> hopefully putin gets deposed and someone more like your leader gets installed
Given the choice, I'd definitely rather have Zelensky than Putin, but preferably not either. The world doesn't need more celebrity politicians. (I recognise that the US is scarcely a model here; I can only plead that I didn't want any of our celebrity politicians, either.)
EDIT: To be quite clear, this is not meant in any way as anti-Zelenksy. As the child comments say, correctly, he seems to be the leader Ukraine needs right now.
The Ukrainians choosing whomever they want is the best outcome. There is still the possibility that they could choose someone terrible, but that is their prerogative.
The perfect president does not exist. I’d settle for one with whom you can have a discussion and who does not see the world through the prism of an imaginary past.
> The Ukrainians choosing whomever they want is the best outcome. There is still the possibility that they could choose someone terrible, but that is their prerogative.
Oh, agreed! I certainly wouldn't say that Ukrainians shouldn't be able to select their own leader—they should, and, despite superficial impressions, have done so well. It's just that I hope the world doesn't learn from this that electing comedians is the way to go.
> It's just that I hope the world doesn't learn from this that electing comedians is the way to go.
Yeah. Though this one does not seem to behave so badly in the end. No comparison with Trump or Reagan.
To be fair, whilst not a populist, I am fed up with career politicians and bland technocrats that are killing politics. We need doctors, lawyers, intellectuals, farmers, businessmen, factory workers, and much more (in no specific order) in our parliaments and amongst our elected people. A sweet spot between reckless clowns and psychopaths would be nice.
In this case, it looks like Zelensky may be exactly what Ukraine needs right now. He might just be playing another part, but if so he's doing a really good job of it.
"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."
yeah I agree in part that we should probably not have celebrity presidents but he is definitely qualified for the job and has a law degree so it's not like he's just an actor. now on the other hand our celebrity leaders I can generally do without.
Germans allow German weapons to be sent to you, Dutch will send. Poland is sending truckloads.
I've already been looking up Norwegian politicians this morning to ask them to somehow get rid of their old law to not export weapons to countries at war (I think it was meant to be against profiting from war, not to prevent helping, in which case maybe it would be OK if they sent it for free? Norway has some seriously good weapons tech so it could help.)
I got an offer the other day that I normally wouldn't take but will possibly take anyway to help oil&gas/defense.
Edit:
Russian athletes will be banned from competitions. Champions League finals will not be in St. Petersburg, World Cup Skiing final will not be in Russia etc.
I didn't think the banner of Anonymous as-used-by leftist hacktivists was still active after the FBI's crackdown a decade ago. Imagine a world where the FBI treated white supremacist terrorists the same way they treat hacktivists.
When I first heard of Anonymous they were going after scientologist. It has definitely been used by a number of groups over time, probably with some overlap.
Hacktivists are not white hat hackers. They are black or grey and justify actions with personal morally. Judge each case by it's own merits. A lot of regular people get treated as terrorists when they do things like hack their school.
I haven't ever heard of white supremacist terrorist. I've heard of terrorist, I've heard of white supremacist, but I don't think the groups bi-sect. What is the last white supremacist terror attack you remember?
If you haven't heard of a white supremacist terror attack, it is because you are ignorant of domestic terrorist activities. That doesn't mean they don't exist.
Also, you should revisit your hat definitions. White and black hat are a matter of political perspective for each act and issue, but hacktivists are definitively not grey hat.
The 1995 bombing was against the federal government not an act of white terror. Just because someone might be racist doesn't mean the act or terror was racist in nature.
The New Zealand shooting the fbi wasn't involved.
The El Paso mass shooting was against one group. You don't qualify to be a white supremacist unless you hate everyone not white. That person had a problem with a specific group hardly makes him hate everyone nor was his act against everyone not white.
Anonymous doesn't really have any political allegiance and doesn't do things for the reasons you think they do them. Most of those videos are made by non-technical people and are basic propaganda - and that's a big part in shielding Anonymous from too much federal heat. The people actually doing the work are mostly there for the laughs and clout. Second, Anonymous is mostly decentralized, much like terrorist networks. They gather on image boards you're probably detestful of and post messages on plain sight alongside a stream of repulsive content. They also splinter themselves across various IRC networks and now probably use more modern decentralized encrypted comms. That makes them difficult to track.
