Putin Invades Ukraine II

[dualstow]

I Need to understand more about the Coup that overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian government that I believe had good relations with Russia.

Was there a coup? I don’t remember one except the one in Russia- well, the Soviet Union. The Soviets did poison a Ukrainian leader. Looking at wikipedia, because I don’t remember most of this stuff, I see Yanukovych, but he didn’t come to power out of a coup.

[jalanlong]

I liked your post but I agree with Xan — was it Xan? — who said the strange thing is the preemptive mistrust. That’s how I feel. With any significantly large event, as long as it’s coming from the mainstream media, some people are ready to discount it. I don’t know what to say to that. Is there a lot of crap in the papers? Sure. We have to scrutinize.

Well if you have a child or friend who continually either outright lies or spins everything they say for an ulterior motive then at a certain point, it would be human nature to cast a suspicious eye over everything they said.

I personally wonder why this particular military action has gotten so much media attention? The mainstream US media in general is not that hot on foreign affairs because the American people are not that interested. But over the last 4-5 years they have spent a huge amount of time on Russia...from conjuring up that Trump is a Russian puppet to CNN stating that their interference in the Clinton/Trump election was "an act of war" and now to going wall to wall coverage on a military action that is nowhere near as horrific as other ones in Yemen or Somalia that they never gave a second of airtime to. And their focus has worked as everyone now has an "I Stand With Ukraine" sticker on the social media page and even my local sports radio show hosts are talking about spending all weekend watching the war coverage on tv. A CNN poll shows 75% of Americans want Nato to go to war with Russia over the Ukraine!

I am not a conspiracy theorist who can give you some detailed plan of why everything happens..but I am suspicious enough of the mainstream press and their manipulation of the general public and I believe there are reasons, even if I dont know what they are personally.

PS. My conspiracy radar does go off when I see the CDC and NYC remove mask requirements right after the public is distracted by a war!

[dualstow]

I liked your post but I agree with Xan — was it Xan? — who said the strange thing is the preemptive mistrust. That’s how I feel. With any significantly large event, as long as it’s coming from the mainstream media, some people are ready to discount it. I don’t know what to say to that. Is there a lot of crap in the papers? Sure. We have to scrutinize.

Well if you have a child or friend who continually either outright lies or spins everything they say for an ulterior motive then at a certain point, it would be human nature to cast a suspicious eye over everything they said.

definitely, but there’s a difference between scrutinizing what one reads and maybe discarding 30% of it (or 70% if you like) vs ‘the entire free press is a lie’. State run media is a lie. There’s an old joke in Russia, whose two traditional newspapers are called Truth and News. The joke is that there is no news in Truth and no truth in News. But this is not the old Soviet Union or present day North Korea. We may have a heavily influenced press, but it’s still a free press.

I personally wonder why this particular military action has gotten so much media attention

You’re wondering why a ground war in Europe is getting a lot of media attention? Syria got a lot of attention for a very long time until people tired of it, and that’s in a region that’s always in conflict. In Europe, this is the biggest event since, what, Kosovo? Since World War II?

Conspiracy theorists, and even some non theorists but…hard core skeptics have constantly been telling us how covid is just a vast conspiracy. If that were true, wouldn’t “they” want to downplay this massive invasion?
This is a big deal. It could spread to other countries. It could end with Putin being deposed. Anything could happen.

[ppnewbie]

I Need to understand more about the Coup that overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian government that I believe had good relations with Russia.

Was there a coup? I don’t remember one except the one in Russia- well, the Soviet Union. The Soviets did poison a Ukrainian leader. Looking at wikipedia, because I don’t remember most of this stuff, I see Yanukovych, but he didn’t come to power out of a coup.

Not much time to research it, but I think it also as referred to as a "revolution" in the US. Again this is hearsay on my part because have not had a chance to look into it more deeply. But I believe the "revolution" overthrew a democratically elected neutralist government that was trying to work with the west and Russia.

Good Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6hIlfHWaGU

I have not had a chance to watch this video but I will probably listen to it today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

[Xan]

I liked your post but I agree with Xan — was it Xan? — who said the strange thing is the preemptive mistrust. That’s how I feel. With any significantly large event, as long as it’s coming from the mainstream media, some people are ready to discount it. I don’t know what to say to that. Is there a lot of crap in the papers? Sure. We have to scrutinize.

Well if you have a child or friend who continually either outright lies or spins everything they say for an ulterior motive then at a certain point, it would be human nature to cast a suspicious eye over everything they said.

A suspicious eye makes perfect sense. But to automatically believe that whatever the media says automatically can't be true means two things:
1) You are under their control exactly as much as anybody who unthinkingly swallows everything, and
2) No reconciliation in this country is possible even in theory. We are past the point of no return.

