Here’s a map of the global freedom status, and Russia seems to be in the same group with most of Africa Middle East and Asia. Considering this context, the news article doesn’t seem surprising at all. Just another sad day in Russia.
Also Putin is not a communist, but a post-fascist masquerading as an anti-fascist
Wow, so you do actually have eyes! Fucking hell, you are raising my respect for you!
Fun fact, I would nothing but for Putin to get hanged. But not by American imperialists and their lapdogs, but by the russian proletariat for the reestablishment of an RSFSR.
So sorry buddy. It seems your assumption about me has been wrong, I suggest lurking more before speaking about your opponents.
Well your best bet for that to happen is Ukraine crushing Putin’s balls. As long as he has the full support of the nationalists the proletariat can eat bark
Big words from someone who just brought three different forms of sharia law into BRICS.
I still don’t fucking understand why tankies simp so hard for this shit. It’s like you are trying to prove that your philosophy is no deeper than “America bad.”
Unfortunately NATO wasn’t designed in a way that conceived of a rogue member state like Turkey. This means that it has a very limited toolkit for reigning in Erdogan’s excesses. He also has a huge amount of leverage due to Turkey’s pivotal role on the Black Sea which is obviously critical to everything happening in Ukraine. For now, NATO really does have its hands tied with regard to Turkey.
No, it doesn’t really, they just don’t want to do anything. Everything happening in Ukraine started happening much later than Turkey happened.
And about NATO design not conceiving of something - when Turkey was admitted to NATO, there were people still alive who saw not their parents and grandparents, but their children and grandchildren killed before their eyes in 1915-1921.
It was conceived that if somebody really wanted to get rid of that thing, then it’d be possible to make a shortcut on paperwork with all the military power. 1952, remember. But then again, it was 1952, you know, colonial powers still being that and not caring much about genocides of brown people. So nobody would see Turkey’s current behavior as a problem.
About rogue member states not being thought of when NATO was being created - when NATO was being created, even France and UK were more likely to behave like “rogue member states” and they did in some little known cases (Biafra, for example, or the Suez crisis). And Turkey was full-blown fascist (well, it didn’t stop being that at any point since then till now, just Westerners conveniently assumed that it changed like Japan, say, one my relative in the US from Jewish side is just in complete denial that it hasn’t as it wasn’t civilized by bombs, while at the same time uneasy with my cousins going to Germany).
About NATO having its hands tied against Turkey due to Ukraine - if A happened before B, you can’t justify A with B. So you can’t justify Turkey getting away with everything it does by Russia vs Ukraine taking all the attention.
I’m not talking about anyone being justified; I am talking about realpolitik and the fact that in international relations it’s often the case that what ought to be is often in direct conflict with what actually is.
It would be awesome if we could live in a world of absolutes wherein national interests never conflicted with moral ambiguity, but that’s just not reality at all, sorry to inform.
And why then it’s a problem that Russia wreaks havoc in Ukraine?..
And I don’t see Western states acting in their best interest anyway. I actually see something between slow surrender to the worst of their competition and some weird kind of “let no one win”, trying to empower the worst savages while simply not working with those of competitors who shouldn’t necessarily be their adversaries. You can also take a look at the people which reach the top in European and US political classes, these are of, eh, declining quality.
Also for my second point - an event in the future still can’t be the cause for an event in the past, justification or not.
Other than that - large parts of NATO \ West “civilization offering”, so to say, were about freedom and human rights.
And large parts of the Soviet alternative were about humanism and equality and unification.
And if it’s casual for you that people were not supposed to believe in any of that in either case, then I don’t get it why people here are so eager to point out Soviet hypocrisies as if they were any different.
It’d be probably also awesome for realpolitik fans to not forget how real world works in terms of errors. Right now an error in your security systems means some protest, some Assange or Snowden, some scandal. Getting into realpolitik too much would shift those errors to justified terrorist acts. Well, I suppose that may be one reason why some countries are so eager to get rid of nuclear energy despite all the green agenda in PR. Single point of failure and all that.
I don’t think it’s whataboutism to point out that a worse criminal you are fine with, and a smaller one not, because the latter kills “blue-eyed Europeans” and all that.
You can’t just discard observations that you are a hypocritical bag of piss with that one word, “whataboutism”. And it only refers to somebody defending their own crimes. Most of real whataboutism I see in social media comes from Turks and Westerners defending Turks.
Other than that, if somebody says that and you don’t, I don’t care if they’re a tankie. Turkey is worse than a Stalinist dictatorship, and I have priorities.
If you support the side opposite to Russia, be it Ukraine or NATO, you sort of support Turkey, cause of the context of alliances and relations. Turkey is in NATO and Turkey is friendly with Ukraine.
Point is, we’re not talking about B/Turkey.
We actually are doing that right now. If you don’t want to, you can leave this conversation. That’s the way conversations work.
And B/Turkey being bad doesn’t mean that A/Russia is excused from their terrible behavior.
Yes, it isn’t. You seem to imply that I said it is. I haven’t.
And (gasp!) Just because I oppose A/Russia doesn’t mean I support B/Turkey.
Not in general. But in our specific situation you sort of do through that opposing side being Turkey’s friend more than Russia itself.
The entire argument is bad faith and lacking any logic or critical thinking.
On all sides.
Now, about bad faith - if people like you yelling “whataboutism” can prevent a conversation on a certain subject, then it’s not really whataboutism. If they can do that without preventing that conversation from happening, then maybe it is. “Whataboutism” is not a basic concept. Once we turn to logic instead of some list of common fallacies, we don’t need it (and also logic beats any such shortcut).