You must be joking. Any sources to prop up that dubious assertion? How many mass shootings or bombings in the last 20 years in either Europe or North America were done by self-proclaimed communists?
Black Lives Matter, which by the admission of its own leaders is a Marxist organization, caused more than 2 billions dollars in insurance claims during the George Floyd protests.
Right. BLM has absolutely nothing to do with a Marxist organisation. How are they planning to seize industry, means of production, and institute a dictatorship of the proletariat? So no, they are not Marxist (note that them not being a Marxist organisation does not preclude some Marxist people to be part of it). “Marxist” is not a label you put on things you don’t like.
Besides, the parent post mentioned “far more act of political violence and destruction”, which you did not address at all. Pointing out that one group did some material damage tells nothing if you don’t look at what the other did. The vast majority of terror events, both in the US and in Europe, are due to either white supremacists or Muslim fundamentalists. You can start with these sources. They cover 2 years, but you’ll have pointers for the rest of the last 2 decades:
> How are they planning to seize industry, means of production, and institute a dictatorship of the proletariat? So no, they are not Marxist
By promoting Marxism and gain public support by exploiting otherwise legitimate redress of grievances. You seem to make the point that just because they don't have the means to do it now doesn't means most of the organization doesn't espouse these views, which is ridiculous.
> Besides, the parent post mentioned “far more act of political violence and destruction”, which you did not address at all. Pointing out that one group did some material damage tells nothing if you don’t look at what the other did.
More than two billions of damage in insurance claims is not something that goes unnoticed. People who makes the claim that there are "far-right terrorists" roaming about and causing widespread mayhem and terror can't point to nothing else than a few handful specific events that are nothing of the same scale in terms of damage and scale.
> The vast majority of terror events, both in the US and in Europe, are due to either white supremacists or Muslim fundamentalists.
Radical Islam and the "far-right" doesn't really go together, that's doesn't really make sense to even consider put them up together. But radical Islam i soften using the rhetorical devices of the Left against European culture however.
The justification is that those sites are used to spread false information to the Russian public. By blocking access to them, they might start looking elsewhere, and won't be bombarded with the "denazification" brainwash attempts.
I suspect that in Russia "Nazi" implies anti-Russian rather than anti-Semitic. The Germans killed about 20 million Russians in WW2, including about 15 million civilians.
Perhaps those remarks sound bizarre to Western ears because we interpret them differently.
I think that number includes Ukrainians. And I can’t believe Putin didn’t realize that that speech, his style justification, would be seen and judged all over the world.
I'm sure Putin realized his speech would be seen and judged worldwide. I don't think he cares. He probably thinks he can just do whatever he wants and the world will accommodate him.
That's why I said "about 20 million" rather than 27 million (which is the consensus for the Soviet Union as a whole).
Exact numbers aren't important in this context, they simply illustrate that Russians have their own experience with Nazis that isn't what Americans usually think about when Americans think of Nazis.
The important point, about which I'd love to hear from someone more familiar with Russian language and culture, is whether the word "Nazi" is used in the same way in Russia and America (when not referring to actual Nazis).
Some details about this accusation are provided in this video (which appears to be a piece of Russian propaganda, with both interviewer and interviewee being writers for RT) starting about 4 minutes into the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GkmdCaBECs&t=273s
Those nuts were a bigger deal in 2014, and their political party only has a few seats. Russia is hardly in good standing with respect to right wing extremism.
There you go. Putin and his forces are really shaking in their boots over those predictable DDoS attacks from Ukraine's Anonymous finest. /s
It's as if that is all they can do, compared to Ukraine themselves getting hit by the same attack from Russia and throwing a malware wiper in the mix, propagating all over. Ukraine has nothing to fight with really in cyber defences.
Might need to find a better way of attacking them rather than using predictable attacks like that which are easily mitigated against.
There's a sibling post (by tgv) that makes a decent case for why this is actually good and meaningful, why it actually hurts the Russian propaganda effort, why maybe it'll affect Russian morale. I hope so.
But I do understand your reaction.
The West's response has felt so underwhelming that I have been angry at its apparent impotence. All symbolic nonsense, it feels: "We're going to add Vladimir Putin's name to a list! So that, should he hypothetically want to change some numbers at one of our banks, he can't! That'll show him!"
Like, what the hell is that? Block the man's bank accounts? No, if you weren't full of shit you would "find, fix, and finish" him. Talk talk talk.
