Drinking and looking at dead people in Bucha. Debating pulling enough Ethereum to buy a fucking Javelin missile. "If you ever wondered what you would have done during the holocaust, it's what you're doing now."
LINEAGE BY GRANDPARENT:
- slaver
- slaver
- slaver
- Belarusian Jew
No Belarusian Jews left. They were all murdered by the Tsars and Hitler. From over half the population to 20,000 in 80 years.
My novel is never going to be published. It treats Russian intelligence kindly. I'm ashamed.
Starstreaks are fucking metal, BTW. Stage 1 gets it out where it don't burn your face off, Stage 2 gets it to Mach 4, then it paints a fuckin' rectangular laser grid, then three nasty little tungsten carbide penetrators that half-spin guide themselves into the center of that laser grid, then when they hit the fuse waits just long enough to go through the fuselage and then it explodes and scatters tungsten carbide flechettes.
That was an MI-28. You gotta understand - as a little boy of the 80s? That fuckin' helicopter was goddamn doomsday. Fuckin' "Soviet Military Power" to the nth degree.
There were 128 of those fukkas. 127 now, or less. Speaking as a Cold War aficionado it's been fucking humbling seeing just what abject pieces of shit the whole of the Warsaw Pact armory turned out to be. Pretty fuckin' glad I didn't buy that T-72 (not that the wife would have let me).
And all that was just melancholy until the cameras showed up.
Fucking monsters.
I mean yeah you can get little kids to do all sorts of horrific shit. Just take a look at Abu Graib (wherever you are, rd95, linking to news photographs isn't trolling). But I mean holy shit.
I don't know how deep this goes. How ugly this becomes. What happens next.
Some of us are reading Thomas Rid's Active Measures. Which is basically the official KGB term for "trolling." "AIDS was invented at Ft. Detrick" "NSA is spying on Angela Merkel" shit like that. Rid makes the point that the CIA decided in the '50s that disinformation eroded their credibility while the KGB gave no fux. If you don't live in a free society who cares.
Did you know that the biggest CIA disinformation campaign was called "QR Plum?" And that it was a million dollars a year to support Ukrainian independence, going back to the '60s?
There's a very real part of me that firmly believes that after the 2016 election, the CIA decided Putin was going down. That Ukraine was absolutely going to be where it was going to happen. And that leveraging the classic "Soviet" tendency to avoid reporting bad news could quagmire Russia into ignominy.
But there's a part of me that knows Putin would be entirely happy being Kim Jong Un.
I've never hated Russians before. I grew up thinking I was part Russian (I blocked my mother earlier this week; her revisionist gaslighting views on the family history notwithstanding, when I wouldn't accept her apology for fucking me over she decided to pay me instead but that's another story).
Saw a picture of a dead guy face down with a bag of potatoes.
Time for dinner.
Hug your loved ones.
Definitely don't need the "during Putin" qualifier here. One stat that should be more widely known is that during the years of the Marshall Plan, the US poured about the same amount of money into its allies as the USSR took from its own allies. While the US was busy financing factories in the Rhineland, Stalin had his people literally dismantling and transporting industrial infrastructure back to Mother Russia. Both strategies were ultimately defensive, but fuckin hell if you wouldn't rather be on the side of the government who thinks that building shit to prevent another apocalyptic war is better than breaking shit to prevent another apocalyptic war. I recently read Journey into the Land of the Zeks, and oh boy if you want a depressing read that really, really countermands this essayist's interpretation of WWII as Russia "literally saving the world", then I highly recommend it. I do not recommend it if you want something to lift your spirits. I'm no fan of Reagan, but Evil Empire was and remains as apt a description of the USSR (and it's current iteration) as there ever was. I gave some money to Ukraine via the link that necroptosis provided. And I've made it clear to my friend in Congress that I won't give her a red cent this year if she votes in any way to curb support to Ukraine. But beyond those immeasurably small contributions, I'm not sure what the fuck else to do. I feel like we've done some decent things as a country, but have been really lacking elsewhere (e.g. 100,000 refugees? we can do better). I know we're all afraid of Russian nukes, but aren't they afraid of ours? Dollars-to-donuts that despite the nominal weapon counts, the US has vast nuclear superiority to Russia, and I'm certain Vlad is aware of that fact.During Putin’s rule, Russia has offered nothing to European countries to make NATO membership unattractive for them.
I don't want a depressing read, although i definitely gravitate toward them. Fortunately for me that's not an audiobook so I'm saved. I've been throwing money at Aid for Ukraine because they're local. I discussed my Javelin missile idea with a buddy who pointed out that not only does the government have more liquidity for offensive weaponry, they also rarely pay rack rate. The largest recipient of Marshall Plan money was the United Kingdom (receiving about 50% of the total), but the enormous cost that Britain incurred through the "Lend-Lease" scheme was not fully re-paid to the US until 2006. The next highest contributions went to France (8%) and West Germany (12%). Some eighteen European countries received Plan benefits. Although offered participation, the Soviet Union refused Plan benefits, and also blocked benefits to Eastern Bloc countries, such as Romania and Poland.
Fucking hell man, there hasn't been a day gone by where I haven't thought about accepting the offer to fight. Volunteering was able to scratch the itch.. but this is just something else. Fuck."If you ever wondered what you would have done during the holocaust, it's what you're doing now."
The discussion I had with my wife was "nobody wants your 47-year-old never-trained hasn't-fired-a-gun-in-25-years ass out there where everyone else has to worry about you." on the one hand I really worry as to just how horrible things are going to get in Russia now. On the other hand I really want it and that part isn't useful, human or good.
There's a lot not being said about the IL and one of those is that you most likely would have never been allowed into country in the first place. For the best, that is not a place you want to be. At all. Should I go it will not be with the IL. I hope that things getting worse in Russia will lead to changes. It may be a misplaced hope and we do truly see a NK equivalent, but in the meantime it gives me an excuse for having the same terrible thoughts as you.