what the fuck is happening in Russia?

i can think of one decision manning made that may have helped

She repudiated Glenn Greenwald, but that's probably not what you were thinking of.

now i'm wondering what the correlation between repudiating glenn greenwald and taking estrogen looks like, i mean it's a small sample size but i, too, repudiate glenn greenwald

seriously edward snowden not transitioning is a fucking tragic blow to humanity, the guy looks like abi thorn pre-transition and look how _she's_ turning out

look i know it's rude of me to say but i feel like chelsea manning has come out of things a lot better than snowden did

this seems uncontroversial

.. anyway, what the fuck is happening in RUSSIA

A few hundred (mainly female) protesters gathered in the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk earlier today to protest mobilisation

While performing the Yakut Osuokhai folk dance they shouted "no to war" and "no to [Yakut] genocide", local media report https://t.co/DZlvHcXRAI pic.twitter.com/MBiukhr8Pl

— Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) September 25, 2022

They chose an interesting staging ground for the protest; the statue in the background is of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platon_Oyunsky

A Yakut communist, playwright, translator, statesman, and eventual victim of the Great Purge, he was posthumously rehabilitated in the 1955; a statue of him was erected in 2003.

I kept searching trying to figure out who it was but the results kept coming up with Lenin, whose statue has graced the main square in Yakutsk since 1967. Despite being described as Yakutsk's "cultural heritage," however, its future remains uncertain. Critics point out that plans for it to be refurbished this year have run into budgetary difficulties: not all of the funds necessary have been allocated.

Newly mobilized Russians are told what they need to take to the war. Spoiler - pads and tampons.
(English subtitles) pic.twitter.com/CumYqqpuit

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) September 26, 2022

also in the bizarro russian news: “a petition to provide vegan and vegetarian military rations has gathered over 25000 signatures”

'ask your family to send tourniquets!'

geez that inspires confidence

Looks like enlistment/mobilization centers being set up at the Georgian border at the main Verkhnii crossing. If true, looks like effecticvely like a partial border closing

Questions about the capacity of Georgia (and to lesser extent Armenia) to absorb anti-mobilization Russians (also maybe between March exiters and September exiters)

welp, the votes are in, everybody wants to join the Russian Federation - that's democracy in action

Solovyov gets drafted and goes crazy. pic.twitter.com/bd8lMf4zFi

— RealSubtitles (@R82938886) September 27, 2022

A weird people in my uneducated opinion

RIP red tie man

I do not think those are real subtitles.

If they are, that's a really weird exchange

click through and it’s made very clear they’re fake comedy subtitles

yeah not really sure what’s the purpose of this tweet or the fact that reposting it might not provide the necessary context.

the original exchange is revolting - and should be presented as such.

in the actual bizzaro russian news: those who are drafted are advised to buy and bring their own supplies. clothing, first aid etc

which essentially means: you can buy better chance of survival - if you can afford it.

if Russia wanted to preserve the illusion that they're still a world-class fighting force, this incursion has pretty much shattered it.. creaky old equipment, poorly trained & supplied troops, a chaotic command structure, rampant corruption, looting, etc. They have plenty of cannon fodder, but that's about it.

i’m holding slight hope it’s these kind of news that will contribute to mass discontent - because this is something that they can’t blame ukraine for

.. or the west

in the actual bizzaro russian news: those who are drafted are advised to buy and bring their own supplies. clothing, first aid etc

This was an issue with American troops in Iraq 2 as well, iirc.

