Ukraine war mega thread

[NamPikToot]

Oh so the Russian Army fired on civilians fleeing Mariupol, after publicly offering them a safe corridor out, not the Azov Nazi's who in fact were the ones to benefit by keeping civilians in Mariupol as human shields.

Did you undergo some kind of Ipcress thingy?

[sabang]

It's been so long since I read that mike, that I have forgotten the storyline. Len Deighton right? Anyway, the TV mini series is in my ever growing 'waiting to watch list'. I'll let you know then.

[sabang]

I don't like her at all P, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Yes, Zelensky is highly corrupt (Pandora papers), a serial Liar, and certainly is in cahoots with thugs- even if he is too wimpish to be one himself. Just because you are rooting for the same side, it does not suddenly transform him into an angel, or a hero. Sorry, life ain't that simple.

[pickel]

Yes, Zelensky is highly corrupt (Pandora papers)

Avoiding a bit of taxes from film company profits. There are a lot of Putins inner circle in the Pandora papers as well, hiding money they stole from the Russian people. You know, actual corruption. You suspiciously fail to be offended by that though.

[sabang]

^ Yes, indeed (re putins lot). The 1.3bn Zelensky has stashed Offshore is from several sources, but prominently from a highly dogy Ukrainian/Israeli/Swiss billionaire who is also the largest individual funder of the Azov brigade, and at least one other far right militia (he was formerly the Governor of Dniep. Province, Ukraine). Go figure. Sorry to rain on your party, but Zelensky is no hero Pickel.

[Reggie]

Zelensky is a dead man walking. The rooskies won't tap him, but the yanks probably will to start a proper war. If he survives that and makes peace with the rooskies, the Nazis will kill him. Thats why he's drunk and smacked out on coke all the time.

[pickel]

The 1.3bn Zelensky has stashed Offshore is from several sources, but prominently from a highly dogy Ukrainian/Israeli/Swiss billionaire who is also the largest individual funder of the Azov brigade, and at least one other far right militia (he was formerly the Governor of Dniep. Province, Ukraine).

An Israeli funding the Azov Battalion? Does he have Jewish space lasers too?

[sabang]

Yes! Of course, he is a Ukrainian Jew- but his other nationalities are also useful for a dodgy billionaire. There are actually Jewish fighters in the Azov brigade too, as I have mentioned previously (hopefully dead by now).

Does he have Jewish space lasers too?

Better still!

[pickel]

There are actually Jewish fighters in the Azov brigade too, as I have mentioned previously (hopefully dead by now).

Don't exactly sound like Nazi's to me. Anyways, I doubt they need Jewish space lasers as they seem to be doing quite well without them, as this video shows.


Soldiers of the Ukrainian regiment "Azov" destroyed a Russian tank in Mariupol. (soldiers seen flying from the tank) : RussiaUkraineWar2022

[sabang]

In this TikTok and propaganda war, invective reigns supreme picky. Personally, in more reasoned discourse I would prefer using the term Far Right, or maybe Fascist. But Azov in particular loves it's Nazi regalia.....

[pickel]

I would prefer using the term Far Right, or maybe Fascist

That describes Putin. And a few posts up, you posted quotes from American Far Right Fascists supporting him.

[sabang]

Sometimes, commies fight commies. Sometimes, fascists fight fascists. Sometimes, christians fight christians. We can't stop muzzies fighting. And so on. Did you have a point?

Einstein said it best. "Why War"?

[pickel]

Sometimes, commies fight commies. Sometimes, fascists fight fascists. Sometimes, christians fight christians. We can't stop muzzies fighting. And so on. Did you have a point?

Einstein said it best. "Why War"?

You justify Putins invasion by repeating his propaganda that it is to clear out the Nazi's, all while cheering on the deaths of Jews defending Ukraine (as you posted above), and quoting a Jew as though you are for peace.

I guess my point is that you are a raving hypocrite.

[sabang]

I quietly celebrate a dead Azov thug, regardless of creed or color- no different with Isis. Saying that the sole reason for the Russian invasion of Ukraine is to 'clear out Nazis' reads well at home of course, but that's all. Several other reasons that I won't labor you with, or repeat ad infinitum. And what is wrong with quoting a wise Jew?

I guess my point is that you are a raving hypocrite.

