Like a reverse Alien vs. Predator. Whoever loses, we win.
Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
- Start date
It feels as if the Russian official left out the word ‘cheeky’. As in cheeky little devil. The sort of thing you say to an overly performative five year old. Which is exactly how Elon Musk is acting
"Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened" -Dwight D. Eisenhower (1945)
Who wants to tell this poor bastard that all the photos in the world didn’t make an iota of difference? You know when you get to the afterlife and can find him.
No need to involve that troglodyte:
Except that's not what you're doing. You're supporting the most powerful empire in history in its efforts to weaken a country it has been treating as an enemy after participating in overthrowing the government of that country's neighbor; you support these breathtakingly hypocritical efforts that will likely kill people and cause much suffering apart from any deaths. You support making an international pariah of Russia for the awful crime of acting like your own country does without any significant penalty.
You realize that the sanctions are intended to promote regime change in Russia, right? So let's say they work; what do you suppose is going to improve about the whole situation there when the most powerful empire paves the way for another Russian leader to come to power AGAIN? Oh! Maybe instead of Russian oligarchs, we'll be able to capture the Russian economy for Anglo-American
The evidence for this is incredibly weak because NATO, the United States, and Ukraine treated Russian demands and concerns-- which were not just about WMDs-- with stonewalling. You don't get to have it both ways; diplomacy has to be seriously pursued if you want to make counterfactual assertions about what would have happened that allege insincerity. As it stands, your evaluation of what would have happened is short-circuited to a reality which simply did not explore the possibility of treating Russia with anything other than contempt.
I dont even know if he even realised what he was saying. He thought he had the perfect line and never thought that anyone could be homosexual/Jews/disabled and German. Then, like normal, as soon as someone has pointed out what you said on Twitter as wrong, the Twitter people must be declared as wrong. Because taking a good hard look at what you are saying is just too hard
I usually try to give people the benefit of the doubt. But... he just KEEPS doubling down.
I saw tweets of his that were mocking Ukraine support, one using the npc meme to suggest it's just a trend only npc sheep are following. He's garbage.
I just watched a video on Youtube that included the dead bodies of many civilians (I'm not posting it, but you can probably find it easily if you really want to). It was posted today by Patrick Lancaster reporting from Donetsk, and he claims it is from events that happened today. He surveys the carnage that is the result of what he called a cluster bomb attack by the Ukrainian army aimed at the center of Donetsk. Patrick called it a deliberate attack against civilians, as there were no military targets in the area, but I speculate that it might be more accurate to call it an indiscriminate attack. He also says that attacks like these have been happening for the past eight years. Make of that what you will. It is notable that the arguments that conclude "we have to help Ukraine", though the particulars may vary, also would seem to apply to helping Donetsk resist Ukrainian aggression.
A discerning reader probably doesn't trust Russia to help in good faith. I can't say I blame you; but by that same token, why should anyone trust the United States or NATO to help Ukraine in good faith? What if encouraging turmoil in Ukraine by knocking over its elected government in 2014, installing anti-Russian nationalists, giving them weapons, and ignoring the atrocities they were committing against people in the Donbass was actually designed to draw Russia into conflict there? What if the opportunity to enact these sanctions and inflict casualties on the Russian military was actually the goal of US/NATO policy over the past decade just like what happened in Afghanistan under the direction of Zbigniew Brzezinski-- in which the mujahideen was armed by the CIA with the help of Pakistan before the Soviet intervention? It would certainly explain why Hillary Clinton and others publicly jumped to the idea of arming an insurgency in Ukraine like during the Soviet-Afghan war as somehow an example of a good idea.
A discerning reader probably doesn't trust Russia to help in good faith. I can't say I blame you; but by that same token, why should anyone trust the United States or NATO to help Ukraine in good faith? What if encouraging turmoil in Ukraine by knocking over its elected government in 2014, installing anti-Russian nationalists, giving them weapons, and ignoring the atrocities they were committing against people in the Donbass was actually designed to draw Russia into conflict there? What if the opportunity to enact these sanctions and inflict casualties on the Russian military was actually the goal of US/NATO policy over the past decade just like what happened in Afghanistan under the direction of Zbigniew Brzezinski-- in which the mujahideen was armed by the CIA with the help of Pakistan before the Soviet intervention? It would certainly explain why Hillary Clinton and others publicly jumped to the idea of arming an insurgency in Ukraine like during the Soviet-Afghan war as somehow an example of a good idea.
I think the tweet was an understandable expression of anger towards the invader and a reference to Putin's speech stating Ukrainians and Russians are one people and that Ukraine should have never existed.
Daily mail (assuming the same incident).
Bonus...
