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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: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24 2022, @09:04PM (5 children)
I'm the AC you replied to last night. I see that aristarchus took the opportunity to reply and say nothing of value.
As I see it, you're a fool. You're essentially taking Putin at his word. He's already shown he can't be trusted. In the preceding weeks, he claimed that all the troops near Ukraine's border and in Belarus were just military exercises. He claimed that the military exercises were ending and that the troops were returning home. That's totally not what happened, and many of those troops are now attacking Ukraine. If Putin had told the truth, those troops would not be invading Ukraine right now.
Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. They interfered in Belarus' election in 2020 to keep pro-Russian leaders in power, effectively making Belarus a puppet country for Putin. Even if Putin were to stop at the Donbass region right now, why would you trust he's going to be satisfied? What makes you think he won't decide to just invade the rest of Ukraine a bit later?
As I've said in other posts, the Sudetenland is a pretty good historical precedent for what's happening here. Hitler had already annexed Austria. He then annexed the Sudetenland in 1938. Czechoslovakia wasn't welcome to participate in the conference that produced the Munich Agreement, but they were pressured by their allies into accepting the agreement. The Munich Agreement effectively forced Czechoslovakia to give the Sudetenland to Germany, in exchange for a promise that Hitler would stop seizing territory. In Czechoslovakia, the agreement was referred to as the Munich Betrayal, because they were sacrificed to Germany to appease Hitler. The agreement lasted until March of 1939, when Hitler ordered the invasion of the rest of Czechoslovakia.
Assuming Putin will stop at the Donbass region is like trusting Hitler to stop with the Sudetenland. Even if he stops for now with Donbass, what makes you think he won't take the rest of Ukraine later? If he gets away with that, what makes you think he won't decide to attack Poland, or Lithuania later to directly connect Kaliningrad with the rest of Russia? For that matter, what makes you think he wouldn't try to annex Latvia and Estonia as well? Maybe you think Putin wouldn't attack the Baltic States because they are NATO members, but NATO has shown weakness in responding to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That might embolden him to try directly attacking NATO members. Can the Baltic States really trust that NATO will aid them if Russia attacks?
I say that you're a fool because you're ignoring history. Sure, it would be nice if Putin honored his agreements, but history shows that appeasement doesn't work. Putin already thinks he's in a position of strength because NATO isn't directly engaging Russia in combat, and he believes the risk of a Russian nuclear strike is sufficient deterrent.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 24 2022, @09:43PM (4 children)
You may be right. Putin may be repeating history. I don't think so. Russia has been advancing the same concerns for years now - they don't want NATO with all their arms sitting on their very doorstep, less than 500 miles from Moscow. I believe that when Russia has the Donbass for a buffer, they'll calm down. If/when Ukraine applies for membership in NATO, they may get riled up again - but probably not invade again.
Time will tell. But I think it a mistake to confuse Putin with Hitler. Putin isn't advancing the theory of a master race. He hasn't organized a Putin Youth movement, nor has he directed the women in his nation to only marry Russian Supermen. There is no Nietzsche publishing fairy tales about the origins of the Ubermenschen, and all the lesser races.
Meanwhile, most of the other states that Putin might want to annex are already members of NATO. If he should attack any of them, then our response seems to be pretty clear - we attack to defend them. Putin knows that as well as you or I.
Ukraine is unique among eastern Russian nations, at this moment in time. Ukraine played their cards, and they don't have a winning hand. It sucks, but they chose to play the game. Now, they'll take their lumps.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Magic Oddball on Thursday February 24 2022, @11:08PM (3 children)
There's an interesting article on the "it's all about NATO" theory that you might want to read:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/02/putin-war-is-not-about-nato.html [slate.com]
Reportedly, Russia did little more than grumble a bit during the waves of NATO expansion, including when Ukraine first started asking to join in the late 90s; it didn't react with anti-Western rhetoric, threats, or invasions of its neighbors. There's also that NATO members' refusal to accept countries with territorial disputes means that there was virtually no chance of the Ukraine being allowed in after Russia began targeting it back in 2014, so that doesn't really make sense as a reason to invade.
Putin's aggression instead has reliably been in response to nearby countries ditching authoritarian corrupt pro-Russian governments in favor of democracy:
I think that considering how aggressive Putin has been about silencing criticism of the Russian government within his own country, the above theory makes a lot of sense.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 24 2022, @11:16PM (2 children)
I thought that Ukraine officially asked for membership in NATO in 2008, but NATO didn't act on the request. I have little idea why no action was taken at that time, the disputed border problem came later, right?
The color revolutions - do you mean they weren't instigated by the West? We certainly gave them a lot of tacit approval and support, if not explicit.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 25 2022, @03:18AM
Sounds like there might be something wrong with that narrative! I think the key is the delusion that the West somehow has a magical talent in instigating a large number [wikipedia.org] of such successful revolutions with considerable public turnout and support.
It's like the British Empire blaming the US revolution on the machinations of the French. Clearly it wouldn't have happened if the French hadn't instigated the whole thing! I guess it's better than acknowledging that someone elsewhere in the world doesn't prefer your government!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 25 2022, @03:26AM