Ukraine

[thplinth]

The Russians are saying it is a false flag. 

https://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12415918@egNews

 

[thplinth]

"We would like to emphasise that all Russian units withdrew completely from Bucha as early as March 30, the day after the Russia-Ukraine face-to-face round of talks in Turkey.

Moreover, on March 31, the mayor of Bucha, Anatoliy Fedoruk, confirmed in a video message that there were no Russian servicemen in the town, but he did not even mention any locals shot in the streets with their hands tied.

It is not surprising, therefore, that all the so-called "evidence of crimes" in Bucha did not emerge until the fourth day, when the Security Service of Ukraine and representatives of Ukrainian media arrived in the town."

[Malcolm]

Difficult to see how this is going to end.  Difficult for the west to stand by watching as Russia commits genocide in Ukraine.  The public support in the west for intervention will rise significantly with the rape torture and murder of women and children, and the starvation of a country that is now having to resort to eating pets and cannibalism.

 

 

[phart]

6 hours ago, kumnio said:

Interesting, and quite possible.

The third last paragraph is very interesting, "Notice how all the dead people have a white arm band?" Strangely, despite looking at far far too many pictures of dead people, I never noticed that, so decided to look through the pictures again, and out of dozens of pictures, and sadly even more dead bodies, I didn't see a single white arm band, not one. 

No idea who Gonzalo Lira is, so decided to google him, now Im nowhere near qualified to call him mentally ill or a lunatic, but I can call him a fucking loopy bastard, he appears to be an attention seeking man who seems to have garnered a following of sad souls, looking for some value in their life. I don't know if he is happy with the attention he is getting, being paid or genuinely believes what he is saying, but this carries no weight at all.

 

Coach redpill? It's amazing.  

This is a grifter of incels. Now they're a war correspondent.

Every time I dip my toe into this conflict it becomes even more bizarre.

 

[ThistleWhistle]

Regardless of whether it was Russia or Ukraine the bit that gets me is the west are absolving themselves from their role in this.  The media for the best part of a month have been championing the local civilian resistance showing us pictures of grannies learning to fire rifles and townsfolk taking crash courses in street warfare whilst simultaneously lauding our response in chucking them as many anti-tank guns and tampons as the could possibly need then are now pivoting around horrified that civilians have been caught up in the conflict.

 

Inevitably the masses here understandably don’t like seeing normal folk slaughtered and there is increasing calls for more direct action – does that not seem kind of orchestrated and pretty obvious train of events once we’d armed locals to the teeth?   

[thplinth]

It is very possible there was no massacre. The Russians are suggesting these may have been bodies from elsewhere that have been brought and dramatically positioned on the road with zip ties etc... and yeah this is the sort of propaganda operation that goes on in wars.

Whose interest is it in for there to be an 'atrocity' that is immediately used to demand western intervention. Certainly not Russia's but most definitely Ukraine's (or rather the people who have seized power in Ukraine this last 8 years).

This is how I was almost sure the Syrian chemical attack would prove to be a false flag. It made zero sense for Assad to do that when he was winning... to do the one thing that could provoke the West to intervene. 

The Russians have taken much heavier casualties trying to minimise civilian destruction (especially in the first week or so) . They are trying to win 'hearts and minds'. So why do that and then commit atrocities, does not add up.

The one group in all of this who are capable of committing atrocities (and have already committed them) are the ultranationalist nazi units. They are extremists. They are also the group most wanting this to escalate by bring in the west. They really could do something horrific and try to blame Russia.

This attack though looks like it was probably stage managed for propaganda purposes by the security services of Ukraine. Who knows where these poor people died and how. This is why I avoid posting stuff like this when you cannot possibly verify the claims. The soldiers getting shot in the legs there is actual footage of it happening and being tortured afterwards and I still didn't post it (it is too graphic anyway, horrendous). 

[phart]

1 hour ago, ThistleWhistle said:

 

 

Inevitably the masses here understandably don’t like seeing normal folk slaughtered and there is increasing calls for more direct action – does that not seem kind of orchestrated and pretty obvious train of events once we’d armed locals to the teeth?   

If we're looking for causal lines, i'd suggest looking at the reason why folk were armed in the first place. Oh yeah an invasion.

Invading armies always get local opposition , open any history book. They'd be fighting anyway , now of course the reason for arming is hardly this noble purpose, however if there is no one there to fight we don't have a problem.

That's the crux of the matter for me.

The Iraqi resistance were all armed with AK's , Vietnam were all armed by the Russians etc.

