mm versus 1435 mm. Many people say they made this choice to make it harder for Germans to invade, but the people saying this tend not to have any primary sources to cite. In an old Slavic Review article, R.M. Haywood says this is wrong and the Russians preferred it for technical reasons and simply thought the idea of a rail connection to the West was unrealistic. ) The Soviet Union continued this policy, and the result is that Ukrainian freight trains today can’t easily move into Poland, so the blockade creates a huge shipping bottleneck.
I initially assumed the Russians were primarily interested in hurting the Ukrainian economy by denying them export income and secondarily interested in raising global grain prices to benefit their own grain exporters. But Russia has halted grain exports and is now arguing that western countries should lift their sanctions on Russia in order to get the Russian grain flowing. This doesn’t make a lot of sense since the countries sanctioning Russia are not the countries most hurt by soaring food prices. Unfortunately, the whole idea of invading Ukraine didn’t make much sense either (I tried to warn them!), and Putin’s thinking on this issue seems driven by ideology rather than any practical consideration.
This leaves us with a really big problem, and its most straightforward solution — Turkey abrogates the Montreux Convention and NATO sends a fleet of warships to break the Russian blockade — involves gigantic downside risks.
Food has gotten very expensive
Today’s global inflation is partially attributable to stimulative fiscal and monetary policies enacted in a number of major countries, including notably the United States of America — you can see that clearly in the “core” Consumer Price Index that strips out volatile food and energy commodities. But these commodity price swings are very painful and as you can see, grocery prices have been rising in the United States faster than overall inflation, driven by a staggering 40 percent increase in the cost of wheat flour.
There is partial substitutability between different staple crops, so even though the blockade directly impacts the price of wheat, the price of corn is up 32 percent and the price of soybeans is up 18 percent. Grain costs also partially pass through into meat prices because they raise the cost of animal feed.
While expensive food is a genuine hardship to many people in rich countries, it’s not a crippling economic calamity the way expensive energy is. Back in 1970, the average American household spent 16 percent of its money on food; today we spend less than 8 percent, even as we’ve shifted to eating out more and eating more meat (and more food overall). Nobody is happy about rising food prices, but most households can adjust across many margins.
And even though very few Americans are farmers, our farmers have incredibly high productivity and the United States is a major global exporter of wheat. High wheat prices push up the value of the dollar, improve our terms of trade, and have some offsetting disinflationary benefits in terms of making exports cheaper.
Long story short, Russia’s wielding of the food weapon is certainly annoying to their ant
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Quote:Come to think of it, it's hard to believe anything you post about yourself.
Originally posted by SignyM:Quote:
6IXSTRINGJACK:
Russians are the only ones winning now.
We certainly aren't.
Fuck Democrats. Fuck Joe Biden*.
Your time is almost up.
Tick Tock.
SeCOND: 6ix, there is time bomb in your chest from smoking. Tick Tock. You're dead.
SIGNY: SECOND, there is a time bomb ticking away in all of us.
That means you, too.
Much as you like to think that you're "above" all of us, you're not going to live forever. Realistically, you've got about ten years left.
You might want to consider whether you want to live your remaining years as the hateful twisted fuck that you are, or ... yanno... shed that gross mental twitch, free yourself of hate and live a rich, fulfilling decade or so. You can't change the 50 years you spent being a slave to self-loathing and hate, but you CAN enjoy your remaining years in peace!
*****
But then, what does this have to do with the OT?
SECOND: 6ix has doubted everything I have told him about myself. I should doubt myself, assuming 6ix knows better. The [il]logical conclusion is that if nothing is true then I don't exist. How can I die if I am unreal? That sounds rather silly, doesn't it? But then neither Signym nor 6ix have any "proof" of anything.
A) I have all of the proof that I need to know that you're a twisted fuck who lies like a rug, even to yourself. The proof is right in your posts. Youve twisted your brain into accepting any argument in service to your hate, no matter how untrue, illogical, or contradictory to previous posts.
B) The proof is right in THIS post. To say that it's "logical" to disblieve your existence bc someone disbelieves what you post about yourself is supremely illogical. It's hard to believe you were ever an engineer.
If you were so wealthy, what are you doing here? Dont you have better things to do? I'm kinda heading in SIX'S direction- I think you're just some poor twisted soul posting from a basement somewhere.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Awwwwww.
We're done playing today, Second.
I guess you can just go ahead and pout then.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:I'm sitting at a desk, looking out the window at a metallic industrial building about 60 feet across a driveway. Forget about basements because there are none in the Houston area, other than a few subterranean parking garages under skyscrapers. Those are a very bad idea in the 100 year flood plain, which covers downtown and the Houston Medical Center, but still some architects design basements where they shouldn't.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Come to think of it, it's hard to believe anything you post about yourself.
