Panto_Villan

Pretty much everything in that post appears to be incorrect, a non-sequitur, or irrelevent. Ultimately although you may be proved correct that the Russian military is much weaker than anyone (except apparently you) anticipated, from what I can see you seem to have come to that conclusion through a lot of faulty logic and dubious assumptions. I'm aware I'm the one that's been replying to your posts, though, so I'll leave you be now.

Yeah I guessed as much from what bickster said and the post about not knowing about civilian planes. Because I'm a big nerd I was curious (got talking to a guy who made satellites the other day which I also found really interesting). Can you be more specific or is it classified in some way?

Interesting. What is it that you do?

At the start of the conflict I thought the most likely scenario was that the Russians overrun Ukraine but get a bloody nose doing it. I think on balance that's still the most likely outcome - but I'm much more optimistic than I was previously, and I think the best case scenario has improved dramatically. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that the Russians might throw everything they have at the Ukrainians and not be able to take the country, and that it spells the end for Putin. Which would obviously be great. However I don't think we're quite there yet. The US thinks Russia have only committed 50% of their massed forces into Ukraine so far, and most of those already in Ukraine are still in decent shape. Even those tanks stranded due to lack of fuel are only out of action temporarily unless there's any Ukranian forces close enough to put them out of action for good. It's perfectly possible that the Russians can still overwhelm the Ukranians with sheer numbers, or perhaps they'll change tack and disregard civilian casualties to make things easier for them and that might turn the tide. Perhaps they'll encircle the major cities and knock out the power and heating, and then just pummel the defenders into submission with artillery. Or perhaps they'll fail to take Kiev but succeed in taking one or more major cities like Mauripol, and the war ends with Ukraine remaining independent but having to give up a chunk of their territory. An analyst on Twitter pointed out that three days into the 2003 Iraq war, US forces had been taken as POWs and there was media talk that the US was losing the war - but as we all know the military campaign ended up being an overwhelming success. It's not a foregone conclusion that the Russians can't still force a victory. But obviously they've performed far worse than I expected and the Ukrainians have also performed far better than I expected (even taking into account the fact I never thought they'd be pushovers). Also, there's the possibility that Russia further escalates the situation - starts using low-yield nukes, for example, and demands the Ukrainians agree to cede certain territory otherwise they'll have their major cities obliterated. At the end of the day Russia has always had the ability to escalate the situation in a way that Ukraine can't necessarily answer, although obviously doing so would be very dangerous for Russia and increases Putin's chances of being deposed. But we still need to consider them a possibility. Finally, it's worth pointing out that the poor performance of the Russian forces so far doesn't mean the more cautious among us were wrong to be cautious. No sane military planner would assume that the Russians would waste their paratroopers on unsupported helicopter landings in the first day of the war, or not get their supply lines sorted, etc. If your enemies make those mistakes then that's great, but you can't assume they will. That after this showing said I doubt NATO is too frightened of anything in Russia's arsenal besides its nukes right now.

I might be wrong, but I thought I read something yesterday that there was a surprising number of carve-outs in the US sanctions and one of them was civil aviation?

The video’s from the region where the Ukrainians tried to stop the Russian forces that have been pushing out of Crimea. Doesn’t look like it went particularly well for them unfortunately. Video should probably be titled “Crimean Front” rather than “Crimean Front Line”.

You were asking for proof that Russia was winning the battles in the post I quoted. They’re clearly winning battles. At a cost, of course, but they’re still winning. Edit: there’s plenty of evidence that Ukraine are losing troops and vehicles too, although their victories get more press for obvious reasons. This video for example.

I mean, they control that airfield you seem to think is incredibly important. I’m as happy that the Ukrainians are putting up stiffer resistance than expected as anyone is, but you’re delusional if you think they’re actually *winning*. They’re just inflicting (and almost certainly suffering) reasonably high casualties as they lose. Maybe that’ll be enough if they can drag it out for long enough, but it’s a big assumption that Putin will be put off that easily.

A smart man would probably realise it’s a pretext to replace Zelensky with a pro-Russian military government after a “coup”.

