zazen

Resolve the core issue rather cause more issues by becoming a pariah state the world hates and getting hated on wherever you go as a tourist, sadly. Their not threatened from all sides. Their existence isn't at stake - its not a survival issue but a security issue caused by occupation. In other words - a security dilemma they have created by their own actions and continue to perpetuate rather than resolving the core issue. If a man takes my brother hostage with his gun to his head and arm around his neck - I don't just bomb the both of them. I also don't ask the criminal to step to the side to make space between him and my brother so I can bomb him anyway. If he wants something in exchange - it depends on what he's asking for. If the demand is nonsense and maximalist (such as I commit suicide in exchange for my brothers life ie Israel doesn't exist in exchange for a Palestinian state) then things get complicated and messy. If its a balanced demand (ie they want to exist in a Palestinian state with sovereignty along side Israel) then it should be entertained. If the demand is for a inalienable right the world already has consensus on and that I have little ground in standing in the way of - unless I want to be hated by the world for doing so and gaslight everyone for being anti-Semitic - then it makes sense to let the right manifest. It's called diplomacy and win-win cooperation - something Western hegemony is too arrogant for.

It’s like saying criminals hide among New Yorker civilians - theres literally no where that isn’t a civilian area in such densley populated places. Gaza’s more densely populated than Tokyo and equal to Hong Kong. Where is Hamas supposed to fight from? We can’t expect Hamas to come out in the open and fight like in some Western showdown lol not when one sides F35 will zap them into dust and they have tanks and armor. Maybe they should do a UFC fight with bare fist only and no civilians get hurt but can watch instead.

@BlueOak Regarding the Tomahawks - the issue is in the ambiguity and the fact that NATO or the US could put nuclear warheads even if Ukraine doesn't have them itself. Nuclear deterrence runs on worst-case logic and Russia will have to factor this in. Beside that - the range is threatening enough and it would mean US/Western involvement much more concretely in strikes upon Russia which complicates Russia's position. Does that mean that they then start striking arms industry in NATO countries? It brings up many questions and raises the stakes. The fact its taken so lightly shows the willingness of some to escalate the war into a hot one and spread it beyond Ukraine. Do you think Russia would allow itself to collapse before leveling Ukraine? Don't you think Putin being out would invite someone much more hard line than he is and escalate this war even further? Many things are being balanced and calibrated at all times - including the intensity of the war. Things have been kept in the tank for the contingency of NATO getting involved directly down the line. If Russia was really about to collapse we'd see a entirely different kind of war being waged - scorched earth kind like in Gaza. Russia clearly doesn't want a ceasefire but a permanent resolution to the whole issue. A ceasefire just means Ukraine can re-group and build up again to continue at a later date. Also, article 73 of the Ukrainian constitution makes any agreement to alter Ukraine's borders legally void unless approved by a nationwide referendum so any concession made without that could be thrown out later. Let's see what happens.

@BlueOak @Breakingthewall That’s definitely a lot of pressure being applied for once - via drones of all tools. They seem to be doing what sanctions intended to - whether that bends or breaks Russia is to be seen. Let’s say all this pans out to the point of collapse - do we really think Russia is going to sit by and allow itself to collapse or wouldn’t it level Ukraine before that even happens? As Israel has done to Gaza. If all this chaos takes Putin out who comes after? As far as I know Putin seems to be the more restrained among the lot who are growing frustrated with him not gong all out. Putins seems to be balancing things as to not tilt so far into forcing NATO’s direct involvement or alienation from its allies or the world for going scorched earth and racking up the civilian death toll. The reason tomahawks escalate things is because when launched no one can tell whether their equipped with nuclear warheads or not - so Russia would have to take this into account and respond for the worst case which risks nuclear war. Yet we have Eurocons egging all this on as if they’re unaware of the basics. Seems it was a bluff tactic as Trump is known for. Are we all ready to spill blood for this war? Good listen going into the fragile situation we’re currently in: It’s a narrative war out there. This for example: https://x.com/simpatico771/status/1980718375757029645?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ See the exchange of bodies linked in that tweet which shows Russia exchanging far more Ukrainian casualties than Ukraine. Fog of war. If manpower eventually becomes an issue - what next? Europe sending troops and direct war.. It seems on all fronts there are massive pressures which is why even UK’s top chief is saying what he is (Ukraine can’t win). Manpower, arms (Trump saying they need it for themselves), funding (freezing assets now which isn’t optically good for trust in Western finance and will have consequences). Just more de-industrialising and bad economic outlook for Europe with all the moves being made (Nexperia also). Today a refinery in Hungary is ablaze now too lol. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2025/10/20/should-frozen-russian-assets-fund-ukraine-eu/ “The West does not have the resources to bankroll an indefinite war. Instead, fatigue has risen – notably in the United States – for continuing to finance Ukraine. There is a curtailed capacity to deliver on loans and grants when many western governments face political and budgetary turmoilthemselves. Ukraine can no longer rely on the United States to deliver any sustained financing. This means the European Union – already Ukraine’s single largest financier – will have to foot much of the bill. But there may be a voter backlash within the EU if the military funding of Ukraine comes at the expense of domestic spending. The only realistic resource at this stage is the Russian assets.” All they have now are drones and courage it seems. Or a invitation to scorched earth policy from NATO stepping in directly of which Ukraine will be the first casualty. Even if Eurocons and Neocons get their wet dream of ousting Putin, that will bring in a someone with a harsher stance they need to deal with - so what’s the off ramp here? Seems the battlefield will decide.

