No update today, will be able to continue tomorrow.
Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday's discussion post.
I made the mistake of reading a reddit thread about the war. Either they have an utterly delusional view of the progress of the war or we do, because it is night and day over there.
Reddit has a good track history of being in touch with reality. Boston bomber hunt, Reddit brigade to Ukraine & outing those CPC Uighur killers 🤡
I don't know what to do with Uighur saviors. "No, it's not a genocide, yes, it's an intrusive violation of individual rights and freedoms, not, it's not a genocide, and yes, it is much less harmful than America's counter-terrorism policy of "Kill them, then kill the first responders who show up to help them, then murder their entire family at the funeral."
Like you have to explain Adrian Zenz and the Victims of Communism grift and they're either going to accuse you of genocide denial or conspiracy theories before you get half way through explaining hte origins of the black book of communism.
The amount of energy needed to debunk propaganda is painfully disproportionate to the amount of energy needed to instill it in the first place.
its kinda genius because being tarred as a "genocide denier" is probably the strongest charge you can casually accuse someone of
Also it does double duty by softly equating actual genocides with much lesser crimes, diluting the concept and cheapening denunciations of some of the greatest crimes against humanity.
Now all the libs think Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine by removing refugees from war zones and the word has effectively lost all meaning.
I mean, most of my friends who accept the uigher genocide narrative deny the white genocide. If you can get them to admit that, then it comes down to quibbling over evidence and what have you.
(note: I don't believe the white genocide is happening)
I wouldn't underestimate the energy used to instill propaganda. Its been what nearly 100 years now of anti communist indoctrination? We are a few mice squeaking into the void against the full weight of the billionare class, the state and its appendages, as well as the masses who have been thoroughly brainwashed.
It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Redditors have no concept what so ever of the stakes of an attack on Russian territory. A generation grew up ignorant of the massive nuclear arsenals of the respective great powers and now they think the US can just swing it's dick around inside Russia without a nuclear response.
It's mostly westoids and honory westoids who have been conditioned from birth to fall for specialised propaganda. They have a harder time mentally going against the general narrative.
Truth is the first casualty of war and both sides are operating under the fog of war. Noone will really know what the real state of the war was over time until 50 years after it's over.
America: Gun control is the most important thing we can possible do right now because ~150 children are killed in school shootings every year
Also America: Let's send Ukraine missiles that can strike deep inside Russia, potentially triggering a nuclear war that will kill between 2 and 4 billion people
Love this country.
Also, wouldn't a strike inside Russia allow for a full Russian mobilization? I vaguely remember that that's why this is a "Special Military Operation", because Putin can only do adventures with a limited part of the army unless the RF is directly attacked. Am I remembering that right?
I don't think there's anything really legal or political that stops Putin from mobilizing, except lack of really fervent enthusiasm for the war.
A strike inside Russia with American weapons could really galvanize the Russian people behind Putin.
They are already galvanized behind Putin, he has a 80% approval rating. Is the west getting it yet?
It's actually insane how far the West goes out of its way to intentionally not "get" Russia in any political, historic, economic, or social way.
They really do not understand the Russian mindset at all, and do their best to be completely ignorant of Russian interests or reasonable requests for mutual respect. It’s like westoids really are solipsistic and think that Russians are philosophical zombies of the lawful evil alignment
solipsistic
This is the thing. Americans in general have no concept of other people living or thinking differently to them. Its narcissistic ignorance. They are the most important nation in the world and so they don't need to know anything about anyone else. Canadians live 99% exactly the same way as Americans but when I would go down to USA I'd get asked stupid questions like if we have toilets in our kitchens. I was under 200km as the crow flies from my home town and was asked if we live in Igloos all year or just during the winter.
was asked if we live in Igloos all year or just during the winter.
I hear that climate change is a real threat to your Canadian igloos. Is that true?
I couldn't afford to ever own my own igloo in Canada so I immigrated to Australia where I will never be able to afford a bark humpy.
This was someone who considered themself a history buff.
Well here's your first mistake.
