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What is the most powerful flying bug? This poll is closed. |
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15 | 3.71% |
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115 | 28.47% |
| 🪰 |
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12 | 2.97% |
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67 | 16.58% |
| dragonfly |
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94 | 23.27% |
| 🦟 |
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14 | 3.47% |
| 🐝 |
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87 | 21.53% |
| Total: | 404 votes | ||
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Dancer posted:Hi I'm a dumb lurker who knows the basic sonnenrad and lighting bolts but not much more. Are you referring to those? Are there some fash symbols that specifically got popular among normies during this war? Want to expand on not only why the West is adopting these symbols, but explain the history around how the became mainstream in the first place. Ukraine's brand of nationalism is explicitly pro-Nazi, in like a genuine non-propoganda way. If you're American, it's hard to really understand this but the fascist movements of the 30s deeply motivated the secessionists of Ukraine. The western part of Ukraine has historically been an extension of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire, meaning that it's historically Catholic and the gentry had ties to Polish nobility. The eastern side, on the other hand, tends to be more Orthodox and the influence of the Ottomans in Crimea introduced Islam, creating a more multi-ethnic patchwork. After the Russian Revolution, the dust settled and the Ukrainian SSR became subsumed under Soviet auspices. The political chaos of the 1930s led to the idealogy of fascism to emerge as the alternative to communism. It's hard for Americans to understand now, but in the interwar days, there was really no political "middle ground". The fever pitch of the two warring political sides was a direct consequence of the disaster of WW1, leading to multiple empires collapsing, revolutions, political realignment, economic disaster and huge loss of life. It's in this context that Ukrainian nationalism was born. The ideas of fascist thinkers, both the intellectuals of the time like Evola and political leaders like Mussolini, deeply influenced those that wished to have their own Ukrainian state independent of the USSR. A powerful political organization emerged from this called the OUN - the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. This was an umbrella organization that attempted to connect the various fascists/nationalist organizations that were cropping up. The OUN was deeply influenced by Dmytro Dontsov who was a Ukrainian nationalist that eventually settled in Lviv, western Ukraine. His core idealogy was a rejection of both communism, and the democratic Liberalism of the West. The core of his idealogy was influenced by Hitler and Mussolini - that it's only by a strong Will of the single ethnic peoples to create a master nation, and a rejection of pluralism more generally. He believed that an indepdent Ukraine should resemble something like Hitler's Germany, which despised the egalitarian tendencies of communism (AKA: multi-ethnic plurality) and the decadent, outdated model of the democratic West. The OUN popularized the saying "Slave Ukraini", of which it became the OUN's rallying cry. The OUN was created along these explicitly fascist lines, and therefore was the first serious attempt at Ukrainian sovereignty. Fascist idealogy places great importance on marshall characteristics - therefore, many paramilitaries associated with the political wing appeared. The most infamous of these is the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, led by fascist fanatic Stepan Bandera. The rejection of pan-Slavism by Ukrainian nationalists meant that minority Russian, Jews, Poles and others in Ukraine had to be forcibly expelled or exterminated in order to create a strong ethnostate that would be exclusively the home of the Catholic Ukrainians. The OUN and UIA therefore collaborated with the Nazis in WW2. When the Nazis invaded, the puppet state they created in Ukraine was nominally administered by the collaborators. The OUN organized, identified and helped kill hundreds of thousands of their own people along with the SS. Hitler, trying to gain Lebensraum, was not interested in making Ukraine an independent nation and instead was planning on exploiting both the land and it's ubermensch Slavic population. This led to Bandera's eventual imprisonment in Germany, but not before ruthlessly exacting programs on the Jews in Ukraine. As the Germans began to retreat in 1944, and the Soviets came to retake the country, the paramilities under OUN auspices fought a bitter partisan war with the that lasted for years after the WW2 ended. The Soviets, in their attempt to de-nazify, banned the OUN as an organization. After maidan, Ukraine rekindled and revived the OUN and it’s associated paramilitaries at a state level by officially giving those partisans that both collaborated with Hitler and fought a partisan war against the Soviets “veteran” status with associated pensions and recognition. This pissed off people who had family that died for Ukraine fighting them, largely in the east of the country. It is impossible to disentangle this type of Ukrainan nationalism from Nazism because of the deep collaboration between the OUN and the German state itself. Accusation of nazism is often vague and more for propaganda purposes, but the red and black flag of the OUN is very explicit about its political roots and purpose. The units that set the tempo of the original 2014 war were all on the far right and explicitly supported partisan warfare. This is the root of the tension in Donbas. The far right forces, such as Azov Battalltion and Right Sektor, were the ones to stop the Russian advance in 2014 and held onto Mariupol, which they then terrorized the rest of the Oblast from. This is to say - Azov did what the official Ukranian forces couldn’t, which only led to spreading their idealogy. In order to become politically viable, the governments post 2014 set a pact with the popular fascist militias as they, at that time, were the superior fighting force and therefore went all in on the OUN and Bandera himself. That's why it’s possible that Zelensky, as a Jewish Ashkenzai, has to politically support the very same type of people that helped commit the Jewish massacres in Baba Yar and Lviv. It's also why neo-Nazism is so pervasive in Ukraine and what makes it so dangerous. The national identity of a sovereign Ukraine, in western Ukraine, has deep ties to the fascist movements of the 1930s that were unlocked to great effect in 2014. The administration in Kyiv today explicitly supports OUN idealogy, as they have completely banned and eradicated any elements linking their history to the Soviets. The plethora of fascist symbols in its armed forces is a direct consequence of this.
