Just another rant

[DCFusor]

Well, a good friend just mailed me "what about what's going on in Ukraine" and I just went off (we normally talk about computer stuff). I thought it might be worth sharing as a rant here. So here's my reply to that:
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Yeah, I've been kind of watching that one. Looks like horrible human stupidity (again, sigh). Did I say "again"? Gheesh, the fallout of deficit spending strikes again and again, you can only pull the future so far forward, financial engineering or not. The pertinent question is how far are these fools at the top going to push things. It's like we need some older, cooler heads from the cold war back running things - at least they understood MAD, even if they were too dumb to realize the demographic time bomb was already falling on us.


The one thing you can like about Putin is he makes O like like a spoiled female child demanding a prize for bringing checkers to a chess master game. And that's all. He's one nasty, narcissistic motherfucker - but very good at it. And now he's playing the star treck poker - fizzbin (obscure but if you get it, you'll get it). Bluffing with tons at stake - worse than Bond's Casino Royale. They're all crazy out of their minds - you can smell crazy on this, their minds are like bags of cats.


The ruble is crashing. The "hzygobbledygook whatever they call it in Ukraine" is crashing. yuan is crashing, yen is crashing, and the banks in Ukraine are closing and keeping the depositors money that they don't have anyway. As they pointed out on ZH, the spoils system (where you bribe underlings to keep the house of cards up) is breaking down - periphery and developing countries first, but the real tragedy is that the developed countries, which used to carry the rest - stopped. Out of necessity. No capex, stock buybacks instead. No hiring - because no demand because no hiring, so no need for capex since there's no one needed to run the new machines, so stock buybacks and unsupportable dividends. In fact, the biggest wealth transfer to the already-wealthy in history is going on, and that's not only in absolute (adjusted) value, but in percentages too.

Human behaviour compiler::Loop detected, non-halting program without modifications, stack overflow in recursion and floating point, out of memory, which are being fought, soon with more blood. Double goto fail detected.


This shit ain't what the world needs just now. And it's not the only thing. When they want you to look here, be sure and keep looking over there for where the real "magic" is happening - that pipeline the Saudis and Qatar want to run through Syria to compete with Russia to sell energy to Yurp (largely what this is really all about, with a dash of petrodollar in there, or more than a dash - and 3++ bill documented money paid by Saudi and Qatar for the "syrian rebels" on top of what we've contributed there - follow the money and it's all pretty obvious)...those islands the Chinee want from the Japs...Expect some action that this is a cover for, along with it getting pretty real for "just a cover".


Anytime you create a large group who feels "anything would be better than this" which essentially is what the world has managed to do - expect bad things to happen. We're old and wise enough to know the new boss is gonna be just like the old boss, and a sucker still won't get an even break, but hope can be a dangerous weapon too...


Why don't we just roll out the guillotines for all the bankers (oops, I meant "financial engineers"), burn the bad paper that caused all this, and just get back to living right?

 

[dontdeBasemebro]

Yup, more petrowars.

I'm begining to think that this was a bit of a Russian flase flag, or at least they took advantage of it as such. It has been their MO for a long time, and is even in their constitution (last I knew), that Russia is obligated to protect Russians even outside of Russia. Russian has in the past moved people (voluntarily and involuntarily) into areas it wants to control, handed out passports to natives that want them, and then use the excuse that it is protecting Russian citizens in order to take control (or at least have a lot of say).

Currently Russia has several gas lines that go through western Ukraine, Belarus, and a line through Turkistan. They are proposing a north line going under the Baltic to Germany and a south line going under the Black Sea to Bulgaria, passing just south of Crimea and the key port of Sevastopol.

With the west/gulf states working on a pipeline through Syria to Turkistan (and then to Yurp), securing the area of the proposed South Line is crucial. This is a fight over who gets to sell gas to Yurp for the next century or so, and gain the massive wealth and political power that comes with it.

There a plenty of folks in the western Ukraine that legitemately hate Russia and want to be done with them, and are also wanting on the EU gravey train. Just compare Ukraine to Poland, who both left the USSR in similarly poor condition. Polish per capita GDP is about 3x of the Ukrainians, so combine that with a generations old hatred of Russia and it makes sense that many in the west see greener grass on Yurp's side of the fence.


It just seems really weird to me the the ousted Ukrainian gov't (the PM is in Moscow now, lol) essentially let the rioters take over the place before they even began to shoot. The rioters had makeshift weapons mostly of sticks, bricks, and molotovs - any security force could have put them down fast if they really wanted. It goes without saying what would happen if a similarly equiped group tried that somewhere else.

So, maybe Putin took advantage of actual protests from the westerners, cut a deal with the Ukrainian officials, and then stoked the flames enough to have an excuse to take action; all the while letting the west look bad for stoking another "democratic student revolt" (which has been our MO for a long time). The alternatives seem to be that the protests would have not amounted to much in the long run, or they would have ended up with a pro-western state right in the middle of Russia's neighborhood.

Frankly, the Cold War never died, it just changed phases. The Anglo-Americans, Russians, and Chinese are still sizing each other up and shuffling their pawns and rooks across the board in preparation for the finale.

The Russians have Kasparov, the Chinese Sun Tzu, and we have...
[ame]http://youtu.be/1LW__eE7-BA[/ame]

 

[DoChenRollingBearing]

Awesome rant, DCFusor! Awesome reply, ddBmb!

(DCF, you and ancona ought to write a book...)

Re Ukraine, neither we nor Yurp will do squat. Yopeen problems are for Yopeens to work out. As Ms Nuland said: F**k the Yeu...



AMFs:

:wave:

 

[Penn]

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