The Never-Ending Storm

russia

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People who care about Palestinian lives have been pushing the (accurate, applicable) word “genocide” or the (accurate, applicable) phrase “ethnic cleansing.” At the outset of the invasion, it would have been too soon to call it, but now it’s absolutely not. Anybody who has seen or paid attention knows exactly what’s going on. Only ideology and ethics and affinity are shaping sides, now. And the decades of apartheid don’t help Israel’s case. It’s just willful mass murder at this point.

The fact is, though, in Palestine, as in Ukraine with Russia, legalistic language, finger pointing, recrimination, and shaming don’t mean squat. Nobody is going to enforce it. The US sees Israelis as like them, therefore Israelis will be supported and they’ll figure out what to call it later. Israel wants the Palestinians gone, either removed or dead, and they want the land. They will try and take it, and it looks like the Palestinians are on their own. The US will co-sign that.

That’s the kind of world we live in, now. That’s our reality. The strong take. There’s no objective truth when facts serve power. The weak die, as the world that made them weak looks on, in apathy or in prejudiced judgment. Courts and laws serve only power, and even if they didn’t they don’t save lives or stop tragedies, they only make examples of people in the hope that this will change human behavior (it doesn’t, it never has, if it did we wouldn’t be talking about this).

Practical agency is all that matters. You have it and you live, you prosper. If not, you get victimized. That’s the world the politicians and business people and priests and demagogues made for us. Enjoy it while you can, because if, by chance, you find yourself on the wrong side of the narrative, or the wrong side of luck, or on the wrong side of the perception of influence and power, no one will help you. Nothing will save you. Your life will be disposable. Happens every day. Always has.

https://achrilock.com/2023/12/1034/

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Israel and the United States have no more right to determine the borders or governing structure of Gaza and the West Bank than Russia and Belarus have to determine the borders or governing structure of Ukraine. The racism and inclination toward colonial map artwork are evident even in the suggestion to the contrary. It’s funny to me that no matter how many times empires try this and no matter how many times history demonstrates what a terrible idea it is, they still keep trying it.

https://achrilock.com/2023/12/1006/

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Republican, Democrat, neoliberal, neoconservative, fascist, the political inclination of the US government does not matter. The hundred-year pattern is the same. If there’s an authoritarian regime, we’re propping it up with economics or weapons. If there’s a genocide, we’re ignoring it or selling the weapons or providing the political support that facilitates it, as with Israel / Palestine. If there’s a resolution for global reform or justice, we oppose it.

The only reason they helped Ukraine was to counter another rival power and because people hoped it might lead to some weapon sales. And because enough people of conscience made a whole lot of noise about it. America doesn’t win wars. It fights wars, first-hand or by proxy, perpetually, because that is what the entire society is designed to do. That’s how our economics runs. That’s how our politics runs. America is Sparta, not Athens.

And here in the land so many people around the world have seen in Hollywood’s film and TV, there are a million green zones and a million Gaza strips. When we finally managed to ban identity apartheid, they replaced it with economic apartheid. Those ideas that American politicians and security officials telegraph are not based in reality. Our only practiced value, here, is cannibalism, of each other, of the reformative state, and of anyone else in the world who isn’t strong enough to resist it.

America doesn’t bring law to the world to save it. The law is a weapon, here, of the oligarchy and of right-wing extremists, as it is in Israel, and the American international project is, and has always been, one of shaping the political and economic landscape to recreate that stasis of perpetual decay everywhere on Earth. Don’t believe the hype. We’re just Russia or China with a prettier coat of paint and sweeter rhetoric. America cannot be counted upon to solve this or any other crisis.

https://achrilock.com/2023/11/929/

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Thinking you can destroy a militant group in Gaza and end Palestinian resistance to Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing by allowing one side to wipe out a string of cities and displace the entire population and murder as it sees fit in perpetuity is early twentieth century thinking at its worst. It is an ideological plan, not a practical or moral one.

