This is basically just the complaint that Putin commands a military gussied up in disparaging tone.
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Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
- Start date
What sounds the most probable:It's not mortar fire, so everything's fine I guess.
Explosion reported in Ukraine's separatist-held Donetsk
A large explosion hit the center of the separatist-held city of Donetsk in East Ukraine, Reuters reported late Friday, citing Ria News Agency. A car was...www.dailysabah.com
A) Ukraine trying to kill a separatist commander (which wouldn't really affect the outcome of the conflict) right now when there is a high threat of Russia invading and annexing eastern Ukraine and giving Russia the kind of excuse they want or
B) Separatists sacrificing one bomb and a car to start giving Russia the excuses it needs to annex Eastern Ukraine and finally provide them the victory they have been fighting for for 8 years ?
Please note the BBC analysed the meta data of the video released by the separatist leader about evacuating eastern Ukraine and it seems it was pre-recorded two days before its release; or before the mutual accusations of attacks. This tends to point towards all of this being a whole load of bullshit, setting the stage for Putin to pull a Sudetenland.
Do mind I have no doubt there is still fighting going on in Eastern Ukraine, but not necessarily more than usual.
There's on-site reporting that ~30 towns in the Ukraine-controlled side of Donbas have been shelled in recent weeks.
There's also reporting that the separatist-controlled regions have been shelled and fired upon by Ukrainian forces. Both sides have broken the ceasefire repeatedly, it seems.
Cool, another tweet from a genocide-denying fringe propaganda outlet with somewhere between zero and fuck-all credibility.
TIL "commanding a military" requires one to invade and annex one's neighbouring state for 8 years.
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Indeed! Aaron Mate, who works for The Grayzone, a genocide-denying fringe propaganda outlet with somewhere between zero and fuck-all credibility. Oh, and a media darling for the state-run Russia Today and Chinese state-run Global Times.
Translation: he said something you personally disagree with about a contentious topic and more generally says things that are not approved by anglophone oligarchs which, for some strange reason, you think are credible.
Mainstream media is all run by anglophone oligarchs! You can only trust journalists who post on Twitter. Everyone else is just part of THE MAN.
Don't give a shit if he says stuff that anglophone oligarchs disagree with. Considering I frequently read/ post things anglophone oligarchs disagree with.
He works for an outlet that uncritically parrots propaganda from corporatist oligarchs and establishment racists of other stripes, which for some strange reason, you think are credible.
You seemingly cannot conceive of a source being both 1) critical of the West and 2) a stooge for a different murderous establishment. Which suggests that either your process of critical appraisal is as shallow as a puddle, or you don't give a shit about any characteristics of a source other than whether you like what they have to say or not.
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‘God forbid the Cossacks come’: fears of war rise in Ukraine’s frontline towns
In divided Luhansk, residents have lived in the shadow of conflict for years. But now the shells are getting louder and closer
www.theguardian.com
A few in-person interviews with elderly residents of Stanytsia Luhanska, with harsh words for both the Ukrainian military (and its Western backers) and the Russian-backed Luhansk separatists.
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Really? Genocide-denial and doing the rounds for oligarchic state-propaganda outlets like Russia Today and Global Times tend to be real red flags for me if I'm judging someone's credibility.
TIL literally no media in Russia and China is mainstream.
Well, absolutely. We all know who the big problem is: NYT, Guardian, Le Monde, and all the other fake left wing media betraying the cause. Once they are destroyed, everyone will magically realise the Murdoch press are full of shit and vote in peace-loving progressive parties forever.
You post shit from the BBC, Guardian, etc. as if they are somehow better; as if they should not be red flags of their own by that standard.
They have status that comes from being part of your established media ecosystem. That gives them a perception of having more credibility. But that's all it is, a perception: one that arises from the fact that they typically echo the other things your establishment media wish to promote and so just a few very wealthy voices are made to sound like a choir. You have a shared reality with other promoters of Western imperial aggression; it is no less constructed for seeming real to you. And it crucially gets things, especially about war and peace, especially about issues! which! demand! action! exactly backwards or leaving out so much as to be hopelessly misleading. At least until the actions can no longer feasibly be stopped, then it's to the memory hole and maybe a retraction on page A19.
I tend not to post anything from there that actually has questionable material in it, and the majority of what I post-- even from the Grauniad-- tends to be stuff that runs contrary to the interests of the British and American government. You've name-dropped the BBC and Guardian because that's what I provided on page 1-- the reason being that the Guardian's map is pretty much the most useful one-look visual guide to troop placements at the moment, and nothing in that article is seriously disputed, including by you.
And the BBC's article I posted actually runs against the UK/US government's line. So that's a somewhat pathetic whine.
Since then, I've provided sources from several independent journalists on the ground in Kyiv, completely financially & editorially unconnected to either Western governments or the Russian government. I've been the only person to provide any information from the actual place, and from feasibly independent reporters.
You have posted drivel from either A) genocide-denying propaganda outlets with working relationships with the same oligarchic corporatists profiting from this conflict; or B) no-name armchair analysts on Twitter.
In short, you don't have a fucking leg to stand on criticising anybody else on the quality of sources. Yours have been the utter dregs.
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According to your characterization. You're the one who wants to make it about "quality" of source rather than accuracy of claims-- presumably because then being the subject of smear campaigns by imperialist propagandists counts against credibility.
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That's rich, considering the amount of time you spend strenuously complaining about the sources others provide. In fact, I love the irony of saying that in the very same post in which you provide a tweet from Mate... in which he... dismisses a conclusion on the basis of its source. It's almost beyond parody, to complain about people doing something while you do the same thing in the same post.
OK, let's look at the claims themselves, then. Firstly, that the US withdrew OSCE observers. Well, it's clear the OSCE is still well operational in Donbas, with extensive incident reporting, despite the fact that Russia withdrew from cooperating with them at all in September, which strangely goes unmentioned. The US did withdraw its staff from the OSCE centre in Donetsk, however (about 21 people). I mean... with Russia having explicitly withdrawn from cooperating with the OSCE, Donetsk was quite clearly a risky posting. Recall Russia's long history of murdering reporters the state doesn't condone?
We can call that about a... quarter-truth, though it's a bit sick to blame them for withdrawing some staff from a city now controlled by an explicitly hostile military force.
Secondly, we have the claim that Ukraine refused to renegotiate with LPR & DPR. Somewhat undermined by the fact (already posted above) that Ukraine invited them, alongside Russia and the OSCE, to a meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group, which they refused.
Huh, so the accuracy of the claims themselves is kinda bollocks, then. If only a quick look at the source had told me that was likely to be the case from the start and saved me the time.
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That source being paid warmongers dressing themselves up as experts on "disinformation".
So it's true, then.
Why do they need the trilaterial contact group to revive the Minsk accords to which Ukraine already agreed?
Tankies tend to not be big on practical thinking.
The logic almost without exception is:
1. Focus on destroying (figuratively or literally...) anyone who falls on the spectrum between purity-tested tankie and authoritarian (if not straight-up fascist) right-wing.
2. Let the entrenched far right interests take complete power
3. ???????
4. Communist utopia*
*only for the purity-tested, of course. Everyone else is lucky if they're just sent to a forced labor camp.