So, I believe such a stance to be dangerous.

[ppnewbie]

I liked your post but I agree with Xan — was it Xan? — who said the strange thing is the preemptive mistrust. That’s how I feel. With any significantly large event, as long as it’s coming from the mainstream media, some people are ready to discount it. I don’t know what to say to that. Is there a lot of crap in the papers? Sure. We have to scrutinize.

Well if you have a child or friend who continually either outright lies or spins everything they say for an ulterior motive then at a certain point, it would be human nature to cast a suspicious eye over everything they said.

A suspicious eye makes perfect sense. But to automatically believe that whatever the media says automatically can't be true means two things:
1) You are under their control exactly as much as anybody who unthinkingly swallows everything, and
2) No reconciliation in this country is possible even in theory. We are past the point of no return.

So, I believe such a stance to be dangerous.

To me all it would take is Ukraine and NATO saying - Ukraine is a buffer zone. It can do deals with both. No NATO (US) bases in Ukraine.

[Xan]

To me all it would take is Ukraine and NATO saying - Ukraine is a buffer zone. It can do deals with both. No NATO (US) bases in Ukraine.

It seems to my completely amateur eye that the trick now is to find a solution that allows Putin to pull out without losing face. Cornering him could get really ugly. Your proposal could be a way to do that. Don't know whether he'd accept it though.

[ppnewbie]

To me all it would take is Ukraine and NATO saying - Ukraine is a buffer zone. It can do deals with both. No NATO (US) bases in Ukraine.

It seems to my completely amateur eye that the trick now is to find a solution that allows Putin to pull out without losing face. Cornering him could get really ugly. Your proposal could be a way to do that. Don't know whether he'd accept it though.

True. Nobody knows. I keep hearing that Putin is a pragmatic leader.

[jalanlong]

I liked your post but I agree with Xan — was it Xan? — who said the strange thing is the preemptive mistrust. That’s how I feel. With any significantly large event, as long as it’s coming from the mainstream media, some people are ready to discount it. I don’t know what to say to that. Is there a lot of crap in the papers? Sure. We have to scrutinize.

Well if you have a child or friend who continually either outright lies or spins everything they say for an ulterior motive then at a certain point, it would be human nature to cast a suspicious eye over everything they said.

A suspicious eye makes perfect sense. But to automatically believe that whatever the media says automatically can't be true means two things:
1) You are under their control exactly as much as anybody who unthinkingly swallows everything, and
2) No reconciliation in this country is possible even in theory. We are past the point of no return.

So, I believe such a stance to be dangerous.

Lest people believe this is a recent (i.e. Trump instigated) behavior, my red pill moment came back in the early 90s with the fake story about the Iraqi army pulling babies off of incubators in Kuwait. That story was "authenticated" by multiple trusted sources such as Amnesty International and then carried by every major media outlet from the Washington Post to NPR and then presented before Congress by a 15 year old girl who was portrayed as just an average Kuwaiti child ravaged by war but later turned out to be the daughter of a Kuwaiti Ambassador. The story ended up to be complete fabrication but it served its purpose to help drum up American support (almost 80% in favor at the time) for a war when the majority of Americans had no idea what or who Kuwait or Sadam Hussein were beforehand.

[ppnewbie]

I liked your post but I agree with Xan — was it Xan? — who said the strange thing is the preemptive mistrust. That’s how I feel. With any significantly large event, as long as it’s coming from the mainstream media, some people are ready to discount it. I don’t know what to say to that. Is there a lot of crap in the papers? Sure. We have to scrutinize.

Well if you have a child or friend who continually either outright lies or spins everything they say for an ulterior motive then at a certain point, it would be human nature to cast a suspicious eye over everything they said.

A suspicious eye makes perfect sense. But to automatically believe that whatever the media says automatically can't be true means two things:
1) You are under their control exactly as much as anybody who unthinkingly swallows everything, and
2) No reconciliation in this country is possible even in theory. We are past the point of no return.

So, I believe such a stance to be dangerous.

Lest people believe this is a recent (i.e. Trump instigated) behavior, my red pill moment came back in the early 90s with the fake story about the Iraqi army pulling babies off of incubators in Kuwait. That story was "authenticated" by multiple trusted sources such as Amnesty International and then carried by every major media outlet from the Washington Post to NPR and then presented before Congress by a 15 year old girl who was portrayed as just an average Kuwaiti child ravaged by war but later turned out to be the daughter of a Kuwaiti Ambassador. The story ended up to be complete fabrication but it served its purpose to help drum up American support (almost 80% in favor at the time) for a war when the majority of Americans had no idea what or who Kuwait or Sadam Hussein were beforehand.

