Adam will probably cover this later with far more insight and geopolitical acumen than I can summon, but Putin gave a speech this morning to commemorate the bogus referenda in the Ukrainian territories Russia occupies (for the moment), and I was reading commentary on it from Max Seddon, Moscow bureau chief for FT, on Twitter. The tweets that summarize the speech start here.
In one of the earlier threads, folks who were paying attention before I did noted the homophobic, transphobic, macho nonsense in the speech, and there was plenty of that:
Russian President Putin:
– We're witnessing sheer satanism in West
– Do we want our children to be offered operations on sex changes? It's unacceptable!
– Our future is different. We're fighting for a great, historic Russia pic.twitter.com/BzkDAuRLbl— TRT World Now (@TRTWorldNow) September 30, 2022
Putin may have lifted whole sections of the speech from a Tucker Carlson episode earlier this week:
After suggesting the US blew up the pipelines, Tucker starts listing possible options for the Russian retaliation pic.twitter.com/XvmHolSSg4
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 28, 2022
Seddon and others who are far more informed than I on Russia seem to be viewing this speech as a major escalation. Seddon said:
I’ve watched a lot of Putin speeches over the last 10-15 years and this is the most anti-US one by a really long way.
If I were a western policymaker wondering if he’d really use nuclear weapons – and he hasn’t even got to them yet – I’d be very concerned…
That was a truly stunning speech – one clearly aimed at sending fear into the hearts of US, UK, and European leaders.
Seddon also quoted Alexander Dugin:
“This is a fundamental declaration of war against the modern west and modern world in general. This is a manifesto of Tradition. I can’t imagine how profound the consequences are. It was an eschatological, religious speech.”
On the other hand, Putin sounds like a big bully who’s trying to save face while begging the smaller kid to stop kicking him in the slats here:
Putin calls on Ukraine to stop fighting and negotiate an end to the war with Russia. But these territories are off limits.
"We will defend our lands with all the means at our disposal and do everything to protect our people. This is our great liberating mission." pic.twitter.com/ZrHKZpIslV
— max seddon (@maxseddon) September 30, 2022
Ukraine exposed Russia as a paper tiger, and Putin is in a desperate situation, so I’m not sure what to make of it all. I also don’t know how serious a threat influencers here who have thrown in their lot with Russia’s dictator are. It’s unsettling to say the least.
Open thread.
Winnable House Races in Purple Districts (OH-13)
Kent
Not mentioned is the fact that this morning Ukraine formally requested admission to NATO.
That seems like a significant wild-card. NATO has rules about admissions to NATO by countries with territorial disputes. But if Russia is doing illegal annexations and threatening nuclear strikes I think we are past the normal way of doing things. Rules can be broken or suspended in egregious circumstances.
Thinking about an ending to this war. Seems to me the likely scenario is that we will eventually settle into a cold truce of some sort where Russia probably still occupies part of Ukraine and then it will just sit there until Putin is gone and the Russian government changes and wants to come to some other alternative settlement in order to rejoin the international economic order. It took decades for the Berlin wall to fall and eastern Europe to rejoin the international order. It might take similar lengths of time here too.
StringOnAStick
His escalation is definitely concerning, though escalation is what always happens with Putin so it seems like all roads go to the same place
OT to answer Catclub’s question since I haven’t caught up with her after she asked it: I have a close friend who had the procedure you asked about for his long term, chronic elbow pain and is very pleased with the results.
Also:DIAF and FOAW* Putin!
*(fall out a window, preferably while also on fire).
Baud
Not even Bush thought to blame trans people for invading Iraq.
Betty Cracker
@Kent: Wouldn’t that require the cooperation of Orbán and Erdoğan, who seem fascism-curious?
zhena gogolia
Tucker is a traitor.
Villago Delenda Est
“Satanism” is a shout out to that vile motherfucker Patriarch Kirill.
zhena gogolia
trollhattan
@Kent: Article 5 waits in the wings.
I’ve read statements by NATO members that use of nukes on non-member Ukraine would be considered attacking NATO itself, but without context so I’m left guessing that radioactive fallout would necessarily cross borders into NATO lands, constituting an attack.
But with all that, I cannot envision a NATO nuclear retaliation–conventional warfare in defense of Ukraine, very likely, which would put the very hot ball back in Putin’s court on whether to further escalate.
All this is very disquieting.
trollhattan
@StringOnAStick: A demon defenestration demonstration.
StringOnAStick
@Betty Cracker: Is there evidence that Orban and Erdogan are as hot to acquire Ukrainian territory as Putin is? I hate to say it, but at this point it seems like the whole world is needing to rely on China to bring Russia to heel. That’s a pretty tricky position to be in, not even considering if it could work.
Life lately is a mix of enjoying a gorgeous fall while happily working on transforming a landscape into xeriscaping to plan for the drier now and future, and occasionally realizing all humans could be dead within 2 weeks after Putin destroys the world. It’s more than just unnerving,, I feel like I’m barely hanging on mentally.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: A lot of folks use that word in a hyperbolic way, but Carlson is sidling right up to the line if not crossing it. There’s a media watcher on Twitter who monitors state TV in Russia, and according to her, regime mouthpieces are always citing Carlson since he’s basically saying the same shit they are. I’m all for the First Amendment, but it’s not a suicide pact. At some point, a powerful person may need to have a word with Mr. Murdoch.
randy khan
The homophobia and transphobia are not new at all, and really neither is the schtick about tradition. Putin long has been invested in the idea that the West is awful and decadent and that Russia is on the true path. So I don’t really find that part of the speech particularly surprising or remarkable.
StringOnAStick
@Betty Cracker: agreed. Tucker needs to be reined in, hard.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: He’s right — it’s a multinational authoritarian movement with tentacles everywhere, including here. There’s a great guest essay in the NYT about the situation on the ground in Brazil. Here’s a gift link for anyone who wants to read it.
@StringOnAStick: I hear you.
Mike in NC
Seems like Putin is a whiny crybaby just like his greatest admirer at Mar-A-Lago. F ’em both.
Will
There was nothing new about anything Putin said, so the bedwetters that are evidently experts are way behind. He’s been hammering this USA/Europe is the land of satan and sex changes since before the pandemic. The man likes to bring a lot of christian orthodox language and imagery in his speeches and stage setups. This whole “Tradition” against liberal culture and that Russia is standing against it has become so common.
Jay
@Kent:
Step 1 is that a nation wishing to join NATO, has to formally request for join NATO. What follows next is a 7-15 year process of aligning many factors of their military and society to NATO standards, finally, when all tests are passed, a vote is taken.
NAFO is much easier to join and NAFO Expansion cannot be stopped.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: Julia Davis.
zhena gogolia
@Will: Yeah, I don’t see the rhetoric as any kind of major escalation. But his cavalier reference to Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not reassuring.
LeftCoastYankee
Putin sounds more “scatological” than “eschatological”.
Tony G
Russia is a paper tiger, but a paper tiger with nukes. I don’t think that Putin is self-destructive enough to use those nukes, but who knows?
Chacal Charles Calthrop
Just read Alexei Navalny’s editorial in the WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/alexei-navalny-parliamentary-republic-russia-ukraine
(paywalled unfortunately)
He pegs Russia’s agression to being inherent to its authoritarian form of government: “Giving plenty of power to a good guy seemed logical at the time [fall of the Soviet Union]. Yet the inevitable soon happened: The good guy went bad.”
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw that Russia and America would “each one of them….hold in its hands one day the destinies of half the world.” I always figured that prediction was fulfilled by the Cold War. However, now I’m starting to wonder if it’s still to come.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
What a pathetic excuse for a human. God forgive me, but I will be relieved when that man has shuffled off the mortal coil.
Some lovely souls decided to decorate the russian consulate in Manhattan. Kudos, friends.
Betty Cracker
General note: I don’t think any of the people quoted in the OP are surprised by Putin introducing homophobic, transphobic, etc., themes in his speech, and if it appears that way, it’s probably my fault because I used excerpts for brevity.
Also, breaking from CNN: Biden says the Nord Stream leaks are “a deliberate act of sabotage” accuses Russia of “pumping out disinformation and lies.” He didn’t directly accuse them of sabotaging the lines themselves but said the U.S. didn’t do it.
trollhattan
@Tony G: Yep. As “Far Side” always reminded us, a fat, lazy zoo tiger (et al) is still a tiger, fitted with tiger teeth and claws and the knowledge of how to use them.
