Always ask them if they know what is a Czechoslovakia, what happened to it in 1938 and who were the people shaking hands nodding in agreement and then finally happily cheering after it happened.
The ATACAMs story should be dividided into two points, tne actual material effect on the war(if any) and the political/human factor i.e the current NATO aggression and escalation.
#1 I think Mercouris is very much on point today with his reponse, (here) with the consistent historical analysis so far, this is not the first time Ukraine had success with their missile strikes, such success was brief, but it wasn't the only time then so its obviously not going to be the only time now, in the end the trend is Russia probably has the means to continue to adapt and eventualy develop countermeasures.
The material cost of the war and the imbalance between Russia vs the west is still the key point. As he says, what is the expectation here, what is the end goal? The west can't make many more ATACAMs but Russia can surely make more S-400s. Ultimately there is nothing but a unicorn victory here, what is destroying a S-400 in Crimea going to achieve?
In fact Simplicius makes this point below while demonstrating he is being very inconsistent here.
Ukraine is poised to potentially prick Russia badly and now has the demonstrated capability to do so without Russia able to reliably neutralize the threats. If Ukraine gets the go ahead to use ATACMS and perhaps even the Storm Shadows, Taurus, etc., on Russian soil—not counting Crimea, which they’ve already done as they consider that not to be Russian territory—then all hell could break loose as Russia has not demonstrated the capability to stop the ATACMS reliably, and Ukraine could very well hit extremely sensitive targets that would put Russian command and control at a historic crossroads.
But why has Ukraine suddenly begun to demonstrate such an ability to hit important Russian objects? Answer: mostly because it has poured the remainder of its money toward asymmetric style warfare. You see, none of these attacks damage the real Russian army or change any of the calculus on the ground. But given that Ukraine knows that nothing it can do will change that, it has wisely decided to pour the remainder of its resources into drones and long range weapons capable of at least shaking things up in very asymmetrical ways.
The goal is clear: Zelensky and co. likely want Russia to respond with tactical nukes. For Zelensky—dictator of a country which has already brushed off the world’s worst nuclear reactor disaster in Chernobyl, and which cheerily irradiates its own land with Western supplied depleted uranium shells—a small nuclear incident is the tiniest of possible prices to pay for his regime being saved by subsequent NATO intervention.
Excuse me what? This is literaly unironicaly getting lost on the narrative. I do not agree with this double thinking. The Russian army will simultaneously be thrown into a chaos and at the same time nothing will change in the course of the war?
You can't reach this conclusion, press both buttons here which is why I prefer the conservative stance here i.e this is a short term advantage that is not significant in the long term given the underlying material realities of the war.
#2 - Yet both of them agree that this is yet another step along the escalation/provocation ladder which yeah its undeniable. But who is realy going to waste time guessing where the famous "red lines" realy are? Unless you're paid to write articles or make YT videos about this panic, just keep betting on nothing ever happens.
The Russians should know the European general population is not ready to die for Zelensky, in fact the EU regularly goes back and forth, anyone remember Zelensky being shunned on the NATO summit last year? We know THAT meme?
Its hard to keep making guesses but I think it is still naive to assume NATO intervention is guaranteed at all... Its pointless to make long term predictions but Ukraine is a neoliberal project that is ultimately not really essential to EU/NATO. They can cut their losses and abandon Ukraine at any time specialy if the EU fascist parties start winning elections.
These mythical US weapons are not magicaly going to cause any significant amount of damage if they even manage to hit the targets. The US doesn't have hypersonic missiles. Shadow Strike, Tomahawk, whatever German/French shit they use, unless they target the Kremlin and manage to hit Putin drinking his morning coffee, this is just provocation and I expect nothing will happen.
Lets say Ukraine somehow manages to hit one of their bomber bases, so what they destroy a couple Tu-22s or whatever? Who literaly gives a shit as if that will change the course of the war?
The Moskva remains on the bottom of the sea for 2 years now, NAFO idiots were all claiming this would be the end of the black sea fleet... remember the last couple of fishing boats, sorry "frigates" the Russians lost due to a few drone attacks? Same thing, at first embarrassment, then later everything continues according to the inevitable course of the war.
The Russians talk about red lines but they understand the war is over for some time now. There are real things that could cause escalation IMO things like actual NATO troop deployment to the front not some trench on the Belarus border, maybe a chemical/nuclear false flag etc.
Western wunderwaffen are not it despite Russian speeches.
AP looks realy good on combat and exploration but I don't have much hope for longevity once the novelty wears off, as a live service what makes you come back after you "finish" the game? I'm not sure what is going to be the long term appeal of AP. Its like back in 2008 all these games must fight against WoW players deeply entrenched in their raiding guilds or RP servers, nothing will make them switch games because of the absurd sunk cost or social connections even if WoW was already stagnating, and HYV isn't even stagnating yet.
That sub used to be part of the "reddit left" with a decent overlap with latestagecapitalism etc. Bernie era used to be a good time to "educate" people there about socialism, even if just pointing out that collapse is capitalism's fault.
But given the massive overlapping userbase a lot of those old users moved on, as you know the reddit "left" is a shadow now(thats being generous), so this is just another example of the overall trend of the site. Every criticism of capitalism/US is "political" therefore confined within blue vs red MAGA now.
