[Ukraine] Missing in Action: Western Minds

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Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
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paul_soccer12 posted:

Ukraine is now within spitting distance of the t0513 highway they have also liberated Yahidne and are actively sieging berkhivka.

We are looking at a major event in the next week or so. What I do notice is that the speed at which Ukraine is taking back territory surrounding bakhmut is getting faster as the last two days have progressed.

Wagner's once again complaining and Ukraine is in the outskirts of bakhmut with at least half a mile or so worth of city scape behind them.

Literally another mission accomplished by the Russian military. Wagner is definitely going all in on the fact that bakhmood is captured so that they can loving leave because they know what is about to happen is going to be devastating. This may be the moment that the Russian army's back is broken as the lines are going to start disintegrating over the next coming weeks. At least in this direction.

Big big loving news folks keep your calendars and your live UA maps open

nafo copium ftw

# ¿ May 25, 2023 03:40

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 15:14

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
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lobster shirt posted:

please do not do syqs from elsewhere on the forums please

it should be allowed if it can be mistaken for a reddit post. cuz i 100% thought it was legit a reddit post

# ¿ May 25, 2023 04:12

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Raskolnikov38 posted:

does anyone believe anything prigozhin says

as much as liberals believed anything Chalabi or Yeonmi Park said

# ¿ May 25, 2023 04:26

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AnimeIsTrash posted:

if you go to the richer areas of seattle youll seep eople flying the UA flag, there is a guy with a full UA tracksuit that jogs around one of the lakes

extremely overpaid computer touchers who just discovered ua on a map for the first time in their lives 9 months ago ftw

whose gunna tell them about taiwan

# ¿ May 26, 2023 16:42

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speng31b posted:

not again !

the state department has run out of plot lines to poo poo out to mewling rubes and just gotta recycle them. no one will notice anyways

# ¿ May 27, 2023 02:40

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CODChimera posted:

ive heard this a million times already

you arent supposed to re,member that

remembering is illegal

# ¿ May 27, 2023 02:57

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
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A big flaming stink posted:

anything unusual actually happen there or is it just rubbernecking during the boring parts of war again

writers guild is on strike so copium is running high and using chatgpt to generate new prompts

# ¿ May 27, 2023 06:21

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
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i'm going to brutally destroy paul_saqr with a patreiot freedom missile for liking too much putin (((actionable threat after I raise $500m to afford a single missile)))

# ¿ May 27, 2023 07:34

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Starsfan posted:

Which I guess is a long way to get around to saying that I don't understand why Ukraine is now acting like their offensive is going to be some massive surprise that completely catches the Russians out.

your mistake is thinking it is actually strategic (or even real) instead of internet meme red meat to western war psychos. you gotta keep drip feeding the flag emoji psychos new copium or else they might remove the flag emoji from their profile.. and that.. that would be very very bad

# ¿ May 27, 2023 09:31

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Cuttlefush posted:

lol christ

# ¿ May 28, 2023 05:52

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Al! posted:

hmm hmm ok

war is bad

only tankies are against war. you wouldn't want to be a tankie now would you???

# ¿ May 28, 2023 06:15

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Al! posted:

it seems like there should be an immediate ceasefire and then there should be a realistic long term plan for peace

there was a peace plan last april then boris johnson and joe biden blew it up because peace = gay = anti-american

# ¿ May 28, 2023 06:28

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
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going to use im gunna go off to do a slava ukrani, pls babe? as the new PUA line

# ¿ May 28, 2023 23:59

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Ytlaya posted:

I'm torn on whether Ukraine's level of bullshitting is "because they're really stupid" or "because they're savvy and realize the dumb Americans will believe it."

Probably varies based on the person.

well it is a reddit rear end war so mostly the latter, you need to keep doling out regular doses of catnip to american liberals so they don't lose faith in patriot freedom wunderwaffens. if you stop giving the liberals copium catnip, they might remove their flag emoji

# ¿ May 30, 2023 01:10

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Cuttlefush posted:

depends on the dam and the missiles/artillery and exactly where they hit. im not sure how many, if any, direct hits the dam structure ever actually had from what caliber of artillery but generally reinforced concrete can hold up pretty well against run of the mill HE in run of the mill calibers. I'm pretty sure.

