true. if i hear about historically ukrainian kuban one more time i'm blowing someone up

My mother's first home was a refugee camp. Her mother was sold on a Nazi slave market.

I have dead relatives on Ukrainian battlefields. We can't get them back because russia has colonised the regions.

One relative was taken hostage by the bastard russians and tortured for 2.5 years.

The word "slave" actually means "Slavic person". The word "genocide" was invented in Lviv.

An Amnesty International guy chased my mother through a shopping mall, yelling at her that she was a "stupid white woman who wouldn't know what a refugee is".

Ukrainians aren't allowed to talk about the racism we get every single fucking day because we're "too white".

I will add to this that when I gave a presentation at university about the Holodomor, some Anglo guy stood up, interrupted me, and said Ukrainians deserved it because we're "Nazis".

Adding more, because the russian missile and drone attacks hitting Ukraine right now pretty much broke me.

This was what russians did to one of my family churches in Australia nearly eleven years ago. The racism never ends.

I think people in the west need to face the fact that racism and xenophobia look different in different regions.

Not every country is the USA, and has the same history with colorism and anti-black sentiments based on slavery. Not every empire colonised and occupied regions populated by dark-skinned people.

And now, in the world, there are more meaningful ethnic and national identities than "white" and "black". And many groups are oppressed because of them.

Just because black/white racism is the dominant form of systematic oppression in the USA does not mean that’s universally true. One could guess this fact from the way the USA isn’t the centre of the universe.

Message to all alleged “anti-war tankies”

If you were truly anti-war, at worst you’d at least try to pretend to be neutral, and not support either side. At best, you would not be on the side of Russia, the aggressor that, unprovoked, invaded a smaller sovereign nation that was peacefully minding its own business, was not in NATO, and wasn’t even applying for NATO membership. NATO was not the cause of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As always, I remind people that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine, including but not limited to: erasing all mentions of Ukraine from schoolbooks, murdering entire civilian populations of Ukrainian cities, and kidnapping thousands and thousands of Ukrainian children (some as young as 4 months old) and placing them into “re-education” centers where they are forced to learn how to become good little Russians. Russia is indiscriminately bombing civilian targets like funerals, churches, schools and hospitals, and the Russian army is using mass rape as a weapon of war.

(Remember, Ukraine has demonstrated that they have the capability to reach Russian held territory, but unlike Russia, the Ukrainian military has only targeted military installations.)

If you can just hand wave all of the Russian war crimes and atrocities away because “America bad,” then please spare everyone your anti-war concern trolling, and your faux worries about Ukrainians dying. Just admit that as long as, lol, “communist” Russia isn’t the one being invaded, you are morally indifferent to human suffering and you actually do not care about ending wars.

Russia can end the war instantly just by going home.

vlad_shevchenko

HEy! you know that tumblr post of "Brutus! Put the dress on! You're going undercover!" That's Brutus. And That is the dress.

Reblogging for Brutus getting to wear the dress and his friends being happy for him

aq qaya, occupied crimea, ukraine

I have absolutely never heard anyone express that idea. Admittedly it's been a while since I've followed any Discourse around here :\

—Anna Mariya Basauri Ziuzina, an instructor at the University of Alabama

Source: Ukrainian faculty hosts exhibitions for Holodomor Remembrance Month

I will never get over how weird it feels to have tragic and emotional chapters of your life where you just also still go to work, and the grocery store, and see funny videos online all while feeling such paralyzing fear and heartache

life just goes on no matter what

it’s always wild when people look at eastern europeans and other people who lived under communism or are descended from those did

see that most of these people have a lot to say about the human rights abuses and authoritarianism they and their families survived during communism, the repercussions of which they’re still dealing with today

and then reduce their lived experiences to “oh they’re just a capitalist” (whether that’s true or not) “only right wingers hate communism” (DEFINITELY not true lol) “this is united states propaganda” (buddy, u.s. propaganda is not the only state run propaganda project to ever exist! please stop making everything about the united states!!)

Today Ukraine celebrates Day of Dignity and Freedom.

21st November 2004 - Orange Revolution started.

21st November 2013 - Revolution of Dignity (Euromaidan) started.

On this day today, during russian full scale invasion, we're all sure, more that ever, that all of it has been worth it and the fight for free, democratic Ukraine that continues now, is the most important thing we'll ever do in our lives.

They weren't able to take away our dignity and now they won't be able to take away our freedom. Everything will be Ukraine.

Слава Україні!

Also a friendly reminder that Netflix has very decent documentary on Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, so you might want to check it out. They even released it for free on youtube, so nothing should stop you now

10 years 🚬🚬🚬🚬

11 years 🚬🚬🚬🚬

Today, Ukraine became the first. The first country in the world against which an intercontinental ballistic missile was used.

let's goooo незламний народе first in everything amirite -----------------------------------

no one cares

I don't care what you say. This is the harsh truth. No one gives a fuck if our nation lives or dies.

