Reply With QuoteYou mean I have to work to have an informed opinion?
The key to separating good & bad news is reading more news, but especially local news from the people involved.
Two simple examples, there's been a lot of international debate about who blew up the Kakhovka Dam and who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, and you'll see a lot of propaganda on both sides pointing the finger in both directions. But if you read local expert sources (the people that would know), especially if it's against their own interest on its face: Russian commentators, that would know, know the Russia blew up that dam, and Ukrainian commentators, that would know, know that Ukraine blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.
Sometimes they still try to bury the lead, but you can learn how to read what they're really saying. They usually have the best evidence and explain it in the wider context. Anyway, when the worry is the credibility of news, the solution is to dig deeper to the expert sources closest to the thing in a situation where we can expect them to speak freely. It's usually sources that are not targeting you (you can be initially wary of the ones that are especially targeting you), so you need to translate it and find it in out of the way corners of the net that you have to search out.
You mean I have to work to have an informed opinion?
Yeah you will have to build up those finger muscles to a web search machine level.
Oh by the way, Google got a proposal to split into smaller companies, damn it.
Welcome to chaos and disorder.
Last edited by DuatDweller; 19th Aug 2024 at 19:32.
In Soviet Russia, Ukraine invades you.
That almost deserves an '80s-style slow clap crescendo.
LolOriginally Posted by SD
Big bad corporations, oh no that's tyranny!
Small divided corpororations, oh no that's chaos!
A Russian man from Saint Petersburg admonishing the fleeing civilians of Kursk to stay and fight turns out to be in the funeral business:
https://twitter.com/Bricktop_NAFO/st...75780010995729
Context: Saint Petersburg is one of the wealthier cities of Russia and its inhabitants are far less likely to be drafted into military service.
"Society is ONE" (with the death).
When android phones OS goes to hell (badly done for example, you'll see what I mean).
Ukraine soldiers (either mercenaries or national) are quite desperate and willing to do anything to win, including doing something illogical and crazy (even if they themselves in the foot, not literal).
I've been following Prof. Gerdes for about a year. I thought I'd share this video of his:
The situation in Pokrovsk is grim. I hope the Ukrainians are able to hold the town until the weather gets rainy.
Stumbled upon a conversation with a former Australian diplomat about Russia's red lines and why it's very unlikely that Russia is going to commit nuclear suicide if it fails to conquer Ukraine or gets a harsher beating than it anticipated. The relevant part is from 26:30 to 1:02:00 (The rest is filled with talk about bizarre and esoteric politics revolving around the US, Australia and China).
Starting from the relevant part: https://youtu.be/Qaocovy5KwQ?si=wUXFM5LGC-RI2ElI&t=1350
Last edited by Starker; 3rd Sep 2024 at 10:08.
That's the real problem, you (generic you) don't realizes how today politics involve near-esoteric / mystical&mythical thinking and mindset.....something gone really wrong opposing the "materialistic interpretation" of reality. Somehow it's a sickness, an unholy (I love using this spiritualistic vocabulary against the actual spiritualists and idealists) legacy of the "deep" far right thinking of post-Enlightenment era against the materialism and the reductionism (the so called "Reaction"), paradoxically using as a leverage on the people psyche the product of the socialism culture like Orwell and the idea of the "rebellion againt the system": nazbol-like formations and "proper" neo-nationalism in general just orbit around the idea that the "system" is a form of enlighted tyranny to fight with nostalgia-driven ethno-dictatorship seeking a past - and now denied - halo/majesty.
That's what russian elite thinks.....and all their allies in Europe.
Just remember what I've said in this thread about russian political elite and the varangian guard ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard ) and the enormous weight of foundational mythology in the process of creating a political ideology to "democratically" drive people (of course you can apply this to Ukraine too, but Ukraine doesn't have nuclear warheads to push its grandiosity/exceptional complex like Russia and USA have)
"Thanks" to the market economy as a prime mover of our society, the empty gigantic hole left by socialism will to shape the humanity future as "one" is now filled by nostalgia of a "saint & noble" world never existed but in the mind of conservative thinkers of the late '800.