They always do this. American arrogance blinds them to the nature of their enemy. They didn't even try to understand Iraq and Afghanistani society, they didn't know what the fuck they were doing in Vietnam and Korea, they never even came close to understanding the Japanese and instead utterly dehumanized them. The only enemy they've really understood is the Nazis bc there wasn't much cultural difference between Germany and the US, and because so many people in the US in the 40s were Germans.
"Sorry sweetie, national interests are something only LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES (Tm) get to have."
Say what you will about that ghoul Kissinger, but at least he understands that other countries will act to protect their own interests. Most western leaders these days seem shocked that any other country would ever step outside the "rules based order".
Have you considered that all those approval ratings are completely fake?
And if they're not fake it just proves that all Russians are evil orcs who need to be wiped clean from the Earth?
Have you considered that all those approval ratings are completely fake?
You sound like every Liberal ever
And if they’re not fake it just proves that all Russians are evil orcs who need to be wiped clean from the Earth?
Anti-imperialists who hate America deserve to be wiped off the face of the Earth for acting in the interests of their own survival? Mask off moment from the liberal hexbear wing
I was making a joke, there's no need to whip out the L word.
Ah sorry didn’t sense the sarcasm. This sounds like an unironic comment based on some of the others in this thread
I never thought I would see this shit on this site lmao. The next time an American president gets majority approval numbers are you going to fucking kill yourself and everyone around you because it would mean that all Americans are evil orcs that need to be eradicated?
Edit: I bit the onion somebody shoot me
American president gets majority approval numbers
Unironically I do not think this will ever happen again.
George Dubya runs again and the current Supreme Court allows a 3rd term and the liberals rejoice :agony:
Oh shut up. No one here is buying what Ukraine or NATO is selling. You're in the wrong forum if you believe that orc shit.
I remember that. They sent a couple of helicopters in, right?
I wonder if this is different bc it's the US explicitly sending equipment that could possibly strike Russia.
That was also a border region. It’s a bit different if Moscow or St Petersburg gets a long range American rocket
Or Rostov-on-Don, which is the closest big Russian city to Mariupol and is currently holding the court trials for the captured Azov "people".
I don't think it's likely given the weakness of the Ukrainian air force but who knows. Also Rostov airport has been closed to civilians since Feb 24, maybe it would be a military target.
Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck
❗️❗️❗️❗️ Russia is ready to strike at the United States, - Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
“If America decides to transfer weapons capable of reaching targets in Russia to Ukraine, the country will be forced to strike in order to prevent the delivery.”
“Any transfer of weapons to Kiev increases the risk of a direct clash between the Russian Federation and the United States”, Ryabkov stressed.
(Real Bad ) Clarification by Medvedev : If even one Russian City is attacked Russia will immidiatly destroy the Criminal Decisionmaking Centres and Most of these Centres are not Located on the Territory of Ukraine ... !!!
This is beyond insane. Someone in the Pentagon needs to stop this shit before we all end up glowing in the dark.
those Goldfishbrains will forget about it in 2 Days and then... oh Fuck ... You now how their Brain Works ...
Libs will soon be like: THE RUSSIANS DONT EVEN HAVE FUNCTIONAL NUKES LETS DECLARE WAR ON THEM.
Damn
Libs already are. I know people who are absolutely confident that few or no nukes in the Russian arsenal are viable and that none of the spiffy new apocalypse weapons work. Their justification is that Russia can't afford to maintain it's nuclear stockpile, and also vibes.
I've seen this a few times. They pull all these numbers out of their ass about how old the warheads are and how that meas only a few would be functional.
Even if just 1% of the 8000 or so nukes Russia has are working, that is enough to trigger a nuclear exchange that wipes out modern civilization. Libs would actually instigate nuclear apocalypse to own le evil putler.
Even though the pentagon admits Russia has successfully used at least 15 hypersonic missiles so far in this invasion, and Russia just successfully tested an intercontinental hypersonic missile system.
The US had to go to Russia for rocket engines for a long time. What the hell are libs smoking. If there’s one thing Russians can do well it’s build a missile.
It’s systemic. In that show “The Big Bang Theory,” there were a couple of episodes where one of them was going up to the international space station in a Soyuz capsule. And they were all scared to hell cuz it’s Russian engineering and not reliable.
Except the Soviet/Russian space program has a significantly better safety record than the US one.
