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Conspiratiorist posted:While the Western government's (and ghoulish media) messaging has been atrocious, their actions have been the opposite of saber-rattling: they're bending over backwards to avoid an escalation chain with Russia. The US is sending troops and fighter jets to Poland, and though their present mission has been publicly declared to involve staying put in Poland regardless of future events, it is odd to me that this is seen as peacekeeping while Russian movements within their own borders are provocation. And I do not disagree that Russian movements are provocation. However, if I'm skeptical of US movements as a US citizen, one might think the Russians would be particularly skeptical.
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Feb 14, 2022 21:09
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orcane posted:Why is that odd? How likely is it that these US jets will be used in (hidden? what?) attacks on Russia, the one country with enough nuclear weapons to rival the United States? How many times have the US used forces stationed in Europe to attack Russia? How is that even comparable I'm not concerned about them attacking Russia, I'm concerned about them entering Ukraine, either preventatively or in response to Russia entering Ukraine, which is something one might do with forces stationed in Poland. CommieGIR posted:So far the only troops in Poland is the 82nd Airborne and was brought in to help with evacuations (which Poland has largely opened the border for) Hopefully! This is certainly what has been repeated by the administration even within the past hour. I would like to be able to believe it!
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Feb 14, 2022 21:29
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Panzeh posted:That's an interesting kind of opposition. It reminds me of a libertrarian saying 'i'm opposed to poverty, but doing anything about it would be tyranny' I'm not sure how it's interesting. The vast majority of times the United States has made any kind of military intervention in the last 70 years, it's ended up making the world worse off for it. I think the only one I wouldn't feel comfortable arguing about is Bosnia. The idea that the US sticking its dick in Ukraine would actually make things go better for Ukraine and the rest of the world than not has to fight upstream against all of that history, and particularly, the horrifying last 20 years.
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Feb 14, 2022 21:59
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I guess we're probating all the posts that treat that weird bioconspiracy nonsense with the contempt that it deserves, so I'll unfortunately have to pretend it's worth an actual response: First, there's almost nothing useful that would be gained from having world leaders' genomes on file. The notion that it's for genome collection rather than just a drat COVID test is absurd. Second, even if we grant that they may want it, whole-genome sequencing is literally part of my job. If you want DNA from somebody who enters your house, you can get DNA from somebody who enters your house, especially if you in charge of Russia. It's easier to sequence with full coverage a sample that's carefully provided by your target, but you don't need it.
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Feb 15, 2022 15:24
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Cugel the Clever posted:The reference is to the posters usage of "the Ukraine", not their usage of "the Ukrainian government". I think it's mostly just a combination of native English speakers (and a few others, like the Czech example) being used to throwing "the" in front of a country's name, then hearing or seeing "the Ukraine" in media and not thinking anything of it. I've always said just "Ukraine" but it never occurred to me that the alternative was actually a dogwhistle until it came up in the previous thread.
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Feb 16, 2022 23:08
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Alchenar posted:Yeah don't be another story of a goon who travelled into a warzone and then was never heard from again. I suspect even the people still firmly on the side that its all a bluff probably wouldn't stake their life on it. ...I'd certainly stake that no matter what happens, at no point is flying into Kyiv going to approach the danger of wandering into Syria on foot without your psych meds
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Feb 19, 2022 00:04
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Murgos posted:If Russia withdraws then history books are going to talk about how the strong international condemnation of the invasion contributed to that outcome. Of which Bidens multiple statements will be seen as a large part of that. One hopefully can't coast on credulity into history books. In the end, if this fizzles out, it'll be decades before we know what was going on behind the scenes, but history books will not be giving all the credit to Western leaders for their tremendous leadership during this time. We'll hear that from a few liberal lackey media types and that's about it. No evidence has actually been presented beyond what the whole world can see, it's just been stated without proof that Russia is going to invade Kyiv. That takes a lot more trust than believing that Russia is going to send troops into Donbas (which I do think could happen). And if the administration can actually get credit for that from the slow brains of the world, it seems like they're making quite a PR mistake by not discovering a similar crisis in Taiwan or Korea.
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Feb 19, 2022 17:34
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cinci zoo sniper posted:What would us, stupid Eastern European savages, do without your piercing American insight. That's rather uncalled for.