That's dangerously tragic because the only thing that means something in that values system is the "greatness" in the history chapters and individuals gain value only as a function of this (otherwise they're "cowards" or "traitors", just see how russian elite think about Telegram creator).
To me this is just an hellish maniac nightmare but if the people positively responds to this stimulus (see the recent election in Germany) it will be the "new" reality for the years to come.
Last edited by lowenz; 3rd Sep 2024 at 10:40.
With this news, I'm digging the history of ukraine's contribution to soviet defense industry : https://defence24.com/industry/ukrai...listic-missile
Here is an interesting tidbit cited from wikipedia : "Ukraine's defense industry was a major part of the Soviet defense industry, responsible for 17% of Soviet defense production and 25% of its scientific research.[6] Some Soviet ICBMs were actually built at the Yuzhmash plant in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.[7] Russia's only aircraft carrier was also built in the Ukrainian SSR, as well as a number of other Russian military ships"
Both sides between Russia and Ukraine have also been reported to be reusing Soviet-era equipment. On the Ukrainian side, what is amazing to me is the reactivation of the S-200 missile. Which part of the missile was modified to perform ground attack, Could it be the seeker or radarhoming part?? How the heck do they maintain the interoperability of the legacy s-200 system with modern radar systems?
This s-200 resurrection lead me to the history o even older systems like the s-125 and s-75 dvina. I can't believe s-75 dvina is still used in several countries! some of it may have undergone modernization (yeah I also admit that my country also received Soviet military aid in the early 1960s and the S-75 was included in that aid package in addition to mig-17/19/21, Antonov An-12B, several helicopters, several submarines, Tupolev T-16 strategic bomber aircraft and a cruiser with 4x152mm multi-barrel cannons)
How well-known conservative/reactionary influencers learned to stop worrying and love Russian disinformation:
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/05/nx-s1...encers-youtube
[...]
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, many American cable distributors dropped RT's U.S. channel, RT America, from their lineups, and it eventually shut down production. The video scheme allowed RT to covertly reach American audiences without a presence on the airwaves, the indictment alleges.
Tenet publicly launched in November 2023 with six contributors well-known in right-wing media, including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, David Rubin and Lauren Southern. The videos they create for Tenet regularly cover conservative staples including "migrant gangs," transgender people, online censorship and attacks on Vice President Harris and President Biden.
"While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia's interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine," the indictment says.
The indictment accuses Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva of working with the Tennessee company's founders to conceal the true origins of its funding. They told some contributors that the company was being backed by a wealthy European banker named Eduard Grigoriann. "In truth and in fact, Grigoriann was a fictional persona," the indictment says.
The influencers say they were unaware of the project's Russian connections. On Wednesday, Johnson, Pool and Rubin posted statements on X describing themselves as victims. Southern didn't respond to a request for comment.
"Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived," Pool wrote.
"I knew absolutely nothing about any of this fraudulent activity. Period," wrote Rubin.
Johnson said he had been pitched by a "media startup" and had "negotiated a standard, arms length deal, which was later terminated." His most recent video on Tenet Media's YouTube channel is from Aug. 29.
The Tennessee company offered lucrative terms, according to the indictment. One influencer was paid $400,000 a month, a $100,000 signing bonus and an additional performance bonus in exchange for four videos a week.
Afanasyeva allegedly exerted a lot of control over the Tennessee company's operations and what it put out, including pushing for specific angles that echoed Kremlin narratives.
For example, the indictment said Afanasyeva told the company to blame Ukraine for a March terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall, even though ISIS had claimed responsibility. The company's founder said one of the contributors was "happy to cover it."
Afanasyeva also allegedly requested that the company post a video of "a well-known U.S. political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia" — likely a reference to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who traveled to Moscow in February. According to the indictment, a producer at the company told one of the founders "it just feels like overt shilling" but was told to "put it out there."
Afanasyeva also urged the influencers to share the company's videos on their own channels and got annoyed when she didn't think they were promoting them enough, according to the indictment.
[...]
Classic psy-ops and in the real (not fancy/magic) meaning of the word.
It's why the "free web" is not a friend of the "truth" (truth has no friends).