The war needs to be stopped, the region occupied by neutral third parties, and international criminal proceedings should begin for Israel, Hamas, and any other parties who have contributed to crimes that violate international law. Following that, Palestinians need to be granted (geographically contiguous) statehood. Only the United States is in a realistic position to realize these objectives. If it does not take these actions, it is demonstrating that it does not seek a decisive resolution.

Thinking that you can end Russian aggression in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, or West Africa by imposing sanctions on Russia, or by sending weapons to an occupied weaker combatant locked in a, now years long, World War I era trench stalemate is early twentieth century thinking at its worst. It is a strategy of political convenience, not a practical or moral one. It’s like Iran thinking it can destroy Israel by arming the various militant groups around it. Exactly the same ridiculous magical thinking.

Either Ukraine should be immediately admitted to the NATO alliance, and action should be taken to end the war peacefully and return Ukraine’s territory annexed by Russia, or a joint military campaign should be initiated to remove Russian forces from the area and remove their ability to make war in the near future. Only the United States is in a realistic position to realize these objectives. If it does not take these actions, it is demonstrating that it does not seek a decisive resolution.

The 20th century methodology of treating conflicts as something to be managed over the long term must end if the world is ever to know peace over any length of time. The great game of other peoples’ lives must end. These other places are not even the game pieces to the people making these decisions. They’re the board. It’s unethical, cruel, and counterproductive to the goals of peace and stability. The politics and strategies of wishes and hopes must be replaced by those of action, of results.

https://achrilock.com/2023/11/819/

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Anyway, all’s quiet here among the Western cunts with regard to Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinians, so I’ll lay out for you how I see the Ukraine situation.

If you’ll recall, the fascist right in the United States didn’t want anything to do with it from the beginning, and they still don’t, because they’re fascists, and the dominant spirit of governance within Russia right now is also fascist (it’s actually a kleptocracy but that’s what fascism is, a kleptocracy with some vilified scapegoats… which our right-wing really enjoys). Anyway, the fascist right in the states has more in common with Russia than with their own people or government, or with Ukraine. So, they down-vote funding, and will probably always do so.

If you’ll also recall, the neoliberal right (what many U.S. citizens dubiously refer to as ‘the left’), team Biden / Obama / Hillary / daddy defense contractor / New York anchor desk former CIA panel, didn’t really want anything to do with the actual war from the start either. They liked sanctions and watching Russia spend itself, while pouring billions more into NATO, an alliance that looks really good on paper but which will never actually be called upon to do anything, and if it is, will not because all someone has to say is “nuclear’ and it’s all about strengthening economic ties, again.

But team blue MAGA had to intervene to an extent, because Ukraine didn’t just fall over as they expected (which also would have helped pour more money and gravitas into NATO). It survived the first three days. This was problematic because it made them look all manner of stupid politically and strategically and ethically.

So, Ukraine got some bullets and shells and later drones and rocket systems and the like. But, ultimately, the West was, and is still, pretending to help Ukraine fight a war, rather than actually fighting one. Why would they want to spend billions of dollars pretending at war? Because it still serves their ends. It helps to convince Europe and the world, including the less informed in Asia, that NATO is still a thing and that it sill has power and, most importantly of all, that it still needs money and support. Why is the money for NATO important?

Aside from the political aura granted by its proximity, to leaders who would otherwise not find themselves with access to such power and influence and well-heeled company, that money for weapons and infrastructure gets a lot of people paid. There’s no private money to be made in millions of rounds of small arms ammunition or rockets or dinky drones or any of the rest of it for Ukraine. The money is in bases, in fighter planes, in huge expensive tanks, in precision guided weapons, in nuclear care and feeding, in research and development. You know, the kind of stuff Israel ‘needs’ to fight some guys in black pajamas with “machine guns.”

Now that the Ukraine war is a stalemate, and the West is too chicken-shit to call Putin on his nuclear bluff, that’s it. The money just isn’t there. The margins are just too low. And there’s no political benefit (especially in the states) because the right wants Russia to win and the middle doesn’t want to lose elections to the right and there’s nowhere for the situation to go except badly for Ukraine’s steadfast supporters. Because democracy always caters to the lowest common denominator, morally and practically. Just the way it is. Feel free to love it until the end of time, but it won’t bring you justice. It brings you a delicate balance between psychopaths and organized crime bosses in business suits, same as it ever was.

