As you have said you don't read what I write, there's no use to interact with you.

:grin: (Noticed it too.)

I'm just trying to get you to look at this from the other perspective. From the perspective of someone who disagrees with...

mainstream in Sweden focuses much harder on facts from people who worked with analyzing all of this for many many years.
— Christoffer

...or disagrees with...

made my argument based on somewhat of a consensus in the matter.
— Christoffer — Isaac

So you disagree with media in Sweden being much more factual and unbiased than in many other nations. Care to back up that disagreement with anything?

And you disagree with someone using the consensus of researchers in the matter as most of the sources to form their argument?

What exactly is it that you disagree with here? The process of argument or the arguments themselves? Because all I see is someone triggered by the fact that someone uses the consensus of researchers as a basis for an argument while claiming to have good knowledge of the level of bias for media you don't even have access to.

Am I interpreting this correctly? Because there are not many other ways to interpret what you said there.

These are, again, not just facts of the world, they are opinions of yours and other people disagree with them. — Isaac

If I use the consensus of researchers, both officially cited in Swedish media and my own personal sources from people I know who research these things, that makes my argument an uninformed opinion? What does that leave you? Who usually draws sources from heavily ideological bloggers and single individuals who share the same opinion as you? Why would your sources of information that form your conclusions be of any more factual value than mine? Because you said so? Please

If you think your arguments are soundly based on unbiased consensus, then of course you're going to find opposition to them incoherent (or at least not understand the vitriol), but for those who disagree with that assessment, we might be offended your lack of effort, your lazy preference for the easiest narrative. — Isaac

Yet, I only draw from the sources to form my arguments, I don't recite as you put it, even though I understand it's easier to counter me if you strawman it like that.

And disagreement without a foundation that can balance against such a consensus background is just disagreement noise. Your opinion is valued even lower if you only have a handful of ideological bloggers and individuals that you agree with in the first place.

The problem is that you just don't accept when I say I balance the information I have to find what seems most inductively probable. Because it doesn't fit your narrative and therefore you set out to discredit my arguments instead of actually arguing against them. Hence why you resort to sarcastic mocking rhetoric. You don't counter-argue, you resort to cherry-picking easily countered points pulled out of context, steering things towards a direction that's easier for you to control while dismissing context, the conclusions of points or the full narrative of the other speaker.

If your starting point is that you are being offended by something that's not even close to a hateful worldview and that it rather only doesn't fit with your personal and ideological worldview, you aren't an honest interlocutor if that offense turns into a sarcastic mockery. Then you're just an angry easily triggered person who just wants to shout at people who disagrees with you.

Your arguments have you and your country come out completely blameless and leave absolutely no obligation on you to do anything. They look just too convenient to someone unconvinced as to the unbiased authority of your sources. — Isaac

Yet you have nothing else but "it looks too convenient". All you have is your emotional response to everything here, you have no argumentative quality in your writing but blame others for having less. And you are the one talking about being hypocritical? You make no effort to evaluate the actual logic or rationale of the others' argument, you just compare it to your emotional opinion on the matter and if it doesn't fit, then the other person is a stupid, indoctrinated puppet. And when you get an argument with lots of actual sources you bail out, as you did with the "education" discussion.

You're not an honest interlocutor, you are an emotionally driven, easily triggered person who needs to mock others when you don't agree with them. I have no interest in discussing anything with you because of that, but you persist to spam your unfounded emotional responses to everything said by anyone that has another conclusion than you.

Hence why...

Not much in the habit of writing post that aren't responses to anything — Isaac

Because that's all that you do, react, mock and fight anything that isn't fitting within your narrative. While you blame others for not respecting your views :shade:

Summer has set in here in Roma, Italia. While I sip from my Peroni at a bar terrace, I lazily read through your excellent wikipedia summeries... Thank you (and Street) for that little moment of bliss.

So you disagree with media in Sweden being much more factual and unbiased than in many other nations. — Christoffer

Yes, as a statement of fact, I do.

Care to back up that disagreement with anything? — Christoffer

I have absolutely no reason to believe you. It just sounds like "Oh and my sources are the best, if you don't agree, you disprove it". I don't agree (by default) because it's a very convenient position for your argument.

