Enjoying Spring. Putin proves us wrong. Covid fools China. Advocating genocide.
20220407
Zoriana, Marianna and I took a long walk this morning down to the beach where they had a lovely time playing in the sand and climbing trees. At only about 25 pounds Marianna is still comfortable to carry for a couple of miles on my shoulders. Along the way we saw a lot of wildflowers – I wished I had had my camera.
Here are some pictures of the same flowers, less abundant, in our own backyard.
The weather today is in the mid 60s. The whole family is out in the backyard/vegetable garden.
I have written about being wrong on February 27 and several times since. I considered most of most errors to be relatively excusable. Today I'm going bigger. It appears that Russia was going to invade Ukraine no matter what. If that is true, then the arguments that appealed to my common sense were in vain. Common sense did not apply to Vladimir Putin.
I should have put more faith in the many book reviews I posted here about how Russians think. Russians are not rational. Putin is not rational.
In particular, although Russia's complaint about shoving NATO down his throat was legitimate, he was planning to invade Ukraine in any case. We know this from the writings of Alexander Dugin, in my posts here and as summarized by Streamfortyseven here, here and here. Putin's complaint about the biolabs is likewise valid – the United States should not be building them anywhere, especially right on the Russian border – but he would have invented a pretext to invade anyhow.
Robert Homans' post yesterday included a link to an article in RIA Novosti by Timofei Sergeitsev essentially advocating genocide. I think Homans could have made the point even stronger. More than that, it appears that his link was to an abridged version of the original Russian. I am including a dual text rendition of the entire article at the end of this post. It is in image format because Substack does not handle tables well.
Steve Sailer of Takimag had a great piece yesterday on how the naturalist E.O. Wilson handled being wrong. Here I have a quote within a quote. Sailer's words are in normal text; the italic is his quote of Wilson.
"(E. O.)Wilson’s account in his memoir Naturalist of his reactions on a 1964 train journey when first reading (William) Hamilton’s breakthrough paper on why sterile worker ants sacrifice reproducing to bolster their sister queen’s fertility—while mammals share about 50 percent of their idiosyncratic genes with their siblings, social insects share about 75 percent—is a classic invocation of a feeling I’ve often experienced: what it’s like to realize you are not as smart as you assumed you were:
I went through the article again, more carefully this time, looking for the fatal flaw I believed must be there…. Surely I knew enough to come up with something…. By dinnertime, as the train rumbled on into Virginia, I was growing frustrated and angry. Hamilton, whoever he was, could not have cut the Gordian knot. Anyway, there was no Gordian knot in the first place, was there? I had thought there was probably just a lot of accidental evolution and wonderful natural history. And because I modestly thought of myself as the world authority on social insects, I also thought it unlikely that anyone else could explain their origin, certainly not in one clean stroke.
But by the time his train chugged into Miami, Wilson was Hamilton’s first and most influential convert."
I have much less to lose than Wilson did in admitting I was wrong. I imputed a level of rationality and humanity to Putin that is simply not there. While it should have been evident through these writings, his present actions, especially the insane way in which the Russians are simply destroying the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine, make the case unequivocally.
I invite you, the reader, to do a search on Тимофей Сергейцев and to translate what you find. You might also try Александр Дугин. These are Putin's intellectual standardbearers, and they are frightening, evil men.
Lots of people have trouble admitting they are wrong about coronavirus. The focus is now on the Chinese. They are the last country in the world to adhere to a "zero Covid" policy and it is failing badly. The Epoch Times seems to have the best coverage of the situation.
That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the strong men and good looking women alike are strengthening their bodies on the business end of shovels and rakes. The children are drinking in the sunshine and helping as they can.
Graham
Here follow images of Timofei Sergeitsev's article in RIA Novosti
Now as an outside observer I clearly am not in any position to fully understand much of what Putin has done. My readings suggest that the Donbas region was repopulated by Russian migration many years ago and that those arrivals wanted to force their values on the established communities. That has led to language issues ever since. I place it somewhat like Korea pre-WWII where Japan forced Korean language out, although that was done via military action. Over the many years people became tolerant of each other and adopted whatever language they felt most suited. Russian descendants were perhaps a bit richer than 'natives' but all did OK anyway.
Then 2014 and anti-Russian sentiments took hold as Russia moved on Crimea violating lease agreements. Ukraine was too weak to stop them and looked the other way as private armies funded by bosses got involved. Zelenskyy owes his office to some degree to those bosses. The bosses wanted more in the Donbas so a criminal activity there was somewhat tolerated in tying to displace Russian bosses already there. Russian bosses got Russian irregulars (green men) along with regular troops and a minor war simmered - for years with strike/counter-strike likely all to the detriment of those living there and finding neighbors not able to co-exist. Taking sides in a war not of their making. Meanwhile Kyiv was enmeshed in it's own political stalemates.
Putin was not getting anywhere in the Donbas as the forces there were fundamentally stalemated. Perhaps he wasn't doing well at all and the Azov types were proud of their uniforms and were doing better, perhaps as they got integrated into the real Ukraine military and got fancier weapons. Putin then decided to prepare for full out combat and built up forces. But nobody was backing down. And he was getting nowhere. Zelenskyy was trying to head off the war drums but it's not clear if he could control what was going on in the Donbas. Putin decided in a fit of pique that he could take over the whole place.
So that's my foolish set of far away observations.
But I am worried about a way out for Putin. He has failed and certainly knows his days are numbered. He may escape alive via artful control. Whether the US Generals are right about a long slow war of attrition, I'm not sure. So far the Russian operations have been remarkably bad and few would know why. Hard to know the Russian appetite for a long war over what seems more like lost pride. Trashing the Donbas seems such a silly waste to gain that mythical land bridge. And the Russian fleet could become at risk next if the west decides to help with weapons.
Meanwhile the glory of my Pear trees inspires a hope for some yield after several poor years.
"Russia did all possible for salvation West in the twentieth century. She implemented main west project, alternative capitalism that won national states - socialist, red project. She crushed German Nazism is monstrous offspring crisis Western civilization" - putting lipstick on a pig, in a typical Russian style. Who started WW2 again, Sep. 1939? Then occupied the Baltic states and invaded Finland? Who had an official ultimate goal of rolling over Europe, mid-term? Right...