dorlomin

Lavrov in hospital in Indonesia. He is a 72 year old man, so its not a huge surprise he gets ill. Russian MFA is apparently denying it. So...... we know how trustworthy thier denials of anything are. (edited, already been posted oops)

He was one of the prisoners Wagner hired a few weeks back. He was made to read a statement claiming to have defected to the Ukrainians, Wagner are claiming they kidnapped him from Kyiv. Seems the execution was meant as a terror tactic to dissuade the prisoners from surrendering. How much of the rest is true guesswork. My guess is Ukrainians have allowed people who wanted to change sides to do so pretty easily. Many they capture will be Ukrainians from Luhansk and Donetsk, or from Crimea. So its possible he was caught and was being used as a labourer (there is always a lot of work to do that does not involve being trusted with a gun) by the unit that caught him, before he was recaptured by Wagner in one of their attacks near Bahkmut. The rest is their usual bullsh*t to try and make them seem more badass and capable to the people they have drawn into their services. Its really just a mafia state with nukes.

Holy f**k.

In the next day or so we will hit 8 billion living people https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ Currently about 60% of the world is Asian. By 2100 it will be something like 60% African. But those will be issues for the 2040s, for this decade its more about lack of children across Europe and east Asia and the economic consequences of that. For this decade its the lack of people in their 20s in many advanced economies and people ticking over from being huge buyers of government debt (via their pensions) in their 50s to sellers as they hit their mid 60s and no longer pay into a pension scheme but begin selling assets to receive money from that pension scheme. This may drive an ending of cheap debt. No cheap debt will see equities decline and a possible bear market. We are already seeing property decline so the turbulence is likely already underway. Xi is stepping up the rhetoric on Taiwan. Some speculate that is down to Chinese fears that instead of them sailing past the US as the worlds largest economy in this decade. They will stagnate and their moment to grab the island will pass. There property crash is so huge that many believe the state will not allow to happen. Anyway for the moment lets wait to celebrate living human no 8 billion.

In the coming weeks and months there may be long periods of little movement. This is not the dashing wars of manoeuvre. Its attrition, its grinding down with artillery and trench raiding. Long and damn cold and hard winter ahead for the people in Ukraine. The poorest here in the UK are also going to be paying the highest price for use standing up to Putin, but that is the UK not supporting its poorest and not the fault of those who wish to see Ukrainians get their country back. In the coming weeks if it looks like not much is happening, its not because its "a stale mate" its because without over whelming material or number advantages, this blood long hard way of fighting is the only real way the Ukrainians can grind Russias capacity to retain their hold on the conquered territory. That is how winning will look, months of little happening till Russia collapses and retreats again.

Ukrainians have told me that it gets ice floes in it but it never really freezes. Certainly not that far south. Ukraine get cold in a central Europe kind of way, not in a Russia kind of way. Kherson is on the same latitude as Milan, though will get a lot colder due to the winds from being deeper in the continent. I am not sure how the cold will affect the war. British soldiers would get an arse kicking if you tried to argue its "too cold" even at -20C, but we are a professional army with all the proper gear. We have units that specialise in Arctic warfare. I have a hunch that the low key press releases from the likes of Finland, Germany, the UK etc on winter gear may give Ukraine units with a real edge. Its not going to be most of the army, but they may have enough to keep up pressure. Fighting in the cold is all about having the right equipment and the will. That said I expect winter to do more damage to the mobiks than Ukraine. Properly kitted out cold weather is a pain in the arse. If you are improperly kitted you can end up losing fingers, toes, seriously ill and worst case hypothermia.

Employment data is very good in the US, but other data is awful. A recession seems likely. While the same warning lights in Europe and the UK and the same rising interest rates making fiscal loosening harder, as our previous PM found out with bells on. The only real option is to swallow a surge in inflation with lose monetary policy but inflation then may become structural. There is just so much going on right now its hard to keep up. But a global slow down is almost guaranteed without adjusting for Chinas magic GDP numbers. This will affect the developed world. Energy prices and food will affect the developing as we see with protests and unrest in places like Iran. The question is how restrictions on fertiliser supply will see global food supply chains in late northern hemisphere spring and thus food supply to least developed nations. Doomers are predicting majors famines (Again). More likely it will be chain reactions of instability like 2008 or 2011.

