Ukraine-Russia War Take 2
Here is what the preliminary take on the Ukraine thread disappearing is:
The site was hit with a massive spam attack where hundreds of spam threads were created. In the case where, for example, I see a single spam thread and delete it, that is called a soft delete, and mods can still see them but forum members cannot. Those deletion can be undone.
When a massive attack hits with hundreds of threads, an admin uses a different procedure where the hundreds of spam threads are merged and then hard deleted, where the threads are gone, and no note is left behind. As I have mentioned with my own experience of just soft deleting a large number of posts, sometimes a post or thread gets checked or merged accidentally and is deleted by mistake. Dealing with hundreds of spam threads takes a sledgehammer, not a scalpel.
It appears that our Ukraine thread may have gotten caught up in that recent net of spam threads. If so, it is likely gone for good. I cant say this for sure, and am awaiting comments from admins on this issue. Yes, this sucks. And hopefully there was some other software glitch that caused the disappearance, and we may recover it in the future.
But in the meantime, I have created this new Ukraine-Russia War thread to enable the conversation to continue. Obviously continuity with earlier discussions will be lost. There is no way around that. So as best as possible, let's pick up the conversation with recent events and go from there.
If you have any questions about this, please post them in the mod thread, not here. Let's keep this thread going with posts about the war, not the disappearance of the old thread.
Thanks.
I don't know much about Russia but I get the impression that an appeal is likely to be...unsuccessful.
https://www.wsj.com/world/georgia-russia...
Georgia’s unfolding break with the West was catalyzed by this summer’s strict restrictions on foreign funding for nongovernment organizations, media and civil society. Dubbed “the Russian law” by the opposition, the new legislation mirrors similar “foreign agent” curbs enacted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2012 as he eviscerated political freedoms there.
In another borrowing from Putin’s political playbook, the Georgian government now is moving ahead with a law that would ban LGBT “propaganda” such as Pride events, and uphold “traditional values.” In recent months, many antigovernment activists have been assaulted by thugs believed to be connected with the authorities.
“We are now in the same situation where Russia was in 2012. If the Georgian Dream begins to enforce this Russian law, they will basically get rid of international organizations, of donor organizations, kill the civil society, and then the independent media and the opposition parties, as it has already happened in Russia,” said Zurab Japaridze, founder of the opposition Girchi party who said he had to use his sidearm to fire in the air as he was being attacked near his home earlier this year.
Ivanishvili’s landmark speech at a Tbilisi pro-government demonstration in late April, a rare public appearance for the country’s most powerful man, marked a clear shift in rhetoric. Ivanishvili—who had lived in Moscow for decades and once held a Russian passport—accused the “global war party” in the West of trying to overthrow his government. The main reason, according to him: Georgia’s refusal to become “cannon fodder” and open “a second front” against Russia.
“I can tell you very frankly and openly, we are afraid of Russia…Imagine a scenario where the Russians just turn on the engine of an armored vehicle—not even a tank—and put it on that highway. What do you do as a state? If you shoot, then it’s a war with Russia. And if you don’t shoot, then you’re not a state,” Samkharadze said. “We have learned our lessons, and we know that if there is another war between Russia and Georgia, we will again be all alone.”
Some hilarious stuff in that indictment.
I see on Twitter the Ukrainians using thermite from drones. Weren't people crying about Russia using white phosphorus earlier in the war?
*This post is not sponsored by Tenet
A likely story...
I've seen three clips of the thermite so far:
Ukraine has been dropping thermite on heavy equipment since the start of the war I think, but this is the first I've seen it being used on a treeline. It's probably far more widespread but the units using it weren't posting until now.
My guess is it's a warcrime, but it's also not a top down policy like Russia's use. Here are two videos to show the difference in scale between a unit rigging up a drone to drop it and Russia's deployment of it.
At around 10 seconds in the angle shows how it's being used on multiple areas:
Just found it strange the osint guys seemed to be cheering it on.
It is sad, but not surprising.
On one hand it tells us is the reality of much of "independent" media and journalists these days. It isn't the bedroom operations of 15 years back where fledgling media sites and social media served as a way for freelancers and independents to get a story out without being editorialized to death.
Instead it has become about your own persona and how you can attract followers, subscribers and patrons. And to serve them up, people expect a far more polished and professional product than they did before, so you have people on hire and bills to pay. So there you are, with an audience that expects a specific message and financial obligations that depend on you delivering it. Meanwhile, in the wings you have interest groups ranging from the benign to the outright dangerous, willing to drop considerable cash if you have an audience that listens.
It also tells you of a Russia (and likely many others) that has been emboldened by inaction and gridlocked politics. They have learned that they can assault elections freely and with little consequence, both in the US and elsewhere. When the American president himself in 2018 stood on stage with Putin and told his citizens and the world that Russia did not meddle in elections, the consequences were easy to predict.
meddling in US elections by paying Tim Poole to do propaganda. you guys are hilarious.
What the western world needs to protect itself in these cases is some sort of "declaration of cold war" which would allow special provisions to apply for curtailment of speech that favors actual inimical actors.
That the recent indictment basically only happened because failure to register as a foreign actor, and only because the russians were sloppy (if they had used private money sourced outside Russia it wouldn't have been a crime afaik) is simply insane.
