News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


Great!

When are you leaving for the front?

Did you put all your affairs in order?

The wife and children surely support your commitment to Ukraine's mineral resources.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]

Mineral deal may be in trouble...

Russia captures largest lithium deposit in Eastern Europe, west of Pokrovsk.

A quote that's a few months old from the Ukrainian minister that inked the deal with the US:

"Ms. Svyrydenko said that site, known as the Dobra lithium field, could become the first project started under the deal. Several investors have already shown interest, including Critical Metals Corp, which, despite the loss of the Shevchenko deposit, remains eager to take part in the U.S.-Ukraine minerals partnership, Mr. Zhernov, the company's director, said."

Well, that's just too bad. These American investors can still work there - they'll just have to pay taxes to Russia. They are free to give half their profits to Ukraine if they so wish.

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News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


This is only your opinion.


I apologize. What exactly is funny?


My psychiatrist gave me a note certifying I am 100% mentally stable.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


Yes, we have our German and our American brothers. True.

But they are mere amateurs compared to us.

Germans stuffed OTHER people into ovens (okay, some Germans).

America bombed, incarcerated, and tortured OTHER people.

In Russia - just to show everybody that we truly mean business - we torture, imprison, and put into camps our OWN people.

Understand the difference? The nuance?

Next time you want to compete with Russia in the Cruelty Olympics - do your homework first.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


Haha!

Welcome to Russian history, where the worst instincts of man are given free reign.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


What does it matter, if the others die?

They are not there any longer to criticize you.

Seriously, if you study Russian history - you will understand that the princes of Muscovy were some of the hardest bastards in history.

They make Mongols and Apaches blush.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


Yeah well, in that episode we did kill the bright and creative ones.

But that's what allowed Moscow to rise above the other cities, and eventually the other duchies. It was always led by ruthlessly pragmatic people, that were willing to go so far as to sell their soul to the Tatars, just to gain further leverage over other princes.

This is how Moscow came to control everything, and every other romantic and Prince Charming ended up eating the dust.

Even under Mongol occupation, Moscow planned its eventual rise to the top of the ranking of vassals, and then eventual domination over its master. You gotta take your hat off to these guys.

These warlords married their son to the daughter of the last Byzantine emperor - and the rest is history.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]

... and because the Emperor preserves and protects - it is suicidal to fight him.

He is the father, and the teacher, and the disciplinarian.

In this sense we are an infantile race. Never grew up to take care of ourselves.

We always look to the leader, to tell us: how long we must suffer before he leads us to the next oasis or ungrazed pasture.

It doesn't matter if you have a Bobko or a Kania as part of the crew - the geologically deep Russian way will dictate the further evolution of events.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


Russia is not Poland.

It's 150 million people - instead of 38 million.

It's as diverse as America or China.

There's no such sense of unity, as a country the size of Poland can muster if necessary, and within a short period of time.

All Poles, largely, love other Poles (huge oversimplification, I know).

Not so in Russia. Not even close.

The contradictions within Russia, if given the oxygen and the time - will lead to a full blown implosion.

Russia is only held together by strength, and it's been that way since before the Mongols.

If you don't have an emperor, the thing falls apart.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]

@Torq

This poem, is the stuff of the Pugachev Rebellion, the Streltsy Riot, the Decembrists, and the January revolutionaries.

All these people, however well intentioned, caused us so, so much pain.

Russia does not do well with such things. We don't know the limits, or where the the boundaries lie.

It's either full slavery, or complete anarchy - when we begin to listen to these bright, Paris, London, New York educated people.

This is why I know I have no place to even raise my voice.

It will come from inside, or it won't come at all. I'm a passenger. They won't listen to me, and my arguments will not make sense to them.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]

.
They have the uniform. The badge. The gun. They have the mandate.

They are able to strike quite the pose - when they need to. Believe me.

--//--

One day I'll share my personal view on this dynamic. Regarding who supports whom, and who owes who.

--///--

I've been witness to a thousand boastful conversations by these assh*les. But you should see how they crawl around on their knees, when they need to borrow $10K to send their family to Egypt or Turkey (a trip they can't join them on).

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


In Russia you have to talk to them.

Like the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, they've turned into some version of the Janissaries.

They think only they preserve Russia, internally and externally. They think we all owe them fealty - for the sacrifices they make.

Like the IRGC, they've grown far outside their official jurisdiction. Into business. Into media. Even into sport.

--//--

They walk around like knights or monks.

We are all vulgar next to them. Spiritually bankrupt. Grotesque in our lifestyle decisions.

They look at us (my cousin, for example), as some kind of family donkey that has tuberculosis.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


Not to him.

To some extent, not to Putin. What a lot of my compatriots don't understand.

If you had not ever been close to these siloviki - it's hard to understand how they view us as less than insects.

Life undeserving of the description.

--///--
I respect them deeply, and their work, but I cannot agree with this description of the state of things - of course.

I think others have something to contribute too.

