Wartime

In the light of today as the topic of “negotiations” is continuously being wiped off the table with arguments like “Putin started this war” and “Why should Ukraine aspire surrender while they’ve been attacked?” - let’s recall why negotiations are held at all in war scenarios.

When do officials and representatives hold them with representatives of the opponent?
Huh?
First and foremost, it’s not a question of giving up immaterial “values” and virtues” that one side thinks to have on its side - it’s not a question of ideology and idealism.
Plainly, it’s a matter of pragmatism.

Negotiations over truces and “peace” are being held if one side recognizes that it’s about to lose and being crushed, so the smarter people among the state officials figure they’ll be better off stopping to try to win the war by force and rather try to save the slice of the cake that they still have under their control instead of eventually maybe ending up with none of it.

The essence of sitting down to hold negotiations is not surrendering and handing everything over to the enemy that it wants, but more than that securing some little bits of what one still has instead of losing everything and then depending on the arbitrariness or mercy of the winning opponent what few bread crumbs will be granted to oneself.

You practically do that by trying to find things to offer to the enemy fraction for which it shows itself willing to give up the demands for another item. And you do that up until the enemy fraction becomes content and leaves again.

It’s no different than negotiating a price in a handshake deal.
A buyer has interest in obtaining a particular item, the seller tells you the price, but the buyer doesn’t have enough money or doesn’t want to pay that much, so it needs to approach the seller and see if they are hardened in their stance or if there’s some room that can be debated over.

In that case, it’s “only” that the item that you want to buy is “peace” - or at least a truce so that the fighting and the destruction stops.

Negotiating is a tactic that is known in wars and armed conflicts for centuries. As old as such scenarios.

So this isn’t like an “absolutely crazy idea” in this conflict.
Rather it should be asked: What speaks objectively so much against it?

(Unless the explanation is that there are very stubborn humans involved in this specific case that are occupied by ideology and emotional biases who have a very distorted understanding about war at all - that all that there is to obtain is winning, like in a manic fanatic attitude heading for a crusade, heading towards total war, not just mere self-defense.)

Here, with the war in Ukraine active soon-to-be for half a year, the world is still waiting for Russia to collapse under the consequences of that decision.
Instead consumer prices exploded around the world, certain goods have become even rarer than before after the slight relief of the global economy from Covid-19, and food supplies and heating have become not safe (the latter - let alone how much it will cost in the end and if you can afford it, if your wallet’s budget is tight).

May it not be that the community of the so-called “Western states” miscalculated in a very high degree in this issue?

The path of the warrior can be quite dreadful.
You see a lot of ugly things, experience a lot of betrayal, witness many changes and storms, and you get to feel humans from their various sides. Positive and negative.
Also... you lose a lot of comrades along the way.
People who fight with you for a similar objective or believe in the word you spread, whether they do that for virtuous reasons or for the same shady ones that originally brought you to the battlefield.
They die in battle, they change sides, they split off from your horde because you don’t fight for the right subjects anymore, or they leave because they themselves have abandoned the path of honesty, or they get so severely wounded during the war, so that they can’t go on with the road they have chosen. Also, they might meet a guy/girl in between and settle down because that fulfills them with something that feels larger than continuing a fight whose end cannot be foreseen.

Continuously, along the way, depending on how well it goes, how bad the losses are and who leaves you while carrying on, you keep asking yourself the question whether the path is worth it.
Whether the target of the path is truly worth all you sacrifice for it.
Whether the efforts all pay off, judged by the results you get.
And if it’s practically and morally justified what you do.

Weren’t there other means to achieve the same goal - or something comparable?
Was it necessary to agree to such an ascetic lifestyle?
Could the same ideals be won with fewer losses?
Was everything that had to be done, from your point of view, necessary?
And, at all... do you still continue with the path because of the origins you started it with or did your motives change in between - change into something that more has to do with habit and playing a role voluntarily? Because, meanwhile, you know nothing else what to do with your life?

All that for justifying a continuation before yourself and in front of other people who pose that question to you... For telling you, you’re on a path that feels right to you.

Looking down on the graves of those that have been lost during the war - comrades, civilians, enemy soldiers, innocent victims of the violence, children, even villains -, through the many numbers of them, points the fork whether it’s been enough dead people already or whether their deaths shall not have been in vain...

