Ukraine

[thplinth]

You need to turn on english subtitles if not on already. Very interesting listening to the accounts of the two old ladies especially. Listen to what they were doing. These azov dudes are bad, bad news. 'Worse than nazis.'

 

[ThistleWhistle]

 

[thplinth]

16 hours ago, ThistleWhistle said:

 

It really is ironic perfection.

I've seen it described not as a Freudian Slip but as a Freudian Confession.

He obviously had recognized what a complete hypocrite he was being and that you could easily substitute Iraq for Ukraine and then like the dumbass he is he actually said it out loud. 😀

You notice how he mumbles 'Iraq too. Anyway'. It is just a big game to these cunts, a laugh, especially the smirking chimp above, dreadful human being.

I mean you don't just accidentally say Iraq instead of Ukraine do you. 😀

Edited May 20, 2022 by thplinth

[thplinth]

If you want an example of just how controlled the Western media and our politicians are then I can't think of a better example than comparing their treatment of the US invasion of Iraq versus the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Remember them all slavering over 'shock and awe' and being 'embedded' with tank units as they rolled over hopelessly out gunned Iraqi conscripts.

That Bush could stand up and deliver a moralizing speech like that (assuming he had not utterly fucked it up for a second) after what he and Tony Blair did... it is quite astonishing really. (Get that guy back who threw the shoe at him.)

Put yourself in the Russians' shoes for a moment... how would that look to you. Is this not an Empire of Lies? It really is rancid double standards. Bush etc don't give a fuck about Ukrainians anymore than they gave a fuck about Iraqis or Syrians or Libyans or Yemenis... Isn't it obvious.

This is not just about containing Russia and China it is about containing the EU as well. The neocons especially believe that no other nation or bloc should be allowed to rise in power to the point it could challenge US dominance. (You see it in things like 'the Wolfowitz Doctrine' (which is just a polite way of describing american supremacism). They talk about 'full spectrum dominance'...

That is why they are currently trying to chop them down (using the EU). But it is the EU they want to weaken as much as Russia and China. The US economy is going to do very well out of this selling us their overpriced gas (and I think Russia will be more than fine as well after pivoting to asia) it is the EU that is going to get royally fucked in the middle. 

With friends like the US you don't need enemies. What they have done here in mainland Europe in the 21st century is an absolute shocker. They have established what amounts to a 'Vanilla ISIS' to provoke this war in order to rip us off and keep us in our box. And all the war rah-rah in the media and our 'leaders' (almost to a man / woman) are just selling us down the river.

The people who are going to suffer the most (other than the Ukrainians) will be low fixed income people like pensioners. Just the energy bills alone but the fuel costs are going to feed into every manufactured good and the entire logistics chain causing even more inflation. It is only just starting to manifest... Apart from devaluing the pension and wages it also devalues your life savings unless you invest it all in a physical asset like land. Most folk can't do that and just have savings accounts. Inflation corrodes them. If it gets out of control it is extremely damaging as we saw in Germany prior to the nazis coming to power... oh wait.

[ThistleWhistle]

On 5/20/2022 at 8:28 AM, thplinth said:

It really is ironic perfection.

I've seen it described not as a Freudian Slip but as a Freudian Confession.

He obviously had recognized what a complete hypocrite he was being and that you could easily substitute Iraq for Ukraine and then like the dumbass he is he actually said it out loud. 😀

You notice how he mumbles 'Iraq too. Anyway'. It is just a big game to these cunts, a laugh, especially the smirking chimp above, dreadful human being.

I mean you don't just accidentally say Iraq instead of Ukraine do you. 😀

This opinion peice isn't pulling many punches:

George W Bush is not funny | Opinions | Al Jazeera

But the effective annihilation of a nation is hardly a laughing matter. Ditto for the reduction to a split-second “Iraq, too, anyway” of hundreds of thousands of deaths, countless massacres of Iraqi civilians, the forcible displacement of millions of people, and the saturation of the country with toxic and radioactive munitions that continue to cause congenital birth defects, cancer, and all manner of other maladies nearly two decades after the launch of the “wholly unjustified and brutal invasion”.

One can imagine the horror that would ensue were a nonwhite non-Westerner to crack a joke about, say, the September 11 attacks, or some other event paling in comparison – in terms of human and material destruction – to the war on Iraq. Bush and his audience, on the other hand, are by virtue of imperial entitlement permitted to snicker at a reference to the mass slaughter of nonwhite non-Westerners as though it were merely an instance of self-deprecating humour on the part of the former imperial commander-in-chief.....