To use intercontinental missile to strike Dnipro. That's gotta be the most ridiculously expensive temper tantrum ever.

The way this missile works is that it separates in six missiles in the air, and from some information sources, those six parts separate in six more. To kill as many people as possible with one attack. Pure evil. And to disarm it you would need a specific defense system, able to shoot down the supersonic missile before it separates in the air.

Everyday russia kills more and more or my people. Everyone allows them to do it and to keep on growing weaponry and strength to kill us and to use against you in the future. I'm no naive person anymore, I know those in power would knowingly kill or let get killed anyone below them, but I want to remind you, that if you have something to believe in, or have something to fight against, even the smallest donation counts. Don't get discouraged and please fight together with us against this murderous terroristic state named russia.

For those with covid conspiracies, they said Ukraine had secret biolabs. To those obsessed with Trump, they made a whole Hunter Biden extended universe. To those who are anti-nazi, Ukraine is full of Nazis. To those who are Nazis, Ukraine is full of Jews. To those who are anti-LGBT, Ukraine is depraved rainbow orgies and secret sex tunnels. To those who are pro-LGBT, Ukraine is full of homophobia and hate crimes. To those who are pro-NATO, Ukraine is too hopelessly corrupt and backward, to those who are anti-NATO, its ranks are filled with NATO mercenaries, gender-neutral toilets and furry conventions.

Hence the logical conclusion, if all of this is true, is that Ukraine is a hellscape of genetically-modified, CIA-armed, Satanic Nazi transgender Jewish furries slithering forth from sex tunnel biolabs to serve Emperor Biden.

For the Westerners & other people who don't/can't follow russian news and the russian speaking online space:

This is not satire! They do talk like this. They spread this kind of stuff as 'information'.

The only satirical part here is to put it all together in one sentence, but if you split it up into its components, you'll find each of these, broadly pushed and not just one single mention on someone's obscure blog or something, as russian propaganda. It's mind boggling really how that actually works on people but it does!

Ukrainians, do you remember the genetically engineered mosquitoes, that transmit deadly diseases, but only sting people with russian blood (and they do passport and ideology checks too I guess)? Let's look at it this way: According to Russia we're pretty much geniuses, with all the secret weapons and other technologies we've developed by now, in less than two years even, that lie beyond the world's collective scientific knowledge and capabilities. And we're having orgies whenever we're not currently working or plotting. And at least half of us are world class, armed to the teeth secrets agents or something. I'm starting to believe they're actually thinking very highly of us and are really just envious! Haha.

And also, according to russian propaganda, in addition to everything above, Ukrainians don't actually exist, but are just russians fooled to Western propaganda to think they are a separate nation, and russia is determined to keep killing us until whoever remains accepts it.

Yes it is absurd, yes it is contradictory, but you can see how effective it is...

Propaganda doesn’t need to make sense or even be self consistent. It just needs to be dominant.

Those screenshots are from Timothy Snyder’s class on Ukrainian history, which is very much worth watching:

In Russian propaganda, Ukraine is Schrödinger's Country. It is all things at once, however contradictory.

If you want to understand how we got here, this is a great place to start. I was gifted this education by Diana Savita Wagner (nee Snake, nee ykp-chk, nee keptmathilda) within days of the start of the war. Her recommendation was enough to encourage me to 'attend' the entire class. It was worth every second of my time.

You might find it so too.

For volunteer medic Diana who said herself before her murder: “when my death occurs, Russian propaganda will say I died at the hands of Ukrainians. That is not true. I was killed by Russia’s putin. Make sure everyone knows this.”

this was a great read. “Laziness Does Not Exist” by Devon Price

of course, then there's the other phenomenon regarding students specifically, which I know about from my dad. He taught for a decade or so in an "Academy of Municipal Property" (or economics, or however you choose to translate that specific word from Russian/Ukrainian. It covers stuff like the electric grid, which is what my dad was teaching specifically, and I'm sure you can extrapolate from there. Maybe "ecosystem" is the best metaphor). Location: Kharkiv, Ukraine.

The thing about this institution is that it was a dingy little institute in soviet times, and rebranded itself as an academy because upon the dissolution of soviet union it didn't qualify as a university by the actual criteria that we have for that, and academy sounds cooler than institute. And Kharkiv is a university city, like in peacetime students reach... I think 20% of population? (And Kharkiv is a very large city, with pre-war 1,5 mln population, so you know that's a lot. We get students from all over Ukraine, and foreign students too, mostly from African countries).

What I mean is, for people who want to get an actual education, knowledge of topics and such, this Urban Academy will not be their first, fifth or tenth choice. However, it did find itself a place in the ecosystem: there are rules in Ukraine for state-owned organizations/utilities that for certain positions you need a bachelor's or a master's in a relevant specialty, meaning there's a demographic of people who worked in their chosen specialty for their entire life, but need a diploma to actually get promoted now.

