kravietz

kravietz, 9 days ago to geopolitics

For those interested in #economy of #Russia and international #sanctions, here’s the latest International Working Group on Russian Sanctions status report and recommendations:

Original: https://fsi9-prod.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2024-05/actionplan_3.0_5-14-2024_final2.pdf

kravietz, 9 days ago to Russia

One more overview of the bogus #Russia “peace negotiations” in 2022 from a #Poland diplomat who participated in them

https://onlytruthaboutrussia.quora.com/Russia-did-not-want-peace-only-the-surrender-of-Ukraine-For-the-first-time-the-Polish-diplomat-opens-the-backstage-of

kravietz, 9 days ago to syria

So that you know, this video posted today by #SyrianGirl account with description “Yemen Houthi forces Score a direct hit in US destroyer” gained nearly 700k views, 2.3k shares and 7k likes… and it’s entirely false.

Users quickly identified the original as 2013 video from Norway naval exercise. The “Syrian Girl” account only added some subtitles in Arabic.

The account has been posting such fakes for years, starting from inventing incredible conspiracy theories to discredit the official OPCW investigation into #Assad chemical attacks against civilians in #Syria and then every single fake, mostly produced in #Russia.

Frame from the original in 2013 Norway naval exercise

kravietz, 10 days ago to China

Outcome of #Putin visit to #China in terms of economic agreements signed:

• ✅ Agreement on supplies of Russian topinambour and beef by-products, particularly beef cartilage and stomachs to China
• ✅ Creation of a new nature reserve “Land of big cats”
• ✅ Cooperation between TASS and Xinhua news agencies
• ❌ Construction of Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline was not agreed

To me, these indicate an extremely close and strategic partnership between China and Russia, especially the beef cartilages are going to change the course of the world 😂

Source: https://www.moscowtimes.ru/2024/05/16/putin-ugovoril-si-tszinpina-pokupat-rossiiskii-topinambur-i-govyazhie-hryaschi-a130877

kravietz, 10 days ago to random

Thank you, Paul Ehrlich, for removing whole generations of educated people from the world’s gene pool 👍

Parmesan is not alone. An exclusive Guardian survey has found that almost a fifth of the female climate experts who responded have chosen to have no children, or fewer children, due to the environmental crises afflicting the world. (…) Ninety-seven female scientists responded, with 17, including women from Brazil, Chile, Germany, India and Kenya, saying they had chosen to have fewer children. All but 1% of the scientists surveyed were over 40 years old and two-thirds were over 50, reflecting the senior positions they had reached in their professions. A quarter of the respondents were women, the same proportion as the overall authorship of the IPCC reports.

Because those who today don’t give shit about climate change also clearly didn’t give a shit about Ehrlich racist ramblings from 1960’s and you start to see that in election results worldwide 🤷 The ideas that Ehrlich raised to control the problem would raise eyebrows today as they rather belong to some totalitarian regime, but The Guardian conveniently skips that topic.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/10/climate-scientists-starting-families-children

P.S. yes, I do own a copy of “The Population Bomb” and it literally does start with a contemptuous description of densely populated New Delhi with “all these people” which sounds no different to a 19th century memoir of some colonial lord.

kravietz, 10 days ago to random Polish

Nie, Petr Pavel nie “wzywa Ukrainy do oddania Rosji terytorium”. Pavel powiedział, że “musimy być realistami i było by naiwnością sądzić, że Ukrainie uda się w pełni odzyskać terytoria w najbliższej przyszłości”.

Dalej mówi, że “teraz musimy powstrzymać wojnę i zacząć negocjacje na temat przyszłych uregulowań”. Zwracam uwagę na “w pełni odzyskać” oraz “powstrzymać wojnę” bo żadne z nich nie oznacza “oddania Rosji terytorium”. Pavel w następnym zdaniu, że “żadne negocjacje nie mogą być prowadzone bez Ukrainy”. To znaczy, że dopuszczalna dla niego jest np. sytuacja gdy dochodzi do zawieszenia broni ale przy zachowaniu spornego statusu okupowanych przez Rosję terytoriów (i tak długo np. nie są znoszone sankcje).