......

US allies, too, share a similar sense of humour and would-be wit – not to mention microphone issues. In July 2006, during the G8 conference in none other than Russia, an unattended microphone captured the banter between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his faithful accomplice in the quest to obliterate Iraq.

It was less than a week into the latest effort by Israel – another imperial accomplice – to obliterate Lebanon via a 34-day bombing campaign that ultimately killed some 1,200 people, mainly civilians. Bush addressed his counterpart as: “Yo, Blair”, and, according to the transcript of the chat on the BBC website, the pair had a good laugh over the important matter of a sweater Blair had gifted Bush:

Bush: “I know you picked it out yourself.”

 

Blair: “Oh absolutely – in fact, I knitted it!”

The duo then proceeded to discuss the bloodshed in Lebanon, which in Bush’s view could be resolved not by getting Israel to stop massacring people but rather by getting Lebanon’s Hezbollah organisation – which, logically, was fighting back – “to stop doing this s***”.

Fast forward to the 2022 Iraq-I-mean-Ukraine gaffe at the George W Bush Presidential Centre in Dallas – the “wholly unjustified and brutal” decimation of a country condensed into a single imperial wisecrack – and one finds oneself wishing that it would all just stop.

[ThistleWhistle]

How the capture of Azov fighters affects the Russia-Ukraine war | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera

Thought this was an interesting article on the Azov fighters too - essentially the west are dancing on a pin given the good guy Nazi narrative and them being seen within Ukraine as like Spartans at Thermopylae.

Whilst on the otherhand Russia have gone hard on the bad guy Nazi narrative but being tied up in a seige is a strategic cluster fuck sooking in resources they need elsewhere whilst ultimately what do they do with the Azov unit once it's captured?  Unlikely they'll hand them back as Ukraine want in some sort of swap deal and unlikely to shoot them following a trial as that'll create martyrs. 

Some bullshit trial with long sentences so Russia can claim some sort of victory regardless how pyrrhic would seem the most likely although who knows - whole thing is nuts. 

It'll be a footnote by 2023 at this rate as Taiwan looks to be coming to the boil - playbook looks sort of fimiliar and all:

Yoon unlikely to make waves on Taiwan question after Biden visit - Global Times

  

[thplinth]

This guy gives a really good summary of the Azov and other ultranationalist militias. Top quality. 

https://thedreizinreport.com/2022/05/17/the-fall-of-the-azov/

....................................

This is from sputniknews so take it with a pinch of salt as you see fit but it still has a lot of interesting information in it. Apparently the Azov lads were doing a side line in deadly armed robberies and racketeering. Long before Russia invaded a group of Azov officers were shot to death by Ukrainian special forces as they were in the act of robbing a debt collector. At the time they were suspected of many other armed robberies... Hopefully this will work without the need for a VPN.

https://archive.ph/jiA1r

Where Did the Money Come From?

The Azov was funded - at least partially - by oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, as was the case with the other volunteer battalions operating in the ATO. Furthermore, Svetlana Zvarich, director of the Ukrainian National Information Service (one of the largest companies in the local information collection, transmission and processing market), provided assistance.

On 16 April 2015, Ukrayinska Pravda mentioned the charity foundation for educational innovations, which officially “works with Azov and provides it with everything it needs” in a report from Azov's base at the ATEK engineering plant in Kiev , citing a comment by “the chairman of the supervisory board of the foundation, Svetlana Zvarich”.

But that is not the whole story. On 15 July 2016, the public learned that Azov had links to criminals when SBU Special Forces liquidated a group of Azov officers armed with assault rifles and a grenade launcher in Zaporozhye . They had attacked a money collectors’ car, a raid that was clearly not their first.

SBU Chief Vasyl Hrytsak said at the time that the Secret Service was checking Azov’s involvement in at least ten similar crimes.

Sources later specified to the Russian TV channel Vesti that "Before the New Year (2016 – ed. note), the same gang robbed a jewelry shop in one of the malls early in the morning and killed a shop assistant. And on 28 February, the bandits attacked the jewelry shop again".

There is also knowledge of a bribe of two million hryvnias ($68,000) extorted from a Kiev businessman by the battalion's head of manning Vladimir Brzezinski and former Azov Chief of Staff Vadym Troyan under threats of reprisals.