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Feb 19, 2022 17:43
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Rad Russian posted:I mean that's the loophole isn't it? They won't invade "Ukraine" they'll move troops up to the new border of the separatist regions. I'm sure Europe won't see it this way though. I don't think the plan was ever to go into Kiev or the rest of Ukraine, otherwise invasion would have happened weeks ago. Putin wants either assurance of no NATO in Ukraine or a buffer region there. It's not a loophole because the entire rest of the world will see it as an invasion. The entire rest of the world would see it as an invasion even if the separatist-controlled territory invited them in a la Belarus. I still doubt Russia actually bring troops to the front. It's political maneuvering, tearing up Minsk II, and pushing the front of the proxy war that has been ongoing.
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Feb 21, 2022 19:17
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CommieGIR posted:Russia Troops have already been there, so nothing is really changing. OSNIT has tracked Russia units coming and going form the occupied Donbass regions for ages now. Sir Bobert Fishbone posted:The most interesting thing to see will be whether Russia will stop at the current contact line, or whether they'll push further into portions of Donesk and Lugansk that are now under Kyiv control. CommieGIR is correct, but relatively discreet unit movement is a big difference from pushing the front forward and eliminating plausible deniability; at this point, it's not at all clear that the current DNR/LNR front is actually held by Russian forces (and the separatists and Russia would absolutely deny that it is; Russia denies that there are any in Donbas at all, which is obviously false). Of course Russia is supplying and training them, but it would be a big escalation to actually park a bunch of units openly around Donetsk, for example, let alone actually pushing beyond the Minsk line.
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Feb 21, 2022 19:51
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BoldFace posted:https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1495930277469769729 They're trying to reframe Russia openly entering and occupying Donbas and doing no more as a clear win -- note that such an action is no longer an "invasion" because they've always been there, even though it was universally considered an invasion by the US press on Friday -- so it is necessary to present Kyiv as in grave danger.
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Feb 22, 2022 02:44
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Sir Bobert Fishbone posted:And Crimea units might just have a big white slash. we're sending the ones with a big 'ol dick drawn on 'em to Chisinau, just for kicks
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Feb 22, 2022 19:18
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GABA ghoul posted:Considering the uprising in Kazakhstan, how likely is it that Putin gets ousted if this personally motivated military adventure turns into a disaster for the Russian army and economy? Unlikely regardless. As for the "if", there's very little chance it becomes a disaster for their army, so it depends on how other countries respond economically.
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Feb 23, 2022 16:33
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BoldFace posted:Hoping this is not true. poo poo I just fired up pornhub, it's on there already
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Feb 24, 2022 01:06
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KillHour posted:We could have done "joint military exercises" with Ukrane that just happened to line up with Russia's "military exercises" if we did it a month ago. The US's military is so big that our Navy is the world's second largest Airforce, for gently caress's sake. But that was a political non starter. You genuinely think that would have improved the situation? It clearly wouldn't have. It clearly would have been an even bigger mess. Nobody is asking you to be satisfied, though I'm asking you to recognize the least bad of all the bad options and not bang on war drums because you're upset that Russia has worked its way into a position where it can do whatever the gently caress it wants with Ukraine. If we go back to 2014 and start over from there, then maybe there's a diplomatic solution.
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Feb 24, 2022 06:14
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ZombieLenin posted:As I said earlier in this thread, I am a Marxist; and as a Marxist I do not know how anyone who claims to be on the left could do anything other than cheer on Ukraines people and Armed Services who, in my view, are fighting someone who is as close to a successor of Hitler as one can realistically imagine. Anyone actually cheering on a Russian invasion is fundamentally not a leftist because it is an imperialist, capitalist, right-wing regime waging near-unprovoked war -- that is clearly opposite all leftist thought and the only people who would post in support are anti-west and anti-US empire above all else. I do, however, find it extremely hard to "cheer on Ukraine" because their government also really, really sucks, it just sucks less. I just don't want war.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:38
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Everyone is getting the definition of "tankie" wrong. In modern usage, it's just a lazy pejorative thrown at literally anyone who criticizes Western democracies when you just want to snipe at people. It has no consistent definition and is typically used to give the impression that MLs are irrational without having to explain why, because it lets you lump them in with authoritarian dickholes with no ideology.
