Ukraine Invasion: Part 19

[MagicFox]

Welcome friends, still going

I'm sorry, I know I keep saying it but I really hate all this careless language around the use of nuclear weapons

@Igotjelly

I’m sorry but why does Boris get the cockerels?

Someone has been supplying more than arms to Ukraine - intelligence support and analysis. The UK is quite expert in these things...

@HappyWinter it’s funny you say that. I used to have literal panic attacks at the thought of escalation and nuclear war. Now I find myself waking in the night in cold sweats thinking about the things happening to civilians in Ukraine. My perspective on life and what’s important has, I think, taken a fundamental shift. Life can change in the blink of an eye and I’d rather we all died in a nuclear war tomorrow and know that my children were safe and loved right up until that moment than let them suffer the way children in Ukraine are even for a second.

@Igotjelly I don't think they wouldn't suffer in that scenario

@MagicFox

I'm sorry, I know I keep saying it but I really hate all this careless language around the use of nuclear weapons

Me too.

I’m not sure that the supposed careless talk of nuclear weapons is particularly problematic unless any of us are Boris or Biden masquerading looks around suspiciously

@Igotjelly

I’m not sure that the supposed careless talk of nuclear weapons is particularly problematic unless any of us are Boris or Biden masquerading looks around suspiciously

It doesn't have to have a direct effect to be problematic.

@MagicFox

I'm sorry, I know I keep saying it but I really hate all this careless language around the use of nuclear weapons

Trust me: you'll get used to it.

This is quite horrific reading

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-war-crimes-borodyanka-bucha-hostomel-makariv-b2054530.html?

@DGRossetti sorry, how do you mean?

[quote MagicFox]@DGRossetti sorry, how do you mean?[/quote]
None of this is really new to some of us. My time at High School was spent researching nuclear bombs, fall out, and how to survive the oncoming apocalypse. Loads of ads at the back of the Exchange and Mart for army surplus kit that would be useful (no Lidl then).

I've said before (to general ridicule but at my age that's pretty usual) when the Great Storm of 1987 hit, there was a window of time when I genuinely thought we'd been hit by a strike.

Just listen to the music. The defining music of the era I grew up in:

Interrupting all programs
This is radio clash from pirate satellite
Orbiting your living room,
Cashing in the bill of rights
Cuban army surplus or refusing all third lights
This is radio clash on pirate satellite
This sound does not subscribe
To the international plan
In the psycho shadow of the white right hand
Then that see ghettology as an urban Vietnam
Giving deadly exhibitions of murder by napalm
This is radio clash tearing up the seven veils
This is radio clash please save us, not the whales
This is radio clash underneath a mushroom cloud
This is radio clash
You don't need that funeral shroud
Forces have been looting
My humanity
Curfews have been curbing
The end of liberty
Hands of law have sorted through
My identity
But now this sound is brave
And wants to be free - anyway to be free
This is Radio clash on pirate satellite
This is not free Europe
Not an armed force network
This is Radio Clash using audio ammunition
This is Radio Clash can we get that world to listen?
This is Radio Clash using aural ammunition
This is Radio Clash can we get that world to listen?
This is Radio Clash on pirate satellite
Orbiting your living room,
Cashing in the bill of rights
This is radio Clash on pirate satellite
This is radio Clash everybody hold on tight
A-riggy diggy dig dang dang
Go back to urban 'nam

and 42 years later

Thanks for clarifying, I understand what you mean

I actually find it slightly heartening that both Putin and Biden know how this all works, it’s a dance they’ve done before and I think that’s helpful.

@MagicFox

I'm sorry, I know I keep saying it but I really hate all this careless language around the use of nuclear weapons

Totally agree. If people think it’s bad now, they clearly have no conception of what a nuclear strike would mean, in just about every way possible. It’s so cavalier to just say “nuke the fuckers”, like it’s some conclusive statement.

Johnson’s encouragement of Ukraine’s EU membership is interesting. While an admirable aim in itself, it could add additional instability to a union already having problems with some of its Eastern members.
Johnson would presumably welcome any validation of the UK’s decision to leave, and self-interest would be his middle name if it wasn’t already de pfeffel.

@borntobequiet

Johnson’s encouragement of Ukraine’s EU membership is interesting. While an admirable aim in itself, it could add additional instability to a union already having problems with some of its Eastern members. Johnson would presumably welcome any validation of the UK’s decision to leave, and self-interest would be his middle name if it wasn’t already de pfeffel.

Do you think it would be a bad thing for Ukraine to join the EU?

Just to clarify, I'm not advocating for the use of nuclear weapons at all. That would be insane. I'm illustrating how fear can quickly and easily flip into anger. Or at least trying to.

The UK having left the EU is viewed with some puzzlement in Ukraine but I think the UK is now filed alongside the USA as a far away friend.

Although I have little time for Johnson in a domestic UK setting, his stock in Ukraine is high and he is doing the right things. The cock jug? Hope it goes to somewhere like the V&A ['hello Tristram, I've got this jug...'] rather than on a chequers mantelpiece.

Accompanying image from this morning: first mention of Kherson is the oblast (province) and second the city. 'Hot' doesn't mean temperature.

Does anyone know how many pro-Russian Ukrainian troops are fighting for the Russians?

The Russian army numbers could be swelled by them. Also by unwilling fighters who've joined on the premise "fight or your family dies". The willing fighters will be more effective ofc but sheer numbers do count especially if they are manning artillery. I imagine Russia is way ahead there still.

It's just incredible that Putin has so effectively weakened Russia both inside by corruption and outside by this failed invasion. (even if they manage to hold Donbass and the Eastern corridor, the army is clearly a lot less effective than everything though which is a failure all on its own). In the name of Russia and the strong man, he's proven ... well, exactly the opposite.

About the faeces all over, my companion said that when the Russians came through his grandmother's village they took every glass container of preserved veg/fruit, spilled it on the floor and then shat in the jars. It's obviously a thing. And they present the Ukrainian as uncivilized ...

Hungary would be surrounded by EU member states if Ukraine joined.

Johnson only cared about Brexit as a vehicle to power. If it were in his interests to do so, he would rejoin tomorrow. As it stands, we are going to have a painful couple of years before some kind of reapprochment with our nearest neighbours. The NI question still has not been answered; it's mostly been ignored and wished away.

Check this out. Residents of the Kursk region see off Russian soldiers going to war in Ukraine.

twitter.com/tadeuszgiczan/status/1513080837117517825?s=21

@Igotjelly

I’m sorry but why does Boris get the cockerels?

I think he'll treasure the cockerels. Once he's told the significance of them

@FatCatThinCat

Woke up this morning to warnings on my social media from various European media outlets that viewing or sharing the video footage of the Russian soldier raping then shooting a 1 year old girl is a criminal offence. The bastard has been arrested but it doesn't say by whom. I should have stayed in bed.

That is depraved and evil beyond words. It doesn’t even fit with some sort of theory of the ‘selfish’ gene trying to populate the world with more of itself ( devil’s spawn).

Has this been on the ordinary news? I don’t think people realise the scale of horror what is happening.