As a random aside re: Ghost in the Shell, there's an interesting effect in anime where Western people looking at anime usually think the characters are white whereas if you show the same characters to Japanese people they'll think the characters are Japanese (but with dyed blonde hair, etc). Apparently it's because the art style is quite low-detail, apparently, so your mind fills in the blanks with what you consider the default. I actually thought the Ghost in the Shell character was an AI in a robot body rather than being Japanese, but it's a bit tone deaf to cast Johanssen anyway given the setting is Tokyo. To be honest, I think Cloud Atlas avoided the complaints mainly because it was released in 2012 before the movement really got going. Another example is Altered Carbon, which is all about body-swapping technology. The main character is called Takeshi Kovacs and is half Japanese and half Polish (?), but he's trapped in the body of a white man which he eventually gives back. But there was still a whitewashing outcry when Joel Kinnaman was cast as the lead. At the end of the day angry Twitter warriors aren't particularly interested in context; I'm sure Cloud Atlas would have seen a lot more controversy had it been released 8-10 years later.

Oh, I 100% think the video you linked is racist (couldn't watch all the way through it). But they're going full on with every racist Asian stereotype they can find there; it's not simply a white person making themselves appear like an Asian person. Perhaps we've been talking past each other - when I refer to "blackface" (or whiteface / yellowface) I'm talking purely about the act of darkening the skin, not the whole stereotypical racist act that goes along with it. But anyway, we've probably discussed the topic long enough. Regarding seeing the alternative, yeah, it would be interesting. I guess we'd have to have more knowledge of the local market as it could just be happening out of our view. I imagine there's cases in Chinese or Japanese film history where they have local actors playing people of other nationalities, and maybe a few decades ago they had comedy based purely on racial stereotypes, but I just don't know - it's unlikely to have made its way to our shores. And if it did, I don't even know if we'd fully understand the references and stereotypes given we'd be reliant on subtitles and probably wouldn't be able to pick up on exaggerated accents in the same way as a local. China is producing a lot of high-budget nationalist war films at the moment (the highest grossing film of all time is about a Korean war battle between China and the US, and was comissioned directly by the Communist party) and I suspect some of them probably stereotype the Western villains just as much as western cinema did for our bad guys a few decades back. I wonder if their portrayal of an evil British villain might end up being more offensive than how Hollywood does it?

Yeah, it is a tricky subject and it can be a little exhausting to think about sometimes. But it's interesting to discuss, and I'm not asking these questions to try and catch you out. Just trying to understand where and why your perspective differs from my own. Would you mind expanding on why consider "yellow face" unacceptable? To me the Indian example you gave in the post is much closer to the black analogy given the history of empire in India - it wasn't quite slavery, but there was still a lot of oppression going around. I think there's good reasons why a British man playing an Indian would be unacceptable, particularly when many of the people involved in the Raj were still alive. At least with slavery people are arguing about what our ancestors did to one another and we're all several steps removed from it. However the reason I picked Japan as one of the examples in the first case is that mainland Japan has historically never been invaded and they're also a rich developed nation in the modern day, so the same unfortunate overtones of historical (or modern) inferiority that apply to a lot of cultures don't really apply. China suffered a bit more humiliation in the time of empire but they're an older civilisation than us and a more powerful country in this day and age, so to some extent you can say the same about them. So what is it that makes it offensive for a white person to do yellow face, but not the reverse?

Thanks for the reply. I do agree that blackface is a special case given it references the whole traveling minstrel show thing, and I agree should be considered offensive even if a Chinese person were to do it because the link still exists even if someone from a race not responsible for slavery were to do it. It's the same logic for why it'd be offensive for an Asian person to call a black person the n-word. I'm not sure the logic regarding whiteface is consistent with societal attitudes though. To illustrate by continuing the previous example - would it be considered offensive for a white man to paint his face the skin tone of a Chinese or Japanese person? There's no significant history of slavery between white people and the eastern civilisations and no "yellowed-up" actors performing the equivalent of the travelling minstrel shows, so it'd be exactly the same as a black person wearing whiteface. It's just someone crudely impersonating another race. It therefore shouldn't be considered offensive using the logic in your post - but my instinct is that it would be, right? Because the act of obviously impersonating another race comes across as a form of racial mockery. So I don't really agree that whiteface can't be inherently offensive (unless you also think people shouldn't be offended if I was to walk around with my face painted yellow). It lacks the historical connotations of blackface so it's not as racially offensive, but it is still racially offensive. Would you agree?

A pretty disappointing result, and a disappointing performance. I think we probably deserved a point in that game, but only because Newcastle were dire going forwards for most of the game. I'm starting to feel concerned about the trajectory of the team now. All it'll take is a couple of good results to change the mood, but we haven't shown much recently that might indicate we'd get them.