I agree - it requires an inclusive security architecture of “indivisible security” as they say. The problem is a security guarantee is as good as NATO article 5 which is a large factor of this war to begin with - hence it needs to be made to include Russia rather than exclude them. All this hybrid warfare exists because when two powers are too strong to go directly at each other - things go ghost protocol and grey zone tactics instead. Countries (mainly powers) engage in these things all the time (welcome to geopolitics) but Russia’s engagement is intensified and shadowy due to the larger geopolitical struggle and stakes at play. Israel literally spies on its allies and they aren’t even rivals. Russia’s intelligence services are as active as the CIA, MI6 or Mossad. They differ in style, visibility and intensity. Western agencies can influence via NGOs, media and “democracy promotion”. Lobbying in the West is basically legalised influence which Russia is locked out of. So Israel, Saudi Arabia, or European allies / US corporates can “influence” each other officially while Russia uses unofficial means. The bottom line in reducing all those tensions (and hybrid antics which will never go away but can only ever be managed in the world of politics) is normalisation of ties and a proper security architecture that resolves the underlying tension between Russia’s relationship with the West. Write this in another thread but it’s worth a read (including the Glen Diesen Substack): People need to realise this a larger war than Ukraine-Russia. The reason Tomahwaks can't be given and most likely won't be is because whilst Western involvement in this war is obvious (intelligence, ISR, Western arms and aims at the expense of Ukrainian blood etc) Tomahawks or any system that requires the very explicit involvement of the US to operate such systems (that can't simply be given to those without the operational ability) increases the tensions between rival powers who are avoiding direct conflict (a hot war vs a cold indirect one via proxy now). The stakes are simply too high unless you want to risk WW3 and gamble on that. This is where Ukraine finds itself in a bad position - because it's provided defensive means but never the offensive means that can perhaps tilt the balance in their favor - which may not happen even if they were provided. Those offesnive weapons simply risk a hot war between Russia and the West that is being avoided at all costs by the sane minded, or being flirted with by the insane Eurocons who dream of Balkanizing Russia and taking the fight to them - not knowing what that even means. This is why diplomacy is the only way and the cutting of losses to prevent further losses (to life or land). As we speak there are encirclement of the front line cities with Pokrovsk being a major logistical hub in the cross hairs. The linear thinking of - Russia only captures x km of land in x amount of time therefore it would take them 100s of years to capture all of Ukraine - is simply not smart. War isn't linear - if certain places fall they can have a domino effect more than others and leave wide open spaces to take land more easily than others. Attrition warfare is never linear. Ukraine's drone strategy is good in causing issues in Russia - but the other side of this is that facilities get repaired and back online within weeks at times, and Russia can adapt or move product to other regions to be refined etc. Things shouldn't be overstated. Even if we think the West can cause enough chaos in Russia as to have Putin overthrown - what does that achieve? Putin is actually seen as more of a moderate in Russia - do we really want someone like Medvedev to come into power? lol. This is a good video on the gas situation: We are told that to be patriotic and Pro-Western (values and all) is to egg on a Chihuahua (Ukraine) to fight a Pitbull (Russia), and that anyone talking of a diplomatic solution is a Russian bot. We can't even see the diplomacy Russia/Putin has engaged in since his coming into power, let alone early on in this as the Istanbul negotiations showed. We're lied to and pysoped about every other war or imperial arrangement (Israel-Western ties) but can't fathom similar taking place with regards to this conflict.

