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carpoftruth [any, any]

@ carpoftruth @hexbear.net

Posts
7
Comments
656
Joined
2 yr. ago

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth; And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlasses and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out.

  • https://www.intellinews.com/macro-advisory-will-dark-water-take-the-shine-off-kyrgyzstan-s-golden-growth-412521/

    archive: https://archive.is/bENzO

    bne intellinews on how Kyrgyzstan's rapid economic growth is linked to energy availability, the vast majority of which comes from hydroelectric power off of the Toktogul reservoir. water level in the reservoir is directly linked to how much electricity can be generated, and this reservoir is stressed by general resource management challenges as well as climate change. I wonder how much chinese solar could help here. Reservoirs plus hydropower work great as batteries by using pump back systems and could be coupled to intermittent solar/wind generation.

    Over 90% of the country’s electricity is produced from Hydro Power Plants (HPPs). The main problem is the Toktogul Reservoir, the country’s largest. It feeds five major HPPs that generate around 97% of the country’s hydroelectricity. That includes the Toktogul Hydropower Plant, which alone generates up to 40% of the country’s power. The reservoir can hold about 19.5 cubic kilometres of water, but below about 5.5 cubic kilometres, the hydroelectric cascade that depends on it cannot operate. Currently, the volume is close to 9.5 cubic kilometres. In 2008, the only time in recent memory that Toktogul’s September water level was lower than this year, it triggered an energy crisis, which saw GDP growth decline from 8.4% to a 0.5% contraction in 2009.

    But the country plans even more water-dependent HPPs. President Japarov has pledged that the country will overcome its winter power shortage difficulties and has made a very ambitious declaration that the country will become energy independent within two and a half years. He means to achieve this with the completion of almost 40 new HPPs and a new coal-fired power station (at the Kara-Keche deposit).

    Water is also an issue of concern to the country’s “downstream neighbours.” Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan rely on water from Kyrgyzstan, so if there is a reduced flow in the rivers or a major expansion in the HPPs/Dams cut the downstream volume, this will intensify existing water supply problems in some regions of these countries. The Kyrgyz Government is now proposing that the downstream neighbours pay considerably more for water in order to help fund remedial actions.

  • Of course, I didn't mean a poison pill like a sneaky clause that russia wouldn't notice, I meant a detail that we the general public aren't privvy to because we're reading summaries of a conceptual plan, not any resultant final plan

  • The Russian state isn't directly, but Kirill Dmitriev has been involved in this. That's why RF has said they're not officially aware of the contents of the plan. They are clearly unofficially aware of what's in that document.

  • Yeah I don't think there's any advantage to Russia coming out in favour of this (they haven't acknowledged that this plan exists). Both for the reasons you say and because the devil is in the details. There could easily be some poison pill inserted in such a deal at the insistence of ukraine, the euros, or whoever is the last person in the room with trump.

  • is this what they mean by finlandization?

  • this is such a huge problem in artisanal/small scale/illegal gold mining (no large scale gold operations use mercury anymore). mercury is dangerous to handle at best, but some practices common in artisanal gold mining are just brutal. I've seen video of a guy roasting a lump of mercury-gold amalgam on a shovel with a propane torch right next to where the person's wife & kid were preparing food. mercury vapor is much more easily absorbed into the body than if you eat it or through skin contact.

    even well away from the mine there are big impacts, because mercury waste leaches in water and gets into rivers. mercury pollution gets about a million times worse when mercury is methylated into methyl-mercury, which happens when inorganic mercury gets into biologically active waters (rivers, wetlands, etc). methyl mercury is not only even more toxic than inorganic mercury, but it also bioaccumulates in fish and other wildlife (including humans), which, if there is any kind of functional ecosystem in the area, means that all kinds of food that people might eat from the area is contaminated. in this way, even people who aren't involved in artisanal gold mining with mercury get exposed to mercury.

  • To expand on this, I think both Russia and the trump admin would be very happy to have such a surrender signed off. Zelensky is certainly an obstacle to this peace deal and is clearly being pressured by NABU and western/American oriented anticorruption NGOs in Ukraine, but Zelensky still has a lot of 'facts on the ground' in his favour. Just today rumours were that he will not dump Yermak, one of his important allies in his administration. Frankly any peace deal that doesn't see a ukrainian flag over the donbass is likely to end badly for Zelensky personally, so I don't think he is eager for peace.

    Further, the euros, especially the rabid eastern EU leadership in the baltics, poland, and germany but also the UK/france have a lot to lose through ending the war. Poland and the baltics directly benefit from anti-Russian military spending and the already deeply unpopular administrations in germany/UK/france will not become any more popular if they sign on to surrender after doing 3 years of austerity in service of slava ukraini. Their economies have already been shattered through the US-China tug of war as well as self inflicted wounds from economic war on Russia, so some kind of debt spending is required to keep economic juice flowing. However, these states seem a lot more ideologically capable of debt spending for military purposes than debt spending for social services/infrastructure/industrial policy, and with peace, a lot of the urgency for massive defence spending goes away.

    In short, Russia and the US would both sign on to this and I'm sure some members of the EU would support it (Hungary, Slovakia for example) but the big dogs in the EU as well as the Zelensky regime are highly unlikely to go along with this.