The makers of this map, Freedom House, receive funding mainly from the US government. They also took money from BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest arms manufacturer.
The argument would be that their findings are therefore somehow tainted and unreliable. However, without any evidence that this is so, simply pointing it out as if it’s some kind of “gotcha” is in fact fallacious, as you suggest.
Yeah, well it might not be the best source, but at least they have a map that measures something interesting. The second best option would have been the map of press freedom index. It’s not quite the same things and it isn’t entirely relevant to the conversation either, but there you go. At least it tells you something about the attitude different countries have towards the media, which may or may not be associated with the attitude towards activists. This map also paints a slightly more nuanced picture, but the conclusion is largely the same as before.
Ukraine’s being yellow is just wrong. It doesn’t really matter if it’s fair, but with the ongoing war and the effects of it on the society and its attitudes towards press the color should be orange.
Well, there’s less bias typical for UK-funded sources than usual. At least Azerbaijan is not the same color as Armenia (thought the UK seem to have made a 180-degree turn on that conflict in the last couple of weeks, while keeping the same “formal""legal” position).
Ah, that’s OT, about Russia - it would be purple on that map even before 2008.
…and Russia seems to be in the same group with most of Africa Middle East and Asia. Considering this context, the news article doesn’t seem surprising at all. Just another sad day in American brain dead news for morons.
Honestly how do you people manage to tie your shoelaces?
Internet posts?! This is why online discussions are ridiculously stupid. A classic argument over semantics about Internet posts, when so many people have been censored for speaking out against the government. Anybody that thinks the US is a bastion of freedom has bought into the propaganda. The idea that the US can critique anybody about this tickles me. Green my ass
Adding “jailing pacifists for speaking out” to the things dronies openly support, along with forcing others to fight when they’re not willing to, poisoning civilians with generations of birth defects, and giving cluster bombs to Nazis.
No, we want Ukraine to stop trying to ethnically cleanse the Donbas and give the people there self determination. And we want the Ukrainian government to stop forcibly conscripting people to go die needlessly on the front in a clearly losing war. We want NATO to stop enabling all of that (it literally wouldn’t be happening if they weren’t demanding that it continue). That’s what it is to be a peace activist. And I’m fairly sure I can speak for all of us, we are not pacifists, lol. But we are advocates for peace and the end to the horrible and needless loss of life.
Nice try to completely twist reality, and completely misrepresent us, as you war mongering dronies always do.
Edit: We actually give a shit about all the Ukrainian people being thrown into a fucking meat grinder. We care about their lives. The people who just say “more weapons to Ukraine!” do not give a shit about the lives of the people there. They’re happy to just let the war keep dragging on until the last capable Ukrainian is dead. An example of how WE feel about the tragedy of the situation: hexbear.net/post/503747 (hexbear link to a lemmygrad news post)
Edit: We actually give a shit about all the Ukrainian people being thrown into a fucking meat grinder. We care about their lives. The people who just say “more weapons to Ukraine!” do not give a shit about the lives of the people there. They’re happy to just let the war keep dragging on until the last capable Ukrainian is dead. An example of how WE feel about the tragedy of the situation: hexbear.net/post/503747 (hexbear link to a lemmygrad news post)
So be fucking outraged then that Russia started, and is continuing this war. They’re the ones killing Ukrainians in their homeland.
A comment from that link:
Omg, it’s a full on genocide of Ukrainian people. Just damm the Western libs… Fuck this planet.
Russia is committing genocide. They’ve been raping and killing civilians since the start, this is where your anger and energy needs to be. Imagine being outraged at the nation defending itself from genocide, and those countries that are sending the tools that they’re being asked for to help defend themselves.
Gaddafi’s troops are committing rape to children en masse, they have issued viagra to mass rape people since the start. this is where your anger and energy need to be. Imagine being outraged at the nation defending itself from mass rape, and those countries that are sending the tools that they’re being asked for to help defend themselves.
Here is the UN mandate to intervene in Lybia: …wikipedia.org/…/United_Nations_Security_Council_… a resolution drafted by Tunisia and supported by the African Union, the Arab League and allowed by all of the UNSC.
Where is russia’s UN mandate to annex Crimea and to later bomb Kiev? Did they even try?
honestly i appreciate you attempting to engage this - truthfully, i find the entire premise of appealing to morality in a war fruitless, and my intentions in making the statement above was to imitate that this is a effect that has been repeated for many generations (whether or not it is true).
ultimately people do things to advance their own goals & stamp out contradictions, not on the basis of morality.
this attempt to say this is moral and that isn’t could go on until the next generation of soldiers is born - and it would be pointless because the narrative accepted will often be the media machine with the biggest wallet until some massive contradiction.
ultimately what are your goals here, what are the perspective of the shoes of the russians and the ukrainians, what is the context etc.
perhaps it’s as simply resolved as the issue of the jupiter missles, or perhaps peace was never going to be a option(from your stance of the “russian imperialists” or my stance that the American west desire to remain a world power).
truthfully i am of the opinion the americans seeks to remain a world power [hence the 800 military bases around the world vs the russians 21], and will take advantage of any conflict to pose as the morally high ground in a “just war”, or proxy war in this case.
i don’t think peace was ever an option, russia most likely sees ukraine as a staging ground for nato as it did in operation Barbarossa, or napoleon, or seeks minerals, or believes the new government is too nationalist for their own taste (why does it have to be one point?)
all that matters is that is a war to extinguish contradictions that pose existential threats, another form of competition for capital.
I did not appeal to morality, I stated the fact that the decision to helping the rebels in Lybia took into account every regional player given what we knew at the time. And even in that case it was counterproductive in hindsight.
