In this video you can see soldiers patrolling the borders with rifles and dogs and using drones to scan the area, what’s your definition of heavily armed?
The clue here is that soldiers typically don’t have dogs - their job is not tracking anyone. The folks you see are probably border guards. (Another clue is that soldiers would be expected to carry at least one proper machine gun per squad, items like grenades and grenade launchers, etc.)
The ukrainian military also have checkpoints in the west border to make sure any male between 18 and 60 doesn’t leave the country so that they can be forced into war.
In the west, you should expect to find the border guard. They are capable of checking databases and patrolling in nature, but aren’t heavily armed. And tens of thousands of guys have taken leave on their own, despite anything the border guard can do. If one doesn’t like the draft, one hikes out via the Carpathian mountains.
As for the draft, yes, it’s a real thing. Of course it’s unjust, people should be able to live in peace - hence no agressor should invade any land. Having to take up weapons sucks. But when a war on this scale gets started, states will draft soldiers into their armies. Many will dodge it. Since hundreds of thousands of soldiers are needed, lots of mistakes will be made, and will be sorted out later (units don’t actually want soldiers who aren’t capable of fighting).
Ultimately, who was called up but absolutely doesn’t want to fight, must choose among these roles:
Obviously, everyone is not competent to become a medic. The remaining positions are attainable. So, in the end, it’s mostly people willing to fight at least somewhat, who end up fighting. Some of them get disillusioned and desert, however. That’s normal too, in a large war that lasts long. I don’t hold it against them.
I’m not from Ukraine, and not a military person, but I cooperate with military people, supplying drones and stuff that helps bring hostile drones down (profit is not involved). So inevitably I do know the approximate situation.
I’ve read some things by Malatesta before (not much from Goldman), so thanks for the reading tips. There is a nuance, though. Once some country has started a conquest attempt, any disarmament will only give them victory. Disarmament is only possible when it’s mutual, and then I fully support it. The article by Goldman that you suggested seems to originate from 1915, when World War I was being fought in Europe. I remind that World War I had no clear agressor, and indeed, anarchists of all countries tried to overthrow the ruling regimes (which were mostly undemocratic, frequently dictatorial and imperial).
The current situation somewhat differs. There is a clear agressor, which happens to be a dictatorship and an empire, supported by other dictatorships and a messed up theocracy. There happens to be a clearly defined victim of agression, which happens to be mostly democratic, supported by places that are reasonably democratic. I believe that if Malatesta lived today, I could convince him to start a charity that supplies Ukrainians. :)
I hope for revolutionary conditions to arise in Russia, but that will be a long wait. My comrades there tried and lost, they’ve mostly emigrated by now. Some are imprisoned, some still keep trying (I can’t estimate what the percentages are, people don’t talk openly of such things), but there are approximately 4 times as much cops per capita in Russia compared to a normal country, so their chances are miserable.
If you are sure about something, then bring evidence of considerable off-label activities.
In response to your response about “Nordic Response”:
Surveillance, patrols, road control posts, vehicle inspection, control of air space, minesweeping, evacuation of civilians, and riot control were important part of the exercise.”
Those are realistic military duties in war time. Every military practises them. Where do you find a fault?
An example from real life: the Ukrainian military has checkpoints on roads near the frontline. Moving with a vehicle, you’d expect to show papers, say a few words and maybe even show transported goods. The purpose? Finding reconnaisance / sabotage groups, which every competent enemy is expected to send. If an opponent doesn’t send recon or saboteurs, they are fools. If a military doesn’t learn how to deter those, they’re fools.
How does one learn? After dry reading in a classroom: one holds an excercise. There’s a home team and an opposing team. The home team checks, the opposing team infiltrates. Both teams report what they achieved, results get compared. If the blue team found the “saboteurs”, good. If the red team “blew up” all bridges and pipelines in the area, people think hard about what they did wrong. If they don’t practise, they don’t get to think hard.
While the ability to counteract styrofoam pollution is of course good, sadly this doesn’t apply to other plastics in general. Some plastics are physically hard or chemically much harder to break than polystyrene (PP, PVC, ABS, anything that it fiber reinforced) .
So, while the worms are nice, one should not hope they can help with other plastics.
Based on this, I conclude: the NATO of today is a mostly defensive alliance with some taints in its history.