I seriously don’t even know where this permeating propaganda about Soviet/Russian incompetence came from.
It sounds like the threat is more along the lines of Russia hitting targets in Poland and Germany to prevent the weapons from getting there, but that's essentially the same thing as far as triggering Article 9 and kicking off a world War.
no "decion making centres" , medvedev cleared this up....
It's a shame they can't just drop a tactical nuke on the white house and congress.
thats talk of ! Preemtive Strikes !.. not retailitory fluff ala "if they Strike Russian Territory with this ... " this is , "You dont change Course Puplicly now ! we will directly Attack you! ! "
Russia nearly never makes Statements like this..
My understanding is that they've always maintained the right to a nuclear strike if their territorial integrity is breached or their cities come under attack.
are the Americans really thinking they can "Lawyer" /Debatebro themselfs out of that once Ukraine Uses their Weapons to Strrike Russian Civilians .. Insane ...
American politicians: "Well, technically, a city has a strict definition, and this particular settlement doesn't fit that definition, and so if we strike it with missiles, then the Russians won't technically do us any harm according to their warnings!"
America: strikes
Russia: vaporizes a NATO base in Poland
America: "INNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNTERNATIONAL RULES BASED OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORDDDDDDDDERR!"
The White House: Launching cyber attacks against Russia does not violate Washington's policy to avoid direct military conflict with Moscow.
Did you not forget someone in making this judgment call ?
Isn't it crazy that all the hysteria of the trump years evaporated when Biden won. Not all the things that hysteria was worried about is happening under Biden.
The escalation with Russia thing was something that Republicans were worried with happening under Hillary, which is why when Trump won they went Russia-gate.
Stopped clocks and everything, but it looks like they were correct in that assessment, though by the look of it, this invasion (escalation, whatever) would have happened under Trump and idk if Trump would have had the wherewithall to prevent a similar style of escalation.
Hillary literally wanted a no-fly zone in Syria.
I feel like everyone forgets what an absolutely insane ghoul she was when discussing her.
Like, it's funny to say she sucked shit and lost to a clown that she secretly backed as her opponent, but holy fuck. That woman would drag us screaming into a nuclear war with a grin on her face.
I remember hearing that she was laughing when she say the video of Gaddafi being raped to death with a bayonet.
Not sure about that one but "We came, we saw, he died" followed by laughter will always send a chill down my spine.
Genuine glee at the destabilisation of a nation.
The fact Trump was "unqualified" made him one of the biggest disruptions to US imperialism in recent history, and the deep state still managed to convince him to do tonnes of awful shit.
I won't wish a similar death on her or her family as much as I do hate them but if a bunch of rabid chuds did something like that I wouldn't care
I wouldn't laugh or celebrate but I also wouldn't feel anything for her
I think Trump would have bluffed a big game and did some brinksmanship tweets, and secretly arrange a compromise with Putin where NATO backs off Ukraine and gets them to be neutral. Minsk 2 would still hold for a while but it’s tenuous, Zelenskyy doesn’t control the Nazis who keep breaking the ceasefire.
this could mean anything from a nuclear strike on the US mainland, to simply striking the weapons as they're being transferred inside of ukraine (which they already do plenty of). probably the latter tbh, unless he expanded upon these comments.
(Real Bad ) Clarification by Medvedev : If even one Russian City is attacked Russia will immidiatly destroy the Criminal Decisionmaking Centres and Most of these Centres are not Located on the Territory of Ukraine … !!!
That's how MAD works. If you encroach on the territory of a nuclear armed state everybody dies.
We used to have evil leaders who understood that :die-motherfucker:
Medvedev doesn’t have official spokesman position does he? Is he just going off on his own here playing the rabid dog as a scare tactic?
hes the leader of the Russian security council , so it has weight ..
In order to prevent delivery implies “at delivery point” instead of “prevent sending”
Maybe russia will finally find a map of roads in the ukraine :soviet-hmm:
And he means strike on the weapons I think
Clarification by Medvedev : If even one Russian City is attacked Russia will immidiatly destroy the Criminal Decisionmaking Centres and Most of these Centres are not Located on the Territory of Ukraine … !!!
yeah, they’ve already punted on that, belgorod was struck after that, they didn’t bomb kiev, so they are just posturing
no they did not , dont play these fucking lib games "they are just postering"
its the most dangerous game you can play literally ...
