“And Abimelech fought against the city all that day; and he took the city, and slew the people that was therein, and beat down the city, and sowed it with salt.” (Judges 9:45)
Dear Readers:
Thus doth Biblical mythology record the story of Israelite leader Abimelech, as he conquered the Canaanite city of Shechem. The story then gets even uglier, as the Israelites commit a Khatyn-type atrocity against the Shechemites, herding a thousand men and women into a “hold” and setting them on fire. I remember as a child, studying the Old Testament, this is one of the reasons I became an atheist even at a young age: I simply couldn’t relate positively to any of this, and always found myself rooting for the “wrong” side. Like, those who worshipped Ba’al and stuff like that…
Anyhow, the lead here is not the fire, but the bit about salting the earth, thus making it uninhabitable. Whether or not that actually happened historically (or to other places like Carthage), this is the meme that continues to this day. The idea being that you hate another people so much that you want to destroy their very sustenance, the land itself.
This is how the Russian mainstream press is treating the news that Great Britain plans to gift Schnorer-state Ukraine with anti-tank shells containing depleted uranium. The latter element being the only metal that is hard enough to penetrate Russian armor. These shells will be delivered to the Ukrainian army, along with the Challenger 2 tanks. Russians claim that the ensuing dust particles (when the shells explode) will harm all biological life and ruin the land itself; and that this is one of the criminal intentions going into this plan. A genocidal plot against the citizens and future citizens of these new Russian regions, in other words. (Personally, I don’t doubt that. I think the main purpose is to penetrate tank armor; but the English leaders also like the added side-benefit of harming Russian children.)
However, the British Ministry of Defense pooh-poohs the danger and accuses Russia of disinformation. They say the Russians exaggerate the risk posed by the depleted-uranium shells; and are deliberately trying to muddle people’s brains by confusing “depleted uranium” with nuclear weapons.
Effect On Cancer Rates
To help explain these issues, I have this article by reporter Alyona Zadorozhnaya. So let’s get started.
Zadorozhnaya: The world has already witnessed the consequences of using depleted-uranium shells. Judging by everything, Great Britain is deliberately creating an oncological threat for future generations of these new Russian regions. This, according to military expert Alexander Bartosh, who was interviewed by VZGLIAD.
Bartosh: “I would strongly recommend to the British leadership, that they test this out on their own citizens and in their own territories. And not on people from other nations, like they and the Americans did to the peoples of Iraq and Yugoslavia.
“At the end of the 90’s start of the 2000’s I happened to be working as the Russian Deputy Military Liason to NATO. And I saw with my own eyes the consequences of these barbaric shellings on the territory of Kosovo. According to scientists, the mortality rate there from oncological causes rose significantly. And we see a similar situation in the southern regions of Serbia [where average cancer rates went up].
“Hence, Britain’s declarations on this matter — this is a war crime, and they are attempting to confuse public opinion. The use of depleted-uranium shells should be banned at the highest levels, including the UN.
“Use of these shells in the Donbass region will harm not only the Donbass, but the other new Russian regions. The chemical element can affect humans even decades after the fact. In this manner, Britain is deliberately causing damage to future generations.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova had some very harsh words for the English: “This is a question of the most egregious form of impunity of the Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxon duet to be precise, London and Washington, and how they operate on the international arena. The people who will be affected by this are not only those who reside in the affected area, they and future generations; those who employ these weapons will also suffer.”
[Zakharova is referring to the fact that soldiers who work with, and transport, these depleted-uranium shells, are also shown to have high cancer rates. All it takes is one particle of dust, entering your body…]
Awful Avalanche 
Schnorer-state Ukraine
I take it you mean Schnorrer, someone who bums stuff from other folks. Not really lowly begging, it has to be done with an air of confidence.
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Is that how it’s spelled in German? I learned it as a Yiddish word. Maybe it’s the same thing!
Either way, that describes Zelensky to a tee. The other operative Yiddish word being chutzpah.
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Yiddish is a source for quite a few “low brow” words in German. (https://www.mdr.de/religion/juedisches-leben/jiddisches-woerterbuch-100.html)
There was a theory once that pointed to the Ashkenazi origin and of Yiddish (Jiddisch) by a small group of Jews from the German Rhineland emigrating to eastern Europe.
However recent DNA and linguistic studies revealed the Ashkanzi origin:
“We show that all bio-localization analyses have localized AJs to Turkey and that the non-Levantine origins of AJs are supported by ancient genome analyses. Overall, these findings are compatible with the hypothesis of an Irano-Turko-Slavic origin for AJs and a Slavic origin for Yiddish and contradict the predictions of Rhineland hypothesis that lacks historical, genetic, and linguistic support”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5478715/
So much for the claim especially by eastern European Jews of a Palestine homeland, and even the Sephardic Jews’s claim to a Levant origin is rather doubtful and based on little to no evidence.