Boy howdy, I can’t wait for Iran to get them.
Calouste
Latest theory about the Nordstream explosions is that they were caused by explosives being placed on the inside by service robots. That should be fairly easy to prove or disprove once they get to look at the holes next week after all the gas has leaked out.
I’m not Russian to conclusions, but if it’s true the culprit should be pretty obvious, but it also means other underwater infrastructure might be safer than we thought.
zhena gogolia
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: Putin was never a good guy.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker: Before the February invasion Russia was busy rounding up antiwar protestors. I was baffled by their description as “fascist gay and lesbian Trotskytes.” Guess it’s SOP to dump century-old grievances on the table and see how they roll. Trotskyites?!?
Keith P.
That gave me a bit of a chuckle
trollhattan
IC what you did dere.
livewyre
I don’t see any leverage in letting this kind of rhetoric scare us, except maybe in his favor. His threats are empty. What he does, he doesn’t threaten first.
That’s why I’m convinced that the appropriate response is to keep on as we’ve been and follow Ukraine’s example. They are teaching us what rule of law means – and what it means to stand up for it, with no exceptions for crisis or panic and no suspension of rights. It means something for law to beat force on a level field.
What it means is that law is actually better at doing what we’re after. It means that giving in to fear – just this once – doesn’t work. Capitulation and overreaction fail both functionally and ethically. We’re actually better off being consistent. This is our lesson, if we can learn it.
Baud
@livewyre:
👍
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@zhena gogolia: in the actual editorial Navalny is talking about Yeltsin. Here’s the full quote:
“Russia had its last chance of this kind after the end of the U.S.S.R., but both the democratic public inside the country and Western leaders at the time made the monstrous mistake of agreeing to the model — proposed by Boris Yeltsin’s team — of a presidential republic with enormous powers for the leader. Giving plenty of power to a good guy seemed logical at the time. Yet the inevitable soon happened: The good guy went bad. To begin with, he started a war (the Chechen war) himself, and then, without normal elections and fair procedures, he handed over power to the cynical and corrupt Soviet imperialists led by Putin.”
WaterGirl
President Biden spoke earlier about the ongoing federal efforts to respond to the damage from Ian.
At the end, he spoke a little bit about Putin’s bluster, and Biden really downplayed it and basically said he wasn’t worried.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tony G: Not that I want to find out, but I wonder if Russia’s nukes are even functional these days. The condition of the rest of their military leads me to doubt it.
zhena gogolia
@livewyre: This is my feeling. But I’m a wuss, so I can’t seem to stop worrying anyway!
zhena gogolia
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: Yeah, Yeltsin was never a good guy either.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: Good point. Someone here (I think) said that’s the inevitable result of such rampant corruption — after everyone takes a cut, the end product is shit. That certainly seems to describe their military operation.
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: If 1% of them work, that’s still enough to destroy us.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: It’s not a meteor, but it’ll do.
Josie
@zhena gogolia:
Navalny didn’t mean Putin when he wrote about “the good guy.” He meant Yeltsin.
ETA: Once again, too slow.
Jay
zhena gogolia
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
Reading it now, it’s a good piece so far. Money quote:
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: The question then becomes in what way did they go bad…. Can they launch? Will they function like a dirty bomb? Will they blow up in place? Is there nothing left but a shell. If so, where are the innards? So that whole thing doesn’t necessarily alleviate worries; it just rearranges them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Like I said, I don’t want to find out. We need to presume they work.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia: Well, I don’t see why he thinks that a parliamentary system would work any better than the presidential one did.
The turning point in my opinion was when Putin removed regional autonomy for electing governors. It was governors of provinces (like Nemtsov in Nizhny-Novgorod) who were the growing forces of true democratic thought. And he crushed it.
Rabble Arouser
@Jay: There are Fellas everywhere!
Old Man Shadow
The peace deal is this: Russia withdraws its forces to its territory and respects the sovereignty of Ukraine and its land.
Not one acre to Putin.
PJ
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: Putin was never a good guy (neither was Yeltsin, but that’s another story).
The way the war is going, the Russian Federation may not exist in a few years.
HumboldtBlue
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
Try this link.
livewyre
@zhena gogolia: Intimidation has always been one of his strengths. It would be a lie if I claimed not to be worrying too. But the difference now is that it’s not working in the places where it’s supposed to. It’s buckling under its own rot. It revealed an opening.
This time the ones in his sights are standing up for consistent rules, against the very notion that he can get what he’s after by threat and ruin – and they’re winning. We’re winning. The way that preserves us is winning. That’s what balances the worry for me.
MattF
Saw a thread that made two important points: 1) ‘Tactical’ nukes are not particularly effective militarily and 2) Consequently, the effect of Putin’s threat is more psychological than military. I’m no expert, and I’ve always thought that doomsday theorizing was 99.99% hot air, but I do think that Putin’s training and temperament makes him place the major emphasis on psychology.
ETA: Also, I thought the Navalny piece was pretty good— but how, exactly are you going to make small-d democrats out of Russiams?.
zhena gogolia
@livewyre: The sacrifices Ukrainians are making are unbearable.
MomSense
There is a social media campaign that uses bizarre account names to push tankie messaging that is so offensive. I only know about it because kids I know who went to school with my kids will periodically share tweets and memes (usually on. Instagram stories). The one that really set me off was posted by a young woman who is a dj in LA and also works for indie bands when they are on tours. She was a Bernie supporter then started posting socialist memes until she went full tankie.
The most recent one said Biden announces $13 billion recovery package for U.S. Citizens affected by Hurricane Ian. Nah, just kidding that money is going to Azov NAZIs in Ukraine. I reported the Twitter account but unfortunately read the comments and other related tweets. My god. It’s horrifying. What can we do about this. I’ve know this person for 15+ years.
Cameron
@Baud: I think he meant a Special Military Operation on sex changes, but I’m not sure.
Miss Bianca
@Jay: This cracks me up.
ETA: If only I had the dedication and social media chops to be a successful shitposter! ; )
cintibud
I also have the impression that it’s somewhat more difficult for a Russian leader to launch nukes than a US president. I can’t say where I heard that though, so I might be totally off but I thought that more than one person needed to sign off on a launch order, that Vlad couldn’t simply push the red button. Also there is reason to think that such an order might not be conveyed or followed by underlings who know a launch would result in a disastrous retaliation.
This is in addition to the already mentioned question on how the missiles have been serviced. It might be like the video of the anti-aircraft missile that ended up hitting the camera recording the launch.
Don’t really want to count on any of the above however!
hueyplong
Presumably the IC is looking pretty closely at Axis Tucker. Here’s hoping many good things come from that investigation/surveillance.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: A Rupert defenestration party?
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: Any “fizzle” short of a full detonation could be incredibly messy and dangerous at the receiving end, but is negligible compared to the warhead working properly. I wouldn’t be worried about those, I’d be worried about the fact that there’s such massive overkill in a full-scale exchange that really not many of them need to work.
It’s not as bad as it would have been back in 1983; thanks to various mutual disarmament efforts, they’ve actually only got fewer than 2,000 missiles ready to launch. If only a few dozen of those actually went off, some of us would live. But it’d still smash us pretty hard.
Cameron
@Keith P.: Anglo-Saxons? Everybody knows it was those damn Celts.
catclub
@StringOnAStick: Thanks! good to hear!
MomSense
@MattF:
The problem is that Putin is not necessarily rational. He’s been constructing an authoritarian regime where he is inseparable from the nation state which means that the military failures are a massive assault on his megalomania. He can’t let this stand. Not sure how we deal with it except his removal. Even then it’s hard to predict how those around him and Russian citizens will respond. I fear too many have bought into his bullshit.
Jay
@MomSense:
report a tankie to NAFO.
Keith P.