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Sep 23, 2023 18:46
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Great summary. I will only add that my limited understanding of the OUN is that the red and black flag stands for blood and soil.
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Sep 23, 2023 19:00
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dk2m posted:Want to expand on not only why the West is adopting these symbols, but explain the history around how the became mainstream in the first place.
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Sep 23, 2023 19:02
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dk2m posted:exploiting both the land and it's ubermensch Slavic population. not to nitpick but it's very much the other one
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Sep 23, 2023 19:11
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Mantis42 posted:why did lenin give autonomy to groups like the ukrainians instead of creating a single unitary socialist state? was he stupid? yes
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Sep 23, 2023 19:28
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there was a big fuckin rift within the bolsheviks about autonomy for constituent SSRs versus a unitary workers state. the second faction argued it would fuel nationalism and separatism, the first faction (supported by lenin) won out and we can see the results today.
mila kunis has issued a correction as of 19:33 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 19:31
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I just wanted to add this because I think you did a great job presenting it for people who lurk the thread and haven't read a dozen books on Galicia and I think these two details round it out: Ruthenians (Slavs without a nation), Poles and Jews occupied the same geographic space that was divided by political borders, and, practically speaking, there was no Ukrainian nation with a common or shared identity. Perhaps that fuelled some of the resentment? Bandera and his guys weren't in the USSR initially - they were in Poland. This is why I think talking about Galicia as opposed to "Ukraine" is important. Galicia wasn't in the Russian Empire, it was in Austria-Hungary. The nobility had ties to Poland and led revolts against Austria, and Austria richly rewarded the peasants and middle class that remained loyal to the Hapsburgs and fashioned a new identity to describe them as people other-than-Poles, Ruthenians. This was different than the "Little Russians" in what is now Eastern Ukraine, which was part of Russia. You identified that split already, I just want to focus on two parallel identities being constructed after the partition of Poland. When the Russian Empire collapsed, the Soviets signed the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, awarding much of what is now Ukraine to Austria-Hungary. Austria-Hungary then collapsed shortly after, and the resurgent Soviets and Poles fought over what remained, settling very close to the border of the partitions of Poland, a dividing line still visible on Ukrainian electoral maps. So throughout the whole interwar period, the former Ruthenians found themselves under the rule of their brother Slavs, the Poles, again. This is where Bandera and the OUN emerged and why they were put on trial by the Poles. The Soviet Union then occupied eastern Poland in 1939, once again bringing the two halves under the same state. They also inherited all of the Ukrainian Nazis. You covered that very well as well. The only thing I would add to this is that geographically it overlaps with the Pale of Settlement. Under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, under the Russian Empire and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (though to a lesser degree because the Austrians let Jews live wherever) this is where all the Jews lived. Galicia was a more popularly accepted location for a Jewish state than Palestine. That's another huge thing. Among the Jewish intellectuals in the late 19th century, the ones who ended up in Wien, many if not most where from there, at least in family background. Most Jewish and gentile writers proposing a location for a Jewish state or a place where Jews could live in a multicultural state, pointed to Galicia. Galicia was chosen, in part, because unlike the other Slavic lands of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the Slavic peasants and middle class had no clear national identity, as Slovenes, Slovaks, Czechs and particularly Poles did, because they had never had a state. Of the Slavic people, they had the most in common with the "Little Russians" on the other side of the border, but this was why Austria-Hungary embarked on a 150 year project to promote Catholicism there, trying to duplicate the rift that existed at the top, among the Polish gentry, in the middle and lower classes. You already mentioned Pan-Slavism but I wanted to point in the promotion of the Greek Catholic Church. I also found a paper in their role in the formation of the UAN and Holocaust, at least ideologically which is here. I think it supports a lot of what you're saying. All of which to say, Galicia's threefold nature created a bit of a crisis. You see, the Poles had a conception of a nationhood and state, the Jews had one too, both occupied positions of power in the gentry and middle class respectively. There were poor Poles and Jews, alongside the Ruthenians, but they were the target of resentment by the sort of well-to-do peasant class (I don't want to say kulak) of