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Interesting. I read somewhere that DNA evidence shows the ancient Levant people, including the Hebrews, basically stayed put and became Palestinians. Seems the Romans didn’t deport everybody, only the religious troublemakers. Regular Hebrews just continued living on the land, and everybody blended in. They were pagans, until Islam took over, then they joined that.
Whereas what we know today as Ashkenazi Jews had a completely different origin, they never actually lived in ancient Canaan or the Levant, but somewhere along the way they converted to the Biblical religion and started calling themselves Jews. Maybe even believed in their hearts that they were the people described in the Old Testament.
I don’t really think much of that matters, though. Humans moved around a lot, and everybody is a mongrel. So, I guess you are just what you say, or think, you are.
As for Yiddish, none of that really matters either. It’s clearly a German dialect, and a delightful one at that. I have a Jewish friend who taught me a lot of Yiddish words, and I try to use them in conversation whenever I can!
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“So, I guess you are just what you say, or think, you are.”
Is this not exqctly the “woke” approach, to substitute any biological or ethnic reality with a subjective feeling about yourself, in essence lying about yourself without the corrective of the objective reality?
As long as you claim you are actually a reborn Napoleon or Ceasar, the standard nuthouse figures, without having the possibility do do harm by acting on it, it is just a minor problem for those who have to live with such a delusional person.
It is however a whole different story when such illusions becomethe basis of a mythos, politics, like in the case of the Ashkenazi, who by all accounts as we know now were never previous occupants, are used to justify the occupation of a land and removing and supressing its long time residents with harsh measures and to do so with impunity.
Is that not a similar type of ideology and mythos that Nazism is based on, the mythos of a Volk of pure blood that of course had the right to remove the foreign body, the “parasitic Jew” from its völkisch body, and by declaring itself a superior race (just check the terms Israeli politicians and Rabbis use to describe Palestinians) have the right to occupy the land of inferior races and use it as is the occupiers desire?
Are you really of the opinion that objective reality does no longer exist, and we in the face of reality, the one imposed by environment, biology, history, etc., can be anything we want and by doing this lie to ourselves and engage in illusions, evading to face real pressures a less and less functioning society and power elite trying to maintain control puts on the 99%, and slip into a dreamworld, as is so spendidly described by Horselover Fat.
And by doing so in actually harm ourselves and those we have responsibilities to.
Is that what we all have become to now in the wake of the woke?
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Hm… you do make some powerful points about the harm that national myths can do. We see that very clearly in examples like the Nazis, the Ukrainians, the Israelis, even the myth of the “American dream”, etc.
But is not every modern national identity a myth, to varying degrees?
When the myth is used to justify genocide, as the case with Israelis, then I agree, the myth needs to be countered with facts.
On the flip side, at the individual level, you see people on the internet mocking, say, a person of clearly African origin who claims to be Swedish. Well, because he’s a Swedish citizen. And maybe he grew up in Sweden and feels like he has a Swedish soul, despite his dark skin. Is that woke, or is that just an individual reality? Maybe woke isn’t even so bad as an individual philosophy (“I strive to be who I want to be”) so long as it isn’t imposed onto society as a whole. [Unless I am the King, society should not have to follow my whims and quirks!]
So hm… Maybe we need to clarify the difference between “national” myths and “personal” myths.
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“On the flip side, at the individual level, you see people on the internet mocking, say, a person of clearly African origin who claims to be Swedish.”
As an emigrant twice, my take is that nationality is something that you can choose. This entails however that you accept the laws of the nation you have chosen to live in. To follow any cultural traditions in my experince is not necessary, as long as your behaviour does not stick out like a sore thumb. If it does, that is a problem you have to deal with, but then the question arises: why choose that particular nation anyway?
I was, as in regards to woke, thinking more about the choices that go against your sex, when gender concepts conflict with the biology. In olden times, the conflict was resolved, not always successfully, with counselling.
Nowadays, the conflict seems preferably resolved, irrevocably mostly, with the surgical knife. I do not deny that are biological based cases, like hermaphrodism, when someone might want to make a decision, but we are in the majority talking about choices based often on little but temporary feelings.
The change in language that now presents us with some 70 genders, based on nothing basically but how you feel after getting out of bed. If you want to use them, fine, but we have already three: he, she, it. The first two relate to sexes, the latter to anything else without and/or undetermined sex. To me those encompass what we need. In Portugal we have only two, there exists no neutral gender.
I do not really care about what any adult does, but the idiocy turns to permitted violence when non-adults make decisions and act upon them w/o their parents approval, when the state interferes in the family dynamics by disallowing parents decisions to stand. After all, we are talking in some cases about children even below teen-age, when the concept of sex just becomes a real topic.