Ever get a weather warnings and yet forget to take in something valuable? NASA left SLS out and turns out the small hurricane is going to come a lot closer to the Cape than they originally expected. Only a 15% chance of winds that exceed the ground safety levels of the vehicle (75mph). If it is not damaged its due to try to fly 14 November. Seems a bit of a cursed mission if not entire program at this stage.

The source of Putin's political theory

Past 30 years it has become very religious. It has adopted a very apocalyptic version of orthodox Christianity. For years I thought Putin and the others public religiosity was a show. But recently I have come to believe they really really believe it. It has become one of the defining characteristics of the Siloviki other than Shoigu and Kadyerov. They talk like they are the last guardians of true Christianity against atheistic liberalism and Islam.

Michael Kofman (born in Ukraine) a well known analyst of Russian military shares his opinions from being on the ground in Ukraine. https://warontherocks.com/2022/10/southward-and-eastward-pressure-on-russian-forces/ I think the one thing to focus on is the limits of Ukrainian logistics. Things like good off road trucks are something of a bottleneck. But the precision artillery has been a huge help. The mobiks seem to be more varied than we see, some may be getting good equipment and some training. Its not all the disasters we see in the videos. They also mention that the mobiks may become capable of allowing rotation of forces. In other matters, economically sanctions against oil shipments from Russia begin to kick in early December. This will likely push up world oil prices and intensify pressure internally on Russias economy. But for the moment the economic was is still a long game for the west. While Russias gas was in all about the next 3 months (Dec to Feb).

I see posts on the internet about how Russia could do this or Ukraine could do that and its all measurements on maps and hand waving. I bite my tongue and think how? Its all right if you are the US or UK and you roll in with god tier logistics and air power like the fist of an angry god. But Russia is horrifically under resourced for the war they are fighting and Ukraine is the second poorest country in Europe after Moldova. This is a huge and empty front line. Perhaps 1000km with 150 000 Russians or 150 per km (your mileage may vary). Its mostly emptiness with OPs (observation posts) and artillery. Its mostly dirt poor farm tracks and farm roads. Most of this war is guys in trenches watching for something moving to call in artillery. There is the utter shithellhole Bakhmut that is sort of tiny Somme. But even then its really small scale compared to the kind of "big war" people expected. My point here is what people are not explaining is the reason the two armies are in semi stale mate is these are not western armies with our huge surplus of logistics. These are two groups of desperately thinly stretched soldiers fighting over a vast area of emptiness with little logistics support. The world on foot is very very different from the world on maps.

More likely divisional HQ has fucked off to the other side of the river taking security element with them leaving the engaged brigades balls hanging out in the breeze. Absolute grade A c**t move if that is what they have done. Especially if they hauled the artillery with them (though how they would do that is an open question). All assuming the rumour is true. Big assumption.

These are the heads of government of two former Russian colonies. Sanna Marin of Finland on the left and Zelenskyy or Ukraine on the right. They are also at the opposite ends of the Human Development Index for Europe. I do not support Ukraine because they are some blemishless country who are world paragons in human rights. I do so because they deserve the same chance that Latvia, Czechia and East Germany got, to get the f**k out of the Russian heal and build a decent country for themselves and their people. There is a reason Eastern and Northern Europe is so solidly behind Ukraine. Kunt above me is giving it the big one about nuclear risks. Ukrainians want to join the European Union because it has meant economic growth for so many East European countries. This and not NATO is at the beating heart of 2014 and this crisis. The EU is not invading Ukraine to force them to join us, Russia is doing that to prevent it.

How we got here (financial) I should drag out some Mark Blythe here.

