SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him] @ SeventyTwoTrillion @hexbear.net

I am the news dude. I do the news megathreads.

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I find myself ever more often rolling my eyes at media which offers up fantastical solutions to real-world problems without even really beginning to understand the complexities of the situation, and comparing X party or Y country or Z person with some hypothetical

like the whole "The United States should have withdrawn from Afghanistan, but in a different way!" thing with liberals

it's 10,000 characters, I think, though it's actually a little less than that for some reason (perhaps counting linebreaks? idk) so typically go for like 9700 characters when defined by most character counting programs or websites

Russia has the power to stop the war and retreat.

Yes, but if they do this, Ukraine may kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in the previously occupied territories, including Crimea. Such an outcome is obviously unacceptable to Russia. The Ukrainian fascist paramilitaries have seen the pro-Russian separatists as subhuman for many years.

Yeah the west and Russia where saber-rattling. But Russia choose to act and it.

Russia chose to act on it because it was quite literally the last moment they possibly could have done so, given the rhetoric at the time of Ukraine potentially joining NATO (and even Zelensky asking for nukes!). NATO attempted to provoke Russia into war for decades by marching their military forces towards Russia's border and establishing anti-Russian governments in ex-Soviet countries. Many in Russia accuse Putin of cowardice because he didn't act sooner against NATO and Ukraine and getting them into this mess now when almost every country of note has been converted into NATO vassals, far from opposing him for being a tyrant or whatever. I'm not saying that this makes those civilians correct, it's merely outlining how Russia "choosing" to act on it might not have been a random act of cruel violence by Supreme Dictator Putin but instead an action informed by a whole bunch of factors and that the Russian government has generally been pretty non-violent up until this point even when America is directly spitting in their face and adding more and more countries to the Fuck Russia Club. The Russians might say that they heavily disagree with these countries having NATO membership because it imperils them - and it very obviously does - but when the Baltic states joined NATO for example, Putin didn't march his army to conquer them in retaliation. When Finland joined, he didn't send the tanks over the border. It was a measured decision by Russia to intervene in Ukraine, and it is important to have understanding beyond cliches.

The thing is putin will only use diplomacy on his on terms, and these terms alone will threaten the existence of Ukraines souveränity itself.

This is untrue. At the beginning of the war, in April 2022, Russia and Ukraine almost made peace along the lines of Ukraine regaining Kherson and Zaporozhye, and ceding control of the Donbass, which they already didn't really control anyway due to the Donbass War that has been ongoing since 2014. Ukraine was also allowed to join the EU, but not NATO. The West - in the form of Boris Johnson - came along and told Zelensky to not make peace with Russia, and so the deal was cancelled. We know this because Putin showed off this unfinished peace deal to various African politicians earlier this year. Ukraine could have kept millions of people inside their borders and hundreds of thousands of men alive, and kept two oblasts that they now do not own, if they had taken this deal and ignored the West.

Even so, Russia stated numerous times that they were still willing to make peace. It is Ukraine that does not seem to want it, because their terms are always "If Russia completely withdraws their forces then we will begin to talk," which is an absurd condition no matter whether you're in the right or wrong in any geopolitical or military situation. You see this a lot in history, where countries say "Oh yes, we won't declare war on you, you must only agree to a set of conditions that we know you will never accept," because it makes them look slightly more reasonable to other countries for not just marching in there. I'm sorry, Ukraine could be the most perfect, utopian society that has ever graced the world and Russia could be the most barbaric, backwards, evil nation ever seen in world history, and I would still see Ukraine's demand for Russia's total retreat as ridiculous.

And victim blaming is never ok, even when you think the victim is an asshole.