And you disagree with someone using the consensus of researchers in the matter as most of the sources to form their argument? — Christoffer

No. I disagree with your claim that you have done so. Plus I disagree with the claim that a consensus of experts is more likely to be right that a single, or small group of experts. Qualification and error checking are the factors which make an expert opinion more likely to be right. There's absolutely nothing about a consensus to say they have greater qualification (in fact they will on average have less), nor that they have carried out more robust or lengthy error checking (again, I think marginally they will have done less than some). The expert most likely to right is the one who has the greatest knowledge and has carried out the most thorough error checking. That, by definition, will not be the mass around the mean, but rather one of the extremes.

Why would your sources of information that form your conclusions be of any more factual value than mine? — Christoffer

My conclusions are not more factual than yours. I don't know how many times I can say this in different ways that you might understand. I choose evidence which supports my preferred narrative. The narrative comes first, the evidence second. The difference between me and you here is that you're still labouring under the delusion that you don't. That you somehow start every investigation with a blank slate, unbiasedly selecting your sources, interpreting their conclusions according to some disinterested algorithm, and then just happening, by chance to come up with answers which exactly support your pre-existing political ideals. It's bullshit. You, like every other human in the planet, interpret a complex soup of almost infinite data in ways which confirm your pre-existing biases until such time as those narratives become completely unsustainable in the face of evidence to the contrary. You're hard-wired to do this, it's literally how your brain works, from perception, through emotion, right up to grand world-philosophies.

Your opinion is valued even lower if you only have a handful of ideological bloggers and individuals that you agree with in the first place. — Christoffer

Again, this is just your opinion. One with which others disagree. The people I've cited are all experts in their field. That you personally find them to be 'ideological' is your conclusion. As to your sources, you pretty much refused to cite any, so we can't tell.

You don't counter-argue, you resort to cherry-picking easily countered points pulled out of context, — Christoffer

Again, whether the points I counter are 'cherry-picked' and 'out of context' are both subjective judgements, I would obviously disagree with that assessment.

You make no effort to evaluate the actual logic or rationale of the others' argument, you just compare it to your emotional opinion on the matter and if it doesn't fit, then the other person is a stupid, indoctrinated puppet. — Christoffer

Once more, the idea of having countered 'logic' is a subjective opinion, one with which I would disagree. A recurring problem here is that you cannot seem to understand things which seem 'logical' to you are not that way to others. It's not as if you're arguing that 2+2=4, these are complex issues.

And when you get an argument with lots of actual sources you bail out, as you did with the "education" discussion. — Christoffer

I'm simply not going to engage in a full blooded discussion about education in a thread about Ukraine. The point of it was to see how far you'd take an argument. I was intrigued as to why you didn't just assume I was lying about being a psychology professor (seemingly the easiest option for your argument) but instead assumed that you (presumably unqualified in the field) could 'outargue' someone holding a professorship by looking up a few things on Google. That position simply peaked my interest so I wanted to see how far it went. If you want to start a thread about education I'd be more than happy to contribute, though I'd expect a bit more than a hastily thrown together collection of papers. My views on the matter are not mainstream though.

you persist to spam your unfounded emotional responses to everything said by anyone that has another conclusion than you. — Christoffer

Yep. This is a public forum, not your private blog.

that's all that you do, react, mock and fight anything that isn't fitting within your narrative. — Christoffer

Yes, that's a fair summary (the vast majority of the time). If I want to learn, I'll read a book. If I want to discuss with experts, I'll track some down (though I grant my personal situation makes this much easier for me than others, I'm not criticising other people in this). I have a very specific interest in this place - seeing how people react to having their views challenged, particularly on views I have strong opinions about (it reveals interesting things about my own psyche too, not that I'm going to share any of them publicly). Unless such a form of interaction is against the rules, I'll carry on.

The next master stroke of Putin is to revive the Russian car manufacturing industry and the much-ridiculed Moskvich sedan. Lessons in how to re-animated a corpse. — Wayfarer

The "good old days" :grin:

... media in Sweden being much more factual and unbiased than in many other nations. — Christoffer

It may well be the case. I encourage you to post English versions of interesting Swedish articles here, if you care. I kind of agree with the peace lovers that the English press does follow a rather narrow script on Ukraine. I do post stuff from the French press here, that I believe deviate from what the typical English language media would or could report. I'm sure it's taken by some as further example (if need be) of my French air of haughtiness. But in truth I post this stuff because I naively think it can be useful.

Something like this, for instance.

I post this stuff because I naively think it can be useful. — Olivier5

Weird. Useful to whom? Do you think we're not aware that foreign newspapers exist? I realise I might be the one in the minority here, but I just don't understand this at all. If I want to know what the foreign press is saying I can look up foreign press articles, I've got access to the internet. Google do an excellent translation service... So you're doing what? The choosing for us? Why would anyone want someone else to do that for them?

