Ukraine-Russia War Take 2
Here is what the preliminary take on the Ukraine thread disappearing is:
The site was hit with a massive spam attack where hundreds of spam threads were created. In the case where, for example, I see a single spam thread and delete it, that is called a soft delete, and mods can still see them but forum members cannot. Those deletion can be undone.
When a massive attack hits with hundreds of threads, an admin uses a different procedure where the hundreds of spam threads are merged and then hard deleted, where the threads are gone, and no note is left behind. As I have mentioned with my own experience of just soft deleting a large number of posts, sometimes a post or thread gets checked or merged accidentally and is deleted by mistake. Dealing with hundreds of spam threads takes a sledgehammer, not a scalpel.
It appears that our Ukraine thread may have gotten caught up in that recent net of spam threads. If so, it is likely gone for good. I cant say this for sure, and am awaiting comments from admins on this issue. Yes, this sucks. And hopefully there was some other software glitch that caused the disappearance, and we may recover it in the future.
But in the meantime, I have created this new Ukraine-Russia War thread to enable the conversation to continue. Obviously continuity with earlier discussions will be lost. There is no way around that. So as best as possible, let's pick up the conversation with recent events and go from there.
If you have any questions about this, please post them in the mod thread, not here. Let's keep this thread going with posts about the war, not the disappearance of the old thread.
Thanks.
3043 Replies
No. This is so dumb. Just no. This needs to be banned.
Victor is engaging in the same strategy. It needs to be banned. It's the same every time and stifles any real conversation, which is its purpose.
ban the comparisons of Russia to the West he says.
well, we could talk about how Nuland just admitted that the West did indeed scuttle the peace deal.
No need to ban , especially because these positions exist outside "in the wild" and people might not know how to counter them properly, so let some tankie express his pro russia , anti western position and we counter
Well, that's politics these days. It's driven by trolls and whatever slogans they enjoyed that day. We're hammering the nails into our countries' coffins, one like at a time.
The hottest takes on on Russia and Ukraine in this thread is offered by people where I get the distinct impression many of them couldn't pick out Ukraine on map, let alone Moscow or Kyiv.
It's even hard to blame them. The former American president believed the Baltics was the Balkans. Which as far as geopolitics goes is the equivalent of handling a loaded gun without knowing which end makes people go bye-bye. There is no standard for leaders, there is no standard for discussion and social media will only push what people like.
again, comparing Russia to the USA is not pro-Russia. its actually a scathing indictment.
You don't do just that, you claim you compare them but then fail to criticize Russia even a fraction of what you do with the USA, ie, at the end, you are pro Russia.
While you claim USA is 100% responsible of what you consider the "palestinian genocide", and they could stop at any time according to you, you don't claim Russia is 100% responsible of invading Ukraine and all the negative consequences for ukrainians and russians of that completly avoidable choice, do you?
Do you agree the totality of the life loss and the destruction since feb 2022 is russian responsibility, all of it, all it took was for Russia just not to invade to avoid it all?
Empire apologists in this thread are hilarious claiming that Sevastopol belong to the west and that ukrainians should die for this adventure,while at the same time 40000 dead palestinians is brushed off as a defensive measures
Did you even listen to this? Not only does she not say what you're claiming, she says exactly what you've been told since the very start: the deal completely scuttled Ukraine's military in order to set up Russia to invade again. Ukraine was not going to accept this. Ukraine is a country with its own agency, quit treating them like a pawn on a chessboard like the Russian propagandists your tankie sources get their propaganda from.
I argue that whatever is beneficial for the west is what is moral if you are a western person, there is never any other consideration other than rational self interest (the only complicated part is the long term self interest) in geopolitics, because that's how every country that survived in world history behaved (those who didn't, disappeared from the map).
That's just the ruthless reality of humanity.
The west realizes some form of "humane" behaviour is actually rationally beneficial , that's the only reason we do that, there is no inherent moral consideration that tells you how to act other than your self interest, as a country.
The uniqueness today is having people living among us that play for the enemies, in large enough numbers, and letting them exist in our countries.
Because we are trying this very risky game of tolerating them (unlike all other countries in history, try to have my pro-Ukraine takes in Russia and see what happens, or try to be a palestinian pro IDF in Gaza and tell me what happens), which many people think will lead to good outcomes (i don't).