missiles and especially munitions that are purposebuilt to gently caress up reinforced concrete could and have popped dams. artillery probably could if it was just allowed to fire on it for ages and eventually compromise the structure enough. i imagine it'd be awhile though? an extremely unrealistically long while, i mean

still anything can decrease the integrity of the dam and make it more susceptible to failure from water pressure. engineers inspecting the dam would know whether or not that was the case. we can't.

concrete gravity dams are resilient but concrete arch dams require arching effects for stability and it wouldn�t necessary be that hard to destroy an arch dam. embankment dams are pretty good but if the reservoir is high enough, you just need to surgically breach the clay core leading to internal erosion or overtopping. munitions can also trigger static liquefaction for hydraulic fill dams. Aswan dam was the worlds most dangerous dam for a long time and part of the reason the Israel war ended so quickly was because Israel was threatening to bomb Aswan dam which would have been very easy to do with munition liquefaction and very bad

e: autocorrect

Xaris has issued a correction as of 21:31 on Jun 7, 2023

# ¿ Jun 7, 2023 21:26

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
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why would chesa putler do this

# ¿ Jun 8, 2023 05:31

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do we have a new wunderwaffen for nafo to masturbate to yet. are we back to himars yet, or are we still on the f16 cycle

# ¿ Jun 9, 2023 09:37

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why is everyone jerking off about leopards. are they the new wunderwaffen de hour that everyone is pinning nafo hopes on??? idgi

# ¿ Jun 9, 2023 17:31

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this is joe b idens fault for not releasing the f-35s to ua, which is why they're losing. send the f-35s!

# ¿ Jun 10, 2023 09:33

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
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wrap it up tankailures, big z has won. the counter offensive is SUCCESSFUL. get over it. cope harder :smug:

# ¿ Jun 11, 2023 02:29

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CODChimera posted:

does ukraine actually have 500-700+ armoured units in reserve?

they actually thave 700000 in reserve just off screen

# ¿ Jun 12, 2023 06:29

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
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hmm maybe elon has a point about bots

# ¿ Jun 16, 2023 00:31

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Frosted Flake posted:

There's a theory about that,

https://twitter.com/ArmchairW/status/1670181878866018304?s=20

no wonder why widdle z-man has been increasingly isolated and unhinged the past year. he listened to bojo and got hundreds of thousands of his own ppl killed because of it

# ¿ Jun 20, 2023 05:32

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
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Danann posted:

_{(from t.me/VampireSix/529, via tgsa)}

Brown Moses is basically running Ukraine's war effort

lmfao, but also i thought we knew this already?

this was already a reddit-rear end war ran by social media influencers and other social media superstar morons with various flag emojis. using brownmoses maps in an reddit-rear end shoulda been obvious

# ¿ Sep 11, 2023 00:56

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Al-Saqr posted:

I am now permanently and 1000% on Russias side now in their fight against Ukranian Nazis. Sorry Zelensky you made me make a choice.

drat� this is bad news� for Russia

# ¿ Oct 7, 2023 21:50

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Buck Wildman posted:

poppin in to say lol at the thread title gw

# ¿ Oct 12, 2023 21:26

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ContinuityNewTimes posted:

Personally I would like the people of Eastern Ukraine to not be under the boot of a Ukrainian government that wants their culture removed from their borders

you could even go farther and say that the ethnic minority residents in the east are/were being genocided by the State after the US-coup, according to some definitions of the word.

but yes it's a shitshow and the only moral option was for peace. which the world's biggest power and owner of the petrodollar could have easily made happen if it wanted to. infact, it didn't want peace to happen and intentionally sabotaged peace efforts for a new proxy forever war

# ¿ Oct 12, 2023 22:34

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Zoeb posted:

I remember the Euromaidan protests. The former president was a crook and I can't imagine all of those people were CIA agents or otherwise on the payroll. There was legitimate and organic criticism of the Ukrainian government. The US probably benefited sure but they could not have made an impact at all had there not already been a pre-existing rejection of the government by the Ukrainian public.

That's actually wrong, they had much much more hand in driving it. Not everyone were directly CIA but it was setup and funded well in advance by US. The primary driver is that Yanukovich was rejecting an IMF requirement to raise the pension age, reduce benefits, privatize energy at the time. Russia swooped in around that time and offered a more favorable loan, that's when the shitshow really kicked off because that really really upset the status quote of increasing privatization and austerity.

