Oh nvm misread your question lol

I mean they can access Ukraine from the west

Germany no longer blocking aid in fact they're supplying arms themselves now

memri.org/reports/russia-us-standoff-ideological-dimension

idk who the author or website is but found it a pretty good intro and overview of the unofficial rossiyan ideology; see if any of these topics sound interesting to you

The End Of History Did Not Materialize'

Today's World Is 'Multipolar' And Not 'Unipolar'

National Sovereignty

The West 'Betrayed' Russia

'From Lisbon To Vladivostok'

'The So-Called Liberal Idea… Has Outlived Its Purpose'

West's Identity Vs Russia's Identity

Russia's Eurasian Identity

No More The Soviet Union

Tradition

it also goes into some culture war meme bs which is whatever but yeah.

I think it goes two ways. On one end, I don't think a lot of the media necessarily cares about Russia/Ukraine or is going all out defending Ukraine because they care about the country - it's obviously just about money. Writing articles on daily updates on war is boring at best and at worst soulcrushingly depressing. They need to write invigorating and attractive headlines and the easiest way of doing that is glorifying one side and writing insane whimsical almost mythological headlines. The second easiest way is to drum up distress for how evil the opposition is and how inhuman and disgusting they are. The two obviously go hand in hand.
With other figures, I think it depends. All of these "retired generals" going on the media circuit and being like "yeah i would go to war with Russia if i was still in NATO..." I don't think is as pointed as you'd think. You have to remember these "retirees" have their entire career built off of posturing and "war games". In order to stay relevant when not serving a post they can say whatever dumb s*** they want in order to maintain relevancy. No one's going to give an interview to a former general saying "well actually you see there is a nuanced history of mistakes in NATO and Russian aggression...", they want to hear sparking headlines and obviously these generals can provide that in exchange for adding "featured in the media" accolades to their resume which they'll then use to keep getting speaking engagements elsewhere.
For current politicians themselves? It's hard to say. "The enemy is violating international order" has been the kind of longstanding call used by the West since like basically post-WW1. It's just that as time went on it became increasingly hypocritical, but the guiding philosophy of the West hasn't really "changed" per-se since the cultural reset of post-WW2, it's just been increasingly mutated; all of the above stuff plays into it too. Amid international crises, you still have people who have to worry about their resume/career building or making money and that's balanced alongside ideological guidelines. People in congress have to balance their actual thoughts on war next to being re-elected or being picked to be a talking head on MSNBC or Fox News.

you rly think the full spectrum anti-russia sentiment in the western press is a response to financial incentives?

I don't think hating Russia is the result of financial incentive but I think the manner under which it manifests in rhetoric is

i guess i just accord more strongly with the idealist-systemic Yarvin idea that "it's not about the money, it's about sending a message"

i think the issue is that there's tons of other ways they could be attacking Russia if that was the case. Like don't you think it's a bit suspicious that most of the headlines are essentially glorifying war and read in almost an exploitation/shock film manner rather than the usual association of western media and over social programming-style propaganda? Compare the rhetoric used for the ukraine-russia war vs the rhetoric used for domestic politics or inter-political conflict in the west ("why we can't let x get elected"). It doesn't line up in the same comparable manner. While it's probably true similar underlying reasons are why ultimately that hatred of russia exists to begin with for sure, the way the rhetoric manifests is very different in being reflective of that

When the US made a move to sell more gas to Europe to compete with Russia:

Earlier this month in an interview with reporters in Brussels, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry also referred to “freedom” gas, and told news site Euractiv who that “freedom” was for: Europeans.

Perry said that, after liberating Europe from the Nazis in the 1940s, “the United States is again delivering a form of freedom to the European continent,” adding that, “rather than in the form of young American soldiers, it’s in the form of liquified natural gas.”

(The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy, unsurprisingly, declined to comment.)