Ian Bremmer in a 10 minute interview covers Russias dirty bomb threats, Xi and Putin then Musk and Twitter. Boiling down the key point for the Ukraine crisis: Russia now regards Kherson as Russia so they seem to be trying to manufacture some leverage with the west over the implied threat of going nuclear and using the dirty bomb as an excuse. That is actually something I had not thought about, that all the noise was simply a really badly hidden "false flag" but rather a threat to the west over going nuclear over Kherson without drawing out red lines. The west does have an advantage here, the sheer number of precision weapons we have actually perform most of the battlefield tasks that used to be assigned to tactical nuclear weapons. Something like taking out an airbase is now about 10 Tomahawks. Taking out a bridge would be a single F-16s worth of GPS guided bombs. So when the west threatens to respond conventionally to a Russian use of a nuclear weapon its a very real threat. BUT (like the Kardashians, anything nuclear always comes with huge buts) even a western conventional intervention could trigger escalations that put us further up the escalation ladder towards global nuclear war with strategic weapons. His point on Xi and Putin is that Xi has minimal influence. But I am not sure that Xi's public scolding of Russia is really what they are saying in private. We shall see. What Xi has that Putin badly badly needs is trucks. Good off road trucks. But Xi seems to be living with a ticking clock over retaking Taiwan so may not want to deliver even those, if Putin was smart enough to ask for them. The 2020s is not really a matter of "crisis, what crisis?" more "crisis? which one?"

Adam Tooze introduces the concept of the polycrisis. It does not reach conclusions but it does map some of the issues but more importantly how we now are in something of an era of constant crisis. https://www.ft.com/content/498398e7-11b1-494b-9cd3-6d669dc3de33

Modern big tech (and small tech) create echo chambers and controversy by the nature of the algorithms that they use. To use one of the oldest of these as an example: Amazon use a sort of pattern matching algorithm to recommend books to you. Say you choose to buy Lord of the Rings the book, it will then recommend books others who bought that also bought so perhaps Game of Thrones. This is all very 2001. But the algorithms became more and more elaborate so they would take into account your age, race, sex etc. So it may start recommending Margaret Atwood to an older women and perhaps Star Wars to a younger man. All very wholesome and obvious. But the same farming of data and presenting of choices happens on things like youtube, facebook, twitter etc. But these are now presenting you news stories. So if you generally follow some pro Indyref channels and upvote SNP content you are going to see the same world view as others from that milieu. Most are vaguely aware of this but then that is not that much more than simply always buying newspapers that give one side of the news. In and off itself though that level of bias will have an impact on how people see the world if they only ever hear that Biden is awful or that the country is being over run with immigrants. For some the real problem is dopamine and how it forms memories and behaviours. You pull the arm of a slot machine and you feel a rush of excitement. That rush includes dopamine that is in part making you feel good but also in part making memories and habits. Dopamine has a powerful role in signalling where to to lay down neural connections. So your pulling of the arm becomes something your body craves for you to repeat. Or drinking alcohol, smoking and now tweeting about politics. The companies do not give a f**k what your politics is, its about "dwell time". Encouraging you to stay on app longer and longer. More and more dopamine. What gets people to dwell on facebook, youtube or twitter longer? Being angry and sharing the validation of being angry with other people who agree with you. Some of the strongest emotions that drive people habitually to watch videos and interact with web pages for longer and longer. Musk is not going to fix this, god alone knows what he thinks he is going to fix because the entire online ecology is built around feeding people to be emotional not rational, to be angry not thoughtful and to be dutiful consumers. And it will not take more than a couple of seconds to realise how many come onto Pie and Bovril to indulge in self congratulatory, angry politics. This does not even have an algorithm and people get addicted. Still people gleefully outsourced censorship to tech companies with smug "no one has the right to a platform" etc etc. Now you might find out what happens when those tech companies values no longer align with your own. (We shall see what Musk actually does, I suspect its more of a case of a dog finally catching the car and not really knowing what comes next).

Well this answers the question of how post congress Xi would act, Wang Yi has been glowing in his support of Russia. https://www.reuters.com/world/russias-lavrov-holds-call-with-chinese-counterpart-thanks-support-ukraine-2022-10-27/ The article only gives the basics but the MFA has apparently released a statement. An (unverified) translation here No hint of physical support though. Just diplomatic atm.

