what the fuck is happening in Russia?

If he's looking at open source data then he needs to say more. If he's dropping hints based on a classified briefing or a leak than he needs to say less.

History is over... NOW

wait

NOW

Wanda Jackson’s Fukuyama Mama

It does seem a fairly safe bet, just based on momentum, that Russia will continue to see setbacks on the battlefield in the coming days, though Fukuyama's tweet seems to imply something bigger than that. Not sure what information he has, other than Putin's evident desperation.

I think people are underestimating the extent to which Fukuyama operates on pure vibes.

Not sure what information he has

Does he have information or a desire for people to pay attention to him?

The latter. I think his comparative advantage is supposed to be an ability to recognize emerging patterns more quickly in data that everyone has access to.

in the chicago academic scene a lot of people are into post-history

I don't really have any view on whether his "End of History" thing was wrong or just early. But I do know it was a hugely successful and durable meme that he dined out on for years and parlayed into various comfortable sinecures. So not necessarily evidence of incompetence.

One of his predictions from February:

* The collapse of their (Russia's) position could be sudden and catastrophic, rather than happening slowly through a war of attrition.

More predictions.

happy october everyone pic.twitter.com/Dhq7DOO0MZ

— isi litke (@isilitke) October 3, 2022

Mr. Fun At (Halloween) Parties.

Joyce Carol Oates did it better

Yup.

at worst a war crimes

Any thoughts on why the US has released to NYT info that it believes Ukraine was behind the Dugina assassination?

I didn't think Ukraine was behind the assassination (and this particular release doesn't necessarily mean it was either). No idea why this was release (and released now), or even if it was intentional release

anyone with a hot take?

Letting Putin know that we're not in the business of assassinations on Russian soil? Gotta be on his mind.

yeah, we're too busy sabotaging pipelines to assassinate his cronies' children

I'm trying to get my head around the large numbers of torture sites in Ukraine that we're still probably only scratching the surface of. Particularly the seemingly unco-ordinated and purposeless nature of them. Is this ingrained in some way, an extension of Dedovshchina?

Its difficult to imagine going from zero to hundred so quickly, from regular life in Russia to this, unless it was already part of life to some degree. And if it wasn't...a lot of the torturers will be going back to everyday life in Russia eventually

They might be not be "going back to Russia" though. There's anecdotal evidence that some of the worst behaviour has been by separatists from Russian controlled areas of Ukraine.

Even if thats the case, the fact these sites seem to be all over and in places where the separatists aren't deployed (or are they? not sure) suggests its across the board, or at least fairly standard

That being said, I'm not all that clear who the separatists are, or what the dividing line between separatists and little green men is, or how much that line has changed between 2014 and 2022

This is a really weird line of thought, the notion that abhorrent behaviour in war and justifications for it is linked to national origin or whatever is not supported by most of recorded history.

Yeah, maybe, I'm not sure what to think either really. It might be that in other wars this is standard too, I know there was Abu Ghraib and others so maybe its just being reported more with the unprecedented level of access we have?

I mean, to pick one example from about a million in history…we know about some of the atrocities committed by the British in Kenya before independence because there were survivors and there are some surviving documents. But before leaving the country they dumped huge amounts of documents in the Indian Ocean rather than handing them to the new Kenyan government. What do you think was so bad that they couldn’t risk it being discovered?

The difference is whose torture is considered torture, and whose is considered an unfortunate if understandable cost.

I think the thing they couldn't risk being discovered was evidence of atrocities. Quite possibly directly ordered but maybe unfocussed and random as is seemingly the case today in Kharkiv and other oblasts

I'm not sure there is a difference, but if there is it would be the role of conscripts, regular Russians that weren't even troops a few months ago. How does one go from working in a cafe in January to torturing people in March?

You may well be right, that this is something intrinsic, that the exception isn't Russians, its Ukrainians - and the story isn't "why are Russians torturing?" at all, but "why aren't Ukrainians torturing? (unless of course they are too and we're not seeing the reports)

I will say this as nicely as I can.

A while ago I was unfortunate enough to encounter a free soldier F event in central London. All around me were men on motorbikes being cheered by huge numbers of people. Ordinary people cheering for the right of a British soldier to kill Irish civilians and walk free, because to kill us in cold blood in the streets is less of a crime than to be held accountable for it. How do you think I feel that I live somewhere where people voted for a government that included that as part of their policy agenda?

No people is uniquely monstrous. Given opportunity, a lot of people will excuse the worst atrocities, there’s really no more to it than that.

I think its essentialist to think any particular people are intrinsically more or less monstrous than any other people. We shouldn't pursue that line of thinking. I think a large percentage of any country is completely fine with killing in theory and enjoy seeing it on tv. I think a smaller but still large percentage of people would kill without even thinking abuot it. Doing torture...probably starting to drop off a bit but still higher than we would like

I think what you're suggesting is that the people who are ok with this, are actually able to jump right into torture - without having some level of it already being present in society? I think this is true for some, but still seems a big step for people without prior experience to some degree. Its not something I'd feel ready to step up to without some level of desensitization first

Stanley Milgram to thread.