The question of who's the "victim" here depends on how far you're willing to look back in history, what you think are relevant facts about the situation, whether you believe the 2014 coup was in fact a coup, whether you believe that Ukraine is plagued by fascist paramilitaries like Azov or whether they're cutesy fun girl scouts, and quite literally hundreds of other things. I'm not even willing to be automatically contrarian and say "Actually, Russia is the victim and NATO is the aggressor!" because that's also not correct, the situation is way too complicated. This isn't Harry Potter vs Voldemort.

absolutely unfuckingbelievable. the entire entertainment industry just churns people through exploitative systems and phenomenally rich bastards and spits their husks out at the end, I would be amazed if piracy was affecting the outcomes of artists and musicians by even 1%. pretending that this is damaging the EU economy is also very funny, the Europeans are having zero troubles damaging their own economies by cutting off from China (read: acting as if they're decoupling from China and then buying the exact same Chinese products through third countries at additional cost)

#Tradle #529 3/6
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https://oec.world/en/tradle

would quite literally rather risk world war 3 than give Russia even the slightest crumb in exchange for also getting Ukrainian grain out, as they literally promised they would do in the terms of the grain deal. l m f a o.

I was actually considering doing like a yearly State of the World where I go through every country (well, maybe not every country, there's like 200, but most countries) and go through the events that have occurred but that is a phenemonal amount of work. might still do it but it would have to be like, in exchange of two weeks of updates or something in December. so then I was thinking about doing it every month instead and I might still do that, but again, a lot of work.

that being said, I'm doing a lot of organizational and sorting work on things behind the scenes with these updates. nothing to get excited about as the average person here, but once it's all said and done it'll be easier for me to hypothetically do longer-term summaries like the ones I've suggested, if I decide to do them. the issue obviously is that it's always a two steps forward, one step back kind of thing because I can't go into a hyperbolic time chamber to get it all done, it takes time and in that time more events keep happening.

you put the lasers on the missiles, put the missiles on the planes, and the planes on the runways because a single speck of dust got on it and so the planes can't fly right now

also @Alaskaball@hexbear.net, what do you mean by a megathread review play-by-play megathread? like we go through the 52 megathreads that year and sort them into chad vs virgin or something?

also worth noting that our three top news megas are, in order, the very first one that @Alaskaball@hexbear.net hosted at the start of the war to contain the initial shitstorm of "god damn it this fucking sucks" at 2023 comments, the Wagner munity news mega at 1606 comments, and the news mega when Russia started its missile bombardments of Ukraine in October with 1345 comments. so the technical record to beat is 2023

bit idea: a "return to tradition" guy with an Anubis fursuit

I Love My Trans Comrades!

Update for August 16th

Mali's president engages Putin on phone about Niger coup

In a message shared on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Goita stated that Putin emphasized the significance of a peaceful resolution to ensure stability in the Sahel region.

Western nations are apprehensive that Niger might follow the path of Mali, where a previous coup led to the involvement of Russian Wagner group mercenaries in counter-insurgency efforts.

Putin has urged the restoration of constitutional order in Niger. On the other hand, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group, expressed support for the coup. Interestingly, there has been a notable surge in pro-Russian sentiment in Niger since the coup, evident in rallies where junta supporters waved Russian flags.

UK MI6 to send 100 Ukrainian fighters to Africa and counter Russia

A military-diplomatic source claims that the UK's Secret Intelligence Service or MI6 prepared a sabotage unit of 100 Ukrainian fighters set to be sent to Africa to fend off Russia-Africa cooperation.

The source states: "According to information confirmed by several sources, the British intelligence service MI6 has formed and prepared for deployment to the southern continent a sabotage and punitive detachment consisting of militants of Ukrainian nationalist and neo-Nazi formations to counter the development of cooperation between African countries and Russia".

...

The main objective of the presence in Africa will be "sabotage of infrastructure in African countries, as well as the elimination of African leaders oriented towards cooperation with Russia", per the source who also noted that the unit would be delivered by "a chartered civilian ship from the [Ukrainian] port of Izmail to the [Sudanese] city of Omdurman during the second half of August".

The problems with Ukraine’s wartime collaboration law

By Open Democracy, which is generally anti-Russia, pro-Ukraine but willing to admit problems. It describes how "collaboration" with Russia can extend even to garbage collectors working in previously Russian territory, like Kherson, while it was occupied.