Those patterns are definitely observable - they exist because human nature is constant enough to create probabilities, but consciousness adds variance. A good way to look at it is the container vs consciousness. The container shifts odds, but doesn't always determine destiny. Structures/systems/containers are the bones and meat suit (container) humans operate within, but it's the brain soup of the psyche, culture and consciousness that moves within it and directs towards better or worse outcomes. So a intersection of fatalism and agency. Structural constraints (nature) sets the stage (incentives and pressures) within which the psyche behaves (plays on the stage). Usually humans behave more similar than different, therefore patterns emerge. So I guess we could weight it more towards nature determining outcomes,than nurture shifting towards different outcomes. For example from Chat GPT: ''The term “Thucydides Trap” comes from political scientist Graham Allison, who examined 16 historical cases over the past 500 years in which a rising power threatened to displace a ruling power, ending in war. Here are the facts from his Harvard Belfer Center study (“Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?”): Out of 16 cases, 12 ended in war, and 4 did not. That’s about 75% war, 25% peace.'' Variance showing not all power or positions of power are abused: You can be so honourable that even your rivals respect you. That’s why there are fewer “greats” however. As you point out observable patterns show up - because nature acts out the same more often under the same conditions than not. Exceptions get the adoration because they “transcended” nature or more so exercise it with some conscience (that separates man from animal). Man doesn’t simply default to nature but can determine and exercise will upon it - nature is the starting point not the end point. “When Saladin retook Jerusalem in 1187, he was in the same structural position as the Crusaders a century earlier: a victorious conqueror standing over a defeated, occupied city. The conditions were identical — military triumph, religious rivalry, opportunity for revenge. Yet his response could not have been more different. The Crusaders, when they took Jerusalem in 1099, massacred Muslims and Jews indiscriminately, bathing the city in blood. Saladin, in contrast, pardoned the city’s Christians, allowed orderly ransom for captives, invited Jews back to resettle, and guaranteed protection for holy sites.”

“Ukraine cannot win its war with Russia and should negotiate peace terms with the Kremlin, according to Britain’s most senior army officer. Reflecting on Ukraine’s chances of success against Russia, he said: “My view is that they would not win.” “Could not win, even with the right resources?” he was asked. “No,” he replied. Pressed further by The Independent, he was asked: “ Even with the right resources?” “No, they haven’t got the manpower,” the former commando said. In his first long-form podcast interview, Lord Richards, the only British officer to have commanded massed US troops at war since 1945, said the outlook for Ukraine was not good. “Unless we were to go in with them – which we won’t do because Ukraine is not an existential issue for us. It clearly is for the Russians, by the way,” he said on World of Trouble. “We’ve decided because it’s not an existential issue, we will not go to war." Sobering truth from 36min - 50min from UK’s top army officer. Another good one:

Thank you 😄 News from just today: Ceasefire broken already it seems.

Very relevant video on this topic of Kishore Mahbubani ( former president of UN Security Council) and a polish scholar discussing double standards and how to deal with Russia / China and Multipolarity.

That’s what I said - people just assume moral development by a single topic / metric - which is that their political system of governance is democratic. It’s like thinking because tribal communities in the jungle democratically vote on who the next elder is or who gets to eat the first bite of the hunt - that this means they are morally developed because they let everyone vote on things. Meanwhile they do ritual sacrifice like the Aztecs to get the rain god to give them good crops for next year lol