There was an interview on DW with the Polish politician Radoslaw Sikorski. DW was doing its usual hemming and hawing (which, let's be honest, I normally like; it tries not to go crazy in any way), but Mr. Sikorski simply minced no words: Germany gets about 1/3 of its gas from Russia and was going like "should we stop buying it? We don't know! It's such a hard decision!", while he, from Poland, which depends on Russia for 70% of its gas, was already going "cut off all purchases of Russian gas; I don't care if it hurts". He wasn't crude but he was blunt, and clear, and incredibly refreshing. You immediately thought: This is the sort of leader we need. Forceful and intelligent.
Poland -- fucking Poland -- had donated Stingers to Ukraine. (Like, to its credit, Britain had shipped Stingers and Javelins.) There!That is at least doing something. And meanwhile Germany, which actually has a significant arms industry, is sitting on its ass and, I don't know, investigating a steering committee.
And even on the front that merely is the shuffling of assets, the West is going, "I don't know? Should we shut off SWIFT? We still need some escalation options...". Dude, the man is rolling goddamn tanks around and killing people; cutting off SWIFT doesn't even rise to the level of proportionate response. You need to have done it yesterday.
Oh, and, if you're publicly saying "we can't do this because we need to keep some leverage", it's exactly equivalent, informationally, to you having done it and had no additional leverage; it is a public admission of impotence. Putin has already priced this shit in.
"You and what army?"
I was reminded of that "physicals vs. virtuals" essay. Yeah, I know it was sort of an apologia for -- well, first, the Ottowa truckers, who may or may not actually be the evil right-wingers Trudeau says they are (now that Putin's using it, this word "de-Nazification" takes on a different ring, no?); and by association, maybe also an apologia for the actual right-wing grifters (Trump et al) who are trying to capitalize on them(?) -- but I still thought it captured something that's been bothering me for a long time. At some point there is reality, and you cannot approach life purely as a matter of public relations and the shuffling of assets.
I found a video on YouTube of a column of Russian tanks rolling essentially-unopposed, single-file, on a bridge across the Dnieper. A few token potshots. What the hell is this? Even I know how you take out a motorcade: You ambush the lead and the tail vehicles so the rest are sandwiched, and then you deal with the rest as you're able. (Or, it's been months, why are there no charges on the bridge? Is this incompetence or some level of strategy above my pay grade: "We'll need that bridge later"?) I guess they didn't have antitank weapons? Is that not itself a failure?
And then I look at the public reaction in the West and it just sickens me. It's all "mourning" (What? The cau...
The situation has changed somewhat since I wrote the parent post, at least with respect to Germany: They have now themselves also begun to supply Stingers/Javelins to the Ukrainians. The urgency needs to be kept up, but this is heartening to see.
I have also been thinking about how to meet aggression and to subvert it. Defense must be stalwart, but it may also be worth remembering that many of the Russians attacking are themselves quite young and inexperienced (putting the "infant" in "infantry"). There is probably something more attractive for them in Europe than there is in Russia. Give them a way out. They will probably not be received well in neighboring countries if all they speak is Russian (especially after this), but perhaps they and their families can be accepted as refugees (with appropriate resettlement packages) in other places within the Western sphere of influence, e.g. South America. Take Putin's "human resources" away; let them hang out on a beach somewhere.
They have provided a "user-friendly ddos tool" here [1] as discussed on reddit [2]. This does exactly what you'd expect it to do – it makes a large number of connections every second. It's completely and utterly dumb (and beware clicking the link!) but I imagine that such attempts sufficiently at scale are large enough to have a significant effect.
Whether or not rt.com going down internationally materially affects Vladimir's plans or place in the world, however, is another question.
The mental health of so many people watching powerlessly is also worth something. This gives anyone a chance of doing something. It might help very little, but it _is_ at least a grain of sand in the machine of death.
P.S. I'd encourage you to have a look at the js source code before opening this page. It seems to be relatively clean, readable and straightforward indeed.
Here's an alternative, that includes a bit more infrastructure, that potentially participates in the military supply chains + state-owned social networks: https://lostmsu.github.io/hack_russia/
This is excellent. If you look elsewhere on the Internet you will find that most of the Russian tank crews and troops were told that they were doing an exercise and kept completely isolated "on mission" for a couple of months. Then they get orders to proceed into Ukraine, probably spun without any collateral information or lies. At this point under DDoS their usual news sources are GONE. That means no propaganda available from the Russian government. The only sources available to them, if they get access to them, are saying that they're the bad guys and that is soul crushingly demotivating when you don't know why you are where you are.
