Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[THE_WIZARD_]

I believe George Thorogood is from Delaware.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Has there ever been anything good to come out of Delaware? besides Dogfish Head 120? I think not.

Blue Collar Joe, the People's Hope.

Also the Court of Chancery

[iam416]

You're thinking of Chauncey Billups, and he was an asshat on the Court.

[lineygoblue]

They do, but be advised -- they're only good if you don't much care what sort of appearance, hygiene and genitalia you get. It's a real dealer's choice roll of the dice.

So perhaps the best course of action is to abstain from sex when visiting Scotland.

[iam416]

No, the best choice is to abstain from visiting third world hellholes. HOWEVER, if you eschew all reason and good-decisionmaking and do visit a third world hellhole, the prudent choice is conventional abstention.

[Jeff Buchanan]

More on yesterday's headline making dust up inside a RUssian city that is close to the Ukrainian boarder (paraphrased from ISW) ......

The Kremlin accused Ukraine of conducting a border incursion in Bryansk Oblast, Russia on March 2 — a claim that Ukrainian officials denied. Bryansk Oblast Governor Alexander Bogomaz claimed that “several dozen” Ukrainian saboteurs conducted an armed incursion into the villages of Lyubenchane and Sushany on the international border.[1] The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) doubled down on Bogomaz’s accusation and claimed that the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) conducted an operation to “eliminate” Ukrainian saboteurs who reportedly killed one individual and took up to six individuals hostage. Russian President Vladimir Putin then responded unusually quickly to these claims, alleging that (Ukrainian) “neo-Nazis and their owners” carried out a “terrorist attack” against Bryansk Oblast. Putin also claimed that Russia will ”crush” neo-Nazis that have consistently aimed to deprive Russia of its history, killed the daughter of Russian nationalist ideolog Alexander Dugin, and ”killed people in Donbas.”

Note Putin's continuation of the propaganda intended to deflect attention from military failures in Ukraine while at the same time exaggerating the threat from the west to the Russian Federation.

Ukrainian officials denied the Kremlin’s accusations of Ukraine’s involvement in Bryansk Oblast and claimed that Russian officials might be facing problems with increasing partisan activity in Russia. Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Mykhailo Podolyak stated that Russian accusations are a deliberate “provocation” aimed at scaring the Russian people into believing that Russia needs to continue to fight in Ukraine.

A representative of the Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Andriy Yusov stated that the incident in Bryansk Oblast is “part of transformative processes in Russia” and pointed to inter-ethnic, inter-religious, and socio-economic conflicts among Russian citizens in Russia. Yusov also noted that the March 2 public statements of the Russian Volunteer Corps’, which claimed responsibility for the incursion, further show that “Russia is beginning to wake up against Putin’s bloody dictatorship.” Yusov likely referred to two videos uploaded by Russian Volunteer Corps fighters claiming that they crossed the international border into Bryansk Oblast to “liberate” fellow Russian citizens from Putin’s dictatorship without harming Russian civilians.

The Russian Volunteer Corps claims to be an all-Russian, Ukraine-based armed formation. The head of Dutch open-source investigative group Bellingcat's far-right monitoring project reported that the leader of the Russian Volunteer Corps, Denis Kapustin, is a far-right extremist figure. Social media users geolocated one of the two videos showing two servicemen with the Russian Volunteer Corps flag to Sushany. The two videos each showing two men in uniform holding a flag remains the only concrete evidence available that anything happened.

[Da Geezer]

Damn! Did you write that in 7 minutes? Impressive.

Nope. 4 minutes with chatGPT

[THE_WIZARD_]

High tech geezer?

[Jeff Buchanan]

This is an interesting discussion on the Bryansk, Russia incursion by a so-called extremist right wing nationalist group of Russians fighting for Ukraine. It's quite detailed and fleshes out what Meduza journalists think this incursion was all about and who was involved.

Cliff Notes:

• The leader of the group called "The Russian Volunteer Group" is led by a notorious self identified neo-Nazi that's been around and an active crazy since 2004. He's been banned from Germany where from that location he was active inorganizing right wing extremists/neo-Nazi activities throughout Europe. Germany labeled him a threat to public safety. He now operates from Ukraine, claims he's working for the Ukrainian military but that's in dispute.
• Meduza thinks that the operation was undertaken to demonstrate the weakness and susceptibility to these kinds of incursion through Russia's borders. The purpose? To siphon off Russian troops in Ukraine to beef up local security in these boarder villages.
• IMO, if that was the purpose, this group may have been operating at the direction of and for Ukrainian Special Forces.

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/03...your-partisans

[Jeff Buchanan]

Relating to the above, I've read several articles about the complexity of various currents within Ukraine and identifiable groups behind them. At face, westerners following the war in Ukraine, see a well oiled, strong Ukrainian government running the war with a Churchillian leader who is admired and followed. There's no question that, much like inside the US, there are extremist groups, nationalists, that hold anti-semitic, racist, anti-government views inside Ukraine. Anarchists would be among them.

The so called Ukrainian separatists of the Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts are a separate group of Ukrainians that favor Russian rule and who oppose Kiev. Putin armed and infiltrated this group with Russian FBS agents in order to undermine and destabilize Ukraine's legitimate governments over the last two westward facing ones - a decades worth. The separatists are not neo-Nazis, claim no affiliation with that group and openly decry the neo-Nazi movement that Putin plays up as characterizing the whole of Ukraine and thus being a threat to mother Russia.

Professed neo-Nazis like this dude that leads "The Russian Volunteer Group" ostensibly and claiming to be "fighting for Ukraine," are probably not doing what they do because of their loyalty to Zelenski. Rather they have a right wing extremist vision for Ukraine. To that extent, they're dangerous but apparently exploitable if one can believe Ukrainian Special Forces put them up to invading Russia from Ukrainian territory..... and I can. War is dirty shit.

[Da Geezer]

High tech geezer?

YUP. ChatGPT contacted me to write some of Jeff's posts, but I declined. I figure he is doing a good job.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Geezer with high tech gadgets is dangerous. Like letting Grandma drive to church in a Space Shuttle.

[lineygoblue]

You know things are bad when even Wal Mart packs its bags and gets out of town.

Wal Mart announced that it is permanently closing the two locations located in Portland Oregon due to financial performance issues.

Real world definition is that they're closing the stores due to too much theft. As we all know, Portland is one of many prog/liberal west coast cities that decided to defund and eliminate much of its police force, and no longer prosecutes shoplifters as long as they don't steal too much. Of course Wal Mart will now be accused of bigotry and racism for their decision, because that's what we do in 2023. After all, big retailers should be able to absorb the shoplifting losses from local thieves.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/walmart-shutter-portland-locations-just-months-after-ceos-warnings-crime

[CGVT]

JFC.

I was friends with a retired Wal-Mart exec. They close stores down all over the fucking country because of theft, even in *gasp* conservative places. But you know, white meth-heads don't get the FOX-rage that you all crave.

[THE_WIZARD_]

We all know CGVT is a shoplifters liney...don't aggravate the situation...