Ukraine war mega thread

[pickel]

Sounds like an enourmous and exacaggerated number, even if you include clinics and spin

What if the number was 10 helge? Would you consider that an acceptable amount to be bombed?

[helge]

What if the number was 10 helge? Would you consider that an acceptable amount to be bombed?

You know me, Pickel

[sabang]

Not every leftie is buying the propaganda blitz. Certainly not Catty-


Excerpt from "If It Feels Like You're Being Manipulated, It's Because You Are":

If you've got a gut feeling that your rulers are working to control your perception of the war in Ukraine, it is safe to trust that feeling.

If you feel like there's been a concerted effort from the most powerful government and media institutions in the western world to manipulate your understanding of what's going on with this war, it's because that's exactly what has been happening.

If you can't recall ever seeing such intense mass media spin about a war before, it's because you haven't.

If you get the distinct impression that this may be the most aggressively perception-managed and psyop-intensive war in human history, it's because it is.

If it looks like Silicon Valley platforms are controlling the content that people see to give them a perspective on this war that is wildly biased in favor of the US narrative, it's because that is indeed the case.

If it seems like a suspicious coincidence that Russiagate manufactured mainstream consent for all the same shady agendas we're seeing ramped up now like cold war brinkmanship against Moscow, internet censorship, and being constantly lied to by the mass media for the greater good, it's because it is a mighty suspicious coincidence.

If it seems weird to you that so many self-styled leftists are responding to this war by fanatically supporting the extremely dangerous unipolarist geostrategic agendas of the most powerful empire that has ever existed, that's because it is weird. Really, really, really weird.



If It Feels Like You'''re Being Manipulated, It'''s Because You Are

[bsnub]

Certainly not Catty-

She is the one that is propagandized just like you are, dippy.

[David48atTD]

Excerpt from "If It Feels Like You're Being Manipulated, It's Because You Are":

If It Feels Like You'''re Being Manipulated, It'''s Because You Are

Caitlin Johnstone

Rogue journalist



Caitlin Johnstone is a 100 percent crowdfunded rogue journalist, bogan socialist, anarcho-psychonaut, guerilla poet and utopia prepper living in Australia with her American husband and two kids.
She writes about politics, economics, media, feminism and the nature of consciousness.

She is the author of the illustrated poetry book "Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers."

Caitlin Johnstone | Scoop InfoPages

*Sigh* ... another lefty nutter

[Switch]

^^^Someone went to an awful lot of trouble to make that nonsense up! It’s the kind of rubbish that an unhinged gobshite like SoCal would produce, and you, who seemed so normal, have suddenly changed tack and allowed yourself to become eclipsed by it.

The roots of this attack on humanity we’re not sown yesterday. Putin is trying to revive the horrors that began when the Soviet Republics were first formed almost exactly a century ago. Russia was afraid that it might allow Poland to grow stronger in the years after World War One. They decided to surround themselves with “buffer” Republics of the Soviet Union in order to ensure their own safety.
It was done with a kind of brutality that has not been witnessed since the formation of The League of Nations, which was raised to prevent such a catastrophe happening again, in the wake of World War Two.

The League of Nations/UN and the formation of NATO was the west reacting to the prevention of War in Europe, faced by the development of the Warsaw Pact. The WP was once again the Soviet response to protectionism of the mother country.

Putin has carried forward an anti western stance first developed by responses following WW1. Putin has mired himself in history which exists primarily in his mind and no one else’s. He is a throwback, albeit a powerful one, protected by his own propaganda. Such propaganda has no place in the reality of todays world. Neither does Putin.

If NATO is seen as a threat today, that is entirely at the whim of a very worried man. NATO is not only relevant at the Atlantic and European level, but due to Putis intransigence, it is now increasing defence budgets at national level in Europe. Mad, unpredictable, yet powerful bullies have the kind of effect that the US leadership of NATO could only dream of. Despite formalizing the 2% target for NATO members defence spending as a result of Russian interference in Crimea, this time he has done Biden a huge favour by stirring up national defence attitudes within the NATO structure.

How long before NATO becomes more involved in Pacific concerns by Putin galvanizing Australia, NZ, South Korea and Japan? This is the reason behind China’s tacit supportfor Russia.

Putin has made too many enemies by his recalcitrant and backward protectionism. I suppose we should be grateful that the French retain an independent nuclear deterrent, outside the bond of NATO membership.
Gives Putin something else to think about before he uses nukes himself?

Eventually Putin will be obliged/allowed to withdraw and save face. He’s halfway there already.

[bsnub]

and you, who seemed so normal, have suddenly changed tack and allowed yourself to become eclipsed by it.

He lost the plot and went full on nutter sometime ago. He is not the same poster he was ten years ago.

[sabang]

If you can't tell you are being manipulated, it's you that are the nutters! I mean it's as obvious as, well, a very obvious thing.

