If you really wanna go - alive or dead my friend

[Mimi]

The family in Slovakia has some broad opinions on the matter. They share a small portion of their eastern border with Ukraine. I'm aware that they are quite worried about the situation. I think the older generation is generally wary of Russia, though their views on communism are pretty mixed. One of my mid-20s male cousins who has shared a lot of anti-vax stuff has unsurprisingly shared semi-pro Russian stuff. The stuff itself doesn't seem so bad, but the people who he is sharing have some very pro-Russian stuff. Here's an excerpt (not what a cousin shared, but something else from someone he did share): "The US and Great Britain are calling for war, not Russia, which they pushed into a corner, which had no where to retreat. People in Slovakia must also realize this, that in the case of Ukraine, the main aggressor is the Ukrainian puppet regime controlled by the USA. Also, people need to realize that by supporting this Ukrainian dictatorial regime they become supporters and advocates of neo-nazism and ethnic cleansing."

(This is all via auto translation apps and some of the stuff I have to manually translate (like images with text on it).

I remember, growing up in the 70s and 80s, that if you ever said anything positive about Russia you were automatically branded a Pinko. It's amazing to see the turn-around.

[Dr. Medulla]

The family in Slovakia has some broad opinions on the matter. They share a small portion of their eastern border with Ukraine. I'm aware that they are quite worried about the situation. I think the older generation is generally wary of Russia, though their views on communism are pretty mixed. One of my mid-20s male cousins who has shared a lot of anti-vax stuff has unsurprisingly shared semi-pro Russian stuff. The stuff itself doesn't seem so bad, but the people who he is sharing have some very pro-Russian stuff. Here's an excerpt (not what a cousin shared, but something else from someone he did share): "The US and Great Britain are calling for war, not Russia, which they pushed into a corner, which had no where to retreat. People in Slovakia must also realize this, that in the case of Ukraine, the main aggressor is the Ukrainian puppet regime controlled by the USA. Also, people need to realize that by supporting this Ukrainian dictatorial regime they become supporters and advocates of neo-nazism and ethnic cleansing."

(This is all via auto translation apps and some of the stuff I have to manually translate (like images with text on it).

I remember, growing up in the 70s and 80s, that if you ever said anything positive about Russia you were automatically branded a Pinko. It's amazing to see the turn-around.

On so many things, the alt-right (well, really, the right) has become a doppelganger of the New Left of the late 60s, early 70s.

[motorsmell]

The biggest losers in war are the working class...they die in it, fight in it and pay for it...all for the greed of rich maniacs that should be serving those very people.


Go easy, step lightly...stay free.

[Sparky]

I came across this video of a Ukrainian father having to say goodbye to his young daughter as she's evacuated and he stays behind to battle Russian troops.

I challenge you to watch this and not shed a tear for those poor people whose lives are being completely upended by this unprovoked Russian aggression.

[Spiff]

The biggest losers in war are the working class...they die in it, fight in it and pay for it...all for the greed of rich maniacs that should be serving those very people.


Go easy, step lightly...stay free.

Yes, but especially women and children, whom every army ever in history has proclaimed to be fighting to protect.

[Spiff]

I came across this video of a Ukrainian father having to say goodbye to his young daughter as she's evacuated and he stays behind to battle Russian troops.

I challenge you to watch this and not shed a tear for those poor people whose lives are being completely upended by this unprovoked Russian aggression.

Do yourself a favour and don't watch FOX News war coverage ...

[Sparky]

I came across this video of a Ukrainian father having to say goodbye to his young daughter as she's evacuated and he stays behind to battle Russian troops.

I challenge you to watch this and not shed a tear for those poor people whose lives are being completely upended by this unprovoked Russian aggression.

Do yourself a favour and don't watch FOX News war coverage ...

No Faux "news", OAN or Facebook in my household, thank you.

[Marky Dread]

There are no winners in any war ever. As soon as one human being is killed then everyone loses.

[revbob]

The biggest losers in war are the working class...they die in it, fight in it and pay for it...all for the greed of rich maniacs that should be serving those very people.


Go easy, step lightly...stay free.

Well said

[BostonBeaneater]

Well look at you Ukraine, out there fucking up totalitarian bingo cards.

