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What is the most powerful flying bug?
This poll is closed.
🦋 15 3.71%
🦇 115 28.47%
🪰 12 2.97%
🐦 67 16.58%
dragonfly 94 23.27%
🦟 14 3.47%
🐝 87 21.53%
Total: 404 votes
[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

 
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Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


war, huh, what is it good for

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Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Al-Saqr posted:

going? brother i literally today just got my first warhammer box in twenty years I’m completely gone to hunt bigger fish to fry. I feel like I’m the cherry on top right now.

what army did you get, guessing orks of course

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


HashtagGirlboss posted:

Welcome back thread. You’re not wrong about that QCS thread. It goes places. I’m not sure how much longer spaces that look at the war in a nuanced skeptical way are going to last on any English language platform, that’s hardly SA specific. There’s a certain dogged moral certainty that has overtaken pretty much everyone. It’s almost been remarkable to watch it develop in real time

I really don’t think it helps at all that most of the higher profile voices in opposition to US involvement have been MAGA types

The CPC letter and the push to deplatform BJG are other examples. It’s wild out there

The pushback BJG has been getting us wild

https://twitter.com/briebriejoy/sta...ingawful.com%2F

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


http://johnhelmer.net/thieves-parad...ent/#more-70130


quote:

A new report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reveals that the Ukraine has become a thieves’ paradise in which corporate loan defaults are written off; embezzlement from banks is not traced; the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) no longer audits the country’s bank liabilities and reserves; and the IMF admits it cannot tell how much of the $35 billion in foreign cash grants and loans promised to Kiev has been disbursed, or to whom.

“Disbursements of all committed funds over the remaining months of the year is urgently needed and will make a difference,” declares Kristalina Georgieva (lead image), the IMF Managing director since 2019, “especially in light of the recent horrific damage to energy infrastructure.” Georgieva was speaking in Berlin on October 25.

“In a best-case scenario,” she added, “we estimate that Ukraine’s financing needs would be about $3 billion per month. When we incorporate some additional financing for higher gas imports and some repair of critical infrastructure, we quickly reach $4 billion per month. The recent missile attacks, which have clearly caused much more damage, not only confirms the validity of these estimates but leads us to consider $5 billion upper range.”

However, in a 32-page IMF staff report on the state of Ukrainian budget finance and the risk of system-wide financial collapse, the Fund experts have concluded that “large-scale forbearance with a delayed recognition of NPLs [commercial bank non-performing loans] and the suspension of NBU enforcement actions and audits of financial statements make a comprehensive assessment of the impact of the war difficult and uncertain.” The report has been released at this link on the IMF website.

“Uncertainty” is IMF officialspeak for black hole. “The balance of probabilities,” according to the staff paper dated October 3, “would suggest that Ukraine has an unsustainable level of debt.” According to the Fund rules, this should suspend or stop IMF and all other foreign government cashflows.

Georgieva and the IMF board, dominated by the US, say otherwise. The black hole, the staff report goes on to say, is “unique to the extreme circumstances now prevailing in Ukraine, [so] very high uncertainty makes it difficult, at present, to estimate with sufficient precision the impact of the war on the debt outlook, and what would be required to restore sustainability.”

Instead, they have accepted a promise issued in a letter to the Fund dated October 1 from the Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergei Marchenko and NBU Governor Kirill Shevchenko. “We commit to undergoing a new safeguards assessment of the National Bank of Ukraine and will continue providing IMF staff with the NBU’s audit reports and authorize its external auditors to hold discussions with staff.”

This is a future promise. The NBU audit reports already received by the Fund in Washington ought to show exactly how much foreign cash has been received at the NBU, and what has happened to it in the disbursement throughout the Ukrainian public finance system. They don’t. In fact, the staff report tables show “disbursed and prospective official financing” conflating the two numbers together, and treating both as imprecise and unreliable because they are “2022 proj[ected].”

On October 7 the Fund’s Executive Board met to agree to the despatch of a fresh $1.29 billion in cash, and to accept the NBU’s promissory note for future accountability. The staff report says the new money is to be paid through the “food shock window of the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI)”. The black hole promise has been assigned an IMF acronym; it’s to be called the PMB – “Project Monitoring with Board involvement.”

Once PMB is put into operation, Marchenko and Shevchenko told the Board in their letter, “we expect [it to] help eventually pave the way for an Upper Credit Tranche arrangement in the near future”. This is Ukrainian officialspeak for turning “eventually” into the “near future”; and for throwing more good money after bad.

Since the present Ukrainian government was installed in Kiev in February 2014, the IMF has demonstrated a long record of failing to audit the NBU and commercial banks and of refusing to stop the multi-billion dollar diversion, fraud and embezzlement of the foreign funds by the oligarchs close to the regime and to Washington.

Oops, so much for that tax money.