In other words, the Azov militiamembers were simply engaged in racketeering. According to the owner of one of the gambling halls, the so-called patriots showed up in mid-2015. Couriers from local radical organisations visited all the gambling halls, offering to “negotiate”.

"The cooperation with the 'patriots' basically means that they do not touch us. And we pay them money for this - 30 to 50 thousand hryvnias a month [$1,020-1,700] from each hall. If we do not pay, a Molotov cocktail will burn down the gambling hall within a week".

A quote in the article from Azovs' first commander.

"The challenge of the current generation is to create a Third Empire, the Great Ukraine. The historic mission of our nation in this crucial century is to head and lead the white peoples of the world in a final crusade for their existence, a crusade against Semitic-led sub-humanity".

The oligarch Kolomoisky mentioned above who largely funded Azov is Jewish and has Israeli citizenship. Strange bedfellows you would think... 

[phart]

Here's his take on the Covid too.

Is it a parody site?

https://thedreizinreport.com/2022/05/23/my-sons-school-shows-you-the-future/

I live in a heavily Democrat area, where most children even as young as 8 or 9 years old, are vakk-syn-ated against the korona.

My son’s school of perhaps 500 students (not the one in the headline photo) is sending out near-daily notices of korona infection. They had been down to no cases as recently as March. Now, it’s 4, 5, 6, 7, even 10 per day.

What does this tell you?

It tells you the vakk-seenz have not led to herd imm-yoo-ni-tee.

Which means, despite what Dok-ttor Fow-chee might tell you, the eppy-demmik is not coming to an end. Not even close.

It can only be over when there is herd imm-yoo-ni-tee.

As I wrote to my mailing list (before this blog) many times, for the eppy-demmik to be over, most people have to get noticeably, unmistakably sick, produce their own genuine imm-yoon response, and recover. (In other words, let the thing run its course.)

We were told the vakk-seenz would generate herd imm-yoo-ni-tee, stop transmission, stop the eppy-demmik. None of this happened.

“They” have lowered the bar, lower and lower. Now, all they’ve got is that the vakk-seenz (more often than not) prevent severe dizz-eezz—assuming your shot doesn’t f*** you up some other way.

Guess what, that won’t last.

The korona is still here and fast mutating, with no end date.

At some point, it will overcome the vakk-seenz.

“They” must know this.

Leaders of various (northern hemisphere) cities and countries are now warning about severe outbreaks this SUMMER.

Summer???

Someone among the medical authorities, knows (or suspects) something.

Of course, none of them wants to be the first to come out and say the vakk-seenz failed. That person would get doused with benzene and professionally set on fire. It’s easier to go with the flow, and then, when the bottom falls out, “My goodness, no one could have predicted this!“

Those who got vakk-syn-ated, at least with the “jeen the-rah-pee” vakk-seenz, have a problem.

Their vakk-seen derived ann-tee-baw-deez CROWD OUT their innate ann-tee-baw-deez. This has already been proven, it’s not up for debate.

Sadly, the vakk-seen derived ann-tee-baw-deez are FIXED AND IMMUTABLE, whereas the vy-rus is fast mutating.

You see the problem?

There is ZERO chance that the “smart people” DON’T see this problem.

We don’t know when the bottom will fall out, we don’t know where it will start, but there will be a PANN-DE-MYKK of the VAKK-SYN-ATED.

(Of course, the authorities will blame the UN-vakk-syn-ated for it.)

In every highly vakk-syn-ated country—at least, in every one that bought into the “jeen the-rah-pee” vakk-seenz (Russia, for one, did not)—the medical systems will be overwhelmed, and will collapse.

Governments will have to pay all “nonessential” and laid-off workers to sit at home again, which will lead to hyperinflation, or something close enough to it.

And, of course, we have a hungry winter and an even hungrier 2023 ahead of us. I’m guessing this will all hit at roughly the same time.

There’s also a nasty situation with the international politics.

I think that’s three “horsemen” right there. I’m not sure what the fourth one is about. Doesn’t matter.

[thplinth]

11 minutes. 

[phart]

"Top quality"

[thplinth]

Thanks for quoting that but I know, I typed it. 😀 

Yeah, it is excellent. The best overall analysis / summary of the history behind the Azov battalion (but it is much more than that really) I have read / heard by far. It is only about 23 minutes long as well. So I would recommend to others who are interested they watch it. Top quality.  

