It seems the matter is now resolved.

Here’s the link:

https://vimeo.com/user5077443/the-beauty-of-force

Keith

> On Mar 9, 2022, at 7:57 PM, Keith Sanborn <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Hi nettimers,
> 
> For some reason my vimeo account has been “automatically flagged” making all 
> my videos suddenly private. Who knows why? Perhaps because there are Cyrillic 
> characters in the title of this one? Very odd.  I have submitted a ticket to 
> vimeo support. I’ll post if/when my account matters are resolved.
> 
> In the meantime anyone interested in the video can download a low rez version 
> here:
> 
> https://we.tl/t-bKVg6QJnZM <https://we.tl/t-bKVg6QJnZM>
> 
> pw:gloom2008
> 
> Apologies to anyone reluctant to download.
> 
> Keith
> 
> 
>> On Mar 8, 2022, at 3:12 PM, Brian Holmes <[email protected] 
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> 
>> Patrice, you have put into words the bitter assessment of many many people.
>> 
>> But you should be checking the twitter status of Andrei V Kozyrev (former 
>> Russian foreign minister) more often!
>> 
>> March 6: "Russian military. The Kremlin spent the last 20 years trying to 
>> modernize its military. Much of that budget was stolen and spent on 
>> mega-yachts in Cyprus. But as a military advisor you cannot report that to 
>> the President. So they reported lies to him instead. Potemkin military"
>> 
>> https://twitter.com/andreivkozyrev/status/1500611398245634050 
>> <https://twitter.com/andreivkozyrev/status/1500611398245634050>
>> 
>> The fearsome Russian fighting force is a cardboard bear in the mud. The 
>> Ukrainians are well armed, they have been training for this since 2014, and 
>> so far they have humiliated their opponent and inflicted an historic defeat 
>> insofar as any future military prestige goes. The Russian capacity to 
>> intimidate Eastern Europe is plunging. They've lost a staggering quantity of 
>> tanks and vehicles of all kinds, along with the soldiers driving them, and 
>> they still have not established air superiority with all the combat-support 
>> capacity that entails, to the point where analysts have begun to wonder if 
>> they are simply incapable of coordinating and flying complex missions:
>> 
>> https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
>>  
>> <https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html>
>> https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defence-systems/russian-air-force-actually-incapable-complex-air-operations
>>  
>> <https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defence-systems/russian-air-force-actually-incapable-complex-air-operations>
>> 
>> It's uncertain if they have actually used their thermo-barbaric weapons yet, 
>> and you would think that if their fearsome hypersonic missile is not a dud, 
>> they would have already blown up Zelensky's presidential office where he 
>> sits at a precisely known location (the missile is supposed to arrive in 
>> seconds). Who knows? It may be that Nato support before and during the 
>> conflict has included communications-jamming capacities of some 
>> hitherto-unknown sort, or maybe the armed drones the Ukrainians got from 
>> Turkey are the only real superweapons of the war (so far, they definitely 
>> are). In any case, the performance of the Ukrainian David against the 
>> Russian Goliath doesn't suggest any immediate attack on the Nato 
>> mega-Goliath (including its little fingers, the Baltic states), or even on 
>> Moldova. As for the probability that the Nato countries will seize the 
>> occasion to jump the nuclear tripwire by rashly launching their own massive 
>> attack, well, their 75-year adherence to deterrence doctrine makes that hard 
>> to imagine. I don't think Nato will make the nuclear mistake. Concerning the 
>> other side, however, apparently anything is possible.
>> 
>> Nato has a lot of experience with Just Watching (remember the drawn-out 
>> atrocities of the former Yugoslavia, where there wasn't even a nuclear 
>> threat). I think they're gonna just watch while Russia starts 
>> indiscriminantly dropping bombs from high up in the sky, and the whole thing 
>> will continue to be even more horrible than it already is, until some point 
>> at which Putin can claim to have broken the Ukrainian state (maybe through 
>> the use of tactical nuclear weapons to make their own strategic deterrence 
>> credible). By that point the Russians will be so weakened that they will 
>> fall back to some arbitrary cease-fire line in Eastern Ukraine, which they 
>> will have a hard time defending. After that a remilitarized Nato, a 
>> remilitarized Europe and a host of other allies will use the now standard 
>> whole-of-society methods, including every embargo imaginable, to reduce 
>> Russia from a third-rate economic power and false military giant to a failed 
>> state on a mammoth scale. No problem, the Chinese will manage them for their 
>> oil and gas.
>> 
>> These projections are absolutely no better than yours, Patrice, but I 
>> thought I'd try devil's advocate!
>> 
>> Brian
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Mar 8, 2022 at 6:21 AM patrice riemens <[email protected] 
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> ... has already arrived .
>> 
>> Aloha,
>> 
>> Even though the last two posts on the list are mine, I have no intention to 