Poza tym Pavel mówi:

• że jest pewny, że połączone zasoby USA i EU są wystarczające do “wygrania sytuacji na polu walki”
• że “jesteśmy zbyt ostrożni i przywiązujemy zbytnią uwagę do ryzyka eskalacji podczas gdy Ukraińcy tracą ludzi i terytoria”
• że członkostwo Ukrainy w NATO wymaga najpierw jakiejś formy pokoju a dopóki Ukraina nie będzie w NATO, siły sojuszu nie będą bezpośrednio walczyć na jej stronie

Oryginał: https://youtube.com/watch?v=20aeo-zGJR8&t=1157s

kravietz, 10 days ago to Israel

#Israel bombing #Hisbollah targets in Baalbek #Lebanon, while #Ukraine bombing Belbek air base in #Russia occupied #Crimea (yes, for the second time). Did they agree on these targets or what? 🤔

P.S. this made me curious about the etymology of these names 🤔

Remote photo of explosions in Belbek air base in Crimea

kravietz, 10 days ago to Russia

Today #Russia and #China play best friends forever and #USSR had been traditionally placed in the same “communist” basked as China. Some fun facts that especially tankies are getting completely wrong today.^1

Since 1950’s China and USSR were actually conflicted over each other’s interpretations of #Marxism and in 1960’s the conflict nearly escalated into a full-scale nuclear war between the two countries.

China criticised CPSU (Communist Party of Soviet Union) over Soviet invasion of #Czechoslovakia (1968)^2 and “Brezhnev Doctrine” which denounced any Marxism version outside of the Soviet one as “reactionary” (Marxist newspeak for “heresy”). This included both Czechoslovak reforms and Mao’s Cultural Revolution in equal manner. At that time China actually developed complex relations with Eastern Bloc countries such as Romania and Czechoslovakia behind Kremlin’s back.

Essentially, everyone called each other “reactionary” and claimed their Marxism is the correct one. Any resemblance to past religious wars is entirely incidental. 😉 In 1968 Chinese diplomat Zhou Enlai speaking in Romanian embassy in Beijing called Soviets for “fascist politics, great power chauvinism, national egoism and social imperialism”.^3

Does that ring any bells? 😉

Soviets and China had a number of unresolved border issues in Manchuria. In 1968 China started escalating these, actually killing Soviet border guards. Moscow, knowing of China’s nuclear weapons and Mao’s confrontative attitude preferred to deescalate… which only encouraged Chinese.

Does that remind anything from contemporary history? 😉

At the peak of the conflict in 1969 USSR found itself in the position of a country with high-tech army challenged by a low-tech army which relied on millions of conscripts and human wave tactics.

Does this ring any bells? 😉

In 1969 Soviet army managed to push back overwhelming several Chinese offensives near the island of Zhenbao in spite of their overwhelming numbers with ratios up to 1:10 Soviet to Chinese. That was possible primarily due to the technical advantage, such as then-advanced T-62 tanks.

A ceasefire was signed in 1969 - on Chinese side by the very same Zhou Enlai who called Soviets “fascists” only a year before, but the actual peace agreement was only signed in 1991. The conflict was only completely resolved in 2008 (!) when Russia ceded 340 km² of the disputed lands to China.

As you can see, contrary to the mythology carefully constructed by modern “geopolitical realists”, there’s nothing constant in Russian or Soviet policies. Russia can not always win armed conflicts, it can cede territories and in general conflicts can be won in spite of imbalance of power. Oh, and calling others “fascists” was used by everyone and Russia was both an user and a recipient of this nomination.

kravietz, 10 days ago to random Polish

Niezwykle trafna analiza stanu rosyjskiej armii i państwa od Marcina Ogdowskiego:

Tyle że zamiar poprawy wydajności wcale nie musi dowodzić determinacji, jaką przypisuje się Kremlowi. Gdyby rosyjska armia osiągnęła zakładane cele w Ukrainie, nikt by się jej dziadostwa i toczącego ją złodziejstwa nie czepiał. W strukturach quasi-państwowych, de facto mafijnych, korupcja jest narzędziem sprawowania władzy. Rentą, gwarantem lojalności. Póki beneficjent nie nakradnie za dużo, póty jest bezpieczny. Kiedy mamy do czynienia z sytuacją „za dużo”? Ano wtedy, gdy jakieś składowe systemu zaczynają poważnie szwankować. Premie korupcyjne w rosyjskiej armii i przemyśle zbrojeniowym za czasów szojgu pożerały nawet 80 proc. (!) oficjalnych wydatków (dane za rosyjskim Transparency International). Modernizacja sił zbrojnych w dużej mierze zatem miała fasadowy charakter. Skutki widzieliśmy w Ukrainie.

Polecam całość bo zawiera wiele innych trafnych obserwacji:

https://bezkamuflazu.pl/umiarkowany-sukces-w-ukrainie/

kravietz, 10 days ago to Slovakia

Perpetrator of the shooting of #Slovakia prime minister Robert Fico is a 71-years old Slovak writer Juraj Cintula. He didn’t speak of his motives yet.

https://hms.ba/atentator-na-fica-je-slovacki-knjizevnik-juraj-cintula/

kravietz, 10 days ago to random

Russia military airport in #Belbek occupied #Crimea - some serious air defense and/or radar systems destroyed here.

