Random Rant Thread

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I always found shit like blaming Marylin Manson for Columbine shooting utterly mindless and offensive, but let me confess now that I'm beginning to think that the Call of Duty culture installed very, very wrong ideas about war in (younger) people's minds.

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Look, Zelensky is calling for the no-fly zone and EU membership while fully knowing his country won't get either of them. He knows that, his ministers know that, his fucking dog knows that. But he has to do it because that's his duty.

Even in the middle of a large-scale invasion, into their own country, they are calmer than you fucking Call of Duty dweebs on the internet.

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Mariupol is the stronghold of neo-nazi Azov battalion. It's unfortunate for the civilians in and around the city, but the battles over there will probably be a lot more intense than anywhere else, because even the squeamish low-morale Russian soldiers would be super-motivated to fight and kill the Azov men. It's going to be a grudge battle.

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Bumping into Hillary Clinton's giddy face on a huge TV screen all of a sudden, in times like this, gives me a mild heart attack.

And of course she says truly inane things about what's going on, but in this thread I've repeatedly established how much of an absolute foreign policy idiot she is, and how thoroughly her brain has been fried by all the Russiagate crap, so the less said about her comments, the better.

Um, OK, of course she talked about funding and arming the Afghan "insurgency" and how successful it was against the Soviets, and stopped right there. Those "insurgents" would literally attack the US - successfully! - 10 years later, but that's such a minor detail that I'm just being Mr. Pedantic here, I guess.

And no, there was more. She kept going, on that stupid lane.

This is really horrible, though. People like her seem to think they are somehow vindicated now. It's frightening to let such people dictate our foreign policies. You should remember that even with truly dangerous shit like this Russian invasion happening, we've been rather lucky so far considering what kind of people have been running the show for decades.

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Call me Mr. Whataboutism, but I wish that people had even a tenth of the outrage that they express toward Russia now toward the Saudi, and its biggest enabler USA, on the war in Yemen. Just a tenth. I'm not asking for much.

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One definition of galaxy brain is to think that you can occupy and govern Ukraine when Ukrainians themselves haven't been able to do the latter for 30 years.

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Everyone in the media using such words as "unthinkable" and "unprecedented" to describe what's going on needs to shove them up their own fucking ass. And it's those same fucking people that we have to rely on with regard to many other horrendous wars in the Middle East, Caucasus and Africa. Our world is in this sorry state partially because those people in the media have no ethical principle whatsoever.

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What the fuck does "unthinkable" even mean? These things are VERY thinkable, and no one is above anyone else. And "unprecedented" is basically a lie unless you want to go full pedantic and technical.

I'm just sick of those people. Sick of them.

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Agreed. Let's do this for all the super-wealthy in the world so that we can tax them properly.

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I have two gigantic chips on my shoulder, and one is about Guiliani, and the other about this idiot.

Again, I'm still waiting for apologies from a lot of people about these two, America's Mayor and The Future Of The GOP.

I told them centuries ago that these men were first-class morons, but they wouldn't listen.

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A very, very high percentage of American Ashkenazi Jews have roots in Ukraine, and needless to say they don't exactly pine for the old home. There were some very simple reasons for why their ancestors left the place after all, such as, you know, survival. Ukraine is THE Cossack Land, you know. One of the worst places for Jews.

And most of them hadn't even heard of Ukrainian president Zelensky until the invasion, but the minute that they learned that he's a Jewish comedian turned president, well, I can only imagine the mind-bending phase that they had to go through in order to digest that. It's not just the "Jewish" part but the "comedian" part is even more important, and so is the "Ukraine" part. I mean, he's a son of highly-educated Jewish parents - his father was a chief professor in cybernetics and computer engineering - who would take up acting and comedy and become successful in the show business. It's such a Jewish-American story, but he's not American. He's Ukrainian, whose ancestors stayed in Ukraine and persevered through all the mayhems in the 19-20th century.

I'd think it's just impossible for the average Jewish American not to cheer for the man, even though the emotions that they have as they cheer for him are very, very complicated to say the least. It's partly familiarity, perhaps faux-familarity, partly strong admiration, and still partly bitter feelings about Ukraine.

I made fun of Zelensky many times, but a Ukrainian guy told me that he could be a good crisis president because of his natural talent as a PR guy, particularly toward the West. We didn't exactly envisage *this* kind of a crisis, but I guess he was right.

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Well, there's a strong possibility that many of these guys are totally ideologically fucked up, bending hard and far toward the right side, but *probably* decent soldiers. I wouldn't vouch for them, but these Japanese outcast types, they still have the pre-1945 Japanese genes, and can fight.

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Anne Applebaum predictably going full retard, but what's new.

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I made fun of the UK's (= the City's) feather-touch SeVErE sANcTiONs, but don't get it wrong: You add all up, the US/EU/Japanese/etc. sanctions, and it's going to absolutely devastate the Russian state. It's quite brutal.

You might think the gas and oil revenues are still flowing in, but it's not going to last long. They will get US dollars for the gas and oil, and then what? They won't be able to spend any of that. And if they have to touch the gold and yuan reserves, well, that will mean the Russian state is going bankrupt sooner or later.

We are not dropping physical bombs on the Russian troops, but the economic sanctions are absolutely brutal bombs.

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Utterly predictably, Mariupol is turning into hell.

The Russian media have kept demonizing the Azov battalion as Nazis for years now. I mean, I can't really say that they don't deserve to be demonized, but in any event no Russian soldiers would be squeamish about killing them. Unfortunately they will be less squeamish about the "collateral damage" on civilians than usual too when it comes to fighting Azov.