@Cameron: So, given the time frame, would the Russians be the Kievan Rus’?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MomSense: How are you feeling?
kalakal
@livewyre: Well said
Ruckus
@Tony G:
vlad supposedly has cancer. It may be somewhat/actually advanced. If it’s advanced he may not actually have a lot of time to bring about his vision of world domination by Russia, and vlad. And yes he’s about as far behind as he’s ever been so I’d guess that he’s not seeing a lot of time to get this done. His own are leaving him, hence the 10 mile long lines to get out. His army is fighting but few of the force seems to have a lot of fight left in them. And force is all he’s got, many (most?) of his own people seem to think he’s over. (That’s my estimation.) That doesn’t mean he can make a complete fucking mess of everything but to do that requires a functioning army and or major weapons of mass destruction. Is he crazy, stupid, deranged enough to pull the big switch? A lot depends upon the people around him. The world has made a lot of the people around him likely a lot less happy with their fates as their toys, freedoms, livelihoods, fortunes are at stake and it’s all due to vlad. He’d like the rest of the world to become his playthings and the rest of the world seemingly thinks that sucks donkey balls. This can likely go a few ways. 1st vlad pushes the button. That is likely the end of life as we all know it, but especially vlad’s life. 2nd is vlad says push the button but someone with a touch of sense pushes vlad’s button and a lot of things change, likely for the better. 3rd vlad dies, naturally or otherwise, and a lot of things change, likely for the better. 4th this shit goes on for a while and vlad loses. We then sort of start the process all over, does vlad retaliate, commit suicide, or get horizontally removed from power? If Russia wants to actually succeed as a country I see the only way is for vlad to be not in the picture. And right now, to me that seems like the best of all answers, no matter the question.
catclub
@Matt McIrvin:
Our hair will definitely be mussed.
Cameron
@Keith P.: The next step – weaponized archaeology.
MomSense
@Jay:
Ok – I found quite a swarm of them.
WaterGirl
@Jay: Can you explain NAFO to me? I haven’t been paying enough attention.
ByRookorbyCrook
Putin is desperate to trigger a stronger response from NATO. Ruzzia is about to lose their professional army in the coming weeks. Lyman is encircled and Kherson is supply starved on the wrong side of the Dnipro. There is no way to stop the massive loss of face Putin will endure unless he can turn himself into a martyr fighting for Mother Russia against the entirety of the Western World. I imagine Putin will escalate rapidly as it becomes more apparent that Ukraine is pushing the invaders back across the 2008 borders. I do not see there is a significant movement in the Oligarchs or political elite to oust Putin right now. They will let this play out and pick up the pieces after. At this point, I will be surprised if Putin does not attempt to drop a nuclear bomb on Ukraine. This is the offramp he has chosen. He has been defeated by Ukraine and will try to obfuscate that in the horror of a World War.
matt
@MomSense: Oh boy, hipster socialism.
HumboldtBlue
@WaterGirl:
Here ya go. NAFO
matt
A bunch of weird threats and dumb right wing talk won’t reverse the exposure of Russia as a ghetto country lacking the capabilities of a modern power.
Another Scott
In other news, … USNI.org:
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ishiyama
@MattF: Yes, blowing a great big hole in an enemy formation does no good without follow-up. And radiation sickness won’t kick in until long after the affected soldiers go kamikaze on the other side – with nothing to lose and death a certainty. Nukes are for mass acts of genocide, not tinkering with battle lines.
MomSense
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Terrible, absolutely terrible. I’ve been running high fevers and my throat feels like I gargled with broken glass and sand. It’s difficult to swallow and very painful. I’m coughing all the time, but it’s productive and doesn’t seem to be settling in my chest.
I was talking to my oldest about it and we can’t believe the people who aren’t taking this seriously. His choice of words is more colorful than mine – he was talking about the people raw dogging the COVID pandemic. I’m vaxxed and boosted and it’s hell. Facing this without is horrifying.
Baud
@MomSense:
Report her to NAFO?
Kent
Well yes. But the US carries a VERY big stick within NATO and if the US really wanted to bring in Ukraine I’m sure they could figure out how to incentivize those countries to voting yes. It is just like Congress. You buy their votes. What do the Turks and Hungarians want from the US or the EU? I’m sure we could figure that out.
Not saying that will happen. But it is how you would theoretically get those votes. In any event, Russia and Turkey are historic enemies. I’m not sure how much Turkey is going to side with Russia here.
trnc
Well, duh! Trans people were invented by Obama.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Man, it’s a slippery slope from Wilmer stanning to getting red-pilled, apparently.
Kent
If NATO observers are in Ukraine, NATO peacekeepers, or whatever, and they are taken out by a Nuclear strike that might trigger Article 5.
Tony G
@Ruckus: Unfortunately, you’re probably right. If Putin really is dying — and therefore has nothing to lose — then he might see no downside to gambling — even if it means pushing the “nuclear button”. The question is whether his subordinates — who presumably would have a lot to lose — would obey if he ordered a nuclear strike. Very dangerous times, obviously.
trollhattan
@Another Scott: Hazarding is a verb? I know “hazard a guess” but never “hazard a ship.”
Like the Iowa turret explosion, this one’s not going to be solved.
HumboldtBlue
@Cameron:
Why is everyone overlooking the most obvious suspects?
The Vikings.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MomSense: Ack. I’m sorry. Did you talk to your doc? Maybe they can prescribe the antiviral whose name escapes me
trollhattan
@Kent: Had not considered that one. Maybe so.
Gin & Tonic
Navalny should stay in his lane. That op-ed is just full of tendentious bullshit when he’s talking about not-russia.
While Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova have had a difficult path at times sine 1991, perhaps their persistent instability is due to the fact that russia is fucking invading them and illegally annexing their territory. And there are certainly Central Asian republics which are a damn sight better than russia, authoritarian as they may be. I don’t see Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan threatening anyone lately.
New Deal democrat
@livewyre: “ I don’t see any leverage in letting this kind of rhetoric scare us, except maybe in his favor….
“That’s why I’m convinced that the appropriate response is to keep on as we’ve been….”
Yes. Backing down at all only means that Russia learns to use this threat repeatedly in the future (as to. E.g., the Baltic States).
Simply making clear that we will continue to assist Ukraine as we have since February, and making no further mention of his threats, is the best course. That and using back channels to continually offer Putin off-ramps – which I hope we have been doing all along.
The Moar You Know
@cintibud: Russia won’t use a missile on Ukraine. They won’t have to. Just load a warhead up in a truck or boxcar and drive it down to Kyiv.
No satellite or radar trail.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
NAFO are an international collective of social media pile on shit posters who swarm in on Russian trolls, tankies, Russian Officials, and Kremlin KKKeyboard KKKomandos.
They either swarm in with such volume of nonsense that the Social Media account is useless, or so angers the poster that they flip out, violate the guidelines and get banned.
Kent
Yes, that is the normal peacetime or cold war procedure. But what you are describing is bureaucracy. During times of war and international crisis nations and bureaucrats have ways of shortcutting normal processes and procedures. They could make up something like granting Ukraine provisional status in NATO subject to final approval in 10 years or some such. If Russia is tossing nukes around Europe then I suggest all bets are off.
Lapassionara
@WaterGirl: thanks. Me too. And while the explaining is going on, what is a tankie?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cameron: You’ve got a lot of Gaul to say that.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah, that has a real “blame the victim” vibe to it.
Another Scott
@Kent:
Stoltenberg’s press conference today indicates that NATO is watching the situation carefully. Ukraine, like any nation, continues to have the right to apply for NATO membership. NATO is not a party to the war, but is supporting Ukraine and will continue to do so because VVP cannot succeed in changing borders by force. Any nuclear escalation would be catastrophic for Russia.
In short, nothing has yet changed with respect to NATO.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
They won’t risk that. If the truck is interdicted someplace in Ukraine because Ukraine has radiation detectors set up on major highways or checkpoints. Or because whatever Russian special forces officer driving the truck decides to divert the shipment and sell it to Ukraine for $10 million. The would risk having that warhead captured by Ukraine and mailed back to Moscow “return to sender”
HumboldtBlue
@Lapassionara:
Those assigned to serve in the armored corps, particularly in tanks, heavy armored vehicles. Cole was a tankie.
What eyeroller said.
@HumboldtBlue: In this context it refers to the kind of people who supported Russia sending tanks into Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Moar You Know: WTF? Do you think that rail and truck traffic between the countries is flowing smoothly?
Lapassionara
@MomSense: I tested positive on Sunday. Have been managing symptoms with Mucinex D and keeping track of my oxygen level with a pulseoximeter. Using the hot salt water gargle on my throat. Plus pain reliever when needed. Good luck!
Eyeroller
@HumboldtBlue: In this context it refers to the kind of people who supported Russia sending tanks into Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968.
Lapassionara
@HumboldtBlue: thank you.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: why is that good?
