1. Ukrainian hackers post Russian casualty numbers on Russian official websites and social media accounts. That's not bad. A better idea - post instructions for sabotage. For example, if you burn trackside relay cabinets, it will lead to huge delays🧵
Russia is heavily reliant on railways. Russian autoroutes have always been of low quality (with few exceptions) and thanks to sanctions Russia will face difficulties with producing and repairing trucks. Railways sabotage will heavily undermine logistics and supply of Z-operation
Railways sabotage in Belarus is already so widespread that it's severely undermining supply of a northern Russian Z-army. In Russia it's less common. And yet, that's exactly what's happened yesterday - someone attempted to blow up a relay cabinet with a handmade bomb near Kaluga
Railway sabotage is great idea. First, it's small scale action which a regular guy can do. Just go and burn a relay cabinet. Second, it can inflict enormous damage. Third, railways are so long, it's just impossible to properly guard them all. Which makes them easy to attack
Consider that Russian military industry is very heavily concentrated in a few clusters. For example, MLRS systems like Grad are produced on Motovilihinskiye Zavody plant in Perm. Just one major production center in entire Russia - makes it easy to sabotage
Ofc this MLRS plant uses imported instruments. Their technologist mentioned Seco, Sandvick, Walter, Iscar, Mitsubishi, Ghuring, Botek and Tungaloy. He mentioned only one Russian plant which produces instruments of high enough quality - KZTS in Kirov. It's apparently a bottleneck
Btw: this also shows how important it is not to allow technological import into Russia. Polish activists did a great job blocking the trucks leaving to Belarus. Belarus has been the main hub for Russian smuggling since 2014. Now as it's blocked, they'll try to use Georgia I think
Transsiberian railway is a highly vulnerable communication line. It's the only viable way connecting European Russia with Siberia and with China. Thus it'll be highly important for smuggling and technological import Russia can't do without
On July 23, 2021 flood damaged a railroad bridge on the Transsiberian. As a result, 500 trains were delayed. Trade flows were disrupted: companies had to reduce their shipments by the railway by 50% between July 26-28. They didn't restore the normal schedule till mid August.
That shows how vulnerable is the critical infrastructure in Russia. My advice - make concise instructions with sabotage, especially railway sabotage, and post them on Russian official websites and social media accounts. It's way more efficient than posting casualty numbers
Not everyone in Russia agrees with Z-campaign. Here you see people in St Petersburg beating up a truck driver who put Z onto his truck
A guy in Voronezh tried burn down a military commissariat (recruiting station). He failed - they put the fire down, but his choice of aim was emotionally motivated and inefficient. Infrastructure sabotage is much better. Make instructions with visuals and post on official media
2. If possible, target Russian military and National Guard on social media and send them standard instructions on how to avoid being sent to Ukraine. Which pretexts you can use, what instruments you have. No moral preaching, just - you can tell them A, B, C and they'll fuck off
3. Make public pressure on Western companies that refuse to leave the Russian market. French supermarket chain Auchan, and German Globus told they aren't leaving. Pressure them publicly, make it impossible for them to remain. That's important for increasing the systemic shock
4. Make pressure on European governments to stop railway shipments from Europe to China through Russia. Yeah, they're still going, though their number decreased. And I strongly suspect they'll be used for smuggling vital European components for Russian military industry
5. It's time to start talking with minority POWs, check their views and recruit those who could potentially change sides. Russian army heavily relies on minorities as cannon fodder. You know which region drafted the most people in Central Military District in 2021? Bashkortostan
In 2021 when they lacked few hundred recruits to meet the quota, local ruler (a Kremlin man) ordered not to break "old traditions of military draft". They'd broke the law in every way forcing recruits into the army. That's how Moscow is getting cannon fodder for its imperial wars
Moscow is using quite a wide range of minorities in Ukraine. Some examples of soldiers who are either KIA or captured, I'm not always sure. This guy is either a Tatar or a Bashkir from Bashkortostan
This one is a Kazakh from Astrakhan. Despite being just 14% of Astrakhan Oblast population, ethnic Kazakhs comprise 86% of Astrakhan casualties in Ukraine. Being a poor rural minority they naturally become a cannon fodder
A soldier from Tuva KIA
A captured Crimean Tatar serving in the Russian army. Crimean Tatars are heavily oppressed in Russia. After annexation new authorities started destroying their houses, disappearing their activists and random people. Their position is way worse than that of Kazan Tatars