Burned our remains of military equipment

kravietz, 11 days ago to Russia

Unconfirmed reports of heavy shelling of #Schetinivka (Щетинівка), a village in #Russia Belgorod oblast just next to the #Ukraine border. This could indicate Ukraine shelling a concentration of Russian forces preparing for another border incursion - as you can see on the map, there was no battle activity in that area previously.

kravietz, 11 days ago to Ukraine

Luxury yacht “Royal Romance” ordered by former #Ukraine oligarch Victor Medvedchuk and moored in Croatia was transferred to the state of Ukraine after a lengthy legal battle. The yacht was arrested by Croatia in 2022 and transfer to Ukraine was ruled by a Croatian court, but subsequent appeals took almost two years.

https://arma.gov.ua/news/typical/areshtovana-yahta-kolaboranta-i-zradnika-ukraini-medvedchuka-pereyshla-pid-prapor-ukraini

ellie, 11 days ago to random

i want to eat uranium

tdp_org, 11 days ago to webdev

My pals in BBC World Service have been doing some awesome work on "lite" versions of their news articles (other page types to follow).
They essentially skip the Server-Side React hydration which means you end up with a simpler HTML+CSS page, no JS.
Page sizes drop significantly:

• Transferred: ~600KB -> 30KB
• Total: 1.65MB -> 135KB
  Just append .lite on a URL e.g. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/crgyyvdz1dro.lite
  There's no on/off UX at the moment but they're working on that too.
  #WebDev #WebPerf #WebPerformance #BBC

Screenshot of a BBC World Service Mundo "lite" page with Dev Tools open showing bytes transferred and total as stated

kravietz, 11 days ago to random Polish

Bitwa o „trumienne”. Jak krewni Rosjan, którzy zginęli na wojnie, dzielą miliony

Rodziny zmarłych podczas inwazji na Ukrainę rosyjskich wojskowych toczą sądowe boje o tzw. trumienne – zasiłek przysługujący po śmierci żołnierza. Na przykład Oksana wytoczyła byłemu mężowi proces o 6 milionów rubli (ok. 258 tys. zł), a Jewgienija, która straciła na wojnie ojca i ojczyma, doprowadziła do zmiany prawa: teraz dorosłe dzieci mają prawo do jednorazowej wypłaty w wysokości 5 milionów rubli (ok. 215 tys. zł). Nasz rosyjskojęzyczny portal Vot Tak przyjrzał się tym historiom.

https://belsat.eu/pl/news/14-05-2024-bitwa-o-trumienne-jak-krewni-rosjan-ktorzy-zgineli-na-wojnie-dziela-miliony

junesim63, 11 days ago to Palestine

"I wear the traditional black and white scarf to celebrate my heritage. That’s enough to make you a target in the US today"
Arwa Mahdawi

#Keffiyeh #Palestine #USPolitics

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/14/palestinian-keffiyeh-symbol-of-my-identity-should-not-be-afraid-to-wear-it-public

kravietz, 12 days ago to Ukraine

#Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba once more explains the #Russia lie about “we nearly had a peace deal in 2022 but Ukraine refused it”

Dmytro Kuleba speaking in a studio

randahl, 12 days ago to random

Brilliant proposal by German politicians: Let us place air defence systems inside NATO, and have these systems save civilian lives by shooting down missiles over western Ukraine.

This is pretty clever because

1. Russia cannot bomb these systems as that would be an act of war against the entire NATO alliance.

2. The systems cannot trigger a war with Russia themselves, as they are not attacking Russia.

Do it!

https://www.dw.com/uk/u-nimeccini-proponuut-zbivati-droni-nad-ukrainou-silami-nato/a-69054148

kravietz, 12 days ago to poland Polish

10 May 2024 around 20:00 in the evening around 140 men stormed the #Poland border from #Belarus and were pushed back by Polish border force and army.

The times when small groups of actual migrants, including families with women and children, sneaked through the forest are long gone. Since around 2022 it’s exclusively young, masked men, often equipped with strobe lights and lasers and guided by uniformed Belarussian border guards. Granted that in 2022 Belarus welcomed a large group of “Wagner Group” mercenaries and employed them as instructors, speaking of “migrants” is no longer sustainable - these are coordinated attempts of storming EU border by men who can be Russian/Belarussian saboteurs or “Wagner” mercenaries, or any combination of these.

A swampy forest opening with some barbed wire fences guarded by uniformed border guards while a crowd tries to storm from the right, but then is sprayed with water or tear gas and retreats several times.