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue: No. Tankie
Jay
@The Moar You Know:
driving to Kyiv didn’t work so well for Russia the last time they tried it.
HumboldtBlue
@Eyeroller:
Added that, thanks.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: That sounds awful, and you are living on your own now, right? Are all the kids out of the house? Or is your mom still living with you? That would make things even more complicated.
Yikes, I’m so sorry.
The Moar You Know
@Omnes Omnibus: not at all. And I expect the Ukrainians are looking for exactly such a thing. But there’s a lot of land border there and they can’t keep an eye on all of it at once.
Just saying that Russia doesn’t need to rely on their shitty cameraman-seeking missiles to get a possibly working nuke to a target.
WaterGirl
@Jay: Thank you, that’s very helpful!
HumboldtBlue
Warblewarble
Say it loud TUCKER PUTIN.
Martin
The underlying question is what politics is Putin trying to achieve here. He’s already failed miserably at weakening NATO. I think the assertion that the US blew up Nordstream is quite a clear admission that Russia blew up Nordstream.
I suspect Putin’s ultimate political aim is very simple – not get pushed out of a 9th story window by some oligarchs security team. It’s simple self-preservation – and fuck everything else about Russia which he only cares about in order to keep the people on his side. I mean, that’s the cynical view on politics in general – that Democrats don’t *really* give a shit about any of their policy ideas, they’re just a means to get popular support so they can maintain power (same assertion we put on the GOP). That’s also a simple explanation for the uneven application of these policies – advocating for people of color while simultaneously not really allowing them to have meaningful leadership roles in the party and being willing to sell those interests out to donors.
So if we take that view with Putin, he needs a strong Russia, because that’s how authoritarians maintain their support. But the reality of his military is not strong. Maybe he can turn the tide with a million Walking Dead conscripts (reports are that Belarus has agreed to deploy 120,000 forces, but I don’t know how reliable that is – could be complete bullshit, but it doesn’t sound implausible if Russia is willing to make such a commitment of force themselves.) but if that doesn’t work, then he’s got a VERY narrow path. A nuclear exchange would be devastating for Russia, but it might keep him alive. In fact, it might be the only thing that keeps him alive. The end game for authoritarians is pretty consistent – death, sometimes by their own followers, for failing to achieve the dominant state they advocated for. But a nuclear exchange could serve as an excuse to stand down militarily and accept the status quo.
Not saying it’s not a sociopathic path, just saying that it might be a rational path to someone like Putin.
Baud
@HumboldtBlue:
I’m going to guess the charges are reporting on the death of Mahsa Amini.
The Moar You Know
@MomSense: Damn, I am sorry. My course of the plague did that with the throat for the first three or four days, then settled real nicely in my chest for two weeks. Also real weird bleeding/blood clot stuff. I did not expect that part.
It’s not the sickest I’ve ever been – that was a surgery gone very bad – but sick enough to not want to do it again. Vaxxed and boosted as you are. Suspect this would have not ended well if I had not been.
Martin
@HumboldtBlue: I always understood Cole to be a ‘tanker’. That was the term for the armored corp. Tankie is just the pejorative for left Stalinists.
H-Bob
@trollhattan: The “annexations” by Russia may be to give Russia an excuse for using nukes, as Russia will assert that Ukraine is attacking Russian territory, so the use of nukes is defensive.
Kent
The reason I frankly don’t think Russia will use nukes is because that would obliterate the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Which is basically a deal between nuclear and non-nuclear states in which the non-nuclear states promise no to develop nuclear weapons and the nuclear states promise never to use them on a non-nuclear state.
Russia benefits more from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty than any other nuclear nation. Because it has longer and more hostile borders than any other nation. And using nukes in Ukraine is telling every single Russian neighbor from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan to Estonia that they had absolutely better develop their own nuclear arsenal because that is the only way to deter Russian first use.
I can’t imagine that is a world that Russia wants to live in. With 5 more hostile neighbors developing their own nuclear weapons. And how many nuclear scientists live in former Soviet republics? A bunch I suspect. Many of them like Ukraine have their own robust civilian nuclear industries. Building simple nukes is not really that complicated if you have the uranium or plutonium. If North Korea can do it than so can any other Russian neighbor.
MomSense
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
I’ve witnessed a lot of them go from Sandernistas to tankies.
Steeplejack
@Lapassionara:
Tankie defined.
Another Scott
@trollhattan:
CRS report at the FAS.org (3 page .pdf) from March 29, 2022:
(Emphasis added.)
More at the link.
Cheers,
Scott.
The Moar You Know
@Kent: Ukraine got rid of their nuclear weapons. I guarantee you that every non-nuclear country in the world is drawing the correct conclusions about the wisdom of being non-nuclear at the moment.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kent: The invasion of Ukraine may have already convinced them that they have to have nuclear weapons.
JoyceH
@Omnes Omnibus:
Probably not. Here’s the issue, as best as I understand it. With a nuke, the fissile material sits surrounded by tritium gas. The tritium enhances the boom. Problem – tritium has a short half-life, like seven years. It decays into helium, which retards rather than enhances the boom. So you can’t just put your nukes in storage and forget about them, they need regular maintenance. Like every three or so years, a team needs to come by, siphon out the helium and refresh the tritium. And here’s the kicker. Tritium is WILDLY expensive. So much so that if you had a fire extinguisher filled with tritium, it would be worth more than a million dollars. Well, in a military where the brass gets rich skimming off the money that’s supposed to go to low value material like food rations, what are the odds that all those nukes still have all their necessary amount of tritium, and how many of them are just helium?
kalakal
@Cameron: Make your mind up, was it the Angles or was it the Saxons? None of this obfuscatory grouping of suspects
Feathers
Because the thread needs a funny dog video
C Stars
Putin’s source of power is fear. And his political operation has been pretty effective at weilding it in new and innovative ways. So of course he’s threatening using nukes. That doesn’t mean that he will (and even if he does, it won’t stop him from losing). He’s using a whole generation of Russia’s pride as cannon meat and now there’s a radioactive wind blowing over his country? Yeah, I don’t think the oligarchs will hang with that. We’ll see one way or the other. Anyway if the right is eager for a big juicy moral panic driven genocide, trans people are a bad target because there just aren’t that many of them
ETA Just to say that I am the parent of a trans person, I’m trying to be realistic here.
MomSense
@The Moar You Know:
I’m sorry you went through that. Fingers crossed I don’t get the bleeding/clotting issues.
Jay
@Martin:
I doubt Belarus will do anything more than they have done so far. “Elite” Units, like the 1st Guards Army, who’s normal role is to defend Moscow, have gotten mauled that they have been rebuilt with new fodder 3 times. 1 First Guards soldier quoted in a Meduzza article noted that only 20% of the First Guards survived their dash, the retreat from Kyiv.
Belarus is not known for the quality of their military and are probably well aware that sending them across is basically the same thing and kissing them goodbye.
In the meantime, by rumor rattling, trans shipping Russian supplies, and quartering in Russian mobliks, ties down a significant amount of Ukrainian Forces as a counter, along the border.
Martin
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: So, people on the left are just as susceptible to authoritarian following as people on the right – the difference is whether there is an authoritarian leader for those people to glom onto. The Democratic Party is very good at purging those folks in local/state races so they don’t reach the national level. Upside of rejecting folks like Andrew Yang who helicopter in to national races. Republicans are obviously now terrible at it (they used to be good).
So, I think a left-leaning authoritarian follower who might have glommed onto Bernie (I don’t think he’s an authoritarian, but he does speak in very absolutist terms like one) and get disillusioned at the lack of absolute commitment to the cause could quite easily glom onto a right-wing authoritarian. Essentially these people are terrified they’ll find themselves on the wrong side of a dictatorial regime and will sign onto any program that puts them on the right side, even if they are the express target of that movement. See Clarence Thomas targeting every 9th Amendment basis precedent other than the one that protects his marriage. That’s the trade – I’ll sell out everyone you want sold out, provided you protect me personally.
George
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
Maybe other people have made this point already, but there are good guys who are good, and then there are bad guys who play as if they are good guys until they can take off their masks to reveal that they really are bad guys.
Power corrupts, but absolute power just allows people to take off their masks and show us who they were all along.
kalakal
@The Moar You Know: I think they already got that message from watching North Korea.
C Stars
@MomSense:
@Lapassionara:
Ooh, I’m sorry you are both sick. It sounds yucky and I hope your symptoms resolve soon.