[sabang]

Chris Hedges: The Pimps of War

April 11, 2022


The unaccountable coterie of neocons and liberal interventionists who orchestrated two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East are now stoking a suicidal war with Russia.


The same cabal of warmongering pundits, foreign policy specialists and government officials, year after year, debacle after debacle, smugly dodge responsibility for the military fiascos they orchestrate. They are protean, shifting adroitly with the political winds, moving from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party and then back again, mutating from cold warriors to neocons to liberal interventionists. Pseudo intellectuals, they exude a cloying Ivy League snobbery as they sell perpetual fear, perpetual war and a racist worldview, where the lesser breeds of the earth only understand violence.

They are pimps of war, puppets of the Pentagon, a state within a state, and the defense contractors who lavishly fund their think tanks — Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, Institute for the Study of War, Atlantic Council and Brookings Institute. Like some mutant strain of an antibiotic-resistant bacteria, they cannot be vanquished. It does not matter how wrong they are, how absurd their theories, how many times they lie or denigrate other cultures and societies as uncivilized or how many murderous military interventions go bad. They are immovable props, the parasitic mandarins of power that are vomited up in the dying days of any empire, including that of the U.S., leaping from one self-defeating catastrophe to the next.

I spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent reporting on the suffering, misery, and murderous rampages these shills for war engineered and funded. My first encounter with them was in Central America. Elliot Abrams — convicted of providing misleading testimony to Congress on the Iran-Contra Affair and later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush so he could return to government to sell us the Iraq War — and Robert Kagan, director of the State Department’s public diplomacy office for Latin America — were propagandists for the brutal military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala, as well as the rapists and homicidal thugs that made up the rogue Contra forces fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which they illegally funded. Their job was to discredit our reporting.

“Like some mutant strain of an antibiotic-resistant bacteria, they cannot be vanquished.”

They, and their coterie of fellow war lovers, went on to push for the expansion of NATO in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, violating an agreement not to extend NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany and recklessly antagonizing Russia. They were and are cheerleaders for the apartheid state of Israel, justifying its war crimes against Palestinians and myopically conflating Israel’s interests with those of the U.S. They advocated for air strikes in Serbia, calling for the U.S. to “take out” Slobodan Milosevic. They were the authors of the policy to invade Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya. Robert Kagan and William Kristol, with their typical cluelessness, wrote in April 2002 that “the road that leads to real security and peace” is “the road that runs through Baghdad.”

We saw how that worked out. That road led to the dissolution of Iraq, the destruction of its civilian infrastructure, including the obliteration of 18 of 20 electricity-generating plants and nearly all the water-pumping and sanitation systems during a 43-day period when 90,000 tons of bombs were rained down on the country, the rise of radical jihadist groups throughout the region, and failed states.

The war in Iraq, along with the humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, shredded the illusion of U.S. military and global hegemony. It also inflicted on Iraqis, who had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11, the widespread killing of civilians, the torture and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners, and the ascendancy of Iran as the preeminent power in the region.
Push for War & Overthrows

They continue to call for a war with Iran, with Fred Kagan stating that “there is nothing we can do short of attacking to force Iran to give up its nuclear weapons.” They pushed for the overthrow of President Nicholas Maduro, after trying to do the same to Hugo Chavez, in Venezuela. They have targeted Daniel Ortega, their old nemesis in Nicaragua.

They embrace a purblind nationalism that prohibits them from seeing the world from any perspective other than their own. They know nothing about the machinery of war, its consequences, or its inevitable blowback. They know nothing about the peoples and cultures they target for violent regeneration. They believe in their divine right to impose their “values” on others by force. Fiasco after fiasco. Now they are stoking a war with Russia.

“The nationalist is by definition an ignoramus,” Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš observed.

“Nationalism is the line of least resistance, the easy way. The nationalist is untroubled, he knows or thinks he knows what his values are, his, that’s to say national, that’s to say the values of the nation he belongs to, ethical and political; he is not interested in others, they are no concern of his, hell — it’s other people (other nations, another tribe). They don’t even need investigating. The nationalist sees other people in his own images — as nationalists.”

The Biden administration is filled with these ignoramuses, including Joe Biden. Victoria Nuland, the wife of Robert Kagan, serves as Biden’s undersecretary of state for political affairs. Antony Blinken is secretary of state. Jake Sullivan is national security adviser.

FULL- Chris Hedges: The Pimps of War – Consortium News

[bsnub]

If you can't tell you are being manipulated, it's you that are the nutters!

We aren't the ones regurgitating Kremlin propaganda like a fucking puppet.

[sabang]

Well no, you are regurgitating US gov't propaganda like muppets.

[harrybarracuda]

If you can't tell you are being manipulated, it's you that are the nutters! I mean it's as obvious as, well, a very obvious thing.