It's the same reason we invaded Iraq, Libya, etc. Saddam was trying to sell oil in euros before US invaded them, likewise Gaddafi was trying to sell oil outside the petrodollar and then we bombed him to smithereens shortly after

quote:

Speaking of designs, lets talk about Ukraine. Cause what they probably think of is Ukraine from 2014-on. Brave, embattled Ukraine. Maiden Square Ukraine. Fighting to be free. Huddled masses all using laptops to do revolutions. Lets talk about that Maiden revolution. Here's an interesting fact you might not know about the Maiden revolution. It had all it's infrastructure set-up before anything actually happened, before any protests started. The general way the protests were going to go, the general architecture of how this uprising was going to proceed, was all in place already. You want to know who put it in place?

USAID, that is such a wing of the CIA that we haven't even pretended otherwise since 1950s, the National Endowment for Democracy, likewise something no one even bothers to pretend it isn't, and various wings of the Omidyar Group. Now you hear Omidyar, you might think of an episode with Ken Silverstein, formerly of The Intercept, at the time was convinced that The Intercept was a CIA honeypot: that what it did was attract whistleblowers and sit on as much information that was brought to them as possible and get them arrested, and it also attracted people who fancy themselves as 'serious leftist journalists' and then policed the limits of what accepted 'leftist journalism' meant. It cut it in to ways: it sure no one leaked anything too explosive, and as the "premiere leftist publication" and made sure no one could get anything actually left published. It also ensured Jeremy Scahill could make documentaries wearing different hats from many different regions sitting on a railing of a boat going into different channels, it was excellent for that. Well, the man who owns and runs The Intercept is one Pierre Omidyar, you know, a member of the PayPal mafia: tight with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, and early stockholder in Amazon, so tight with Jeff Bezos.

You know, the people you want to have political associations with when your business is going to be "liberating countries from under the thumb of post-soviet evil". And in addition to USAID and NED, Omidyar got into pre-Maiden Ukraine and set up a number of concerns, one he called 'Center UA', a vague ill-defined project to amplify 'the voices of otherwise voiceless Ukrainians'. Now what do you think that means when they say "the Ukrainians that aren't being heard"?

Well, what we're talking about is Nazis, what we're talking about is Banderites. So along with Center UA, Omidyar also set up a regime-change media network called Hromadske, that was broadcasting pro-overthrow, pro-western, vaguely 'free speech', vaguely democratic, propaganda the months before anything happened at Maiden. And then, my favorite, before anything happened at Maiden, he set up a fact checking service for western news agencies who were going to be sending people into the Ukraine. So when CNN, or Reuters, or AP, has a reporter come in, and that story gets submitted for fact-checking, that fact-checking is being done by people who set up the fake revolution.

And the fake-revolution, as I have just alluded to, backed not so much by photogenic young college hippies that you saw so much of in the newspapers and internet back then, but by a group of people whose interest in Ukraine is not exactly political in the strict sense, they aren't really concerned with the Ukraine in terms of it's economic borders, it's GDP, it's population growth, it's division into various statuary sectors. It's not politics in a theoretical sense, it's a politics in the knock your teeth out sense, the people we've been supporting in the Ukraine since Maiden, since before Maiden, the same people we have in fact been training at our military facilities at Fort Bragg. You know, Fort Bragg, the same place where 95 soldiers have either been murdered or killed themselves in the last two years and there are no investigations, the same Fort Bragg where there seems to be an endemic child rape and human trafficking problem that no one has done any serious investigation of except Seth Harp. But certainly not any internal investigation.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2023 22:38

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
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Nix Panicus posted:

Crimea and the Donbas republics werent stolen by Russia, they defected.

lol one of the best fun-facts that I don't think many people is aware of is that after the USSR was broken up, Crimea actually voted to go independent (and briefly succeeded). Ukraine invaded and forcefully annexed Crimea in the early 90s.

anyways the official CSPAM position is that war sucks and should have been resolved peacefully years ago. But America did not want a peaceful solution at all and has been actively sabotaging any peace: blood is on america's hands

# ¿ Oct 12, 2023 22:43

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Zoeb posted:

I am new to this place. I wasn't familiar with an official CSPAM position but yeah I can agree with that in general but I don't think either side of this argument is flat-earth. I do think this is a debate where reasonable people acting in good faith can disagree and its not a matter of them being Russian assets or CIA assets.

I'll have to consider what you have said. This contradicts most of the articles and media I typically read and watch.