I had been thinking I’d put it off until closer to the winter holidays, but there’s a vaccine clinic in our community tomorrow and I think I’ll go get the bivalent booster now rather than later.
HumboldtBlue
@Martin:
I am catching up today, well behind on my trolling lingo.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
My mom is here and she has it too although very mild.
Martin
@Kent: I think you are aligning Putin’s interests too much with Russia’s. The last 7 months has been a great illustration of the degree to which Putin is willing to sell out Russia’s interests. In fact, that’s his entire history in Russia, just done more subtly.
What serves Putin is what matters, not what serves Russia. The upside to that distinction is that Putin doesn’t launch nukes himself. He orders others to do that, and their interests can be markedly different. As such, just like with Trump and the current federal judiciary, we’re reliant not on the system working, but on some member of the system stepping out of line and doing what’s right. That happens a LOT. But it also means a lot of dice rolls hoping one of them comes up 20, and there’s no guarantee one will come up 20.
MomSense
@Lapassionara:
Sending healing and good thoughts your way. My kids are teasing me because I always used to give them popsicles when they were sick so they keep asking me if I have plenty of popsicles. I do! My diet consists of mostly ice water and popsicles.
Another Scott
@Omnes Omnibus: Yup, we don’t really know.
Energy.gov – Maintaining the stockpile. They’re complex gadgets that have to work in under stressful conditions. Making sure they can still work takes a lot of effort and a lot of money. Can VVP’s russia still do that? Has it been doing that over the last 31+ years? (Recall that their last nuclear test explosion (24 October 1990) was before the end of the USSR.)
Trouble is, of course, we really don’t want to be in a situation where we find out whether they work or not…
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@Jay: Alternatively, Belarus may believe in Putin’s nuclear threat and decide that helping win a conventional war mitigates that threat.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Yeah, I read that in his comment and thought about that for you.
MomSense
Patron’s Instagram account posted a video called Angels inspired by the dog Crimea who was sitting on the rubble of the house where his humans lived and died. Tears.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjIaf65jd8D/?igshid=NzNkNDdiOGI=
jl
Well… OK… but from what I read Ukrainian forces are about to encircle Lyman, which apparently is a small but strategically important city in Donetsk, and maybe capture a Russian division in the process.
So fighting still goes on and Ukraine still threatens to beat the Russian forces. And there is nothing Putin, or the US, or NATO or anybody else but Ukraine can do about it in the short run. And India and China don’t want to be Putin’s buddies anymore. So, if Putin wants to blow the world because of that, well, people can get off our back about it.
Martin
@HumboldtBlue: It’s not a distinction of terms that anyone would have cared about until recently. But I think the traditional term for Cole would have been ‘tanker’.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Is someone bringing you guys food, etc?
Jay
@Martin:
“some” people on the The Left. The Left is a great big sea with lots of different fish.
Another Scott
@MomSense: Feel better! Here’s hoping for a quick and complete recovery. I’m sorry you are going through that.
Thanks for the report – it’s important.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Geminid
@HumboldtBlue: Two days ago Iranian human rights organizations estimated that Iran’s regime had arrested 12,000 people and killed over 240. So far its repression of this wave of protests has been more restrained than in “Bloody November,” 2019 when by Reuters’ count they slaughtered 1500 people.
Two other cases that have not received very much attention are those of Zehm Saddiq, 31, and Elhan Choudbar, 24. The two women were convicted in early September of “corruption on earth” and more specifically, human trafficking. They were accused of helping gay Iranians flee the country. Ms. Saddiq and Ms. Choudbar are appealing their death sentences.
A September 5th BBC article on this case is titled:
The BBC article is based on reporting by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@StringOnAStick: @Betty Cracker: Can the Murdochs rein in Tucker? I get the impression he might now be big enough to take his all and ae his own court at OAN or maybe even CNN Or Maybe Theil will start a new channel for F*cker and Infowars and alumnae.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Because why use a term which nearly everyone comprehends (Stalinist) when one can employ an obscure bit of lingo which many fewer do?
(Yeah, yeah, Stalin was worm food before Budapest and Prague but the gist of the term still applies.)
;)
Martin
@JoyceH: Based on the state of the rest of the Russian military, I think it’s probably safe to assume that the majority of Russia’s nukes are non-operational. But that doesn’t really matter in anything short of a full nuclear exchange. For the purposes of this discussion, they only need a few operational ones, and I think it’s safe to assume they have at least a few.
Of the 6300 estimated nukes that Russia has – how much risk are you willing to take between the operational number being 1 or being 6300. Basically none. Everyone will behave as if they all work, and take no comfort if only 1% work.
Baud
@NotMax:
Stalinist could mean anyone. Tankie refers specifically to apologists in the West.
catclub
@kalakal:
No love for the Picts?
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: He was acquitted. The Navy, again, tried to find an underling scapegoat for systemic issues with the operation of her ships, ignoring safety regulations, shoddy maintenance, etc.
A ProPublica story from about a week ago.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Belafon
@HumboldtBlue: Remember when teens were posting K-Pop clips to disrupt right-wing messaging? I think we are going to need a lot of groups that turn this kind of stuff into something ridiculous.
NotMax
@Baud
Distinction with but a hairsbreadth of difference, IMHO.
Besides which, tankie lands on the ear like the babble of a four-year-old.
Baud
@NotMax:
Appropriate, considering the subject matter.
Captain C
@matt:
Smash capitalism! Smash the West! Smash the USA! But not ’til the fall, ’cause Daddy’s check just cleared and I’m going to spend the summer in Ibiza, smashing capitalism by rolling molly all night on the dance floor and sleeping on the beach all day!
trollhattan
@Another Scott: Whew, that’s graduate-level needle threading. The whole thing is an interesting read, even if I only grasp it in part.
Can imagine during four Trump years he probably kept pestering DoD and DoE guys as to why he, Trump, couldn’t have his own nukes and if not, how could he change the rule?
The Afghanistan MOAB drop was clearly DoD;s housewarming gift to Trump to get him off an “I can win Afghanistan in a day, with nukes!” initiative.
“We do have this one option, sir.”
What those poor kangaroos did to deserve it is another question.
RaflW
All of this is why the Trumpist American right was and is so enamored of Russia, and would really like for Ukraine to knuckle under so all that war criming that Z troops are doing might stop (or at least be easier to deny/cover up).
The conservative movement in this country is a gutter. A garbage fire. A harem of treasonous Putin-lickers.
Baud
@Captain C:
trollhattan
Take a fog-o-war grain of salt but here’s one map showing Ukraine has Lyman surrounded. Considerable progress in just one day, if so.
https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1575933472656572416?cxt=HHwWgIC-tZnJ694rAAAA
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
My DIL dropped food off. I’m really lucky.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@HumboldtBlue: thanks!
now everyone can read what Navalny wrote
Another Scott
@trollhattan:
Slava Ukraini.
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
@Baud:
How do I report people to NAFO? She posted a tweet by someone else to Instagram. I went to that Twitter account and reported it, but how would I get NAFOs help?
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Wow. People willing to send someone to prison for life to shirk responsibility and cover their own asses. Not a good day for the Navy. Or for NCIS.
NotMax
@MomSense
“Prime rib and lobster tails again?”
;)
Full disclosure: actually experienced frequent weekend visitors whining about them being served so often at a time (longish story) when a couple of us in the group sharing digs full-time were fortunate enough to be getting them gratis on a regular basis.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I’m glad of that.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: This made me laugh.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: I think a lot of it is just Manichean thinking combined with a type of inertia.
Anyone who lived through any of the Cold War and the era of George W. Bush is going to be extremely suspicious of Americans going on about how our foreign policy/military establishment is on the side of freedom, democracy and everything good. They could even be excused for thinking that anything that comes out of that Blob is a lie and the opposite is the truth.
Putin has been working on exploiting this reflex very, very overtly. RT has been pushing itself to foreign-policy lefties as the thinking person’s alternative to the US line for decades now. That’s how you get people like our old friend Bob in Portland insisting that Russia is the not-bad guy and the Ukrainians shot down that airliner, etc., even if they’re not paid trolls. Remember how his argument always boiled down to “they lied to you about Iraq; they’re lying to you now”?
(Even Alex Jones went down yelling about how the liberals invaded Iraq. It’s an all-purpose refutation for everything. I am not proud of the shit I said back then, myself, but I don’t see how it has anything to do with Ukraine or Sandy Hook.)