Following international law is not about morality, it’s about being able to vaguely know what you can count on and possible consequences when you perform a military calculation or a geopolitical move.
If everyone just takes what they can get away with regardless of others’ interests, the future will just be a series of Iraq and Ukraine wars all over the world, particularly in Africa, Europe and Asia.
I did not appeal to morality, I stated the fact that the decision to helping the rebels in Lybia took into account every regional player given what we knew at the time. And even in that case it was counterproductive in hindsight.
i acknowledge this, i have no desire to struggle for the trough.
Following international law is not about morality, it’s about being able to vaguely know what you can count on and possible consequences when you perform a military calculation or a geopolitical move.
to follow law and order for the sake of law and order, you will find these rules tend to favour the well established, powerful and often rich governments. just like it once was deemed that to attack kings was deem sinful for they conversed with god. the rich and powerful will write laws that benefit them, while maneuvering around them with ease to cripple/destroy their enemies/threats.
the material reality on ground matters immensely, and we the west seek to capitalize on this opportunity (in the ukraine) to liquidate our enemies where ever, whenever possible.
If everyone just takes what they can get away with regardless of others’ interests, the future will just be a series of Iraq and Ukraine wars all over the world, particularly in Africa, Europe and Asia.
my friend, we will live to see many more wars, there are contradictions grander than this, (see ipcc report) - and i assure you, we will be portrayed as the good guys, with hollywood movies on how our soldiers going overseas to do these wars made us feel sad.
The Lybian war was started on lies and shattered the country so I don’t care if it was “legal”. Diplomatic routes in Ukraine were tried (e.g. the Minsk Agreements) but broken by Kiev. The Crimean people overwhelmingly supported the annexation.
Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t, once you’ve invaded a territory it’s hard to assess, but it’s a fact that they violated Ukraine’s borders to add to their territory twice now.
International law matters here, because invading parts of other countries leads us back to 1914: you sacrifice the peasantry and treasury, but the “empire” is rewarded with territory gains for the history books, this influences military calculus so that wars become more likely if the trend catches on.
You are not free to speak your mind in russia and the government has not earned a reputation for telling the truth at any point since 2014.
Libya today is a haven for islamic terrorism and slaver markets. Regardless of the “legality” of the NATO (mostly french and US led) intervention, it threw the entire region in outright chaos, and was enormously damaging to the working class of Lybia, but also of the entire fucking Sahel.
Yea, in hindsight it would have been better to just let him crack down on the population to keep stability in the region, but with the information we had at the time, most African and Arab neighbours agreed that helping the rebels with a no-fly zond would be better than not to, since the civil war was going to start anyway. You don’t care about legality, but that is not the point. The point is that this was not unilateral, like Iraq, and even then military interventions can go terribly wrong.
You realize more fighting and more weapons doesn’t magicly win territory? It’s war, to continue fighting means killing more people and destroying more lives. The fighting needs to stop as soon as possible, one way or another or the whole country will end up like Bakmuht.
So your answer is to let an aggressor nation just happily steamroll through any country it pleases? Because down to this logic, any nation that decides to defend their homeland just cause needless bloodshed. No fighting = no deaths, but the aggressor can literally just waltz in and take whatever it wants.
The fighting needs to stop as soon as possible
Agreed. Every effort needs to make sure Russia leaves Ukraine ASAP. Ideally without any more deaths. But unfortunately as long as Russia continues this pointless act of imperialism, then the death toll will rise.
So your answer is to keep the meatgrinder running for as long as possible? Sure, countless Ukrainians and Russians are dying, but at least the lines on the map don’t change.
If Ukraine wants to remain a sovereign nation and retain its land, then what alternative does it have? I don’t think any nation in their right mind would happily let an invader just attack without putting up a defence.
Russia themselves threw millions of men into the meat grinder to defeat the Nazis and so did the allies. So did the north Vietnamese against the US. It’s tragic, but it’s it’s unfortunately the reality when there’s bad actors that invade other nations.
You think nazis are in this case the good actors because the genocide they were busy with got interrupted by an invader invited by the people you wanted killed off to protect them?
And you just keep using thought terminating cliches like “everything true but also bad is enemy propaganda” to prevent yourself from thinking about what holiday Ukraine made January first.
As just a single flippant example to both call you an idiot and say ‘fuck you’ for making me bother making a self evident case.
Defending Ukraine in this war is exactly equal to supporting the genocide they were committing to provoke it.
No the real answer is these people somehow think their constant egging on escalation instead of some sort of diplomatic resolution, won’t eventually lead inevitably to the war escaping its proxy status and evolve into a REAL inter-imperialist direct confrontation with all of what it implies (it implies nukes)
So your answer is to let an aggressor nation just happily steamroll through any country it pleases?
You were happy enough to let Ukraine commit genocide until an ‘aggressor’ stopped it
Every effort needs to make sure Russia leaves Ukraine ASAP
So enlist. They’re out of warm bodies to throw at minefields and artillery kill zones. Instead of being so bloodthirsty with other people’s lives, put yours at risk.
Why do you deserve to live if you want other people to die for your cause? Go die for your own cause. Go die with the rest of your nazi comrades.
You were happy enough to let Ukraine commit genocide until an ‘aggressor’ stopped it
No? Let’s not forget that Russia massively exaggerated the numbers this, whilst simultaneously also committing atrocities themselves, and then severely ramped it up in the invasion. It hasn’t stopped, it’s got significantly worse.
Why don’t you go to Putin and ask him to pull out of Ukraine? Or go protest the war in Russia and build momentum to get the population to protest?