Says the bloke who has a one position narrative straight out of totalitarian propaganda playbooks.

You're just a fucking drone, I have no idea why you think anyone else is being manipulated apart from your fellow monotonous wanketeers.

[harrybarracuda]

Well no, you are regurgitating US gov't propaganda like muppets.

[bsnub]

Well no, you are regurgitating US gov't propaganda like muppets.

Would that be the propaganda that turned out to be true? Like when the US government warned that Russia was going to invade? I seem to remember you saying that they were liars back then and swore Russia would not invade. You bleated on with the same nonsense for months, only to be proven wrong.

[harrybarracuda]

Algeria is a big fan of Putin.

Italy signed an agreement to increase gas imports from Algeria on Monday, the latest push by a European Union country to acquire alternative energy from Russia, following its invasion of Ukraine.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the deals - signed between Eni SpA and Algeria's state energy firm Sonatrach - were a significant step in Italy's drive to reduce its dependency on Russian gas.
Russia is Italy's biggest supplier, representing 40 percent of total imports, followed by Algeria, which provides some 21 billion cubic metres of gas via the Trans-Mediterranean pipeline.
The new deal would add an extra nine billion cubic metres of gas from Algeria, just eclipsing Russia's 29 billion cubic metres a year, Eni said in a statement.

[David48atTD]

Chris Hedges: The Pimps of War

Damm you sabang, you know I can't resist!

On Contact^*, the Emmy-nominated show Chris Hedges hosted for six years for RT America and RT International.


He has turned to the dark side, he has ... there is no turning back.

For some levity ...





^* Author & social critic Chris Hedges interviews anti-establishment intellects & activists not to be heard anywhere else

[kingwilly]

Would that be the propaganda that turned out to be true? Like when the US government warned that Russia was going to invade? I seem to remember you saying that they were liars back then and swore Russia would not invade. You bleated on with the same nonsense for months, only to be proven wrong.

He keeps pretending that didnt happen and that you might forget it was so...

[Switch]

I’m sure that some of the wet lettuce Ivy League pimps that Hedges refers to do exist.

Strangely none of them occupy positions of authority in the US.

Just like your opinions, they are easily ignored.

[bsnub]

He keeps pretending that didnt happen and that you might forget it was so...

I know.

[Backspin]

Interview with Putin advisor interviewed by Italian publication Sergey Karaganov: «We are at war with the West. The European security order is illegitimate»- Corriere.it

How can an attack be justified on such grounds?


«For 25 years people like myself have said that NATO expansion would lead to war. Putin said several times that if it came to Ukraine becoming a member of NATO, there would be no Ukraine anymore. In Bucharest in 2008 there was a plan of quick accession of Ukraine and Georgia to NATO. It was blocked by the efforts of Germany and France, but since that time Ukraine has been integrated into NATO. It was pumped up by weaponry and its troops were trained by NATO, their army getting stronger and stronger day by day. In addition we saw a very rapid increase of neo-Nazi sentiment especially among the military, the society and the ruling elite. It was clear that Ukraine had become something like Germany around 1936-1937. The war was inevitable, they were a spearhead of NATO. We made the very hard decision to strike first, before the threat becomes deadlier».

[pickel]

before the threat becomes deadlier».

How would it become deadlier? Does he seriously think Ukraine would invade Russia? Would never happen, and he knows that. So do you.

Does he think NATO would invade Russia? They aren't even fighting them now when they have a moral reason to do so. It's a defensive alliance and Putin is the one that is the warmonger.

[panama hat]

If you can't tell you are being manipulated, it's you that are the nutters! I mean it's as obvious as, well, a very obvious thing.

Yet here you are, continuously swallowing Putin-Propaganda . . .




Lovely

[bsnub]

It was clear that Ukraine had become something like Germany around 1936-1937. The war was inevitable, they were a spearhead of NATO.

Complete propaganda nonsense, put out there for lemmings like you and the other Three Stooges. Useful idiots.

[harrybarracuda]

Complete propaganda nonsense, put out there for lemmings like you and the other Three Stooges. Useful idiots.

You have to remember a slightly retarded protozoan has better critical thinking skills than skidmark.

[sabang]

The real conspiracy theorists reckon that the US deliberately goaded Russia to war with repeated and deliberate provocations. Partly against the old enemy, Russia- and it's cozying up with China, which they hate, and partly to keep EU/ Nato under the thumb- including killing NS2. Also a hostile/ warring Ukraine is no conduit for the BRI- for which it is an otherwise ideal route.

You decide, but war it is and do you reckon it was/ is worth it? Ukraine is decimated, it's GDP down by around 45%. People are dying (but not "us"- it's a proxy war). And we are all gonna be poorer for it. In the 'global south', food insecurity and possible starvation beckon. It could easily have been avoided with "the simple application of common sense".