OK. I guess mine is, you're pretty damn simple.

[pickel]

And what is wrong with quoting a wise Jew?

A pro peace quote preceded by justifying a war, and wishing death to Ukrainian Jews defending their home.

You're a hypocrite. It's that "simple".

[Switch]

Our hypocrisy on war crimes makes a rules-based world, one that abides by international law, impossible.


The branding of Vladimir Putin as a war criminal by Joe Biden, who lobbied for the Iraq war and staunchly supported the 20 years of carnage in the Middle East, is one more example of the hypocritical moral posturing sweeping across the United States. It is unclear how anyone would try Putin for war crimes since Russia, like the United States, does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. But justice is not the point. Politicians like Biden, who do not accept responsibility for our well-documented war crimes, bolster their moral credentials by demonizing their adversaries. They know the chance of Putin facing justice is zero. And they know their chance of facing justice is the same.

We know who our most recent war criminals are, among others: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, General Ricardo Sanchez, former CIA Director George Tenet, former Asst. Atty. Gen. Jay Bybee, former Dep. Asst. Atty. Gen. John Yoo, who set up the legal framework to authorize torture; the helicopter pilots who gunned down civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in the “Collateral Murder” video released by WikiLeaks. We have evidence of the crimes they committed.

But, like Putin’s Russia, those who expose these crimes are silenced and persecuted. Julian Assange, even though he is not a US citizen and his WikiLeaks site is not a US-based publication, is charged under the US Espionage Act for making public numerous US war crimes. Assange, currently housed in a high security prison in London, is fighting a losing battle in the British courts to block his extradition to the United States, where he faces 175 years in prison. One set of rules for Russia, another set of rules for the United States. Weeping crocodile tears for the Russian media, which is being heavily censored by Putin, while ignoring the plight of the most important publisher of our generation speaks volumes about how much the ruling class cares about press freedom and truth.

If we demand justice for Ukrainians, as we should, we must also demand justice for the one million people killed — 400,000 of whom were noncombatants — by our invasions, occupations and aerial assaults in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. We must demand justice for those who were wounded, became sick or died because we destroyed hospitals and infrastructure. We must demand justice for the thousands of soldiers and marines who were killed, and many more who were wounded and are living with lifelong disabilities, in wars launched and sustained on lies. We must demand justice for the 38 million people who have been displaced or become refugees in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria, a number that exceeds the total of all those displaced in all wars since 1900, apart from World War II, according to the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs at Brown University. Tens of millions of people, who had no connection with the attacks of 9/11, were killed, wounded, lost their homes, and saw their lives and their families destroyed because of our war crimes. Who will cry out for them?

Every effort to hold our war criminals accountable has been rebuffed by Congress, by the courts, by the media and by the two ruling political parties. The Center for Constitutional Rights, blocked from bringing cases in US courts against the architects of these preemptive wars, which are defined by post-Nuremberg laws as “criminal wars of aggression,” filed motions in German courts to hold US leaders to account for gross violations of the Geneva Convention, including the sanctioning of torture in black sites such as Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib.

Those who have the power to enforce the rule of law, to hold our war criminals to account, to atone for our war crimes, direct their moral outrage exclusively at Putin’s Russia. "Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime," Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, condemning Russia for attacking civilian sites, including a hospital, three schools and a boarding school for visually impaired children in the Luhansk region of Ukraine. "These incidents join a long list of attacks on civilian, not military locations, across Ukraine," he said. Beth Van Schaack, an ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, will direct the effort at the State Department, Blinkin said, to "help international efforts to investigate war crimes and hold those responsible accountable."

This collective hypocrisy, based on the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves, is accompanied by massive arms shipments to Ukraine. Fueling proxy wars was a specialty of the Cold War. We have returned to the script. If Ukrainians are heroic resistance fighters, what about Iraqis and Afghans, who fought as valiantly and as doggedly against a foreign power that was every bit as savage as Russia? Why weren’t they lionized? Why weren’t sanctions imposed on the United States? Why weren’t those who defended their countries from foreign invasion in the Middle East, including Palestinians under Israeli occupation, also provided with thousands of anti-tank weapons, anti-armor weapons, anti-aircraft weapons, helicopters, Switchblade or “Kamikaze” drones, hundreds of Stinger anti-aircraft systems, Javelin anti-tank missiles, machine guns and millions of rounds of ammunition? Why didn’t Congress rush through a $13.6 billion package to provide military and humanitarian assistance, on top of the $1.2 billion already provided to the Ukrainian military, for them?