Jay
@Martin:
TDF forces along the Belorussian border are at full strength, have been training hard, and are no longer Militia/Light Infantry Units, separate from regular UA units.
They have also fortified the border with several trench and bunker systems in depth. UA SOF and Partisan groups have also been very active along the border and across it.
Lushenko has done the bare minimum to stay on Pootie Poots “good side”.
With out the full strength of the Belorussian Military and Security establishment, to quell civil unrest, I don’t see Lushenko staying in power.
Lushenko is probably canny enough to realize that Pootie Poot and Russia’s nuke threats are hollow.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I’m sad for you that someone you have known for so long has turned into someone like that.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
👍👍👍
“Because is now part of Russia while staying here, watering plants, feed cat, and walking dog. Enjoying now your Airbnb experience.”
Lapassionara
@Steeplejack: Thank you. I should have known this, given the major events I lived through where tanks were used to crush dissent: Prague Spring, eg.
Jay
@NotMax:
Not all “tankies” are Stalinists.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@WaterGirl: Thank you for posting that! I just saw it on FB and was gonna link it, but it’s better with the magic of comment images :)
cain
@The Moar You Know: Couldn’t it have been detected through radiation detectors?
Kent
Of course. but Ukraine has a very robust civilian nuclear industry and a lot of nuclear scientists. Plus probably some who worked in the soviet nuclear weapons back in the day when Ukraine was a soviet republic and did have nukes.
So how hard can it be for Ukraine to redevelop nukes? They don’t even need missiles. They can smuggle one into the center of Moscow.
Is that really a path that Moscow wants to go down?
Martin
Thought this deserved a serious response.
Particularly for zoomers, shitposting is a legitimate form of expression – and a somewhat functional one. I mean, say what you will about numtots, they’ve had a meaningful impact on urban development because shitposting serves the same function as satire – to reveal distinctions that culturally we have smoothed over. It’s a form of communication that intends to reveal truth through humor and engagement.
Stalinist is the smoothed over term. It’s loaded in a very particular way from being shaped by serious intellectuals who have their own agenda. ‘Tankie’ cuts through that by being inherently pejorative, removing whatever conceptions or misconceptions you might have of Stalin and Stalinism, and revealing the goals and ideology in a way that is harder to dismiss.
And this isn’t new – we’ve done this throughout history. And the introduction of a new term also serves to isolate the new manifestation of that ideology. We don’t need to care about the old Stalinists – we have a brand new breed of Stalinists that need to be discredited before it take root and a new term assists with that. Simply people asking ‘what is a tankie’ serves that goal by pushing the existence of these folks into the foreground.
Put another way – every effort of older generations to control the language of ideas will be met by younger generations inventing new terms to confuse the audience, forcing them to pay attention during the process of understanding the new term. You can’t ignore twerking while you are looking up what ‘twerking’ means. Censor it all you want, it now lives in your head.
trollhattan
@Jay: Have to believe having had a front-row view of the last eight months, Belarus wants NO part of Ukraine’s military. For starters, they would have no qualms about taking the war into Belarus, which they are (mostly) avoiding with Russia.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
The problem with that thinking is forgetting that people who are not us lie too.
cain
@Martin:
Wouldn’t that be a good time for some regime change in Belarus? I mean, Russia fucked with their elections if I recall. The person who won is out there somewhere.
I would think with the troops out – that would be a perfect time for the Rebel Alliance to get cracking. Especially with Russia being so weak.
MomSense
@NotMax:
It sounds painful in my current state.
Martin
@Jay: I’m unaware of non-authoritarian tankies. Not necessarily Stalinist narrowly, but still authoritarian. Not sure that’s a meaningful distinction.
Is there a group that is non-authoritarian that I’m unfamiliar with?
Jay
@MomSense:
do you have twitter?
if you have twitter, find an active Fella, send them a reply with a screen shot of the tankie’s post, pointing out that that account needs a good “bonking”. The Fella’s will take it from there.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
It’s more nuanced than that in the current on-line world. It’s basically people who are one step beyond rabid Berniebots, such as the person MomSense mentioned at #54 (who may not even know who Stalin was). “Stalinists” doesn’t get it. It’s like wanting to call hipsters “hep cats.”
Martin
@cain: I think in order for there to be regime change, there needs to a vision of something better than the current regime. Not sure the people of Belarus can envision that with the current Russia on their border. Not sure new leadership rids them of Russian dominance.
HumboldtBlue
@WaterGirl:
That’s such a funny account.
Matt McIrvin
@Steeplejack: There’s a variety who adore Xi Jinping too. That makes marginally more sense since at least Xi Jinping claims to be a Communist.
chopper
@Another Scott:
a seaman, fingered by another seaman?
Jay
@Martin:
Collectivist Anarchists and Socialist Collectives are Far Lefties with an abhorrence for Authoritarianism, and not “tankies”.
Captain C
@trollhattan: I wonder if, in the case that Belarus was stupid enough to get involved, would Poland at minimum decide that an intervention was in order (after all, a sane, non-invade-y neighbor is much better than an authoritarian, aggressive, stupid one). I suspect that would not end well for Belarus.
MomSense
@Martin:
The term has obviously changed. These are mostly young people who embraced communism in reaction to their anger and disappointment with democrats on economic issues (the biggest issue I see is student loan forgiveness). They also reject our military spending. Somehow it morphs into anti-western sentiment to the point where they are defending a militaristic, oligarchic petro-chemical state. It’s totally fucked up. Tankie is the name that young people give to their peers who have veered off into this bizarre anti-western, pro Russia, pro violence, and pro-communist place.
Captain C
@Jay: You don’t usually hear those types defending or encouraging authoritarian states invading their neighbors, no matter how anti-US or -Western the authoritarian state is. At least, I haven’t.
ETA: On rereading your comment, you seem to be saying the same thing. Somehow I thought you were at some point alluding to the existence of non-authoritarian Tankies, which seems like a contradiction in terms.
MomSense
@Jay:
I can do that!
Martin
@WaterGirl: The navy really fucked up with that ship. Not sure what rank would have had primary responsibility for that ship, but that person and every officer below them should be held accountable. It’s just appalling what’s being reported. 15 of 807 fire extinguishers were in working order. Fire hoses were missing. Records were falsified. One of the fire control officers said they had walked the ship 2 days before the fire and everything was in working order – but in the investigation fire control stations had no hoses. He said they must have been stolen. On the equivalent of a US light carrier.
The only upside is that the ship wasn’t nuclear powered. Large enough to warrant it, mind you.
Matt McIrvin
@MomSense: The junior Communists’ hearts are mostly in the right place, if I don’t agree with them in detail. What I don’t entirely get is how somebody squares that with supporting a reactionary, aggressive turd like Putin, who isn’t even a Communist. I guess being ex-KGB gives him extra credit. It’s like they think the Soviet Union never ended. But I think most of that just comes from reactive anti-Americanism.
Baud
@MomSense:
Somehow is propaganda, probably. I don’t know why we would think manipulation is confined to MAGA heads.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: He said not all are Stalinist not non-authoritarian.
Martin
@Jay: I’m confused. I wasn’t remotely suggesting that leftists were universally tankies. I know a few collectivist anarchists and never heard one of them defend Russia’s actions here. In fact, they are among the louder voices opposing it. So anti-tankie.
Tankie is used to differentiate among leftists groups, arguing that these Russian defenders aren’t valid leftists because of their authoritarian sympathies.
Jay
@Captain C:
A bunch of the Baltic States have seriously “fenced” their borders with Belarus with multiple 12 foot fences topped with concertina wire, leaving only the official border crossings available, some which have been fortified.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: I guess I’m not sure that’s a meaningful distinction to draw to reject the term. It sounds like a defense of non-Stalinist, yet authoritarian leftists.
His later comment though comes to the defense of non-authoritarian leftists, which to my knowledge are never referred to as tankies, to the degree that they are pretty much the only ones I ever hear using the term ‘tankie’ to distinguish themselves from the leftist Putin apologists.
different-church-lady
Pretty sure it’s the opposite way around.
Ann Marie
@MomSense: Try to eat more than just popsicles. When I had Covid, it was relatively mild — fever, really bad sore throat like you describe, aches all over, and fatigue. Mine only lasted about a week. I made myself eat even when I didn’t want to, and I think that helped.