There's really no "good vs evil" here, it's a new proxy forever war vs.. well. who loving knows. but one thing is for sure is that America is definitely the evilest one here for encouraging a new forever war meatgrinder of conscripts to die. Like I said, the world's most powerful country holding the global dollar could easily have resolved it or never let it get to the point if it wanted, but it did (and does) not want to, that's full culpability to me imo. They even admitted that they sabotaged the March/April(?) peace talks that happened shortly after it kicked off.

And yeah People have a 'right to defend themselves' absolutely, but does The State have a right to force people to defend The State? The State is not The People: that's a bloody question without an easy answer, and usually one involving killing a bunch of people.

oh yeah another fun fact: America and Germany straight up recently admitted that Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 agreements was never intended to be honored and was just a buying time thing. that's pretty lovely!

I'll see if I can find all the old sources from the previous iteration. there was good articles showing how the west has been intentionally treating UA as a exploitable resource colony for decades now: just stripping it bare to the bone and requiring it to privatize everything from farmland to forests to make cheap IKEA chairs. Always keep in mind they definitely do not have The People's best interests in mind or at heart.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2023 23:02

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
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some of John Mearsheimmer's writings are pretty good (but not complete either, afterall, he is a vaguely pro-West-centric person). These two are at least reading for a perspective and understanding of why it's not a simple UA good versus RU bad:

https://southfront.press/history-will-judge-the-united-states-and-its-allies-john-j-mearsheimer/ (c. Feb 2022)
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-darkness-ahead-where-the-ukraine (c. Jun 2023)

Xaris has issued a correction as of 23:16 on Oct 12, 2023

# ¿ Oct 12, 2023 23:14

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Raskolnikov38 posted:

i mean thats the story of all the countries that exploded out of the soviet union because gorby let everyone rob the state blind and set up nationalist fiefdoms

What the West did after the abandonment of the USSR in the post-soviet states and Shock Doctrine is absolutely sickening. Some of the worst crimes against humanity of all-time, and those scars are still bleeding together. Millions of people were straight up killed in the West's conquest to strip it bare and exploit whatever resources were left in place

I shoulda quoted the whole thing before, my bad:

quote:

A little bit of historical context but I want you to think of NATO at the end of the Soviet Union. Because what choices did NATO have? Number one, had it wanted to, it could have offered inclusion to Russia itself. If you're looking for a significant player in a 'North Atlantic Treaty', a Russia, even a reduced Russia, even a Gorbachev democratic socialist Russia had it been allowed to transpire would have been a significant player in the region, no? Or you could acknowledge that the entire purpose of NATO had been to stand as a bloc against the Soviet bloc, and in the absence of a Soviet bloc, there was really no purpose for NATO. The thing had served out it's time, we could let it disintegrate, right?. No, that's not what we did, because some men, the same kinds of men who were helping Nazi industrialists hide their money in 1941, with names like last names like Bush, could see further into the future.

Number one, we weren't going to let Russia turn into a democratic-socialist Nordic welfare state. And we didn't.

And so, CIA and others affected a coup there and installed a fat gently caress called Boris Yeltsin. During the Yeltstin years, we and our brethren, or transnational siblinghood of global capital, just absolutely stripped Russia down to the loving copper and wires, and then sold those too. Even the bricks. The things we did during the 90s were just utterly depraved. A lot of the mood was pretty well captured by The Exile, Mark Ames and so forth. And we took them for everything they could be taken for. Quite assured, in the prospect that, Yeltsin, as long as he personally was kept fed and fat and drunk and supplied with hookers, wouldn't do anything about it. And he didn't.

And there was a member of Yeltsin's cadre, so a little known KGB colonel we had no concern about at the time, and who we would grow increasingly concerned with years to come, sat and saw this go down.

At the end of the Soviet Union, we did not opt for mass renegotiation for supposed 'world peace and stability' that had been ostensible the entire purpose of NATO this entire time, right??? We got Gorbachev to believe that NATO was not going to going to an inch further than Germany. And then we stole everything we could steal out of the former USSR.

And then while plucking like loving daisies, plucked up every single former soviet border country we could and including them in NATO, and doing what we do best: putting weapons there. And those weapons are often American, and those weapons are often nuclear. So since the Berlin wall fell and all that bullshit, all we did was strip Russia down to the barest possible bones economically, then surround it with countries all of them full of US weaponry pointing directly at it, just in time for the Russian economy to improve enough vis-�-vis the largest salesman of oil & gas to the EU that suddenly they have something we want again.