  • If it is truly as described, very high chance. A substantial amount of Russia's war aims are not battlefield gains or territory. Russian as official language, no foreign troops in ukraine, some kind of disarmament and troop limit are all things that they want. This peace deal doesn't include the remainder of kherson and zaporizhzhia oblasts but aside from that, it is in concept the Russian wish list.

  • More on ukraine, this on the sad state of ukrainian financials and limited euro options to help them pay for it. Failed states seems baked in now.

    https://archive.is/pB9j8

  • https://archive.is/W5FM1

    Zelensky getting pressured by the US to surrender via accepting a peace agreement that accepts most Russian demands

    According to people with knowledge of a document about the draft plan, it would require Ukraine to cede the remainder of the eastern Donbas region — including land currently under Kyiv’s control — and cut the size of its armed forces by half.

    Crucially, it also calls for Ukraine to abandon key categories of weaponry and would include the rollback of US military assistance that has been vital to its defence, potentially leaving the country vulnerable to future Russian aggression.

    Additionally, no foreign troops would be allowed on Ukrainian soil and Kyiv would no longer receive western long-range weapons that can reach deep inside Russia.

    The plan would also stipulate that Russian be recognised as an official state language in Ukraine and grant formal status to the local branch of the Russian Orthodox Church — provisions echoing long-standing Kremlin political objectives.

    Axios's Israel shill, Barak David broke this story and his version includes this note:

    "The Qatari and Turkish mediation helped in ending the war in Gaza and could help in ending the war in Ukraine," one of the sources said.

    A senior Qatari official participated in the talks between Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's national security adviser Rustem Umerov last weekend, the sources said.

    Perhaps some quid pro quo for Russia abstaining on the recent Gaza security council resolution

  • Thank you comrade

    Could you expand on what a commune looks like in practice in Venezuela? Like how many people are involved, are they centered around a town/urban area/productive asset, what kind of demographics of people get involved (or not)?

  • is this followup from the same attack you mentioned earlier in the week that supposedly used ukrainian made missiles instead of ATACMS? it doesn't sound like this attack was very effective

  • so basically this is an upgrade to some patriot systems that Ukraine got from Israel/Germany to allow them to fire PAC-3 interceptors, which are more appropriate for the kind of munitions Russia is firing at them?

  • In Canadian Indigenous news, the consequence of setting international borders through colonialism continues:

    A group of Alaska tribal nations is going to the B.C. Supreme Court to demand a seat at the table in Canadian resource development – including a mine expansion that is among the nation-building projects Ottawa has selected as pivotal to economic development.

    The Alaska groups argue that their historical use of what is now northwestern B.C. makes them Aboriginal peoples of Canada under the Constitution Act, saying that status should guarantee them the same rights to consultation as Canadian Indigenous groups.

    Consultation has a specific and quite expansive definition in the context of Canadian Indigenous issues and more or less guarantees a place at the table for representatives of Indigenous communities (not a veto or specific control over projects, but meaningful nevertheless).

    If you imagine the Alaska panhandle running north-south alongside Canada, a lot of rivers in the region have headwaters in the Coastal/Skeena mountain ranges in northwest BC and flow west across the US-Canada border into the Pacific ocean in Alaska. Geographically, it's easy to understand why Indigenous peoples in the area would have traditional territories on both sides of what is now the international border. Since mines can and do contaminate rivers, and since fishing tends to be a very important part of Indigenous communities all along the coast, there are real risks to tribes in America from projects in Canada. Vice versa as well, as development at the mouths of rivers can obviously impact fish spawning and ecosystem function upstream.

    The US-Canada boundary along Alaska cuts through the traditional territory of a number of nations and peoples, with different Tlingit nations on both sides of the border for example. As a non-expert it's hard for me to really put a finger on this though, as Indigenous peoples in the Alaska were "integrated" into the US with very different legal structures than are used in Canada.

    These types of challenges have generally been unsuccessful in the past, but I suspect this kind of thing will continue as there is a significant amount of existing and potential mining activity on the Canadian side of the border in what is colloquially known as BC's Golden Triangle. Based on the physical reality of geography, there is a clear case to be made that projects in Canada could impact American interests in Alaska (Indigenous, corporate or state). I don't think this particular case is being driven by the US state, but this is nevertheless an avenue for indirect influence of American environmentalist NGOs on Canadian Indigenous, corporate and state interests.

  • Wapo of all places talking about how Israeli settlers have become even more violent in the west Bank.

    Describing this kind of fascist violence as "out of control" really does a lot of work though. Is the edge of a knife "out of control" when someone holds the handle and swings it around? The whole point of the Israeli political project in the West Bank is that the state actively supports violent Jewish nationalism/Jewish supremacy and shelters violent fascist settlers from recourse while maintaining a fig leaf of legal process.

  • as contingency if any missiles or drones enter Polish airspace.

    Have nato aircraft intercepted Russian munitions going into Poland before?

  • Yeah agreed, this kind of social alienation is fully acceptable to capital and bourgeois sentiment until it starts materially affecting lives and The Economy. I think we've reached that threshold now. Charlie kirk and Brian Thompson and the attempt on Trump got a lot of people shook.

  • it should be chinese checkers, or go