So you're doing what? The choosing for us? Why would anyone want someone else to do that for them? — Isaac

Because I read the French press, and they don't.

Because I read the French press, and they don't. — Olivier5

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=French+press+about+Ukraine&t=fpas&ia=web

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=french+newspapers+on+Ukraine&t=fpas&ia=web

Yes, as a statement of fact, I do. — Isaac

It's not a fact just because you say so. :shade:

I have absolutely no reason to believe you. It just sounds like "Oh and my sources are the best, if you don't agree, you disprove it". I don't agree (by default) because it's a very convenient position for your argument. — Isaac

One way to get a hint of the situation: https://rsf.org/en/index?year=2022, but of course I'm mostly referring to the expert guests within these media channels who provide most of the information able to be used to assess any kind of probable overview of the current events.

Which is more than you can provide. And of course, you used your "professor" claim at every point it works best for you, and then not when it doesn't, as well as what I can remember biased bloggers or writers close to your own ideological heart but rarely valid for any kind of unbiased method.

I disagree with the claim that a consensus of experts i more likely to be right that an single, or small group of experts. Qualification and error checking are the factor which make an expert opinion more likely to be right. — Isaac

For a professor that's quite bad English there, had to fill in the gaps and English isn't even my first language. But then you don't make much sense either, like, you don't seem to understand the idea behind consensus, in scientific terms. If you have a set of experts, then the more experts that conclude the same, the better the consensus is because all that error checking and reviewing goes through a larger set of data. So, they all work through an analysis of the information they have access to in order to reach a conclusion with high probability, which can vary based on the information. So the more experts there are, the higher the probability of reaching a truthful conclusion.

The claim you make that a single expert can be more right than a group is only a way for you to justify that your experts are the right ones. That's as epistemically irresponsible as you can get really. A single expert can reach a new perspective and present it, but it's not a fact or close to the truth before that perspective has been tested and checked by others.

There's absolutely nothing about a consensus to say they have greater qualification (in fact they will on average have less), — Isaac

And there's absolutely nothing to say the opposite or that your expert source is better, just that a consensus of many experts has a higher probability to be better as a collective, than a single expert. This is why methods to reduce bias require more people than just one expert.

(again, I think marginally they will have done less than some) — Isaac

More conjecture in order to create the impression that your single sources are better than others.

The expert most likely to right is the one who has the greatest knowledge and has carried out the most thorough error checking. That, by definition, will not be the mass around the mean, but rather one of the extremes. — Isaac

And again, this does not invalidate my sources or make your sources more valid or truthful. The biggest problem was when I bias-checked your sources and found them far more politically biased than what would be considered valid for any good argument to be made from them.

My conclusions are not more factual than yours. I don't know how many times I can say this in different ways that you might understand. — Isaac

You cannot know that. Just because you have an opinion based on nothing more than your emotional reaction to what others write, does not equal me not using the information I have in front of me much more when making an argument. You seem to think that because you don't agree with someone else through pure opinion and emotion, then they are on the same playing field as you, which I know I'm not. The discussion about education was a clear example of our differences and should have made a point of that, but obviously, it didn't for you.

I choose evidence which supports my preferred narrative. The narrative comes first, the evidence second. — Isaac

Yeah, this is why you are generally full of shit. This is wrong and backwards on so many accounts that it proves just why you're pretty irrelevant as a voice in this discussion. Here's a little lesson in how to handle this with epistemic responsibility; you have a claim, hypothesis, or opinion, then you check all the facts to not only verify but also falsify in order to reach an answer as to if it's a probable conclusion or not. Since we're unable to do pure deduction with the available information, it's induction, probability. Only when different conclusions have been made can you create a possible narrative. If you think I'm not making efforts to do any of this, then you are wrong. But the way you tackle things is plain wrong and makes it impossible to have a proper discussion since you make most shit up and cherry-pick whatever fits your narrative, just as I suspected.

The difference between me and you here is that you're still labouring under the delusion that you don't. — Isaac

I'm not. But I guess it's impossible for you to grasp that when you've entangled yourself into such a backwards method of finding out what's probable.

That you somehow start every investigation with a blank slate, unbiasedly selecting your sources, interpreting their conclusions according to some disinterested algorithm, and then just happening, by chance to come up with answers which exactly support your pre-existing political ideals. — Isaac

What the fuck are you ranting on about here? And what political ideals are you referring to?