Well, we know why. Our war crimes don’t count, and neither do the victims of our war crimes. And this hypocrisy makes a rules-based world, one that abides by international law, impossible.

This hypocrisy is not new. There is no moral difference between the saturation bombing the US carried out on civilian populations since World War II, including in Vietnam and Iraq, and the targeting of urban centers by Russia in Ukraine or the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Mass death and fireballs on a city skyline are the calling cards we have left across the globe for decades. Our adversaries do the same.

The deliberate targeting of civilians, whether in Baghdad, Kyiv, Gaza, or New York City, are all war crimes. The killing of at least 112 Ukranian children, as of March 19, is an atrocity, but so is the killing of 551 Palestinian children during Israel’s 2014 military assault on Gaza. So is the killing of 230,000 people over the past seven years in Yemen from Saudi bombing campaigns and blocades that have resulted in mass starvation and cholera epidemics. Where were the calls for a no-fly zone over Gaza and Yemen? Imagine how many lives could have been saved.

War crimes demand the same moral judgment and accountability. But they don’t get them. And they don’t get them because we have one set of standards for white Europeans, and another for non-white people around the globe. The western media has turned European and American volunteers flocking to fight in Ukraine into heroes, while Mulsims in the west who join resistance groups battling foreign occupiers in the Middle East are criminlized as terrorists. Putin has been ruthless with the press. But so has our ally the de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman, who ordered the murder and dismemberment of my friend and collague Jamal Khashoggi, and who this month oversaw a mass execution of 81 people conivicted of criminal offenses. The coverage of Ukraine, especially after spending seven years reporting on Israel’s murderous assaults against the Palestinians, is another example of the racist divide that defines most of the western media.

World War II began with an understanding, at least by the allies, that employing industrial weapons against civilian populations was a war crime. But within 18 months of the start of the war, the Germans, Americans and British were relentlessly bombing cities. By the end of the war, one-fifth of German homes had been destroyed. One million German civilians were killed or wounded in bombing raids. Seven-and-a-half million Germans were made homeless. The tactic of saturation bombing, or area bombing, which included the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo, which killed more than 90,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo and left a million people homeless, and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which took the lives of between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, had the sole purpose of breaking the morale of the population through mass death and terror. Cities such as Leningrad, Stalingrad, Warsaw, Coventry, Royan, Nanjing and Rotterdam were obliterated.

It turned the architects of modern war, all of them, into war criminals.

Civilians in every war since have been considered legitimate targets. In the summer of 1965, then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara called the bombing raids north of Saigon that left hundreds of thousands of dead an effective means of communication with the government in Hanoi. McNamara, six years before he died, unlike most war criminals, had the capacity for self-reflection. Interviewed in the documentary, “The Fog of War,” he was repentant, not only about targeting Vietnamese civilians but about the aerial targeting of civilians in Japan in World War II, overseen by Air Force General Curtis LeMay.

“LeMay said if we’d lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals” McNamara said in the film. “And I think he’s right…LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose, and not immoral if you win?”

LeMay, later head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, would go on to drop tons of napalm and firebombs on civilian targets in Korea which, by his own estimate, killed 20 percent of the population over a three-year period.

Industrial killing defines modern warfare. It is impersonal mass slaughter. It is administered by vast bureaucratic structures that perpetuate the killing over months and years. It is sustained by heavy industry that produces a steady flow of weapons, munitions, tanks, planes, helicopters, battleships, submarines, missiles, and mass-produced supplies, along with mechanized transports that ferry troops and armaments by rail, ship, cargo planes and trucks to the battlefield. It mobilizes industrial, governmental and organization structures for total war. It centralizes systems of information and internal control. It is rationalized for the public by specialists and experts, drawn from the military establishment, along with pliant academics and the media.