As to your 'question'.

Just a guess and not having read his blog before but judging that he says all comments have to use his specific spellings on that one article only I'd say he is trying to avoid being de-platformed by using 'phonetic' type spellings for certain 'hot' words / phrases. It seem to be his only covid related posting so I think that is what it is. It is also obvious looking at his site it is not a parody site. I think he has a military background listening to him the actual video I posted. 

Well anyway thanks again. 

[ThistleWhistle]

www.globaltimes.cn/page/202205/1266390.shtml

By stating the US would intervene militarily if the Chinese mainland takes the island of Taiwan by force, the Biden administration is taking a step further to hollow out the one-China policy, and Biden's remarks had led to China's strong opposition. Analysts warned that as the US and its spearheads, especially Japan, are using the Ukraine crisis to promote a cognitive battle to help with the de facto "independence" of the island of Taiwan, their schemes would encounter a stronger response from the Chinese mainland as the mainland makes no compromise on its core interests.

Would imagine Japan and South Korea would be savvy enough to want more than a promise of tank guns and tampons before poking China to breaking point but if this explodes Ukraine will look like a pillow fight.

[thplinth]

I am not a huge fan of Chris Hedges as I find him a bit overly apocalyptic at times but in this latest one...

https://www.mintpressnews.com/chris-hedges-american-imperialism-permanent-war/280923/

You read that and you just think... we have the resources and technology to make this planet a paradise for everyone, who decided things have to be like this and why.  

 

[phart]

I was at the gym this morning and someone stopped me to ask if I was wearing my clothes for Ukraine. I looked down and I had a yellow t-shirt on under my blue hoody i wear to the gym.

Hadn't even occurred to me , literally just grabbed the first t-shirt in my pile. I never even bought the tops myself, my friends mum keeps buying me these sport t-shirts she gets in sales. They're all these "vibrant" colours.

They were an older person with an accent I couldn't place, I was like no sorry I didn't even realise and they walked off. So guess i'll not be wearing that combo at the gym again.

[ThistleWhistle]

49 minutes ago, phart said:

I was at the gym this morning and someone stopped me to ask if I was wearing my clothes for Ukraine. I looked down and I had a yellow t-shirt on under my blue hoody i wear to the gym.

Hadn't even occurred to me , literally just grabbed the first t-shirt in my pile. I never even bought the tops myself, my friends mum keeps buying me these sport t-shirts she gets in sales. They're all these "vibrant" colours.

They were an older person with an accent I couldn't place, I was like no sorry I didn't even realise and they walked off. So guess i'll not be wearing that combo at the gym again.

Wonder if you’ve triggered some mad mental vexillologist who’ll stalk your gym now to challenge your work out ensemble.

 

‘How can you wear green in white in support of Saudi actions in Yemen’

 

‘Blue and white you twat – do you not know what is happening on the West Bank!’

 

‘Fucking knew it – red and blue in support of your mate Kim Jong-Un’

 

Only solution I can see is white pants and vests like you forgot your PE kit for school.  Just dunna wear yellow socks or shoes in case they're not a fan of the Pope either.  

[ThistleWhistle]

Is Putin achieving his goals in Ukraine? | Russia-Ukraine war | Al Jazeera

 

Thought this was an interesting article - is the west widely reporting there's Nazi on Nazi action going on?  I only listen to Radio 4 on the way home really and they touch on it time to time but in a very duck and weave type approach.  

[phart]

56 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

Wonder if you’ve triggered some mad mental vexillologist who’ll stalk your gym now to challenge your work out ensemble.

 

‘How can you wear green in white in support of Saudi actions in Yemen’

 

‘Blue and white you twat – do you not know what is happening on the West Bank!’

 

‘Fucking knew it – red and blue in support of your mate Kim Jong-Un’

 

Only solution I can see is white pants and vests like you forgot your PE kit for school.  Just dunna wear yellow socks or shoes in case they're not a fan of the Pope either.  

Tomorrow is red , white and blue if i include my shorts.

I made a histogram chart a few weeks back and put in a random colour combo from excel. Someone in the group asked if I was a Rangers fan as it turned out it was the same colour scheme as some away/third strip combo.

Makes you paranoid what sort of signals you're sending out to others without realising it.

[ThistleWhistle]

39 minutes ago, phart said:

Tomorrow is red , white and blue if i include my shorts.