The path of the warrior itself can be the warning memorial to this mass of devastation - to these existences ended, to the lives spun and twisted along it, to human madness and all the worst abilities and character features mankind can display, to the austerity you have to endure and force upon yourself for it, and to the lasting loss of trust other than in yourself.

As much as the Afghanistan war remained an apple of discord throughout the whole time of the 20 years the occupation of the Western troops lasted because of the shady reasons it was started with, it also simultaneously and silently became a train you couldn’t just jump off anymore and quit tomorrow.

Now with their departure, the tactical and political changes of the coming weeks and months will be a proof of that - and, at the same time, it will lay down the sad record of that the two biggest and strongest armies in modern history - the US army + its NATO associates and the Soviet Army - couldn’t rip out the root of exaggerated Islamic religion in this region and create a united country called “Afghanistan” that can claim its rank in the modern world order.
Be that that the religious extremism was just started and about to be strengthened (the Afghanistan war of the Soviet Union) or that it is a result of past foreign engagements gone wrong (the support of the US for the mujaheddin fighters in the 80s to make the Soviet Union fall; the support of the Syrian rebels, which were mostly if not entirely Islamic extremists as well, and by that helping creating the Islamic State, strengthening Islamic religious motivated terrorism and systematic violence on the whole and in the whole Middle East area) and that it outgrows one’s own powers and finances that one was originally willing to sacrifice for this endeavor (the Afghanistan war of the US and the NATO troops that were still deployed there).

It’s hard to guess how much the decay inside these big players make out a share in their respective defeat...
As a question to those two wars you can leave behind if how war itself is being led in these modern times hasn’t changed too much from the scheme of firm organized and equipped armies fighting each other on the battlefield, as it still was the case in WWII and its later offshoots around the world.

For this specific case, you can put on the record - as bitter, brutal and cynical it may sound: As long as the residents of this country who aren’t involved in religious extremism aren’t willing themselves to take a different path, to organize and do something to drive this out of their country, to rip this root of war and violence out in their society once and for all and harshly sanction it, as long as they rather flee abroad or to Europe, giving in to the order that a guerrilla army imposes on them - as long as that remains the case, this country won’t ever be peaceful and “free” again (whatever anyone wants to imagine under the term “free”).

That Afghanistan which even received a seat in the Intercosmos program and could see one of their citizens fly into space to the Mir station will be missing for a very, very long time now...

These days it’s ringing one year with Covid-19 being globally around - and, thinking realistically, the end still can not be foreseen. Although, admittedly, the means against the disease that this new coronavirus causes have grown from that status of “zero” last year.

So, let’s forge a summarization what there could be learned through the course of this year past...

One thing that, for sure, could be very clearly learned, wherever you lived on this planet: Capitalism is on its last legs. Or better say: It’s not the economy form anymore which can seemingly supply everyone with everything he/she needs. Also, it’s not the capitalism anymore that people used to know from glorious and wealthy times.
Why is that?
It’s because of the globalized economy that is around there now, that it has formed over decades, and the “development plan” of “let’s develop the world and bring supply and goods to the most difficult areas of the world” has shifted to “let’s make money with the least amount of work and investment” - which in practice means “minimal setup for everything, so that the circle of making money is still being kept up, but don’t think about the future or possible disturbances of that one setup for achieving something”. A wobbly base for supply with necessary goods.

As the virus went around the globe and other states than China and its East Asian neighbors realized that this is a topic that affects them also, this should have become very visible as nearly all countries of the world suddenly charged the market of face masks, disposable gloves and protection suits and found themselves getting way too few than needed because most of the production worldwide had been outsourced to China. - Here not the Middle Kingdom is to blame, but just greed, first world arrogance and a slightly racist mindset of Western enterprises which think like “things that have become minor activities which get paid just a few pennies - these can very well be done by some primitive people; for us this is beyond our standards”.
Enterprises and the big economy never wasted a thought about “What if there could suddenly be a spike in need?”, they didn’t care for a home-brew supply just in case whatever happens.
The only thing they cared about was their profit and about exploiting some folks in a country far away from their headquarters. And they have assured themselves of that never anything is going to happen which may break their concept how they had arranged the supply chains.