Go die with the rest of your nazi comrades.
Of course, you see all Ukrainians as Nazis. Explains why you’re so eager for Ukraine to roll over so Russia can come in take over the country and eradicate Ukraine and it’s culture.
Let’s not forget that Russia massively exaggerated the numbers
“we were only doing a little genocide”
whilst
cringe
and then severely ramped it up in the invasion
Not after the invasion. After Ukraine reacted to its situation turning hopeless by turning to terrorist tactics like bombing civilian bridges during rush hour.
Why don’t you go to Putin and ask him to pull out of Ukraine?
Because unlike you I don’t wish for the genocide to continue until it’s successful.
Of course, you see all Ukrainians as Nazis.
No. Just the ones who took power in 2014 and have since made it illegal to oppose them politically while making national holidays out of WW2 nazi heroes. The ones you keep photographing with their nazi tattoos because you somehow can’t find all the good Ukrainians who aren’t sporting them.
It’s a nazi country. It’s run by and run for nazis. You’re defending them knowing this full well. You’re covering for them. That’s why I call them your comrades. You’re a nazi by action.
Explains why you’re so eager for Ukraine to roll over so Russia can come in take over the country and eradicate Ukraine and it’s culture.
Typical nazi rhetoric: either you let us purge anyone not like us or you’re doing oppressing us.
To say nothing of how fucking ignorant you are of the entire geopolitics around the war to say something so fucking stupid as to not even know why Russia is fighting. Shut the fuck up if you don’t know anything. Sophomoric linguistic punch-ups like ‘whilst’ do absolutely fucking nothing to mask the fact that you’re talking out of your ass.
The president himself is Jewish, with something like 8 million Jews living in Ukraine. How much of the far right make up the Ukrainian parliament?
Stepan Bandera
Yeah fair enough, it’s not great to be celebrating this guy. I suspect this is more about a big “fuck you” to the Soviet Union rather than celebrating his collaboration with the Nazis, given what happened to Ukraine in the 30’s. To them he symbolises the fight for independence from Russia.
They’ve been raping and killing civilians since the start
You know this is not genocide, right?
You are describing war crimes. War crimes are horrible. Two rapes are two rapes too many. Every side in every war does them, which is a major reason war is so horrific. Genocide is much more than a series of war crimes, though. To believe otherwise is to declare all sides in all wars genocidal, rendering the word meaningless.
They’re kidnapping Ukrainian children and trying to “re-educate” them, and given Russian soldiers have had specific orders to “kill everyone” from commanders, and video evidence of random civilians being targeted and killed, I can’t really think what else is could be? Seems like they’re trying to eradicate the Ukrainian people and their culture.
They’re kidnapping Ukrainian children and trying to “re-educate” them
Let’s start with a source for this one. I’ve seen nothing akin to the indigenous boarding schools ran by the U.S. and Canada in actual campaigns to destroy a people’s collective identity. What I have seen are reports of children whose parents are not available/alive to take care of them (a fact of any war) and Russia putting them in school and/or up for adoption (something any state would do).
We meet just a few days before the international criminal court issued warrants for the arrest of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, his commissioner for children’s rights, for directly supervising the atrocity of kidnapping Ukrainian children for “adoption” and “re-education” in Russia.
I mean it’s a pretty well known enough to trigger an international arrest warrant.
I’ve seen nothing akin to the indigenous boarding schools ran by the U.S. and Canada in actual campaigns to destroy a people’s collective identity.
Classic hexbear whataboutism response. Like I’m going to sit here and defend the horrendous crimes that happened in those boarding schools. Both things are wrong. You can be critical of Russia my man, you don’t need to defend it so aggressively.
Your linked articles makes literally no fact-claims outside of what my comrade there said. It just ignored whatever reasons Russia have and assumed the worst or let you imagine/fill in the gaps. Edit: added “no” because it was missing
Your comrade just made an assumption that the Russians are merely looking after children who have lost their parents, as if they’re playing the generous role of social services.
From the linked article:
In February, a report from Yale University found that since the start of the war, children as young as four months living in occupied areas had been taken to 43 camps across Russia, including in annexed Crimea and Siberia, for “pro-Russia patriotic and military-related education”.
In at least two of the camps, the children’s return date was delayed by weeks, while at two other camps, the return of some children was postponed indefinitely.
Videos published from the camps by the occupying regional authorities show children singing the Russian national anthem and carrying the Russian flag. In separate videos, teachers talk about the need to correct their understanding of Russian and Soviet history.
Simmons said: “All of it adds up to a story which is utterly horrendous. It’s horrendous on every conceivable level.
Still literally none of that goes against what was said. There’s s war, and when that happens and territory changes hands, there’s always this problem (or the military let’s the children just run around with parents gone and get themselves hurt). It’s not unique and it’s not something you have a better idea for. Its why we stand for bringing and end to wars generally while you stand for ending Russia (where the next war will just come at the next eastern border where this whole cycle will repeat). Can you not see how areas which have become Russian through referendum will have issues of parents being gone and wanting children back, but Russia can’t just send em randomly across a border. They’ve gotta have checks for the parenthood and that the children are not also claimed by another parent that stayed (a case which often happens with divorces, and complicates it). All while trying to work with a government that very obviously is not willing to work with you. All the articles fit this narrative also, just with spin on top using specific wording and leaving out details.
International law is a joke. If you knew anything about it you wouldn’t be screeching “whataboutism!” at even the most obvious of comparisons, because you’d know that a cornerstone of what passes as International law is looking at practices of other countries.