 

[ThistleWhistle]

17 minutes ago, phart said:

If we're looking for causal lines, i'd suggest looking at the reason why folk were armed in the first place. Oh yeah an invasion.

Invading armies always get local opposition , open any history book. They'd be fighting anyway , now of course the reason for arming is hardly this noble purpose, however if there is no one there to fight we don't have a problem.

That's the crux of the matter for me.

The Iraqi resistance were all armed with AK's , Vietnam were all armed by the Russians etc.

 

Oh totally - swap the flags over and the same stuff would be happening although arguably the west are more covert and a lighter shade in their shitebaggery than the Russians.  However, we surely can't arm them then be surprised and horrified when they're dying in the streets.  If they were dying in the streets and we hadn't armed them then that is on Russia; once we've armed them it is still on Russia but we're complicit too now which at the moment doesn't really seem to be getting raised.    

In terms of causal lines it can be tracked all the way back to at least the Ukrainian constitution where attaining NATO membership is written in to it.  Benefits of 20:20 hindsight but making them hand over their nukes to the Russians seems absolutely mental on the one hand or arguably in the current climate decent foresight.  If the carrot hadn't been continually dangled on NATO and EU membership and they were instead told it couldn't happen would what is going on now just have happened quicker or would it have played out differently?

This is worth an hour if you've not seen it - this lecture was back in 2015 following Georgia:

   The myopia of the western media is frustrating and it is just too time consuming to read our media, RT, AJ and the Chinese english daily to get a truer sense of what is going on.  In our media you'd think the Chinese had their arse on the fence but local reporting suggests anything but:

US adding fuel to fire to benefit from Ukraine crisis - Opinion - Chinadaily.com.cn

He seems to think too that this Ukraine crisis is going to be eclipsed by the impending Chinese crisis in the south China Seas so the rest of the decade looks pretty shit.  

[ThistleWhistle]

Thought this was an interesting perspective from China:

US wages economic war to maintain global supremacy - Opinion - Chinadaily.com.cn

The United States is the only superpower in the world capable of creating regional conflicts or unilaterally waging wars.

In the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the explicit goal of the US is to cut the economic bond between Russia and Europe, paralyze Russia's foreign economic contact channel, break Russia's international financial lifeline, grab excess profits at the pan-European market with lower costs and lead the flow of global capital to the US. But its underlying strategic goal is to deepen other countries' dependence on the US-led economic and financial order and prolong the cycle of US dollar hegemony.....

 

...At the same time, the three major rating agencies, following a series of sharp downgrades of the credit rating of Russian companies, have recently cancelled the credit rating of Russia's sovereign debt and all companies in response to the European Union's fourth round of sanctions against Russia. This is equal to the direct blocking of the financing channel of the Russian government and enterprises at the international financial market. It was also at this time the US started the cycle of interest rate hikes under the pretext of fighting inflation, and revealed it would drastically shrink the Fed's balance sheet.

At a time of uncertainty in global markets, the Fed's rate hikes clearly signal US confidence in the endogenous growth momentum of its economic system and send a strong message to other economies the US still dominates. While promoting the stability of the US financial market, the accelerated flow of global capital to the US will further prolong the cycle of the US' dollar hegemony.

[phart]

42 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

Oh totally - swap the flags over and the same stuff would be happening although arguably the west are more covert and a lighter shade in their shitebaggery than the Russians.  However, we surely can't arm them then be surprised and horrified when they're dying in the streets.  If they were dying in the streets and we hadn't armed them then that is on Russia; once we've armed them it is still on Russia but we're complicit too now which at the moment doesn't really seem to be getting raised.    

In terms of causal lines it can be tracked all the way back to at least the Ukrainian constitution where attaining NATO membership is written in to it.  Benefits of 20:20 hindsight but making them hand over their nukes to the Russians seems absolutely mental on the one hand or arguably in the current climate decent foresight.  If the carrot hadn't been continually dangled on NATO and EU membership and they were instead told it couldn't happen would what is going on now just have happened quicker or would it have played out differently?

This is worth an hour if you've not seen it - this lecture was back in 2015 following Georgia:

   The myopia of the western media is frustrating and it is just too time consuming to read our media, RT, AJ and the Chinese english daily to get a truer sense of what is going on.  In our media you'd think the Chinese had their arse on the fence but local reporting suggests anything but:

US adding fuel to fire to benefit from Ukraine crisis - Opinion - Chinadaily.com.cn

He seems to think too that this Ukraine crisis is going to be eclipsed by the impending Chinese crisis in the south China Seas so the rest of the decade looks pretty shit.  