So like this sudden heroism, eternal right, of self-determination, of a people most Americans couldn't give a gently caress about 10 years, hell most couldn't give a gently caress 5 years ago, this must be summoned because we're in a position they have something we want. And what we want is to surround them with weapons to place ourselves at the head of their economy which is selling ungodly, unholy, amounts of oil and gas to the Europeans. So that degree of influence may be whom they are allowed to sell to, and whom they aren't allowed to sell to, at what price. You know, like maybe stopping and controlling Russia-China interactions and perpetuation of the petrodollar. It's not a series of coincidences; not merely opportunistic men navigating circumstances in front of them, yes there's some of that, but there were people back in the 1990 who very much foresaw the growth of Russia as a oil state as the major supplier to the mainland. Right around the time Deng Xiaoping was turning China to what it is today. They have littered weapons around the continents to prevent Russia from any degree of self-determination.

This isn't an apologia for Putin, he's an awful son of bitch, and we don't know what he's done yet. And the contours of the military incursion aren't clear. And he's probably done the stupidest thing in his life that will, if not outright kill him, then at least probably disposed. There's no good to come from a partial or total invasion. Just simply saying it is profoundly disingenuous for liberals to act as if this just suddenly sprung up, as if it hasn't occurred as part of our designs on the region for the last several decades

# ¿ Oct 12, 2023 23:31

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dk2m posted:

I think you're right to question all these things, and you're fine to feel conflicted. After all, there's been breathless words and media coverage over the last 1.5 years on a situation that, on first glance, seems fairly cut and dry - a country is invaded by its neighbor, who is now trying to annex its land. It's fair to ask, how could anyone find an issue with this?

First, when we think of "Ukraine" in the west, we imagine it to be like a normal, relatable western country like the US or France. This couldn't be farther from the case. Ukraine has been shaped by the forces around it, namely it's massive neighbors. From the Mongols, to the Ottoman, Polish-Lithaunian, Austro-Hungarian, and yes Russian neighbors, Ukrainian identity isn't something as easily "identifiable" as the cultural identity of a long sovereign nation like France. Therefore, there are deep divisions and splits, causing parts of the country to have different religious allegiences, cultural signifiers and language spoken.

It's within this context that 21st century Ukrainian nationalism, developed in the western part of the country, was explicitly fascist. I tried to write about that here:

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4016635&userid=151411&perpage=40&pagenumber=8#post534779590

with a great followup by Frosted Flake here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=4016635&pagenumber=2620&perpage=40#post534780410

These splits were largely kept under control by the USSR during its existence. However, once independence emerged in 1991, they ruptured to the forefront of society again. Ukraine once again became emobroiled with its neighbors, but this time, by the US as with the elections came about a chance to influence a very pivotal state for Russia's security - Ukraine holds the key to take over the Russian Caucuses, which Hitler exploited.

By 2004, contentious elections led to the Color Revolution, in which the candidate backed by the Eastern Ukrainians, who were Russian speakers, initially won the elections, but international monitors nullified and Yushenko won.

By 2010, Yanukovych won, who was on friendly terms with Russia, and international observers also agreed he did as well.

By 2014, Yanukovych was deposed and was forced to flee his country. Call it a coup, call it a revolution - this was enough to spark a civil war. As fascist symbols started reappearing, and paramiliatry militias became once again a feature of Ukrainian society, the Eastern part of Ukraine declared autonomy. Russia, knowing that the leases on key naval bases in Crimea would be up in the air, and potentially be nullified and given to NATO, had natural interests that coincided with the rebels. Once Ukraine started bombing their own citizens and refused to allow the east special administration, the Russian administration tried to find a compromise through the Minsk agreement. There was also pressure within Russian government itself, with the Duma and the Communists forcing bills through its Parliament to give the DPR/LPR special autonomous privileges. Putin relented to these domestic forces, as minority Russian speakers were dying across their borders while they did nothing.

By Februray 2022, after nearly 10 years of frozen trench warfare, violence, and broken trust across the board, Ukraine unilaterally withdrew from the Minsk agreement. Without any sort of political or diplomatic pathway left, Russia started it's "special military operation" that was a small enough force to bring Ukraine back to the negotiation table. By April 2022, Zelensky and Putin potentially ready to talk peace deals, until Boris Johnson convinced Ukraine that with Western backing, Ukraine can actually expel Russia from its territory and regain the rebel regions of Crimea + Donestk + Luhansk. This relatively small initial invasion force turned into a full blown war, as Russia regrouped and mobilized to re-focus on the East.