Ruthenians. The children of Ruthenian clergymen, closely related to the well-to-do peasants (if not the same class. "Children of" is complicated because technically Catholic clergy couldn't marry but these were close kin networks at the top of village life, or seething in resentment under the German, Jewish and Polish middle classes in towns) were the first literate class to emerge from the people of the fields, as opposed to Polish, German or Jewish, and they were filled with, je ne sais quoi, hatred, jealousy? About living in a multicultural province of a multinational empire, but having no idée fixe the way the Poles, Germans and Jews did. The other upper and middle class, bureaucratic, administrative, military positions were filled by Germans, who obviously had a state outside the Dual Monarchy as well. Some Germans within the empire also seethed with jealousy and resentment about that (a certain Austrian painter most famously). The proximity of the Jews and resentment for them was not limited to Galicia, of course, though it was the only region of Austria-Hungary to ever see pogroms of the sort seen in the Russian Empire. It was shared by the Polish gentry too. In the 19th century revolts against Austria and Russia, led by the Polish nobility, massacres of Jews were common, led both by the Poles and the loyalist peasants. This sort of feeling persisted, like frustrated nationalism was hand in hand with trying to drive out the Jews who were associated with Russia and Austria Hungary. I linked that book a few weeks ago about how Poles were the real victims of the Holocaust because the Jews had it coming, unlike the innocent Poles. This was a widespread idea throughout the whole region. It's being popularized again today. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 19:43 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 19:33
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amazing post, quoted for future reference EDIT: and so was this Comrade Koba has issued a correction as of 19:41 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 19:38
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evilmiera posted:The guy literally went to work for a Russian propaganda network, you don't gotta hand it to him. Literally all news/political media is "propaganda" - it just so happens that Russian propaganda is frequently correct because they have the very easy task of "talking about why the US is bad"
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Sep 23, 2023 19:44
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dk2m posted:The units that set the tempo of the original 2014 war were all on the far right and explicitly supported partisan warfare. This is the root of the tension in Donbas. The far right forces, such as Azov Battalltion and Right Sektor, were the ones to stop the Russian advance in 2014 and held onto Mariupol, which they then terrorized the rest of the Oblast from. This is to say - Azov did what the official Ukranian forces couldn’t, which only led to spreading their idealogy. There was Russian assistance but the bulk of the fighting on the Donbas side was done by Ukrainians. Also, a big part of why Ukraine started using far-right paramilitary groups was because the Ukrainian military was refusing to run over/shoot non-violent separatist protestors.
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Sep 23, 2023 19:45
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Minenfeld! posted:That's because they have the cultural context to evaluate it. Most don't for Eastern Europe and filter it through a different lens. they absolutely can, they choose not to when it suits them. i think this is a good article on assuming naivety: https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/ quote:In short: Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live. The psychic and material costs are rationally worth the benefits. quote:The prevailing populist narrative grants the People (of the West) moral innocence by attributing to them utter stupidity and naivety; I invert the equation and demand a Marxist narrative instead: Westerners are willingly complicit in crimes because they instinctively and correctly understand that they benefit as a class[...] We’re not as stupid as we’re made out to be. quote:I believe that, on the contrary, the process of Western propaganda is better understood in terms of “licensing”: the issuing of moral license for the bourgeois proletariat to profitably go along with bourgeois designs without the feeling of shame overwhelming. In this alternative account people aren’t “brainwashed” insofar as they don’t actually believe the lies, not in the way that we generally understand belief. It’s more correct to say that they go along with them, whether enthusiastically or apprehensively, because it’s actually their optimal survival strategy. you can ignore all kinds of nazism and anti-democratic repression while the people doing it are fighting your enemies. your heart can break for the people suffering at the hands of the russians, but not for the ones who've suffered at the hands of the ukrainian government for the last decade. russia is the enemy, declared by the political faction you've affiliated your interests with for years. the inverse is also why you see what might otherwise be the puzzling phenomenon of american nazis and right wingers being anti-ukraine, despite the level of power their ideological fellows have there - the democrats hate trump and keep drawing a line between russia and trump, they love trump so therefore they support russia.