You, like every other human in the planet, interpret a complex soup of almost infinite data in ways which confirm your pre-existing biases until such time as those narrative become completely unsustainable in the face of evidence to the contrary. You're hard-wired to do this, it's literally how your brain works, from perception, through emotion, right up to grand world-philosophies. — Isaac

This is why there are methods to make sure biases and emotions get suppressed while formulating rational conclusions. Methods you clearly just shown to do backwards and wrong. Just because you don't understand this or think it's impossible or believe that because you can't do it then everyone else can't, doesn't mean that everyone works things out as you do.

Again, this is just your opinion. — Isaac

No, it's not opinion to point out how method trumps appeal to authority.

The people I've cited are all experts in their field. That you personally find them to be 'ideological' is your conclusion. — Isaac

Not when I bias checked the sites you referred to.

Again, whether the points I counter are 'cherry-picked' and 'out of context' are both subjective judgements, I would obviously disagree with that assessment. — Isaac

You already proved you do exactly what I said so case closed.

A recurring problem here is that you cannot seem to understand you things which seem 'logical' to you are not that way to others. It's not as if you're arguing that 2+2=4, these are complex issues. — Isaac

What's logical is that I look at information, facts, and many experts and form a basis of knowledge before formulating any kind of conclusion. While you decide on a truth you like and pick what fits it. This is what you've said yourself to do and if we compare who's following most logic here, I'd say you proved to be on the lower end. It doesn't have to be a math equation to be a logical method of finding out probable answers to complex issues. If you think complex philosophical topics cannot use logical methods to help bypass emotional opinions, then you're really not knowledgeable in this epistemical topic.

I'm simply not going to engage in a full blooded discussion about education in a thread about Ukraine. — Isaac

No, you stopped when the argument became too solid. That's what happened, you had no problem discussing it for many pages and long posts before you dropped it when I provided enough actual papers to support it. Cherry-picking to fit your narrative won't cut it by that time.

The point of it was to see how far you'd take an argument. — Isaac

Yeah, sure :lol:

I was intrigued as to why you didn't just assume I was lying about being a psychology professor (seemingly the easiest option for your argument) but instead assumed that you (presumably unqualified in the field) could 'outargue' someone holding a professorship by looking up a few things on Google. That position simply peaked my interest so I wanted to see how far it went. If you want to start a thread about education I'd be more than happy to contribute, though I'd expect a bit more than a hastily thrown together collection of papers. My views on the matter are not mainstream though. — Isaac

:lol:

The attempts you make to slither yourself out of failing to counter that and change things into some personal study you make in order to sound like you're above it all would be considered arrogant if it wasn't so fucking hilarious. But at least it proves just how you act and work, combined with what you've said now about how you actually just pick what fits your narrative best shows just how lost in the woods you are.

Yep. This is a public forum, not your private blog. — Isaac

It's a public forum focused on higher-level discussion. If you want something more casual, then go to any social media platform of your choosing. And wouldn't spamming answers to everyone, cherry-picking stuff and providing your wild emotional opinions be closer to the idea of a private blog than being on a public forum? No one is trying to censor you, I was just asking you to stop spamming answers to me, but I guess that your idea of a public forum doesn't require people to act civilly and respect such requests. For you, a public forum is more of the wild west, just like, you know... trolls think public forums are.

Yes, that's a fair summary (the vast majority of the time). If I want to learn, I'll read a book. If I want to discuss with experts, I'll track some down (though I grant my personal situation makes this much easier for me than others, I'm not criticising other people in this). — Isaac

And again you believe you are the only one who is able to track down experts :rofl:

I have a very specific interest in this place - seeing how people react to having their views challenged, particularly on view I have strong opinions about (it reveals interesting things about my own psyche too, not that I'm going to share any of them publicly). Unless such a form of interaction is against the rules, I'll carry on. — Isaac

I'd say it makes you a dishonest interlocutor with a motive that no one has any interest in being part of. You can do whatever you want, but you're just proving yourself to be dishonest in the discussion and you have now also proven to not care for reviewing your own opinions and just cherry-pick whatever works best for you when answering others. If this isn't proof enough that you are irrelevant in this discussion I don't know what. Dishonest, sloppy and lazy in creating arguments and basically just interested in anything else but the topic of this very thread. Based on this, your lack of respect towards others here is remarkable.

Why should I give you more of my time then? You're not writing here with honesty, you're just jerking off.

