Let's start a meme contest about the @RheinmetallAG. I will give some examples and material that may be useful. Make your own memes and post them. Don't forget to mention @RheinmetallAG in your posts. In a week we'll choose the best ones and I will ask the authors to work with me
Key materials:
1) Rheinmetall press release, 2011 2) Their statement with awkward misinformation "we didn't supply any simulation technology!" (I've a proof you did), 2022 3) DW report on Serdyukov's visit to Letzlingen to sign contract with Rheinmetall dw.com/ru/партнеры-по…
Key facts:
1) In 2011 Rheinmetall started to build Mulino training center for Russian army with JSC Oboronservis 2) After the corruption scandal (Oboronservis case), it was renamed to JSC Garnison 3) After Crimea Rheinmetall "left" the project, but continued to supply Garnison
4) Oboronservis and Garnison is exactly the same company, just rebranded. So Rheinmetall worked with exactly the same Russian contractor, supplying it even after 2015 5) While Rheinmetall claims they never ever supplied simulation equipment for Mulino, they did (I have a proof)
Perhaps, it makes sense to put:
1) Rheinmetall logo 2) Garnison/Oboronservis logos on the memes. Well, these are the same logos. Because it is the same company, just rebranded
Now templates for memes. It is just a vague idea, don't hesitate to experiment. This is @RheinmetallAG pretending to leave the Mulino project, while in fact, continuing to work through the JSC Garnison proxy
Or perhaps this one could be combined with @RheinmetallAG logo and the pictures of Zapad-2021 manoeuvres where Putin's army prepared for invasion of Ukraine
This self description can be a component of some good meme, Idk
There's no need to limit yourself by well-known meme templates. You can absolutely take historical photos, like signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact
Or the Soviet/Nazi partition of Poland in 1939
I think this one may serve as a template for a very good @RheinmetallAG meme. So please do not hesitate to experiment, post your memes not forgetting to mention the @RheinmetallAG and one week later on September 6, we're gonna choose the winners. Good luck!
PS "Get over Rheinmetall AG!" - also a great meme material, thank you. Someone witty could play with this words, putting them in relationship context or else, Idk
Fake jobs are completely normal & totally natural. The reason is: nobody understands what is happening and most certainly does not understand why. Like people, including the upper management have some idea of what is happening in an organisation, and this idea is usually wrong.
As they do not know and cannot know causal relations between the input and output, they just try to increase some sort of input, in a hope for a better output, but they do not really know which input to increase.
Insiders with deep & specific knowledge, on the other hand, may have a more clear & definite idea of what is happening, and even certain, non zero degree of understanding of causal links between the input and output
I have recently read someone comparing Trump’s tariffs with collectivisation in the USSR. I think it is an interesting comparison. I don’t think it is exactly the same thing of course. But I indeed think that Stalin’s collectivisation offers an interesting metaphor, a perspective to think about
But let’s make a crash intro first
1. The thing you need to understand about the 1920s USSR is that it was an oligarchic regime. It was not strictly speaking, an autocracy. It was a power of few grandees, of the roughly equal rank.
2. Although Joseph Stalin established himself as the single most influential grandee by 1925, that did not make him a dictator. He was simply the most important guy out there. Otherwise, he was just one of a few. He was not yet the God Emperor he would become later.
The great delusion about popular revolts is that they are provoked by bad conditions of life, and burst out when they exacerbate. Nothing can be further from truth. For the most part, popular revolts do not happen when things get worse. They occur when things turn for the better
This may sound paradoxical and yet, may be easy to explain. When the things had been really, really, really bad, the masses were too weak, to scared and too depressed to even think of raising their head. If they beared any grudges and grievances, they beared them in silence.
When things turn for the better, that is when the people see a chance to restore their pride and agency, and to take revenge for all the past grudges, and all the past fear. As a result, a turn for the better not so much pacifies the population as emboldens and radicalises it.
The first thing to understand about the Russian-Ukrainian war is that Russia did not plan a war. And it, most certainly, did not plan the protracted hostilities of the kind we are seeing today
This entire war is the regime change gone wrong.
Russia did not want a protracted war (no one does). It wanted to replace the government in Kyiv, put Ukraine under control and closely integrate it with Russia
(Operation Danube style)
One thing to understand is that Russia viewed Ukraine as a considerable asset. From the Russian perspective, it was a large and populous country populated by what was (again, from the Russian perspective) effectively the same people. Assimilatable, integratable, recruitable
In 1991, Moscow faced two disobedient ethnic republics: Chechnya and Tatarstan. Both were the Muslim majority autonomies that refused to sign the Federation Treaty (1992), insisting on full sovereignty. In both cases, Moscow was determined to quell them.
Still, the final outcome could not be more different. Chechnya was invaded, its towns razed to the ground, its leader assassinated. Tatarstan, on the other hand, managed to sign a favourable agreement with Moscow that lasted until Putin’s era.
The question is - why.
Retrospectively, this course of events (obliterate Chechnya, negotiate with Tatarstan) may seem predetermined. But it was not considered as such back then. For many, including many of Yeltsin’s own partisans it came as a surprise, or perhaps even as a betrayal.