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Sep 23, 2023 19:46
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https://twitter.com/Dock_Currie/status/1705509568359645660 https://twitter.com/mossrobeson__/status/1705640564291412462 lol the Canadian parliament gave a standing ovation to an SS guy
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Sep 23, 2023 19:48
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actionable slander against that war hero
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Sep 23, 2023 19:49
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That's why we're not just talking about Nazis here, but Galician chauvinism, like moving the date of Christmas, New Years, taking over religious holy sites, banning the Orthodox Church. Those aren't part of the National Socialist project Germans would recognize, or a fascism Mussolini would be familiar with, but very, very clearly tie these beliefs to that region of Poland/Austria/Poland (again)/the USSR (briefly)/ Reichskommissariat Ukraine/Distrikt Galizien/the USSR (again). I actually want to point out that a huge part of the Bandarist "conflict" with the Third Reich, that for the past few years has been equated to "resisting" the Nazis, was because Galicia itself was administered as part of Poland by the Nazis. You could see much of their "resistance" as Irredentism over the lost province.  Keep in mind that the OAN killed hundreds of thousands of Poles in the areas that fell under Reichskommissariat Ukraine, which is a lingering source of conflict between contemporary Polish and Ukrainian nationalists.
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Sep 23, 2023 19:51
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John Charity Spring posted:https://twitter.com/Dock_Currie/status/1705509568359645660 Was it this thread that I wrote about it? Canada uniquely ruled against the verdict of Nuremberg in the 1980's. They refer to it as "First Ukrainian Division" so the public doesn't get uncomfortable, but legally they ruled that the SS was not a criminal organization, specifically because of the Ukrainian lobby. We're the only country in the world to do this, iirc. Even the Baltics, who celebrate their Nazis, have not formally gone against the verdicts of the Nuremberg Trials and ruled that the SS was good, actually.  e: What the gently caress? Is Pizzagate real?  Zelensky asks Marina Abramovic to be ambassador for Ukraine: Artist will lend her voice to help rebuild schools in the country
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Sep 23, 2023 19:54
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hunka hunka burnin' love
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Sep 23, 2023 19:56
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mila kunis posted:they absolutely can, they choose not to when it suits them. i think this is a good article on assuming naivety: https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/ That first quote is 100% proven by parts of this very website.
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Sep 23, 2023 19:59
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lvov%E2%80%93Sandomierz_offensive#Encirclement_at_Brody_(Brody_Cauldron) reading this and having warmth wash over me like i'm sinking into a bathtub
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Sep 23, 2023 20:00
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Nonsense posted:actionable slander against that war hero I wanted to draw attention to this too. Because of that Canadian government ruling, which was all started because the Ukrainians wanted the Canadian government to go after the Simon Wiesenthal Center, you aren't allowed to call them criminals and they will use the law to go after you. I can't talk about this in any detail, but this is also relevant to the Victims of Communism Monument. In most countries, efforts are being made to keep Perpetrators off memorials like that. In Canada, not so much... They also want to build it, not a joke, larger than and in front of the National Holocaust Memorial. i say swears online posted:The scattered survivors broke up into small groups and attempted to break out. The German War Diaries evidence that approximately 15,000 men reached German lines including about 3,500 men of the SS Division Galicia. Before the operation, the division had numbered 11,000 men. Konev was elated at the unexpected success of the operation. Harpe's Army Group was falling back; the 4th Panzer Army to the Vistula River and the 1st Panzer Army along with 1st Hungarian Army to the area around the Carpathian Mountains. Who the gently caress wrote this article? It's written from the perspective of the Nazis for chrissakes. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 20:03 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 20:01
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John Charity Spring posted:https://twitter.com/Dock_Currie/status/1705509568359645660 I love the wikipedia article which basically goes "Well it wasn't really approved by the German High Command (so they were still SS Galicia)". Edit: quote:On 17 March 1945, Ukrainian émigrés established the Ukrainian National Committee to represent the interests of Ukrainians to the Third Reich. Simultaneously, the Ukrainian National Army, commanded by general Pavlo Shandruk, was created. The Galician Division was renamed to 1st Division of the Ukrainian National Army. However, there is no proof to demonstrate that the renaming was done formally and the German Army's High command continued to list it as the Ukrainian 14th SS Grenadier Division in its order of battle.[32][33] The division surrendered to British and US forces by 10 May 1945.[27] And ofc they found a way to surrender to the Western Allies and not the Soviets. BadOptics has issued a correction as of 20:08 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 20:05
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Frosted Flake posted:I wanted to draw attention to this too. it'd be really funny if indian online trolls found out about all of this in their current spat with canada