> If you look elsewhere on the Internet you will find that most of the Russian tank crews and troops were told that they were doing an exercise and kept completely isolated "on mission" for a couple of months....At this point under DDoS their usual news sources are GONE.
I don’t think the OP the as saying that the Russian soldiers were lost because RT was taken down. Rather that they were lost, on top of everything else that is happening currently.
It is clear that RT is propaganda for foreign consumption, not domestic.
Russian soldiers staging for the attacks were posting to TikTok, and on the night of the invasion, traffic jams started showing up at 3am near the border.
The linked article says "many commenters ... assume the Russian soldiers left their phones on ... but Lewis said that almost certainly was not the case, and the traffic data Google was showing was ordinary people who couldn’t get on the road because of Russian military movement." Which doesn't rule it out, but clearly doesn't require it to be true.
That still seems possible, if civilians have been fleeing in their cars? It sounded like drives that would have taken a day under normal conditions were taking several days in the current chaos. Which of course still doesn't mean Russian soldiers might have their phones on.
Russian soldiers flirted with Ukrainian women on Tinder right before the invasion. Either they have no shame whatsoever, or they actually thought they would be welcomed as saviours, as so many soldiers been told before.
It’s worth saying that the word “tabloid” is typically used to refer to the style of journalism (ie the focus on entertainment) rather than in its historical context of the type/size of paper.
The expert quoted says that it almost certainly wasn't due to soldiers leaving their phones on. He suspects it was ordinary people who were slowed by the movement.
That said, if they were posting on TikTok that's another story.
Russian troops could simply be operating under the premise that none of their actions would be necessary if the West hadn't meddled and created the Ukrainian crisis in the first place. It's that simple.
Ukraians are sick of being taken advantage of by Kremlin so naturally they opened towards the west. It’s their choice as a sovereign nation. If they consider they get a better deal with the west then what do you expect the west to do, reject them for fear of Putin?
I wasn't trying to explain the actual political situation. I don't know what "deal" they took exactly. It's just really easy for any side, including the actual Russian individual taking orders, to delude themselves about the enemy and who is really to blame. For example, it doesn't take much for an American soldier to waltz into the Middle East and purport to be focused on building schools, and they even demand respect from much of the populace while doing it.
That being said, the underlying viewpoint behind the convenient justification is not that controversial on its own because the West was trying to win over Ukraine through various means. This is seen as something akin to nation-building even by some American academics.
Why? To take pictures? Were they in airplane mode?
And it's one thing to not expect the Taliban to DF your phones. The Ukrainian military, especially with prior control of the cell infrastructure, is another story.
If you need to coordinate with someone who isn't sitting by a radio, you need to call them (including the local govt, your own civilian personnel, etc.). You might not be issued a radio at all, so a phone is what you have.
Commercial telecommunications are an important part of any military worldwide, when they are available - so you use them until someone actually starts DFing you accurately, and then even after that, it's a risk to be managed and certainly not black & white.
In this case the Ukrainian military should be able to use the cell towers to DF every phone. I don't get why that would be a risk rather than a certainty.
Weren't, e.g., the Abu Ghraib photos and video from cellphones? I honestly don't have any first-hand knowledge, but I would be surprised if the facts on the ground vs official policy regarding soldiers' phones wouldn't be different. That said, I'd also be surprised if cellular internet was functional in the middle of a war.
I am assuming the only information a solider will receive is from their commanding officer and their comrades. If they haven't seen alternate explanations by now, I have no particular reason to believe they suddenly will.
The secrecy could be explained that they didn’t want the invasion plans leaked by low level operations. Apple does the same thing with new products, with different teams working in isolation on a need to know basis. Clearly the army now knows exactly what they are doing and where they are, and they’re still doing it.
Now lets put you in their shoes. All your usual news sources are gone and you get the perspective from foreign news that the entity you represent is the aggressor, would that be convincing to you?
Google is going to show you something that confirms your existing beliefs like a mirror, or you are going to see ad-ridden geocities-looking websites saying things that dont match your existing beliefs, from bloggers or news sources in governments you weren't indoctrinated to respect
How effective do you think this would really be for most?