If you were so wealthy, what are you doing here? Dont you have better things to do? I'm kinda heading in SIX'S direction- I think you're just some poor twisted soul posting from a basement somewhere.
The truth about what I'm doing at fff.net is silly. It involves my signature which mentions a Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives. I was impressed by that alternative script, which is better than the script for the final movie. There is also a story "Indistinguishable From Magic" where Wash lives because River and Kaylee save Wash in the Serenity movie with stolen technology. I was impressed by it and wanted to rewrite it to make it less J. K. Rowling and more science.
http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=5185
I was going to take the two ideas (Wash lives, River saves him) into stories that doesn't depend on almost magical super science. Instead, the stories would take River Tam seriously: that in our everyday reality River Tam actually can be telepathic and actually can know the future, two things hinted at in the TV show, but I'm sure Joss never committed himself to those talents because they seem to Joss as unrealistic as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Telepathy and precognition were spices added sparingly to a few Firefly episodes, not really the main ingredients. Same is true with the first 5 episodes of Star Trek - Strange New Worlds. I doubt the Star Trek writers believe telepathy or precognition could be real although they keep added the two imaginary spices to their stories whenever the writers get stuck before a deadline to finish a script.
If I wrote those stories, I gotta get over my embarrassment at writing about things other people strongly disagree with or scoff at. Joss Whedon or the Star Trek writers don't have that problem, but I do, probably because of my engineering schooling and everything since in East Texas.
By receiving endless condemnation from people like Signym and 6ix, I am slowly growing less and less prone to being embarrassed by what I write. I complete believe what I write on Ukraine or everything, but I still get embarrassed because what I know as brutally simple facts contradicts what 99% of the world puts their faith in.
That's about as much as I want to write about my hobby. Saving the world becomes River and Kaylee's hobby, which they don't talk about because no one would believe them and this my hobby. Ukraine is also my hobby. Here's to hoping Putin dies horribly and the Russian Army gets slaughtered by Ukraine in revenge for what Russia did to Ukraine. Stories need villains. Russians and Republican voters, especially Trump, are those villains in stories and, in my opinion, real life. I don't have experience with Russians, but I have too much experience with damn fool Trump voters. They are best at bringing their personal problems to work and making their problems into co-workers’ problems.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Ih huh.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:If you read the whole story, there are parallels between Glenn Greenwald and Signym.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Ih huh.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
The Long History of Glenn Greenwald’s Kissing Up to the Kremlin
In his world, it seems America can do nothing right and Vladimir Putin can do nothing wrong.
In the months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, maverick journalist Glenn Greenwald has emerged as one of the loudest anti-Ukraine voices in the American media, with all the usual themes:
transparent gloating over Russia’s apparent war gains in Eastern Ukraine;
alarmism over United States support for Ukraine leading to World War III;
even the flogging of “American biolabs in Ukraine” conspiracies in his Substack newsletter and in videos.
While Greenwald has made overwrought claims about the “neo-Nazi menace” of the Azov Regiment, his only response to reports of Russian atrocities in Bucha has been to warn about the dangers of falling for “war propaganda” and “social media’s manipulations.”
Greenwald has been baffling and disappointing legions of his progressive admirers for years with his cozy relationship with the MAGA right. And a look at his career shows that his pro-Kremlin affinity goes way back — as part of a more general tendency to sympathize with foes of the U.S.-led “neoliberal” (or “neoconservative”) international order.
I first locked horns with Greenwald, then a columnist for Salon, in the fall of 2008 over Russia’s war in Georgia — which, in retrospect, can be seen as the first trial run for the current war in Ukraine. In October, at the height of the McCain/Obama presidential race, Greenwald wrote a column blasting both candidates for peddling the “blatant falsehood” that Russia had attacked Georgia without provocation in August of that year. But here’s the thing: neither Obama nor McCain had used the word “unprovoked” in describing the Russian attack on Georgia. Obama used “unacceptable” and “unwarranted”; McCain came closer to the substance of Greenwald’s claim by referring to Russia’s “naked aggression.”
It is true that Russia’s August 8, 2008 invasion of Georgia was not “unprovoked”: it was preceded by Georgia’s August 7 shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the disputed region of South Ossetia, in which several Russian peacekeepers were killed. Of course, even aside from the question of whether the Russian troops in South Ossetia were really acting as “peacekeepers,” the Georgian attack itself came in response to ongoing and numerous provocations by pro-Russia separatist rebels, including the shelling of Georgian villages and other ceasefire violations. Russian troop movements in the region may have also contributed to escalating tensions. And there was the more fundamental provocation of flooding South Ossetia with Russian passports in a concerted effort to create an enclave within Georgia where Moscow could claim a national interest by acquiring Russian citizens to protect.
More at https://www.thebulwark.com/the-long-history-of-glenn-greenwalds-kissin
g-up-to-the-kremlin/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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