Sure, but they wont attract one's attention to interesting content.

I mean, you never post from an English language news site? What's the essential difference?

they wont attract one's attention to interesting content. — Olivier5

So the role you play is determining what's interesting?

I mean, you never post from an English language news site? What's the essential difference? — Olivier5

Not without comment, no. Posts should have a point, I think.

the better the consensus is because all that error checking and reviewing goes through a larger set of data. So, they all work through an analysis of the information they have access to in order to reach a conclusion with high probability, which can vary based on the information. So the more experts there are, the higher the probability of reaching a truthful conclusion. — Christoffer

Surprisingly that's false. Check out this

So the role you play is determining what's interesting? — Isaac

More precisely, what,s interesting and unlikely to have been reported in mainstream English language sources. Who as you know are quite narrow-mindedly... well.. shall we call it "cheerleading Ukraine"?

I can add comments...

I've seen that video before, and yes, it is like this, but if you go to 11:20 in that video you get my answer and why I'm always pointing out why there's still no point in saying we shouldn't aim for it. The only way to get things as right as possible is to follow it. As I've argued in other threads, it is possible to train yourself to emulate the rigorous process used in science, in everyday thinking, it just requires training. It is not equal to always being right, but it is far better than relying on our biological biases when trying to make any kind of argument and it is a vital tool for being a more balanced person that can evaluate perspectives better than one who doesn't follow it.

As for what I wrote, what I mean is that if all experts follow their work and ethical praxis, the outcome is far better if the statistical number of experts is higher. Generally the higher number of people looking at an object, the more likely it exists as they describe it. Basically.

...as well as the video coming out in 2016, when at 10:12 he states that "the last 10 years things have started to change for the better", and now we're 6 years after this video was published, so it's important information, but also a thing the scientific world has been working to fix for 16 years now, 6 years after Derek said "it's changing for the better".

Something like this, for instance. — Olivier5

You have 49.25% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.

I gather they're saying that Ukraine sort of happens to have been caught between

• democracies versus autocracies (e.g. Biden)
• "old world order" versus "new world order" (e.g. Jinping)

Not sure what such a new world would be (except Uyghur culture probably won't be invited).

I can add comments... — Olivier5

Comments would be an improvement, in my opinion. I might disagree with you most of the time, but at least I can ask you why you think what you think. Can't ask the journalist who wrote the article.

Yeah, and that's actual papers with method statements and statistical analysis.

Once you get into the field of 'expert opinion', you're pretty much just getting a run down of the current paradigms from any consensus.

Not to mention the fact that when people say 'consensus' they generally mean a biased sample of experts whose views have been collated or otherwise published in the sources available to whomever is making that claim. We're rarely talking about some statistically valid sampling procedure.

And, add to all that the fact the experts in most fields simply do not spend their time frantically checking each other's papers. Maybe psychology is some rare oddity, but it just doesn't happen. Over the course of a decade, maybe a bit less you might just get sufficient turnaround for the earlier papers to have been checked by a small handful of their colleagues, the rest will certainly have an opinion on everyone's papers (got that in spades), but not checked with any rigour-adding methodology.

As for...

"the last 10 years things have started to change for the better" — Christoffer

The main improvements have been in pre-print servers and set pre-print methodologies. It's about the avoidance of specific forms of statistical manipulation and low powered experiment design. It wouldn't apply to vox pop experts at all.

It's about a post-UN world, where there's nothing left of the old allies' dreams of collective security.

The end of human rights as "normative" (as the UN would have it) for instance. Human rights are now just some "Western" concept, waged by the West when it suits them, which is true. Any international norm, any international organisation like WHO requiring any modicum of transparency in information sharing between states, would ultimately go down the drain.

Because Western.

Spheres of influence are the new thing, in a multipolar world.

Dystopian.

As I said, it's not different from posting anything else. You can ask me questions about what the journalist meant.

Joe Jackson - 40 Years



(contribution to the thread's soundtrack)

Comment: another aspect of the war is evidently economical, with far reaching consequences. (not sure that this comment was particularly illuminating but I'm told that the people want comments)


Ukraine war has stoked global food crisis that could last years, says UN
Shortages of grain and fertiliser could cause ‘mass hunger and famine, says chief, as World Bank pledges $12bn to ease shortfall

The United Nations has warned that the war in Ukraine has helped to stoke a global food crisis that could last years if it goes unchecked, as the World Bank announced an additional $12bn in funding to mitigate its “devastating effects”.