I was gonna say.

maybe we just need one general what the fuck is happening thread

#onethread

What do Russians think of the Pitchfork 90s lists?

how the fuck do you leave off Yegor i Opizdenevshie??

from meduza:

sources close to kremlin say the russian government is not in the rush to annex because the "PR effect during mobilization will be close to zero". they also say the kremlin understands that russians haven't been convinced yet the annexation is necessary, although the official propaganda says the regions are economically beneficial, and referendums followed by annexation is an absolutely "normal process" - including the west (quoting such examples as texas joining the US).

there is also the thinking that such a delay would leave some room for negotiations. although currently the main headache for moscow is the wide spread discontent due to the mobilization. the kremlin conducted a closed survey and the results were not to their liking.

it appears the plans to block the borders for any men within the drafted age group are on hold for now - "we underestimated the amount of people trying to flee and we can't risk it - because we don't have enough enforcement".

reminds me of playing Command & Conquer, I know exactly what point in the game he's at

The only people who are ready to live according to US rules are "political masochists and other followers of non-traditional political relations," a homophobic joke.

Putin rants about sex change operations. "This is unacceptable. We have our own future. pic.twitter.com/n99bow1BaA

— max seddon (@maxseddon) September 30, 2022

What a weird rant...

I mean it’s only weird if one discounts everyone who talks like that these days

More on today's speech:

I wish every single person in the West would listen to Putin's speech. Obviously, that won't happen so let me summarise as a professional translator for 10+ years. He states, as he has done from the outset, what his intentions and complaints are in the plainest terms possible.🧵

— Konstantin Kisin (@KonstantinKisin) September 30, 2022

Lovely mix of truths, exaggerations, elisions, prejudices, fantasies, and lies.

xp

Some fairly valid points, meant solely to rationalize his hateful and brutal form of imperialism.

(Quote starts with “They flattened…”)

German cities without "any military need to do so". There was no need for this except to scare us and the rest of the world. Korea, Vietnam. To this day they "occupy" Japan, South Korea and Germany and other countries while cynically calling them "allies".

— Konstantin Kisin (@KonstantinKisin) September 30, 2022

Yeah, pretty sure Dresden was payback for the Blitz

and the V2 program

Churchill was also interested in dropping anthrax over Germany along with poison gas.

elvis t otm

"Yeah, pretty sure Dresden was payback for the Blitz"

the RAF were the first to target and kill German civilians in the air war between Britain and Germany. The "payback" rhetoric has always been a load of bollox. Unless your name is Aimless and confidently talking history channel level trash as knowledge is your ting!

so you're not into trash talking, eh?

Pretty sure Churchill didn't need much of a reason to merrily kill thousands of people.

Comrade Putin, thank you!

So bizarre seeing the transphobia in the middle of anti-colonial talking points.

"how do you do fellow members of the global south and victims of western colonialism?" pic.twitter.com/o7YbykoXVj

— Luka Ivan Jukic (@lijukic) September 30, 2022

So bizarre seeing the transphobia in the middle of anti-colonial talking points.

Is it that bizarre? LGBTQ is an expression of western imperialism. Galloway was making similar points in Batley recently, seems relatively standard by now

It's not bizarre in the slightest, he's just casting his nets wider with a few extra keywords and phrases.

He knows there's plenty of people in the West who agree with him, including many in government.

The same strategy as Fox News bigoted blowhard Tucker Carlson appropriating the language of economic justice to sell Republican policies. Folks don’t have visceral tribal allegiances to neoliberalism like they do to race, nationalism, or gender roles. Now that neoliberalism is widely failing, it’s getting to be a hard sell so they have to resort to the bait-and-switch.

neoliberalism is always a hard sell and has to be forced on people and I think the punitive/authoritarian/austerian side (the culture war stuff) is always at least implicit- and people get to pretend they're fighting power when they make that stuff explicit (trump brexit etc etc) instead of rejecting the logic altogether which would be too hard and might have actual consequences

the thing that leapt out at me from putin was the what I thought of as duginist and eurasianist touches- I don't know enough to know if this is the actual core of putinism or if it's more like a dogwhistle to a certain faction but it's striking anyway

unfortunately it will resonate to some extent- anyone who knows anything about syria knows how bullshit the anticolonial stuff is from russia - sadly that doesn't include a large proportion of the western lefts (and dissident rights) he's reaching out to here