Woke also becomes problematic for me when talking about reparations to groups or ethnicities who were harmed by other groups or ethnicities. How far do we go back with any claims? Can I file a claim against the Spanish crown? My family name Moritz, Maurice, Mauritz, Morris, Maric or Móric points to the expelling some Jewish forebears that wound up in Germany, or someone of Mauretanian background.
Both is likely, as in school I was was thought to be somehow of arabic or middle eastern Jewish decent, due to my haircolour (black) and a darker shade of skincolour than that of my class-mates. My nickname was Moses, btw. As a kid had never problems with sunburn at all.
To strive to be what you can, or think you want to become or be, at some point becomes a matter not of desires, but of feasibility, when reality, be it education, intelligence, environment, financial means, opportunities, have to be acknowledged as posing limits.
And you might consider to adapt to develop yourself within those limits, considering the cost – in all matters – of trying to fight those limits. Again, personal experience.
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Well said, peter. A lot of it is just about common sense, trying to balance the personal freedom of the individual with the concerns of the collective.
As for the issue of ethnic reparations, that’s just a Pandora’s box. Everybody has a grievance against somebody. There should probably be a statute of limitations.
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The Christianity of Western civilization literally copied the worst part of the Biblical story and therefore its enormous criminal record, and that is why the divine DO NOT KILL has never been valued.
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I mean, the Old Testament has some great stories and poetry and historical chronicles and stuff. But we were supposed to believe, as children, that these were always the good guys? And frankly, some of the rantings of the Hebrew prophets remind me of the Taliban.
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I have tried to verify the dangers of depleted Uranium by consulting sources from the IAEA, the EU Commission, UNODA (United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs),
The two former agencies (https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_layman/depleted-uranium/en/index.htm and https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/iaearole.pdf) downplay both the dangers caused by the toxicity of the heavy metal, and the alpha radiation effects (only dangerous when inhaled or ingested), whereas the latter one confirms what the critics say thusly:
“The use of depleted uranium ammunition leads to severe and far-reaching consequences for the health of humans contaminated with aerosol particles of uranium oxides, long-term contamination of the land on which the actions were performed, as well as contamination of technical means directly involved in operations”
Click to access Serbia1.pdf
Despite the difference in assessment, the simple fact is that those living in the vicinity of the action and having to make a living from the soil later will suffer to some extent negative health effects, maybe for several generations.
But in the context of this war, where other solutions to conflict resolution were blocked, denigrated and dismissed from the start by NATO, this is just a minor quibble in a war crime committed by NATO, a war crime because of its refusal to let Ukraine come to an agreement and a war crime because it blithely dismissed Russia’s security concerns and offers for negotiations.
Fuck NATO and ist toxic influence. This toxicity is much more concerning than that of some depleted Uranium.
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Thanks for this Yalensis, I hope to investigate this early next week if not before. For what it’s worth, I have seen some social media chat from health staff here in England, who often speak against Russia’s actions, but are opposed to this because of cancer and other long-term health conditions. It’s ignorant for media or politicians to pretend radiation is nonexistent.
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Thanks Nicola, and I wish you luck with your scientific investigations.
Maybe you could also study the effects on drinking water (and waterways for fish and wildlife), I know that’s one of your interests.
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Just done a quick skim of some articles but cannot comment on the methodology and overall accuracy of nuclear and some pharma studies but I did check that metaanalysis of multiple journals did back up their conclusions. DU contaminates water, soil and is absorbed by humans, animals and fish through water (for humans and animals when used as drinking water) but also inhalation of particles (and more research is showing links through micro and nano-particles as well. It also affects plants and fungi (1).
DU compared with natural uranium, contains less of radioactive isotope U235 and also contains plutonium as well as decay isotopes of thorium and protactinium (2).
It causes chemical toxicity and there is growing evidence of radiotoxicity but some of the research was completed too late after e.g. the Gulf wars and Kosovo to confirm so some authors are expressing uncertainty about direct links. Am not mentioning the political aspects of journal articles because other commentators have noted already. Surrounding human populations and some neighbouring countries have been suffering severe health effects including cancer (particularly leukemia and lung), respiratory problems, skeletal structures being altered or abnormal growth in early development.
There are also alternations in both cell development and gene expression across humans, animals, plants and fish. Recent studies are showing that non-irradiated cells become toxic, altered and stressed by neighbouring radiated cells affecting development and reproduction.