‘Exploiting Cadavers ’and ‘Faked IEDs’: Experts Debunk Staged Pre-War ‘Provocation’ in the Donbas - bellingcat
Russian media reported that a civilian car in the Donbas was destroyed by a Ukrainian IED in the days before the war. But damage to the vehicle doesn’t add up, and charred bodies show suspicious signs of an autopsy.
www.bellingcat.com
Donetsk is born of a military coup orchestrated by Russia and backed by the Russian army and Fascist Wagner. The Donetsk army is the aggressor. Had Russia never orchestrated that coup (which quite likely didn't benefit from popular support unlike in Crimea) nobody would have died. Instead Russia kept on providing military support and prevented Ukraine to retake territory indirectly annexed by Russia through two installed vassal states. You can blame Russia for the 14 000 victims (on both sides) who died.
Than why do you believe and repeat 99% of Russian propaganda?
NATO? NATO wasn't involved with Ukraine except for some low level cooperation. NATO is not what you believe it is. I don't trust the United States. But I trust that Ukrainians were tired of their inept and corrupt politicians and that refusing to sign the EU-Ukraine association agreement was the final straw.
That's all on Yanukovych and failing to understand a lot of Ukrainians saw more opportunity in being associated with the EU rather than Russia. And who can blame them? Would you prefer to live in Belarus or Lithuania?
Ukraine has relatively free elections. The US has no say on who wins or not.
Compared to how much the US is sometimes arming regimes Ukraine got very (little) armament support from the US.
So whenever the US ignores atrocities in a country Russia is instantly triggered to invade said country? The same Russia which sends soldiers and support to help regimes commit atrocities against its people? Are you being serious?
The annexation of Crimea and military coup orchestrated by Russian fascists in eastern Ukraine already provided that opportunity. Yet the US was very mild sanction wise. Recent history doesn't support your theory. The US and EU have been patient and lenient with Russia and its aggression in Ukraine, Russia decided to abuse that lenience by escalating the conflict to a full blown war. Off course the west is going to adapt its reaction to Russian actions. You can't just keep on being lenient. Russia escalated this on its own and forced the West to react.
The main thing the US and EU did which may have contributed to this war is not being firm enough in 2014, giving Russia false hope it could start a full blown invasion with little reaction.
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Oh derp, it was here.
Funny events in anti-woke world
Oh dear, he's a "semen retention warrior" too. Those guys have this weird innate obsessive ability to make 'not having a wank' sound so much more creepy and gross than just having a wank. I do not recommend looking further into that subculture. It's too late for me of course. Like I'm learning...
forums.escapistmagazine.com
"Efforts to weaken a country". Perhaps if a militaristic oligarchy requires unfettered ability to slaughter and annex other countries in order to maintain its position of strength, then we're not obliged to protect that strength.
You care about the continued position of strength of Russia, but are perfectly willing to weaken and sacrifice Ukraine- another sovereign country- to do it. Why does the strong position of one matter so much, and the strong position of the other is entirely disposable? The answer, of course, is that one more readily serves the geopolitical chess-game you imagine you're playing between the US and Russia, in which Ukraine is a mere pawn.
Ah, that's why all these sanctions were in place before Russia started invading the rest of Europe, of course.
No, my supposition is the following: 1) Russia ends invading sovereign countries; 2) Sanctions on the Russian economy end.
Russian demands were control over the foreign policy of another sovereign country, and the freedom to invade/annex with impunity. They were a fucking non-starter, and Russia knew that. And even if they had made a deal, there's zero reason to believe Russia would honour it, after they reneged on every other international commitment they made. So that deal wouldn't have even provided any security at all for Ukraine. Russia could still invade with impunity.
(I also see the logical progression of apologising for the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact a few pages ago... and now advocating for NATO making a grubby deal with Russia to carve up a country that sits between them, and sell its sovereignty to the Empires, against its wishes and with military force if necessary. Both treat smaller countries as tradeable, expendible bargaining chips for larger imperial powers to play with.)
Which begs the question, how does someone become the richest person in the world by having such childish, reactionary standards? Perhaps it’s a prerequisite for being filthy rich.
But at the same time, just imagine there’s no countries. I wonder if you can. Nothing to kill or die for. A brotherhood of man.
The problem is people being people, most ultimately couldn’t stand the thought of what “things” we’d need to sacrifice for that to work. Our sociopolitical structure determines our fate, designed to divide and conquer. Only difference from before is it being done “civilly” now, and happening slowly over the course of generations so people never become alarmed about it.
‘Nowhere to retreat’: inside the bunkers on Ukraine war’s eastern front
In the Donbas, Ukraine troops have been fighting separatists for eight years. Now they hold their line against Russia’s advance. Kate Geraghty and Anthony Galloway report from the contact line.
You missed a key step. The step where Russia was proudly parading said elected government around as their puppet and fifth column . Of course the poor sods lost all their legitimacy after that. Putin is to blame for the downfall of the Yanukovych regime. He forced them to self destruct and surrender any mandate they might have had. Russia has been the aggressor at every stage of this conflict. Everything was initiated and then escalated by them. Russia wasn't ''drawn into a conflict'', they forced themselves into this position by forbidding Ukraine to create ties with Europe and then piling on aggression after aggression when this backfired on them.