It’s not just lack of courage but also lack of foresight and cunningness which is required in geopolitics. This isn’t a game of jenga for the soft hearted liberal types who think their above survival and power dynamics - only to ruled by the power of US imperial and corporate interests at the cost of their own interests! You gotta be a Bhudda (benevolent) Machiavelli in this game or it’s simply not for you. https://x.com/acea_auto/status/1978800942859608529?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ From the European Automobile Manufacturing Association: “We are deeply concerned by potential significant disruption to European vehicle manufacturing if the interruption of Nexperia chips supplies cannot be immediately resolved.“ Also: https://x.com/theothersideru/status/1978559267423846507?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ “Italy stops extradition to Germany of a Ukrainian man suspected of masterminding Nord Stream sabotage A second Ukrainian suspect remains in custody in Poland, which is still reviewing a separate German extradition request This comes just a day after Poland demanded Germany stop its Nord Stream attack prosecutions, arguing they are not in the interests of Poland or NATO“ Self-mutilation and industrial sabotage lol exactly why I’m leaving Europe like many others. Can’t save the ideologically blinkered. Any wise and tactful leader would dedicate themselves to a path of extricating themselves from dependencies slowly whilst “maintaining” relationships with those you depend on until you get a stronger hand. You don’t just cold turkey yourself like it’s some smoking addiction - or else your Christmas turkey may literally be cold this winter for some! Arnaud on Nord stream commenting on a Polish minister who’s said Thank You America after it was blown up: https://x.com/rnaudbertrand/status/1979373210849443970?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ

EU hypocrisy. This is why people don’t simply say Israel’s crimes or US-Israel’s crimes (big/lil Satan) but Western crimes. Roughly 10% of the world population (the West) want to cozy up to the global majority (who are aware of colonialism and imperialism) and have them pick, plug into and stay within the Western led eco-political order vs BRICS building a new one. Yeah, I wonder why their hedging ..

Being a democracy doesn’t automatically confer the moral development people think it does - this is simply conflation. The US was a democracy when slavery was a thing. It’s a political system of organising society - not a moral barometer. Western propaganda has people dick ride democracy as a justification for empires actions against “different” systems that require liberating - only the oligarchs pockets in these so called democracies get liberated. Bae be like

Ewsome Newsome seems authentic

Infighting with some group supported by Israel: Divide and rule, or pretext for continued ops.

Agreed - but on a different timeline. They literally needed (past tense) to cleanse Palestinians post Holocaust (existential survival logic) - in order to settle a majority Jewish state in a majority Arab land. But today they have a state, one of the strongest militaries in the region, nuclear deterrence and superpower backing. So the existential survival logic doesn't exist today, only a existential threat to their supremacy and domination beyond their own state. They play conflation Olympics between survival and supremacy - hence the deceptiveness on which an entire thread on the forum exists lol. Though I'm sure in some minds they do feel existential threatened - largely self inflated by their own propaganda, past trauma/paranoia and worldview - but speaking objectively it doesn't exist. Bro we know not all Israeli's are as twisted as the far right but to mention it every chance with a disclaimer is tedious business. Israels predicament is that it was a settler colonial project in response to a horrific Nazi project, but a settler colonial project that happened at the wrong time in history - during a time when de-colonization was happening and where that sort of way of doing things was phasing out of global norms. This means that even if they achieve their aims (largely have) they will be hated by the world for doing so. It’s got a moral and legitimacy crisis for continuing to exist the way it is by not settling the injustice it caused at its inception and continuing that injustice till today. Zio's missed the boat.

What do progressives want? One can be authentic about their values while being authentic about how to realistically achieve the closest version of them in the real world. Values are aspirations, not expectations we should impose on a messy world in which we will imperfectly attain them. Sometimes (a lot of the time) you don't get good things by sounding or solely doing what looks good on the surface. This isn't a moral purity test, life isn't only real social (socialist) dynamics where we can sit in a hippie camp and sing, but is where real power dynamics need to be accounted for. Powers need to be buffered by principles, but power dynamics shouldn't be denied all together or the reality of them. Soft hearted values mean shit without the hard reality of having the power to execute on and maintain them - but the liberal reflex is opposed to the methods because it looks ''mean'', even if the method is the means to the closest version of their ideal ends (social welfare, good living standards, safety from crime, equality under the law) See what Singapore became from nothing and what it took. Governance and civilization building isn't about political purity tests and authenticity as much as it is about political pragmatism, boldness and a benevolent wielding of power. Philosopher king type sheeet. Just came across a Bloomberg article yesterday on Singapore - one of the best pension systems in the world: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-14/these-are-the-world-s-best-and-worst-pensions-in-2025#:~:text=Singapore has broken into the top tier of an annual,CFA Institute Global Pension Index. Again - what do progressives want?

