Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "Would I Like to Visit Ukraine? - April Qu0026A" video.
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One last thing, Jake. I had no idea about your former YouTube service, but I imagine doing this will have changed your life forever in that regard. Financial sites are not my thing but I know they are popular, and the hardest thing about watching them (the reason they’re not my thing) is you can never be sure you’re not watching someone who isn’t just trying to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn via some new, artfully disguised, Ponzi cum Web 3.0 scheme. Or, like some of those popular cable shows in which a bald guy with a baseball bat smashes crockery, just nearly always famously wrong about the important stuff.
Your reporting on, and support for, Ukraine; the self sacrifice of setting your own interests aside to follow a topic that advertisers are leery about, whilst risking the ongoing threat of demonetisation from an ever twitchy YouTube algorithm, will have given you mountains of that illusive capital which other financial channels just can’t buy: PUBLIC TRUST.
I will stay subscribed to you, whatever the future brings. Besides, the worlds of international politics and finance are inextricably linked, so I would imagine that this would be a safe bet for retaining both yours and your audience’s interest in the years to come?
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@colehowe : If you’re really interested, and have the patience, this is the discussion you need:
It’s a genuine perfect storm of one, “leader’s,” stupidity. He was never a, “smart,” man. He rose through the ranks of the KGB by taking advantage of the Wild West environment created in the vacuum of a post Soviet Russia. He co-opted the mafia into his secret services, making him rich. Alexander Litvinenko was a colonel in the KGB at the time and the reason Putin hated him so much was because he gave a public press conference, naming Putin, as running a scheme to sell Afghan opium and launder the cash into Russia and his own pocket. A world wide press conference was unprecedented enough, but naming names was the make or break moment for Russia. President Yeltsin was either going to clean up Russia’s democracy, or the thugs would win. But Yeltsin was too drunk and too blackmailed by Putin to do a damned thing by then. So Litvinenko was forced to flee Russia and Putin inherited the presidency.
They have a word in Russia for which there is no translation directly into English. It means, “I’m lying, and you know I’m lying, but because I have so much power and you have none, we’ll act like this is just a joke, and I’m flattering you by letting you be in on that gag.” I’ll spell it wrongly now, but I think it’s called, “Stoya,” or, “Ztovia,” or something? But it is this, “cultural acting,” that the press and public all take part in that creates this, “illusion,” of Putin being a, “smart,” man. We’ve been losing a lot in translation ever since the 1990’s, and it’s cost us dear.
When George Bush has to explain why Putin totally ignored any diplomatic agreements and marched into Chechnya, it’s far easier to for his people to explain it away as Putin’s, “crazy like a fox,” mentality, than to admit that he inexplicably gave us the middle finger. When Barack Obama drew a, “red line,” in Syria, it’s easier for his people to talk about Putin’s, “long game,” than to admit that he has such contempt for the west’s rule of law that he’ll gleefully gas Syrian civilians, committing a brand new set of war crimes whilst breaking any treaties he had with the world.
Putin has spent roughly a TRILLION DOLLARS on image making, propaganda and disinformation in the last 10 years alone! And we have been SO SUCKERED by their tactics that, even when we see Russia as the enemy, we STILL fall for their bollox and see their evil through a lens of THEIR making. So we make blunders, like imagining that Putin could take Kiev in three days, or then three weeks, or maybe three months, perhaps three centuries!?
We are only now, FINALLY, BEGINNING to see Putin’s Russia for what they really are: FAKES! Russia is no, “smarter,” than Donald Trump. His ideas on, “history,” are not what he, “believes,” but carefully crafted set of intellectually baron EXCUSES written by moderately smarter men. And they are all men. His desire is to take the massive fossil fuel resources of Ukraine and, if he cannot spend them on the open market, he can prevent Ukraine from becoming the economic power house it threatens to become. The top international oil companies were threatened out Ukraine, but prior to the war, they reported findings of gas and oil that could compete with Russia’s supply, off the coast of Crimea alone! Not to mention the coal and oil in the east, and new oil finds just next to the Carpathian Mountains to the west! It was always about the money and the power for Putin and the rest is all excuses and window dressing.
His use of terror is deliberate and calculated, and was brought on by the MYTH we sustained in the west that appeasement might work when he invaded Crimea! No one was learning from history, or looking beyond the smoke and mirrors. We might as well have INVITED his invasion with our pusillanimous response to Crimea!
But, as to Russian culture, and how they see the world? All the Russian people know is that Putin made his KGB contemporaries, like Cyril, the equivalent of their Pope and head of their Orthodox Church. This was why the Ukrainian government had to close down so many orthodox churches all over Ukraine, recently. They found treasure troves of Russian intelligence in their vestries and that almost every priest in that church was a Russian spy, working for Cyril! That’s pretty BLATANT, don’t you think?
People like Litvinenko have been assassinated long ago, in horrid ways. Litvinenko was murdered on British soil and there are warrants out for his murderers. Since the 90’s. And when they were first issued, the suspects gave a press conference, from the same building, in the same room that Litvinenko used to give his and name Putin as a criminal gangster. Pretty strong message there, right?
Putin is just a thug and his people know it, by the way they’re having their phones randomly checked in train stations for apps and messages the government doesn’t like, by faceless armed cops; by the way state tv threatens them regularly, whilst all the free speech channels have been shut down. By the way that political dissidents and journalists keep being murdered at home and abroad. But they have been trained to be politically inactive and morally absent.
I mean, don’t you think that a population which DOESN’T hit the streets to protest at the bombing of men, women and children, after seeing footage of destroyed cities being celebrated on state TV needs waking up? When they’ve decided it’s, “okay,” to take away ANY nations power and water supply, do they sound like, “thinking,” reasoning people to you? I happen to believe that a collective decision to tolerate genocide warrants collective chastisement.
So, when you’re next thinking about the question of the Russian population, just ask yourself how you would respond to such a stimulus? And then ask, why do they not band together to stop this? They are more alien to us than the Chinese, in their psychology. And it’s born of a nation that has NEVER known democracy in a 1000 years.
If you followed me all this way, thank you for your patience. Just know I left a LOT out for the sake of brevity. Slava Ukraine. ✌️🇺🇦
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