ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

Hmm is it safe to assess western media coverage as anything less than pure garbage without getting carpeted with F-bombs?

For anyone still asking “what’s it all about?” — that Time article posted up thread had a lot of pertinent info that I hadn’t seen in other coverage. (I didn’t make it past the paywall on o. Nate’s NYT piece but the point about the treaty also stands out.)

As a citizen of a Russia-bordering country, from a Russian-speaking household, having travelled in Ukraine, Moldova, Russia and Georgia, it is pretty fucking offensive reading people describing Russian positions as «sabre rattling», but perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised

Care to elaborate?

Just people upthread being totally dismissive of the experience of having Russian aggression as a constant presence, because NATO or whatever.

It’s good to know there’s someone else with a passport, not great when poster Mule pops up to aggressively condescend as they occasionally do (recall them tone policing calzino in the unhappiness of ilx) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’m not going to apologise for describing obvious dick waving as such; that doesn’t mean it’s not unnerving or upsetting for people in the area though!

xpost

Oh cheers. Feel free to f-bomb me cause I assumed based on the Russian-speaking that it might be the opposite.

Full disclosure I did just read a Guardian article and a Russia Today article side by side and the RT article wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Heavy use of scare quotes tho. (Also remarkably hard to find on Google at all now.)

And gyac your perspective is appreciated too, I didn’t recognize the name. I do also have a passport for what’s it worth. Ask me about China (my mom is a Tibetan Buddhist and my ex was Tibetan so I may be less than 100% unbiased.)

The unfortunate nature of china’s role in the world means they’re never going to get held to account ito what they’ve been doing in Tibet/Xinjiang, Russia to a lesser extent has a position of power because of its role shipping gas to Europe and its location. It takes a lot for a war to kick off because of these realities I guess, so Putin et al can really act as they like with impunity because what’s going to happen to them? And does Western Europe even care beyond keeping the gas on? And if there’s no danger of military pushback then Russia doesn’t have to do anything besides move some troops around and make some verbal threats, so yeah, that’s really my thinking on “sabre rattling”, that and the only people really going hard for war are the only people who always are, ie Atlantic Council shitheads and dopes like AA.

Jus «obvious dick waving», right. But whatever, gyac. We’ll never see eye to eye.

To be clear: had no issue with what you wrote, viborg

All this ^ has been covered thread and in more detail by others previously, if you’d like to talk more about your opinion then I’d be interested to read it.

*upthread

You’re on the mark obv. Off topic but I was in HK during the ‘siege’ of HK Polytechnic U. I stayed at Chunking Mansions which is on Nathan Rd quite near there. The protests were ongoing all around there. I took some interesting pics that I never posted online.

For anyone curious why someone might say that the state of journalism in Russia today is "not good", this piece from Deutsche Welle (the German public news organization) is a neat summary:

https://www.dw.com/en/critical-journalists-in-russia-fall-silent/a-60670100

Or I guess you could just google "Anna Politkovskaya".

Who is arguing the state of Russian journalism is good?

No one, but some are equating it to state of journalism in western democracies, or implying that the differences are insignificant.

Another good article from DW, on how Russian media have been laying the groundwork for possible hostilities with Ukraine. Seems the goal is not to get average Russians to actually support war, very few do, but to at least blame the West if hostilities do break out:

https://www.dw.com/en/how-russian-media-outlets-are-preparing-an-attack-on-ukraine/a-60801837

lol

Note to Readers: Updated Post
Matt Taibbi
Feb 17

In the wake of new developments on the Ukraine-Russia story, I updated “Another All-Time Media Faceplant” this morning.

All this ^ has been covered thread and in more detail by others previously, if you’d like to talk more about your opinion then I’d be interested to read it.

― mardheamac (gyac), 17. februar 2022 12:34 (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don’t think my opinion is necessarily much different from what some have said upthread, really, or that I have any unique perspectives here. I agree with some of your analysis in the preceding post, particularly concerning Russia’s strategic upper hand. However, I disagree that Putin does not want or need «war» (although that may be different things), and I don’t read Russian positions as mere posturing (even notwithstanding that Russia have been fighting in Dombass for years). Crimea, Georgia, should be clear evidence that there is a willingness if considered necessary in order to reach strategic goals. Re Ukraine, strategic goals is more effectively secured through a level of territorial control over Ukraine (as NATO-guarantees regarding Ukrainian membership will clearly not be given), especially given that an attack will not be directly responded to by the US / NATO (regardless what the AC our AA may argue, thankfully).

In this light, «sabre rattling», «dick waving», seems off the mark and disrespectful in my view, but we don’t need to continue that discussion (I realise that I was the one picking the fight).

Psh, just like Putin.

amassing FPs at the border

#BREAKING In a document to the UN, Russia is formally accusing #Ukraine of "exterminating the civilian population" of two largely Russian-speaking regions.

