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One of the more peculiar stances is an ad hominem where the news media of most of the developed world is partially or completely disregarded. Here's an example:
[Pav:] You don't seem to want to realise no mainstream source will ever give you a reason to believe anything that would make you less willing to pay taxes to defence companies. Perhaps you own some shares, or feel you benefit in some other way? I suppose it IS within the realm of possibility, though only by cosmic accident. It IS strangely fascinating and amusing talking to someone who is a true believer in the broken window fallacy (probably in the form of post WWII parables).
If you look at Pav's other postings on this, it's a remarkable dysfunctional chain of this crap. Even when he cites links, not a one supports his claims. For example:
[Pav:] Right.
This post contains Pav's defective arguments in a nutshell. It's just a story about the Ukrainian Prime Minister whining about his allies' statements with counterwhining from sources associated with the allies. What we actually had been speaking about at that point in the thread was violence, psychopaths, and corrupt oligarchs, none of which found their way into Pav's source.
Here's another example. MSNBC gets photobombed (they showed uncritically neo-nazi symbols on the uniforms of the soldiers involved in the video) by the Azov Battallion, which a genuine neo-nazi military unit in the Ukrainian military. So what? This is far from the first time covert product placement has been a thing in military news.
Another example is a blogger link from this post. It's just a few pages of pulling stuff out of the author's ass confidently. For example:
Ukraine’s President Zelensky told visiting US Senators in early June that the country’s military defense against Russia and the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline are inextricably intertwined.
Once the project is completed, Ukraine will be deprived of the funds required to fund defense spending and defend Europe’s eastern border.
“Nord Stream 2 will cut Ukraine off from gas supplies, which will cost us at least USD 3 billion per year.”
Zelensky, always the joker, wants Russia to pay $3 billion per year so he personally can defend Europe from Russia who is paying him.
Notice how the author smoothly transitions from a fact - that Zelensky stated that closing a particular pipeline would cost the Ukraine a lot of money - to the unsubstantiated claim that Zelensky then wants Russia to pay for it. This is then further logically mangled into the idea that it somehow explains the Ukraine-Russian friction we're seeing now.
Zelensky’s Ukraine is shuffling Europe, NATO, and the US closer and closer to the line where one mistake in diplomacy, one stupid move by any of Ukraine’s infamous Neanderthal nationalist volunteers, and bang!
Let us further note that such infamy is only on the Russian supporters side. Somehow everyone else has come to grips with the reality that there's a small number of fascists/neo-nazis in the Ukraine military. My favorite quote of this batch:
In response to this, Ukraine mobilized over ½ its army or over 170,000 troops to the frontline with all the heavy weapons at its disposal accompanying them.
This force was a supposed counter to the Russian invasion army, which again, was just over the border.
In reality, the Russian army staged planned war games near the city of Yelnya, 160 miles (257 kilometers) from the Ukrainian border. You read that right, the Russian army was160 miles away from the Ukrainian border even though every major western publication made it sound like they were already in Kiev.
As I noted at the time, now those "war games" are inside the borders of the Ukraine. Looks like the Ukraine was right on that one!
While I didn't say it at the time, if the author is so horribly wrong about the "war games" and the infamy of Ukrainian troops what else is he horribly wrong about? This isn't the alternate media source I'm looking for.
Then there's the king of one liner putdowns:
[fustakrakich:] "Your" take is just mass media propaganda. Nobody wants war but the US
And yet we see Russia making those aggressive moves towards war. It also furthers the propaganda narrative that this is merely a showdown between Russia and US with Ukraine interests being completely irrelevant.
Also that Runaway journal was about some academic blaming the US or possibly the Western world for the conflict. At one point Runaway claimed:
[Runaway1956:] You didn't listen to the man, did ya? The "west" engineered that coup. Mearsheimer doesn't say so, but I'm aware that the Koch brothers were prime movers in the coup. We quite literally backed fascists and neo-Nazis in the coup.
In other words, there was no support for Runaway's assertion there from his source. In fact, I've googled this subject a bit and never found Runaway linking to a source for the Koch brothers accusation - though if he had, I would have stated that it shows good taste in revolutions on their part.