I mean it’s old news, medvedev hasn’t said anything new. And again, they have both kiev and lvov decision making centers, they haven’t even attacked them, because this is some sort of gentleman war, where only poor die
According to the Ukrainian MoD, the Ukrainian Kherson offensive has failed, and Ukrainian forces have been pushed entirely out of Russia-controlled territory, back to the other side of the river. This offensive has, so far, gone even worse than my low expectations for Ukrainian forces.
At least 70% of Severodonetsk has now been captured by Russia.
Any word on negotiations? I can't imagine Russia is feeling like talking after the US said it's going to ship in long range rocket artilley.
The last I heard was Ukraine refusing negotiations until Russia withdraws completely, not only from the Donbass republics and the Ukraine but also from Crimea. The west is cheering on the Ukraine, ordering them to fight to the last Ukrainian.
The last thing I heard from the Russian side was that they wouldn't meet to negotiate anything but a Ukrainian surrender.
I don't think they're going very well. Maybe, if we're really lucky, the Ukraine will come to its senses and sue for peace once all of Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhiza and Kherson are controlled by Russia, and defy western dictates in order to save it's people. But we live in hell so I wouldn't count on it.
If Russia is making steady progress and doesn't actually want to conquer the entire country then in theory they can set up a defense line wherever they want the border to be and then just pound the shit out of whatever Ukraine throws at them. It might turn in to a North Korea DMZ thing where the war is de facto over but de jure still going. They're high on Nationlist brain farts if they think they're getting Crimea back.
In such a scenario Russia would still need to make frequent strikes deep into Ukrainian territory to destroy weapons caches, air bases, missiles etc. For a de jure war, de facto peace scenario to work there would need to be an understanding with the Ukraine of each state staying on their own side of the DMZ.
And Ukraine has serious nationalism brain, and has totally dehumanized the enemy, and has dispersed political police in to the army to enforce it's will, etc. etc.
(Also why does Russian official government documents always in graphical PDF form? It’s annoying and very difficult to use auto translation)
To mess with the devious western spies that relies on Google translate to conduct information warfare
You laugh but Zenz is apparently the world expert on Xinjiang in the west and he uses Google translate 😂
It's kinda crazy what you can do when you have actual industries.
let's try a scientific approach to understanding politics
but instead of using established marxist science let's just slap some statistical physics in there and see what happens
fucking STEMlords
Scientific historians will look back upon this paper in respect and awe for the first time that scientists achieved an objective analysis of something, particularly a political situation. I can only congratulate the authors for this accomplishment.
Lmao I didn't even notice that! Truly chef's kiss if that was intentional, and idk what to say if they're just incompetent.
New Zealand has joined the chicken coop and is now cucking alongside Australia for US intervention in the Pacific after raising concerns about China's growing influence in Oceania.
Would just like to point out that America has over 200 military bases in the Pacific, including 120 (and over 50,000 troops) in Japan, 73 (and over 20,000 troops) in South Korea, 7 (and over 1000 troops) in Australia, as well as a base on Samoa, the Marshall Islands, Guam, and a few throughout Indonesia and the Phillippines.
The United States is pissing and crying and shitting its pants about China potentially making trade deals that could hypothetically, one day lead to singular military bases on some of the smaller islands in the Pacific.
The Hegemon can't play nice with others and doesn't want to share its subject populations.
That’s a whataboutism sweaty. Do you support Chinese imperialism?
NYT: New Zealand to provide 10 bottles of milk to Taiwan in case of Chinese invasion
Can you explain? I used to watch that channel when I was learning about guns
The host has started a publishing house and has been crowdfunding books for a while, before this year they were all very dry reference type books about stuff like the development of French service rifles, British "bullpup" rifles, currently in the works is a book about the handmade pistols made in China during the warlord era.
But this February he announced that he was intending to crowdfund the publishing of a kind of "war diary" from a former Azov fighter who travelled to Ukraine from Sweden in 2014 to fight when the civil war first broke out, and in the announcement video he featured footage with Azovs usual array of nazi imagery while simultaneously stating that "Azov has been misrepresented by the media".