All of these instances, this buildup and the nature of the civil war that spilled over into Russian territory, is lost when the narrative is - "a country is invaded by its neighbor, who is now trying to annex its land". This idea that Putin woke up one day and decided to invade his neighbor based on nothing but vibes ("unprovoked") should be understood for what it is - propoganda.

We're at the stage of this conflict where Russia is dug in and will now decide on the battlefield what it wants its terms to be. This didn't have to be the case, and hundreds of thousands are dead based on empty promises by the West where we can't even give them F16s, let alone bring them into NATO. Generations of Ukrainians will pay the price for the massive depopulation, gutted economy and inevitable poverty that will grip the country as Western backed powers grow bored of the war. Make of this what you will.

quoting for truth

# ¿ Oct 13, 2023 00:42

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
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Zoeb posted:

A rules based international order would hypothetically be a nice thing to have but the US has consistently undermined such an order by exempting itself from the rules, flagrantly violating those rules when they invaded Iraq and used Black sites for torture, and can't be depended upon to keep it's end of any bargain past the next presidential election where we can just revoke our end of any agreement.

Now you're almost getting it :3:

Who writes "the rules"? Well, the powerful, the elite. What made them powerful and elite? Big and ever increasing reserves of capital (for all intents and purposes, capital and power are interchangeble) pillaged from the imperial peripheral / third-world with a sprinkling of breadcrumbs to their peons they rule over. What do they want most to never happen? Losing their capital/power. Ergo the most powerful cannot ever actually write the rules, when rules are written it is to inherently protect them AND give them smoke-screen cover to do Bad Things (such as exploit people) because well..."hey we're just following the rules_{_{_{the ones we we wrote}}} mannnn, it's allowed for us to exploit these people as you can see on Article 3.5.2.c as long as we give them a 5% mental health voucher after killing their family and a 3% bonus to ivy league admissions for relatives killed by our bombs and gave them a 6-hour warning"

It's not even about violating their own 'rules', i mean that too, rules for thee but not for me, but in a broader picture it's more than just that

It's the same reason democracy is also, generally, bad. It's a smokescreen to legitimize exploitation and immiseration under the guise of "well THE PEOPLE voted for this! if they didn't like it they'd just vote someone different". Liberal democracy is almost solely about legitimizing exploitation by pretending it's a 'will of the masses'. America and the west are not democracies: they're plutocracies as inherently "the rules" that define democracy are ones made by the powerful and always will be used to empower the powerful and it comes down to material conditions to control people and their perceptions. once you realize democracy is an complete and utter sham and all the west is is plutocracies, you should start to see the matrix

the only way a "rules-based international order" could even vaguely exist and be vaguely reaistic is under a JDPON.. which.. well, that's never gunna happen willingly without entirely dismantling the western global hegemony

Xaris has issued a correction as of 01:42 on Oct 14, 2023

# ¿ Oct 14, 2023 01:40

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
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Homeless Friend posted:

ruled based international order is just a fancy word for capitalist principles being applied globally (globalization) which are enforced by economic coercion (play or die) and the literal die as we see in these small, relative to the entire system, conflicts. The shooting wars are very dramatic and eye catching tho. The economic churn of the extraordinarily wide pyramid of exploited people worldwide funnelling resources that are more and more concentrated as they meet at the top of a pyramid is way more suffering than a couple of measly wars imo

yup

one of the greatest tricks the Western liberals did was convince people that as long as no one is directly shooting or whatever, it's all good baby. doesn't matter that we're starving tens of millions of people to death and shortening their life expectancy in half from undernourishment and no medicine and causing permanent immiseration. that's actually good and kosher: that's just capitalism bay-bee. maybe they should learn2code if they didn't want to have to wade through plasticide toxic waste to scrap old electronics for 0.00001 cents in copper or cut out their kidneys to sell.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2023 06:13

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

One advantage for Ukraine is that with everyone focusing on Gaza nobody is dwelling on the counteroffensive being a failure.

tbf every flag emoji lib has quietly removed all their flags and forgotten about it even before i/p.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2023 19:31

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

antipattern posted:

I see he still believes Ukraine will be let into the EU, any day now

he's dumb and maybe still does believe that, but the big reason is using it as propaganda. liberals have utterly massive catnip boners over the EU and love "self-determination" buzzword that they suddenly learned on twitter a few years ago. Like i really cannot understate how much libs love EU and don't see why every country shouldn't join it and infact it's dastardly reactionary CHUDDDdd to be against it. telling liberals "putler is denying ukraine their self-determination to join the EU" is very potent move crafted specifically to tickle the feeble brains, despite being entirely wrong.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2023 02:42

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

January 6 Survivor posted:

Ukraine joining the EU is a non starter anyway because of all the stuff that would need changing (anything from institution reform to road signage) to satisfy the membership requirements, and that was before the war even started.