> tank crews and troops were told that they were doing an exercise and kept completely isolated
Most likely they are lying to look more sympathetic - there is a video of a Ukrainian soldier asking questions to a captured tank crew member. He said "We were told we are doing exercises". Ukrainian solder responded "I've hearing the same shit since 2014"
To be fair the second panel be more like: "Someone found an open window in the CIA's poster-printing factory and used it to gum up the cogs in one of the conveyor belts."
In keeping with the analogy: the finishing school that's churning out teams of highly coiffed government-destabilizing psychopaths is not physically connected to the factory that produces the posters. And the custodian in the poster factory knows how to clean the gears and reset the breakers.
I dunno, it's a bit different when the "poster" is a weapon unto itself, in the theatre of information warfare. It's more like "hackers incapacitate CIA mind control device".
People often underestimate the effect of propaganda. I know very high profile and highly intelligent people, think doctors and lawyers, who think it still is an act of self-defense against neo-nazis.
I can understand the argument of NATO encircling Russia, but the invasion of a sovereign democracy can't be justified. Russia was on losing track because of Russia, not Ukraine.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 187 ms ] threadI thought these were defacements, but it's just your common DDOS playbook.
Given the choice, I'd definitely rather have Zelensky than Putin, but preferably not either. The world doesn't need more celebrity politicians. (I recognise that the US is scarcely a model here; I can only plead that I didn't want any of our celebrity politicians, either.)
EDIT: To be quite clear, this is not meant in any way as anti-Zelenksy. As the child comments say, correctly, he seems to be the leader Ukraine needs right now.
The perfect president does not exist. I’d settle for one with whom you can have a discussion and who does not see the world through the prism of an imaginary past.
Oh, agreed! I certainly wouldn't say that Ukrainians shouldn't be able to select their own leader—they should, and, despite superficial impressions, have done so well. It's just that I hope the world doesn't learn from this that electing comedians is the way to go.
Yeah. Though this one does not seem to behave so badly in the end. No comparison with Trump or Reagan.
To be fair, whilst not a populist, I am fed up with career politicians and bland technocrats that are killing politics. We need doctors, lawyers, intellectuals, farmers, businessmen, factory workers, and much more (in no specific order) in our parliaments and amongst our elected people. A sweet spot between reckless clowns and psychopaths would be nice.
"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."
Things move slowly but they move!
Germans allow German weapons to be sent to you, Dutch will send. Poland is sending truckloads.
I've already been looking up Norwegian politicians this morning to ask them to somehow get rid of their old law to not export weapons to countries at war (I think it was meant to be against profiting from war, not to prevent helping, in which case maybe it would be OK if they sent it for free? Norway has some seriously good weapons tech so it could help.)
I got an offer the other day that I normally wouldn't take but will possibly take anyway to help oil&gas/defense.
Edit:
Russian athletes will be banned from competitions. Champions League finals will not be in St. Petersburg, World Cup Skiing final will not be in Russia etc.
An entirely deniable front for US cyberwarfare (or way to rally hacktivists to their cause) seems like a valuable thing for a nation state to create.
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/racist-a...
https://www.kuow.org/stories/extremist-groups-popping-up-lef...
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/northwest-fr...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne...
https://www.splcenter.org/states/washington
Hacktivists are not white hat hackers. They are black or grey and justify actions with personal morally. Judge each case by it's own merits. A lot of regular people get treated as terrorists when they do things like hack their school.
I haven't ever heard of white supremacist terrorist. I've heard of terrorist, I've heard of white supremacist, but I don't think the groups bi-sect. What is the last white supremacist terror attack you remember?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_terrorism_in_the_Unit...
Also, you should revisit your hat definitions. White and black hat are a matter of political perspective for each act and issue, but hacktivists are definitively not grey hat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_synagogue_shooting
1995 Oklahoma City bombing, USA, 168 killed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing
2019 El Paso Walmart shooting, USA, 23 killed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_El_Paso_shooting
2019 Christchurch Mosque shooting, New Zealand, 51 killed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/02/doj-white-suprem...
The New Zealand shooting the fbi wasn't involved.
The El Paso mass shooting was against one group. You don't qualify to be a white supremacist unless you hate everyone not white. That person had a problem with a specific group hardly makes him hate everyone nor was his act against everyone not white.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/02/22/fac...