Though a decent chunk of fans attempted to defend the move the backlash was very quick and hard against this whole thing and he attempted to damage control by insisting that the diary itself had no nazi content. But once people found the Azov nazis twitter and linked him calling for genocide, bragging about his continued activities inside Sweden etc the whole thing was cancelled in a pretty embarrassing way.
On top of that it probably permanently fucked up a planned book about the Kalashnikov rifles cause the author of that was Russian and IIRC probably former military or some other state position where he could have gotten access to development information.
So i just saw this bait or just standart Issue Purity Brained "Socialism_enjoyer" threat , but its closed allready
So some write on the DE-JURE Foundations of this War ....
-
Russia recognised the babytwin Republics on 22.02.2022 in their Oblast Borders
-
the Republics where under undeniable Attack by Ukraine Forces --> https://www.osce.org/files/2022-02-23%20Daily%20Report_ENG.pdf?itok=57816
-
They then Called on its new de jure Ally Russia to Help them , Russia send in Peackeepers while it also
-
Russia invoced Article 51 of the UN Charta , right to protect
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
- USA Vetoed the Article 51 of course , but its wierd as Russia named him as the Agressor ..
For Article 51 Russia invoced 4 Vital Threats to Russia and its Allies
-
The Bombing of Donbass / non Impemenation of Minsk 2
-
Zelensky claim to pursue Nuclear Weapons
-
US Biolabors in Ukraine
-
the Discrimination against the Russian Minority by Ukraine Goverment
Then Putin went to the Duma to get his Mandate , which is a Mandate for a "Special Military operation"
he then Acted upon this Mandate given to him by the Russian Duma.
A War needs to be decleared by the Duma , what was decleared was a Operation to remove the Threat post by Ukraine to Russia and DPR .. thats why its a Special military operation ... not a War ..
oh god I was high on amphetamines and got nutty with it in there 😂
Edit: To be fair they pinged me at the end of my shift and I had just snorted 2 adderall. Am I supposed to not reply 80 times?
its super annoying to argue with somebody that argues in Words and Objects , not Processes .. "well it was Russia that Invaded" , like the hole frame is just "Good acts or bad act" , not reasons for ...
A lot of personal distaste for Putin himself is really tinting their vision I think. I don’t blame them for dislike the guy, but they are letting it cloud their vision of world historical geopolitical events effecting millions of people.
I got accused of “really loving Putin” and him being my pal a lot. You can see this really bothers them. I never said a single praiseworthy thing about him other than he is not a fascist and is being forced into a pragmatic anti-imperialist stance so I believe his statements regarding the stated Russian war goals.
I give it really annoying how liberals, being the fetishisers of personal responsibility and great man theory they are, reduce complex geopolitics to the personal quirks of a handful of leaders. They conceptualise this war as a fistfight between Putin and Biden/Zelensky and chalk every win and every loss up to their personal skills or shortcomings. Liberals completely fail to see this as a conflict between states, complex entities composed by many individuals and with internal logics of their own.
oh god I was high on amphetamines and got nutty with it in there 😂
Bro!
-
Watching the encirclement tentacle coming out of Izium get bigger while redditors cheer for the Ukranian re-capture of Crimea.
Germany’s foreign minister says Russia has adopted a strategy of flattening settlements from a safe distance in the Donbas.
In a speech to the German parliament, Annalena Baerbock said Russia was fighting a war to “depopulate and extinguish civilisation” in the eastern Ukrainian region.
“City by city, village by village, Russian troops are destroying them from a safe distance,” she said. “First the missiles, then the warplanes with artillery, and then, when everything is flattened, the tanks roll in.”Of course she is from the Green party.
Germany: "Noooo, you can't just flatten my proxy troops from outside the range of the man portable weapons we supplied them with..."
Russia: "Hur hur artillery go boom."
Funny they talk about Russians shelling villages when Patrick Lancaster has hundreds and hundreds of firsthand interviews with people in many of these villages saying the Ukrainian army has been indiscriminately shelling their homes for montoo.
Hell, dude even had flechett shells dropped on a village he was just at after walking through there and after interviewing a local saying the Ukrainians were shelling his home with white phos too.