As the first countries had to operate with national lockdowns because of infection rates spiking, supply chains being more dominated by greed and thoughtlessness than anything else could be witnessed with food items.
At that time, and still it is so, some countries literally “had the task” to produce ware X and none else did that.
Why? Because of “planned economy”. “Planned economy” that doesn’t serve peoples’ needs and keeping up a public order, but just big enterprises and corporations making the most in profit with the least amount of bet - which had been arranged this way by corrupt politicians which realized the laws and legislature for that over decades.
Simultaneously, it became noticeable how many food items of particular types nationally were produced merely for exporting them to some other nation(s) - because then, these wares once remained in their countries of origin because the international trade and border traffic strongly reduced all by themselves.
So actually there’s a strong overproduction in particular goods just in favor of export in each country because some circumstances for creating them seemingly or factually fit advantageously for those who draw the most gain from the price of them and the separate national economies have been shifted to incredibly monocultures, leading to strong dependence on each other and therefore to fragile supply chains that break down as soon as anything on a larger scale strikes and disturbs their functionality. (Besides: Also leading to incredible one-sided ecological burdens).

Which, in the end, leads to countries producing some particular stuff in such large quantities that they could barely use them up themselves to supply their own people, and other stuff being produced in such few or no quantities that they’re literally fucked if they’re on their own for once.

This is not optimization of production and international “division of labor” according to the concept of David Ricardo. This is abuse of currency exchange courses for the sake of making dead substance called “money”, exploiting one people - the one that manages to be cheaper than all other -, playing multiple ends against the middle for no practical use of human society as a whole, destroying and ruining nature along the way, and even endangering the prosperity that mankind has made it to over centuries (because infrastructure already erected is being left to decay or to reduction due to costs, but which also results in decrease of performance, safety and stability). Including preventing other people from the 2nd or 3rd world countries getting to comparable levels of prosperity - because infrastructure in their countries sees no real development and investment into it anymore, other than if it is for broadening the circle of generating money for some far-away-living already wealthy person in a skyscraper.

During the year with Covid-19 around, witnessing time episodes through the natural seasons with more or lesser restrictions in each country, the overall global economy has a little adapted to the circumstances given - even though, noticeable in many spots and situations, against its will. Actually the big economy wanted to go on and act like nothing is wrong, like the virus and the disease doesn’t exist.
Supply chains have a little adapted through the course too because the countries and their national economies individually realized that this isn’t going to be over so soon and they are going to have to adapt if they want to evade chaos, bottlenecks and public panic - all, additionally, to their own personal disfavor too.

But, one point still remains as it was before: Protection clothes, masks and corona test kits still are being mostly produced and China and other East Asian countries. - The most important goods in order to actually manage and decrease this pandemic.
And the (capitalistically-organized) world economy doesn’t seem to see a problem with that. Forgotten are the troubles of the past spring in which the self-declared “wealthiest countries of the world” were running around like scared chicken and panicked over their lack of supply with basic medical goods for hygiene.
All progresses according to habit meanwhile... With nothing really learned from it.

That is why there is to say that capitalism is at its end.
That is why there is to say that the capitalism that people knew, which once helped developing the world, is no more.
Now it is just an economic system rooted down on fragile legs, existing mostly for making a few dozen people in the world rich (rich with something that has no meaning in nature and that can’t feed you if there are no food items to buy with it), and even these big partakers actually just wish for getting well through the breakdown if it happens. Because they somehow know that this stripped down machinery isn’t gonna last forever anymore.
But changing the concept or coming down from their “standards” of greed, how much this shall be supposed to bring them in “gain”, is like blasphemy to them - like they’re going to break a leg if they once be content with their amounted mass of money and sacrifice some in order to keep their own base for a living upright.

So it is either up to you and me to come up with something else in time, to shift structures back or erect new ones as best as possible under that reign in order to secure our own well-being - because the people currently sitting at the levers that make the world go around won’t be willing to make that happen. They just sit and watch and try to figure out how much juice the lemon still exudes.
All the while not really caring for human life, animal life, plant life, civilization, health of the masses or mankind being still alive in a hundred years and in good shape, not degenerated.

So - what could be witnessed in the past year with Covid-19 is the expectation of what can be seen in the coming year. Maybe milder, probably rather worse...
‘Cause it cannot be forgotten that also vaccine manufacturers are just subjects interested in making money. - Guess what they do if someone else discovers or engineers are way better and more easier vaccine or treatment for the disease?
Of course, they’ll try to shut that one down and ruin that person... Even if it’s factually correct with what it has found/engineered.
The laws of a corrupted market full of predators are still intact, even though there is a plague out there.