But they see in us only potential traitors and - fundamentally - weaklings.

It's hard to talk to them.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


Haha!

This is such a silly thing to say...

To kill like Stalin did, you cannot be mortal man. None of our categories apply to him. Nothing that makes sense to you - small, bourgeois man.

It's not some Hitler, who acted like a coward hiding behind a huge faceless bureaucracy - maintaining deniability.

Stalin sat late into the night - responding to letters containing pleas from distraught mothers and fathers at the edge of suicide. He signed hundreds and thousands of execution orders. This takes a level of steel that I cannot even fathom.

Stalin had no understanding of money. At the end of his life, they opening his cabinet, and a hundred sealed envelopes with his salaries came pouring out.

He did not understand luxury. He lived like a Spartan officer. Desk, chair, cabinet.

He definitely was not pained by conscience.

He only thought about the power of the state.

Such people show up once in a thousand, or two thousand years.

He was certainly not a man, but something more. A demon, some Soviet demiurge.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


Oh shut up....

A Pole is gonna teach me about lying.

You lie as hard and as frequently as we do.

This lying and scheming - it sits deep in our Slavic genes.

Some kind of natural allergy against a day's honest work.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]

I know Western people are loathe to consider such options, but when you deal with a problem such as lying and corruption - shooting people is not a bad option.

We eked out 40-50 years of moderate competence, on the memory of the Stalin purges.

Modern Russia is to a large extent the country Stalin has created. The man is larger than life itself. His shadow still hangs over the Russian government. Grown people - adults - still say his name in hushed terms. The fear - 75 years later - still has some residual hold.

But it was his approach that worked. Fear of Stalin, worked wonders on the average Russian fraudster. His omnipresence and omniscience, gave even the most cynical piece of sh*t fear of God.

Famous poet. Famous artist. Famous ballerina. Famous engineer, and so on and so forth. Stalin didn't care if you were about to invent teleportation - he would kill you if you were seen as not being a team player.

We need someone like this - today - to remind the people that get fat and rich while others die in the trenches, that there is still God for them. That there is punishment.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


The books I suggested him to read.

We've been suffering from thieves, idiots, and bad roads for the best part of a thousand years.

This does not mean anyone externally is able to save us from this.

Historically, Russians begin fixing things in their country only after losing a war disastrously.

Peter modernized Russia and turned it into a European country - in response to humiliating losses to the Swedes.

Alexander abolished serfdom (1861), modernized the military, reformed the judiciary, expanded railroads, and experimented with local self-governance (zemstvos) - in response to the Crimean War. In that war, Russia lost to a Western alliance; exposing its backward logistics, serf-based economy, and outdated army.

Lenin, and then Stalin, led a violent reconstitution of the national economy - following the loss in WW1 and the Polish-Soviet War. They nationalized industry, collectivized agriculture, and built a command economy. The Red Army was rebuilt virtually from scratch after near-total collapse - around a groundbreaking new vision of mass mechanized warfare.

Putin started modernizing the army after the embarrassing performance in Georgia, where it took nearly two weeks to disable a military that had a fraction of the firepower of a single Russian military district. In Georgia, we were saved only by our overwhelming mass vs the Georgians.

In the same way now - no Torq can save Russia from itself. If it's to reconstitute itself in a new and more powerful form, it must fully internalize the lessons from its recent embarrassments.

The answer is certainly not in a lack of democracy... per se. The answer lies in breaking free of a culture of total lies. Lies are the center of Russian problems. Everybody lies. The private lies to the sergeant. The sergeant lies to the lieutenant. The lieutenant lies to the captain. The captain lies to the major. The major lies to the colonel. The colonel lies to the general. The general lies to the general staff. The general staff lies to Putin. In result - the system is f*cked.

If Russia can defeat the total culture of lying at every step, for no logical reason whatsoever, it will be the greatest country in the world.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


Everyone who thinks that the two Maidans were the greatest manifestation of liberty ever.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


They were by no means flourishing.

Say what you want about illegal invasions, liberty, human rights, etc - but Ukraine had never been doing better than Russia economically. Not at any single point between today and 1991, did the Ukrainians grow faster than us, have higher incomes, or benefit from greater choice of consumer goods.

--///--

The dangerous example the Ukrainians were setting, was that you could don kitchen pots on your head, and start throwing bricks at policemen and taking potshots at them from your hunting rifle.

The dangerous example they set, is that it is enough to bring 15,000 people from all over Ukraine to the central square of the capital - in order to topple a democratically elected government. This, while every single other city in Ukraine stays quiet, and most normal people continue trying to live their normal lives.

This is exactly what happened during the October Revolution, when a small group of fanatics enforced their will on Petrograd - and plunged the rest of the country into 80 years of misery.

What I don't understand, is why the West cheers for this and pretends it is democracy. Nobody in the West seems to be ok with protesters storming government buildings.

Nobody thinks the Gilets Jauns have the right to storm the Elysee Palace and throw Macron in a rubbish bin. Nobody thinks it's ok for Jan 6 protesters to storm the Capitol.

