TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian fascist invaders.
I am a 73 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2993. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
One of the best drone pilots of the AFU, who killed 400 occupiers and destroyed more than 60 units of military equipment.
The 25-year-old volunteer Oleksii from Kryvyi Rih, with the call sign "Dvizh," is one of the most effective UAV operators.
The serviceman of the CODE 9.2 unit of the 92nd Assault Brigade worked at a factory as an electric and gas welder before the war and had no experience operating drones. All he knows now is the knowledge and skills that came during the war.
In one day alone, his crew carried out 110 sorties against the enemy. Today, "Dvizh" is already a legend among pilots and promises to teach everyone interested in operator skills.
Glory to Ukrainian Hero!
Gerashchenko.
🇺🇦@ukraine_report 🇺🇦🔱
Joyce Vance should have been a federal judge, not the loose Cannon.
💭🦉 At the beginning of summer, Russia will advance on Donbas, they will move in the direction of Pokrovsk, — Budanov in an interview with ARD
The Russians will also advance in the Chasiv Yar direction
🟠 The head of the MDI also emphasized that Ukraine now needs "additional volumes of artillery systems and ammunition"
💬 Commenting on the joint purchase of 800,000 artillery shells for AFU by EU countries at the initiative of the Czech Republic, he noted that so far he "does not feel" their presence at the front
🟠 The situation at the front is difficult, but controlled;
🟠 Budanov believes that a Ukrainian offensive this year is possible;
🟠 "The Crimean bridge is heavily guarded, but we are working on this topic";
🟠 We support the Pope's initiative to exchange "all for all", but the Russian side shows no interest in exchanging prisoners.
How fascism works
An article about modern day fascism.
Fascism seen as technique, as a method of politics, use of rhetoric, a way of running for power. Of course, that’s connected to fascist ideology, because fascist ideology centers on power. And in this it applies not only on ruZZia, but equally on Trump and MAGA.
The key aspect is that fascist politics is about identifying enemies, appealing to the in-group (usually the majority group), and smashing truth and replacing it with power.
If you think about fascism as a sliding scale, ordinary conservative politics is going to find itself somewhere on that scale — which is not to say that it’s fascist at all, any more than ordinary Democratic politics is communist. But just as extreme versions of communism suppress liberty on behalf of radical equality, so too do extreme versions of right-wing politics, namely fascism, suppress liberty in favor of tradition and dominance and power.
In the past, fascist politics would focus on the dominant cultural group. The goal is to make them feel like victims, to make them feel like they’ve lost something and that the thing they’ve lost has been taken from them by a specific enemy, usually some minority out-group or some opposing nation.
This is why fascism flourishes in moments of great anxiety, because you can connect that anxiety with fake loss. The story is typically that a once-great society has been destroyed by liberalism or feminism or cultural Marxism or whatever, and you make the dominant group feel angry and resentful about the loss of their status and power. Almost every manifestation of fascism mirrors this general narrative.
It requires the destruction of truth. Truth is required to act freely. Freedom requires knowledge, and in order to act freely in the world, you need to know what the world is and know what you’re doing. You only know what you’re doing if you have access to the truth. So freedom requires truth, and so to smash freedom you must smash truth. Nobody thinks of the citizens of North Korea as free, because their actions are controlled by lies.
Fascists are never content to merely lie; they must transform their lie into a new reality, and they must persuade people to believe in the unreality they’ve created, to disassociate them from reality.
You get them to sign on to this fantasy version of reality, usually a nationalist narrative about the decline of the country and the need for a strong leader to return it to greatness, and from then on their anchor isn’t the world around them — it’s the leader.
Propaganda and mass media are therefore essential. Fascists are always telling a story about a glorious past that’s been lost, and they tap into this nostalgia of the people. So when you fight back against fascism, you’ve got one hand tied behind your back, because the truth is messy and complex and the mythical story is always clear and compelling and entertaining. It’s hard to undercut that with facts.
This applies to Putin in Russia, Erdoğan in Turkey, Orbán in Hungary, and also Trump in USA. There the blame is as much on the Republican Party as it is on Trump. So far, they’ve chosen loyalty to Trump over loyalty to rule of law.