@gabapentin

yea i know what you mean

in that sense i agree with you the medium it manifests in is a reflection of the desire to cultivate engagement

but that's due to the particular valence of war

particularly in this desensitized age

think abt the first ever images of war shown on the boomerbox in VIETNAM and how much it affected public opinion

it was probably the first time a lot of people had ever actually watched someone die and it haunted them, basically birthed the modern manifestation of the horror film genre according to some theorycels

now the modern internet user has seen scores of people die, some of these millennials/zoomers have been watching snuff videos on the deep web from time. it's pedestrian, almost

so yeah it makes sense to me that has to be framed as this exciting and enervating thing to the level of sensory overstimulation bc it needs to be to get the audience, so desensitized to violent imagery, off

and i think whatever the "intent" ultimately behind it we could concur that the attempt to cultivate engagement operates as such

oh for sure i agree that the people actually choosing to fight the war have material geopolitical interests at stake that ultimately underlie their actions, which are in turn aided by the imperialist press

i was speaking particularly to the press' focus on their own pockets (the financial health of nominally independent journalistic organs, such as NYT, i.e, the idea that "so-and-so newspaper or cable news organ or website are motivated primarily by the Desire to Make Money off the Ukraine-Russia conflict"

I think it is primarily driven by that

Ideology is also intertwined ofc, but not just as something seperate from financial incentives from clicks/ratings but also that certain expressed attitudes garner more attention and approval

for sure, it would be unproductive to try and separate them out as in a vacuum from each other

but re: krishna saying that "it's obviously just about money" for the press to sensationalize, i disagree -- the opportunity to be a conduit for the expression of imperialist power is itself an incentive that is orthogonal to the desire to Get Paid

Yeah i agree, especially when you often got people making appearances who are or used to directly be involved with exercizing that imperialist power

It's not that I think it's necessarily only about money but rather that you see a coalescing of different factors under a kind of unified motive. Like I don't think every single person who works at CNN & Fox or something are all bleeding heart imperialists who are "in" on a conspiracy or something. There are for sure groups that have overt motives within quasi-governmental (or even just actual governmental) agencies but the way things manifest are often not completely top down in reality. You can tell when something is actually top down because it'll all be reflective of the exact same idea with one specific source disseminating the information in a super obvious manner. Media information around protests in 2020 are the best example of this. However this doesn't really manifest in the same manner because it's reactive to a phenomena rather than in interest of a phenomena. Obviously there are global motives at stake - take the atlantic council - but the motives in cases like this where the actual events are uninfluenced in practicality by them means the narrative is separate from the reactive party and what the party does instead is set the tone of reaction. The other groups are only working within the boundaries of that reaction - so for example, if on a top level it's known that "russia = bad", there is an incentive to monetize information which exists irregardless of the party. The media doesn't need to be like they were in the 60s because monoculture allows the message to spread regardless - I saw more twitter posts on russia being the devil before there was a single article even reporting on ukraine/russia. Knowing what the monoculture thinks means the media can extrapolate this in a kind of recursive manner - but within those confines there are still people with individual or corporate interests who have to work within the confines of monoculture for their own individual successes; the fact you're seeing such a huge distinction in actual NATO staff vs retired NATO staff rhetoric seems to be a big proof of that.

The sanctions are a joke and will be good for Russia in the long term. State will be buying back shares of most companies severely affected at insane discounts. Americans essentially gave Putin the chance to nationalize large portions of the Russian economy for very cheap.

Also they planned for the reserve freezes well in advance... This is the advantage of not having your entire government rotated in and out every 4 years you can make long term plans and execute

Also Russia MOD just published their causality numbers so far about 500 dead and 1500 wounded.

Peer to peer warfare is no joke...

i agree

i guess the most succinct expression of how i feel is that the successful acquisition of status and power as an individual is related to money but the money is (i mean obviously you gotta feed your family but) its kind of a proxy or a symbolic reflection of that status and power

its like what moldbug says, you get paid well by NYT but you don't desire to write for NYT because of the money

i swear we living in the matrix, what the f*** is this

He really be tweetin'...

Yep, I’m thinking based

old.reddit.com/r/GenZedong/comments/t4w4wg/wtf_fox_news_actually_telling_shit_how_it_is

lmao whyd this old military f*** get on fox and start spitting

france24.com/en/live-news/20220302-georgia-to-apply-immediately-for-eu-membership

Georgia moving up its EU application from the planned date of 2024 to tomorrow (note: the dates refer to the application to become an EU candidate, not accession)

So they're next