I made a histogram chart a few weeks back and put in a random colour combo from excel. Someone in the group asked if I was a Rangers fan as it turned out it was the same colour scheme as some away/third strip combo.

Makes you paranoid what sort of signals you're sending out to others without realising it.

'Someone is getting in Jubilee spirit early - Sweet Caroline DA DA DA!'  

[thplinth]

I'd maybe not be swathed in red, white and blue if there was any chance of bumping into some Ukrainians. (Must have been awkward on match days for expat rangers fans living in Kiev.)

Edited May 26, 2022 by thplinth

[phart]

 

[thplinth]

Shit you should not have lost all that weight. Tactical reserve. 😀

[Och Aye]

Cannibalism.

I've got a few neighbours picked oot 

[thplinth]

Unfortunately (for us) I think this guy is right in his analysis. 

 

[Ally Bongo]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_C._Johnson

[thplinth]

I think there is a lot of truth in this as well... especially for Europe.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/is-america-the-real-victim-of-anti-russia-sanctions

Is America the Real Victim of Anti-Russia Sanctions?
By misjudging the size and importance of Russia’s economy, the West might have taken steps toward its own isolation
BY
ARNAUD BERTRAND

Remember the claims that Russia’s economy was more or less irrelevant, merely the equivalent of a small, not very impressive European country? “Putin, who has an economy the size of Italy,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in 2014 after the invasion of Crimea, “[is] playing a poker game with a pair of twos and winning.” Of increasing Russian diplomatic and geopolitical influence in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, The Economist asked in 2019, “How did a country with an economy the size of Spain … achieve all this?”

Seldom has the West so grossly misjudged an economy’s global significance. French economist Jacques Sapir, a renowned specialist of the Russian economy who teaches at the Moscow and Paris schools of economics, explained recently that the war in Ukraine has “made us realize that the Russian economy is considerably more important than what we thought.” For Sapir, one big reason for this miscalculation is exchange rates. If you compare Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) by simply converting it from rubles into U.S. dollars, you indeed get an economy the size of Spain’s. But such a comparison makes no sense without adjusting for purchasing power parity (PPP), which accounts for productivity and standards of living, and thus per capita welfare and resource use. Indeed, PPP is the measure favored by most international institutions, from the IMF to the OECD. And when you measure Russia’s GDP based on PPP, it’s clear that Russia’s economy is actually more like the size of Germany’s, about $4.4 trillion for Russia versus $4.6 trillion for Germany. From the size of a small and somewhat ailing European economy to the biggest economy in Europe and one of the largest in the world—not a negligible difference.

Sapir also encourages us to ask, “What is the share of the service sector versus the share of the commodities and industrial sector?” To him, the service sector today is grossly overvalued compared with the industrial sector and commodities like oil, gas, copper, and agricultural products. If we reduce the proportional importance of services in the global economy, Sapir says that “Russia’s economy is vastly larger than that of Germany and represents probably 5% or 6% of the world economy,” more like Japan than Spain.

This makes intuitive sense. When push comes to shove, we know there is more value in providing people with the things they really need to survive like food and energy than there is in intangible things like entertainment or financial services. When a company like Netflix has a price-earnings ratio three times higher than that of Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, it’s more likely than not a reflection of market froth than of physical reality. Netflix is a great service, but as long as an estimated 800 million people in the world remain undernourished, Nestlé is still going to provide more value.

All of which is to say that the current crisis in Ukraine has helpfully clarified how much we’ve taken for granted the “antiquated” side of modern economies like industry and commodities—prices for which have surged this year—and perhaps overvalued services and “tech,” whose value has recently crashed.

The size and importance of Russia’s economy is further distorted by ignoring global trade flows, in which Sapir estimates that Russia “may account for maybe as much as 15%.” While Russia is not the largest producer of oil in the world, for example, it has been the largest exporter of it, ahead even of Saudi Arabia. The same is true for many other essential products such as wheat—the world’s most important food crop, with Russia controlling about 19.5% of global exports—nickel (20.4%), semi-finished iron (18.8%), platinum (16.6%), and frozen fishes (11.2%).

Such commanding importance in the production of so many essential commodities means that Russia, like few other countries on the planet, is in many respects a linchpin of the globalized production chain. Unlike “maximum sanctions” on a country like Iran or Venezuela, attempting to cut the Russian link has meant and will likely continue to mean a dramatic reorganization of the global economy.