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Jose Mengelez posted:

is it considered a pro russia position to say ukraine would be marginally better off being rebuilt as part of the russian federation than getting carved up by the IMF and sold off piecemeal to US business interests?

here, i've drawn a helpful diagram to explain this wild, zany tankie position that i personally do not hold;



like i said, not my personal opinion as i'm certain the good ole US state dept will write off those hundreds of billions in military aid as 'doing a buddy a solid' and happily allow ukraine the freedom (:911:) to democratically govern itself as a sovereign nation.

also, i'm 100% sure a triumphant zelensky's first move will be to immediately decriminalize organized labour and opposition parties and declare an immediate moratorium on pogroming roma as that's just the kind of vibe he's putting out y'know?

I don't think it's worth speculating over. The areas Russia will annex will likely get just as carved up and exploited by Russian oligarchs. I do recall there was a dispute over pensions getting sold out by Poroshenkos government, but the amount of cuts Russia will have to make to reorient itself after the war are going to affect these types of policies as well.

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Majorian posted:

Since I'm already in full swing at making GBS threads on people's sources, this guy also has some wild publications.:laugh:

Covid-19 has broken so many brains lol drat

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


https://twitter.com/UkraineNowMedia/status/1568631810581725190?t=CWnu69-Kd5vIwInUM-ZVAg&s=19

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Majorian posted:

You're making a difference!:patriot:

Also lol

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1588576334783320064

OH MY GOD, POLAND ADMIT IT!!!

This is honestly the silliest theory Russia keeps harping on about. A dirty bomb is more plausible than this.

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Danann posted:

The actual reason is that it's hard to photoshop an Abrams and Bradley with Z's and launder it as a Russian loss for OSINT to use in their daily navel gazing. :tinfoil:

What, you doubt that Russia has lost 1400 tanks so far?!

https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1588520926412697600?t=gXibnYh_l86pftQW-Dz-ow&s=19

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


speng31b posted:

https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1588650833268334594

i think the rwa guys are done with war and just really like old timey trains now. probably a fond reminder of the monarchy

Makes sense given how much Tsar Alexander loves trains.

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


samogonka posted:

uh, i really wonder what they try to achieve with such statements

https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1588823475514314752

https://twitter.com/SarahAshtonLV/status/1588887347990777857?t=7vxXglBJpJp7yNCpp81u7g&s=19

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


speng31b posted:

FF is going to vore the pope

When you think about it, transubstantiation is just voring Jesus

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63572668.amp

yeah, this looks encouraging

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Al-Saqr has been pretty consistently anti-Russia since they stalled on taking the Donbass after Mauripol imo. I dunno why the :derp: panic is popular

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


thatfatkid posted:

Hes been anti russia ever since they intervened in syria and prevented it becoming libya 2.0. Hes a oval office

sorry your pet dictator got insulted, shithead

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Ukraine is being powered by the iron lung of US taxpayer money and will continue to be so until the foreseeable future

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1590818260504973313?t=5XeO-8PTogOi67o3yi3dzA&s=19

looks pretty grim

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Tankbuster posted:

yes, the soviet finland war, where the finns won by...hang on

also where they "won" by still losing land

tbh this war would be very different if Russia had taken all of the Donbass by now. That's their main goal and yet they're still stuck trying to capture Bakhmut. I can see this going like the Winter War too.

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007



So did Russia decide what the extent of their claimed borders was then? After the referendums, it was unclear whether they were claiming the entire Oblasts or the state of the border at the time of annexation.

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


The referendum were nonsense in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia because the vast majority of the population had fled those areas by this point. They were maybe valid in the Donbass areas but even then that's after 8 years of civil war and any pro-ukraine civilians leaving the area.

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Sound posted:

gently caress around, find out

I hope "high-level" only means government officials, and not teachers and nurses like previously implied by others

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Frosted Flake posted:

How did Trots become Neocons? That part never made sense to me.

Their brains were broken by the revolution not happening in their lifetime. Many such cases!

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Southpaugh posted:

So Ireland didn't really industrialise in the typical european fashion, it industrialised as a colony, unlike our neighbours which were all nation states. So Industrialisation took place in Dublin, Belfast and Cork. All coastal port towns, Belfast had harland and Wolfe and the linen industry, Dublin mostly did food processing on an industrial scale, biscuits, glass bottles that sort of thing. There were steel works but it was on a more artisan scale. You'll still see the odd steel plate on the streets that was cast in a Dublin foundry before my parents were born. Theres no coal or steel in Ireland, so heavy industry was never really an option outside of Dublin and Belfast. You can bring materials into the port for production and manufacturing but otherwise they have to take a train somewhere so all those industries were centred in the port cities because the manufactured goods were for export.

When the Free State was formed the trade terms that allowed heavy industry in the free state locations went away. TW for Train enthusiasts: we took up a phenomenal amount of track as what industry we did have contracted into a more sustainable form or went away entirely. Ireland essentially de-industialized from what it had upon creation of the free state which led to all kinds of boring history on De Valeras "dreary Eden" as Ireland became inward looking and "self sufficient". Outside of heavy industry Dublin city centre was basically a large red light district and sex work was the largest employer of working class irish women. This is changed by the Legion of Mary, a group of people as scary as that name might suggest.