WaterGirl
@Jay: I will ask the next obvious question. “How do you find an active Fella?”
different-church-lady
@Calouste:
In Russia, conclusions jump you.
Jay
@Captain C:
@Martin:
“tankie” is a perjorative (sp) applied to a Western Putin fluffer irregardless (sp) of political ideaology (sp).
Mearshimer,(sp) and Fishsticks are “tankies”.
kalakal
@NotMax: The expression originated amongst the far left in the UK in the 50s & 60s where all the Marxists/Trots/Maoists were constantly forming & splitting into little groupescules all trying to out purity pony each other and all of whom loathed the others* It applied to very specific groups of commies and was used as a serious insult by other groups of commies. Came into general use amongst the rest of the UK as applying to commies who supported the USSR .
* It’s where Monty Python got the Judean Peoples Popular Liberation Front scene from.
kalakal
@catclub: Nope, never trusted ’em. The Batavians on the other hand, fine upstanding bunch.
HumboldtBlue
@WaterGirl:
Just search “Fella,” I did about 20 minutes ago top find some threads and you’ll get plenty of responses.
Jay
@Martin:
in your origional(sp) post you said “The Left”,
it’s a “no true Scotsman” thing. There is tons of support for Ukraine on the “left” and “Far Left”.
There are a bunch of people on the left and right who’s brains have been broken.
Since Puttie Poot invaded, the term “tankie” on Social Media has evolved.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
search #Fella on twitter. Look for someone calling out a Social Media person for a piled on bonking.
WaterGirl
@Jay: Thank you.
Martin
@MomSense: Yeah, I get that. But I don’t see embracing a socialist/communist economic view as necessarily embracing the authoritarian nature of Stalinism. Jay’s mention of Anarchists as a clear example.
You get as much variation within a socialist economic worldview as you do in a capitalist one, which is why there’s a zillion subgroups of socialism, such as Stalinism. ‘Tankie’ is really a term of distinction within the socialist community to differentiate from authoritarian and non-authoritarian forms.
My son sits in this space in a very odd way as he has a legitimate kind of nostalgia and affinity for things Soviet – mainly spacecraft but other sort of odd technologies of that particular political state like ekranoplans and weird cars and shit like that. He’s also a socialist. But he is anti-authoritarian and a pacifist.
I think it’s more that as calling oneself a ‘socialist’ has become a lot more acceptable in American life now requires differentiating between different kinds of socialism as the general public typically has no fucking concept of it, having been indoctrinated that anything socialist is evil. So calling oneself a Georgist may be accurate, it’s also meaningless in normal conversation. And god forbid you identify with anarchism given how loaded that term is. ‘Tankie’ communicate a lot, pretty clearly at least within the community. It’s a blunt rhetorical weapon, but it’s also effective. I expect this will just expand into a broader set of colloquial terms over time.
UncleEbeneezer
Sit down everyone, this might shock you: turns out my proud Marxist, DSA, Amnesty-International and #FreeAssange buddy is extremely pro-Russia!! I know, I know, who woulda guessed…
He’s even pushing the Crimea-Has-Always-Been-Part-of-Russia bullshit propaganda that Putin, Trump and Le Pen love to spread. Ugh. I generally like him as a person but man, I just don’t know if I can really be friends with someone this clueless.
topclimber
@Jay: Wrong on Mearshimer. He may be totally wrong but has been consistent that Putin wants a buffer state to his east. Guess what, he just annexed it. He blames Western actions for goading Putin over the years, but has condemned the invasion.
Let’s not smear people whose only mistake may be that they got it wrong.
ETA: to his west, i.e. eastern europe.
Martin
@Jay: Never heard Tucker referred to as a ‘tankie’. Why choose that when ‘fascist’ is just sitting there.
Jay
@Martin:
there is a Belorussian Government in Exile in Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, centered around the actual winners of the last election.
kalakal
This is another result of Putrid’s war on the west
https://twitter.com/RichardVaughan1/status/1575803035317547008?s=20&t=zS8mVsozTZ2nObWLDyXL_A
Eyeroller
@kalakal: Splitters!
At least according to Wikipedia, for what that’s worth, the term “tankie” faded after the 1980s, or was confined to the UK, or both, then re-emerged around 2017 as “Internet slang.”
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub: They spend too much time grooving in caves with small animals.
Steeplejack
@Jay:
You just made Martin’s point. He said, “I’m unaware of non-authoritarian tankies.” He didn’t say everybody on the left was a tankie.
kalakal
@Captain C: I’m pretty sure Belarus is not going to let it’s army go anywhere. It’s already busy occupying Belarus
Martin
@Jay: I thought that was clear that I meant a particular subset of the left which is why the word Stalinist is there.
Perhaps this is simply a disagreement of whether the ‘left’ is defined by anti authoritarianism or by socialist economic concepts, or the intersection of the two.
MomSense
@Matt McIrvin:
I think it has to do with an inability to manage complexity. Most people see the world in a good/bad, up/down, black/white way.
If the U.S. is militaristic, foreign aggressor, capitalist state that exists just to funnel money to the wealthy and exploit the rest – then they choose to view our adversaries positively. It doesn’t make any sense but is it such a stretch to think that people don’t make sense? They also love to annoy and anger Democrats.
Remember that the Squad voted against assistance for Ukraine. A not insignificant subset of their supporters have veered off into this worldview.
Regnad Kcin
@HumboldtBlue: let’s not forget the Sea People(s)
zhena gogolia
@topclimber: Why does he need a “buffer state”? Who’s threatening him? Doesn’t he have enough fucking territory that he doesn’t know how to govern?
MomSense
@Martin:
One of the tweets I saw from that same account said you can’t have SoCIAlism without CIA. From what I’ve experienced with these young people I know (sadly, more than one) it started with Sanders and Democratic Socialism, and then socialist memes, and finally communist memes, militaristic communist memes and lots of anti Democratic Party memes. For awhile there all the Che memes had me flashing back to 1980s dorm room posters.
Calouste
@UncleEbeneezer: I think Crimea has been part of Russia for a shorter amount of time than Texas has been part of Mexico.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Martin: Why not both?
Martin
@MomSense: I disagree with the inference around the squad. That was very clearly a protest vote which they knew would pass very easily to draw attention to the lack of similar assistance for other groups, notably Palestinians who are having their land annexed by Israel. They even stated as such quite clearly, and stated support for Ukraine.
I won’t defend it as particularly *effective*, but I won’t disparage them for drawing attention to Democrats being only marginally more critical of Israeli aggression than Republicans are – which was sort of the point. Expect more of that if the generational difference in polling on the issue stands (zoomers are very eager to cut Israel loose, politically)
Martin
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Kind of defeats the purpose of having the term tankie as a differentiator of leftists. My opinion of leftists would really suffer if they adopted Tucker as one of their own.
MomSense
@Martin:
I realize that was their publicly stated reason, but I also see who their supporters are.
HumboldtBlue
@Regnad Kcin:
Ahh yes, those nefarious bastards.
Also, to add to my education on the word “tankie,” in the past few weeks I have learned that “Huylo” is a derisory term for Putin.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Martin: These labels are all pretty meaningless in my opinion. “Labels are for food.”
kalakal
@Eyeroller: Anecdata maybe but I remember the term being used pretty commonly in the 2000s. The ‘Left’ in the UK covers a LOT of ground but pretty much unites in loathing hardline authoritarians. Most far left wing organizations in the UK rely on arcane books of rules & procedures rather than T84s to achieve internal party dominance and prefer self defined idealogical purity to power.As far as Putin goes they’re useful idiots at best. The current real Tankies are those like the dregs of the Revolutionary Communist Party such as Claire Fox, Brendan O’Neill, Munira Mirza who morphed in Libertarian hard liners and got jobs as Johnson advisers bushing ultra hard line Brexit policies
kalakal
@Omnes Omnibus: Which one’s Pink?
UncleEbeneezer
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: To elaborate, we can’t even define if Left-Right is a matter of economics or degree of authoritarianism in this thread. (…and that still leaves out questions of human rights, individualism, environmental concerns, etc.). These labels aren’t helping us communicate together because they don’t have enough actual meaning.
Steeplejack
DougJ keeps hitting it out of the park.