[Howard Beale]

Hey guys, HB here (formerly Raging Bull on the pre-crash board). It's, uh...been a minute since I posted. I drifted away some years back, not for any real intentional reason other than life just gets in the way, but more recently I've become a (very) occasional lurker. I felt compelled to post on this thread because, well, y'know, situations that could mushroom into World War III are kind of important for people to have conversations about and I had some thoughts that I haven't really seen expressed anywhere here. Feel free to disagree (obviously).

Let me just preface my comments with this: the most important thing I want to impart is that my heart goes out to those of you who mentioned that you have friends or family in Ukraine and I very much hope they stay safe, and that you are able to have some peace of mind about their well-being in the face of this ongoing situation sooner rather than later.



Okay, on to the messy stuff...

The family in Slovakia has some broad opinions on the matter. They share a small portion of their eastern border with Ukraine. I'm aware that they are quite worried about the situation. I think the older generation is generally wary of Russia, though their views on communism are pretty mixed. One of my mid-20s male cousins who has shared a lot of anti-vax stuff has unsurprisingly shared semi-pro Russian stuff. The stuff itself doesn't seem so bad, but the people who he is sharing have some very pro-Russian stuff. Here's an excerpt (not what a cousin shared, but something else from someone he did share): "The US and Great Britain are calling for war, not Russia, which they pushed into a corner, which had no where to retreat. People in Slovakia must also realize this, that in the case of Ukraine, the main aggressor is the Ukrainian puppet regime controlled by the US. Also, people need to realize that by supporting this Ukrainian dictatorial regime they become supporters and advocates of neo-nazism and ethnic cleansing."

(This is all via auto translation apps and some of the stuff I have to manually translate (like images with text on it).

The thing is, whether or not this guy is also some crazy QAnon guy, his take here is actually pretty spot-on. The blatantly false claim being made repeatedly in the corporate media that this military action is just some kind of totally-out-of-the-blue shocker rests on the idea that this happened in a vacuum, which it absolutely did not. This view willfully ignores (at least) three very major factors...

A) The Maidan Coup: This war didn't just suddenly begin this week—if anything, this is Russia taking a decisive step toward ending a conflict that the US created with their 2014 coup in Ukraine. This isn't some conspiracy theory—we even have a smoking-gun leaked phone call between then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland (now Joe Biden's Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs) and then-US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt openly discussing who they're going to put in power after overthrowing Ukraine's democratically-elected government.

Just as it has done in Central America, the Middle East and North Africa, the US government then achieves these ends by backing the worst and most violent extremist elements (oh, sorry, I mean "moderate rebels") to act as muscle in the country whose government they're trying to overthrow this week. Which in the case of Ukraine, meant far-right neo-Nazi militias, the most notorious of which is the Azov Battalion (which has since been fully and officially incorporated into the Ukrainian military). Ukrainian neo-Nazi crimes committed against ethnic Russians include—but are by no means limited to—burning them alive, strangling or beating them to death with baseball bats in the streets of Odessa in broad daylight and murdering dozens of children.



The US now feigning concern over Ukraine's sovereignty would be laughable if it wasn't so disgusting. Since 2014, Ukraine hasn't been a country, it's been a hollowed-out client state with a puppet government and a Nazi-infested military that serves as a proxy for the US in it's escalating brinkmanship with Russia—and at least 14,000 people in Ukraine have been killed as a result.





B) NATO: The press seems to be doing all they can to minimize the role NATO played in the lead-up to all this, but it's certainly key to contextualizing how we got here. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and upon the reunification of Germany, Russia was given the impression by Western powers that NATO would not be further expanded east of Germany (Gorbachev has made several statements to this effect over the years). While there wasn't a formal written agreement, it was understood by the West that Russia would view continued NATO expansion eastward—not unreasonably, mind you—as a very real cause for concern. Nevertheless, since 1991 NATO has added 14 new member states, ALL of which are east of Germany, 5 of which are right on Russia's border. It is not unreasonable for Russia to have sought some kind of security guarantee in the midst of all this, especially as there began to be talk of admitting a country that the US had just fomented extremist anti-Russian sentiment in.

Here's a 2015 Chomsky interview that's been making the rounds the past couple days that's germane to all this...





C) Provocation (on the part of the US, not Russia): It's ludicrous to characterize what we're seeing now as "unprovoked Russian aggression." First off, if Putin was really the war-hungry 21st Century Genghis Khan that he's being painted as, why did he not take this action eight years ago when the US did the coup in Ukraine, or at any point in the meantime up until right now? He's arguably shown great restraint as civilians were shelled day in and day out and slaughtered by neo-Nazis in Donbass. He has sought a peaceful solution through diplomatic means for eight years now, and at every turn, the US has told him to go fuck himself. He sought an answer and some sort of security guarantee with regard to Ukraine membership in NATO. He fought for the Minsk Peace Accords to be implemented and actually followed, which would have included an immediate ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weaponry and equipment, release of POWs, monitoring by the OSCE, humanitarian aid; plus elections, constitutional reform and dialogue on interim self-government for Donetsk and Luhansk. Again, all of these attempts at negotiating a peaceful solution were rebuffed—for eight years. All the while, the US was pouring more than 650 tons(!) of "lethal aid" into Ukraine and using its most vulnerable citizens as expendable pawns in their Imperialist chess game—not to mention putting a blockade on them, which, given what they were already experiencing, was unspeakably sadistic.



Ukraine isn't even the whole story with regard to US provocation toward Russia. Kazakhstan is another country on Russia's border—and is yet another country that experienced a "Colour Revolution" that happened to be bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA front. Another country on Russia's border? Belarus, who had an election in 2020 in which they re-elected their president, Alexander Lukashenko, to a sixth term. The US was not pleased with this outcome, as Lukashenko is a holdover from the Soviet era and they would've much preferred to have his opponent Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the kind of standard-issue politician in the Neoliberal mold that the US would ideally like to install in every country, as their pointwoman in Belarus. Their solution? You guessed it—NDA-funded Colour Revolution!

Having concerns about various countries that you share a border with being destabilized by the US while NATO spends three decades expanding to your doorstep and essentially surrounding you does not make Russia crazy or paranoid. We could certainly talk about Putin being crazy and paranoid in other contexts in relation to other issues, but Russia has not been the bad actor with regard to this particular issue. The US wanted to force his hand and kept poking and prodding him to make that happen. But don't take my word for it—just ask former US Ambassador to Russia (and current CIA Director) William Burns, who, thanks to Wikileaks, we now know predicted all of this back in '08



Now, is Vladimir Putin a bad guy? Uh, yeah. Duh. Most leaders on the world stage are bad guys, nearly all of whom have an amount of blood on their hands that is unfathomable to the mind of any decent, non-murdering human being—whether that blood was accumulated through presiding over drone programs, coup d'états, wars or having journalists and dissidents whacked. Debating if Putin is slightly worse than this or that dictator or authoritarian strongman (or US president) in a world run almost exclusively by textbook sociopaths isn't particularly relevant when analyzing current events, the current event at hand being rapidly escalating tensions between the two nations who, between them, hold 90% of the world's nuclear arsenal. My point being, this military invasion into Ukraine is not the result of a bored Putin sitting in the Kremlin war room having a moustache-twirling brainstorming session about how he can further solidify his Marvel supervillain image to the Western world. It's largely the result of years of bad and dangerous decisions on the part of Washington that could get us all killed, and I think that's the most relevant point of discussion here.

To be clear, yes, Putin choosing the military option can certainly be condemned as it is indisputably a violation of international law and Putin did have a couple of other potential options on the table instead of going all in on the most extreme one; and most importantly, as wiser men than myself have put it...

There are no winners in any war ever. As soon as one human being is killed then everyone loses.

War sucks.

THIS. Always, indisputably this. War is war, war is the worst thing human beings do, civilians will die, have died, and there's certainly no whitewashing or minimizing how horrific that is. Blood of the innocents killed in war is always on the hands of the one who authorized war.

Ukraine getting the imperial conquest treatment from a kleptocratic capitalist authoritatian with delusions of resurgent empire.

Okay, wouldn't this be a much more apt description of the US during the 2014 coup? Putin said in that speech that the goal is the "demilitarization and denazification" of Ukraine. This is not an Imperialist war. This is not a prolonged occupation, an attempt to annex the country as a whole, or even an attempt at regime-change (which would be standard operating procedure for the US), as Putin has made clear that he's fine with Zelensky remaining in power as long as just two demands are met...
1) A guarantee of Ukrainian neutrality (i.e., stop seeking NATO membership)
2) A guarantee to remove all foreign weaponry from Ukraine (i.e., the metric tons of "lethal aid" sent by the US that would be used for continued ethnic cleansing in Donbass)

This military operation will be called off if these two requests are met. Members of Ukrainian parliament have urged Zelensky to agree to these terms, which seems like a no-brainer, especially given the disparity between Ukraine's military capabilities and Russia's.

I came across this video of a Ukrainian father having to say goodbye to his young daughter as she's evacuated and he stays behind to battle Russian troops.

I challenge you to watch this and not shed a tear for those poor people whose lives are being completely upended by this unprovoked Russian aggression.

This is pure, unadulterated propaganda. The video itself is absolutely real, yes, but that is a pro-Russian rebel saying goodbye to his family as the AFU approaches Donbass. The video was originally posted by the mayor of Gorlovka, Ivan Prikhodko. Here's the original post:


Sparky, don't get the wrong impression—this isn't meant as any kind of personal attack on you, I've seen a handful of your posts in my recent visits and you seem like a mensch-and-a-half. I'm not in any way suggesting that you shared that video in bad faith; I would just suggest that everybody vet the sources of the pictures and videos they're seeing right now as the internet is being flooded with misleading or mislabeled footage like that.





Speaking of propaganda—you know, it's funny, when Donald Trump praised Nazis, we were told by the media that it was the end of America as we know it and that our democracy was irreparably damaged for all time. When Barack Obama, then Trump (and now Biden) armed Nazis, the media was completely silent about it and most Americans didn't even seem to notice or care.




The propaganda-fest we've been seeing the past few weeks in the lead-up to all this has been nauseating. We now have the media doing puff pieces on neo-Nazi battalions. It's hard to believe that the reporter didn't know he was hanging out with a neo-Nazi battalion, Azov aren't exactly known to be shrinking violets when it comes to their Nazism. They wear the Wolfsangel symbol of the 2nd SS Panzer Division on their uniforms (as pictured above). They tear down WWII memorials. They got a street in Kyiv named after their idol, Stepan Bandera, a WWII-era Ukrainian Nazi collaborator. A street that, if you follow it all the way through, ends at Babi Yar, the ravine where Nazis massacred over 33,000 Jews on September 29/30, 1941. Even in the midst of this war, they've been defiantly flying their swastika flags as they face off with the Russian military.

We can get into the debates about social media censorship another time, but I also found this to be quite a development—I'm not on Facebook, but as I understand it, they'll ban you if you praise Nazis. Until now, apparently, as they're lifting that policy in order to allow praise for the Azov Battalion. Apparently Nazis are awesome as long as they're Ukrainian Nazis. Good to know! So, the mainstream media and Big Tech are officially and unambiguously pro-Nazi, at least when being pro-Nazi serves Imperialist narratives. That's where we're at currently.



I honestly do not mean for my tone to come across as caustic or dickish to anyone here—I have great affection for the awesome folks in this community and great memories of when I used to post here; and I've always admired the thoughtfulness and political insights of Gene, Flex, Inder, Wolt, Mate, Doc, Spiff, et al (you dudes are all way smarter than me, I got no problem admitting it). It's just been...frustrating for anyone who's followed the events in Ukraine since 2014 getting increasingly nervous about what was unfolding to then see most people have this reductionist, one-dimensional reaction of "Putin bad! Ukraine good!" I mean, granted, it's totally fine for "Putin = bad; innocent civilians in Ukraine = good" to be a part of the discussion, but I think there's more to the story than that; we should be dissecting who and what got us into this absolute clusterfuck to begin with; context and nuance are important here.

It's also problematic to see so many people suddenly have a bleeding heart for Ukrainians (I'm not talking about you guys, I mean on Twitter and such), but no mention—or seemingly, knowledge—of the fact that on the same day that the war started, the US bombed Yemen and Somalia, and Israel bombed Syria. Didn't really see any virtue-signalling hashtags about how those same people are #standingwith the Yemenis, Somalians or Syrians.

Sorry to ramble, but my overall point is just that I don't think the main problem is any one individual despot or whatever, the actual existential threat to all life on this planet is that we have one country that, in the post-Cold War world, feels that it should exert total, unquestioned hegemonic control over absolutely everyone and everything, no matter the human costs of that insane pursuit. It's not a coincidence that the only eight or nine countries that have resisted complete absorption into the sphere of total deference to the American Empire just so happen to be the ones that we are propagandized about non-stop. Such propaganda has, funnily enough, basically created a Cold War Mk II, only this time we've also thrown China into the mix. What I think we've been looking on in horror at the past few days is America's chickens coming to roost once again [see also: the Fall of Saigon, the Iranian Revolution, Iran-Contra, mass refugee crises, 9/11, the failed Venezuelan coup and Juan Guaidó's clownshow "presidency," Assad's victory in the CIA-funded war in Syria, the Fall of Kabul, etc.]. Only this time it's different—the US can absolutely level countries like Libya and Syria without batting an eye, but Russia and China are a very different story. These are nuclear-armed powers, and continuing to engage in these kinds of propaganda/proxy wars with them are a very, very bad idea.

It would be great if the US could learn a lesson from this moment. But it won't.

[Flex]

Howard, welcome back! Long, thoughtful post. Thanks for engaging. Just wanted to acknowledge it, especially since I'm directly quoted in a couple spots, and promise a response in the next day or two. Given the time you put in, I want to make sure I give the respect of a thoughtful and considered response (and I think I'm familiar with most of your sources you cite, but I want to revisit them as well).

In any case, I certainly appreciate you stopping back in. And for the thoughtful dialogue. I think I said this on Twitter the other day, but, y'know, it's not like discussion online I about changing policy or influencing decision makers. Hopefully it's just about considering our own understanding of the world and working to articulate some truth and moral clarity. Appreciate your engagement with, I think, that spirit in mind.

[Dr. Medulla]

I've generally kept my yap shut on this topic because I'm both rather ignorant about the details and my pacifism is a position that *really* doesn't have a lot of breathing space at this moment.

That said, I'm not in a position to offer a meaningful critique of Howard's—welcome back, stranger!—political grenade lobbed into the room (that's not a slam by any means; grenade throwers can be invaluable in a conversation). I will offer, however mildly, that the idea of Ukraine in NATO was always a wretched idea. Go back and read George Kennan's Long Telegram from 1947, where he explained Soviet foreign policy as rooted in the centuries-old Russian fear of invasion and desire for buffer states. Ukraine or the Baltic nations in NATO is placing the rival West right on Russia's doorstep. So I get that and to the degree that I ever thought about NATO's eastward expansion, I thought it a bad idea that was unnecessarily provocative, purposefully or not.

The other thing I'll add, again historically rooted, is that when Germany attacked the Soviet Union and seized Ukraine, they found people very willing to participate in the genocide of Jews. This isn't to declare that all Ukrainians are Nazi sympathizers or antisemites, or that the current regime is Nazi sympathetic, only that there is a historical tie to Nazism that should be appreciated.

[Sparky]

Hi Howard, always open to hearing another perspective, no offense taken whatsoever.

Admittedly, no government is perfect, I think we all can agree on that.

I held off on posting the video for a day to allow me time to Google it a few times to see if there was anymore info on it. Today I searched it again and found a site questioning the origins of it, while others stood by the story, so it may be propaganda, more to come perhaps, but still very sad regardless of which side was having to say goodbye to a child as the father heads off to war.

I can see the similarities between the US being concerned for our safety in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis and Russia being concerned about the possibility of the Ukraine joining NATO today. I think the difference here is the Ukraine and other nations surrounding the former Soviet Union have some very valid reasons to fear Putin. From where I sit the man appears to be extremely evil and prone to making extreme threats, including the use of nuclear weapons, so I can understand the countries surrounding Russia being concerned for their safety to the extent that they would want the backing of a multi nation force such as NATO to ensure they weren't swallowed up by an aggressive neighbor.

I'd prefer it if the nations of our world would somehow learn to peacefully coexist, live and let live, allow each country to do their own thing, provided they're not trampling on any other nations right to peacefully exist. Perhaps that's a naive wish given the politics, egos and greed that seem to be ruling the world today, but I can dream.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Nobody "wins" in a war, both sides will suffer terrible losses.

[Low Down Low]

Loathe to get too deep into it too as don't feel i have the in depth knowledge to dissect things, didn't even think putin would go this far so not had a good handle on it. But will say some of the coverage I'm watching is grim and infuriating, especially when you see a guy interviewed on the bbc weeping because "European people with blue eyes and blonde hair" are being killed and nobody thinks this sentiment is worth challenging in any way.