Scientists are still understanding more about environmental effects of DU but it is present in humans via soil, water and air. (3)
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1. Fomina, M., Hong, J.W., Gadd, G.M., 2020. Effect of depleted uranium on a soil microcosm fungal community and influence of a plant-ectomycorrhizal association. Fungal Biology 124, 289–296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.funbio.2019.08.001
2. Durakovic, A. 2016. Medical effects of internal contamination with actinides: further controversy on depleted uranium and radioactive warfare. Environ Health Prev Med 21, 111–117 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s12199-016-0524-4
3. Schilz JR, Dashner-Titus EJ, Simmons KA, Erdei E, Bolt AM, MacKenzie DA, Hudson LG. 2022. The immunotoxicity of natural and depleted uranium: From cells to people. Toxicol Appl Pharmacol. 2022 Nov 1;454:116252. doi: 10.1016/j.taap.2022.116252.
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oh and one study has also found gastrointestinal problems too
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Thanks, Nicola! Maybe you can publish something in a scientific journal. I hope people start to see what’s going on and ban these dangerous weapons.
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Wow! Super work, Nicola. Thanks so much.
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If you Google “Gulf war syndrome and Depleted Uranium” you will get hundreds of entries stating that studies, too numerous to mention, have thoroughly debunked the association !!!
And yet, anybody who was there will tell you, a very high percentage of guys who went into destroyed Iraqi vehicles looking for “trophies” wound up getting sick. So who you going to believe, your own eyes or, a “science” bureaucrat who wants DoD research funding?
While I listen intently to Colonel [Ret.] MacGregor and have great respect for him, he has a blind spot on this issue because the DU-sabot is so dammed effective and he used this weapon better than any before or…since.
A priori to the Gulf-War-I, on numerous occasions, I was personally warned by senior NCOs with technical backgrounds in munitions that climbing into destroyed vehicles was problematic because the DU round upon penetration becomes a plasma that deposits itself on adjacent surfaces in a non-adhering film. This film on the skin is not particularly dangerous but, if inhaled or digested a serious health hazard. And, in the field, it’s hard to wash off stuff much less a fine dust that you would never notice.
Those “debunking” studies, when you check who financed them, are as reliable as the 3LA reports on Iraq developing nuclear weapons.
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Thanks, S. I read in google that the plasma formed cannot penetrate human skin. But that’s assuming a big IF, namely IF the skin is not broken. I mean, I’m looking at my own skin right now as we speak. I don’t have any wounds because I am not in combat; however, I have one rather troublesome cut on a finger (from stabbing myself while cooking); and what looks to be a Stage I pressure ulcer on one of my thumbs (from lacing up my skates too tight and pulling on the laces).
Who amongst us can claim to have perfectly intact skin?
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A cynical bon mot from Henry Kissinger, an expert par excellence: “An expert is someone who articulates the needs of those in power. ” Journals ask contributors to disclose funding sources for a reason. Talk about disinformation.
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Exactlly!
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Yes, it’s hellish stuff, depleted uranium, when it turns into dust and inhaled, or as a plasma, coats the inside of the turret/workspace of an enemy tank after the round becomes molten and penetrates its armour. Cleanup crews getting it over their skin and inside their mouths and lungs towing away tank hulks get very ill, from what I’ve read, if they go inside to pull out human remains. And anyone refitting the tank for future combat is on the poison hook as well. Let alone uranium dust scattered over farmland higgledy-piggledy, or any land really.
And I don’t suppose Russia has ever developed such artillery rounds themselves. Too pure, too sweet. And they have tungsten instead of DU. But from 2018:
https://tass.com/defense/1036958
Using DU doesn’t violate any international treaties, says Russia in that link. But now? Russia is irate about its possible use. Well, my country of birth has turned into the biggest shit show on Earth, become a real life Monty Python skit. No wonder Russia spits at the UK, but let’s not protest too much, eh? Russia’s not lily-white. War is utter hell, and I don’t believe much of the self-serving horseshite either side in this conflict serves up as justification for using nasty stuff, or pretending they wouldn’t ever use the stuff like poison gas, bioweaponry and depleted uranium ammo if they “had to”. They’ll use nuclear weapons “if they have to”. Great. Wonderful.
More detail:
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/america-russian-tanks-are-now-shooting-depleted-uranium-bullets-175219
Politico hates the National Interest, saying it’s too pro-Russia. Oh well, the Abrams tanks use depleted uranium armor, so its crews are screwed, blued and tattooed no matter what if they get hit. America!
Man’s gross inhumanity to man has been a feature, not a bug, since time immemorial. War is beyond hell for an injured water-based biological unit with pain nerve endings direct-wired to the brain. And the psychopaths know it.
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Thanks, beluga. That answers the philosophical question: “What is man?”
I like your answer better than Aristotle’s “Man is a biped without feathers”.
[Was that Aristotle or Monty Python?]
Not to mention Shakespeare’s “What a piece of work is man!”