Anyway, I think this illustrates some of the weirder failures of the pro-Russian side in this conflict. Namely, obsessing over sources of evidence rather than the evidence itself. But given how unflattering that evidence is, maybe this is the best they can do?
All I can say is that it's probably a lot safer to complain about media bias than to defend Putin only to have him stab you in the back a few weeks later. But it begs the question: why is imaginary CIA/MIC involvement enough to completely torpedo a media source, but not being horribly wrong and/or irrelevant?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24 2022, @06:14AM (11 children)
Oh look, Vladimir Putin has new cock holster.
If Russia was just taking out air defenses in Ukraine and invading two small provinces, they wouldn't be sending tanks into Ukraine from Belarus. Troops entering northern Ukraine from Belarus aren't going to those two provinces in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv is very close to the Belarusian border, however. Sending ground troops in from Belarus is exactly what you would do if you're planning to invade Kyiv.
Don't insult everyone's intelligence with this bullshit. Stop making excuses for Putin's war of aggression. It was wrong when the US invaded Iraq under false pretenses. It's wrong when Putin pulls this same shit with Ukraine. It's blatantly obvious that Putin has zero intent of stopping after invading a small portion of Ukraine. He clearly intends to invade the entirety of Ukraine and take out the legitimate government, particularly after falsely accusing the Ukrainian government of being Nazis. How many tens of thousands of people have to die to satisfy Putin's aggression?
Stop repeating the Russian propaganda you get from RT and think for yourself. This isn't about attacking the source because of who the source is, but about attacking the source because its claims just aren't supported by the evidence. Again, if Russia was only invading two provinces, they wouldn't be sending troops in from Belarus. There's also the issue of Russia interfering with the election in Belarus to ensure they would be friendly to Russia, which violated the sovereignty of Belarus.
Had you been alive at the time, you would have also denied that the events of September 1, 1939 were a big deal.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 24 2022, @06:36AM (10 children)
Wow, ari. I didn't realize that you're also a military genius.
Tanks coming in from Belarus? Citations needed. I've been watching the news for hours now, and there hasn't been any mention of ground forces coming in from Belarus. When I see something that resembles a credible citation, I'll take it into account.
Right back at you. Military depots around Kiev seem to have been targeted with missiles, and maybe by Russian air. If you're invading, are you going to leave the enemy's depots intact, to be used against you later?
Maybe. On the other hand, Putin probably learned some lessons from Afghanistan. Lessons that we failed to learn . . .
That's not bad advice. You might take your own advice. Stop repeating US propaganda, and think for yourself. Russia can probably take most all of Ukraine. Russia can't keep much of Ukraine, outside of those areas that are predominantly Russian. The Donbass region, basically. I expect that Russia is going to take everything from Odessa up to Kharkiv, then negotiate terms. After action negotiations will give about half of that territory back, because Russia won't want to occupy all of that hostile territory.
How's that for thinking for myself? You want to try it now?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24 2022, @07:01AM (9 children)
You lost credibility when you accused me of being aristarchus. Yes, he's posting lots of spam and he ran lots of sock puppets. I've condemned him plenty of times for his sock puppets and his harassment. Lots of people think you're a jackass, not just aristarchus/ Let's be clear here; aristarchus is delusional and has a dangerous obsession with this site.
Do you know much about European history? No two situations are identical, but I think there are legitimate parallels to the events preceding WWII. Yes, my comment about September 1, 1939 was somewhat hyperbolic. It's probably more accurate to compare this to Germany annexing the Sudetenland. Hitler claimed that he was supporting the rights of Germans in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, that they were being oppressed, and that the Sudetenland should be returned to Germany. At the time, Czechoslovakia was allied with France and the Soviet Union, so the relationships were stronger than the more informal support of Ukraine by NATO. But the general sentiment was that France had no interest in risking war, so Hitler assumed they wouldn't use force. Hitler was right, that he would get away with annexing the Sudetenland because the other European powers wanted to avoid direct war with Germany.