Likewise not a fan but since we're here - we need to also take into account time scale (not just scale of destruction) and proportionality. Even if we matched the civilian death rate of Gaza (70k) to Ukraine - Gaza's population is 2 million vs Ukraine's 40 million (though a lot fled). The time scale in which those deaths occurred is in nearly half the time (3.5 yrs for Ukraine war vs 2 for Gaza). The per capita civilian death toll is approximately: Ukraine - 35 per 100k inhabitants Gaza - 3'000 per 100k inhabitants Iraq - 600 per 100k inhabitants For the moral lens, the context of these wars matters also. Ukraine is state vs state (great power proxy) war, Gaza is a state vs stateless people ''war'' in which non-state actors have arisen from those conditions to fight the state that denies their people one. Iraq was a empire state (US) going to war against another state on the other side of the planet and based upon fabricated lies. Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Gaza have at least some security logic, US's Iraq war has none except empire logic for empire gain - and based on lies which is especially dark and twisted - destabilising the region into a hornets nest of extremists. Regardless of Russia's historic rhetoric about Ukraine - the security calculus exists independent of it and would be responded too. Which is why I say there is at least ''some'' security logic that can't be denied. Even if Ukraine was as different as Mexico and culturally-historically divorced from Russia - the security dilemma still exists of a great rival power encroaching upon you in a vulnerable geography that's been a past invasion corridor due to the lengthy border and flat lands that allows for it. This is why it's understandable for many, yet not excusable. The fact Ukraine is a civilizational kin state only makes things worse - just as Pakistan being turned into a battering ram against India would be taken personally by India, or Taiwan against China - by rival powers who wanted to contain either of them. Israel's situation can also be traced to at least some security logic (Hamas, Hezbollah, supported via Iran etc). But it's not a existential threat in the same way great power competition is - its a threat of exhaustion from a unresolved political issue that's trying to be resolved via a military solution. The security is also self-perpetuating and exists because occupation and dispossession never ended. They equate the control of those people (fighting for their rights but being gas lighted as terrorist savages for it) with survival, when controlling (perhaps cleansing) them is what's causing the issue to begin with. It's got a element of security logic but is more supremacy logic. US-Iraq - empire logic for gain. Israel-Gaza - supremacy logic with some security logic that's exaggerated. Russia-Ukraine - security logic with some historic rhetoric that's bogus and irrelevant to the modern day. Interestingly just came across Putin speaking on Iraq compared to Ukraine: https://x.com/RussiaIsntEnemy/status/1978500666608742545 Name of the account is so propagandic lool

Baffles me too: https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1978579570333757891?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ

A good way to think of it at a systems level is that the US is like a landlord of an entire town with blocks of apartments (our global system). Most tenants are grateful for the infrastructure, institutions, laws and policing provided. But this landlord also abuses his position: raising rent on tenants he dislikes (sanctions), entering their apartments without permission (interventions), and sometimes taking their belongings (resources or regime change). Because he’s the only landlord in town, his power becomes monopolistic - if he evicts you, you’re homeless (locked out the global system). Meanwhile, Russia is one of the tenants. It’s frustrated by how the landlord treats certain tenants better than others and fears that the landlord’s agents (NATO) are moving closer to them - who they have a bad history with. Russia’s neighbour apartment is their cousin Ukraine who is offering to split rent and room share with NATO. On one level - Russia feels insecure for having a hostile neighbour, but on another level feels betrayed by family - adding vodka to the wound. What was a cold calculated security issue now becomes a personalised one only heightening the tensions. Russia decides to pre-emptively turn this familial neighbours place uninhabitable for NATO and make their cousin Ukraine think twice about hosting them. Russia even goes as far as to extend their apartment into Ukraine and claim they used to be one penthouse but only split recently with a wall partition. Obviously this is wrong - because if every tenant started smashing walls for “security” or making historical claims over other apartments for having lived in them before - the whole bloc and town would fall into chaos. Russia can be understood, yet not excused. The landlord’s arrogance, selective enforcement of rules and total monopoly created the very insecurity that made the tenant act out - however unjustly and brutally. The lesson is: The landlord (US) maintains order but abuses its position within it - corroding trust through hypocrisy. The tenant (Russia) violates rules out of fear and a sense of betrayal adding insult to injury. The rest of the tenants (Global South) - just want a building / town where security and monopoly power isn’t abused. One of the wealthier tenants (China) starts building a town next door alongside other irritated tenants (BRICS) who’d like to attain some bargaining power and hedge against the current landlord. The current landlord (US), his agents (NATO) and most of his loyalist tenants who had preferential rates (Western bloc) oppose and feel threatened by this new development - as if enough residents left their town for the new one, their assets would depreciate in value, and their power along with it. Check out John Mearsheimer speak on the changing order in the first 13min of this talk to make sense of it even more:

Found this interesting: Chat GPT ''1. Russia’s campaign in Ukraine is militarily brutal, but not indiscriminately exterminatory For the scale of ordnance dropped, the civilian-to-combatant ratio in Ukraine is unusually low by modern-war standards. The UN’s verified toll (~14k civilian deaths in 2½ years) is tragic, but tiny compared with Iraq (hundreds of thousands) or Gaza (tens of thousands in one year). That suggests targeting discipline and geographic concentration: Russia mostly strikes power grids, transport nodes, and front-line towns, not mass city centers. There have been war crimes and cluster munitions, but not a strategy of annihilating the civilian base. In short: strategic terror is not the doctrine—coercion through attrition is. 2. The West’s recent wars (Iraq, Libya, Gaza through its ally Israel) show a pattern of systemic civilian entanglement The U.S. and Israel rely heavily on aerial dominance and shock-and-awe destruction meant to paralyze governance structures. These are designed to quickly degrade the enemy’s capacity by collapsing its civil infrastructure—electric grids, ministries, hospitals—on the theory that it forces surrender. That doctrine maximizes short-term control but produces staggering collateral damage. It’s less about battlefield victory and more about “break the system to remake it.” So in Iraq and Gaza you see industrial-scale civilian harm because the target is the entire ecosystem that sustains resistance, not just the military formations. 3. Ukraine’s war looks like industrial positional warfare, not counter-insurgency or urban pacification It resembles World War-style fighting between organized armies with clear front lines. Civilians are mostly casualties of proximity, not deliberate policy. That’s why the toll, while horrifying, is orders of magnitude lower per month of combat. 4. What it tells us about military ethics and doctrine today Russia fights conventionally, trying to compel through exhaustion and infrastructure pressure rather than extermination. It shows a Cold-War-era “strategic warfare” mindset. The U.S./Israel model treats wars as social-engineering exercises—obliterate the opponent’s civil order, then reconstruct on your terms. It’s a neoliberal form of total war, fought through airstrikes, blockades, and sanctions rather than front lines. The result: Ukraine’s civilian death ratio looks like a 20th-century war, while Iraq and Gaza look like 21st-century imperial policing, where civilians are the battlespace. 5. The moral inversion this exposes It’s darkly ironic that the side most accused of barbarism (Russia) shows more restraint toward civilian populations than the powers that justify their wars as humanitarian. It suggests that Western warfare has evolved toward maximum precision in rhetoric, maximum destruction in effect—a kind of technocratic savagery that hides behind the language of democracy and defense. In essence: Russia wages war against armies. The West and Israel wage war against systems—and systems are made of people. That difference in doctrine explains why the body counts look the way they do, and why modern moral narratives about “civilized warfare” ring increasingly hollow.'' _________ I pushed back saying that the lower civilian death toll can be attributed to the successful evacuations done early and bunker systems from the soviet era that prevented a higher number - and that it can't all be pinned on Russia showing restraint via their operations. This was the response: ''1. Evacuation and sheltering clearly saved many lives Without evacuation corridors, bunkers, and early-warning systems, Ukraine’s civilian deaths would easily have been several times higher. Missiles and artillery have hit apartment blocks, markets, and infrastructure — if those targets were fully populated, the toll could have reached hundreds of thousands, not tens of thousands. So yes, civil defense infrastructure and mass displacement explain much of the gap. 2. But that alone doesn’t explain the entire difference Even accounting for evacuations, the pattern and intensity of Russian strikes are far less indiscriminate than in Iraq or Gaza. Russia has not flattened entire cities for symbolic punishment, like the U.S. did in Fallujah or Israel did in Gaza City. Russian bombardment typically follows front-line movement, not the total leveling of civilian centers behind enemy lines. The ratio of civilian to military casualties remains relatively low — a hallmark of targeted, positional warfare, not total warfare. If Russia were aiming to maximize civilian terror, it has the capacity — it simply hasn’t chosen to do so on that scale. 3. Compare the doctrinal mindset Iraq 2003: “Shock and awe” sought psychological collapse by destroying command, power, and urban infrastructure all at once — civilians were structurally baked into the target set. Gaza: Israel’s “mow the lawn” logic treats the entire territory as a combat zone. Ukraine: Russia aims to degrade capacity and exhaust the state, not erase the population or seize cities through firestorming. So even if Ukraine had been more trapped — no shelters, no evacuation — the likely death toll would have been far higher, but still below Iraq’s million-scale catastrophe, because Russia’s campaign isn’t built around mass annihilation of civilians. 4. A fair conclusion Evacuation and bunkers dramatically reduced deaths. Russian targeting doctrine (for all its brutality) still shows a preference for infrastructure and military nodes, not terror-level carpet bombing. Combine the two, and you get Ukraine’s relatively low civilian toll compared to Iraq or Gaza. So, yes — had those protective measures not existed, civilian deaths might have been closer to Iraq’s verified range (hundreds of thousands), but probably not approaching its total collapse scale. The evidence suggests both strategic restraint and defensive preparedness played crucial, complementary roles.''