It is currently very busy doing a real job - opposing a conquering dictator named Vladimir Putin.
I wish it luck, as long as it sticks to its declared purpose. If it oversteps, I will revise my opinion.
The EU has by now significantly outpaid the US, and out-supported the US in Ukraine. However, for historical reasons, it lacks certain items which Ukrainians badly need (tactical ballistic missiles and anti-missile defense, to bring good examples).
On the matter of aircraft, I should especially emphasize that EU countries have given fighter aircraft, but the US has not. The US is currently attempting to get through the bureaucracy of approving a Swedish AWACS aircraft (with some US components) going to Ukraine.
Educate thyself here, military people use this resource and approve of it:
So, NATO had a problematic operation, trying to establish (and coordinate the establishment of) guerilla stay-behind troops to use in the event of Soviet takeover - and the operation went especially problematic in Italy during the Years of Lead, where some of those guys associated with right-wing terrorists. The year was 1969 or so.
Basing on this, how do I conclude anything about the NATO of today?
Disclaimer: I was asked to hold an anti NATO speech during a protest event during a NATO summit. Being a moderately honest anarchist, I held a speech denouncing the practises seen in Afghanistan (the year was 2012), but emphasized that collective self defense is a valuable thing to have (a common attitude here in Eastern Europe), and added that if the alliance would bother doing what it says on the sticker, I would support it.
NATO is an alliance of various countries. Some of them aren’t nice or democratic (classic example: Turkey). Mixed bag, and constantly changing. Membership in NATO is not a letter of indulgence for a member state to do anything - allies are obliged to help only if someone attacks a member state. If a NATO member attacks someone else, allies can ignore the affair or even oppose the member (example: Turkey recently bombed Kurdish troops in Syria so sloppily that threatened US troops shot down a Turkish drone).
In his shoes, I would think twice - does their team really want to present their dirtiest laundry to the world - such as owing an election to a media oligarch?
As for the EU, it’s a massive bureaucracy which still follows its own laws. It probably won’t change track. There is no single person to change its track.
However, at this stage of the game, I have the nagging feeling that some American may downregulate Elon Musk directly, far before the EU manages to step on his precious toe.
Ideally, people should try to get them Jas-39 Gripen with MBDA Meteor missiles to back up the F-16 fleet.
Currently, the situation seems to be: F-16 pilots are still inexperienced and their missiles are outranged by some missiles that a Su-35 could be carrying (e.g. R-77M with 190 km range). When a Su-34 (fighter-bomber) conducts glide bombing runs from a distance of 40 km, a Su-35 (air superiority fighter) typically provides it air cover. Under such conditions, it’s a difficult task for an F-16 pilot to fire an AMRAAM at the bomber (at best 180 km range) and evade counter-fire from the fighter. Fortunately they’ve got shiny new ECM pods and hopefully Russian planes haven’t got decent radars.
However, a plane with longer range weapons (Meteor can fly for 200 km) would deter even a fighter escort of the Su-34, and likely end glide bombing as a tactic.
Alternatively, one can hope that the actual range of AMRAAM exceeds the advertised range or the actual range of R-77M falls short of advertised range - or that they have better radars, or can somehow backport Meteor to F-16, or that their ECM can beat the electronics of R-77. However, as far as I’m aware, firing an AMRAAM from maximum range needs a really big target (actual bomber, not a fighter-bomber).
Either way, good to hear it happened. :) If it happens more, it might finally deter glide bombing. So far, air defense ambushes have also temporarily deterred it and drones have struck airfields where the Su-34 planes get equipped, but nothing has stopped it for long.
the experiences around Helene and Milton are just an extreme continuation of a trend where the public is increasingly getting its information from extremist figures online rather than experts
Sadly, all true.
I’ve had to remind people several times that “if you go reading Twitter, please put on your intelligence analyst glasses”. To find a grain of truth in that truckload of dust.
If conservative means “cautious and wary of unexpected results”, “disillusioned with methods that we tried and failed with” or maybe even “equipped with experience of successful and failed cooperation with various sorts of people”, then yes. Already before age 50, I’m spoiled with various good and bad experiences. I cannot exclude that as my tendency to explore decreases (psychology tends to affirm this trend), I may get prejudiced too. I may have to figure out something to counter it.