I mean I'm sure the EU capitalists would love nothing more than several more million people to exploit for low, low wages but here's the thing, those reforms will end up making it easier, not harder.

it's a non-starter because they already get all the exploitation as an imperial periphery colony and capitalists make way more having it loaded to the brim on IMF loans with stringent neoliberalism, coupled with selling off privatizing forests for cheap ikea wood and privatizing farmland for ConAgra-types to profit

it's already a turbo neoliberalized authoritarian hellhole that does likes to do genocides, so there's really no gain for formally adopting the colony into the EU

Xaris has issued a correction as of 06:06 on Nov 2, 2023

# ¿ Nov 2, 2023 06:03

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

bunk data in, bunk data out

# ¿ Nov 2, 2023 08:50

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 15:14

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

dk2m posted:

This has already happened, which is why Donbass seceded from Ukraine in 2014 in the first place

From Gubarev's book

good quote

I also like pointing out just insane tidbits like this:

quote:

Forests in the Ukrainian Carpathians are on the verge of extinction as the country faces an ecological disaster of unprecedented proportions, environmentalists say. Illegal loggers are illegally trafficking abroad entire trains of fir trees, earning millions of dollars. According to local residents, deforestation has dramatically intensified over the past two years.

The scale of the disaster can be seen in shocking photos of bird�s eye views of cleared mountain slopes which have been were published on the Internet. One of these photos is the southern slope of the Popadia Mountain at the junction of the Zakarpattia and Ivano-Frankivsk regions of the country, where logging is strictly prohibited by law.

Before the Maidan revolution of 2013, trees were growing quite densely. Now, less than three years later, a huge bare spots have formed. The green Carpathian Mountains are gradually turning into a desert. According to the deputy Yuri Gnepa of the Zakarpattia Regional Council, in the Mizhgirya district of Zakarpattia region, 40,000 cubic meters of wood were being cut down earlier. Now it is about 100,000.

In the opinion of some experts, the native mountains could become even more thinned out because authorities want to allow the free export abroad of cut timber. The government of President Petro Poroshenko has proposed that the Verkhovna Rada cancel the ten-year moratorium on the export of unprocessed timber (roundwood) that was approved in 2015. This has caused mixed reaction among experts.

�The timber export moratorium was aimed to protect forests from destruction and to support the domestic wood processing industry, which is breathing its last,� says Igor Sheludko, an expert on forestry.

�Instead of timber going to Ukrainian enterprises and feeding our workers and the economy, logs are being sold massively to our neighbors in western Europe. But this is unprofitable. One cubic meter of raw material costs 80-90 dollars, whereas treated lumber has a value ten times higher. We have to develop our own production. Ukraine is becoming a raw materials appendage.

�The EU countries did not like our moratorium on timber exports because they buy that timber from us for a song and then make furniture to sell back to us at high prices.�\

European governments even provide subsidies to companies to export timber from Ukraine. But the same governments cherish their own forests. In Poland, Slovakia and Romania, trees are not cut on an industrial scale. Moreover, Romanians equate illegal felling to threats to national security.

Forest workers, say locals, are self-financed and are paid very poor prices for their wood. They cut down fine-quality wood and sell it to intermediaries, who then ship the wood to the West and make tens of thousands of dollars per week.

�The trees which protected the river banks from erosion by swollen rivers are no longer there. Now only stumps remain. Nothing now slows the rapid river currents,� explains Wojtowicz.

�At the same time, rivers and wells in villages are drying up because the trees perform a water regulation function. Their roots hold back lots of moisture. For example, a large spruce tree can hold up to three tons of water. When it is cut, the moisture evaporates. The mountain dwellers are forced to walk for kilometers to find springs.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2023 08:57

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Ukraine] Missing in Action: Western Minds

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