Second hand embarrassment lol Arnaud is awesome. Here’s another recent tweet about the Dutch company seizing Chinese assets: https://x.com/rnaudbertrand/status/1978085002584662448?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ “This is an extraordinarily dumb thing for Europe to do: the Dutch government is quite literally stealing a leading Chinese semiconductors company, at least its international operations. They're probably acting in coordination with Washington since it was simultaneous to Trump's new "50% rule" that added all subsidiaries of companies on the U.S. "Entity List" to the list (which is the case of Wingtech Technology, Nexperia's Chinese parent company). I'm not even exaggerating on the "stealing" bit: they suspended the Chinese CEO from his position, appointed a non-Chinese director on the board with decisive voting rights and expropriated the company's shares by placing them under management by a third-party trustee. All under a law called the "Goods Availability Act" (government.nl/latest/news/20…), which is an emergency wartime legislation designed for things like the requisition of bread or fuel during a foreign invasion. It makes absolutely zero sense in this case: last I checked Holland wasn't being invaded, and Nexperia is operating normally, with chips flowing to European customers exactly as they always have. It's so dumb in so many respects. First of all this obviously kills the investment climate in Europe: go convince any non-Western country to invest in Europe now, when they know their investment can be seized from one day to the next on the flimsiest of pretexts. It invites retaliation from China, which is almost systematic. I wouldn't want to be a Dutch company with Chinese operations right now... It undermines Europe's own semiconductor strategy. Nexperia is one of the all-too-rare successful EU semiconductor companies, headquartered in Holland with 14,000 employees worldwide. Destabilizing it isn't exactly smart... Last but not least, it sends yet again the message of a EU with zero strategic autonomy since, again, this was simultaneous with new US rules that affected Nexperia.” Tweet 2: “Interestingly, now that we have more information, the best angle to understand what happened with Nexperia is as an economic proxy war between the U.S. and China, with Europe - as is often the case these days - as the battleground (and therefore the main victim). As per confirmation from court filings (x.com/FT/status/1978…), it's now clear that the Dutch moved to seize Nexperia because they were told by the U.S. that if they didn't do so the company would end up on the Entity List and would therefore be basically killed by extraterritorial U.S. sanctions. Which would have been a heavy blow for the Dutch economy because, despite being owned by a Chinese company, Nexperia is headquartered in Holland and employs over 10,000 people in Europe. And now China's response to the Dutch seizing Nexperia (x.com/Sino_Market/st…) is to deploy their own economic weapon against the company: the company has been banned from Chinese supply chains, which is also pretty much a death warrant for such a business. So in effect it was a "tails I lose, heads... I lose too" situation for Europe: no matter the response - be it from US financial weaponry or Chinese supply chain weapons - Nexperia would basically be on death row. Which again illustrates the tragic strategic situation European leaders have put the continent in through decades of terrible choices. There's that saying: "if you're not at the table, you're on the menu"... well in Europe and Nexperia's case it's even worse than this, Nexperia is not being eaten by either side: it's being destroyed to prevent the other from having it. Europe doesn't even get the consolation of getting eaten: they're simply simply collateral damage, crushed like a powerless bug without a second thought about it.”