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/2020-protests-changed...
Besides, the parent post mentioned “far more act of political violence and destruction”, which you did not address at all. Pointing out that one group did some material damage tells nothing if you don’t look at what the other did. The vast majority of terror events, both in the US and in Europe, are due to either white supremacists or Muslim fundamentalists. You can start with these sources. They cover 2 years, but you’ll have pointers for the rest of the last 2 decades:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/22/white-supremac...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/us/politics/domestic-terr...
That's not true https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/jul/21/black-lives-m...
> How are they planning to seize industry, means of production, and institute a dictatorship of the proletariat? So no, they are not Marxist
By promoting Marxism and gain public support by exploiting otherwise legitimate redress of grievances. You seem to make the point that just because they don't have the means to do it now doesn't means most of the organization doesn't espouse these views, which is ridiculous.
> Besides, the parent post mentioned “far more act of political violence and destruction”, which you did not address at all. Pointing out that one group did some material damage tells nothing if you don’t look at what the other did.
More than two billions of damage in insurance claims is not something that goes unnoticed. People who makes the claim that there are "far-right terrorists" roaming about and causing widespread mayhem and terror can't point to nothing else than a few handful specific events that are nothing of the same scale in terms of damage and scale.
> The vast majority of terror events, both in the US and in Europe, are due to either white supremacists or Muslim fundamentalists.
Radical Islam and the "far-right" doesn't really go together, that's doesn't really make sense to even consider put them up together. But radical Islam i soften using the rhetorical devices of the Left against European culture however.
Perhaps those remarks sound bizarre to Western ears because we interpret them differently.
https://www.avwsu.org/the-liberation-of-kiev/
A sizeable fraction of these “Russians” were actually Ukrainians.
Exact numbers aren't important in this context, they simply illustrate that Russians have their own experience with Nazis that isn't what Americans usually think about when Americans think of Nazis.
The important point, about which I'd love to hear from someone more familiar with Russian language and culture, is whether the word "Nazi" is used in the same way in Russia and America (when not referring to actual Nazis).
It's as if that is all they can do, compared to Ukraine themselves getting hit by the same attack from Russia and throwing a malware wiper in the mix, propagating all over. Ukraine has nothing to fight with really in cyber defences.
Might need to find a better way of attacking them rather than using predictable attacks like that which are easily mitigated against.
There's a sibling post (by tgv) that makes a decent case for why this is actually good and meaningful, why it actually hurts the Russian propaganda effort, why maybe it'll affect Russian morale. I hope so.
But I do understand your reaction.
The West's response has felt so underwhelming that I have been angry at its apparent impotence. All symbolic nonsense, it feels: "We're going to add Vladimir Putin's name to a list! So that, should he hypothetically want to change some numbers at one of our banks, he can't! That'll show him!"
Like, what the hell is that? Block the man's bank accounts? No, if you weren't full of shit you would "find, fix, and finish" him. Talk talk talk.
There was an interview on DW with the Polish politician Radoslaw Sikorski. DW was doing its usual hemming and hawing (which, let's be honest, I normally like; it tries not to go crazy in any way), but Mr. Sikorski simply minced no words: Germany gets about 1/3 of its gas from Russia and was going like "should we stop buying it? We don't know! It's such a hard decision!", while he, from Poland, which depends on Russia for 70% of its gas, was already going "cut off all purchases of Russian gas; I don't care if it hurts". He wasn't crude but he was blunt, and clear, and incredibly refreshing. You immediately thought: This is the sort of leader we need. Forceful and intelligent.
Poland -- fucking Poland -- had donated Stingers to Ukraine. (Like, to its credit, Britain had shipped Stingers and Javelins.) There! That is at least doing something. And meanwhile Germany, which actually has a significant arms industry, is sitting on its ass and, I don't know, investigating a steering committee.
And even on the front that merely is the shuffling of assets, the West is going, "I don't know? Should we shut off SWIFT? We still need some escalation options...". Dude, the man is rolling goddamn tanks around and killing people; cutting off SWIFT doesn't even rise to the level of proportionate response. You need to have done it yesterday.
Oh, and, if you're publicly saying "we can't do this because we need to keep some leverage", it's exactly equivalent, informationally, to you having done it and had no additional leverage; it is a public admission of impotence. Putin has already priced this shit in.