UN secretary general António Guterres said shortages of grain and fertiliser caused by the war, warming temperatures and pandemic-driven supply problems threaten to “tip tens of millions of people over the edge into food insecurity”, as financial markets saw share prices fall heavily again on fears of inflation and a worldwide recession.

Speaking at a UN meeting in New York on global food security, he said what could follow would be “malnutrition, mass hunger and famine, in a crisis that could last for years”, as he and others urged Russia to release Ukrainian grain exports.

He said he was in “intense contact” with Russia and other countries to try to find a solution.

This is something that unfortunately seems to happen. The upturn in global inflation (thanks the enormous money printing efforts during Covid and before) isn't going to make this any more easier. Or climate change.

I think the worst affected areas will be the Sahel. But the hit Ukraine's economy is taking is extremely severe, but naturally that isn't on the minds of Ukrainians as they are bombed daily by Russia and fighting a conventional war. When the enemy is bombing your cities, people aren't upset about the economy tanking.

I think the worst affected areas will be the Sahel. — ssu

This a food price crisis, and I would think that as such, it will hit poor countries that are net importers of staple food. There's a long list of those, all the more so because a long period of globalisation and low food prices on the global markets -- a period that appears to be ending now -- has led many countries to neglect their domestic food production in favor of their 'comparative advantage' on world markets. It worked for them as long as globalisation was reasonably 'functional', but now with Covid and this war, it doesn't work anymore.

For instance Egypt has a strong comparative advantage on the world tourism market, and that's what they developed, and they kept imoprting more and more wheat. Now there're few tourists going there, so...?

Egypt had already earlier food riots when the high oil price affected food prices some years ago.

Troubles in the economy will in some places become political troubles. It's hard to know just where.

It's hard to know just where. — ssu

My prognosis is: North Africa, Egypt, the Indian subcontinent, a number of African countries strongly relying on world markets, and poor island states. (for the worse effects)

Probably, Putin would regard these kinds of consequences as leverage. The fact that he can cause world starvation will be, to him, only a sign of how powerful he is. He will have absolutely zero concern from a humanitarian perspective.

"Russia is the world's largest wheat exporter. It plans to export more of the grain in the new (July) marketing season due to a large harvest and stockpile, reported Reuters, citing IKAR consultancy on Wednesday, raising its estimate for the wheat crop.

Russia, which competes mainly with the European Union and Ukraine for wheat supplies to the Middle East and Africa, has been limiting its grain exports with taxes and an export quota since 2021 amid efforts to slow domestic food inflation."

So Russia will profit from high food prices.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZVXYaQz1lw
(Russian Invasion of Ukraine - 80 day update - Cold War Special)

Finally, and most importantly, it's not matter of how pure their blood is, but who are the indigenous inhabitants of Crimea. Not the Russians! But the Crimean Tatars. So they should be the right owners according to your views! — neomac

If you really want to know who the original inhabitants of Crimea were, then you should try to find out instead on fixating on Tatars just because it serves your political agenda.

Unfortunately, if you don’t even understand what Mongols are, how are you going to understand what Turkic people and Tatars are?

For your information, Tatars and other Turkic peoples originally came from the same area as the Mongols and are genetically closely related to them. Otherwise said, they're genetically closer to Mongols than to local populations like the Slavs. This can be seen from their facial features like eyes, etc. as noted by Arab and other visitors to the region in the Middle Ages:

Medieval Muslim writers noted that Tibetans and Turks resembled each other, and that they often were not able to tell the difference between Turks and Tibetans. On Western Turkic coins "the faces of the governor and governess are clearly mongoloid (a roundish face, narrow eyes), and the portraits have definite old Türk features. Turkic peoples - Wikipedia

For those who are unfamiliar with the subject, the easiest thing to do is to think (a) of Mongolia as situated to the north of China and having a population related to the Chinese, and (b) of Turkic people (including Tatars) as originally coming from western Mongolia and Mongols proper from eastern Mongolia:

Turkic-speaking peoples sampled across the Middle East, Caucasus, East Europe, and Central Asia share varying proportions of Asian ancestry that originate in a single area, southern Siberia and Mongolia. Mongolic- and Turkic-speaking populations from this area bear an unusually high number of long chromosomal tracts that are identical by descent with Turkic peoples from across west Eurasia. Admixture induced linkage disequilibrium decay across chromosomes in these populations indicates that admixture occurred during the 9th–17th centuries, in agreement with the historically recorded Turkic nomadic migrations and later Mongol expansion. Thus, our findings reveal genetic traces of recent large-scale nomadic migrations and map their source to a previously hypothesized area of Mongolia and southern Siberia.