Meanwhile agriculture and agrarian concerns are where all of the money and power were then, and are in the modern era. Ireland continued to ship large amounts of food out of the country

Imo, the famines of the 1840s destroyed the character of the irish countryside. The land movements of the late 19th century have an entirely different character to the one they might have had, but the poor and the dispossessed were already dead or displaced by the time they came along. Its worth noting that civil unrest had always been on a simmer coming out of the 18th century, this led to, in order; Wolfe Tones 1798 Rebellion, the Act of union 1800, the dissolution of Irish parliament 1801, the gradual repeal of the penal laws, growing agrarian violence, the emancipation of catholics and then the Famines of the 1840s. It is after this time period that the nation state and an irish republic starts to get talked about and its these people that we recognise from late 19th century politics, into the 20th century and the present day. De Valeras grandson is still in the Dáil for example.

Suffice it to say the Irish eventually got the land, and then immediately set about replicating the british social order absent new lords and ladies.

Returning to the point though, industrial relations at the time would have gone something like this. the Foundry is owned by an aristocrat, a lord dunsany lets say. Lord Dunsany employs a middle class agent to setup the foundry. Skill labour in the foundry and management are all middle class. Working class people do the backbreaking everyday labour in the foundry, travellers would work with the working class guys to bring materials and so on to the foundry. So its the bourgeois, the petty bourgeois, the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat in order. Thats essentially as that would be in the present day, except the travellers, the lumpenproles are no where to be seen in the modern equivalent of this equation. They have been pushed out by both changing society and changing technology. With no one to champion their class interests they are left out in the cold.

My point being the revolution provided no change in the system, just who benefited from the system. Ireland in the present day is a post industrial, agrarian export economy with small amounts of high end manufacturing and lots of computer touching. Rip twitter. That manufacturing is pharma and food. A lot of the whey products you see on the shelf are Glanbia, as is Kerry Gold butter, we make a lot of generic pharma, the infamous horse paste ivermectin was developed in Ireland.

The people who benefit from the current and future irish economy are the same people that always had and always will. There remains no place in Irish society for Travelling people and without some kind of meaningful effort on behalf of the government there never will be.

"If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs. " - James Connolly

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


https://twitter.com/lizaclinwizard/status/1592204922388647936?t=k3t-suKAfeHrC3A9xW3Ebg&s=19

cool martyrdom

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


https://www.ibtimes.com/ukraine-cancels-work-permit-foreign-media-over-coverage-violation-cnn-reportedly-included-3635431

https://mobile.twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1591983412327358464

Not all foreign media is getting kicked out of Kherson but its extremely funny that some of the more pro-Ukraine outlets like Sky and CNN got burned.

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Majorian must probe themself, to show they could probe the rest of us

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007



So who actually bombed the hospital?

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1593964877160321025?t=q7lm3ORfzDY-MhNbvk0nyQ&s=19

Russia is blowing up their own pipelines again

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007



You did a warcrimes denialism!

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1594395141581611009

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


SplitSoul posted:

Didn't they say the same thing shortly after invading?

Yes. Demilitarisation and Denazification, two of the main goals in February, would require a new government.

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Sweden getting in on the arresting collaborators game too.

https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1595030435452575751?t=TxUJOBJcB4FS9tbyTPA4WA&s=19

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


paul_soccer12 posted:

If the kiev regime starts realistically threatening Crimea I think it's time for Russia to consider using nuclear weapons. In my opinion

IMHO that's an overreaction. Only if they reach Rostov.

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Ardennes posted:

I would say this war is only entering a deeper morally grey morass: the Russians attacked first and are clearly doing their own war crimes but at the same time the Ukrainians seem to be taking every opportunity of going after minority language speakers or just anyone that is the least bit suspect.

I am very pessimistic about negotiations as well especially as the strategic bombing is deeping, that isn't the type of thing you do when you are ready to sign a ceasefire.

yeah, this is sadly predictable especially once the far right militias started getting valourised. All the anti-Russian poo poo over the past few years now has a perfect justification.

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Majorian posted:

lmfao if you think Lukashenko is white

https://twitter.com/Halalcoholism/status/1483567264960253952?t=EPi3FfZNsXSIG1JErj6Agw&s=19

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1596066963608178688?t=hv1nGoh9fwoUmbygcUsbgQ&s=19

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1596066973749637123?t=La1UfdcWPasg5UyatR-cSg&s=19

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1596066977038360577?t=C6MIYUk6gGFjvDoE1rqnLA&s=19

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


U/R War: For an example, I very much enjoy Dutch cabaret

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


fits my needs posted:

is there like a 90 page sock manual

Frosted Flake please report on what socks the Canadian Mounties wear or something

Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Slim Jim Pickens posted:

I remember seeing this being claimed around a month ago. Is it supposed to have happened again?

Another confusing aspect of this war is that sometimes the journalists gnash at the bit and break a story 10 minutes after the Ukrainians send a missile at Poland, and then sometimes they repackage something that happened ages ago.

The article is confirming it was the incident from last month, yeah

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Not So Fast
Dec 27, 2007


Vomik posted:

maybe they meant one trillion UHD? that’s like $25b USD although seems low

$25b is basically their monthly budget at this point. $1 trillion sounds accurate for how much damage has been done but food luck getting it

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