Industrial war destroys existing value systems that protect and nurture life, replacing them with fear, hatred, and a dehumanization of those who we are made to believe deserve to be exterminated. It is driven by emotions, not truth or fact. It obliterates nuance, replacing it with an infantile binary universe of us and them. It drives competing narratives, ideas and values underground and vilifies all who do not speak in the national cant that replaces civil discourse and debate. It is touted as an example of the inevitable march of human progress, when in fact it brings us closer and closer to mass obliteration in a nuclear holocaust. It mocks the concept of individual heroism, despite the feverish efforts of the military and the mass media to sell this myth to naïve young recruits and a gullible public. It is the Frankenstein of industrialized societies. War, as Alfred Kazin warned, is “the ultimate purpose of technological society.” Our real enemy is within.

Historically, those who are prosecuted for war crimes, whether the Nazi hierarchy at Nuremberg or the leaders of Liberia, Chad, Serbia, and Bosnia, are prosecuted because they lost the war and because they are adversaries of the United States.

There will be no prosecution of Saudi Arabian rulers for the war crimes committed in Yemen or for the US military and political leadership for the war crimes they carried out in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, or a generation earlier in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The atrocities we commit, such as My Lai, where 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were gunned down by US soldiers, which are made public, are dealt with by finding a scapegoat, usually a low-ranking officer who is given a symbolic sentence. Lt. William Calley served three years under house arrest for the killings at My Lai. Eleven US soldiers, none of whom were officers, were convicted of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But the architects and overlords of our industrial slaughter, including Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Gen. Curtis LeMay, Harry S. Truman, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Lyndon Johnson, Gen. William Westmoreland, George W. Bush, Gen. David Petraeus, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are never held to account. They leave power to become venerated elder statesmen.

The mass slaughter of industrial warfare, the failure to hold ourselves to account, to see our own face in the war criminals we condemn, will have ominous consequences. Author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi understood that the annihilation of the humanity of others is prerequisite for their physical annihilation. We have become captives to our machines of industrial death. Politicians and generals wield their destructive fury as if they were toys. Those who decry the madness, who demand the rule of law, are attacked and condemned. These industrial weapons systems are our modern idols. We worship their deadly prowess. But all idols, the Bible tells us, begin by demanding the sacrifice of others and end in apocalyptic self-sacrifice.

The Lie of American Innocence - The Chris Hedges Report


More hand wringing, compassionate stuff from that namby pamby Chris Hedges.

Thanks for the superfluous history lesson. Not only does it contain a singular theme, that US intervention is all bad, but it contains no contemporary context for the conduct of such wars. In every case, the US was responding to idealistic political context at the time. It varies from the former Soviet Union trying to support communism in the Vietnam war, to criticism of efforts to undermine Islamic extremists in the Middle East.

It is easy to look back with 20/20 vision and heap approbation on your chosen enemies, but the truth is, such historical perspectives are arranged by you to point the finger at only one direction. At any time in history, the world looked to the US for support and solutions to wars of contemporary nature. If you want to go back to WWII, and look at it from the US viewpoint, the US did not want to get involved at all, until Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.
The UK government were being led by appeasement at home, and bluff assurances of none other than the Fascist Adolf Hitler.

The US faces a difficult balancing act in the Middle East, by supporting the Christian values of Israel, and the other side of the coin in explicit support for a powerful economic ally in Saudi Arabia.

Would all these global interventions be better left alone, and lunatic tyrrany allowed to prevail in the cases of Ghadaffi and Saddam Hussein? Perhaps the west and the EU/NATO should sit back and watch a clearly paranoid Putin, in respect of the Ukraine, do whatever he feels is appropriate on a daily basis.

Your chosen interlocutor is well known for his anti liberal views, as a journalist and Presbyterian Minister. His opinions can be found in print media and on TV, anywhere in the US. I have to wonder if such anti establishment views and opinions are allowed in the same coverage in Russia?

Without contemporary and historical context, it’s only the opinion of one western influencer, practicing his rights to freedom of speech. You know the kind, all those who supported the Trump ascendency!

Your fatuous attempts to regain any credibility seem to be failing again.

[sabang]

the Christian values of Israel

Umm, where do I start? Nope, not going there.

Anyway- decently written, and you even spelled 'fatuous' correctly. Chocolate brownie for you.

[Switch]

You justify Putins invasion by repeating his propaganda that it is to clear out the Nazi's, all while cheering on the deaths of Jews defending Ukraine (as you posted above), and quoting a Jew as though you are for peace.