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Sep 23, 2023 20:08
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mila kunis posted:it'd be really funny if indian online trolls found out about all of this in their current spat with canada it's just a good luck symbol
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Sep 23, 2023 20:08
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The recent New York Times editorial (September 15) opposing negotiations between Ukraine and Russia was so hallucinatory it might have been written by an AI chatbot. “It is in America’s national interest,” the editorial writers state, “to lead its NATO allies in demonstrating that they will not tolerate Mr. Putin’s revanchist ambitions. It is a demonstration of America’s commitment to democracy and leadership that other would-be aggressors are watching.” America’s commitment to democracy has always been tenuous at best. Our wealth was founded upon the enslavement of Africans and the expropriation of Indigenous land and resources. International power was derived from war and intervention, both military and economic. Even the U.S. system of voting, the crowning glory of our democracy, is badly compromised by an electoral college and gerrymandering. “Leadership” has generally meant bullying friends and enemies alike, or as Kissinger once said about South Vietnam: “Being America’s enemy may be dangerous, but being America’s friend is fatal.” Our enemies are often democratic and our allies repressive. Ukraine, for example, is no democracy. Transparency International ranks it 33/100 (near Russia) on its Corruption Perceptions Index. Since the start of the war, Ukraine has taken a further anti-democratic and neo-liberal turn. Rather than establish a conventional war economy like the U.S. and other nations did during World War II — nationalizing key industries to direct resources toward the common defense — Ukraine privatized public assets, enriching a cadre of oligarchs. The Defense Ministry’s procurement and conscription system is so riddled with corruption that its entire leadership was recently replaced. That’s progress, but it comes late, and its results remain to be seen. The tax regime, already regressive, has become more so. Individuals (rich and poor) and businesses all pay a flat tax of 18% — Steve Forbes would be a happy Ukrainian – and the incidence of corporate tax avoidance is high. Recent changes to the country’s labor laws have erased protections from nearly 3/4 of the workforce. Most workers now lack the right to bargain collectively and are subject to “zero hour” contracts that allow employers to change employment schedules at will. (Even the World Bank, where neo-liberal “structural adjustment” was born, is doubtful about the wisdom of these so-called reforms.) Ukraine has since 2015 regularly imposed sanctions on independent media, and last year President Zelensky banned 11 opposition parties for supposed “links with Russia.” There is no longer any progressive opposition. Any peace negotiations between the warring parties, the Times editorial authors state, are “premature” because “neither side is willing to negotiate”. In fact, Russia has publicly welcomed peace initiatives following successive Papal, Chinese, Indonesian, African, Turkish, and Saudi Arabian interventions. Their rhetoric has never been put to the test however, because Ukraine has insisted upon full Russian withdrawal from Ukrainian territory – including Crimea — as a precondition of direct negotiations. Ukraine’s stipulation is also its maximalist goal. The only viable course, the Times editorial bot says, quoting Biden, “is to give Ukraine the weapons and resources to defend itself, so that when the time comes, it would be ‘in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.’” In other words, negotiations will come after success on the battlefield. War is the precondition of peace. The formula is a familiar American one. It was deployed successfully (but at exorbitant human cost) at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but without result in Vietnam. In December 1972, Nixon pledged to bomb the North Vietnamese until they begged to return to the peace table. The U.S. military dropped more bombs on the North in 12 days than in the previous three years. We know how that war ended. The Friedman bot On the same day as the Times editorial, Tom Friedman, the paper’s most influential columnist, wrote a similarly hallucinatory op-ed, but with a dose of theodicy: “What Putin is doing in Ukraine is not just reckless, not just a war of choice, not just an invasion…What he is doing is evil.” Friedman continued: “And the Ukrainians I met, to a person, seemed to understand that they and Europe were bound up together in an epochal moment against Putinism….This is as obvious a case of right versus wrong, good versus evil, as you find in international relations since World War II.” When one side of a conflict says God is on its side, you know you’re facing a long war. Don’t get me wrong. Putin is despicable thug. Though taunted for over two decades by NATO expansionism, he responded in February 2022 with utter recklessness. Rather than press for negotiations while he had the world’s attention, he attempted to seize Kiev in an ill-fated blitzkrieg that in the first weeks cost the lives of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, and thousands of Russian troops. Posturing and fulminating before banks of cameras and fawning generals, Putin increasingly resembled Adenoid Hynkel. His veiled threats of nuclear war recall the famous scene in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator in which Hynkel performs a ballet with an inflated balloon-globe. But Putin is no Hitler. However loathsome, he lacks the capacity if not the desire to enact wholesale slaughter upon any nation or people. The point is unintentionally made by hawks who say that Russia is too weak to seize the small Donbas region, but then claim it is so strong that it threatens to conquer Western