(even though his study is super-flawed)

From what I can tell, much of this doesn't seem to fit that pattern though, much doesn't seem particularly directed (although there is that too). There's a chaotic element

Initially thought you were referencing the Monkey Ladder experiment, which I'd never heard of until recently (most likely also flawed, but interesting!)

Is that like Monkey Tennis

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSn3-fRTanipMj496Tnuqahw4WEK2zH6YwEoQ&usqp=CAU

Mass shooting at a Russian training ground

A deadly shooting at a Russian military training ground in the Belgorod region has killed 11 and injured 15, according to official sources. Unconfirmed reports by witnesses say the number of casualties may be as much as twice that. The incident allegedly occurred when Russian officers made derogatory remarks about Allah to volunteers of Tajik origin. Official reports say there were two shooters, both of whom were killed. A witness says a third shooter escaped. The incident occurred against the backdrop of frequent shelling in Belgorod and complaints from soldiers about conditions at the training ground and on the front lines.

See pilot.. pic.twitter.com/rcAnunTRaK

— ka0_nash1 🇪🇺 🇨🇿 🇺🇦 (@J4rr1N) October 17, 2022

why?

Will the pilot get picked up for a full series?

Russia has SO MUCH empty space to fly training missions, yet they chose this spot?

maybe it wasn't a 'training mission' after all

Wow, that photo

LOL truly the Russians are just trolling us now.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-british-navy-personnel-blew-up-nord-stream-gas-pipelines-2022-10-29/

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fh0FiM7XEAYaUGY?format=png&name=360x360

Vadim Boyko, a Russian colonel who was involved in the autumn mobilisation commits suicide in his office by shooting himself 5 times!

Funny enough it wasn't the bullets that killed him, it was the fall out of the hospital window.

Well, it was drinking the vial of polonium that caused him to fall out of the hospital window.

Bringing back the Purgin' Thirties.. darkness at noon and all that

Bump thread every time an oligarch dies under mysterious circumstances

Russian real estate tycoon Dmitry Zelenov passed away earlier this month after tumbling down a flight of stairs while visiting friends in the French Riviera, according to a local outlet and an independent Russian outlet.

The French newspaper Var Matin reported Sunday that Zelenov, 50, had been dining with friends in Antibes on Dec. 9 when he suddenly became unwell, falling down a flight of stairs and suffering critical head injuries. He succumbed while receiving treatment at the Hospital Pasteur in Nice.

Baza, an independent news channel on Telegram, reported that Zelenov had toppled over a railing and hit his head. Authorities informed the oligarch’s friends around 7 a.m. the following morning that he’d died without regaining consciousness.

The channel also said it was “known” that Zelenov had previously undergone vascular surgery for unspecified heart problems.

The Antibes Police Department is currently investigating Zelenov’s cause of death, according to Var Matin.

The 50-year-old was the former owner of Russian developer Don-Stroy, which constructed the 61-story Triumph Palace Tower in Moscow, one of the tallest residential structures in Europe. Before the company fell under the control of Russia’s state-owned bank VTB after succumbing to the 2008 financial crisis, Zelenov’s net worth was estimated at $1.4 billion, landing him on the Forbes list of Russian billionaires.

Zelenov is the latest in a long line of top figures in the Russian oil, gas, technology, and financial sectors to meet suspicious and untimely ends—the most recent being Anatoly Gerashchenko.

The former head of Moscow’s Aviation Institute (MAI), Gerashchenko took a mysterious fall “from a great height” at the organization’s headquarters in September. The institute’s press office called the 73-year-old’s death “the result of an accident.”

A fortnight before Gerashchenko’s death, 39-year-old Ivan Pechorin, an executive appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin to help oversee development in the Arctic, himself took a strange fall off a moving boat off the Russian coast. And two weeks before that, Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Russia’s second-largest oil company, died after purportedly falling out of a hospital window, plummeting six stories to the ground.

I'm seven years older than that guy? Proof positive that when you accumulate wealth past a certain event horizon, it drains you into a husk more effectively than any leech or ghoul.

I mean, not to make excuses for late Russian oligarchs, but he looks about 50 to me.

oh shit, apparently there's a war going on

RIGA, Latvia — After nearly 10 months of war, but referring to the brutal invasion of Ukraine instead as “a special military operation,” Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday finally called it a “war” for the first time, setting off an uproar among antiwar Russians who have been prosecuted for merely challenging the Kremlin-approved euphemism.

“Our goal is not to spin this flywheel of a military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war,” Putin said during a televised news conference following a government meeting on Thursday. “This is what we are striving for.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/22/putin-war-ukraine-special-operation/

https://64.media.tumblr.com/d892e26be4d5c85bd78aad31b801fb6a/tumblr_mff7wxN8AF1rlho0no1_500.gif

love Putin's whole "Look, I didn't want this either" strategy