Ukraine v Russia II

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But remember, this is what the people arguing that Ukraine should just make territorial concessions for some kind of peace deal are apparently fine with for the folks unlucky enough to be in the occupied territories.

 

Meloni is a great admirer of Mussolini. The fact that she would dare to open her trap about Africa is insulting in and of itself.

 

If they manage to rape their own propaganda mouth pieces, you have to wonder what they have been doing to the local population...

 

The horror

 

Hey Belgian guy, apparently a Belgian PMC has 500 armored vehicles, including 50 Leopard 1s, 38 Gepards, 112 Austrian SK-105MM light tanks, 70 M113s, among others.

Politics be damned, send them all to Ukraine

 

I'm beginning to look at Brazil as a sort of international version of Preston North End (or St. Etienne or DC United or whatever). Their fans are clinging to long-gone greatness because there's nothing else to hold on to.

Anyway, have a nice day.

 

No, we don't need to wonder. There's plenty of evidence of what they've been doing.

Which is why a ceasefire or negotiated deal that allows Russia to retain any Ukrainian territory will inevitably result in more atrocities perpetrated on the civilians in those areas.

 

what did she say about Africa?

 

She misses the rains down there.

 

the line is ‘I bless the rains down in Africa’, but I’ll allow it


is there anything a hundred men or more could do to help?

 

Hungary.

 

Huh, you're right.

 

I'm glad you asked...I'll have 2 slices.

 

2 goulash pie slices coming right up.

 

extra paprikash, please

 

Hold the pineapple!!

 

Mmm, they need them for their sneaky agenda:
https://www.theroyalforums.com › 8905-leopold-ii-wanted-to-invade-the-netherlands
Leopold II Wanted To Invade The Netherlands | The Royal Forums
Leopold II Wanted To Invade The Netherlands June 24, 2009 at 8:50 am by Marengo View the image at 215 New reports have revealed that King Leopold II of the Belgians (1835-1909) had plans to invade The Netherlands. These plans were found in the royal archives in Brussels by the Flemish journalist and historian Kris Clerckx.

 

I wouldn't read much in to it. It's just realpolitik.

The South supports Russia primarily because they perceive a need for competing super powers. In addition, the politicians tend to be backed by Russia and China because those countries are very amenable to the type of mega-projects which look good in the news but are rife with kickbacks. You just can't do that type of stuff anymore with Western companies since the advent of stricter laws in corruption. Any financial funny business involving any Western company at just about any level can get you in jail if you set foot in the West.

In the end, though, everyone can see that Russia is weak. The guy on the street can also tell that those Chinese and Russian projects are corrupt as hell and at this point every place has a story about a Chinese bridge falling down because of bad parts.

 

In the case of the China projects, the guy on the street can also tell it doesn't use locals on the projects. Every Chinese project is run by Chinese officials and use Chinese workers. These workers are also confined to the worksite, so there is very little impact to the local community related to the construction.

 

The US is starting to crack down on individuals and companies that are assisting Russia in sanction breaking.

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1241

It is also worth noting that the top Treasury official in charge of sanctions made a visit to Turkey and UAE to have a government level discussion about companies in those countries being used to go around the sanctions and to let them know, if they don't start cracking down on the sanction breaking, the US could start applying sanctions to the countries.

https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-p...l-to-warn-uae-turkey-over-sanctions-evasion-2

 

Seems to me like basically an old school Cold War perspective, clumsily grafted onto a modern world where it doesn't make much sense.

In the Cold war, on the one hand, you had the Marxist belief that leftist revolutionary movements in the "Third World" represented movements for self-determination and economic justice, and were spontaneous local mobilizations even as they were part of a global movement towards socialism. The right-wing authoritarian governments that opposed them, then, were essentially Western puppets. Right-wing leaders in the US and elsewhere, on the other hand, saw these leftist movements as instruments of the global Communist conspiracy, essentially planted in the developing countries by the Soviet Union and its agents. (e.g. Jacobo Arbenz's government being viewed as basically just a Commie beachhead). In either case, superpower intervention was depicted by its supporters as defending local aspirations against elites installed by foreign powers. Both of those perspectives downplayed the domestic and local roots of the political opponent.

Sometimes there was some seeming reality to the accusations of being a foreign puppet. When Syngman Rhee was running South Korea and US aid was a large percentage of his country's economy, North Korea's claims in this regard probably seemed more widely plausible than they did after the South became a democracy. But those views were always an oversimplification that led to distorted perceptions, and sometimes those distorted perceptions had some pretty awful consequences ( as seen in e.g. the US war in Vietnam).

Anyway, with the fall of the Soviet Union, a lot of Chomskyish types who'd had an emotional investment in their own side of the narrative wanted to find a way to keep it going. Hence, there's now some supposed Global South that will rise up to throw off the shackles of Western imperialism, or whatever. It's a story that's in part driven by the big economic and population shifts away from Europe and the West, but with those real-world trends being interpreted through an archaic Cold War leftist lens.