Gin & Tonic
@HumboldtBlue: That really should be “khuylo,” as the first letter is the Cyrillic “х” – in phonetic terms a voiceless velar fricative. It’s applied to Putin, but it is a generic term, kind of like “dickhead.” It really got popular among “ultras” – football (soccer) fans in Kharkiv, in part because it is very well suited to a sing-song chant of “Pu-tin khuy-lo!” Now you can buy shirts with the slogan “ПТН ХЛО” which can be printed in large letters. It eliminates the vowels, but is clearly understood by everyone.
MattF
Very OT. French TV show had people with unusual laughs sit together.
Gin & Tonic
@UncleEbeneezer: Yeah, until Stalin forced the Tatars out in 1944.
J R in WV
@Another Scott:
Great news. Upper management in the USN is defective in every way, with crew shortages and lack of training, procurement failures, piss poor management, corruption in the officer corps ( fat leonard! ) !
The captain of Bonne Homme Richarde was not a surface warfare officer, he was a fighter pilot, woefully unqualified to command a warship — he and his fellow leadership officers are why that warship burned like that.
Damage control is a primary requirement on Navy ships, and the leadership of damage control on this ship were totally incompetentn — unaware of what worked and what didn’t work! The crew was not able to fight the fire either!
And that is why this E1 sailor was selected as the sacrificial goat — to cover far the Captain and Admirals who were really at fault!
Yes, I’m bitter! But so glad the kid was acquited, there was no evidence ar all!
HumboldtBlue
@Gin & Tonic:
That was part of the definition I read. I can understand the missing H as well as it relates to Kharkiv. One steep learning curve for me is re-learning Ukrainian spellings and pronunciations after decades of reading military and political history using Russian spelling and pronunciation.
Another Scott
@kalakal: Speaking of the UK…
Hmm. Sounds very messy.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bill Arnold
@cintibud:
Cheget (Russian: Чегет) is a “nuclear briefcase” (named after Mount Cheget in Kabardino-Balkaria) and a part of the automatic system for the command and control of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces (SNF)
The General Staff are involved, and gating:
zhena gogolia
I just heard on Dozhd that Patriarch Kirill has Covid.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
What is the derivation of “tankie”
Geminid
@MomSense: At least two of the Representatives in the “Squad” are members of the Democratic Socialists of America. I’m not saying that is neccesarily a bad thing, but when their votes differ with the rest of the Democratic caucus I often see people explain the various principles they are supporting when there is a more pragmatic interest involved. That is maintaining credibility with their base in the DSA, their other party.
Steeplejack
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Tell me you haven’t read the thread without telling me you haven’t read the thread.
Jay
@zhena gogolia:
it’s a Cold War thing. The USSR created the Warsaw Pact after WWII with the idea that any war with NATO would be fought on Warsaw Pact and NATO territory and the USSR would avoid much of the massive destruction of their western areas. (the valuable stuff).
It’s another nostalgia thing for Russia, and also taps into the early post Cold War era where states like Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia aligned themselves with Russia.
Over time, many of those States became more pro-Western and pro-EU, which was both an influence and economic loss for Russia.
Pootie Poot spent a lot of time and money selling these “themes” at home and abroad.
“Buffer State” is not equal to “Good Neighbor”.
Omnes Omnibus
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: People who supported the USSR sending tanks into Hungary in 1956.
Bill Arnold
@H-Bob:
That’s one subtext, using fear of thermonuclear war to attempt to affect Western policies.
Also, more explicitly, conscripts can now be deployed to those regions.
Gin & Tonic
@zhena gogolia: Would be a real shame if he died.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: lol
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: Wouldn’t it? But I’m sure he’ll be in the bosom of Abraham, after the righteous life he’s lived.
ETA: This is why he wasn’t at the festivities today.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Omnes Omnibus: Tank you.
Rand Careaga
@Martin:
Jeebus. That’s uncomfortably reminiscent of what we’ve been reading recently about another large military operation…
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Ouch
Geminid
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I think that a single, left/right axis is insufficient to describe people’s political beliefs. A second authoritarian/non-authoritarian axis might be generally useful for theoretical beliefs, but- when I analyse practical party politics, a second “establishment”/anti-“establishment” axis seems to catch a lot of the dynamics in both the Democratic and Republican parties, and maybe among Independents as well.
Getting really theoretical, a third axis could be patriarchal/non-patriarchal. But I think that patriarchy is so embedded in our culture and society that it’s not easy to comprehend. The misogyny and sexism we can see are just the tip of an iceberg.
UncleEbeneezer
@Gin & Tonic: And only 17% of Ukrainians identify as Russian according to the stat I read.
Dan B
@MattF: Thank you! Although part of me feels like my psyche has been disturbed like I was witnessing a stand up show in a psychiatric hospital or zoo. Some strange laughs there.
Eyeroller
@Geminid: The usual breakdown is a quadrant. Libertarian on one axis, left-right on the other.
I am a “left libertarian.”
Matt McIrvin
@kalakal: Not to be confused with the US Revolutionary Communist Party, which is Bob Avakian’s clown show and is still operating last I heard…
Ruckus
@Martin:
I believe the enlisted long before I’d believe many officers. My experience is that most officers are almost always at least a step or two behind whatever is going on. Not all the time for sure and some are markedly better. But I’d bet with all that work going on that most of those officers had zero or close to zero idea of the ship’s condition. I’ve been in the yard for some time on two ships, one almost as big as this one. It is a cluster fuck of monumental proportions. Yard workers come and go as their jobs require, the ship’s higher officers may know what is supposed to be going on at any time but the crew likely doesn’t. A ship this size is going to have a lot of people walking around doing simple things on up to cutting walls with OxAc torches, welding things, rewiring, repiping, painting. And it sounds like most people know even less about what’s going on than we enlisted did 50 yrs ago, even if you paid a lot of attention, which makes more actual sense on a slightly bigger ship than the last one I was on and in the yard.
Gin & Tonic
Was just reminded on Twitter that 30 September is the day Hitler annexed the Sudetenland.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: Lots of people comment without having read the whole thread. Some people comment without having read any of it! I have done both, myself!
Geminid
@Eyeroller: Yes, that is a good quadrant. Libertarian/statist captures the different varieties of leftists well.
I follow Michael Paulowski some on Twitter. He self-describes as “dem-soc, likes anarchism.” The “anarchism” is more of a belief that democratic socialism is better built from the bottom up through co-ops, unions and other voluntary organizations than built by being imposed by the state. He considers the Democratic Party more progressive in this respect than many self-described “Progressives” who want a powerful, anti-capitalist government.
Paulauski is very hostile to tankies, accelerationists, red-brown alliancers, etc.- what he calls the “dirtbag left.” He writes favorably of some DSA chapters and members, but overall he seems sceptical of the organization.
MomSense
@Matt McIrvin:
I couldn’t believe it – they still quote him and show old videos. I think their Twitter handle is something like RevComm
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Avakian’s organization is still kicking. After the Dobbs decision they sposored a pop-up abortion rights organization whose demonstrations got a lot of attention. They had a lot of people wearing their light green scarves for a while.
Citizen Alan
@UncleEbeneezer:
I couldn’t be. Just today I defriended someone on Facebook who I had known for over 20 years because they posted one too many memes about how there is no difference between a Democrat and a Republican
UncleEbeneezer
@Citizen Alan: The problem is that he’s a regular member of my local police reform group and generally a good guy. He’s just an idiot on this stuff. He’s from the Occupy camp.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin:
I remember back in 2016, when I watched the green party presidential debate on YouTube (sponsored by the RT network, naturally). One of the whack jobs running for for the nomination continually talked about China in breathless adoration.
Booger
@Omnes Omnibus: Boy, now that’s an obscure musical reference.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: Their big thing is trying to convince people not to vote, as I recall.
kalakal
@Another Scott: lol!
Villago Delenda Est
Preferably before he takes his tumbrel ride.
Villago Delenda Est
@HumboldtBlue: “Tankie” has its origins in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 which the Soviet Union halted and reversed by sending in the tanks. In the US Army, guys like Cole are referred to as “treadheads”. Guys like Omnes are “cannon-cockers”, or, much more politely, “Redlegs”.
Nettoyeur
@JoyceH: T half life is 12 years
The Lodger
@Another Scott: Considering it’s the Tories, I’m not sure that wasn’t meant exactly as written.
Jinchi
@Omnes Omnibus: Their artillery has been pretty devastating to cities in Ukraine. My guess is most of their nukes work just fine.