But if conservative means that I suddenly don’t want a society with equality and without hierarchy, then - nope.
Speculation has it that either “Palyantsia” (small turbojet drone) or “Neptun” (sizable cruise missile, antiship with ground strike capability) were used. Since part of the Russian facility was hardened and underground, I would ordinarily favour the hypothesis of “Neptun”, but it’s supposed to be out of their range and the videos recorded over Russia featured a turbojet sound and the video you linked has a small explosion (this would fit “Palyantsia”, since it’s small).
I attempted to find the source of this image and its spread seems to originate from 4chan (or at least, 4chan was one of the earliest vectors).
Chances of this being a disinformation / prank seem pretty high currently.
/me listening to the sound of a WinXP virtual machine booting under Debian Linux
They can shoot their foot with a grenade launcher next. I’m already out of range.
To resist an organized group, you communicate the problem (in an anarchist society, communicating the problem of a nascent state seems like the easy part), present evidence of the nature and severity of the problem, and ask people and existing organizations to mobilize.
Whether the next step is obstructing the state peacefully or mass production of munitions, would already depend on how bad the state has got.
The same that stops them from taking over a democracy. Sometimes.
If a society became anarchist enough to abolish state structures, there obviously had to exist a reason - there had to exist popular support.
Thus, someone attempting to recreate a state would face questions and opposition. People would try to persuade them of their error. If they declared a state, anarchists would not recognize it. If it claimed sovereignity above a territory, anarchists might not recognize that either.
The new state might encounter problems - unwilling residents would leave and be accepted in anarchy, annoyed anarchists would organize trade boycotts and sanctions, ultimately it could go badly and armed confrontation could follow. In some scenarios, the state might remain and attract people who want to live there. In some scenarios, war would follow - and if the majority really was anarchist, the state would lose and disappear.
Also notably, the Kronstadt anarchists held a general assembly to dicsuss the question of “shall we accept Lenin’s ultimatum, or fight a battle against the Red Army?” and decided democratically to fight.
(The battle was extremely bloody, anarchists lost and the Red Army won, at the cost of losing at least 5 times more people. Considerable numbers of anarchists escaped to Finland.)
In short: anarchists can use heavy artillery when needed, even if they know that war is not healthy - neither for them or the society they want.
YPG, the militia formed during the seperation of Rojava from the Syrian government, have been accused by Human Rights groups of using Child Soldiers.
Correct… and notably, unlike the other forces around them (Syrian dictatorship, Turkish-sponsored islamists, ISIS, etc) they responded to the accusation within a month:
In June 2020, United Nations reported the YPG/YPJ as the largest faction in the Syrian civil war by the number of recruited child soldiers with 283 child soldiers followed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham with 245 child soldiers.[141]
On 15 July 2020, SDF issued a new military order prohibiting child recruitment. The NGO Fight For Humanity conducted multiple training sessions with hundreds of SDF commanders about the UN-SDF Action Plan To Prevent Child Recruitment, and distributed informational posters and flyers about it written in both Arabic and Kurdish, as part of an ongoing educational process. Syria-based researcher Thomas McClure observed that “SDF are less likely to engage in such practices than any of the other forces in Syria, but seek to hold themselves to a higher standard of accountability and human rights.”[142]
On 29 August 2020, SDF announced the creation of a new system that anyone can use to confidentially report to specialized Child Protection offices any suspected case of child recruitment, in accordance with the action plan that the SDF signed with the United Nations in the summer of 2019.[143][144]
Sadly, until the IDF starts investigating and prosecuting their members for war crimes (and stops assigning people without the required education, skills and psychological traits to essentially do police duties) - some parts of the IDF will continue to perform the role of recruiting Palestinians into extremist and militant organizations. :(
I would not be surprised if one of the dead man’s relatives decides at some point to take up weapons.
A technical note: they need to sort their communication out earlier, by the midterm congressional election. Apparently, their communication didn’t reach the voters, and voters were in a mood for hearing sweet lies from a criminal oligarch. They need to think of how to change that…
US society needs to somehow withstand 2 years of Trump running loose.
One can also hope that some senators or representatives are old enough to retire (or courageous enough to defect), changing the composition of the Congress before that. That might prevent or slow Trump from steamrolling new laws into force, until something has been figured out.