If Russia just accepted that Ukraine and the EU would have a trade deal then none of this would have happened. If Russia accepted that publicly parading Yanukovych around as their puppet was a mistake that backfired on them then none of this would have happened, if Russia hadn't responded with extreme violence when they lost their puppet none of this would have happened.
Maybe because all of Russia's demands were completely unacceptable? Of course no one was going to agree to surrender Ukraine to them, or give Russia a veto or even outright ownership of other countries foreign policy. What other reaction than contempt should there have been when those are Russia's demands? When they insist they still have ownership of Ukraine and that other countries need Russia's consent to form ties with them then contempt is the only react it deserves.
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Again, Russia's economy is only the size of Italy. Billions of dollars sounds like a lot, but it is a tiny drop in the vast ocean of the EU's combined GDP. Again, this all comes back to a point I've been repeating. Russia is not actually a superpower. It is not actually a rival to the United States or the EU. It is a relatively poor country whose economy has been profoundly mismanaged by successive horrible governments. Having a comedically massive army isn't enough to be a superpower any more.
Russia's sanctions didn't work because the Russian economy is not actually big enough to matter. The idea of Russia waging any kind of economic warfare against the EU is laughable, because the EU economies can take the hit. The sanctions against Russia cost the private sectors of the EU and the USA more than the Russian sanctions. Energy companies alone lost billions from sanctions against Russia, although I'm sure they were subsidized generously too.
The agribusiness lobby in the UK and much of the EU is a lot weaker than in the US, in large part because the agricultural sector is heavily subsidized. See, the subsidies we're talking about are targeted subsidies. They mostly take the form of income support for farmers who wouldn't otherwise be able to remain profitable within the market, which favours smaller farms over large and commercially successful intensive farms.
This is actually a good example where I think you haven't actually thought about what you're saying, and instead just base all political assumptions on how you personally feel about the country in question, rather than any kind of consistent political logic. The alternative to agricultural subsidies is that farming as a sector is subject to the whims of the free market. That's why conservatives hate agricultural subsidies.
Those same conservatives, supported I should add by a significant and deliberate Russian state-sponsored media disinformation campaign, have now come a long way towards realising their objective by getting the UK to leave the EU, thus cutting rural economies (which ironically, tended to vote leave) off from EU subsidies, leaving them facing a very uncertain future and accelerating the domination of US-style corporate agribusiness over the now "free" UK market. I didn't realise you were such a supporter of the free market personally, but it doesn't surprise me. It seems like you'll support anything if we slap a Russian flag on it.
That is debatable.
Undeniably, the effect of such sanctions is to make people suffer, but that is not the same thing as that being the point. Sanctions can be (and usually are) targeted, the problem is that modern economies are so interconnected that even targeted sanctions will have economic effects on more vulnerable people.
Earlier, I mentioned the economic fallout on western energy companies caused by western sanctions against Russia. That might sound great, energy companies are evil institutions who are killing the planet for money. But do you think those energy companies actually took the hit, or do you think they just passed it on to their customers via higher prices, or to taxpayers via corporate welfare? People suffer because that's just the way the economy is set up. It's a system built on displacing economic suffering onto the most vulnerable.
The people not blaming their leaders are wrong. Their leaders are always responsible. Their leaders are the beneficiaries of the economic system which expects them to bear the burden of sanctions. Expecting me, or anyone, to shed tears on behalf of the Russian government for harm suffered by its people when they and their oligarch friends are explicitly benefitting from that harm and preserving their own interests by displacing it onto the most vulnerable is obscene, it's about as far from any form of meaningful anti-capitalism as you can get.
Then stop acting like it.
You've had so many opportunities, at this point, to correct me. You've had so many opportunities not to act like a caricature. You still can, at any point.
Worse for whom?
You are supporting Russian policies which are concretely and literally killing and displacing people in Ukraine, resulting in the deaths of Russian soldiers, resulting in the mass arrest and detention of activists and dissenting voices within Russia itself and the general curbing of civil rights, massive economic disruption to some of the poorest areas in Europe, extreme risk of long-term environmental damage and massive displacement of the economic harm onto the poorest members of society. Your belief that the Russian government cannot be held responsible for its own actions does not change what you are actually supporting. Your belief that the ends will justify the means in the long term when the evil galactic empire is destroyed does not change that the policies you support are making things much, much worse for many people in the present.
Ineffectual protest would be a start. At least Silvanus can get there, you can't even seem to manage to do that.
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Dude, you aren't allowed to be angry. That'll provoke Putin and cause an invasion
Where have I ever showed that I think the US or NATO are doing things in good faith?
In fact, many people here have told you OUTRIGHT that they don't think they are
How is this proving whatever you want us to believe?
You keep making this same point like its a gotcha without realising that it's not
Unfortunately, the US back the fascist president. Because no one likes a controllable fascist like the US. They lost too in 2014
Learn the difference between acting like something and declining to respond to some weirdo's asinine assumptions.
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