Real Life was one of the few sources of interesting technological critiques and commentary besides Logic, sucks to lose it. Anybody have favorite essays to share? I quite like all of Lauren Collee's pieces, in particular:
Gee, I wonder why people are downvoting an obvious fascist stooge.
[1]
> Twenty-nine police officers in the western German state of North-Rhine Westphalia have been temporarily suspended after their unit was found to have shared extreme rightwing content on a WhatsApp group.
> Images shared by the officers, most of whom are members of a unit in the town of Mülheim an der Ruhr, reportedly depicted Adolf Hitler, the swastika flag, a collage of a refugee inside a gas chamber and the shooting of a young black person.
[2]
> A far-right extremist has confessed to murdering a pro-refugee German politician who was found dead outside his house on 2 June having been shot in the head.
[3]
> A gunman killed nine people in two apparently racially motivated shootings at shisha bars in the German town of Hanau, police said. The suspect then killed himself, according to officers, after also killing his mother at his home.
> [...]
> The Bild newspaper said the gunman had expressed extreme rightwing views in a letter of confession he left behind. A video in which he explained his motives is believed to be part of the investigation.
This particular refrain is one that's worth examining from the lens you're dismissing. Under what frame is "war less common" in Europe (or even "East Europe")? An extremely narrow one at best, IMO. A large proportion of pro-Ukrainian propaganda also outright contradicts this notion by referencing historical acts of Russian aggression.
> It is not uncommon for Ukrainians to refer to African-Americans as “[N-Word]”. Volunteers of color may be called 'a monkey' or may see children’s games with Blackface. Being aware of the history of dehumanization for people of African descent may help inform where this comes from; it does not justify it. It will be at your discretion to determine the intent.
[2]
> "Problems arise when young foreigners are prioritised over women and children of Ukrainian citizenship who are trying to get on the same trains."
> "Maybe we will put all foreigners in some other place so they won’t be visible and there won’t be conflict with Ukrainians trying to flee in the same direction. This is something that has to be taken care of and we will be doing it."
[3]
> Ukrainian servicemen help evacuate civilians near Irpin, #Ukraine. Three civilians were killed as Russian mortar rounds landed, striking a route used by civilians fleeing southeast toward #Kyiv.
> If you assume that a bad bear market is a 40% drawdown, and since 2009 the S&P 500 has gained 20% on a good year, you only need just 2 good years or a mixture of some good and mediocre years to offset a bear market.
This is one of the most basic mathematical errors you can make...
> In 1970, the United States had orchestrated a coup to oust Prince Sihanouk, and installed Lon Nol, a general who was supposed to be Cambodia’s Suharto. His forces trained in Bandung, not far from the site of Sukarno’s 1955 Afro-Asian Conference. During Lon Nol’s rule the United States continued to bomb the country indiscriminately, killing hundreds of thousands of people, mostly peasants, in a futile attempt to stop Vietnamese communists from moving through the countryside. The United States dropped three times the tonnage on Cambodia that fell on Japan during World War II, atom bombs included.
> [...]
> The disregard for life was staggering, and well understood in Southeast Asia. Traumatized refugees flooded Cambodia’s cities. After the US-backed coup that deposed him, the ousted prince, Sihanouk, published a book of memoirs titled My War with the CIA. “We refused to become US puppets, or join in the anti-communist crusade,” he wrote. “That was our crime.” He threw his support behind the small, shadowy, and strange group of Marxists he had repressed while in power. The Khmer Rouge, as he called them in the old colonial language, were the only ones fighting against Lon Nol and the US Army, which was wiping out entire swathes of the population.
Pol Pot was convinced of the necessity of armed struggle by the annihilation of the PKI in Indonesia. There ~1 million people were killed with the encouragement of the US and Britain, who supplied arms, kill lists, and promises of economic development.
[2]
> In a “historical lessons” document composed in early 1977, Pol Pot looked back on the 1966 period as follows: “If our analysis had failed, we would have been in greater danger than [were the communists] in Indonesia. But our analysis was victorious, because our analysis was agreed upon, because most of our cadres were in life-and-death contradiction with the enemy; the enemy sought to exterminate them constantly.”
After Vietnam invaded Cambodia and put a stop to the Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields:
[3]
> The United States chose to recognize the remnants of the Khmer Rouge at the United Nations, keeping its tiny regime alive, and refusing to recognize the Vietnamese-allied government. This would last for years. Partly, it was a way to appease Carter’s new ally in Beijing. But Benny knew that it was something else too. “They hated Vietnam too much,” Benny said. “They couldn’t forgive them for winning the war.”
[4]
> And to insure that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge would fight the Vietnamese occupiers, the Carter Administration helped arrange continued Chinese aid.
> "I encourage the Chinese to support Pol Pot," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser at the time. "The question was how to help the Cambodian people. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could."
> At the United Nations, the United States, along with most countries of Europe and Asia, gave the Cambodia seat to the Khmer Rouge Government by itself and, after 1983, in coalition with other anti-Vietnamese Cambodian groups.
> All attempts even to describe the Khmer Rouge regime as genocidal were rejected by the United States as counterproductive to finding peace. Only in 1989, with the beginning of the Paris peace process, was the word genocide spoken in reference to a regime responsible for the deaths of more than a million people.
[1][2][3] - The Jakarta Method, chapters 2, 4, and 10 (also contains more detailed sources)
> by posting supporting "evidence" for an article written by a guy with a fascist agenda.
I compare sources with opposing biases because I believe it helps to parse out what's true and what's not. Bellingcat is absolutely in opposition to the Gray Zone line, I suggest contrasting their reporting on Syria for proof of this. That both of these sources are agreeing on these claims suggests there is some truth there. If you think that ignoring it is simply the most convenient thing for now, that's at least a more honest opinion than blanket denial and willful ignorance of independently verifiable facts. The latter is far more helpful to fascism than whatever you think you're accusing me of.
Sure. Do you agree that there are fascist elements in Ukraine's government that should dealt with (by the Ukrainians, to be clear)? If you don't, which aspects of my examples do you contest?
Nope! I think Putin only cares about having a buffer zone from NATO, much like Afghanistan is (or was intended to be) for the US against China. I'm simply providing examples to your question upthread:
> Are they holding political office or have strong influence on the politics of Ukraine?
All 3 examples hold political office and 2 are upper-level administrative positions.
here's an article [1] from Bellingcat (who are certainly quite different from RT and Gray Zone in terms of bias):
> In the most high-profile, but far from isolated, incident showing how Ukraine’s far-right movement is being mainstreamed by government leaders, Ukrainian Prime Minister Honcharuk and the Minister of Veterans Affairs Oksana Koliada appeared at an October 2019 event organized by a far-right figure on trial for murder. The event, called “Veterans Strong”, was headlined by the neo-Nazi band Sokyra Peruna, well known for its white supremacist, Holocaust-denying, and anti-Semitic lyrics.
> Some of their greatest hits include "Six Million Words of Lies"... [2]
Mayor of Konotop Artem Semenikhin was interviewed on PBS [3] this past week, and had a portrait of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera [4] hanging in the background.