But let’s see what your article says:
Kherson was liberated in November after eight months of occupation, but is pounded every day and night by Russian artillery… A report last October by Yale University Human Rights Lab, citing a vast range of open sources in Russia and Ukraine, traces many reasons for their abduction: including so-called “evacuation” from state institutions such as that at Kherson
This article documents that (when it was written) Kherson was still an active war zone, but nevertheless adds scare quotes to “evacuation,” as if there is no need to evacuate children from a war zone and this is all a Russian pretense. So early on we can see that no Russian explanation will be deemed credible, even when the explanation Russia gives (e.g., evacuation) is documented by the author himself.
“Staff hoped for three months that our army would somehow evacuate them,” Sagaydak continues, “but when it became apparent this would not happen, we made arrangements for those with living relatives
Even Ukranians recognize the need for evacuating children, but nope, it’s an evil plot when Russia does it! Note also that the immediate evidence we have here – an in-person interview with a Ukranian working with kids, not a second- or third-hand story – mentions exactly what I said: kids orphaned by the war who need to go somewhere, not Russians snatching kids from their parents.
“Another woman here, aged only 30, took five, which could not possibly have been hers, so we made up a legend that she was helping her pregnant sister while she gave birth. We had to invent all the medical records, and worried when a driver turned up who was not the one we had planned. But when they were stopped, and the untrustworthy driver even told the true story, the kids managed to outwit the occupying soldiers.”
What is more believable: Russians are trying to snatch any kid they can lay their hands on, for some reason the Ukrainians subjected to this believe fake medical records will prevent this, a driver tells them “hey here’s five kids with fake documents,” and the kids outwit a bunch of soldiers with some unexplained cunning? Or is it more likely that Russians consider kids in a war zone basically a nuisance, and aren’t particularly invested if someone is trying to evacuate them?
But then, on 15 July, the Russians returned, with 15 more children to be cared for
So the Russians are stealing children by… taking them to a Ukranian orphanage?
I mean, just look this shit up? There’s tonnes of articles, accounts from mothers trying to get their children back, UN reports on it, loads. Stop pretending like this isn’t happening, it’s absolutely ridiculous. Feels like I’m witnessing some kind of Russian information warfare in action here.
You know this is happening yet you’re coming out in defence of Russia.
Lmao you can’t even imagine how someone could possibly disagree with the liberal narrative – even after someone goes line by line through a salacious article and highlights bias and inconsistencies.
Genocide is a crime. If you claim a crime occurred you have to provide evidence. What you are doing is equivalent to accusing someone of murder, then standing up in front of the judge and shouting “we all know he did it, just go out and find the evidence yourself, what, are you some kind of Russian plant for saying I need a witness???” Just a laughable response.
So be fucking outraged then that Russia started and is continuing this war
its so weird that the day the tanks rolled over the border of Ukraine history magically just began, there was no material reality prior to this event, or any geopolitical events of consequence we could connect to this outcome, certainly none that had to do with openly threatening to expand a hostile military alliance with supersonic and nuclear missiles 5 minutes from the capital city of Moscow
i wonder if the US has ever done the exact same thing in the name of national security and what the NATO heads said about it then
every pro NATO take is certified baby brain shit that demonstrates nothing but a lack of understanding of material reality, history, geopolitics, on top of an absolute disregard for human life, gross hypocrisy and a level of false outrage that is always directly proportional to how loudly they’re calling to escalate bloodshed
Russia is committing genocide. “So do the humanitarian thing and send depleted uranium shells to this warzone. Slava Ukraini!!!”
RUSSIA BEST!!! RUSSIA THE PEACEKEEPERS!!! THE HUMANITARIANS! DEFEND RUSSIA AT ALL COSTS! SPREAD ALL THE RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA!! RUSSIA CAN DO NO WRONG! POOR POOR RUSSIA HAD NO CHOICE!!
No. You’re not doing it right. You’re supposed to learn what the fuck you’re talking about first. And you didn’t so now you’re having a childish tantrum at people talking back to you.
You think they told you to log off for their benefit and not your own? That’s twice you’ve said something stupid because you didn’t know what was going on around you.
hey as long as we’re concerned about warmongering imperialists killing civilians indiscriminately, might as well not forget the all-time world champions
Sorry just trying to find the part of this thread where we were talking about the history of the UK… Oh no wait you’re just doing the classic whataboutism that you guys enjoy, as if I’m going to start getting all defensive 👍. Nice try though.
Russia turned the other cheek for eight years as Ukraine continued breaking treaty after treaty and committing genocide on Russia’s border while at the same time threatening to host NATO nuclear weapons and invade their territory. They were dragged into this war by necessity. If I had any doubt in your typical American ignorance of foreign affairs, I would call you the warmonger. But I just call you an idiot.
Learn what the fuck you’re talking about. Stop using words for their impact alone.
Russian pacifists want Russia to stop invading Ukraine.
Western “pacifists” want to send NATO tanks to Ukraine.
They are not the same.
Russian anti-war activists have a correct position.
But an important consideration should be whether one’s actions actually contribute to Russia withdrawing sooner, or if they instead help justify further, equally self-interested NATO involvement in the war.
Unless you are Russian, it’s most likely the latter.
There are two imperialist blocs involved in the conflict, and it doesn’t matter which one of them technically started it.
There are two imperialist blocs involved in the conflict, and it doesn’t matter which one of them technically started it.
I’m sorry, but when it involves one imperialist bloc invading a smaller country, then it does matter.
Do you have the same position regarding the Vietnam war, Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan? Or do you only support whichever side is not aligned with the US?
Russian anti-war activists have a correct position.