Indeed…
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“Thou shalt have no other gods before me!!!” is a line used by dictators and tyrants, and I’m not going to listen to [or obey] any of them.
Ask any Iraqi doctor about birth defects [due to DU], and that’s all you need to know about how ‘safe’ and ‘healthy’ it is. Heck, even smoking tobacco was ‘good for you’ according to some scientists, back in the day.
A booster jab, anyone…?
Have a good look at what’s happening to Occupied Palestine, and you cannot but conclude that those who wrote [or inspired] the ‘Old Testament’ are as vengeful today as they were back then.
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Difficult to find fault with your conclusion. Here’s a child-friendly version of part of Joshua:
https://thebricktestament.com/joshua/twenty-four_cities_massacred/jos11_01.html
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Child-friendly, in the sense that acted out by Lego pieces?
Brilliant!
“Hamstring their horses…” ah, now that really ticks me off, Jahweh!
Kill the humans, okay, but what did the animals do to you, you maniacs?
They could have just killed the people and adopted the horses. Everybody needs horses. Argggg! I am so angry!
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¿ Cuando finalizara Rusia de comportarse como un idiota
Rusia está a un mes o dos de la autodestrucion , al menos de la perdida de territorio .
¿ Cuando finalizarán los rusos de comportarse como idiotas .
Mañana sábado ire a Casa Rusia , en Madrid . Del comportamiento iluminado , o del comportamiento bruto de su personal , asi deducire el futuro de Rusia .
Lastima de una patria actualmente tan enajenada , ( que dependa tanto de China ) , como Rusia . Fiodor Dovstoyesky seria incapaz de creerlo .
O Rusia comienza desde el Donbass , una pacifica pero reforma radical socialista, o Rusia va a desaparecer .
Si Rusia no se respeta a si misma, por bien que done y done cereales , por bien que comercio con precios muy disminuidos de sus energías, por bien que ceda su soberania a la OMS, por bien que sus atletas y artistas cedan su autoestima en competiciones internacionales, Rusia no va a conseguir pronto sino el abandono y desprecio y fatiga de sus amantes , es decir su merecida penitencia ( abandono, ruina y desprecio ) .
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The Italian branch of Orwellian MSM system now is trying to hide everything, but even in my tragicomical country the judiciary recognized that hundreds of Italian soldiers who handled DU weapons during the Kosovo war died for cancers, and that other hundreds fell disabled…..
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If the soldiers are going to handle these toxic weapons, then they really need to suit up like workers at a nuclear plant. (Or other hazardous jobs.)
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Don’t worry, just up the bounty on Western armour and the problem will solve itself.
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Raghead: Saw it yesterday, I think. Absolutely, devilishly brilliant!
Question: What’s the URL for the very beginning of your series? (I’ve wanted to read your stuff from its start, but can only work backwards from the most current.)
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A lot of my stuff got wiped in a net crash in 2014. I’ll try to find the beginning for you.
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Here you go:
Please note that there will be a lot of gaps between 2012-mid 2014 when the net crash happened. A lot of sites lost their photos.
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If you want only the Ukraine strips, and you’re on Telegram, you could consider joining our channel. It has all of them dating back to 2014.
https://t.me/TalesOfUkranazistan
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Much obliged Raghead. It’s great stuff from square one. (Loved the Hillary swat!)
I can’t do Telegram from my normal computer (Win XP still), but I do have other access. Some day I may even upgrade. (Nah!)
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Unfortunately I can’t do telegram from my normal computer either. It’s starting to become an issue…
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If you’re on VK my girlfriend posts them there too:
https://vk.com/club212455913
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Thanks again!
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Your comics are great Raghead! I’ve seen them cross posted on other sites many times, like the ones you did US/UK mercenaries trying to escape from Azovstal 😀
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I agree! Future historians will write that Raghead was the Pablo Picasso of this war. It’s like “Guernica” with a sense of humor.
Except that his drawings are more realistic because they don’t have, say, an arm in the wrong place, or an eye at the wrong angle…
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Of course, considering the dismal realities of Guernica, Picasso’s anatomical depictions are probably fairly accurate..:(
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Nice! But those guys coulda got maybe 2 million rubles if they delivered the tank intact, instead of setting on fire!
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Stepan (the fat one) and Andriy (balaclava) aren’t that bright. Plus as I drew in the previous episode they didn’t know how to operate the tank.
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Aha! I see.
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I’ve followed the DU issue loosely since the Iraq War, and the stuff is definitely nasty. The birth defects are horrid — I’ve seen photos from Fallujah — and the cancer increases in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia seem far from ‘coincidental’.
