Growing up in a working class part of New York, a young physicist like me will quickly find his way to Nobel Laureate Richard Feynmann. He was one of our role models.
One of the greats – and yet, he kept his accent. Proudly. Didn’t try to acquire Brahmin affectations.
Wolfgang Paul and Hans Bethe commented he spoke like a “bum.”
Feynman was heavily influenced by his father, who encouraged him to ask questions to challenge orthodox thinking, and who was always ready to teach Feynman something new.
One of the many great quotes from Feynman:
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.”
Keep Feynman’s advice in mind and let’s look at Ukraine.
Our elites tell us Putin is a modern-day Hitler — and he must be stopped before his divisions march across Europe just as we replay the Munich double-cross over and over and over again.
Or, Putin’s a madman attempting to resurrect the late Soviet Union.
And given the US endless psyops campaign, our elites can’t avoid hitting their own product and believing it.
They declare the Russian invasion a failure because Russian forces did not try to seize what NATO generals would try to seize.
Instead, Russia artillery and air strikes continue to pulverize AFU units in the east while destroying supply chains and NATO weapons as soon as US weapons cross the border.
No surprise Ukraine goes through a week’s supplies in a day. What’s not bombed is stolen and disappears into the black market – this is Ukraine, a kleptocracy run by oligarchs who own the president (Zelensky and Biden). They pay Biden’s crack-addicted son, and Biden gives them $40 billion.
Nice work if you can get it.
Every night, our talking head retired military officers appear on CNN, MSNBC, and the major networks to pronouce Russia has been defeated.
Consider the map I posted above. It’s a 1918 map of Taurida Governate.
Take a close look at it — note the borders.
Then, consider a map of the current battle lines.
You can see Crimea below the occupied territory of what was once Taurida Governate. Note the border with Donetsk.
Russia’s 49th Combined Arms Army out of Crimea has gone up to the historic border of Taurida … and then just stopped.
What’s Taurida?
Taurida was a historical governorate of the Russian Empire. It included the Crimean Peninsula and the mainland between the lower Dnieper River and the coasts of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.
In 1783 (4 years before the US Constitution created the United States), the Khanate of Crimea was annexed by Catherine the Great’s Russia. Soon after this the Taurida Oblast (Taurida Province was established. During the reign of Paul I the oblast was abolished, but soon (in 1802) re-established as a governorate (guberniya). It was a part of the Russian Empire until the Russian Revolution of 1918.
Then it became part of the Soviet Empire.
Crimea and Taurida’s connection with Russis is older than the United States.
The governorate’s centre was the city of Simferopol. The province was named after the ancient Greek name of Crimea – Taurida.
During the Second World War the Crimean peninsula was invaded by Nazi Germany and Romanian troops in summer 1941 across the Isthmus of Perekop. Following the capture of Sevastopol on July 4, 1942, Crimea was occupied until German and Romanian forces were expelled in an offensive by Soviet forces ending in May 1944. The Nazis murdered around 40,000 Crimean Jews.
On June 25, 1946, Taurida was downgraded to the Crimean Oblast, and the Crimean Tatars were deported for alleged collaboration with the Nazi forces. A total of more than 230,000 people – about a fifth of the total population of the Crimean Peninsula at that time – were deported, mainly to Uzbekistan. 14,300 Greeks, 12,075 Bulgarians, and about 10,000 Armenians were also expelled.
On February 19, 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree on the transfer of the Crimean region of the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. This Supreme Soviet Decree states that this transfer was motivated by “the commonality of the economy, the proximity, and close economic and cultural relations between the Crimean region and the Ukrainian SSR”.
At that time no vote or referendum took place, and Crimean population had no say in the transfer (also typical of other Soviet border changes).
And so, because the Soviets decided in 1954 to make Crimea a part of Ukraine, Crimea and Taurida were considered part of Ukraine when the Soviet Union ended some 50 years later.
After the US-backed Maidan Coup in 2014, Russia invaded Crimea and organized a referendum. The results favored rejoining Russia. Probably honestly won. Maybe not.
Anyway, here we are today with the balance of Taurida now in Russian hands.
In this “special military operation”, Russia forces in Crimea quickly pushed back AFU forces in Taurida, … and then just stopped.
In the news today, Russia is reestablishing municipal governments throughout Taurida, including replacing Ukrainian automobile license plates with Russian license plates.
While the war continues in the east where Russian forces are driving final blows on AFU forces in Donetsk, life seems to be returning to normal in Taurida.
A Russian normal.
While DC Elites believe the rapidly degrading AFU halted the Russians on the traditional border of Taurida, on that Kherson front, it appears it appears Russia simply stopped.
Feyman’s advice was spot on. Easy to assume your enemy thinks as you assume he thinks.
The first principle of war is to be honest with yourself – to know you enemy – to not make the easy assumptions because that’s what you would do.
Russia does not think like America.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.”
Econophysics2020 