Long and interesting discussion

but unsatisfactory as they did not quite explain the economic factors except Yves Smith to some extent. Gonzalo Lira seems right but a bit of a loose canon. This video is also posted in Naked Capitalism. inthe comments, Yves Smith explains a bit of the unpleasant commements by Gnzalo Lira about Scott Ritter: Yves Smith October 13, 2022 at 9:22 pm Lira did an unnecessarily nasty takedown of Ritter not long after Lira was detained by the SBU and had all of his channels taken from him by them, which led to Lira being demonetized. Lira’s beef was Ritter’s tendency to make sharp changes in his readings of the war, without similarly sharp changes in underlying facts. I had relied on Ritter unduly early on and was also persuaded by his bullish take on Russia’s prospects, and I think Lira was mad at feeling duped. Ritter was aggressively saying Russia would wrap up the war quickly, as in a few weeks. He then flip-flopped when NATO was going to arm Ukraine and said it would be a game changer. He’s also made questionable statements about NATO being effective at training, which might have been true when they had the leisure of time, but can’t be now if nothing else based on how the Ukrainians have to be trained out of country, in too little time (a mere 3 weeks for the ones in the UK) and too few in number. Ritter also declared Lira to be dead when he disappeared. If you read Ritter”s Wikipedia entry (and there’s no reason for the pro-Establishment Wikipedia to cut Ritter any slack), Ritter was found guilty 2x, both time stings, both time with no actual sex, just phone and IIRC sexting. The first time was supposed to be sealed. It was nevertheless presented in the second case, where Ritter maintained the woman he never met was pretending to be 15 but wasn’t. When he was being prosecuted, you can guarantee the police got his computers and communication devices. If they had found any kiddie porn or evidence of solicitation or sex with minors, you can be sure that would have been brought in.