The Genetic Legacy of the Expansion of Turkic-Speaking Nomads across Eurasia – National Institutes of Health

Genetic evidence points to an origin in the region near South Siberia and Mongolia as the "Inner Asian Homeland" of the Turkic ethnicity
The Tatars (/ˈtɑːtərz/; Tatar: татарлар, tatarlar, تاتارلر, Crimean Tatar: tatarlar; Old Turkic: , romanized: Tatar) is an umbrella term for different Turkic ethnic groups bearing the name "Tatar".
Tatar became a name for populations of the former Golden Horde in Europe, such as those of the former Kazan, Crimean, Astrakhan, Qasim and Siberian Khanates.
All Turkic peoples living within the Russian Empire were named Tatar (as a Russian exonym). Some of these populations still use Tatar as a self-designation:

Kipchak groups
Kipchak–Cuman branch
Crimean Tatars …. - Wikipedia

1.

A. Turkic people come from the same area as, and are related to, Mongols.
B. Tatars are Turkic people.
C. Therefore Tatars come from the same area as, and are related to, Turks and Mongols.

The Turkish government calls Crimean Tatars “Crimean Turks” and “kinsmen”:

'Turkey to continue to stand by Crimean Tatars' – Anadolu Agency

When Russia retook Crimea in 1783, most of the “Crimean” Tatars emigrated to Turkey, which shows that they felt more at home among their Turkish kinsmen than in Russia!

2. “Tatars” or “Tatary” (татары) in Russian, was a generic term applied to both Mongols and Turkic peoples associated with the Mongols, and it was first applied to Genghis Khan’s hordes which were composed of Mongols and Turkic tribes.

3. Irrespective of genetic affinity, the Tatars were closely associated with the invading Mongols and Turks.

4. It wasn’t “just the Mongols” but the Tatars themselves, including Crimean Tatars that attacked and enslaved Slavic populations like Ukrainians and Russians:

The Crimeans frequently mounted raids into the Danubian principalities, Poland–Lithuania, and Muscovy to enslave people whom they could capture; for each captive, the khan received a fixed share (savğa) of 10% or 20%. These campaigns by Crimean forces were either sefers ("sojourns"), officially declared military operations led by the khans themselves, or çapuls ("despoiling"), raids undertaken by groups of noblemen, sometimes illegally because they contravened treaties concluded by the khans with neighbouring rulers.
For a long time, until the early 18th century, the [Crimean] khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, exporting about 2 million slaves from Russia and Poland–Lithuania over the period 1500–1700. In 1769, a last major Tatar raid resulted in the capture of 20,000 Russian and Ruthenian slaves. – Wikipedia

Ukrainians and Russians kept fighting the Tatars for several centuries, as anyone who has read Russian authors well knows.

When the old, peaceable Slav spirit was fired with warlike flame, the Cossack state was instituted. In place of the original provinces with their petty towns, in place of the warring and bartering petty princes ruling in their cities, there arose great colonies, villages, and districts, bound together by one common danger and hatred against the heathen robbers. The story is well known how their incessant warfare and restless existence saved Europe from the merciless hordes which threatened to overwhelm her … – Gogol, Taras Bulba

Gogol was not only a great writer, but he wrote at a time when memories of Tatar raids were still fresh in the national consciousness, and he was from the Cossack region of Ukraine that had been at the very center of the Slavs’ struggle against the Tatars. Indeed, like many Cossacks, he may have been part-Tatar himself.

In sum, any objective analysis must start from the fact that the prehistoric inhabitants of the region were Eastern European hunter-gatherers (EHG). Indeed, the region is regarded by scholars as the Urheimat or original homeland of Indo-European people. By definition, this makes people like the Tatars outsiders.

Eastern Hunter-Gatherer – Wikipedia

Map of Indo-European Expansion – History Files

In historical times, Crimea was inhabited by Indo-European (Caucasoid) peoples: indigenous Tauri, followed by Greeks, Scythians, Goths, Alans. These were invaded by successive waves of nomadic Turkic tribes from the east (Central Asia): Huns, Bulgars, Cumans, Khazars, Mongols.

The Greeks were the first to introduce civilization and to build cities in Crimea from the 5th century BC, and southern Crimea remained Greek until it was conquered by Turkey in 1475, i.e., it was GREEK for a thousand years!