It is pro-Russia. It is blatantly pro-Russia. Again here's what you said for reference:
Even if you want to claim you were being sarcastic, the fact is that your posting has not been. You have repeated every single Russian justification for this war. You have no once attacked Russia. You have attacked Ukraine in every single way possible.
Saying that Russia is doing what USA has done is not just wrong, but it is a justification. All of your actions point towards you justifying Russia's genocide (which you deny even exists) and their imperialism.
If only there existed some people with the ability to stop this blatant propaganda and victim blaming.
victim blaming is only allowed when its directed at global south
Nice, now he's allowed to throw out accusations of racism with 0 evidence (again).
The favoritism and amount of **** this poster can get away with is almost as absurd as his argument that Russia learned to be violent from USA.
Well, if I'm going to be an empire apologist, I demand that we revoke the Treaty of Paris and immediately conquer Sevastopol for the glory of the ̶e̶mR...
Here's a post I wrote over a year ago on this whataboutism, still relevant, same tactics:
List of countries that share a border with Russia:
Joined NATO:
Norway
Finland
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Poland
Built Nuclear Weapons:
North Korea
China
Russia Sent Troops:
Belarus
Ukraine
Georgia
Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh peacekeepers)
No Nukes, No NATO, No Troops:
Mongolia
Kazakhstan (technically some Russian troops were sent to quell riots)
The reason for joining NATO should be obvious.
NATO "encroachment" is an impossibility. Countries join of their own free will. Russian propaganda seeks to portray NATO expansion as something that occurs against the will of the member countries in ex-Soviet nations at the behest of America. This is parroted here with people calling it “occupying” and “relinquishing sovereignty.” Every state is free to choose its allies, every state is free to sign treaties with other nations.
Hungary held a popular vote for joining NATO, 85% wanted in. The others joined based on their parliaments and governments decisions.
Poland: 89% (they more or less coerced their way into the alliance FFS)
Lithuania: 84%
Hungary: 80%
Romania: 77%
Latvia 72%
Czechia: 72%
Estonia: 70%
Slovakia: 63%
Bulgaria: 54%
For some reason no one has ever answered when I've asked this question: what does NATO threaten? Russia has nukes, it's not getting invaded. Russia is at its absolute weakest and NATO has not invaded. If NATO is "encroaching" on anything, it is encroaching on Russia's ability to terrorize its neighbors.
I edited for you.
but its just a fact that US aggression towards the global south is not just tolerated but often blamed on the victims. just read any thread about the violence in the Libya, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Venezuela.
Who could have foreseen that this train of thought was all just a ruse to turn this thread into a discussion about USA's foreign policy, and away from the Ukraine-Russia War?
oh the USA foreign policy is not relevant to this war? the US is shipping billions of weaponry to Ukraine and encouraging all of its allies to fund the war as well.
The fact that you are believing in Kiev propaganda at face value,is worrisome at least
there are no limits in this thread to the criticisms directed at Russia. Georgia, Moldova, Chechyna on and on.
but you absolutely must not bring up anything else that the USA has ever done.
make it make sense.
It's the EU encouraging the USA to help (begging actually), the russia-ukraine war is much more relevant for us than for the USA, the USA cares far less about Russia (and the middle east) since they are energy independent .
And we are spending more than the USA as well, accounting for the many millions of ukrainian people we took it that pose a heavy burden on our welfare systems
USA foreign policy can absolutely relate to this. But no, whatever the hell happened in Libya, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Venezuela etc. does not relate.
You are comparing these things because you've got some flawed logic that USA is always bad because of these things, therefore USA must be bad here because they're always bad and they have to be bad because they're always bad.
Russia isn't bad because they're always bad. They're bad because they are doing awful things. USA is doing a good thing by providing aid to Ukraine to defend itself; whatever happened in Libya doesn't alter this in the least bit. You just want to steer the conversation to a place where you can attack USA, which is not in this thread.
Feel free to open a thread that is about how bad USA was in Libya, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Venezuela... but that's not this thread.
The Crimea was assigned to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev. And this particular war is not about the Crimea but was started by a failed Russian attempt to take Kyiv.