Not playing it and I'm sort of biased because I'm looking forward to ZZZ apparently on July 4th or so and that is a direct competitor.
From the reactions so far I think despite the terrible launch it will just float around the mid-high tier earnings charts, below HYV games and maybe they'll be happy to make FGO/Nikke level revenue.
The discourse is funny specialy from the CN side. CN mobile gaming is at an inflection point though, stupid people hyped this as the GI killer but realisticaly there is nothing to look forward now, HYV continues to dominate as predicted, which is awesome if you like their stuff but something something late stage capitalism monopoly.
This launch just shows how much investment and capital realy matters, to compete with HYV you need a lot of money and actualy invest into a massive technology stack(basicaly their own Unity version btw), massive repeating content, artists/musicians, community building and now even moving into other media(their own animation studio).
Its funny to watch history repeat again sort of how everyone wanted to copy WoW and failed, now lots of gachas want to copy GI and fail etc. Only Blizzard is stupid and HYV is actualy a decently smart company that actualy invests into themselves and not just hoard cash to get rich.
But I think WW will be fine if they keep up over the years.
Its important to remind that as you know some of these news outlets already had to transition from physical to digital media and this transition was entirely driven the 2000's Google monopoly on the internet. Everything was about search traffic and SEO.
Things changed a bit when social media started to drive traffic on their own taking some of that share from Google search but only the platform changed, not the methods.
In the age of competing both for SEO and for social media engagement, real "journalism" i.e actual humans to write reasonably accurate 500-1000 word articles to drive traffic are not important anymore. IMO the authority website model google created is long dead or irrelevant, these giant websites will never leave the #1 spot anymore anyway so the only competition is among those that can afford to pay for adsense(literaly why google pushes top paid results over actual search for some time now, they're desperate).
Old black hat SEO tools have existed right alongside Google since 2006. This AI paradigm then is just another step along these black hat tools, now not deemed black hat anymore and openly embraced.
When google became "the internet" the enshitiffication future was sealed. AI is just another tool from this long process not at all new though I guess people are also more aware now that this hit the mainstream. yet people forget the industry was using bots to spin fake articles almost 20 years ago already.
When I started sort of paying attention to some of these mainstream "news" sources since the Ukraine war, I immidiately noticed so much of it is rage bait shit or just sometimes literaly copy pasting between multiple sites, beyond the AP nonsense, narratives are sometimes repeated almost verbatim between WSJ/BI/NYT etc. The end result really is, do you need to pay someone to copy paste narratives when the AI can sort of do it well enough anyway?
I'll tell you this, if the year was 2008 these AI tools would be banned by Google and you'd be heavily penalized, heck perhaps naively I even believe they would change their algo specificaly to counter this as they did many times in the past to sort of "fight" the low hanging fruit black hat SEO of 10-15 years ago.
Alas not only they lost that battle but they openly embrace it now that even Google themselves acknowledge the dead internet theory is something to consider and the only thing that realy matters is making money. As a consequence, if even the monopoly owners don't care anymore then this is the result, every webpage will be some form of AI/bot content.
On the basis of evidence collected and examined by my Office, I have reasonable grounds to believe that Yahya SINWAR (Head of the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) in the Gaza Strip), Mohammed Diab Ibrahim AL-MASRI, more commonly known as DEIF (Commander-in-Chief of the military wing of Hamas, known as the Al-Qassam Brigades), and Ismail HANIYEH (Head of Hamas Political Bureau) bear criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of Israel and the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 7 October 2023:
Extermination as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(b) of the Rome Statute;
Murder as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(a), and as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
Taking hostages as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(iii);
Rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(g), and also as war crimes pursuant to article 8(2)(e)(vi) in the context of captivity;
Torture as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(f), and also as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i), in the context of captivity;
Other inhumane acts as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(l)(k), in the context of captivity;
Cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i), in the context of captivity; and
Outrages upon personal dignity as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(ii), in the context of captivity.
Its impossible to accept these joke ass or even straight up already debunked allegations as crime just as a justification to do both sides. No kidding condemning Hamas leaders on an international court over murder as a crime against humanity? Like you have to be joking, if someone told me this is a birdsite shitpost I wouldn't even doubt it.
But sure take it seriously then IMO the fact they can't do this without doing both sides is already another clear defeat for Palestine. The fact they're using straight up Israeli oct 7th propaganda allegations as a basis to condemn Hamas is yet another defeat.
I don't see any reason to cheer this. So what if you magically arrest Benny over there? Both siding the genocide is a very bleak long term prospect, if you had any hopes for western institutions this is a red flag, not that people here need it but still.
Maybe my initial impression will age like milk and 1 month from now the entire Israeli leadership is in jail and Palestinians are all cheering. Technically its possible but come on now lol.
Let us today be clear on one core issue: if we do not demonstrate our willingness to apply the law equally, if it is seen as being applied selectively, we will be creating the conditions for its collapse. In doing so, we will be loosening the remaining bonds that hold us together, the stabilising connections between all communities and individuals, the safety net to which all victims look in times of suffering. This is the true risk we face in this moment.
How much of a cockroach you must be to write this in 2024. This is the greatest election challenge of our time lol
If I wasn't already a communist this would be radicalizing me so much. This is peak liberalism.
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