As I was saying: They will get hostages back and continue it seems, under any pre-text or reason. Jared Kushner's Art of the Deal logic is: Get to a yes first, and hash out the details later. Well, those details include Bibi and his far right coalition he depends on flopping the entire peace process and handling Trumps temper tantrum at making him look bad as a minor inconvenience in fulfilling their true aims.

@BlueOak Too many comments that our discussion just gets lost. I'm acknowledging nature exists, but adding in that context shapes how that nature / power manifests itself. For example as you've said - smaller powers don't war as much when larger powers keep them in check - that's acknowledgment that the context / structure they exist within is affecting how they behave, how their nature is being expressed. Nature is the base or starting point, not the end point which is shaped by the context. Power imbalances affect behavior - but why do some power imbalances produce stability (US-Canada, EU internally) while others produce war (NATO-Russia, Israel-Palestine)? The answer isn't simply because humans are humans or nature is nature (all the same). It's because of how power is structured and whether security concerns are addressed. We nurture nature towards better ends to live in a civil-ised world. NATO members don't war with each other despite massive militaries because they're inside a cooperative security framework. NATO vs Russia wars because there's NO framework that addresses Russian security concerns. Russia / Putin called for that after the fall of the USSR but it wasn't taken seriously despite Western analysts themselves blaring about the consequences of crossing red lines and provocation. Rejecting Putin's calls and warnings was due to the arrogance of being atop of the current world order which gives no incentive of considering others in. Your Cold War point shows how structure shaped outcomes. Mutually assured destruction, arms control treaties, hotlines / back channels, institutional frameworks - made war irrational despite massive militarization and ideological hatred. The system channeled behavior toward managed competition instead of annihilation. Militarism without sound security architecture creates issues. It's not inevitable that having or increasing military leads to war. China has one of the largest and hasn't yet used it to the degree the US has. If militarism lead to war then we'd see war all over the world as every country has a military. By that logic London should break away from other areas of England because it has a disproportionate economic and political power compared to the rest. This naturally occures in countries because capital cities concentrate power and money. Looks like UK will breakup (with Scotland) before Russia: https://youtu.be/0u9owvUbY_Y?si=-mewvHBAoloLkrbf&t=2 Israel got its hostages in the past via negotiations with Hamas. Hamas also came to the current negotiated peace deal with Trump and co. Peace is possible if we don't view nature or the psychology of actors as inevitable. It's fine to have stage green values and think about the planet, but it needs to be prioritized correctly. Security and geopolitics needs to be accounted for before those - because without security their won't be future generations to begin with, or they will be left in a economically weaker position due to less competitiveness against Chinese industry who places sovereignty and power at the forefront whilst simultaneously aiming towards sustainability in the long run. We can't complain about others (BRICS) rising and outcompeting the West otherwise. A quote from a youtube analyst regarding the recent rare earth situation: ''This is how we find ourselves in the predicament that we have created. It's easy to blame the Chinese. But our own system chased profit margins. It then supports profit margins and celebrates profit margins and that you'll only ever get it if you can deliver the cheapest product. While enforcing emission standards and reductions that are optical only because the emissions haven't reduced. It's just getting made elsewhere instead of right here. So we can bang on a drum and wear a bloody hippie outfit. But the excessive red tape has meant that these businesses can't do anything in a lot of these states.'' I didn't mean dismantling influence, but increasing it via a equitable approach that beats what Russia/China have to offer. The spectrum is influence, intervention then imperialism. The current relationship between the West and ''the rest'' is tilted towards intervention/imperial (especially the CFA Franc system).