Europe. The contradiction exposes the lie. To see Putin as a new Hitler is both to deny the unique intensity and scale of the Shoah and to risk extending the duration of a punishing and dangerous war. After Russian forces were defeated at Kharkiv and Kherson in Fall and Winter 2022, Putin narrowed his strategic aims. They are now to ensure Ukrainian neutrality, secure the status of Crimea as part of Russia, and protect the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. (Neither is currently recognized as a state under international law because they are controlled by Russia.) Putin’s war-fighting tactics have similarly narrowed. They now consist of two, equally senseless but sustainable modalities: trench warfare and sporadic bombing of cities and other military, and commercial targets. The civilian bombing has so far been limited – nothing like the strategic or “terror” bombing of Barcelona by German and Italian forces in 1938, or the carpet bombing of Rotterdam, Dresden, and decades later, Hanoi and Haiphong. (The U.S. bombing of targets in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1965 to 1973 killed at least 300,000 civilians.) Russia’s intermittent terror bombing of Kiev, Odessa and other cities is an effort to break the spirt of the enemy. Such tactics however, it’s long been known, tend to strengthen a people’s resolve to fight. After arguing in support of total victory over Russia whatever the cost, Friedman’s shifts from moralism to pragmatism. Russia is bigger and better armed than Ukraine and is prepared to fight indefinitely, he says. Humiliating Russia could cause it to use tactical nukes, possibly leading to nuclear Armageddon. What’s necessary therefore, is to inflict sufficient punishment on Russia to force it to the negotiating table. Once again, war is seen as the precondition of peace: “Ukraine needs to inflict as much damage on Putin’s army as fast as possible. That means we need to massively and rapidly deliver the weaponry Ukraine needs to break Putin’s lines in the country’s southeast. I’m talking the kitchen sink: F-16s; mine-clearing equipment; more Patriot antimissile systems; MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems, which could strike deep behind Russian lines — whatever the Ukrainians can use effectively and fast.” Friedman offers a shopping list to warm an arms merchant’s heart. Winners in the war so far (a partial list) Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, TotalEnergies, Cheniere Energy, Gazprom, Rosneft, Novatek, Lukoil, Vitol, Wintershall (BASF), Sperbank, VTB Bank, Transneft, Boeing, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Northrop Grummon, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Bechtel, Rheinmetall, Lockheed Martin, Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, Goldman Sachs, SG Trend Indicator, Managed Futures Offshore fund, Diversified Aspect Capital, Applied Research Laboratory Europe, Bristol Trust, BlackRock, Frontline, and International Seaways. Losers in the war (partial list) Ukrainian soldiers (more than 70,000 killed, 180,000 wounded), Russian soldiers (more than 120,000 killed, 180,000 wounded.) Ukrainian civilians (approx. 10,000 killed, 18,000 wounded). Russian civilians (approx. 80 killed). Ukrainian refugees (approx. 6 million external and 5 million internal). Ukrainians in need of humanitarian support (nearly 18 million). Poor and food insecure people globally (345 million). Wild animals (10’s or even hundreds of thousands). Zoo animals (500 – 1,000). Farm animals (approx. 7 million). The global climate. Magical thinking The New York Times editorial and opinion writers, with very few exceptions, support a continuation, and even sharp escalation of the war, with the U.S. and NATO sending more, and more-advanced weapons. They argue that a successful offensive will strengthen Ukraine’s position when the adversaries eventually begin negotiations. They further argue that the U.S. has no right to push Ukraine into talks until it is good and ready. There are two flaws to the argument. The first is that Ukraine has since Spring 2023, undertaken a major offensive but made no significant progress. There is little reason to believe that more tanks, missiles, fighter planes and the rest will overcome Russia’s significant advantage in troop numbers and war materiel. I’m no war strategist, but protecting territory, as Russia is now doing, is clearly much easier than advancing to seize territory. The morbid fact is that in a long war, Ukraine will run out of soldiers well before Russia does. It’s magical thinking to believe – absent actual conquest of Russian territory and Moscow itself – that more war will bring a rapid peace, or that negotiations are impossible during an ongoing conflict. The second flaw concerns the prohibition on the U.S. encouraging Ukraine to negotiate. The U.S. is a party, not a bystander to the conflict. I won’t rehearse here the history of U.S. duplicity and aggression following the break-up of the Soviet Union and the expansion of NATO. (I did so in CounterPunch soon after the war began.) But regardless of its role in the war’s initiation, the U.S. is now the main funder and promoter of the conflict. It has contributed some $75 billion in arms and other aid to Ukraine, and currently has an appropriation request for another $24 billion. In addition, the U.S. has wrangled some $140 billion and counting for Ukraine from its NATO allies. The U.S. in sum, had a role in starting the war and has a stake in ending it. Finally, the politics in Ukraine demand that the U.S. openly suggest that Zelensky begin negotiations with Putin or at least prepare the ground for them. Claiming that Putin is a war criminal and has committed genocide – that he is another Hitler — makes it politically impossible for the Ukrainian president to initiate a dialogue. Persuasion by the U.S. and NATO to begin talks, however, along with back-channel discussions with China, India and Turkey to persuade Russia to negotiate in good faith, might be enough to hasten the end of this senseless and destructive war.