Those who employ them are inclined to pooh-pooh the dangers out of vested interest. But General Kirillov is downright alarmed by this:
UK could fuel radioactive disaster in Ukraine – Russia
https://www.rt.com/russia/573527-ukraine-uranium-radioactive-disaster/
… Speaking at a briefing, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who is in charge of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense Forces, issued a scathing criticism of the UK’s plans to support Kiev with armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium.
He noted that such munitions have only ever been deployed in combat by NATO countries, most notably during the Iraq War, when the US used at least 300 tons of depleted uranium.
“As a result, the radiation situation in the [Iraqi] city of Fallujah was much worse than in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the nuclear bombings by the United States,” Kirillov stated, recalling that Fallujah had been dubbed “the second Chernobyl,” while the local population suffered from a skyrocketing number of cancer cases.
The West is well aware of the consequences of using such weapons, the general stressed. Even though it “will cause irreparable harm” to the health of Ukrainian troops and civilians, “NATO countries, in particular the UK, express a readiness to supply this type of weapon to the Kiev regime,” Kirillov stated.
He warned that the use of the munitions will contaminate farmland. “In addition to infecting its own population, this will cause tremendous economic damage to the agro-industrial complex of Ukraine… reducing any export of agricultural produce from Ukrainian territory for many decades, if not centuries to come,” the general said. …
[Somewhere lately I saw some sage advice from the Russian side that, if the West thinks DU munitions are so safe, they should test them on their *own* people. Bravo!]
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For what it’s worth, one can hope that the DU tank shells won’t be used often. IANATG (I am not a tank guy) but I read one one military-related website that such shells are only good for tank-vs-tank fighting (or against other armoured vehicles). That’s because they don’t have high explosives in the warhead. They rely on the ultra-heavy metal (tungsten when it’s not uranium) to punch through the opponent’s armour and kill the crew from the splattered metal plasma. If it doesn’t hit the crew cabin, it still knocks out the vehicle by the damage it does to the opponent’s machine. If one of these shells is used against a building, trench or other non-metal structure, it just bores a hole through it but doesn’t do the damage that an explosive round would. Kinda like an old-fashioned cannonball. If the Ukies (or whoever’s soldiers are manning the tanks) have any sense, they won’t waste their shots with these unless they’re directly battling armour. Because when they fire, they have to reload, and they are simultaneously a target for whatever anti-tank weapons are in the area. So even if they WANT to be bastards, which they probably do, they might refrain because the risk won’t be worth the reward of general bastardry. And it’s not likely the donated tanks — only the handful of British ones will be using this, apparently — will be slugging it out with other armour. It’s not Kursk 1943. One can only hope this analysis is valid.
That said, DU (which the Soviets used too, but decided it wasn’t worth it, according to a video by Scott Ritter that I watched) is another thing to add to the list of U.S. crimes against the planet. Radioactivity from nukes, Agent Orange, vapourised uranium… What could come next? (cough — biological weapons — cough) Agent Smith from “The Matrix” was right — humanity is a cancer.
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“I remember as a child, studying the Old Testament, this is one of the reasons I became an atheist even at a young age”
Jewish, Hittite, and Assyrian texts spanning more than 1000 years contain references to leaders and armies who sowed the lands of their enemies with salt.
Various Hittite and Assyrian texts speak of ceremonially strewing salt, minerals, or plants (weeds, “cress”, or kudimmu, which are associated with salt and desolation over destroyed cities, including Hattusa, Taidu, Arinna, Hunusa, Irridu, and Susa. The Book of Judges says that Abimelech, the judge of the Israelites, sowed his own capital, Shechem, with salt, ca. 1050 BC, after quelling a revolt against him. This may have been part of a ḥērem ritual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salting_the_earth
atheist record since French Revolution is nothing to be proud of, especially communist record under Stalin and Mao.
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It’s true that this ceremonial “salting” was standard practice in the ancient world, and probably just a ritual. Also true that everybody and their grandmother committed genocide back then, so one can’t set aside the Israelites as especially genocidal. The Israelites/Hebrews just documented their war crimes more extensively than all others, being so literate and all.
As for atheists being particularly bad people, I deny that! Also, Stalin probably wasn’t an atheist, there is some evidence that he continued to believe (surreptitiously or maybe superstitiously) in the Eastern Orthodox God.
Mao I don’t know much about, but I don’t think he was an evil person. He actually did quite a lot of good things for the Chinese people. (And some bad.)
As for the French Revolution, I am very proud of the French Revolution! (even though I’m not French)
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You should read:
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1990). “Leftism Revisited: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot”:
For the average person, all problems date to World War II; for the more informed, to World War I; for the genuine historian, to the French Revolution.
Operation Parricide: Sade, Robespierre & the French Revolution by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn:
…the French Revolution was not only interested in the good Doctor Guillotin’s deployment of mechanical mass murder, it was also interested in genocide and not only in Alsace but also in other regions of the République… In the French Revolution the scum of France succumbed to blood lust and opened the door to evil.