With respect to shooting down satellites (again Jesus I am sick of this story) Eric Beger had an article out a couple of hours ago. Says what the space community has been saying for months about this shite. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/russia-threatens-a-retaliatory-strike-against-us-commercial-satellites/ Among the two main visual imaging: Planet Labs has about 190 satellites on orbit (they do a lot of the satellite imagery you see in the press), these are about the size of a cornflake box. Maxar has its World View constellation, I do not know how many they have but its a few. They have the best resolution among the constellations so tend to be used by the press the most. And SpaceX has close to 3000 on orbit for its communications satellites. So generally the US commercial fleets are way way way to big to bring down with kinetic weapons. There is a 4th, OneWeb with a couple of hundred communications satellites but they are not involved in this conflict. To be fair since Rogozin got the bullet (metaphorically) the Rusians have calmed down with the threats. Ironically Russian ASAT just popped in the news as ISS had to dodge another piece of its 2021 test. I have lost count on the ISS dodges of Russian ASAT tests, the iditios pinged a dead satellite with an ISS crossing orbit. ISS also had to manoeuvre to avoid an older Chinese ASAT test debris late last year. But that was a much older piece of debris, I think most of that old debris field has cleared back to Earth.

Russia is also so insanely empty. Most of the state is held together by cash from the central state paying for roads, electricity, railways etc. Most of it *****a forest. Much of it is very dry, only spared being desert by how cold it is to prevent water from evaporating. I do not discount it becoming so broken that large parts are a failed state. But breaking away from the center, outwith a few dense pockets around the Caucasus would be a one way ticket to the bottom of the global development index. Even existing mines would struggle to turn over enough cash to keep roads and rail open to keep goods flowing. Added to the extreme cold in much of it through winter, its only oil and gas state revenue that keeps many cities alive, barely. Edited, ta*ga forest biome seems to be caught by automod.

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station has 6 reactors. Most are in cold shutdown. The control rods are firmly in place and the metal has spent weeks to months cooling. Some may still be warm enough to require some active cooling, I am not monitoring it enough to say when all 6 no longer need active cooling. This is nothing remotely like Chernobyl. The containment vessel is 10m of concrete. The other source of risk is the spent fuel rods that still require active circulation of water to keep cooling them. But they are kept in lower masses than for any serious reaction so they will get warm but it would take days to weeks to boil off the cooling ponds and even then I am not sure they will burn. There is a risk locally but its metal. Metal does not float in the air easily. Only the broken containment vessel* and huge fire inside Chernobyl spread the material over a wide area. *Well it was really just a roof. https://www.politico.eu/article/how-real-is-the-danger-from-ukraines-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant/ https://carnegieendowment.org/experts/434 Rendering countries uninhabitable by reactor fire is bullshit for movies.

The idea is that Ukraine is building a bomb that is not a full nuclear bomb. Either an explosive laced with nuclear material, or a nuclear bomb that is not able to go full power. This will spread radiation over an area, though not as much as many seem to think. He has made these claims before, but on TV to Russians and justifying the war. This time they are pushing these claims to other countries in a way that is obviously stage managed. Why is anyones guess. Nuclear weapons are a lot more complex than public imagination would have. They do not wipe out armies with the flick of a button, especially in as sparse a conflict as this one. So how he would use them if he did is really as much of a mystery as much of the rest of his actions. Perhaps more likely he may use it as an excuse for chemical weapons, but again that is so much of a headache and will be seen coming weeks in advance. The whole things looks like an idea that will make everything worse for everyone and not actually benefit him and his army.

Shoigu had a call with the Chinese making claims about the Ukrainian "dirty bomb" plot. https://meduza.io/en/news/2022/10/26/russian-defense-minister-sergey-shoigu-repeats-dirty-bomb-allegations-to-india-and-china The MFA raised it with the UN https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-raises-accusation-un-ukraine-dirty-bomb-plans-2022-10-25/ Its looking more and more like this is a real plan that is running through the steps in a playbook by the Russians. This looks so comically obvious that they may actually be planning to do this and not simply more of the "desatanation" level guff. Jesus wept.