Some friend told me that Zelensky's wife spent one million dollar in jewels and stuff in one day.
So much for Ukraine's help money.
So much of fake news like the Bugatti one?
You should get better friends.
Last time around it was a sportscar. They can barely be arsed to change the propaganda anymore.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2...y-on-a-bugatti
LOL, just got this news:
https://tg24.sky.it/spettacolo/cinem...6/limonov-film (translate in your language)
How russians can call us "russophobes" if in the middle of a war against us (we're the "satanic west").....we just promote in our cinemas a film about Limonov who was a prominent nazbol AND prokhanovist totally fallen in love with the Ruski Mir and the idea that 66-75% of Ukraine is Russia?
They're so naive and we're so stupid to let their propaganda go wild (and promote Evola-like characters like Limonov.....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Limonov )
The ones responsible for the Soviets fall - so real liberals in primis, not the "libtards" as I must always specify for the american readers - are direct responsible of the proliferation of dangerous characters like Dugin or Limonov. They're not just "madmen nobody listen to", they're charming fanatics à la Osama Bin Laden.
Last edited by lowenz; 7th Sep 2024 at 16:34.
A "Cartier" jewelry spree leans a little harder on the her being honorarily Jewish (via VZ) for the people actually taking that sh!t seriously ... I mean if they're making stuff up out of whole cloth anyway.
Last edited by demagogue; 7th Sep 2024 at 23:42.
Apparently, this is the kind of content the Russians were paying for:
I don't know if it's worth a 400k monthly salary exactly, but I guess money isn't really an issue for state-funded operations.
You should at least TRY to be better than that, to just believe random shit someone heard on Facebook or Instagram, and that you heard second hand.
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-new...lth/a-69552392
They've been trotting out similar claims, all of which get debunked. What are the odds the latest one is real?Ukraine's first lady, Olena Zelenska, has been regularly accused of going on extravagant shopping sprees while her husband, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sends Ukrainians to war with Russia. Sometimes, she's said to have bought jewelry or a luxury yacht, other times, it was a private estate once belonging to the British royal family.
False evidence purporting to show that the president and first lady of Ukraine are living a lavish life and have amassed untold wealth — financed by corruption — regularly circulates online. The most recent of these claims suggests the couple bought one or two luxury sports cars from the French manufacturer Bugatti as gifts for themselves on a recent trip to Paris.
The suburban Paris car dealership referenced in both the video and the invoice is real, and a manager from the business answered a DW inquiry into the online claims with a written response. The dealership said it had nothing to do with the incident, and had filed a complaint with authorities for, among other things, document forgery, identity theft and libel.
The invoice posted online contains a number of inaccuracies, which lends credence to the dealership's claim that the invoice is a forgery. Mistakes include the misspelling of the Paris suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine in the address line, the omission of obligatory sales tax information, and no mention of method of payment — in fact, no currency is listed at all in the document.So, the French site this "news" was from was generated with AI, seemingly by someone who didn't actually speak French or they would have picked up the errors in the French AI generated output.The "news" site where the story first appeared online offers the third indication that the story was fabricated. Although the text of the story was made to look like a normal tabloid article and offered enough detail to make it appear as if it had been generated with AI, the site itself contains the hallmarks of a troll site.
It has no masthead, no author names, no picture information and no publication dates for any of its articles. Moreover, the page's jumbled layout, skewed images and awkwardly cropped images are all the likely result of sloppy programming.
Perhaps the biggest red flag is the fact that nearly every article featured on the page starts with the words "Voici un titre court pour l'article" (Here's a short title for the article). This gives rise to the suspicion that someone, or something (like a computer program) tasked an AI chatbot with creating titles for articles and then posted the entire response on the page.
It's really not rocket science to work out this stuff is propaganda created by Russian trolls, and they go for outlandish claims specifically because they know that those types of claims are more likely to spread far and wide on social media, whereas believable and sensible claims would not.
They go for expensive sports cars and jewels precisely because it's a dumb person's idea of how rich people spend their money.
Last edited by Cipheron; 8th Sep 2024 at 17:28.
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