“Any movement that gave us… the guillotine as one of its first fruits and the Gulag as one of its finest cannot simply be affirmed as it stands.”
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Oh please, this is just childish B.S. During the so-called “Reign of Terror”, only a few thousand aristos in France were actually guillotined. Most of them probably deserving of it. At least it’s more humane to chop off somebody’s head quickly than the slow garroting of “heretics”, which was a favorite tactic of the Spanish Inquisition. Not to mention burning people alive in the Auto da fé.
Do you support the Spanish Inquisition? I bet you do, Maxie, you retrograde Obscurantist! You seem like the kind of person who would.
Meanwhile, while all this guillotining was going on, the National Convention (1794) banned slavery in France and in French colonies.
The real genocide was going on in the colonies.
What do you say about that, you clerical Obscurantist supporter of the Spanish Inquisition thumbscrews and garroting? People like you make me sick!
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The death toll ranged in the tens of thousands, with 16,594 executed by guillotine (2,639 in Paris),2 and another 25,000 in summary executions across France. The Terror only lasted 9 months after all.
Between 1789 and 1802, there were about 1 400 000 killed (Sorokin, Pitirim. The Sociology of Revolution. 1967). That number includes those killed during the revolution itself (1789-1799) and the Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802).
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According to modern estimates, around 150,000 people were prosecuted for various offences during the three-century duration of the Spanish Inquisition, of whom between 3,000 and 5,000 were executed, approximately 2.7% of all cases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
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Max,
Do you know nothing of the slaughter of the Cathars? Is this ignorance studied or unbidden?
Until Nazism, the Roman-Catholic Church held the record for genocide in Europe; the Pope himself admitted the guilt and asked for forgiveness for the 500,000-1,000,000 souls slaughtered by the Roman-Catholic Church.
I was raised Irish-Catholic, an alter-boy, learning the rudiments of Latin…the works. The order of Catholic Nuns that taught us our letters/doctrine acknowledged Catholicism’s dark shadows..why can’t you? If believing requires ignorance of known facts, your faith is of little value.
Try googling “Zoé Oldenbourg Cathars” and learn.
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comparing to the slaughter of bolsheviks?
read Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin, and about atheist Dostoyevsky
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Oh Jesus, Solzhenitsyn? That’s all you got? Please…
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Interesting reading:
Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth by Ludwig von Mises
Socialism An Economic and Sociological Analysis by Ludwig von Mises
Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War by Ludwig von Mises
Marxism Unmasked: From Delusion to Destruction by Ludwig von Mises
Leftism From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Marx’s Religion of Revolution by Gary North
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I knew I’d read thorough rebuttals of this neo-Nazi garbage before:
US govt and media whitewash Nazi Holocaust citing debunked ‘Black Book of Communism’
https://thegrayzone.com/2017/11/22/black-book-of-communism-debunked-antisemitic-nazis/
by Ben Norton November 22, 2017
The cynical manipulation of history has helped propel neo-fascist nationalists around the globe. In the West, anti-communist zealots have rewritten the past for political gain, and unleashed demons of their own in the process.
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National Socialist — National Socialist German Workers’ Party, had good teachers — Lenin and his Bolsheviks with Cheka and gulags
The breakdown of the number of deaths is given as follows:
65 million in the People’s Republic of China
20 million in the Soviet Union
2 million in Cambodia
2 million in North Korea
1.7 million in Ethiopia
1.5 million in Afghanistan
1 million in the Eastern Bloc
1 million in Vietnam
150,000 in Latin America
10,000 deaths “resulting from actions of the international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power
The murder of hundreds of thousands of rebellious workers and peasants from 1918 to 1922
The Russian famine of 1921 which caused the death of 5 million people
The decossackization, a policy of systematic repression against the Don Cossacks between 1917 and 1933
The Great Purge which killed almost 690,000 people
The dekulakization, resulting in the deportation of 2 million so-called kulaks from 1930 to 1932
The death of 4 million Ukrainians (Holodomor) and 2 million others during the famine of 1932 and 1933
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism
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Again with the ahistorical garbage. This idiot propagandist (max) simply doesn’t understand the class differences between socialists and fascists.
Even though they are Nazis themselves, the purpose of screechers like him is to identity Nazi = Communist in the minds of the petty-bourgeoisie, because they understand that ordinary people won’t necessarily take their Nazism straight, unless it is somewhat disguised.
These guys make up numbers and conflate apples and oranges. Let’s stipulate, even if the numbers were right (which they are not), and Commies killed more people (in terms of absolute numbers) than Spanish Inquisition/Nazis combined, then so what? People slaughter people, it’s happened throughout history, it’s unfortunate, it would be better if people could settle their conflicts without violence; but the important thing is what they are fighting for. The French Revolution and the various socialist revolutions brought many great benefits for humanity: universal literacy, a better living standard, fair working conditions, etc.