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Sep 23, 2023 20:10
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BadOptics posted:I love the wikipedia article which basically goes "Well it wasn't really approved by the German High Command (so they were still SS Galicia)". I have to start saving my notes on this, but it was actually invented by the British in around 1946. The British wanted to keep the Ukrainians to use them to bring in the agricultural harvest for that year. They had an existing agreement to repatriate police and civil collaborators as well as the SS to the Soviets. They therefore started using the terminology of a "1st Ukrainian" to retain them and classified them as "surrendered personnel" or something similar rather than POWs. In part this was to use them as farm labour and in part to avoid returning them, because German and Italian agricultural labourers were similarly classified so they could be employed outside of POW camps. It gets more complicated because around this time a Ukrainian SS man identifies himself to the British as the Catholic padre of the "1st Ukrainian" (he wasn't ordained) and then the Papal envoy got involved. This was because the British passed along the letter to the Holy See. In the Holy See at this time, the rat line for Croatian, Italian and German Catholic SS men was beginning to operate. When it came to their attention that there were large amounts of Ukrainian SS men facing repatriation, they began working the British. The British (charitably) were trusting of the Catholic clergy and began to falsify documents for the "surrendered personnel" of "First Ukrainian" so they would not have to be returned to the USSR. While all this is going on, there are right wing Ukrainian-Canadians posted to England, mostly in the RCAF iirc. Somehow in the triangle of letters between Rome, home, and Britain, they get wind of the Ukrainians. They begin falsifying documents as well, also referring to a "First Ukrainian". This is because Canada had a very strict screening policy for POWs and would not ever allow SS men to emigrate to Canada. The RCMP and Red Caps were going through the POW camps and records captured by Canadians and (to their credit) were taking things very seriously - at the insistence of the Polish Canadian community. So, these Ukrainian-Canadians start falsifying documents for the Ukrainians to give to the RCMP so they can go to Canada. This is before they're even released from British custody, and remember they are still supposed to be repatriated. I think the (Ukrainian) Canadian clergy got involved at some point here as well. This was not unanimous though and there are serious fights about this within the Ukrainian community, as well as people reporting this to the RCMP. The RCMP starts investigating and Canada begins complaining to the UK. That's because many Ukrainians had volunteered for the war, as well as the pro-Socialist outlook of the Ukrainian Canadian community that has been written about before. Ukrainian Canadians who had been in the Army, where the SS shot many Canadian POWs out of hand in Normandy, in particular despised the SS and fought to prevent this from happening. Some of them had also liberated Bergen Belsen and its satellite camps. However, the Ukrainians in the RCAF, who had been based in Britain flying for Bomber Command, were way more attached to this idea of Ukrainian nationalism, or maybe had less hatred for the Third Reich. I'm not really sure what to make of this, just describing the split. Ukrainians in the RCN were 1) very rare indeed and 2) not involved, if anyone was wondering. To recap, "First Ukrainian" was not an identity that existed during the war but all evidence points to it being fabricated after the war, in Britain, as part of these two rat lines. The third, largest ratline would come later, after the secret meeting between the UK, Canada and Australia over the fate of the collaborators and Perpetrators and their anti-communist credentials and would lead to an organized effort to move as many Croatians to Australia, and as many Ukrainians to Canada as possible. By then, the RCMP and Canadian immigration authorities had been ordered not to investigate any documents from the Ukrainians, so the "First Ukrainian" moniker was no longer used. That's further evidence for it being invented to facilitate these rat lines. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 20:29 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 20:10
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mila kunis posted:In short: Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live. The psychic and material costs are rationally worth the benefits. Rule #2 violation
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Sep 23, 2023 20:45
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Vomik posted:Finnish larva evolving in the bog into a f35 deep serral lore.