...the owners of Kherson’s main garbage collection company have been arrested and their trucks seized. Alena and Dmitry Dubrovsky, who ran the company for 20 years, are facing charges of wartime collaboration for continuing to work between March and November 2022, when Kherson was under Russian occupation.

The regional police department and prosecutors claimed that last summer the Dubrovskys supported Russia’s introduction of the ruble, opened company accounts in a Russian bank and paid taxes to the occupying administration. In other words, they “carried out economic activities in close cooperation with the aggressor state” and “transferred material resources to the occupiers”. This is regarded as wartime collaboration and aiding the aggressor state, the penalties for which are up to five and 12 years in prison, respectively.

...

According to the Kherson prosecutor’s office, more than 1,000 investigations into collaboration had been filed by the end of June, though only 50 sentences have been handed down so far. Another 234 investigations involve allegations of aiding Russia.

Colombia's president Petro has written a piece on the growing violence in Ecuador, saying that it may be related to drug markets - particularly fentanyl, which is plaguing the United States right now.

"Today the largest coca growing area is not located in Tumaco in the Nariño Pacific, nor in Catatumbo. The new area with the highest cocaine production in the world is located in a 10-kilometer strip along the Colombo-Ecuadorian border, on the Colombian side," Petro explained.

Petro highlights that the cocaine market collapsed in the United States, replaced by that of fentanyl, which, according to him, leaves more than 100,000 people dead a year.

"It is for this reason that the price of coca leaf falls in the areas dedicated to export to the United States and the armed organizations based there replace the loss of profits from cocaine with illicit gold, extortion and kidnapping against the same population of the area," he stressed.

"This is why, from being a peaceful country, Ecuador has surpassed Colombia in violence, and perhaps this is why presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated,"

I do like his ending quote:

"From the marijuana of welfare capitalism and its rebellious youth, we move on to cocaine, the drug of competitiveness and neoliberalism; and now we enter the drug of death, fentanyl: the drug of capitalism, of the climate crisis and war," he concluded.

Increasing carbon dioxide is making our food less nutritious

Elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels negatively impact key mineral nutrients in plants, reducing the nutrition derived from consuming them, reveals a recent review article in the Trends in Plant Science Journal which summarises findings from several studies. The review by scientists from France explained that almost all C3 plants – which employ the C3 pathway for photosynthesis where the first carbon compound has three carbon atoms – that are exposed to elevated levels of carbon dioxide show reduction across nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, iron, zinc, magnesium and sulphur.

While being a vital resource for plants, carbon dioxide is also among the prominent greenhouse gases. Considering that the majority of plants on the planet, including cereals like wheat, rice, barley and oats, use the C3 pathway, the review article raised alarm bells about increasing carbon dioxide levels not only impact the quantity of food produced but also its quality.

China’s maritime ambitions boosted, claims largest shipping fleet title from Greece

China has overtaken Greece as the owner of the largest shipping fleet in terms of gross tonnage, according to a report by a leading global industry information provider, as it steps up efforts to become a major maritime power.

The Chinese-owned fleet has reached 249.2 million gross tonnage, or 15.9 per cent of the market share, edging ahead of Greece’s 249 million gross tonnage and Japan’s 181 million gross tonnage, according to Clarksons Research on Friday.

South Korea and the United States ranked fourth globally at around 66 million GT, with Germany falling from fourth in 2013 to seventh, the report showed.

Western press fetishizes Ukrainian amputees as limb loss epidemic grows

Japan, US to develop missile to intercept hypersonic weapons

The two governments will likely reach an agreement at a Japan-U.S. summit meeting slated for Friday, several government officials said.

The two countries will aim to strengthen deterrence by preparing for threats that are difficult to deal with using existing missile defense networks.

This is the second time Tokyo and Washington will jointly develop interceptor missiles since they worked on the SM-3 Block IIA in fiscal 2017.

Arrangements are currently being made for separate bilateral talks in which Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and U.S. President Joe Biden will discuss the joint development and announce it as part of an agreement, on the sidelines of the Japan-U.S.-South Korea summit meeting scheduled for Friday in the suburbs of Washington.

Why do you need this if the Patriot can already do it?