trompete

joined 3 years ago
[–] trompete@hexbear.net 36 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There were elections in Thuringia and in Saxony. The CDU probably has to form coalitions including the BSW (Wagenknecht), who wants concessions regarding military aid for Ukraine.

So the atlanticists at Die Zeit are worried (archive) this will break the transatlantic consensus inside the CDU/CSU and torpedo future coalitions with the Greens (CDU/Greens would be the dream team of US bootlickers).

I'll believe it when I see it. These people have such a grip on all the things, they'll figure something out. Probably Wagenknecht will cave.

Anyway, I have some great quotes:

Support for Ukraine does not come from the party's gut or genes, but requires a permanent political effort on the part of the leadership. Western ties are not a state, but a process: someone has to bind. Solidarity with Ukraine does not just happen, it has to be generated.

Yeah no shit.

In the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, the CDU has always been a guarantor of value-driven foreign policy, at least when it came to the foundations: Western ties, Europe, Israel.

Driven by value alright, shareholder value. Also I love the "at least" in there, I guess even the author felt too embarrassed saying this with a straight face. They took briefcases full of cash from arms dealers lol.

[–] trompete@hexbear.net 58 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

This article by the FT (archive) about the Pokrovsk situation is nothing but bad news for the Ukrainian war effort and barely any attempt is made to suggest this could be turned around. Some excerpts:

Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military analyst at the Kyiv-based Information Resistance group, called the situation on the eastern edge of Pokrovsk “a complete defensive failure”.

“The trenches in front of Novohrodivka were empty. There was practically no Ukrainian army in the once 20,000-strong city,” she [MP Mariana Bezuhla] wrote in a scathing post.

In fact, Russian forces have advanced more rapidly in Donetsk since August 6 compared with the previous months, according to several military analysts, including Deep State, a Ukrainian group with close ties to Ukraine’s defence ministry that monitors frontline movements.

“There is complete chaos,” said Deep State’s Roman Pohorilyi pointing to the fall of key towns such as Novohrodivka and the looming threat to Pokrovsk.

“Ukraine committed reserves to Kursk, leaving fewer options to plug gaps elsewhere. Some of the more experienced brigades have been replaced by newer, less experienced units,” Lee said.

Soldiers who were mobilised this summer following the Ukrainian government’s new conscription laws meant to fill Kyiv’s dwindling ranks have been sent into the fray with little training or experience.

“They freeze . . . they don’t know what to do in real combat,” said a lieutenant whose troops are on the frontline near Pokrovsk. Many “turn and run at the first explosion”.

Soldiers in artillery units near Pokrovsk also highlighted a deficit in shells and a severe mismatch in firepower compared to Russian forces.

“Our shells are running out. We just don’t have enough,” said an artillery commander, noting that many resources had been redirected north to Kursk. For about the past month, his unit has had one shell for every six to eight fired by the Russians.

Russian forces, meanwhile, maintain a significant tactical advantage, bolstered by superior aviation and drone capabilities as well as in artillery, the CDS think-tank said.

So their command lost control, there are not enough people to man the trenches, the press-ganged slaves are less than helpful, Russia has more ammo, drones, air power, everything; and they made this worse by diverting all the good stuff to Kursk.

[–] trompete@hexbear.net 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh god why is this presentation so earnestly serious about le epic history simulator of human progress.

[–] trompete@hexbear.net 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They better not increase system requirements so much that I need to get new hardware.

[–] trompete@hexbear.net 49 points 11 months ago (1 children)

New talking point to get bigger defense contracts just dropped. And he has another one:

"I think we’re in an age when nuclear deterrent is actually less effective because the West is very unlikely to use anything like a nuclear bomb, whereas our adversaries might," he added. "Where you have technological parity but moral disparity, the actual disparity is much greater than people think."

Karp continued: "In fact, given that we have parity technologically but we don’t have parity morally, they have a huge advantage."

Imagine thinking the US has the moral high ground, and that having the moral high ground is a disadvantage.

[–] trompete@hexbear.net 46 points 11 months ago

If he was 50 years younger, he'd have lowered the average age of a Ukrainian soldier. Always with the excuses.

[–] trompete@hexbear.net 13 points 11 months ago

The users should own the means of computing. So choose Debian. The Debian Social Contract states:

We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities.

Any commercial distros do not do this. I don't know if Arch or Gentoo have a written down charter or whatever, but they seem a lot less principled than Debian usually.

[–] trompete@hexbear.net 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Idk about Ireland, but around here they don't like to put speed limits even though the situation clearly calls for low speeds. The law expects people to drive according to the situation. You may be charged with dangerous (i.e. too fast) driving even if you're under the speed limit along some clearly dangerous bend or something.

[–] trompete@hexbear.net 7 points 1 year ago

Maybe a SOCKS proxy is good enough?

SSH can act as a SOCKS proxy and that's pretty easy to do. Your friend just needs to be able to login onto your computer with an ssh account and run this ssh command on her computer:

ssh -D 1234 yourmachine

And then set proxy settings in the browser or whatever to SOCKS4/5, localhost, port 1234.

[–] trompete@hexbear.net 16 points 1 year ago

The "UA pov" rules there are wierd. Basically if it's from a pro-Ukrainian channel it is supposed to be labeled UA pov, even if it's from inside Russia. This was probably filmed by a Russian civilian and then found on a pro-UA channel. Apparently it's geolocated to be in Rylsk, which is not under Ukrainian control.

[–] trompete@hexbear.net 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Probably they're loading the dead into these intact trucks. I'm not sure who has control of the scene (can't tell), but my guess would be it's the Russians, because (a) it's reported as some sort of HIMARS strike, so further from the front (makes sense anyway, they wouldn't be doing a non-armored convoy near the actual frontline I would hope), and (b) why would the Ukrainians do cleanup there anyway? So I don't think it's a Ukrainian fake. It's also too elaborate to be a fake, like are they setting a dozen trucks on fire just to film this?

Oh and the answer is probably shrapnel ~~from cluster munitions~~.

Edit: This is probably drone footage of the strike. It's like 20 trucks just standing there. Looks like regular explosive rockets, not cluster munitions. And Ukrainian troops are not there; that's like 20 km from the frontline.

[–] trompete@hexbear.net 22 points 1 year ago (9 children)

CW death

Video of someone driving past the aftermath.

It's like a dozen trucks all burned out or of full of dead people.

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