I’m not saying they have easy choices. Or good choices. But they do choose. We all do. I’d even say life is all about making small, imperfect choices.

Around 100 have joined non-Russian institutes in order to continue their physics research work with Europe’s particle-physics laboratory.

Not exactly “completely out of your control”, I’d say.

In the other hand, if digging good and settling oil to India were enough, they would not need to raid their savings this hard.

So maybe it’s not that critical to demotivate India from Russian oil…

My impression is that it’s exactly what Ukraine is doing by attacking oil refineries and reserves - make russia decide wether to sell or use themselves for the war.

I do hope that the industry taking it will just slightly delay devaluation and boom! more inflation.

You mean they will go for printer go brr?

Yes, please!

They also held 293.189 tonnes of unallocated gold, compared with 298.84 tonnes on August 1, 303.579 tonnes on July 1 and 329.795 tonnes on June 1.

So they sold almost 40 tonnes of gold in 4 months? I approve that trend.

It’s good that they can just print more rubels to fill the gap! /S

The facts are:

• russia spent a lot of effort trying to ban it
• eventually they “convinced” durov to cooperate to fight terrorism and removed the ban
• in russia fighting terrorism is applied to anything

Yes, I don’t have evidence that the messages are accessed, only that the access is given and that all of that is happening in a country with a blatant disregard to law from the government.

I would be surprised if it’s not.

russia tried to take control over it for a while, until

On 18 June 2020, the Russian government lifted its ban on Telegram after it agreed to “help with extremism investigations”. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/telegram-russia-ban-lift-messaging-app-encryption-download-a9573181.html

Which means they have access to all messages.

Yes.

On 18 June 2020, the Russian government lifted its ban on Telegram after it agreed to “help with extremism investigations”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/telegram-russia-ban-lift-messaging-app-encryption-download-a9573181.html

Which means KGB has full access to all messages.

They didn’t say which exactly human health is not threatened, so all is good and correct as I’m sure there’s at least one senile psychopath who’s safe from that smoke.

I think the main factor to the collapse as well as to why it was taking this long was the speed of communication. Those vassals had the luxury of 10 messages a year from the boss.

Interestingly, when it comes to (hopefully soon) collapse of russia, there are two parts to it. First are the instant communication channels that are useful to the crash and second is the human hierarchy that pootin uses (and has to) to get information. So he’s at the Ottoman speeds of processing information, but at the modern speed of attack.

As a protest, Hungary should sever all relations with the terrible totalitarian EU.

Also I think they should consider moving into russia - there should be enough vacant space.

No, I meant an accessory as in:

An accessory is a person who assists, but does not actually participate, in the commission of a crime.

Of course we cannot. I agree with you that nobody is born evil or a criminal (even psychopaths are not guaranteed to become serial killers).

By all means, if not for propaganda, we would live in a very different world.

But the unfortunate fact is that they did consume enough of that propaganda to do nothing, or worse, follow the orders.

Yes, they are not criminals by nature, but what they do is crime or at least they are an accessory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term)

the answer is - it doesn’t matter. the biggest learning from the nazi germany was that you don’t need the entire population of a country to be homicidal psychopaths. all you need is a small group of those psychopaths, control or media, propaganda and you get a perfectly functioning system where normal everyday folks go to their normal everyday jobs.

just those jobs are in gestapo. or in maintenance of gas chambers. or making food for the equally confused soldiers.

of course, we should avoid civilian casualties as much as we can (but apparently russian army is not required) but the system needs to be stopped.

russia has cancer. chemoterapy is not a pleasant procedure that affects both ill and healthy cells. the alternative is, unfortunately, to allow that cancer to spread to the entire planet.

I believe the trick to avoid getting encircled is withdrawing before one gets encircled

Ukraine doesn’t need that land. russia cannot afford not defending that land. The moment it gets too “expensive” for Ukraine, they withdraw. But that will only happen after russia invests heavily into actually recovering their territory.

It’s like in chess when a knight is attacking two pieces at the same time. The one on defense can only choose a smaller loss.

Which is a win for Ukraine.

These are fantastic artillery numbers. Iirc, russia is an artillery-first military - e.g. shoot a lot or artillery, pause and check with soldiers, repeat as needed.

So the fewer of those they have, the more they rely on guided bombs (which require planes, which are few, wear off and they are steadily losing too) and meat assaults.