And please don’t even get me started on the Ukrainian fake “Holodomor”.
Since he even mentions that word, I have to guess that max is a Ukrainian Nazi, in his basic ideology. Then he read one book in his life (which is a stupid book), and he thinks he is an expert.
max, I would pose one question to you, and this is the litmus test: What is your opinion of Stepan Bandera?
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I was born in SFRY, now Australian citizen.
There is no difference between Stepan Bandera and Lavrenti Beria — one was Nacional socialist another international socialist
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max, whether you are a Yugoslav or an Australian, you are still an ignorant little bitch. You need to read some real books and discover the difference between Marxism and Fascism.
Hint: They are polar opposites, in terms of their constituencies and the social classes they represent.
You remind me of a moron who posted something on a blogsite I visited, something to the effect: “The Nazi Gestapo used to knock on doors in the middle of the night and arrest people. The KGB used to knock on doors in the middle of the night and arrest people. Therefore, the KGB was a Nazi organization.”
I think Aristotle would agree that this is a logical fallacy. One might as well say: “Fish have fins. Dolphins also have fins. Therefore, dolphins are fish!”
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Ludwig von Mises:
There are two patterns for the realization of socialism.
The first pattern (we may call it the Lenin or the Russian pattern) is purely bureaucratic. All pIants, shops, and farms are formally nationalized; they are departments of the goverment operated by civil servants.
The second pattern (we may calI it the Hindenburg or German pattern) nominally and seemingly preserves private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary markets, prices, wages, and interest rates. There are, however, no longer entrepreneurs, but only shop managers. These shop managers are seemingly instrumental in the conduct of the enterprises entrusted to them; they buy and sell, hire and discharge workers and remunerate their services, contract debts and pay interest and amortization. But in all their activities they are bound to obey unconditionally the orders issued by the government’s supreme office of production management. This office tells the shop managers what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. It assigns every worker to his job and fixes his wages. It decrees to whom and on what terms the capitalists must entrust their funds. Market exchange is merely a sham. All the wages, prices, and interest rates are fixed by the government; they are wages, prices, and interest rates in appearance only; in fact they are merely quantitative terms in the government’s orders determining each citizen’s job, income, consumption, and standard of living. The government directs all production activities. The shop managers are subject to the government, not to the consumers’ demand and the market’s price structure. This is socialism under the outward guise of the terminology of capitalism. Some labels of the capitalistic market economy are retained, but they signify something entirely different from what they mean in the market economy.
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In Video: Lack Of Combat Training In Ukrainian Army And Its Results
https://southfront.org/in-video-lack-of-combat-training-in-ukrainian-army-and-its-results/
The above link simply begs for the revival of an old joke, modernized to “The War between Russia and Ukraine”:
“The Ukrainians kept throwing hand grenades, and the Russians kept pulling the pins and throwing them back!”..}8-)
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Tried posting this last night, but something weird happened and it never showed up. It’s the link to Kirillov’s *full* briefing on those depleted uranium munitions the UK plans to send. Quite revealing:
https://telegra.ph/Briefing-by-Chief-of-Nuclear-Biological-and-Chemical-Protection-Troops-of-Russian-Armed-Forces-Lieutenant-General-Igor-Kirillov–03-24
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Kirillov’s FULL briefing on DU at Global South:
https://globalsouth.co/2023/03/25/briefing-russian-chief-of-nuclear-biological-and-chemical-protection-troops-of-russian-du/#comment-3878
[I hope I’m not crossing any “red lines” here, yalensis. I tried posting the original telegraph link twice, but it’s not taking. Is there a “filter” blocking that one?]
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Hi, JMF. No red lines that I can see. Probably just random. This comment went through okay, the earlier I just saw in the spam filter and fished it out.
Sorry about that, but it’s not my fault either, just wordpress randomness, I reckon, the way they handle links.
Don’t worry though, if I see your comments/links in the spam filter, I will always fish them out eventually…!
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Thanks for the feedback, yalensis. Yeah, it was really strange when I first posted and then — Poof! –nothing happened.
Much obliged! Yours is one of the most civilized and congenial blogs I visit.
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Thanks, JMF! I just want to reiterate to everybody that, if you post a comment and you don’t see it, or it disappears, don’t fret too much. It’s not me, it’s just the damned spam blocker. Which seems to have a mind of its own. And later, once I come home from work and log on, I will see it and fish it out.
I know who my peeps are! And I am able to distinguish you from the actual spam, which is all about selling amoxycillin or enlarging your penis, things of that sort.
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