Nobody calls for the overthrow of Spanish government, when Spanish riot police fire rubber bullets or tear gas into crowds.

But in Ukraine they are angels. They are saints. Martyrs for freedom. Noble elves... Why? Because it looks and sounds like they are against Russia. That's it.

All that is required to metamorphose from an unemployed street thug into a George Washington is to announce that you fight "for freedom from the Russian yoke".

News / The Iran war and Poland [826]


Moving HEU is not as easy as it sounds, based on what I've read from papers in recent days.

It's not as highly radioactive compared to other nuclear materials, but still poses a high risk.

It can literally explode like an ersatz nuclear bomb, in what's known as a "criticality" accident. That will kill anyone that is near, and contaminate the area.

Maybe it's possible to move it on 24 hours notice, but it seems like it's hard.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]

@Torq

I'm very grateful to Donald Trump for reintroducing the "threatening letter" back into the diplomatic mainstream.

I hope to see more, from other leaders now.

This is an ancient and established tradition - we should come back to it.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


Well, where do you think Kutuzov came from? Not the same Qutuz, but another Tatar.

P.S. Qutuz's response was to decapitate the envoys and place their heads on the gates of Cairo.

Again... respect.

This is why we have trouble with the Ukrainians, these ******** are as hard as we are.

A little scary, tbh, but in the end - we are even stronger.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]


Qutuz won.

Quite unexpectedly.

Lesson is - only a Mongol can stop Mongol expansion Westwards. Even if a former slave.

Turks will tell you he was Turkic. Don't listen to them. It is the same thing.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [373]

Was listening to a funny podcast today about the Mongol conquests. The narrator read a letter at one point, from Hulegu Khan - to the Mamluk ruler of Egypt (essentially another Mongol, previously enslaved, but through sheer force of will and martial prowess elevated above the locals).

Look at this letter:

From the King of Kings of the East and West, the Great Khan,
To Qutuz the Mamluk, who fled to escape our swords.

You should think of what happened to other countries and submit to us.
You have heard how we have conquered a vast empire and have purified the earth of the disorders that tainted it.
We have conquered vast areas, massacring all the people.
You cannot escape from the terror of our armies.
Where can you flee? What road will you use to escape us?
Our horses are swift, our arrows sharp, our swords like thunderbolts,
our hearts as hard as the mountains,
our soldiers as numerous as the sand.
Fortresses will not detain us, nor armies stop us.
Your prayers to God will not avail against us.
We are not moved by tears nor touched by lamentations.
Only those who beg our protection will be safe.
Hasten your reply before the fire of war is kindled.

- Hülegü Khan

Now, the current undisputed writer of menacing letters is Donal Trump... but still - this epistle stands on another level. 800 years later - it stirs my Russian heart with the power of its prose.

This is what I wish we wrote to Zelensky:

" From the King of Kings of the East and West, the Great Putin,
To Vladimir the Jew, who fled to escape our swords.

You should think of what happened to other countries and submit to us..."

UK, Ireland / BBC launches new Polish language news service [87]


My favorite form of drinking.

Am enjoying some fine bourbon, right this very moment, from AntV's home state. In utter solitude.

It's not about sadness, or drama. It's about ownership. You pour exactly what you want, exactly how you want it. No one judges your ice-to-whiskey ratio (zero). No one steals your olives. No one tries to turn the music up "just a little."

You can toast to absolutely nothing. Or everything.

You can sit in your kitchen in your underwear and listen to some obscure jazz or Soviet wartime marches or German industrial metal - whatever you, in that moment, feel like. You're not performing. You're not managing anyone else's vibe. It's just you and the glass, having a delightful conversation.

Po polsku / Tylko dla Polaków [16]

Faszyści.

Off-Topic / USA News and Poland - part 16 [153]


He's the 5th, that I did not mention.

Did not mention him, because he was not a mayor, a governor, a senator, or a congressman.

Anyway - these days he hates to be associated with New York. He's a Florida man now.

News / The Iran war and Poland [826]


To use an astronomical analogy - I think we are like a binary asteroid.

Two bodies that orbit each other closely, when all other conditions are stable, but then suddenly have very volatile and collision-liable trajectories as soon as they pass a third body - which had exerted a momentary gravitational pull.


Fine, have it your way.

News / The Iran war and Poland [826]


The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Oh... sooo complicated. Sooo complex. So arcane and Byzantine in its internal structures... that we shouldn't even bother.

Come on AntV...

Occupation is occupation. Forced resettlement is forced resettlement. Expropriation is expropriation. Murder is murder. Theft is theft.

Nuance is important, and impartiality, but here I feel you are trying to make something that is pretty straightforward into something more complex than it is.

Po polsku / Koniec Tuska [15]


Dlaczego nie chcesz omawiać takich tematów po angielsku? Myślę, że inni czytelnicy również byliby zainteresowani tym, jak ewoluowały poglądy Torqa.