By taking Crimea from the Tatars and Turks in 1783, Russia reintegrated Crimea into Europe, put an end to the Tatar depredations, and redressed a historic injustice. And justice, after all, is what this is about.

Moreover, in recognition of Crimea’s Greek heritage, Russia gave Crimea’s main port the Greek name of Sevastopol, and there was a wider effort to re-Hellenize the region after its liberation from Turkish-Tatar occupation in order to keep the Turks out of Europe (see Catherine the Great’s Greek Plan ).

Unfortunately, treacherous France and England ganged up with Turkey against Russia in the Crimean War (1853 – 1856) and that’s where the problems with the West started.

If we say that “Crimea belongs to the Tatars” and the Tatars are considered to be Turks, we can see how this can be an invitation for Turkey to try and bring Crimea under its control and we’re playing into the hands of Erdogan who aims to rebuild the Ottoman Empire.

Indeed, Turkey’s (a NATO state) current manoeuvres in Crimea and other parts of Ukraine and the wider region have provided Russia with an additional and, arguably legitimate, reason to intervene.

IMO if NATO gives its member state Turkey free hand to intervene in Syria and Iraq on the grounds that Turkey has “legitimate security concerns in the region”, then Russia should also be allowed to intervene in Ukraine.

In any case, there is no evidence that Crimea belongs to Ukraine and even less that it belongs to America!

Problem with CIA-NATO-Nazi bots is that they may have the technology but they haven’t got the intelligence! :grin:

BTW, if anyone is genuinely interested in the subject, here are some good articles on Turkey’s agenda in Crimea and Ukraine:

Turkey’s Tatar Agenda Explained - Insideover

Erdogan’s wolf trace: Crimean Tatars will turn into Ukrainian Turkomans — Eurasia Daily

No, I'm just calling out your bullshit thinking you know even surface-level stuff of what is going on in Sweden and Finland. — Christoffer

Well, I don't think you've demonstrated superior knowledge of countries other than Finland and Sweden. Kettle calling the pot black, comes to mind ....

Russia didn't intervene or come to the help of Armenia when Azerbaijan attacked in the Nagorno-Karabach. It actually had sold weapons to Azerbaijan. And is all but happy using the divide and rule tactics in the Caucasus. — ssu

The Armenian-Azeri conflict has absolutely nothing to do with Russia’s “divide-and-rule tactics”.

For your information, the territory inhabited by European (Caucasoid) populations originally stretched all the way to western China and southern Siberia. See Afanasievo Culture.

The problem was created when nomadic Mongol and Turkic tribes began to invade European territories. See Turkic Migrations. This includes Azeris, a Turkic group, that invaded Armenian territory in the Middle Ages.

The Azerbaijanis, Azerbaijani Turks, or Azeris are Turkic people living mainly in the Republic of Azerbaijan and Iranian Azerbaijan, as well as in Georgia, Russia (Dagestan), Turkey and formerly Armenia.
A massive migration of Oghuz Turks in the 11th and 12th centuries gradually Turkified Azerbaijan as well as Anatolia.
At the beginning of the 11th century, the territory was gradually seized by the waves of Oghuz Turks from Central Asia, who adopted a Turkoman ethnonym at the time. The first of these Turkic dynasties established was the Seljuk Empire, which entered the area now known as Azerbaijan by 1067.
The pre-Turkic population that lived on the territory of modern Azerbaijan spoke several Indo-European and Caucasian languages, among them Armenian and an Iranian language, Old Azeri, which was gradually replaced by a Turkic language, the early precursor of the Azerbaijani language of today. – Azerbaijani people, Azerbaijan, Wikipedia.

Russia did NOT create the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The conflict goes back many centuries and needs to be taken in the context of Mongol and Turkic encroachment on European territory.

If anything, Russia is trying to strike a balance between two existing mutual enemies on its borders. Russia did sell some weapons to Azerbaijan but it was Turkey that armed the Azeris and encouraged them to attack Armenia by offering military and diplomatic support.

Turkish arms exports to Azerbaijan exploded before Nagorno-Karabakh clashes - Turkish Minute

Don’t forget that Turkey regards itself and Azerbaijan as “two states, one nation” as part of its imperialist designs on the region!

Experts see Turkey’s hardline rhetoric against Armenia as part of Turkey’s aspirations for global and regional leadership and Ankara's increasing efforts to resolve disputes through “gunboat diplomacy.”

AP Explains: What lies behind Turkish support for Azerbaijan – ABC News