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Feb 25, 2022 17:25
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Shes Not Impressed posted:Jordan Peterson level take here where people using the word as it is known and defined in common parlance is NOT what the word actually means! There are like ten mutually exclusive definitions on the last page, and the most correct definition historically, referencing foreign responses to the Hungarian Revolution, has nothing to do with how people have used it in D&D. Don't be an rear end in a top hat. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 25, 2022 17:38
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steinrokkan posted:And we are back to "Putin is just a rational actor who is trying to negotiate, why don't you meanies listen to his reasonable demands?" and we have to act like this deserves to be heard instead of deserving the upmost derision and visceral disgust. Pathetic, pathetic and sickening. I don't agree with anyone who thinks Putin is going to have demands that are all palatable to Ukraine, but painting him as an irrational and unreasonable lunatic is also nonsense. This is the outcome of geopolitical jockeying over the status of Ukraine since 2013. Russia's choices are bad for everyone except Russia, and it's up to the international community to also make it a bad choice for Russia.
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Feb 25, 2022 18:25
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Dwesa posted:According to Putin himself, this is result of Lenin inventing Ukraine and Ukrainians. TulliusCicero posted:Have you ever considered, and I know this might be a hard one to hear so maybe sit down, drink some water, maybe do a breathing exercise: fatherboxx posted:He is a lunatic Yeah, it all comes down to one dipshit speech. It's certainly not the entire post-USSR history between Russia and Ukraine, and particularly all the post-revolution fights as most of Ukraine leaves Russia's sphere of influence. Russia is not just obliterating Ukraine because "IT'S OURSSSSS" and you're all buying into a really astonishingly simple narrative to think so. No, it's not just about NATO, it's about Russia wanting to expand power while the entire western world is hoping for a Ukraine that leaves Russia's influence behind. It's brutal, it's violent, it's an awful thing for most of the world, but it can all be rationalized. The reason this isn't just semantics is because the constant painting of Putin as an insane infantile moron is just going to become justification for the west to abandon challenging diplomacy. There may have been no sensible way of appeasing Putin before this, and that's fine, but the way this situation deteriorated had me pretty loving concerned about the way we're handling difficult relations elsewhere, like China.
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Feb 25, 2022 18:50
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Phlegmish posted:Does the Ukrainian government still have donation links up? I know they were asking for Bitcoins (lol) yesterday. Wouldn't mind supporting them in some capacity. There are so many foreign NGOs you can donate to that have clear humanitarian missions and clear accounting rather than throwing it at a drat government. There's a stickied thread, or just toss it at MSF or IRC.
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Feb 27, 2022 19:31
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Charliegrs posted:I've seen a few videos like this where regular citizens are stepping in front of tanks. I'm surprised as hell that the Russians haven't been shooting at them when they do that. I wonder if that speaks to the level of morale that the average Russian soldier has right now in Ukraine. Like I'm sure many of them don't really believe the bullshit they've been hearing from Russian media about Ukrainians all being Nazis and whatnot. And Ukrainians arent super foreign to Russians like they share very similar cultures and of course most Ukrainians speak Russian. It probably must feel like if American soldiers were sent to invade Canada. Even American soldiers won't usually just shoot unarmed civilians that are getting in the way, and we're uncommonly excited to commit war crimes.
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Feb 27, 2022 19:34
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CommieGIR posted:https://twitter.com/TobyVenables/status/1497916330485370880?s=20&t=LRKA08bJZzUPiLE8w5fP8w This is like doing a write-up about David Duke and calling him an advisor to Biden.
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Feb 28, 2022 13:59
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Randarkman posted:Again no, that's very likely not true. Not at this point, not with the limited size of the Russian invasion force. Pre-invasion, it was the largest force amassed on the border of another country in modern history. Post-invasion, it's of limited size and likely to fizzle out shortly.