Are you aware that it’s possible to want neither NATO tanks nor Russian tanks in Ukraine?
You can even make sure you are consistent with both things in action 100% of the time - it’s a neat little trick called “opposing the position of your own government”.
No, just as it would be unable to resist NATO in being turned into a far-right paramilitary-led banana republic if Russia were to suddenly withdraw without any decrease in NATO involvement.
But the beauty of the neat little trick above is that if the working classes of both sides correctly oppose their respective ruling classes’ interests, we can end up with a scenario where both sides lose - objectively the best outcome for the Ukrainian people, as well as everyone else.
The Russian anti-war activists are clearly holding up their end of the bargain. Why are you not holding up yours?
The Russian anti-war activists are clearly holding up their end of the bargain. Why are you not holding up yours?
Ah! To be young and naive enough to believe that the anti-war activists in Russia have any leverage. They will all end up in Siberia or jumping out of a window.
Any regime change in Russia will come from the oligarchs, and the Russian working class will still be in a bad position (if not worse).
To be young and naive enough to believe that the anti-war activists in Russia have any leverage
funny how shitlibs like you will gladly say stuff like this while in the very same breath talking about how russians are all evil orcs for genociding the smol bean ukranians and they need to be wiped out
also the “oh i am so worldly and wise” liberal condescension act is beyond tired. if you’re so old and venerable then just fucking die already, ghoul.
He most likely doesn’t believe Ukraine is able to maintain their territory protected from Russia with NATO’s weapon supply, and for good reason, given how clearly this is demonstrated by the utter failure of the vaunted counter-offensive. The only thing your position is really advocating is the useless deaths of vast numbers of Ukrainians (and Russians, for that matter).
The mere fact that they are in the act of a counter offensive after Russia tried to blitz then shows that it’s not even close to what you’re describing.
Ukraine is holding their current territory pretty easily and gaining the upper hand very clearly.
The mere fact that you believe this shows how steeped in western propaganda you are
At no point was Russia’s strategy a blitz, this is a lie meant to equate Russia with nazi Germany and Pitin With Hitler even though it’s still ukkkraine celebrating Bandara as a national hero
No Russia’s gameplan from the start has been what it has been for almost 100 years, Soviet tactics not that that coked up nazi blitzkreig bullshit
The attack on Kiev was likely a feint
Ukraine is holding their current territory pretty easily and gaining the upper hand very clearly.
Ukraine is enacting mass conscription now, is including their medical staff, is trying to make students leave their studies to join up, has expanded conscription to 16 year olds and grandads, and is actively trying to draw in EU/NATO countries in the frey risking all out war (Romania is the latest one).
Shit’s absolutely fucked. We are talking hundreds of thousands of casualties, an entire generation of Ukrainian either maimed, dead, or gone from Ukraine out right,mass sweeping liberalization reforms in an already poor as fuck country destroying the few labour rights that existed before the war. Members of pacifist organizations are being put on trial. And that’s the state that you libs are defending?
The war is not going well.
And to be clear, neither is it for Russia. Principled communists and anti-war people are being arrested too, and the initial partial mobilization brought people to th front who would rather have not. There is similar repression, and economic hardship to the common people. There also was mass emigration (particularly to Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, and others).
What is it you want really?
Have more common people die for nothing? Escalate things to “deal with Russia” which means inherently an overt NATO/Russia war (which it seems barring the Baltic members, no one wants) inevitably leading to all out nuclear war?
Are you mad?? This isn’t a sport’s game. Be serious. You are deeply propagandized and itts leading you to deeply irrational positions.
Back in '41, the nazis had the Russians on the back foot. Killing them by the millions. Did the Russians give up their country? Did they complain they had to conscript students?
Fuck no
They conscripted basically everybody. They pleaded the US for weapons and got them so they could make their sacrifice count.
They turned the tide, freed their country and beat the invaders back to the point their leader chose to off himself rather than face their wrath.
Now you’re saying the Ukrainians should surrender because none of it matters??
The famed counter offensive that western media has now described as incapable because of “ukrainians are too soviet brained” (the racism really did jump out lately), due to it absolutely failing to acheive its stated objectives, and leading to a situation far more reminsicent to WW1 murderous slog, and probably would have been even worse had Ukraine actually applied to a T the nonsense the US and more broadly NATO was telling them to do?
Brother it’s been months and we are talking few kms of wins, it’s longer than the already absolutely ridiculous Russian assault on Bakhmut, for far less.
It’s time to end this shit. A diplomatic resolution is crucial, and in terms of the POV of working class people in the west, we must stop the endless billions sent to maintain a steady flow of ukraiian and russian soldiers to the meat grinder, particularly given our own issues.
The only thing your position is really advocating is the useless deaths of vast numbers of Ukrainians (and Russians, for that matter). [emphasis mine]
They never admit it, but the fact that Russian deaths will continue is one of if not the main reason these NATO dronies are fine with sacrificing the lives of all those Ukrainians they pretend to care about. Spoiler warning: they don’t actually care about Ukrainians. But they’ll still couch it in terms as if they’re “supporting Ukraine.” Such “Ukraine supporters” are either completely, pathetically fooled by obvious NATO propaganda or they are just bloodthirsty bigots (or both, which is most often the case).
The Vietnam War? You mean the one where a rebel faction backed by Russia rose up against a smaller, recently established pro-Western government, and the US came to the defense of that government, because if they lost the enemy would surely keep expanding more and more across the entire region, and all the peace advocates were dismissed as supporting appeasement? That Vietnam war?
Yes, we take a similar position on that as we do to this, do you?