Read the full article
@freerussia_report
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a new interview to Ukrainian media.
Kyiv Post compiled the main statements of the Ukrainian leader:
▪️Kharkiv is currently well protected from a Russian ground invasion, and talks of Russia's plans to capture the city are deliberate misinformation.
▪️Russia intends to mobilise 300,000 people by June 1, but may not be able to do so in time. Zelensky also did not rule out that Russia would mobilise even more people later.
▪️The Ukrainian Parliament will vote on a mobilization law in the coming weeks.
▪️This year, Ukraine will receive only 10% of the F-16s promised by its partners.
▪️Ukraine is willing to accept assistance from the United States on credit.
▪️At present, there are no threats from Belarus, but resistance will be provided in any case.
▪️Currently, Ukraine has a stockpile of air defense systems, but in a month, there may not be enough if the intensity of shelling is high.
▪️Ukraine is developing its own weapons against guided aerial bombs.
▪️Ukraine has ammunition for defense, but there is not enough for a counterattack.
▪️Ukraine has built several routes to bypass the blockade on the border with Poland.
📷: President’s Office
Russian dam bursts forcing thousands to evacuate in flood-hit southern region.
As of Saturday morning, the level of the Ural river was nearly double the level the dam was designed to handle, according to regional authorities.
The dam failure occurred because the hydraulic structure was not properly maintained, and a criminal investigation has been opened, the regional prosecutor’s office said.
Earlier, an emergency was declared across the entire Orenburg region after levels in the Ural River rose dangerously because of melting ice.
The dam was protecting the city from the waters of the Ural river. By Saturday morning, the water had reached several districts of the city, flooding nearly 2,400 residential buildings, TASS reported.
“A state of emergency is in effect in Orenburg,” the head of the Orenburg region Sergey Salmin said in a Telegram post Saturday.
“This situation leaves us no choice; overnight the [river] level may reach a critical level. I demand that everyone immediately leave their houses in the flood zone.”
Those who refuse to leave the danger zone voluntarily will be evacuated forcibly, with the participation of police officers,” he added.
Orsk, a city of 230,000, lies near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev described the flooding as one of Kazakhstan’s largest natural disasters in 80 years, according to Reuters.
🇺🇦@ukraine_report 🇺🇦🔱 Liz
"A tank on battlefield means everything will hit it." Hero of Ukraine Yevhen Palchenko - hromadske
"The first shot – and you exhale, fear disappears, emotions disappear, thoughts on the battlefield are turned off, adrenaline appears. You see the enemy, the target, where you need to open fire. I say: "Sheva, shoot!", – Yevhen Palchenko, a tanker from the 59th brigade named after Yakov Handziuk, tells about his first feelings on the battlefield.
Yevgeny is 25. At the age of 23, he was awarded the Hero of Ukraine for the fact that at the beginning of a full-scale invasion, he led a brigade out of the encirclement near Oleshky in the Kherson region.
"When I first sat in a tank – this power, these horsepower, when it all growls, this noise, and these shots, – Yevhen rolls his eyes, talking about working on a tank. — A tank on the battlefield means that everything will try to hit it: from small arms to the largest caliber. If we fought near the sea, too, so the ship's guns would hit us too."
Yevhen's story is in the hromadske video.
Tonight, Russian enemy aircraft dropped a guided aerial bomb on a residential area of Kupyansk.
As a result of the impact, the 4-story residential building was destroyed. A woman died under the rubble in an apartment on the fourth floor of a high-rise building.
In order to remove the body of the deceased, units of the State Emergency Service consisting of two departments and 10 rescuers, as well as a crane of a local utility company, were involved.
At 03:30 emergency and rescue operations were completed.
There is a good chance he made it up to top Joe Biden.
Good morning Resisters everywhere. It's 59⁰, but rain clouds overhead.
12-year-old Yana is preparing to run the Boston Marathon this year to raise money for a sports prosthesis for a soldier who lost his leg.
Yana lost both of her legs as a result of a Russian cluster munition attack on the train station in Kramatorsk in April 2022.
🪐 Subscribe to Live: Ukraine
⚡️Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a new interview to Ukrainian media.