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Sep 23, 2023 20:49
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Orange Devil posted:Seeing the Iraq war fervor play out *again* for over a loving year when this war kicked off has made me jaded enough to believe that none of these johnny-come-lately motherfuckers have learned a goddamn thing and has any understanding at all about the horror they cheered on. If Taiwan goes hot, then we're going to see the same story beats literally lifted from the Ukraine-Russia war reposted again with threadbare adaptations done. Maybe someone will mess up a copy-paste job, and there will somehow be a Ukrainian brigade in Taiwan that doesn't exist at all, but if you call it out NAFO dog piles you for being a tankie.
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Sep 23, 2023 20:50
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IMO one of the most shocking aspects of this conflict is how loving gullible people are. They want to believe, and you only need to glance in that direction to get them there. Maybe it's because this is the first war that I've followed so closely from this side of the spectrum  Are they all like this?
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Sep 23, 2023 20:57
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Cpt_Obvious posted:IMO one of the most shocking aspects of this conflict is how loving gullible people are. They want to believe, and you only need to glance in that direction to get them there. If they trust the news then yeah And distrusting the news is associated with the far right so... A trap has snapped shut at some point
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Sep 23, 2023 20:59
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Cpt_Obvious posted:IMO one of the most shocking aspects of this conflict is how loving gullible people are. They want to believe, and you only need to glance in that direction to get them there. yeah
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Sep 23, 2023 20:59
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Danann posted:If Taiwan goes hot, then we're going to see the same story beats literally lifted from the Ukraine-Russia war reposted again with threadbare adaptations done. Maybe someone will mess up a copy-paste job, and there will somehow be a Ukrainian brigade in Taiwan that doesn't exist at all, but if you call it out NAFO dog piles you for being a tankie. There's a Captain I work with whose grandfather was some sort of exiled KMT general so lol I look forward to being plugged into the people cheering Sun Yat-sen's slogans at meetings or whatever in a few years.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:03
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mila kunis posted:there was a big fuckin rift within the bolsheviks about autonomy for constituent SSRs versus a unitary workers state. the second faction argued it would fuel nationalism and separatism, the first faction (supported by lenin) won out and we can see the results today. to be fair, I don't think the soviet union was really in a position to crush all its opposition at the time
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Sep 23, 2023 21:04
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The Voice of Labor posted:to be fair, I don't think the soviet union was really in a position to crush all its opposition at the time This was all happening in Poland. The Soviets only took over administration in 39. Keep in mind interwar Poland was doing some weird stuff too, trying to stoke tensions across the border. I don't know what connections existed between Poland trying to stir up trouble for the Soviets and their own problems administering these nationalists, but that's a wrinkle as well.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:09
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Dokapon Findom posted:Uncanny demonstration of why not to use a ten dollar word when a ten cent one will suffice MSNBC pundits and Democratic Party mouthpieces constantly use this language, to the point that you can tell how much of a fanatical loyalist someone is to the party by how many of these pompous words they use whenever they talk. I blame Keith Olbermann.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:13
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Frosted Flake posted:There's a Captain I work with whose grandfather was some sort of exiled KMT general so lol I look forward to being plugged into the people cheering Sun Yat-sen's slogans at meetings or whatever in a few years. They're just going to jump into deep end and declare that they love Wang Jingwei now.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:15
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Ytlaya posted:Literally all news/political media is "propaganda" - it just so happens that Russian propaganda is frequently correct because they have the very easy task of "talking about why the US is bad" The dnd understanding of propaganda is when the outlet knows they're a bad guy supporting other bad guys.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:16
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crepeface posted:lmfao canada is so racist the heraldry for the chinese is slanted Unreal Tournament announcer voice: "Holy poo poo!"
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Sep 23, 2023 21:22
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Frosted Flake posted:I just wanted to add this because I think you did a great job presenting it for people who lurk the thread and haven't read a dozen books on Galicia and I think these two details round it out: Ruthenians (Slavs without a nation), Poles and Jews occupied the same geographic space that was divided by political borders, and, practically speaking, there was no Ukrainian nation with a common or shared identity. Perhaps that fuelled some of the resentment? very good post.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:24
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My family from Ukraine lived in Galicia. Catholic, but had some Jewish ancestry because historically in that region Jewish people were not forced to live in ghettos, and they were free to marry Catholics. When the Nazis invaded in 1941 they determined that everyone in that province had an unacceptable amount of Jewish ancestry, and massacred every one of the 50,000 people living there.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:26
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Zodium posted:anecdotally, after a quite long period of general enthusiasm over the prospects of imperialism, furious defense of it and painting it in the brightest colors—people in my circles are increasingly coming around to the thread perspective, though in a dejected It's only because we're losing. It's precisely the same liberal, "empire but done well" stance that Dems had about Iraq.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:29
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kind of way.