Yeah as I said earlier unless you're willing to devote vast amounts of time, and I mean vast amounts of time. (for instance I did watch Mearsheimer, I think you posted it earlier in the thread. I also watched and read rebuttals from other academics and still don't know what to think) your choices are uninformed or misinformed. I choose uninformed as it saves me time to go do other shit.

EDIT: Which is why i'm hardly commentatiing as I don't know shit about it really. Spent ages reading up on covid for two years, particularly the maths side of things. That was at least useful for me learning some new skills.

This conflict , like most, is just depressing as fuck.

Edited April 4, 2022 by phart

[ThistleWhistle]

2 hours ago, phart said:

Yeah as I said earlier unless you're willing to devote vast amounts of time, and I mean vast amounts of time. (for instance I did watch Mearsheimer, I think you posted it earlier in the thread. I also watched and read rebuttals from other academics and still don't know what to think) your choices are uninformed or misinformed. I choose uninformed as it saves me time to go do other shit.

EDIT: Which is why i'm hardly commentatiing as I don't know shit about it really. Spent ages reading up on covid for two years, particularly the maths side of things. That was at least useful for me learning some new skills.

This conflict , like most, is just depressing as fuck.

Flash bastard having better things to do with your time

 

I’m pretty comfortable sub-contracting out to Mearsheimer at the moment as he’s the top of his field, half a century of experience and has attained that despite being US critical reeking of 'socialism' especially recently in his support of Sanders too.  Some of the criticism seemed McCarthyism and some of it seemed intellectual semantics engaging in penis measuring competition.  Thought this was an interesting counter though:      

 John Mearsheimer and the dark origins of realism - New Statesman

 

The thing for me though is he called this outcome in 2014 (even earlier really in terms of the essays he was knocking out) and surely that’s reality playing out.  I don’t think he ever justified Russian action or was particularly cold of the consequences but just warned it was the logical conclusion, as they would see and act upon, of what was unfolding.

 

The bit I don’t understand isn’t why Zelenskyy is now open to the neutrality proposition that could have been achieved months ago but why we are still cheering from the side lines for them to carry on fighting – all that would seem to achieve is weakening Russia for the benefit of the west with Ukraine trapped in a shit sandwich.       

[Ally Bongo]

3 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

 

The bit I don’t understand isn’t why Zelenskyy is now open to the neutrality proposition that could have been achieved months ago but why we are still cheering from the side lines for them to carry on fighting – all that would seem to achieve is weakening Russia for the benefit of the west with Ukraine trapped in a shit sandwich.       

I think it is fairly obvious - Ukraine should be able to decide what they want to do themselves

From listening to reporting recently it would seem that the West has had enough of Putin and Russia's tactics over the last 20 years

[phart]

11 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

Flash bastard having better things to do with your time

 

I’m pretty comfortable sub-contracting out to Mearsheimer at the moment as he’s the top of his field, half a century of experience and has attained that despite being US critical reeking of 'socialism' especially recently in his support of Sanders too.  Some of the criticism seemed McCarthyism and some of it seemed intellectual semantics engaging in penis measuring competition.  Thought this was an interesting counter though:      

 John Mearsheimer and the dark origins of realism - New Statesman

 

The thing for me though is he called this outcome in 2014 (even earlier really in terms of the essays he was knocking out) and surely that’s reality playing out.  I don’t think he ever justified Russian action or was particularly cold of the consequences but just warned it was the logical conclusion, as they would see and act upon, of what was unfolding.

 

The bit I don’t understand isn’t why Zelenskyy is now open to the neutrality proposition that could have been achieved months ago but why we are still cheering from the side lines for them to carry on fighting – all that would seem to achieve is weakening Russia for the benefit of the west with Ukraine trapped in a shit sandwich.       

What's the field, the political philosphy he invented?

[phart]

The thing is if you subscribe to "realism" in this context, the US invasions are the exact same mechanism as the Russian one. So you ascribe the same moral clarity to it.

As opposed to them both being crimes against humanity.

[ThistleWhistle]

3 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

I think it is fairly obvious - Ukraine should be able to decide what they want to do themselves

From listening to reporting recently it would seem that the West has had enough of Putin and Russia's tactics over the last 20 years

Not disputing they should be able to decide their own future as a sovereign state but it's far from easy as we're seeing play out - they've had joining Nato in their constitution since 1996 and have wanted to join the EU too.  If it was purely down to what they wanted they'd be in both but we're reticent to allow them entry to either.  

 

The EU parliament gave him a round of applause then various leaders were quoted as saying there was no chance of them joining short to medium term – think Netherlands and France were the most sceptical with Germany not far behind from memory. 