I support both the Vietnamese fighting against the South Vietnam puppet government and the Ukranians in the DPR fighting against the current Ukrainian puppet government, yes (though my support for the latter is more critical since they’re not communists)
I disagree that the previous government was a puppet government.
My political aims go against the interests of the US, so generally groups that are aligned with my aims oppose and are opposed by the US. I don’t believe in judging every conflict as a disinterested third party with no consideration of past events or present conditions. The US has a long history of installing far-right governments, has an atrocious record of human rights, and violates sovereignty left and right, and that is relevant to who I support.
I do believe in giving critical support to just about anyone who’s willing to disrupt the unipolar world order in which the US has license to act as a rogue state. I want everyone involved in starting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to face a war crimes tribunal and be shot or hanged, and I support things that bring us closer to that goal. You, on the other hand, want to keep blindly trusting those same people to tell us who our enemies are. The only way to put any check on the US’s rampant militarism and aggression is through a multipolar world order.
I disagree that the previous government was a puppet government.
Of course you do, that’s my point.
Tankies will support whichever government aligns with a power that is not the US. Even if that power is a capitalist oligarchy like Russia.
The US has a long history of installing far-right governments, has an atrocious record of human rights, and violates sovereignty left and right
They do, but the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.
Specially when you take into account what Russia has done. They have a long history of erasing East European cultures (i.e. Russification), and genocide. So I do not trust them when it comes to Eastern European affairs, and neither do native people from those countries, most of support for Russia in those areas comes from Russian minorities (I wonder how they got there).
They do, but the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.
Of course they’re not, and I don’t consider them as such. They are, however, the enemy of my enemy. Ideally, once the US is dealt with, Putin can get the wall next.
They have a long history of erasing East European cultures (i.e. Russification), and genocide. So I do not trust them when it comes to Eastern European affairs, and neither do native people from those countries
The US has a much worse historical record with genociding native people, so maybe Russia should support some landback movements in the US. Afaik they never did anything to the Native Americans.
I’m not sure what genocide you’re referring to in any case. But I’m sure you can dig up some skeletons in the closets of any two historical neighbors if you go far enough back. What’s funny about your argument is that you seem to be suggesting that people thousands of miles away are better suited to govern a region, since they likely don’t have a similar record.
(I wonder how they got there).
Are we just going to ignore the part where the USSR expanded Ukraine’s borders to include the disputed regions?
Famines are not genocides lol. Though I suppose you could make the case that the embargo on the USSR caused a lot of excess deaths. Famines were extremely common before the USSR took power because it was a pre-industrial society, the USSR ended that. Also, the USSR is a completely different government from the Russian Federation.
Famines are not genocides lol. Though I suppose you could make the case that the embargo on the USSR caused a lot of excess deaths. Famines were extremely common before the USSR took power because it was a pre-industrial society, the USSR ended that. Also, the USSR is a completely different government from the Russian Federation.
The Irish Famine was a genocide, because it was intentional. I should’ve clarified I mean that famines can be genocides, but are not inherently genocidal.
I’ll note that your own source says in the introduction:
While scholars are in consensus that the cause of the famine was man-made, whether the Holodomor constitutes a genocide remains in dispute
Likewise, the article on the Kazakh famine:
Some historians describe the famine as legally recognizable as a genocide perpetrated by the Soviet state, under the definition outlined by the United Nations; however, some argue otherwise.
And
The de-Cossackization is sometimes described as a genocide of the Cossacks, although this view is disputed, with some historians asserting that this label is an exaggeration.
The last one I didn’t see any mention of genocide though it might be buried deeper in the article, it’s pretty long.
The Irish Famine was a genocide, because it was intentional. I should’ve clarified I mean that famines can be genocides, but are not inherently genocidal.
I’ll note that your own source says in the very first line:
While scholars are in consensus that the cause of the famine was man-made, whether the Holodomor constitutes a genocide remains in dispute
Here’s a quote from the Irish Famine (same source: wikipedia)
Virtually all historians reject the claim that the British government’s response to the famine constituted a genocide, their position is partially based on the fact that with regard to famine related deaths, there was a lack of intent to commit genocide.
I don’t think you understand how this works. You cited Wikipedia asking me to accept it as a source. That means that you accept it as a source, and I may or may not accept it as a source. Given that Wikipedia says that your claims of genocide are disputed, you have to accept that. I don’t have to accept Wikipedia as authoritative, because I never claimed it was, I’m just saying that if you accept it, then you have to accept that all your claims are disputed. That’s just how citing sources works.
Your points real dumb then. Yanukovich was no more a Russian puppet than Poroshenko was an EU puppet. The fuck do you think a puppet government even is?
Those were violent right-wing militias, not peaceful protestors. Did you support the people rebelling against the US government on January 6th? Because that’s a genuinely analogous position to supporting the Maidan coup.
In both cases the rioters sought to overturn the democratic election of a president, and in both cases they did so by storming the legislature. The difference is that the Maidan coup was successful. (Perhaps because of significant US support for it?)
Maybe from the fact that the bloodless US political class has delivered nothing to ordinary people for decades, and people were ready to grab onto anyone who actually seemed to offer a promise of something different? Maybe from the vast swathes of racism that still suffuse the population, which aren’t readily cleansed from a country literally built on white supremacy?
You libs love to use “sure the US is bad too” as a throwaway line, but you clearly don’t actually believe it, seeing as you can’t even imagine that this country could elect Trump without being induced to do it by Evil Russians.
The second you call Russia’s actions imperialist you just broadcast that you’re someone who just uses words for their impact and not their meaning and you should be completely disregarded in any conversation on the topic
It can involve that. But you’re using imperialism to “accuse them of what you’re doing before they can” by flattening all history and context away.
