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Walter Ostanek

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Everything posted by Walter Ostanek

  1. Furthermore I'm so fucking sick of these ideas that people want to be imperial subjects of Putin because they speak Russian or because they opposed Maidan. I've got to know so many people like that over the last couple of years, these narratives couldn't be further from the truth. At least he touched on the resource issue - that is, indeed, a very material underpinning to the "SVO". Though he's weirdly off-kilter about France's interests in Ukrainian uranium, they can (and do) have a far safer, far higher-grade supplier in the form Canada. Been talking to a friend in russia all evening, he is scared shitless of what comes next, everyone with a brain there remembers how Chechnya unfolded. I talk to a couple of friends in Kharkiv most days... but can't tonight because they still have blackouts after the last missile attack.
  2. Christ that has some nauseating takes. Simping for imperialism based on the etymology of a country's name and historical linguistic regions. I hope the Swiss don't find out!
  3. I remember my mum getting upset with me when I came home with the CD version and she saw the bewbs on the cover lol. And fond memories of intricately adding all the symbols in Word so I could paste them into Winamp and give the second track its proper name
  4. Hmm, they were warning about something like this happening a couple of weeks ago. What a convenient excuse for even more dictatorial powers - so soon after an "election" too! An awful lot like how Chechnya first kicked off, no? It'll also be a great way of putting the yanks in a bind too: "you're fine with Israel committing genocide after the murderous Hamas raid, so how can you criticise our vindictive brutality?" Funnily enough, barely anyone gave a shit in the news about the russian rockets lobbed at a Ukrainian hydroelectric dam last night.
  5. The yanks benefit immensely from Israel's existence, it's a nice little toehold from which to play geopolitical chess in the ME, though I don't see any material benefit accruing to the US from Bibi's latest escapade in unmatched brutality. They want an Israel that keeps Iran in check, not an Israel that dents their own credibility. Whereas russia and china have a lot to gain from the continued outrage That's it in a nutshell. The Gulf sheikhs throw them the odd bone, and undoubtedly help with negotiations, but it never amounts to anything substantial. Why would any state offer any *actual* help the Palestinians? They're poor. They have nothing to offer in return. (By Israel's design)
  6. They are reaping the geopolitical gains from the fallout of this brutality, so why would they support a ceasefire? In Palestine they are well aware that no country in the world actually gives a toss about them
  7. how to beat off to autechre
  8. Yes, the same Tony Banks who's in Genesis and who my mum used to fancy. Is it just confirmation bias or are there Genesissy leitmotifs in there?
  9. I thought the 2nd and 3rd both had some fantastic ideas in them. Detailed dives into drastically different forms of intelligence. I found the end of the 3rd one crushingly depressing though and, well, almost pointless, after seeing how much the Enkidu crew suffered, only for it to turn out that *spoilers*. Ditto the deference to some kind of Prime Directive ethic in parts of the 3rd book just seemed weird, given that the first two books were about as antithetical to that as possible. I get that the "we're going on an adventure" fellas didn't want to homogenise cultures/civilisations out of existence, but I struggled with the leap from that to "let's just watch them die" Not read any of his other series, it's kinda daunting seeing how many books he pumps out. Feel like I'd enjoy the Tyrant Philosophers, though.
  10. Honestly I know very little about the bloke, having religiously avoided anything to do with Apple for my whole life so far. But the manner of his death alone tells you he was a cunt. Remember kids, alternative medicine is a fascist gateway, always was, always will be.
  11. Fuck me that was a solid read. Have you read the other two? Really hope Tchaikovsky keeps things going in that series, though I understand it runs the risk of turning into a "hyperintelligent creepy crawly of the week" thing
  12. holding the down arrow down in Excel to see how fast i can get to the bottom
  13. any guesses as to which songs relate to richard dreamshagging which celebrity?
  14. Ah yes Russophobia But yeah fuck Nuland for general neoliberal bullshit, tho the coup stuff is just cringe
  15. Catch the same bloke in a few weeks and he'll probably be boasting about being lavishly wined and dined at some swanky client event
  16. Shit, I used to plod down the street in my first year of uni back to halls listening to that on my 256MB MP3 player. Don't think I've even thought about it since. Lovely little bunch of traxxx
  17. the only person i've ever had to sack is also the only person IRL i've known who's been a self declared JP fanboy. Sacked him for joking about rape one too many times in front of female coworkers, alongside all the typical woman-o-phobic comments
  18. And linking those two things, if you ever wonder why the Indian media/online community is so pro-RU, and why India is now home to so many troll farms, look at who in India profits from Putin's war: Ambani, Adani, the Birla clan: all of the Modi oligarch groupies, getting very rich off of cheap russian oil. You could possibly make a coherent argument that this internet-borne fascist revival is being conducted by and for the oil industry specifically
  19. It's not speculation at all, the actions of troll farms have been reported on, and you can even watch this stuff happen in real time - two very recent mask-off moments were the "Wagner Gap" when all sorts of pro-RU troll activities suddenly went dark while they waited to see what happened to their boss, and the almost comically inept pro-Indian trolling on Canadian subreddits in the wake of the Hardeep Singh Najjar hit job (they were still clearly learning the ropes at the time). The other big tactic you didn't touch on is reputation laundering, where some made-up gobshite will get referenced through a handful of opinion blogs in order to mask a lie as part of a factual narrative I agree that the yanks are utter amateurs at this, they're being massively outgunned in the information realm (ditto cyberwarfare) - at least, the democrats and/or liberal establishment are. They had it down in the TV era, as anyone who even skimmed a US news channel will have noticed during the war on islamterror, but they never adapted to new media. Unsure if the (now ascendant) fascist wing of the GOP have a good handle on it, or if they mostly benefit from russian efforts
  20. Ol' Jack when he was young on vocals there - and produced by Andy Partridge of XTC fame. Fascinating track, you can hear influences from both of them
  21. No, but real information will be so utterly drowned in a tsunami of deepfakes that the internet will become impossible to use Hard-hitting Owen Jones vid. Thing is, he argues from the perspective that what is happening in Gaza is unusually horrific, but really it isn't. Even just in my lifetime, all of this stuff already happened in Bosnia, and most of the outside world only gave a shit if it impacted their strategic interests - and if it didn't, well: "it didn't happen, and if it did, they deserved it". Ditto Palestine half a dozen other times, Chechnya, Yemen, Syria, Ukraine (not least Mariupol). Etc etc etc. This utterly horrific dehumanisation, apathy and hypocrisy is actually the norm, right across the geopolitical chessboard. My wife is of Palestinian background, and consequently so are lots of my family, and one of my in-laws is an activist who's prominent enough to have been the target of shit stirring articles in the rightwing blogosphere. Obviously we were out at protests a bunch over the last few months. But even they, in a moment like this, where some of their (my!) extended family have been killed and they appreciate every scrap of support - they're still seriously weirded out by a fair number of the others who they march alongside at protests. Because they know that these people are campists, supporting Palestine not for innate humanitarianism but because it tickles their geopolitical fancy, and if the geopolitical winds were blowing a different way, they'd be totally fine with this. There has never been a time when any world power, or "the international community" at large, has cared about the value of human life. Only the life of those humans whose suffering impacts their power
  22. All this time I've never managed to get into it, I find it staggeringly depressing, which isn't surprising based on the (inferred) subject matter
  23. You never know whether it's irony-poisoning or whether the irony is always a facade (fascade?) from the beginning. Either way, when fascists tell you that they want to do fascist stuff, believe them. Because if they can, they will. That goes for the Trumpeteers, the Putin-lovers, Modi, Orban & dozens of others.
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