Kyiv Post compiled the main statements of the Ukrainian leader:
▪️Kharkiv is currently well protected from a Russian ground invasion, and talks of Russia's plans to capture the city are deliberate misinformation.
▪️Russia intends to mobilise 300,000 people by June 1, but may not be able to do so in time. Zelensky also did not rule out that Russia would mobilise even more people later.
▪️The Ukrainian Parliament will vote on a mobilization law in the coming weeks.
▪️This year, Ukraine will receive only 10% of the F-16s promised by its partners.
▪️Ukraine is willing to accept assistance from the United States on credit.
▪️At present, there are no threats from Belarus, but resistance will be provided in any case.
▪️Currently, Ukraine has a stockpile of air defense systems, but in a month, there may not be enough if the intensity of shelling is high.
▪️Ukraine is developing its own weapons against guided aerial bombs.
▪️Ukraine has ammunition for defense, but there is not enough for a counterattack.
▪️Ukraine has built several routes to bypass the blockade on the border with Poland.
📷: President’s Office
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives evaluated a series of notifications during the month of February proposing the transfer of 65 F-16A/B Fighting Falcon MLU fighter jets from Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands to Ukraine. Despite the mentioned countries expressing their intention to donate the aircraft, the estimated cost of the initiatives amounts to USD 1.683.5 billion, including spare engines, simulators, manuals, tools, and various materials for operating and sustaining the F-16s.
From the summary of the Foreign Affairs Committee, it is revealed that Denmark will make available six F-16 Block 10, thirteen F-16 Block 15 aircraft, additional engines, and support equipment. The transfer is valued at USD 87.5 million. It is worth noting that the Danish government has not only been one of the promoters of the initiative to provide F-16s to Ukraine but is also one of the few countries training pilots and technical personnel.
Part 2:
In the case of Norway, the transfer includes up to 22 F-16 Block 10/15 aircraft, engines, support equipment, test benches, tools, maintenance materials, simulators, spare parts, manuals, and technical documents, among others. The document mentions that the original acquisition value is approximately USD 1.326 billion. Norway has made available a couple of F-16s for the training of Ukrainian crews, while also forming a core group of instructors to support the Danish effort.
The case of the Dutch RSAT was also discussed. On this occasion, it mentions 24 F-16 Block 10/15 aircraft as well as similar supplementary materials to those of Norway. The Dutch initiative initially involved the transfer of 18 fighters, however, that number would be expanded after the decision to cancel the sale of another six aircraft to the company Draken.
The Dutch commitment is such that in the last week of March, the Ministry of Defense announced the purchase of air-to-air missiles for the F-16s donated to Ukraine, an initiative valued at USD 150 million. In this way, the European state confirmed once again its commitment to supporting Ukraine in the context of the armed conflict it faces with Russia.
Zona Militaria.
🇺🇦@ukraine_report 🇺🇦🔱 Liz
Ukraine is urgently seeking energy equipment and air defense ammunition to prevent summer blackouts following devastating Russian strikes on its energy infrastructure, reports Bloomberg.
The agency highlights that the recent Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure were more meticulously planned than those in the previous fall and winter of 2022-2023.
Ukraine suffered a loss of six gigawatts of capacity, with 80% of DTEK's capacity damaged, resulting in billions of hryvnias in damages.
"The destruction has been extensive, affecting both power generation and transmission. The situation is dire. We still do not have a full assessment of the damage, as many facilities are still inaccessible under rubble. We are scouring the globe for the necessary energy equipment, including neighboring countries, to replace what has been lost. However, these efforts may prove futile if Ukraine does not acquire an adequate supply of anti-aircraft weapons," stated Ukrainian Minister of Energy Herman Galushchenko.
The minister stressed that Russia would be unable to provoke a crisis akin to that of 2022-2023, as Ukraine now has basic generation capabilities covering 30% to 50% of its energy needs, even in the event of substantial damage.
Nevertheless, Galushchenko warned that Ukrainians would be asked to conserve energy during July and August, and the government is exploring various financing options for infrastructure restoration, including the possibility of raising electricity tariffs.
"The situation today is even more challenging than last year, with significant losses in hydropower and the need for scheduled maintenance of nuclear units," he added.
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian fascist invaders.
I am a 73 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2993. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
TheOldGuy's choices:
