Comment by EGreg
Comment by EGreg 3 days ago
[flagged]
Comment by EGreg 3 days ago
[flagged]
Western media has full control over information and if Ukrainians would do something like this, no one would even know.
There were multiple cases of Ukrainians doing something evil or borderline evil that were swept under the rug. One of the recent examples is the cassette munition explosion over a beach in Sevastopol, which killed few children and wounded a hundred of people. I stopped following the war closely but it got my attention because that's my home town. And in this case I even agree that the rocket wasn't specifically targeting the beach (that would be stupid), it was likely targeting the nearby airbase; but that's not the point.The point is that every single time something like this happens, it gets silenced.
There are multiple high-quality videos of the explosion recorded from different angles. On Reddit, a high-quality video of an even like this, surreal and frightening, would otherwise have been upvoted to skies. But not when it puts Ukrainians in bad light! One the next day, as a random Reddit user, you'd never even know about this event (I wonder how many people know about this at all).
And again, this is just one example. I can probably collect few hundreds of cases likes this over the first two years of the war, where as a Western media consumer you would never know about something that could potentially change your opinion on the conflict. And just like this, you're being manipulated. Of course, so are the Russians who solely rely on Russian news sources. The only way to know the truth is to follow both sides closely, especially to what each side hides and silences. You'd be surprised.
> Western media has full control over information and if Ukrainians would do something like this, no one would even know
I'm not inclined to believe that, but even so Russia would scream it off the rooftops if there were the slightest chance that it would affect anything. Unfortunately it'd be lost in the flood of lies that they spout daily. At least western media seems to be mostly silent on things they can't be at least marginally truthful on (presumably because they have no need to be, I guess media in Ukraine is a bit more biased).
Why would that specific video be up-voted into the skies? It's just another piece of misery porn and we had at least 2 years of that on almost daily basis at that point.
The point is that every single time something like this happens, it gets silenced.
Except it doesn't. Stuff like this gets reported all the time (for exactly what it is), also when Ukrainians do it. Like the EW-intercepted drone that hit that apartment outside Moscow, killing (according to local reports) someone inside. Even RFE/RL reported it.
Not every single incident of course -- but they do get reported, very frequently.
People tend not to dwell on it, of course -- because they know these things are bound to happen to some degree (and anyone with more than a completely casual understanding of WW II knows that inadvertent civilian casualties, even in allied countries, were extremely high). And that there are far too many perfectly deliberate atrocities happening, and at far greater scale (and except for a few isolated cases, all coming not so coincidentally from one side). And because they understand the far bigger point, which is that at the end of the day, the war (and all the suffering that will be required to end it) is Putin's fault anyway.
But that's very different from the simple matter of these events being "silenced". Because plainly they're not. The reason they don't get more column inches or newsroom chatter is because, by any level-headed analysis -- they just don't deserve any.
And attempting to describe the state of affairs that way, when clearly it isn't, is well -- manipulative.
I think the one thing that I think completely turns me off this logic is that it’s only proponents seem to be the ones that feel like it’s fine for Russia to keep what it’s unlawfully taken.
Sure, there’s a bunch of drone footage of Ukraine dropping shit on barely moving Russian soldiers, but I’m not sure if that’s an indictment of Russia or Ukraine.
which has now escalated into 1 million dead in Ukraine
So mere hours after appearing in the WSJ, "1M are now dead or injured (but actually about 80k Ukrainian, 200k Russian dead)"[0] is being misquoted as simply "1M dead", and not so coincidentally in tandem with another misconception (that gets repeated on HN almost daily it seems):
when it could have been resolved w Minsk Accords or anything negotiated in Normandy or Turkey since then.
"Could have been resolved", that is, by granting to Putin permanent sovereignty over whatever territories he happened to be sitting on at the time, if not then some, and other non-viable concessions (with no guarantees that they would even work to stop him from simply grabbing more land and/or just keep bombing Ukrainian cities whenever it might suit his fancy):
Fair enough, I was inaccurate in saying 1M dead, should have said “dead or injured”.
However, you are WILDLY inaccurate suggesting that the Minsk agreements would have ”granted to Putin permanent sovereingty over” Donbas. He was not “sitting over it”. The entire Donbas would have been an autonomous part of Ukraine. Kyiv officials didnt want to grant this autonomy, but more importantly, Angela Merkel admitted the West cynically “used the peace agreemnys to buy time and arm Ukraine!”
https://www.news18.com/amp/news/world/ukraine-war-merkel-say...
Now you may say that “Russia would have kept Crimea and that is why Ukraine must fight to the last Ukrainian to return it” but you don’t know the history of Crimea.
The vast majority (94%) voted to be independent of Ukraine every chance they got, starting in 1991, 1992, etc
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Crimean_sovereignty_ref...
They put it in their constitution in 1992
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Crimean_constitution
and referendums showed strong desire to be independent of Ukraine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Crimean_referendum
and they only agreed to be part of Ukraine if guaranteed autonomy (and Russia agreed to recognize it on that basis). After that, though, Ukraine broke the agreement, invaded Crimea with 4000 troops in the 90s, arrested their leaders, forced them to change their constitution, etc. But they got to keep Crimea anyway with not a peep from the “democratic West” (cause the West is biased):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Crimea_(1991%E2%80%...
Crimea has been an unwilling hostage to Ukraine but if Ukraine is doing it then it’s OK because the West never reports on it…
I mean heck, NATO integration was wildly unpopular among the Ukrainian public, it was only happening because Yuschenko was an unpopular stooge who was ramming it through anyway, since Bush vowed that Ukraine and Georgia would be in NATO:
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2010/03/29/ukraine-says-n...
https://news.gallup.com/poll/127094/ukrainians-likely-suppor...
And that was still the case years later
https://news.gallup.com/poll/167927/crisis-ukrainians-likely...
But Bush was vowing to get Ukraine and Georgia into NATO anyway, obviouly to flip Russia’s “red lines” neighbors against them, a sort of reverse Cuban missile crisis: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-ukraine-bush/bush-vo...
This came to a head in 2008 with Georgia when Medvedev - not Putin - was president. The war had the same EXACT elements: two breakaway Georgian republics (Abhazia and Ossetia) being shelled by Mikhail Saaakashvili hoping to be in NATO. They asked Russia for help. Russia invaded with tanks going to the capitol.
The difference is that it was over in a week because Nikolas Sarkozy (the French President at the time) negotiated a peace agreement. Georgia is fine now, I’ve been there. (Saakashvili is in Georgian jail now btw.) Abhazia and Ossetia are not just fine, they’re happy to not be under Georgian hegemony. Imagine that. The matreshka doll of self determination can go more than 1 level deep, which the West and NATO knows really well in the case of Kosovo. (But it’s an “exception” of course, cause it’s them doing it.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_independence_preceden...
Anyway, that is the outcome you are told to “fear”. Russia didn’t go on to annex Georgia, or further, emboldened. They reacted to stated NATO expansion, and shelling of people on their border who asked them for help. They asked the government to cut it out, then intimidated them with tanks. If they backed down and stopped oppressing the two breakaway republics (same as Serbia and Kosovar Albanians) then they stopped also. It’s a valid approach and results in more peace for everyone.
And in fact, in the 2022 invasion, the role of Nikolas Sarkozy was played to the T by Israeli PM Naftali Bennett. He says in a tell-all interview that he was negotiating with Putin and Zelensky directly and could have had the war halted a mere 1-2 weeks in. But he was specifically told by the Western leaders to stand down and let it play out. That “Putin was not to be negotiated with, he was to be defeated.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yma0LxyVVs
So much for “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine”. Actually, the war must go on, so we can weaken Russia. Ukraine is the new Afghanistan (mujahideen, stinger missiles, a decade leaving 2 million dead civilians).
====
Speaking of the casualties:
If you want to go by official UN casualty numbers, this war has the SMALLEST civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios I have ever seen (something like 20 militants to 1 civilian!). Both sides want to avoid killing civilians, likely because 11 million Russians have relatives in Ukraine and vice versa.
By contrast, the urban warfare in Gaza has (in my estimation) a 4 civilians to 1 militant ratio, while the worldwide historica average is 9 civilians to 1 militant.
But militants are people too, especially if they are regular men being grabbed off the street and conscripted against their will. As a man, I understand that men are expendable in war, but as a libertarian, I have to count those deaths as involuntary in most cases.
The longer this goes on, the longer the Ukrainian nation is decimated. The women are abroad, the men can’t leave. The young women end up marrying successful foreigners. I know, I see them all over the place in USA, Canada etc. The children are half-Ukrainian. It’s not only that the men are being killed, but Zelensky’s war and policies of forcing the men to fight are reducing the Ukrainian nation as a while. If he allowed the men of Ukraine a choice, most would opt out of this war, even preferring to leave Ukraine than be drafted.
That’s why I am against wars as a libertarian. It’s politicians deliberately failing to avert a conflict, and the plebs have to pay the price while the politicians get rich and give speeches about how “we must all sacrifice”. Somehow the talking heads on TV never get drafted either!
> by granting to Putin permanent sovereignty over whatever territories he happened to be sitting on at the time
I think the one thing I can agree with is that it’s debatable whether it’s ultimately worth it. Is Putin’s Russia so much worse that it’s worth 80k deaths to prevent it becoming reality in those regions currently occupied?
It's a bit silly to think the Ukrainians would do something like this, because any such thing would instantly lose them the war as all western support is withdrawn.
Russia meanwhile... they just seem like they want to see the world burn. Given the fact they're fighting using convicted criminals, it doesn't seem all that far fetched.