Russia rigged the 2020 election in Belarus, so Belarus is effectively a puppet for Russia at this point. Russia annexed Crimea and is now intent on annexing at least part of Ukraine. Like I said, your statement about Putin stopping at the two provinces in eastern Ukraine isn't supported by the tanks crossing into Ukraine from Belarus. More likely, those tanks are headed for Kyiv, probably with more Russian ground forces.
There are never perfect analogues to historical events, but my point is that appeasement doesn't work against aggressive expansionism. It's also the same thing khallow told you, and he's right.
Those two provinces in eastern Ukraine sound a lot like the Sudetenland. But we'd be fools to assume that Putin has any intention of stopping there.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 24 2022, @07:23AM (8 children)
Maybe. All you ACs look alike, how can I tell you apart?
As for appeasement, yeah, Russia has figured out that appeasing NATO won't get them anywhere.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24 2022, @07:53AM (4 children)
Report his ass to the police. Seriously, aristarchus seems to have an obsession with this site, and specifically with you. If he was going to back down and chill out, I expect he'd have done so long ago. As I see it, he's stalking and harassing you. You should report him to the police and get it over with. I'm sick and tired of his spam and his harassment, but I think the only way he's going to stop is if the police get involved.
NATO has its issues, sure. But that doesn't justify Russia's actions. You've not addressed most of what I've said, somewhat dismissing it with a one-line response. NATO isn't stealing elections in eastern Europe, nor are they invading other countries. Russia is the aggressor here.
The US invaded Iraq under false pretenses in 2003. It was wrong when the US did it. Putin is doing the same thing here, invading Ukraine under false pretenses. The US had no business invading Iraq back in 2003, and Russia has zero business invading Ukraine 19 years later. Two wrongs don't make a right. The US was the aggressor in Iraq when they invaded in 2003, and there was zero justification for the invasion. They fabricated evidence and lied, a massive stain on the legacy of the late Colin Powell. Russia is doing exactly the same thing here, and it's no more justified than when the US did it.
My issue with you is that you seem to be inconsistent. You rightly criticize the US for its expansionism, but I don't see you criticizing Putin for doing the same thing in Russia.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 24 2022, @08:02AM (3 children)
OK, you're definitely not ari - you're sounding far too reasonable.
Hmmmm. At the core of Russia's complaints, is the fact that NATO moves closer an closer to Moscow. That isn't a false pretense, NATO is getting closer and closer. Ukraine is already in possession of NATO weapons. Ukraine wants to be part of NATO. Ukraine is actually, for real, persecuting Russian ethnic people in Ukraine, has been for years. Russia feels threatened. That's not a false pretense.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24 2022, @08:36AM
Finally, a rational discussion about aristarchus, and how somebody ought to report a 2400 year old Greek astronomer and philosopher to the police, for suggesting that Runaway is a real person, and a clear and present danger to the US, with his radical right wing nuttery, and traitorious support of the Putin dictatorship in the Former Soviet Union. But, you know, as much as aristarchus may annoy you, or the ignorant moron, Runaway1956, he as his facts straight, and he knows his history, having lived through much of it. So I suggest you just shut the fuck up, and submit to your superiors in matters of knowledge. Or, you can be friends with Redneck Hillbilly ignoranmouses like Runaway1956.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday February 24 2022, @10:11AM (1 child)
So what? Russia waived its right to care. This invasion is precisely why NATO is getting closer and closer. Russia's neighbors are looking for protection from the beast.
This sort of statement goes back to my complaints about elevating sources over facts. Nobody, including Russia, has ever bothered to show that there is genuine persecution of Russian ethnic people, much less to a degree that warrants invasion. It's just a grab for land, which may well end up with all of Ukraine under Russian control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 25 2022, @06:13PM
Are they persecuting them like Putin is doing to the Russian protesters?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24 2022, @08:28PM
All you Quislings think alike.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24 2022, @08:42PM
Quisling1956 is channeling Neville Chamberlain.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 25 2022, @10:00AM
Admit it, Runsaway, all AC's look like Ari to you now, and you are afraid, very afraid. And you have no more credibility (not that you ever had much!).