Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her] @ Zuzak @hexbear.net

Posts

3

Comments

108

Joined

5 yr. ago

They are fail children who really do believe their own rhetoric.

This is lazy and uncritical. Even if it's true, politicians' decisions aren't based solely on their own whims, but rather based on the material interests they serve. Frankly, I don't see how this is that different from shit like, "Putin invaded Ukraine because he wasn't hugged enough as a child."

You think NATO politicians would have sent all that military equipment to Ukraine if they thought it would be destroyed/countered as quickly as it was?

Yes, that's exactly what I think. Why not? Gives an excuse to spend more on the military, which lines their own pockets.

No, it's really not. I'm not inclined to take what they say at face value and assume it's what they genuinely believe. I don't see why they'd impose sanctions and then be like, "Well, who knows whether this will do anything or not."

Here is the most blatant example I could find.

I don't see what you're trying to show with that. That they wanted to collapse Russia's economy? Obviously. Like I said, if they're doing sanctions then they're going to say that they're going to work regardless of how much confidence they actually have in them. These statements don't really mean anything to me.

Yeah I mean if Ukraine was prepared to accept the results of a referendum they wouldn't have banned opposition parties in the first place.

The point is that they didn’t know that.

I think they did. Because it's just generally true.

I really don't see on what basis I'm supposed to believe that they believed sanctions would be enough. You can't just press a button and destroy a major world power. I find it absurd to think that they would go down this whole path of provoking war, all of it resting on the assumption that Russia would instantly collapse when they did sanctions. There are way more plausible explanations and interpretations that don't rely on people being that dumb.

I don't believe sanctions are a reliable, sufficient method of collapsing major world powers. It's not really relevant to my question in any case.

Yeah obviously once they sent troops in NATO did sanctions but the idea that that would lead to what you said is a pipe dream. Obviously if they somehow got Russia on a silver platter they'd loot it, as they would anywhere. My question doesn't concern events after Russia sent troops in, my question concerns the events leading up to that. I am not inclined to believe that NATO's plans from the start relied on sanctions being enough to bring down Russia as that's an extremely unreliable approach.

Guess you should've listened to Abraham Lincoln's famous quote

the intention of NATO leadership is to absolutely pillage the people and natural resources of Russia

I don't think it's realistic that NATO expected to just steamroll Russia so I don't really agree with this interpretation at all.

Every time I explain the war to libs I become 1% more pro-Russia and I'm a little concerned about it.

Like, can someone tell me what Russia or the separatists could have done differently that would allow the provinces some pathway towards secession or even just representation, while minimizing loss of life? There's an answer to that question, right? Help.

It's a joke to dunk on Reddit, it's become part of our parlance so we tend to drop it pretty casually. I can see how it comes across as accusatory here, but I think the user probably didn't mean anything by it.

I totally agree with you there. Sometimes people here can get a little too pro-Russia for my tastes, but generally there's skepticism towards sources from both sides, while a lot of places are more one-sided and uncritical (towards one side or the other). We believe that multipolarity is a good thing for the world (especially for developing countries), but also Putin is not a socialist and sucks in various ways (transphobia for example). He's the enemy of our enemy, no more, no less.

But yeah war sucks, and I'd like it to end as soon as possible, in a way that lasts, regardless of where the line gets drawn. I wish it were possible to return to the ceasefire arrangement, or to return to before 2014 when Ukraine was more neutral and everybody got along. They're both capitalist countries so the whole thing's kinda dumb and at the end of the day, I just want everybody to be able to go home to their families.

What diplomatic solutions do you think could be reached? From what I understand wouldn't the only thing Russia would accept is being able to keep all the stuff they annexed?

Yes, at this point I think that's looking like the most plausible end to the conflict, regardless of whether we keep throwing people into a meat grinder for the next 20 years or not. Ukraine's stance is that they won't consider any territorial concessions at all, including Crimea which they haven't controlled since long before the conflict started. I don't think that's realistic.

There were better options for Ukraine that would've avoided this outcome. If they'd upheld the cease-fire, if they'd allowed them to have a voice in a democratic process, maybe if they'd given them some kind of status of an autonomous zone. But with all the bridges burned at this point, the options are considerably narrower.

As for Russia, the thing is even if they withdrew, that wouldn't necessarily settle things because there's still Ukrainian seperatists. I didn't agree with Russia's intervention, but I'm not sure what they could've done differently to stop or prevent the shelling of Donbas. You could argue that they're just a Russian proxy, but a lot of people there do have cultural ties to Russia, and if the support isn't genuine, then why did Ukraine feel the need to ban the opposition parties? And you could just as easily say that the Ukrainian government is just a US proxy.

Ultimately, I just don't trust the same politicians and media that lied us into Iraq to present an honest account of things, or to have the interests of the people at heart. Even if Ukraine was able to reclaim Donbas, and even if we say it'd be good if they did (which considering their inability to get along, I'm not sure of), I just don't think it's worth the cost.

Lib: The American media doesn't lie.

Leftist: Here's evidence that it does, from Western sources

Lib: Ah, but at least those Western sources reported it!

Leftist: Alright, here's evidence that it lies, from non-western sources

Lib: You don't really believe that propaganda, do you?

Unfalsifiable orthodoxy.

The situation is more complex than the media presents it as. The conflict started in 2014 when the Ukrainian government was coup'ed and banned opposition parties, causing seccesionists to rise up in eastern Ukraine. The involved parties signed a cease-fire agreement, but Ukraine violated it by bombarding cities in the disputed territories. Russia sent troops in in response, at the request of the separatists.

We don't write off the Russian narrative as baseless, but we do have a range of opinions about the conflict, aknowleging that historical context. Personally, I believe that there were (and are) diplomatic solutions that would minimize loss of life but they are being ignored, in part because of domestic pressure from far-right groups in Ukraine, but mostly from US pressure to have a conflict for the sake of the military industrial complex.

But the only time I can ever think of Western media doing anything on the scale of censoring the 1989 Tiananmin Square Massacre is the Iraq MWD debacle.

As a rule the US government does not mislead its own citizens the way Russia and China do.

Hundreds of thousands of people were murdered for no reason to accomplish nothing but to line the pockets of Raytheon shareholders. And you write it off as if it doesn't even matter.

No one, neither the politicians nor the journalists who knowingly lied to you faced any repercussions. Not only that, but in many cases, it's the same people in the same positions with no reason not to do it again.

Even if you ignore all the other times that the media has lied, how many people do you believe died at Tiananmen Square to think that the two are remotely comparable?

I gotta

UN Convention of the Rights of the Child

History teaches us that we should always do war all the time constantly, as that is the only way to avoid war

That's what you see through Hexbear (there's a bug rn that doesn't show post history correctly across instances). Not that the rest gives any clue wtf they're talking about.

Link?