Back in it! Nice to see Ollie get on the scoresheet too.

I had that view up until yesterday but the US intelligence coming out seems very specific, that an invasion plan has been put in place for the 16th and the orders communicated to the Russian army. This could all be part of the ruse, of course, but once we get to actual invasion plans being sent to military forces I think we might have gone beyond that. Or, rather, I feel like it's an ultimatum that war is going to happen unless the west and Ukraine gives into Russia's demands - which I don't think they will. Personally I think if a diplomatic solution was going to happen, it would already have happened. You're right though that he seems to have approached it in a very strange way. I would have thought not spending the past three weeks obviously threatening to invade Ukraine might have strengthened his hand in the sense that Ukraine would have had less time to prepare, and the West would have had less time to forge a united front against Russia.

Fair enough, when put like that I can see the point you're making better. I think you're being a bit cynical though - although it needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, I think factoids like this are useful in the sense they put dry statistics into something that connects with the brain better. Anyway, I won't labour the point any further.

The irony here is that you piqued my interest enough to make me do 15 minutes of my own research on the topic, but all it did was illustrate the fact that you don't exactly practice what you preach: According to Google Maps it's 133km along the roads from the Belarus border to the edge of Kiev (because if you're encircling the city you only need to reach the edges). A light tank like a BMT-3 does 71kph so could do it in less than 2 hours, and an IFV like a BTR-90 could be there in eighty minutes. Even a heavy battle tank like the T-90 does 60kph, so would only take 2 hours and 13 minutes. The roads look pretty good the whole way, but ironically enough they're best around Chernobyl. However that shouldn't be a surprise given the reactor sarcophagus they finished a few years back was one of the biggest engineering projects in Europe at the time and all that heavy machinery and materials needed to reach the site somehow. So Chernobyl is probably a great place to attack though given it's sparsely populated but has good roads (the idea that the area is a radioactive wasteland is a myth). It should go without saying that the Russians aren't going to be able to get an entire armoured division of heavy tanks to Kiev in two hours while under hostile fire, especially if the Ukrainians blew the bridges, but nobody was saying they could. The claim was that a tank could be driven from the Belarus border to Kiev in 2 hours, which it can.

I think this logic only works within rather narrow bounds though - the major eastern civilisation like the Chinese or Japanese didn't enslave black people, that was a western thing. So is it fine for a Chinese person to black themselves up given their race doesn't have the same historical association with slavery? Blackface is offensive primarily because it was playing on racist stereotypes of black people (being stupid and primitive). As far as I'm concerned, it's unacceptable for someone to dress as anyone from another race in order to act out a racial stereotype. Claiming that black people are allowed to do it because they never enslaved white people is surely another way of saying blackface is perfectly fine for anyone that's not historically descended from European nations that conducted the slave trade, no? I'd be interested to hear what principles guide you in these matters? I said in the other thread that my guiding principle is a harmonious and colourblind society, and I support things that move us towards that and oppose things that move us away from it. You said that was ridiclous and society shouldn't even aspire to that. So what specifically do you consider when you assess whether a proposal goes too far in addressing historical injustice (e.g. reparations, etc)?

I'm really happy with our loan strategy this year. I don't think I've actually ever been interested in the players we have out on loan before (they were usually just being sent out to run down their contracts elsewhere) but now our squad is strong enough we've got a lot of talented players out there getting minutes and experience rather than being left to rot on our bench, Long may it continue!

I’m sure they are. If Buendia had gone to Arsenal and we’d not managed to attract Countinho they might feel different - but I think we landed on our feet.

Its just finally clicked in my head why I’ve always assumed Wendys is going to be terrible (despite being a “premium” burger joint). It’s because I once ate at Wimpy and it was awful. Mind blown.

I think the current military think-tank prediction is they’re most likely to want to quickly encircle Kiev and force regime change. Nobody knows for sure, obviously, but it’s certainly plausible (apparently you can drive a tank from the Belarus border to Kiev in two hours).

Yeah I thought the trucker comment was weird, but I took it as irony too given it’s the main news event occurring in Canada at the moment.

Are people genuinely concerned that signing Coutinho is a bad idea because he’s not young enough? He’s only three years older than Jack and his body has probably been subjected to a lot less alcohol during that time.