The Wesr didn't care about Ukrainians shelling civilians in Donetsk for years, why would they start now?
Between this and the lionization of Azov, I bet Zelensky could eat a Russian baby on live TV and Western media would find a way to justify it.
So is the Green Party universally seen as some kind of liberal party in most of the world? It seems like only the American Green Party is solidly left. Maybe Australia's as well.
in a lot of the Western world, there tends to be an at least nominally left party (Labour, SPD, Parti Socialiste etc), nominally aligned with labour, and sometimes even actual leftist parties that get not completely insignificant shares of the vote
Green parties scoping out a constituency in that context tend to end up going after third way bourgeois libs, whereas that constituency is completely cornered off by the two dominant parties in the US.
Well Germanys green party is very likely to become the most left party we have in parlament in the near future given how collosal our left party has fucked up only getting into parlament on a technicality in the last election. They are huge libs and pretty much the biggest warhawks and transatlantics we have.
I would suggest to every German comrade to just take the grill pill or try some single issue grass roots organizing like maybe try to bring Marxism into the climate movement. It's pretty much hopeless here because there are no organisation cristals.
germany’s green party is very likely to become the most left party
Allah help us all
Ausi greens are pretty ok. Many of them are just eco-friendly libs but there are quite a few undercover MLs in there too.
In other Social Fascism news.
The reason was to curb population growth.
Somehow I already knew this happened on Greenland. Our treatment of that island and its inhabitants is deep fucking shame, and the worst part is that like half of my country doesn't even think it's bad, since the ones who come to the Danish mainland have a tendency towards alcoholism. I have had some success at convincing people that it isn't because of some inate character-flaw in their race, by pointing out that Native Americans, First Nations in Canada and Aboriginals in Australia all seem to have weird alcohol-problems, which just coincidentally happens to be people who have been completely destroyed by colonization.
TIL that Greenland has indigenous inhabitants. I always heard that it was completely uninhabited apart from when the vikings established a settlement there
It has had a pretty small population, due to the climate, but they do exist. And from what I remember, they are somewhat distant cousins of some of the First Nations in Canada, with some researchers currently investigating lingustic connections between the two. Only the problem is that up until fairly recently, both Denmark and Canada had extremely restrictive language laws regarding indigenous languages, which definitely does impact the ability to gather data.
The indigenous folks of Greenland are Inuit, so they're pretty close cousins of the Inuit in Canada. They're part of the same cultural migration that spread throughout that whole region starting in about 1300 CE. It's the fact that the Inuit are relative newcomers to the area that they aren't called First Nations in Canada. It's also why the Norse describe Greenland as being uninhabited - because it largely was uninhabited when they settled the coast there.
I thought they described the place as uninhabited because the indigenous population largely didn't live near the areas that the Vikings choose to settle near, since Greenland was just a stop on the way further west. And the climate / geography of Greenland makes it incredibly dangerous to attempt to explore, so the vikings just assumed nobody could survive in a place like that.
You're close. The Norse settled mostly on the west coast, with the Thule culture mostly way up in the north, having spread there from the Canadian Archipelago. So not only was there a lot of ice, but also most of Greenland, between them. That being said, there were accounts of them meeting, but it wasn't a massive cultural exchange, suggesting that whatever trade or contact existed was relatively limited.
From what I remember of that geography, the eastern coast is fucking rough. All the cities are on the west coast, cause it's less frozen over lol.
Not sure what else they should be called. Calling them settlements seems weird, but yeah, they are absolutely tiny. Greenland only has a population of about 55k, with about a third of them living within the capital.
I just looked up the wiki entry. It seems like they had a few different ethnic groups on the island, which vanished or replaced one another up to the Danish conquest. Interesting stuff
Another very fun fact, is that for historical reasons, Greenland is under the direct administration of the Prime Minister, and is thus seen as a thing that runs itself, and doesn't get a dedicated department / minister to run it. Because of that, the actual administration from Denmark is mostly hands-off, at least thats the way it's portrayed here (although that might just be because it's a litteral colony and we prefer not to talk about those). There is a royal protector / administrator in place, who is supposed to function as a bridge between the Danish government and the indigenous parliament who are nominally in charge of most things on the island.