 

I don’t dispute the west are getting pissed off with Putin as they’ve essentially built him up as Vader to Biden’s Yoda but don’t particularly see that being much benefit to Ukraine – their primary focus seems to be fucking over Russia which may then help Ukraine down the track rather than helping Ukraine which may then fuck over Russia.   

 

I’ve not got much problem to ascribe ‘baddy’ to Russia – I’m just not comfy casting us as the morale hero in this tale.    

[Orraloon]

16 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

I think it is fairly obvious - Ukraine should be able to decide what they want to do themselves

From listening to reporting recently it would seem that the West has had enough of Putin and Russia's tactics over the last 20 years

Then again if you listen to different reporting it might seem that Putin has had enough of the "West's" tactics over the past 20 years?

[aaid]

4 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

Then again if you listen to different reporting it might seem that Putin has had enough of the "West's" tactics over the past 20 years?

I’d actually say that until the last few months, the “West” has largely been ignoring what Putin and Russia have been doing at home - while continuing to wash the money and buy the O&G.   NATO - it’s members - essentially came to an accommodation over their actions in Syria.

The USA’s attention for foreign policy has been focussed more on China over the last two decades.

If there’s any party in this conflict who needs to have some sort of victim complex to shore up support domestically it’s Russia. 

[ThistleWhistle]

1 hour ago, phart said:

The thing is if you subscribe to "realism" in this context, the US invasions are the exact same mechanism as the Russian one. So you ascribe the same moral clarity to it.

As opposed to them both being crimes against humanity.

More in the wider context of political science rather than the ‘realism’ segment he specialises in.  Between them and the Neo-Cons they don’t really seem to have much empathy to local suffering but that it is just the cold conclusion of US, plus China and Russia as the big dogs, running the show.  However, I don’t think that translates as him accepting the actions of the Russians as morally justified but more that it was an inevitable consequence of the road we were heading down.   Applebaum's criticism from a neo-con perspective is churlish basically that because he is critical of US it means he must be supportive of Russia.   

 

Personally speaking if you apply the same moral compass to both sides then you might be wrong but at least you’re unbiased and I’d suggest it was easier to correct the prior than the later.  If you flipped the flags in this scenario, the media would flip too and the masses would be on-board agreeing with their side’s narrative.  If Russia or China became mates with Mexico and were involved in bio-labs for national health reasons plus were friendly on hosting foreign army and munitions causing US to invade the north of Mexico I’d have the US as the bad guys for killing Mexican locals and Russia/China bad guys complicit in causing it for a reckless foreign policy.      

[phart]

We had the cuba missle crisis already with regards to these sort of things.

The difference is reality, Ukraine happened , northern Mexico being invaded cause of bio-labs and munitions hasn't.

 

[thplinth]

You can most certainly see white armbands on at least two victims in the higher quality resolution clips on here 45s into the video plus the picture.

But just not wearing the blue armband seems to make you a target if you believe this report.

https://southfront.org/afu-crimes-in-bucha-kiev-region-false-flag-propaganda-attack-against-russia-revealed-photos-video/

[aaid]

10 minutes ago, thplinth said:

You can most certainly see white armbands on at least two victims in the higher quality resolution clips on here 45s into the video plus the picture.

But just not wearing the blue armband seems to make you a target if you believe this report.

https://southfront.org/afu-crimes-in-bucha-kiev-region-false-flag-propaganda-attack-against-russia-revealed-photos-video/

Source: The Kremlin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SouthFront

[phart]

Also Tucker Carlson,

"leaning heavily on the arguments of Fox's lawyers: The "'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' "

 

She wrote: "Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye?t=1649101314560

[thplinth]

18 minutes ago, aaid said:

Source: The Kremlin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SouthFront

It is higher resolution not higher russialoution you mad xenophobic xenophobe. 😀

Seriously you have a problem with higher definition video now if it comes of Russia.

Are you this thick? 😀

[Lamia]

On 4/4/2022 at 7:40 AM, Malcolm said:

Difficult to see how this is going to end.  Difficult for the west to stand by watching as Russia commits genocide in Ukraine.  

 

 

Is it - they have don e it in plenty of other places.....

[mccaughey85]

14 hours ago, phart said:

We had the cuba missle crisis already with regards to these sort of things.

The difference is reality, Ukraine happened , northern Mexico being invaded cause of bio-labs and munitions hasn't.

 

I think the general public dont appreciate how close we are to a nuclear war. Putins backed into a corner here. The future sanctions on russia will leave them a much weaker nation in the future and i doubt putin is willing to accept that.