Just as predicted: Just as the year starts to take off, it goes on with Covid-19 as the last one ended and it makes you continuously think "Fuck all this shit! I've had enough of it!" as soon as the next crap gets agreed upon by your government (that, on top, reigns without the parliaments for about a year now and there is no problem in the courts with that)...

Seriously, slowly but surely, it gets on your nerves because you can't recognize neither a consistent concept, nor a strategy anymore. It only appears like watching the administration of sheer helplessness.

Die neuste Idee aus dem Corona-Verzweiflungsmanagement: Ausgangssperre.

Liebe Politiker (eigentlich sollte man das "liebe" schon streichen, weil ihr verdient das schon längst nicht mehr) - so wie die Bevölkerung jetzt in der Fläche durchseucht ist, ist es das Schlimmste, was man tun kann, die Leute auch noch zuhause einzusperren!! Dann gibt es nämlich statt einem Infiziertem pro Haushalt alsbald 3 oder 4, weil sich dann alle anderen Haushaltsmitglieder bei dem Infizierten auch noch anstecken!
Was hat man denn bitteschön damit positives gewonnen?!

Zudem - nahezu alles, womit man sich vergnügen könnte, hat eh schon geschlossen wegen eurer letzten Verordnungen. Wo soll man also noch hingehen, wenn die Lebensmittelgeschäfte Feierabend haben?

Oben drauf - es ist Winter. Egal ob Schnee oder nicht, es ist kalt draußen. Die Leute verziehen sich zum größten Teil eh nach Hause, weil sie es warm und gemütlich haben wollen.

Wie viel von dieser gewünschten Ausgangssperre ist also sowieso schon auf anderem Wege Realität? Und eure Scheiß Infektionszahlen gehen nicht runter?

Oh, da fällt einem ein... Hieß es nicht noch in wärmeren Tagen, dass die größte Sorge davor gilt, was ist, wenn die Leute sich wieder in geschlossene Räume zurückziehen und sich das Leben dort abspielt, bei schlechterer Belüftung und Luftzirkulation als im Sommer, weil es kalt draußen ist?
Habt ihr schon wieder den Scheiß vergessen, den ihr noch vor Monaten selbst öffentlich geäußert habt? Oder die Wissenschaftler?

Nicht nur, dass seit dem nichts passiert ist an Orten, wo das unumgänglich ist (Stichwort "Schulen"); jetzt kommt ihr euch noch mit dieser schwachsinnigen Idee an, die Leute zuhause am besten noch einsperren zu wollen!
Etwas, was vor Monaten noch als "besorgniserregend" und "bedenklich" eingestuft wurde!!

Kriegt ihr eigentlich noch mit, was los ist, oder stehen alle Uhren inzwischen nur noch auf Wahlkampf?

Das Kind ist in den Brunnen gefallen, ganz eindeutig. Das geht jetzt auch nicht mehr mit Nachbesserung abzumildern.
Ihr habt im Sommer geschlafen und euch darauf verlassen, dass das Virus zum Herbst wieder verschwunden ist. Ihr habt euch in eurer Arroganz über euer angeblich besser funktionierendes Gesundheitssystem über den grünen Klee hinweggelobt (welches schon mit so vielen ausländischen Fachkräften für die Kassenpatienten aufrecht erhalten wird), und habt dabei vergessen, nach wie vor nach weiteren Erkenntnissen zu suchen wie man die Verbreitungsketten unterbrechen kann. Auch, ob der letzte Verbreitungsweg, der ein großes Thema wurde (die Aerosole), wirklich der Weisheit letzter Schluss ist und es sich nicht doch auch noch auf anderem Wege weiter verbreitet.

Das Ganze erinnert in diesem Punkt an den Prozess des Erkenntnisgewinns zum HIV-Virus in den 80er Jahren.
Zuerst entdeckte man Häufungen innerhalb von bestimmten gesellschaftlichen Gruppen (Schwule, Prostituierte), die einen, in konservativen Augen, äußerst verwerflichen Lebensstil gepflegt haben und die deswegen keiner mochte. Man tat es geradezu als "himmlische Strafe" ab für diese Sünder und kam sich sehr zufrieden mit dieser Deutung vor.
Irgendwann, da tauchten die ersten Infizierten auf, denen man keinen unzüchtigen Lebensstil mehr unterstellen konnte, weil sie diesen nicht hatten - und als Erklärung fand man heraus, das Virus überträgt sich nicht nur durch Sex, sondern auch durch Blut. Nichts mehr da mit "das kriegen nur ganz bestimmte Leute, die sich unmoralisch verhalten".

Wer sagt einem, dass es bei Corona nicht genauso ist? Dass man bei diesem Virus bis jetzt auch noch nicht alle seine Übertragungswege kennt? Und dass vielleicht der ganze Maskenball zwar Linderung des Problems bringt, bei weitem aber doch nicht alles ist?

Wenn man nämlich mit dem Frühjahr vergleicht, bevor die ersten Maßnahmen in Ländern eingeführt wurden, mit jetzt, wo die ganze Welt in Schutzmasken herumläuft und Abstand hält, und die Infektionszahlen sind proportional zu der Anzahl der Tests nicht besser, dann hat man doch offensichtlich noch nicht die Wurzel allen Übels gefunden!
Jedenfalls drängt sich dieser Verdacht auf.

Daran könntet ihr mal ansetzen anstatt euch alle paar Wochen selbst zu widersprechen und zu glauben, dass es die Bevölkerung vergessen hat!
Wo ist da nämlich "das Land der Dichter und Denker", dass früher dafür mal von der Welt geschätzt wurde, immer einen Schritt voraus zu denken?

Wenn Panik und Dummheit heiraten und ein Kind kriegen würden, dann wäre es genau eure Art von Populismus, die dabei herauskäme!

Eine Unlogik, respektive Inkonsequenz, die sich im Rahmen von Corona auftut:

In den Wartezimmern der Arztpraxen soll sich ja immer nur eine abgezählte Person von Leuten aufhalten, um die Mindestabstände einhalten zu können und das Infektionsrisiko niedrig zu halten, nicht?

Alles davon ist aber recht egal, wenn der Rest der Patienten, die gerade nicht in die Praxis gebeten wurden und sich dort aufhalten, auf der Treppe oder im Flur vor der Praxis ansteht - weil die Treppe gehört ja nicht mehr mit dazu...

...Es dürfte zu bezweifeln sein, ob es allerdings das Virus interessiert, wo die Leute dicht an dicht zusammenhocken oder -stehen.

A critical question that slowly but surely comes to mind the longer this pandemic persists all around the globe:

Why the heck are all making the biggest fuss about acquiring a vaccine against the disease?

Arguing with the facts, no country in the world has either a reliable vaccine, nor a med or a reliable treatment against Covid-19 (the vaccine that Russia claimed weeks ago will still have to be prove if it works).
So that makes two construction sites with nothing to start with, all has to be achieved from scratch.

So why furiously betting everything on just a vaccine?

If the current studying of antibody production after an infection solidifies, it might also be there is no lasting immunity to the virus because it keeps changing steadily, like all cold and flu viruses do.
Better it would be to try to achieve both.

So... why do all desperate hopes for “getting the old way of life back” just look up to this pathway?
Is it the money which has already been invested into it?
Is it a possibly shorter development period?
Or do the investors look up to better financial gains through a vaccine than through a med?

I mean... from the point of pragmatism, there are obviously two things that nobody has - and which are deeply desired.
So let’s try to get both things.

Every handbook of basic strategy tells you that it’s always better to have more than one leg to stand on.
Don’t base everything on just one thing because you’ll be fucked if just that one thing breaks or fails.
And we’re talking about millions and billions of human lives here, not just about a mere statistic in a simulation that isn’t real.

A thing that communism in the past definitely didn’t achieve - and which you could consider a task to rack one’s brains about for its adaption to the modern days and to the future: Freeing humans from the need to go working and earning money in order to finance a living.
Communism made the conditions of working takeable, even partly comfortable, for the workers, but it didn’t develop answers for a scenario when the workers won’t be needed anymore - when machines become fully able to replace them or when tasks are finished and needs for goods are covered for a while.
Last but not least, it didn’t develop an idea for when the point in time will be hit that the earth’s human population increases to such numbers that the enhancement of production won’t be good for the nature of the planet anymore as well as there will be no increase in workforce anymore proportional to the population growth because it isn’t needed for covering the demand of goods and services. (Or, in other words: Communism contains no idea what to do in case of human overpopulation - when children start getting born for which there is no task in society waiting for them when they’re grown up.)
If you still base a society upon everybody having a job to do grocery shopping and maintaining a place to live, then this is a major flaw when it comes to the future awaiting mankind now in the 21st century - overpopulation and ecological disasters.