I guess my point is that you are a raving hypocrite.

His discourse is far from reasonable as he describes it.

More confused, I’d say, veering from one stagnant point of detail to another, neither of which can be proved or disproved by the propaganda from both sides. Opinions like Sabang’s are a dime a dozen and prove precisely nothing, other than his own confirmation bias.

And there it is. If only he could pat himself on the back too, instead of relying on virgins water c&p from Backspin and OhOh!

[Switch]

Umm, where do I start? Nope, not going there.

Anyway- decently written, and you even spelled 'fatuous' correctly. Chocolate brownie for you.

It comes back to you posting anything that confirms your own bias.

No rebuttal of the points raised by me or other because, as you say yourself “Nope, not going there”. Because you have nothing and it’s not remotely amusing to anyone apart from you!

[thailazer]

Amelia, Marina, and Arnold are trending inside Russia.

[misskit]

Vladimir Putin's defence minister 'vanishes with heart problems' as war stalls



Sergei Shoigu has not been seen for 12 days and old footage or pictures have been shown of him on TV, say reports in opposition media - he was mentioned in a Kremlin report on March 18 but no visuals of him were shown

Vladimir Putin's defence minister has vanished with "heart problems" as the Kremlin's war effort in Ukraine stalls.


Sergei Shoigu has not been seen for 12 days and old footage or pictures have been shown of him on TV, say reports in opposition media.


On March 18, Shoigu, 66, was mentioned in a Kremlin website report saying he and Putin had discussed “the progress of the special operation in Ukraine” with permanent members of the security council.


But videos and pictures were not shown.


On the same day, state-controlled Channel One aired a story about Shoigu presenting awards.

Yet an image used with the report was the same as shown on 11 March.


Earlier in the war, he had been more visible and frequently quoted.


His circle said he was unwell - with heart problems, investigative news outlet Agentstvo was told by a source close to the minister.


Shoigu is seen as one of Putin’s closest and most loyal allies.

However, strains have appeared over the conduct of the war with him and other leading army and security chiefs.


Shoigu’s daughter Ksenia, 31, appeared with her baby in pictures recently in Ukrainian blue and yellow colours.


In June last year his sister Larisa Shoigu, 68, died of Covid.


It comes as furious Putin has started a witch-hunt of his most trusted inner circle to find the “guilty men” responsible for the failure of his war strategy.


The Russian president is said to be “incandescent” as his military plans were leaked to the West, who shared them with his Ukrainian enemies.

The failure is seen as one of the main reasons several of his top generals and elite forces have been eliminated during the four weeks of warfare.


Putin is said to be growing weary of his close ally and vacation friend Sergei Shoigu, Russia ’s defence minister, who is in overall charge of the stalling military operation.


Long-time ally FSB security service head Alexander Bortnikov- spoken as a stand-in should Putin fall in a coup - is also under pressure, as is Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff.

Vladimir Putin's defence minister 'vanishes with heart problems' as war stalls - World News - Mirror Online

[harrybarracuda]

^
You're quoting Q-anoners now sabang. Think about that. Maybe Zelensky has some Jewish space lasers he can use.

It doesn't surprise me in the least that sabang considers that airhead to be worth following.

[panama hat]

What a surprise, the little French prick

Good grief, you are a whiny little bitch . . .

French companies carry on their Russian profiteering.

care to comment in equal shrieks about the UK still accepting gas and oil from Russia and declaring they'll do so until the end of the year? The multitude of British businesses still operating in Russia . . .


Your fat, inbred slob compares the invasion to Ukraine to Brexit . . . there's your man to get upset about

[thailazer]

^^ Sounds like Putin's world is imploding.

[David48atTD]

^^ Speaking of those who went missing.

From earlier this month ...


Melania Trump condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine



Former first lady Melania Trump, who was born in Slovenia, another Eastern European country like Ukraine, has broken her silence on Vladimir Putin's military invasion.

"It is heartbreaking and horrific to see innocent people suffering. My thoughts and prayers are with the Ukrainian people. Please, if you can, donate to help them," Trump tweeted, along with a link to a donation page for the International Red Cross.

Read More: Melania Trump Finally Speaks Out About The Crisis In Ukraine