Another thing you need to understand about Ukrainian higher education is that it's not choice based. Over your four or five years of undergrad you're going to have, like, three courses where you can choose one of several related subjects - like one of the branches of philosophy or psychology for a software engineer's diploma. Universities (and academies and such) offer a selection of very granulated programs that you get specifically accepted into, and then you get a schedule of what classes you go to at what time in which room (with just your smaller group, your entire specialty, or several specialties together for some lectures).

The result of all of the above together is a population of new adult to middle aged students who are absolutely not here to learn, just to get the paper that says they did. They or their employer unofficially pay the staff for just ushering them through, and people with actual educational integrity like my dad, who want them to at least be present for the exam and submit a paper at least that someone else wrote for them, for a solid honest 3 out of 5 (2 is a failure) and who don't take bribes... yeah, it's not a fun environment.

(There are always a few pathological perfectionists or people who actually do want to learn if they're already signed up for it, keeping classes actually existent, but we're talking an attendance of 3 people in a group of 30, here)

And of course I don't think this has anything to do with laziness either. Those are adults with jobs. They simply do not respect the institution, and considering my dad has complained about someone on staff scamming his students by accepting money for HIS grades... well it's hard to say they're wrong about it, isn't it.

Basically, another thing that can be misread as laziness is fundamental disrespect for the activity. And that's a very different phenomenon, too.

pro-abortion. pro-divorce. i believe we have the god-given right to give up

when people go after no-fault divorce or abortion what they're really doing is trying to enshrine the sunk cost fallacy into law

it sounds like a joke but this is a genuine political belief of mine. you should be able to leave a situation you don't like. the government has no business trapping you in a relationship.

quitters rights!

The 'freedom to leave' is a central tenet of freedom. Most personal freedoms are dependent on that.

So fun fact time!

In my country we don't have "case law" we have ?regular law? where the documents the courts reference are Legal Documents Specifically and only. The judge doesn't have freedom of opinion outside the range explicitly specified by the law.

What we also have in my country is that you can only go to the gvt records building and sign a paper that says youd like to be divorced if: - you don't have a child - both people are present to sign it and if either of these is lacking you have to file a divorce claim to the court even if you and your spouse literally fully agree on everything, are besties and both just want to not be legally married anymore (the second person does not in fact have to show up in person to court, they can just send a letter where they say they agree to divorce)

The result of this process is a document called "court decision" / "decision of the court". It contains the actual resolution / court orders, and before it the full legal decision making process - quoting relevant legislation! - that led to it. The creativity of... whoever is in charge of composing these... ranges from 1 page to like 5 pages of small print.

The legislation that is quoted outlines the fundamental conflict related to this sort of case:

(These are both copypastes from the actual translated court decisions I have on my computer because I used to work as a translator. On my work laptop I had a growing collection of legal quotes like these so I could reuse translations of the same articles lmao)

There is also a DECISION OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT JUDGES that the first one of those should be interpreted as "the court must be stringent and may ONLY grant divorce IF it has proven that preservation of marriage would contradict essential interests".

But, of course, the court cannot /deny/ a divorce claim, because that would be forcing them into preservation of marriage relations and would thus violate their rights to freedom and personal autonomy!

What this means in practice is that in every single divorce claim the court swears up and down that ACCORDING TO TESTIMONY AND SUBMITTED EVIDENCE, it is PROVEN that

(all real quotes with any specific information redacted)

It's a creative writing exercise for every single decision & it's amazing. Every single time NEITHER PARTY IS AT FAULT (because that'd be a whole different court process, I've translated a few of these too) but THEIR CONFLICT IS IRRECONCILABLE. They have different views on family life and have lost the feelings of love and respect towards each other. There is no understanding between them. There's like 10 phrasings like this that recombine to create a truly unique (or at least rare combinatorically) tale of woe. (The court process does not involve gathering evidence or hearing out testimonies because, and I cannot overstate this, they cannot actually make a different decision on a divorce claim because that would be illegal)

(There is also some international treaty Ukraine signed that also reiterates the right to divorce at will, and a whole bunch more of articles in the vein of "the husband and wife must respect each other" that make the whole thing funnier the more of them are quoted in the same document. I learned so much law from our people's struggle with our beloved bureaucracy. And earned so much $$$ from the misery of it)

DID HE LITERALLY PREDICT THE ENTIRE FUCKING WAR. WHAT THE FUCK

I think he just read up on the geopolitical tensions that were already happening. that was part of the pretext for the earlier invasion in 2014

Like, he and half of Ukraine??? The half that was actually following the news & Russian media??? Everyone who didn't predict this was not paying attention???

(Attentive optimists were hoping that This Exact Thing doesn't happen, with high precision as to what exactly they were hoping wouldn't happen)