Our system was probably modeled on the UK's, since we didn't abolish the colonial status of Greenland until 1953, when we had our big constitional update. So i think the similarities are entirely intentioned.
The Danish constitution was based on the Belgian 1831 constitution that served as a model for many liberal systems during the 1800's. Since liberal democracy replaced absolutism with little to no fighting, the civil service continued mostly unchanged after the abolition of absolutism.
The legal system of Denmark is continental and a lot more like that of Germany or France than the British common law system that has no written constitution and relies much more on legal precedent than continental systems.
As for Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), Danish kings had inherited the Norwegian claim on the island, back from the Norse settlements. For centuries nothing much happened but in the late 1700's colonisation started as a few trading and mission posts. Eventually all of Kalaallit Nunaat came under Danish control as a colony and Inuit religion was eradicated.
In 1931 Norway claimed eastern Kalaallit Nunaat under the terra nullus doctrine but lost the case at the Permanent Court of International Justice. Because of this a small patrol of Danish special forces travels up and down the east coast each year to assert sovereignty and thus keep the Norwegian menace at bay.
During WWII Kalaallit Nunaat was occupied by yanks and ruled from the Danish embassy in Washington, independently from Nazi-occupied Copenhagen. Until then the island had been very isolated with the Danish government having the monopoly on all trade. In 1950 the Yankees were allowed to build the Thule Air Base, for the purpose of which the nearby village of Qaanaaq was forcibly relocated hundreds of kilometres away.
In 1953 Denmark annexed Kalaallit Nunaat and made it a county of Denmark, granting the inhabitants citizenship and giving the island two seats in the Danish parliament. Until the grant of limited home rule in 1979 the Danish colonists embarked on a policy of what was called modernisation but which was a period of unashamed cultural imperialism and forced assimilation. The use of the inuit language was discouraged and the colonisers tried to turn hunter-gatherer Inuits into wage-earning Danes. Children were abducted and put in boarding schools in Denmark and public administration, police and health services were staffed by Danes who refused to learn the language.
A lot of the attempts to "civilize" the Inuits were done with little regards for local conditions. For instance the Danes built a big housing block in the capital city of Nuuk. It would have been a perfectly good housing block in Denmark but it didn't work in Kalaallit Nunaat. The doors were too narrow for people wearing arctic gear to enter and the drains couldn't handle the blood from butchering seals.
Home rule improved the situation somewhat, especially following its expansion in 2009 but the country remains heavily affected by imperialism. Most of the cops, the civil servants, teachers and healthcare professionals are Danes who doesn't speak Inuit, the nation is significantly poorer than Denmark and is plagued by symptoms of a broken society like brain drain, corruption, alcoholism and child abuse. Economically the nation remains dependent on fisheries and Danish aid with hopes of building wealth through resource extraction failing to materialise.
Officially Kalaallit Nunaat is an equal part of the Danish realm but reality is different. Inuit in Denmark face racist stereotypes in Denmark, schools in Kalaallit Nunaat teach Danish while Danes know virtually nothing about the Inuit language, and although formally being Danish citizens there have been next to no Inuits occupying high offices of the Danish state, no supreme court judges, no chiefs of staff, no ambassadors, no generals, no fancylands at the royal court. The average Dane sees Kalaallit Nunaat as a liability and doesn't realise the geopolitical weight the nation gives Denmark. On the bright side this also means that there's is no Danish opposition to speak of to the idea of independence for Kalaallit Nunaat.
Yep, while it's my impression that it's at least on a downturn, you can still hear people using "Greenlandic" as basically a euphemism for alcoholism, drunkenness etc.
I think Reddit's changing it's mind. I have upvotes on "NATO will fight to the last Ukrainian".
I wouldn't necessarily get excited about that. Redditors probably think that's a good thing.
they overplayed their hands. eventually if you keep force feeding someone, even if it's something they find palatable, they're going to get full.
perhaps i spoke too soon. they seem to have removed this subtitle from the web version:
The attention on Russia’s battle casualties has obscured the heavy losses of Ukraine’s fighters in Donbas — often ill-trained volunteers.