"You and what army?"
I was reminded of that "physicals vs. virtuals" essay. Yeah, I know it was sort of an apologia for -- well, first, the Ottowa truckers, who may or may not actually be the evil right-wingers Trudeau says they are (now that Putin's using it, this word "de-Nazification" takes on a different ring, no?); and by association, maybe also an apologia for the actual right-wing grifters (Trump et al) who are trying to capitalize on them(?) -- but I still thought it captured something that's been bothering me for a long time. At some point there is reality, and you cannot approach life purely as a matter of public relations and the shuffling of assets.
I found a video on YouTube of a column of Russian tanks rolling essentially-unopposed, single-file, on a bridge across the Dnieper. A few token potshots. What the hell is this? Even I know how you take out a motorcade: You ambush the lead and the tail vehicles so the rest are sandwiched, and then you deal with the rest as you're able. (Or, it's been months, why are there no charges on the bridge? Is this incompetence or some level of strategy above my pay grade: "We'll need that bridge later"?) I guess they didn't have antitank weapons? Is that not itself a failure?
And then I look at the public reaction in the West and it just sickens me. It's all "mourning" (What? The cau...
I have also been thinking about how to meet aggression and to subvert it. Defense must be stalwart, but it may also be worth remembering that many of the Russians attacking are themselves quite young and inexperienced (putting the "infant" in "infantry"). There is probably something more attractive for them in Europe than there is in Russia. Give them a way out. They will probably not be received well in neighboring countries if all they speak is Russian (especially after this), but perhaps they and their families can be accepted as refugees (with appropriate resettlement packages) in other places within the Western sphere of influence, e.g. South America. Take Putin's "human resources" away; let them hang out on a beach somewhere.
Whether or not rt.com going down internationally materially affects Vladimir's plans or place in the world, however, is another question.
[1] https://stop-russian-desinformation.near.page/ [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t18qm4/you_can_ddo...
P.S. I'd encourage you to have a look at the js source code before opening this page. It seems to be relatively clean, readable and straightforward indeed.
You can also easily fork it: https://github.com/lostmsu/lostmsu.github.io
Really? I though RT was part of Russia's foreign propaganda effort, so I wouldn't expect it to have much effect on domestic news consumption. IIRC, actually Russians get their news from domestic outlets like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia-1 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_One_Russia.
This is good news, but mainly because it interferes with Russia's foreign propaganda operations around this attack.
It is clear that RT is propaganda for foreign consumption, not domestic.
That's why we see so many smartphone recordings made by civilians, but not by the military.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgd7dd/google-maps-live-traf...
Seems clear the policy and the reality are not identical here.
"The traffic jam slowly extended to the border, where it then disappeared."
https://www.the-sun.com/news/4757640/russian-soldiers-tinder...
Broadsheets are physically bigger, more text, typically more serious, aiming at a more sophisticated reader
Tabloids physically smaller, more salacious, aiming at the mass market
(Many broadsheets became smaller to save printing costs over time, but the categories still apply)
That said, if they were posting on TikTok that's another story.
That being said, the underlying viewpoint behind the convenient justification is not that controversial on its own because the West was trying to win over Ukraine through various means. This is seen as something akin to nation-building even by some American academics.
So while yes, it is the smart thing to do it definitely isn't what happens in reality.
Yes they do, all the time. I don't think anyone left the wire without their phone while I was in Afghanistan.
And it's one thing to not expect the Taliban to DF your phones. The Ukrainian military, especially with prior control of the cell infrastructure, is another story.
Commercial telecommunications are an important part of any military worldwide, when they are available - so you use them until someone actually starts DFing you accurately, and then even after that, it's a risk to be managed and certainly not black & white.
"Sir yes sir!"
How effective do you think this would really be for most?
Most likely they are lying to look more sympathetic - there is a video of a Ukrainian soldier asking questions to a captured tank crew member. He said "We were told we are doing exercises". Ukrainian solder responded "I've hearing the same shit since 2014"
how does this change anything? feels more symbolic than anything
https://xkcd.com/932/
So exactly like a real poster.
>like "CIA mind control device"
These sites don't have that kind of power.
I can understand the argument of NATO encircling Russia, but the invasion of a sovereign democracy can't be justified. Russia was on losing track because of Russia, not Ukraine.