Russia is defending itself from encirclement. Acting like you’re against imperialism rings hollow when you only apply it to an act of resistance to your empire expanding.
Mind palace history. Ukraine turned away from Russia when the west sponsored a coup against the legitimately elected government and the regime they were replaced with was pro-west.
Not really, the one is a whistleblower leaking highly confidential information and the other is a simple person speaking out against their government’s actions.
I’m not by any means saying that Manning didn’t do the right thing and deserves jail, just that it isn’t the same case.
All the same story, different sources (or bias). not including the NAFO dog community sabatoging that eco socialist (Dimitri Lascaris) trying to make peace talks in canada
edited for more clairty & details and spell check.
one is a whistleblower leaking highly confidential information and the other is a simple person speaking out against their government’s actions
This level of detail is not included in the linked article. The article says “she placed materials about Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine on the Internet that contradicted official Defense Ministry statements.” From the article, we have no idea what those materials were. Maybe they included classified information, maybe they included actually false information, maybe they included incitements to violence, we don’t know.
Radio Free Europe was created and grew in its early years through the efforts of the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), an anti-communist CIA front organization that was formed by Allen Dulles in New York City in 1949. RFE/RL received funds covertly from the CIA until 1972. During RFE’s earliest years of existence, the CIA and U.S. Department of State issued broad policy directives, and a system evolved where broadcast policy was determined through negotiation between them and RFE staff.
Here’s a guy who got locked up for saying that if they try a local Jan 6th in Florida people need to be armed to resist. Dude got sentenced to 4 years of prison for posting about defending the country from Jan 6thers.
I tried to look through a lot of cases. It seemed like most every case was leaking information, threats of actual violence, stolen valor, or other generally agreed upon crimes. There’s truth to the notion that a government is more likely to look for crimes if you’re a specific person, but I don’t know of anyone in the modern US who goes to jail for lying about things the army has done. I use the word “lying” because Russia courts make the claim that that’s what happened here.
Also, there are more recent cases of Russia imprisoning someone for essentially this same crime.
The prosecution provided evidence that WikiLeaks helped Manning crack a password which would involve them in the leak itself. So saying he was just reporting on it is debatable.
Like Russia, the US prosecutes you for exposing the truth of what the US army does abroad. arguing that classified information keeps US citizens safe in their “work” abroad – not unique to the US but the US is the dominant world power still so it gets a lot of criticism from the left. It’s hard to get the right perspective when you live in an imperial core that has done a lot to insulate its civilian populace from the impacts of conflict, and governments don’t like it when whistleblowers make it easier.
I don’t read russian but I think this is legit? I just copied and pasted her Cyrillic name in Duck Duck Go, so these might still be western propaganda targeted towards Russians like I said I don’t speak or read Russian or know major outlets in Russia.
It seems legit that she was arrested based on the Russian articles about that have been posted in this thread, but I don’t speak Russian so idk what it says she actually got arrested for.
Either way, unless RFE is completely distorting the reason why she got arrested and it’s actually a terrible crime she committed, it seems that its another case of far right post-soviet neoliberalism doing police crack downs
The problem with the RFA source is the CIA funding, not that it’s in English. It’s pretty disingenuous to try to imply Newizu is pro-Putin or anti-imperialist, or anti-west or anything else that would qualify as a separate bias or agenda.
I don’t think they’re implying anything like that? A Russian source talking about a bad thing Russia did is generally more reliable than a CIA source saying the same thing, since there’s less incentive to make stuff up.
A shitty source not being the absolute worst source doesn’t make it any less shitty than it is. If your only options for news are US government propaganda or Russian government propaganda, the only valid choice is to stop following the news.
It literally isn’t. RFE is definitely a US propaganda platform, but it objectively has nothing to do with the CIA these days. But you should probably check under your bed one more time just to make sure.
RFE also “objectively” had nothing to do with the CIA for nearly 20 years after it was created, at which point it turned out the CIA had been funding it all along. But now we know they’ve stopped because they said they did, and anyone suggesting that they’re not editorially independent is a paranoid loon, just as they would’ve been in the 50’s and 60’s.
Some of us don’t believe that the people whose job it is to lie stopped lying because they said they did. Suggesting that the CIA is still doing things that they did regularly and successfully kept hidden in the past is not a conspiracy theory.
I searched for her name and despite the RFE article being a week old, no other more credible outlets have picked up on it. Maybe other outlets are using a different romanization of her name but this is certainly a red flag.
I was a little confused by the smile too, assuming she was no older than 30. Losing 6 years of your youth seems harder than 6 years in your 50s. Although it depends on the conditions she’s kept in.
If you go into the article, there is a little caption in the corner of the image that says “Social Media”. So I guess this picture was from before her arrest?
Russian people don’t protest for many reasons. 1 There is no free mass media in the entire country. Majors are has only one way to get information about the world - TV, which is fully controlled by government. TV zombifier full time tell them “Ukrainians attacking is!”, “USA wants Russians to die!”, etc. If every media tells the same lie and for you this is the only source of information - you will inevitably believe.
2 Russia has no opposition-leader to follow. Good candidates: Navalny and Yashin, were enjailed for years. Sane Russian people confused and don’t know how to act in the current situation. We are too disunited for country-wide rally.
3 Peacefull protests don’t work at all. I have participated in every rally in the last 10 years, and each time the government reaction was rougher and rougher. Looks like only power of weapon can help us get free, but citizens has no personal arms, police and army are full loyal to gov.
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