Shitpost picture for a shitpost status.
I didn't mean to write so much. As usual for me, I can't only eat just one piece of information and chew on it -- I'm a glutton for linking things together. This post starts at the recovery of dead Russian soldiers' bodies in Ukraine and ends with a series of citation-provided highlights about Russian Financing impairing the U.S.'s political system. I even manage to get some digs in at the NRA and BLM Global Network Foundation. FAIR AND BALANCED WOWIE (kill me).
Jeeze. It's been not even a full month since I last had dipped my toe in this topic.
Recently, one of the many people reporting on the War in Ukraine via social media echoed something I mentioned earlier about rotting bodies being left in Russian Positions, and that the Ukrainians were often retrieving dead bodies. This has become a bit of a meme as of late, thanks to the unsightly conspiracy around what is being termed the mobik cube, a mysterious package of meat left on the side of the road in maybe belgorad. It's telling that the information space is dominated by anons memeing aggressively for this war, since even two weeks removed, it seems that the best source of information here is know your meme's article about the cube. I mentioned previously that recovery of bodies is important for reasons of grieving, burial, and obviously we can amend that with the obvious sanitary implications for not properly disposing of the dead when they are killed en-mass in an area.
Anyway, not trying to make myself do "hype influencer week by week updates!" crap like your average youtuber, but the grain deal has fallen through. As the linked article from NPR explains, this means famine and death conditions being ever widened around the nations of the Horn of Africa. I'm going to randomly plug two articles about climate change and food production, one of them is by the United Nations' news publications, the other by NASA's climate publication. There's a screenshot a friend sent me of Fox News in current year argument (this week in fact) which implies somehow that the attribution to dramatic fluxes in hot temperatures is somehow partisan. You can't make this shit up, the scientific illiteracy of the GOP is of course impaired by their broad rejection of reality, and their financial ties to wealthy Russians should really be a matter of genuine security concerns. I'm sure we'll hear about how the whole global market situation is somehow only the DNC's fault for those of us who attempt to weather U.S. political actors' statements.
As you know, politics sometimes really is that simple. This isn't as nuanced as we really like to think it is: everything has a price, including blatant endorsement of misinformation. I felt like this was a good time to include some additional article plugs for your own reading and enrichment. As usual, make use of 12ft.io to get around most of the news site paywalls. The 2019 publication of the highly critical Mueller Report has gone into depth about Russian Nationals funneling money into various efforts, but we all seem to have forgotten. Of course around this point, the famously socially conservative elements of the FBI's enforcement tendencies were starting to get slandered as a 'deep state liberal conspiracy' for daring to accuse Trump of illegal shit. I guess it doesn't seem as false as originally advertised (disable adblock for this one) considering Trump faces an onslaught of cases from state governments, the federal government, and a host of private lawsuits over defamation or other sleight abuses of power.
Anyway, here's five news articles below about Russian Money in U.S. politics.
- Dallas Morning News, May 2018
- CNBC, March 2022
- The Daily Beast, 2022
- NPR, January 2023
- Committee of Oversight for the House, 2022
I really don't know when to quit. Here's two bonus articles that came up as I was hunting citations: one about the NRA's corrupt ties to Russia, the other about A key BLM organizer. There, I've done a "balanced" citation. Corrupt bastards are enriched through sociopathy, doesn't matter who they are. People get shocked by this stuff because they're not vigilantly salient about how value systems are a political tool. Ideology kind of just terminates where the dime stops when it comes to how Nations are competing, and the patently sociopathic impulses of nations and societies only make sense if you think of people as non-critical assets of disposable value. It's not necessary or even advisable to personally adopt the attitude, but you need to comprehend how little people matter in these equations.
- Rotting bodies of dead Russian soldiers in the fields?
They were really considered expendable by their government. - Famine across Africa due to global capitalism's enforcement and endorsement of food inequity?
It's ultimately profitable for companies. - Politicians taking money from rival nations in exchange for policy-induced self-sabotage?
It's personally enriching, power is for the sake of the flex.
Alright that's enough belly aching, this cartoon dinosaur is off to have some depression and coffee time.