A Russian black eye makes a few old farts in the security state smile, and it might win a few voters from the Ukrainian diaspora, but these politicians have treated the whole situation like a political burden from the start, because it was. The ethics of it don’t matter. What matters to them is if they can sell it, and if there’s something to sell, preferably with some benefit from that passing through their hands.

There’s no moral component for them, really, with the Ukraine / Russia situation the way there is with their support for what Israel is doing. The latter is a crusade against some ‘other’ that they can barely define and that they have to reach back, however inexplicably, to WWII to cultivate as sufficiently dangerous in the minds of people around the world. The former is just some brutalized kids in old apartment buildings in eastern Europe who probably speak Russian anyway.

They don’t really care about Ukraine, and if they did, they wouldn’t really resolve the situation the way it needs to be resolved because, one, they’re afraid of Putin’s nuclear threats and, two, if they get rid of Putin and Russia becomes a happy democracy with good relations with Europe, there is no longer a need for their precious NATO.

So, Israel’s getting to use the full defense contractor apocalypse package against hospitals and schools and refugee camps in Gaza, because some guys did a mass shooting. In Ukraine you get pretty words and your older brothers’ old crates of ammo. Because as stupid and wrong and shortsighted as these so-called world leaders are, they don’t see any personal gain in doing otherwise. And Ukrainians are being made to suffer and die for it, and it’s absolute bullshit, and I’m sorry.

https://achrilock.com/2023/11/481/

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| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/02/ukraine-reports-most-extensive-russian-shelling-of-the-year | Ukraine reports most extensive Russian shelling of the year |

[…] ““Just like in the first world war, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he told the Economist, in an interview published on Wednesday. He added: “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

[…]

The general said he had underestimated Putin’s willingness to sacrifice his own soldiers – “at least 150,000 killed” so far. “Let’s be honest, [Russia] is a feudal state where the cheapest resource is human life. And for us … the most expensive thing we have is our people,” Zaluzhnyi said.”

https://achrilock.com/2023/11/478/

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| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/26/russian-deserters-call-on-former-comrades-to-join-them-armenia-soldiers-ukraine-war | ‘What’s this all for?’: Russian deserters call on former comrades to join them |

[…] “Nearly 50,000 Russian soldiers have died in the war in Ukraine, according to a recent statistical analysis. Another study showed that in 2022 the war in Ukraine had become the leading cause of death for young Russian men.”

https://achrilock.com/2023/10/304/

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And, while you’re all in a clappin’ mood, I don’t see a bright outcome for the Ukraine situation. Don’t misunderstand, I support Ukraine and the provision of aid to it. Have done since day one. But I don’t think that throwing money at the problem is getting it done (as I said it wouldn’t, since day one). What I’ve seen for two years is a heroic holding action, through no fault of Ukraine’s, but simply due to the disparities between Ukraine and Russia. Russia can send fresh fodder into it for years to come. Ukraine cannot. The same guys who started their defensive war are going to have to finish it. And the West refuses to give them the offensive capabilities to take the fight to their antagonist, which is what will be required to force Russia to stop the war.

I believe that as a generality the international community, particularly those who still consider themselves power players, needs to move away from arms ‘trading.’ I would go so far as to say that it needs to become a crime to profit from the creation or the transfer of a weapon. They should be made by states for defensive need, and for no other reason. They should be controlled in the same way nuclear weapons are controlled. But, more to the point for what we’re talking about right now, throwing money at this problem will not solve it. Weapons are useless if there aren’t enough rested men and women to use them. Spending trillions on a proxy war only enriches the people selling the weapons for transfer and bankrupts the state paying for them. It does not win the war. That requires the antiquated, novel solution of actually going to a place and fighting for it.

Ukraine can’t save the U.S. and Europe by itself. The U.S. and Europe need to either get more deeply involved in the conflict or accept a Russian victory.

https://achrilock.com/2023/10/128/