My advice - approach minority POW and check their views. Then choose those who can change sides and train them in special companies/batallions. With Russia spiralling to chaos, their impact can be huge. Remember, without Czechoslovak Legion there would be no Civil War in Russia
Apart from recruiting minorities according to ethnic principle, it might make sense to use regional one. Identify critical regions in Russia that are weak links in a chain and create companies out of their recruits. My advice - Far East and South (Krasnodar, Rostov, Stavropol)
Let me quote Guicciardini
"I often noticed during the wars that people didn't carry out necessary actions thinking it's too late. And yet, later it would turn out, it was the high time for it. Things go much slower than we expect. That should serve as a warning"
End of 🧵
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What I am saying is that "capitalist reforms" are a buzzword devoid of any actual meaning, and a buzzword that obfuscated rather than explains. Specifically, it is fusing radically different policies taken under the radically different circumstances (and timing!) into one - purely for ideological purposes
It can be argued, for example, that starting from the 1980s, China has undertaken massive socialist reforms, specifically in infrastructure, and in basic (mother) industries, such as steel, petrochemical and chemical and, of course, power
The primary weakness of this argument is that being true, historically speaking, it is just false in the context of American politics where the “communism” label has been so over-used (and misapplied) that it lost all of its former power:
“We want X”
“No, that is communism”
“We want communism”
Basically, when you use a label like “communism” as a deus ex machina winning you every argument, you simultaneously re-define its meaning. And when you use it to beat off every popular socio economic demand (e.g. universal healthcare), you re-define communism as a synthesis of all the popular socio economic demands
Historical communism = forced industrial development in a poor, predominantly agrarian country, funded through expropriation of the peasantry
(With the most disastrous economic and humanitarian consequences)
Many are trying to explain his success with some accidental factors such as his “personal charisma”, Cuomo's weakness etc
Still, I think there may be some fundamental factors here. A longue durée shift, and a very profound one
1. Public outrage does not work anymore
If you look at Zohran, he is calm, constructive, and rarely raises his voice. I think one thing that Mamdani - but almost no one else in the American political space is getting - is that the public is getting tired of the outrage
Outrage, anger, righteous indignation have all been the primary drivers of American politics for quite a while
For a while, this tactics worked
Indeed, when everyone around is polite, and soft (and insincere), freaking out was a smart thing to do. It could help you get noticed
People don’t really understand causal links. We pretend we do (“X results in Y”). But we actually don’t. Most explanations (= descriptions of causal structures) are fake.
There may be no connection between X and Y at all. The cause is just misattributed.
Or, perhaps, X does indeed result in Y. but only under a certain (and unknown!) set of conditions that remains totally and utterly opaque to us. So, X->Y is only a part of the equation
And so on
I like to think of a hypothetical Stone Age farmer who started farming, and it worked amazingly, and his entire community adopted his lifestyle, and many generations followed it and prospered and multiplied, until all suddenly wiped out in a new ice age
1. Normative Islamophobia that used to define the public discourse being the most acceptable form of racial & ethnic bigotry in the West, is receding. It is not so much dying as rather - failing to replicate. It is not that the old people change their views as that the young do not absorb their prejudice any longer.
In fact, I incline to think it has been failing to replicate for a while, it is just that we have not been paying attention
Again, the change of vibe does not happen at once. The Muslim scare may still find (some) audience among the more rigid elderly, who are not going to change their views. But for the youth, it is starting to sound as archaic as the Catholic scare of know nothings
Out of date
2. What is particularly interesting regarding Mamdani's victory, is his support base. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that its core is comprised of the young (and predominantly white) middle classes, with a nearly equal representation of men and women
What does Musk vs Trump affair teach us about the general patterns of human history? Well, first of all it shows that the ancient historians were right. They grasped something about nature of politics that our contemporaries simply can’t.
Let me give you an example. The Arab conquest of Spain
According to a popular medieval/early modern interpretation, its primary cause was the lust of Visigoth king Roderic. Aroused by the beautiful daughter of his vassal and ally, count Julian, he took advantage of her
Disgruntled, humiliated Julian allied himself with the Arabs and opens them the gates of Spain.
Entire kingdom lost, all because the head of state caused a personal injury to someone important.