It basically should be illegal to help enemies, including with speech, when the enemy has been clearly defined as such by a congress (or presidential) declaration in the US or by whatever other mechanism is decided in EU countries or in the UK.
I know the USA have the 1a which complicates these things but war is a general exception to it iirc.
But more generally and accepting that the 1a complicates things, it simply shouldn't be legal IF we are at war (even in a postmodern sense of the word) to allow domestic actors to stan for the enemy in any capacity.
What the western world needs to protect itself in these cases is some sort of "declaration of cold war" which would allow special provisions to apply for curtailment of speech that favors actual inimical actors.
That the recent indictment basically only happened because failure to register as a foreign actor, and only because the russians were sloppy (if they had used private money sourced outside Russia it wouldn't have been a crime afaik)
Nah, there is no need to curtail free speech. There will always be useful idiots. The 2024 version with useful idiots with large useful idiot audiences is just an evolution of that concept.
What needs to be done is to acknowledge that Russia is and has been waging a war against democracies and especially "western" democracies for the last 20 years, this both through intelligence operations and hybrid warfare. At the same time, the blood money that the Russian regime has stolen from its people are greasing corrupt wheels and willing financial systems, creating added incentive to not rock the boat.
Right now, Russia is at war with us, and we are unwilling to stand up for ourselves because we are afraid of what Russia will do. Which makes very little sense, but it is where we are at.
There is nothing that indicates that it will stop. Anti-western and anti-liberal (as in human rights and constitutions) sentiment is by all accounts a very popular political ideology in Russia and together with corruption forms the bedrock of the modern Russian state.
Russia has been trying to influence opinions in western countries since forever, sometimes very succesfully.
The most insane case was in 1932, the Duranty Pulitzer prize won by denying the communists were genociding the ukrainians
The problem has never been russian (or other foreign) attempts to influence opinions, which are to be expected and can't be dealt with in any absolute terms.
The problem has always been having plenty of people living in western democracies while being friendly to the value sets of western enemies, and with those countries.
We can perhaps tolerate their existence in our countries, but we shouldn't tolerate any actual attempt from them to change our countries to reflect their values.
Nah, there is no need to curtail free speech. There will always be useful idiots. The 2024 version with useful idiots with large useful idiot audiences is just an evolution of that concept.
What needs to be done is to acknowledge that Russia is and has been waging a war against democracies and especially "western" democracies for the last 20 years, this both through intelligence operations and hybrid warfare. At the same time, the blood mone
liberal human rights like slaughtering millions in the Middle East over the course of the last 20 years in illegal wars.
What the western world needs to protect itself in these cases is some sort of "declaration of cold war" which would allow special provisions to apply for curtailment of speech that favors actual inimical actors.
That the recent indictment basically only happened because failure to register as a foreign actor, and only because the russians were sloppy (if they had used private money sourced outside Russia it wouldn't have been a crime afaik)
There should always be open criticism of government allowed, especially while at war.
liberal human rights like slaughtering millions in the Middle East over the course of the last 20 years in illegal wars.
Russia obviously doesn't have a problem with slaughtering people in the middle east, so your post makes zero sense.
If it isn't, where you live would simply slowly transform into something similarly dystopian to Russia.
Free speech is a very dangerous thing, it topples governments like nothing else. That is why most people in the world are not allowed to have it. It is also one of those things that people often support loudly in principle, but they get nervous about in practice.
my point is that Western liberal democracies dont give a **** about human rights and are by far the most egregious at trampling on them for fun and profit. dont really care about Russia tbh. but being compared to the USA is not exactly a good look for them.
Ukraine has been dropping thermite on heavy equipment since the start of the war I think, but this is the first I've seen it being used on a treeline. It's probably far more widespread but the units using it weren't posting until now.
My guess is it's a warcrime...
Not if the tree cover is concealing military positions.
liberal human rights like slaughtering millions in the Middle East over the course of the last 20 years in illegal wars.
There are no such 'millions'. The Iraq war cost about 200,000 lives, but 90% of those people were killed by Iraqi faction-fighters or foreign Islamist terrorists and not by the US-led coalition. And few of these deaths occurred during the initial invasion. Most of them occurred during the stabilisation phase, in which the coalition was UN-authorised and not 'illegal'. And no court has ruled the initial invasion illegal either.
Putin's proxy war in Syria ran up a greater death toll in a shorter time and involved the use of banned chemical weapons and indiscriminate bombing of residential areas.
Putin's proxy war in Syria
whos proxy war?
Yes, without ever trying to help the enemy in any way, never even hinting at the possibility of the option that the enemy could be "right" or "more moral" or in any way or sense preferable or better than us, that's the idea.
You cannot be part of a society and work against it in war. It's one of the worst possible behaviour for a human being and we should treat it as such.
Usually when the whataboutism comes out it means there's no defense being offered in Tankie Twitter to parrot.
I guess even the far left is now afraid that they have been getting their cues from the Kremlin, the same as the far right. We have already seen how far left rhetoric mirrors MTG, Maga, and imperialist neo-Nazis.
In what world is Tim Pool the far left?