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Feb 28, 2022 21:58
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Squiggly posted:Cross posting from the GBS thread because I'm looking for actual information and that may be the wrong place to get it There is a memorial to children killed in Donbas in Donetsk with ~150 names. It's not from one singular event. [edit:] To the others who replied, you know, even though it's a misrepresentation of events, you might want to check yourselves on your biases if you just instantly dismiss it instead of looking into it. BRAKE FOR MOOSE fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Feb 28, 2022 |
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Feb 28, 2022 22:05
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Kavros posted:Not what I'm saying. I'm pretty confident the Ghost is crowdsourced propaganda and a completely fictional tale, it's just interesting to me that it turns out that Russia's entire operation in Ukraine was the kind of outlier condition situation in which remarkable situations like that could have come about. They largely don't happen anymore precisely because of the ways in which militaries know how to operate to protect their own air assets, but Russia was straight up all over the place in a peer war extended into Ukranian home turf, and their military systems were wildly unaware of the actual conditions. So... the weird made up story didn't happen, but the made up stories about conditions on the ground corroborate the other weird made up stories? Exactly why are you believing everything that gets tweeted under the fog of war?
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Mar 1, 2022 21:20
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Randarkman posted:How do we know anything at all indeed? If the ghost isn't real, is Kyiv real? Which of you have ever seen a Ukrainian? Yes, "you can't believe everything tweeted during a war" is an identical statement to "you can't believe anything at all." Great thinking.
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Mar 1, 2022 21:25
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Shes Not Impressed posted:This is one of the most astoundingly stupid things I've read in this thread and it's been a long journey. How is that so astoundingly stupid? The government is egging on civilians to take up arms, and it's not a fight for their existence or their ethnic identity, it's a fight for their government. I think there's a plenty big moral discussion to be had over the benefits of fighting to the death.
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Mar 1, 2022 22:17
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Okay -- I really don't feel like arguing with an entire thread about why I don't believe Putin is about to go on a binge of ethnic cleansing. If that's the mainstream view then this is gonna go nowhere and I'll just concede the argument.
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Mar 1, 2022 22:22
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Twincityhacker posted:My Twitter feed is usually filled with fluff. Right now there is one person filling it with "no war but class war" and I am about to pop off. Are you actually getting mad about an anti-war slogan or are you misusing an anti-war slogan
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Mar 2, 2022 20:02
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The Bandera stuff is just an example of how political attacks are generated in a conflict. There are two unassailable truths: (1) Bandera sucks and was a goddamn Nazi, and (2) way too many Ukrainians view him as a hero despite that. Enough so that the Zelensky was politically unable to disavow him despite being exactly the person Bandera would have had eliminated. For Americans in the audience, imagine Robert E. Lee, but a loving Nazi. But despite the existence of an active far-right in Ukraine, the vast majority of Ukrainians don't really have any care for the ideology of the OUN-B, and "Banderite" is just thrown around at anyone with vaguely nationalistic views. It's possible to hold all of these thoughts in your head at once. It is not giving into pro-Russian propaganda to say "oh yeah, this dude sucks, and so does any rear end in a top hat who doesn't think so," just like we can say that about some dipshit with a confederate flag on his pickup, because you can also recognize that some of the attacks are in bad faith.
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Mar 2, 2022 20:37
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Alchenar posted:Okay now we are past 'warcrimes bad' I think the interesting observation here is that in the last 24 hours we've seen Ukranian public messaging start to fall apart a bit. It's looking less centrally coordinated, different military units are writing their own stuff and putting it up on Facebook and it's getting very hit-and-miss and certainly a lot more cuthroat. Probably parallels the state of the war somewhat. I'm baffled by that coming out of a newspaper during wartime, it's really bad international PR when their winning strategy is making this take a long time with good international PR. You'd think there'd be someone in the Ukrainian armed forces going "oh no, no no no, poo poo" and shutting that down.
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Mar 2, 2022 23:44
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steinrokkan posted:It's in France, where they have real food and don't have to pretend fries with gravy is a delicacy, so there's little reason to know what poutine is This was just a coded insult of Belgium.
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Mar 4, 2022 20:56
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Some people don't actually have coherent ideologies, and a lot of the worse "leftists" are just fundamentally opposed to American and Western European dominance. When you stop trying to pin any other ideology on them, it makes sense. The other thing is that in a coherent leftist ideology, there are no good guys directly involved in this conflict. Neither an authoritarian oligarchy or a corrupt, barely functional democracy that is attempting to liberalize is your friend. So these types become reactionaries against the Western media narrative and start saying really dumb things.