This is significant because US officials see accusations like this by Russia as a "pretext for war" on Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/KjCQSkJA6X

— Majeed Gly (@MajeedGly) February 17, 2022

US propaganda machine going into overdrive to push peace-loving Russia into a war they never wanted

Blinken to the UN: "Russia plans to manufacture a pretext for its attack. This could be a violent event that Russia will blame on Ukraine or outrageous accusations that Russia will level against the Ukraine government. We don't know exactly the form it will take." pic.twitter.com/W5TQwzgP3q

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 17, 2022

I guess if anyone would know about that it would be America.

it's certainly a familiar situation, but I don't think the US holds a monopoly on ginning up reasons to invade countries

Putin has already described the situation as a 'genocide' of Russian-speakers, so there's that

This thread would run a lot easier if people didn’t waste their time replying to claims nobody made.

unlike some of you I am against genocide

luckily the anti-genocide forces are apparently ready to sweep in

Starting to have difficulties parsing the irony in this irony.

lol

Note to Readers: Updated Post
Matt Taibbi
Feb 17

In the wake of new developments on the Ukraine-Russia story, I updated “Another All-Time Media Faceplant” this morning.

Is this “lol @“ or “lol w/“ Taibbi? I thought he was widely regarded as a joke in general these days.

Can we just stipulate that everyone here understands the US has invaded other countries on flimsy or fictitious pretexts and has a long sordid history of disseminating lies as propaganda? Having this well-known and accepted fact pointed out repeatedly just sounds like the usual 'whataboutism' in service to absolving Russia from its own misdeeds. OK?

*irony in this dumpster fire of a thread

yes lol at Taibbi rushing out his "WMDs all over again FACEPLANT" article in the same manner the establishment press rushes out their "Russia to Invade at Noon!" tweets

Right, right. I have a hard time as seeing Biden as thirsty for a bloodletting in general, but I do see him as possibly deluded enough to be swayed by the wrong perspectives if there’s a concerted effort in the defense community to gin up a conflict. With WMDs the motive was always pretty obvious even if there are incessant denials that it was chiefly in the best interests of Halliburton and The Carlyle Group.

Always a good time to have a reason to authorize a $700000000000000000000 billion rise in defense spending, while it’s clearly “too expensive” to fix bridges or build trains or do healthcare or college

I guess the biggest sticking point for me, even if we are to assume that Russia stands ready to kill a bunch of people over Ukraine, where the actual fuck do we get off thinking it’s our place to stop them?

Our judgment is clearly not to be trusted, and even if we’re in the “right” side, who can trust us to stop it? We haven’t won a single war in over 77 years. Please do fuck right off with pretending we’re the good, or in any possible way, the capable cops. ffs.

I strongly doubt anyone is going in there to stop them

aimless using weasel words to downplay the US record for CIA sponsored genocide like in Indonesia for example, which shows that mere "disseminating lies" as he put it and other shit in this case resulted in the deaths of millions in a mass anti-Communist genocide action. Nobody is saying Putin is good, just that America is much worse and Americans that swallow western media narratives by Applebum and co are horrible fucking clueless myopic idiots.

US record for CIA sponsored genocide like in Indonesia

yes. they did this. it's in the rcord. do we need to tally everything back to the Algonquins before we've satisfied this need?

aimless using weasel words

fuck you

calzino, clearly you are engaged and passionate about this but maybe attacking everyone for things they aren't actually stating isn't the best approach?

This thread is going into battle as the subject region is, which is weird.

Can we just stipulate that everyone here understands the US has invaded other countries on flimsy or fictitious pretexts and has a long sordid history of disseminating lies as propaganda? Having this well-known and accepted fact pointed out repeatedly just sounds like the usual 'whataboutism' in service to absolving Russia from its own misdeeds. OK?

I'd accept this if there wasn't any signs that the US plans to get involved in this conflict but since there is its track record is very much relevant. Also there's this tendency to handwave this history like "oh yeah they did that in the past but THIS TIME it's gonna be different" every time the US gets stuck into something.

go read a Applebum? calzino comin strong
go read a Applebum? i said calzino comin strong

this tendency to handwave this history like "oh yeah they did that in the past but THIS TIME it's gonna be different" every time the US gets stuck into something.

Who's doing that in this thread though?

Well Putin still painfully recalls the harsh, debilitating consequences of his last invasion of Ukraine, he knows he better play it cool or else

idk, the US seems quite distant from this at the moment. They’ve worsened their relationship with the Ukrainian government, don’t seem to be actively involved in negotiations (led by France and Germany), aren’t proposing any immediate sanctions, have given no indication that they’d help in the event of a war and don’t seem like they’re serious about Ukraine being part of NATO in the near future.

High-volume media rhetoric aside, it seems to be passing them by for the most part, at least for now.

Not sure if this is paywalled and it’s not particularly informative but it’s interesting to see France hinting vaguely again at some kind of new security mechanism that might include Russia, rather than be set up in opposition to it.

https://www.ft.com/content/49a53ff8-f154-4e1f-8141-ed6ee8b6d6cc

On a related note, this might be quite interesting but I’m not paying the RAND Corporation $22 for it.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_proceedings/CF410.html

where the actual fuck do we get off thinking it’s our place to stop them?

Our judgment is clearly not to be trusted, and even if we’re in the “right” side, who can trust us to stop it? We haven’t won a single war in over 77 years. Please do fuck right off with pretending we’re the good, or in any possible way, the capable cops.

thank you for saying this more clearly than I was able to, yes this 100% this

Not gonna try to defend the world police.

Nobody is saying Putin is good, just that America is much worse

But not sure this is well defensible either. The man who was responsible for a ham-handed campaign of assassination and attempted assassination of political enemies outside his borders. Who directly stated he does not believe in the values of the enlightenment.

We tried to poison Castro with a cigar (and possibly with an exploding cigar), not sure attempted assassinations get more ham-handed.