>> become (again) nettime's #1 poster! So this will be my last one for now.
>> 
>> This said I still wanted to share my thoughts  - was it only to be relieved 
>> of them -  about 'the situation' with fellow nettimers. 
>> 
>> ExecSum: I think that war in Western Europe is now inevitable, and it will 
>> descend on us sooner than we all would wish for. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> In my mind, there are three options about when NATO will actually go to, or 
>> be dragged into a war against Putin's Russia. 
>> 
>> Option Zero: There will be no war. Putin will enslave Ukraine after having 
>> laid it to waste, annex part of it, and transform the rest in a vassal 
>> state, or whatever 'solution' he has in mind after achieving 'victory'.  And 
>> 'we' in the West, will accommodate with the new situation and try to make 
>> the best of it, even if it won't be fun at all on many front.  And yet I 
>> would feel insanely optimistic if I gave it half a chance of happening - or 
>> even less than that.
>> 
>> Having put his war machinery in movement, there is no turning back for 
>> Vladimir Putin, save a number of scenarios for his demise that have been 
>> discussed here and there and which are all entirely speculative. So by 
>> keeping it strictly to the current state of the situation, I see only three 
>> possible outcomes, all based on the assumption that the political and 
>> military deciders in the Western alliance (but also outside of it) have by 
>> now concluded that a war can no longer be averted, the only question being 
>> when it will start 'for real'. 
>> 
>> So there are in my mind three 'moments' when NATO will become involved in an 
>> armed conflict with Putin's Russia:
>> 
>> Moment 1: The situation in Ukraine becomes so dire, the 'Grosnyfication' of 
>> Ukrainian cities so blatant, the masses of refugees into Ukraine's 
>> neighbours, fleeing the violence under the bombs so colossal, that 'in the 
>> West', populations, politicians, media, and even the military brass get so 
>> agitated as to decide that enough is enough - and that 'we will be next' any 
>> way. So there will be more and more support pouring into Ukraine that will 
>> less and less distinguishable from direct military intervention, a stage 
>> that in the eyes of Putin has been passed long ago in any case.  
>> 
>> Moment 2 happens if Putin indeed achieve his goals in Ukraine, at whatever 
>> cost to the Russian and to the Ukrainian people without NATO actually 
>> intervening, it having be paralysed by the fear of consequences Putin has 
>> repeatedly, and unequivocally threatened with. In which case there is no 
>> reason whatsoever to assume he will stop at that and now will go to menace, 
>> and, if unsuccessful,  attack both ex-Soviet, but not NATO members Moldova 
>> and Georgia. Russia annexing Moldova will make Romania very angry and very 
>> anxious, doing the same with Georgia will rattle Turkey to an even larger 
>> extent, and greater consequences. And both Romania and Turkey are NATO 
>> members. At which stage the same 'we'll anyway be next'  conclusion might 
>> prevail after all ...
>> 
>> ... or not. Moldova and far-from-Europe (if not from Turkey) Georgia will be 
>> left to their fate of post-Soviet & pre-Imperial vassal states, whether they 
>> have resisted invasion (& be destroyed in the process) or not. Moment 2 in 
>> any case represents a 'between-in'  scenario that could be triggered by the 
>> outcome of Moment 1, ... or not, or might just as well merge with ... 
>> 
>> Moment 3 which will happen when Putin's Russia will directly threaten NATO 
>> countries, arguing yet again that NATO, not Russia, is the 'structural' 
>> aggressor. Unfortunately, the trigger to make it is there, in plain sight, 
>> on the map: it is called the 'Suvalky gap' and it consist in the 90km long 
>> borderline between Poland and Lithuania that separates the Russian 
>> (semi-)exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast from Russia's vassal Belarus - by now, 
>> and surely by then, a nation in name only. No doubt Putin will demand a 
>> 'corridor' to put an end to this insufferable situation, itself the result 
>> from the evenmore insufferable existence of the formerly Soviet Baltic 
>> states as independent countries. And all NATO members, just as Poland.
>> 
>> There will be no Czechoslovakia 1939. Having gone that far, the analogy with 
>> the precedent of Nazi Germany will have become too stark. NATO will go at 
>> war. What happens next is for any one and everyone to imagine.
>> 
>> I am aware that there are a lot of holes that can (and will) be shot in my 
>> presentation. The most obvious one being whether Putin can hold Russia 
>> together as it is dragging it into a fratricidal annihilation war with 
>> Ukraine - with the economic disaster that it entails. And whether he can 
>> hold his power (and even his life) in the face of possible (probable?) 
>> mounting discontent, both of the Russian people and of his own clique. 
>> Beware of the Ides of March (in 6 days time!) and the 'Tu quoque' bit they 
>> say ... but this wishful thinking is surely part of my sentiment, but not of 
>> my reasoning. 
>> 
>> Conclusion: We - and this time without speech marks - are toast. Sorry.
>> 
>> Cheers all the same,
>> p+7D!
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>    
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