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Mar 11, 2022 00:59
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JerikTelorian posted:Yeah I think people freaking out by Americans claiming they want No Fly Zones is misunderstanding. I do think the average American wants to support Ukraine (or hurt Russia), and so if you say "are you in support of [thing that sounds like doing something but doesn't sound like war]" people are bullish on it because they're conveying an overall interest in doing something. When you explain it further, people change their views. It's hard for people to express nuanced views in a yes/no answer. It's not really a nuanced view, it's more of an incoherent one; the lesson isn't that "yes/no" is misleading, the lesson is that you can't give people the credit of knowing what the hell you're talking about when you ask them a poll question but that's not going to stop them from answering it. You see the same thing with polling about US health care policy, where you can get a 30 point swing just by slightly changing the wording.
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Mar 13, 2022 19:42
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Mulva posted:I wonder where this mindset came from. Where people are so desperate to not engage because it could mean total global thermonuclear war and the end of everything. What, you don't think Russians have people like that too? You think we couldn't just drop a nuke on Moscow and say "We will absolutely destroy every single person on the planet if you dare to try anything but total surrender right now." because they'd just all line up to kill themselves? Why? Would you? Why do you think Russians are especially deranged? So, uh, you're asking why people are extremely gunshy about open warfare between the world's largest nuclear powers? I think it'd be really stupid to use nuclear weapons. I also think it was pretty stupid to launch an invasion on the whole of Ukraine. The likelihood doesn't need to be high for it to be an extremely tense situation.
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Mar 13, 2022 20:10
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Nessus posted:Now, should we perhaps resume looking into ways to prevent intercontinential or long-range missiles of whatever sort? Perhaps that would be a wise thing to do. The longstanding military theoretical problem throughout the Cold War is that you can't. Even if you can get most of them, you're still hosed.
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Mar 13, 2022 20:43
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Morrow posted:The irony here is Ukraine is perhaps demonstrating that a non-nuclear state can resist absorption by a nuclear rival, albeit at tremendous cost. Which may be good or bad for nonproliferation. This brand new revelation brought to you by the Vietnam War.
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Mar 13, 2022 20:56
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Nessus posted:The attitude of 'submit to an invader because they will surely win anyway, so fighting back just means you get two rounds of devastation instead of one,' has a sort of implicit angle where this is perhaps true of "the invaded nation, as an entity," but is very much less true for, for instance, minority groups the invader disapproves of. The "roll over and submit" poo poo is tiring and I wish it weren't posted. But one of the strangest things about this conflict is the instant liberalization and, for the lack of a better word, "westernization" of Ukraine in the minds of foreigners. Do you think Ukraine is really so much better about minority groups than Russia that an invasion makes it dangerous for them to exist? Political dissidents and Ukrainian ultranationalists are going to have unique problems. But unfortunately, Ukrainians also loving hate LGBTQ people. And so does Georgia and Moldova and Armenia and Belarus and Kazakhstan and so on.
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Mar 13, 2022 22:32
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I'm obviously not going to engage with anyone who just tells me to gently caress off.ImpAtom posted:I mean you aren't wrong about smoothing out rough parts but that's a really weird example. We're mostly aligned here, because I'm not trying to make an argument that Ukraine isn't better on the equality front than Russia. For almost everyone, it is better for your government to be an almost-functional democracy rather than an authoritarian system that habitually murders political dissidents. Putin shuts down activism far more than a Ukrainian government ever will, and yes, there have been decent institutional strides towards acceptance in recent years. If you're a minority facing discrimination, it is clearly better to live in a place where activists that support you are allowed to exist. But outside of Kyiv, you have to keep your loving head down, which is why I am deeply bothered by people playing this up as an existential threat. This is a nation where statements like "homosexuality should be acceptable in society" have single-digit support. Even for minorities, the day-to-day is not likely to look any different under Russian control. I also want to shut down the "why haven't Ukrainians just give up???" nonsense, but it's absolutely wild to me how people have both minimized how bad Ukraine really is with this poo poo while acting like Russia is about to go on a Holocaust because they arrest dissidents. I don't think I'd be bothered by the latter if people weren't doing the former, because sure, Putin is trash.
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Mar 13, 2022 23:20
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