I heard about that in an interview. The person also mentioned this book. "Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry"

[I Shrugged]

Here is a non-media report from Ukraine. The writer is an associate of Matt Smith, who is the interviewer of Doug Casey on the Youtube channel "Doug Casey's Take." Doug Casey is a writer and investor, maybe best known for his International Man newsletter back in the day. They are both basically anarcho-capitalists, meaning they don't like governments at all. This woman displays a lot of mistrust in her government, but that fits given her association with Matt Smith. Now, I happen to think these two guys are very credible. Not to say I agree with them all the time, but I think they are very honest. So all that said, here's the letter that Smith published today on Substack.

Ukraine: Boots on the Ground Update
More from my nervous friend in Ukraine
Mar 2

Comment

Share

“If you forward this to anyone, please remove name and email address. Also please don't reply to this message because it would be forwarded to personal free account...read and burn)”




A few days ago I published the notes a friend in Ukraine was sending me. A day later she wrote me in a panic. Apparently, anyone showing anything but blind allegiance to the dominant narrative was being hunted down and punished.

I promised to withhold her name and any personal information and she agreed to let me share more…

From “N” in Ukraine:

These past few days a man has been posting short videos to show the current situation in his city. On 2/23 he had 700 subscribers, and now it's 270k subscribers, this is how his information is important to people. Take a look, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCovFGo ... XBA/videos

Yesterday he recorded a video to say that a friend just told him that he's been labeled a russian spy and his personal info has been posted in a special channel, so, he said he won't be going home tonight concerned for the safety of his family. Also said that he won't be posting anymore, but this morning he posted a new video saying he's tired of being afraid... He hasn't posted an update in ten hours, hopefully it's just a technical issue.

Yesterday a mayor of a 27k town surrendered the town to Russian troops to avoid damage and casualties. He was instantly labeled a traitor and ordered to be killed on sight.

In his speech a few months ago when the president was talking about the future war with Russia, he said "we won't surrender and will fight until the last Ukrainian". There is no way he meant that literally?...

There are reports that when nationalistic group retreat in Donbass, they destroy anything they can, houses, cars. There were reports that Russia would open a corridor for civilians but nationalistic groups would shoot the evacuating people in the back. Could be rumors, but could be not. It is very bad in Mariupol right now. From within the city is controlled by these nationalistic battalions using population as a live shield. By the way, this is where "Azovstal iron and steel works" is owned by Akhmetov. A few days ago there was a report that he together with Pinchuk were going to pay to bring a private military company into the country.

There were two bad hits in Kharkov today. From experience from these past eight years (duration of conflict in Donbass), there is always "aggravation of conflict" right before the presidents, previous and current, are meeting with eu, nato, etc. Or during those meetings. Sure, these two hits could have been from Russians, but also they could have happened just to demonstrate how badly the country needs financial support, military support, etc. The eu membership meeting was today, so those hits might have happened for that purpose.

This is why I got concerned about saying anything... This is just so that you know. If you forward this to anyone, please remove name and email address. Also please don't reply to this message because it would be forwarded to personal free account...read and burn)

…
Ukraine Banks

One day after the invasion started, the Ukrainian government revoked licenses of Ukrainian banks with partial Russian ownership. This sent them into liquidation. Account holders - Ukrainian citizens like me- have lost access to our savings and nobody knows if we will recover anything.

What does the Ukraine govt say?

...their explanation for citizens is "you shouldn't have kept money in a 'russian' bank" Taking money for transit of russian gas is fine, licensing 'russian' banks is fine, but citizens are 'at fault' for choosing 'wrong' banks

…

In his interview yesterday the president [Zelensky] said that the reasons why until the very end he was saying that there will be no Russian invasion - "to avoid panic and preserve economy"
Chaos

Someone says that The Times published photo of the girl from the family that was mistakenly killed in Kiev by territory defense on the first day, and it says she was killed by Russian troops. They said it's on the front page but I couldn't find it to check. Let me know if you see it.

…

Supposedly, there is a video bragging how they "took care" of intruders two days ago in Odessa in the middle of the day. The "intruders" turned out to be a man coming back from hospital in a taxi and the taxi driver. Both killed. Investigation is unlikely.

Looking for and "taking care of" intruders has turned into "pokemon go" for some. People being killed just because someone thought they might be intruders. Does Russia have anything to do with this...?

Nothing's on the official news, so all of this is considered "unofficial"

…

This one is official
Official channels yesterday said that it's forbidden for cars to move in the public transport lane in Kiev, and that "cars in a public transport lane will be automatically considered intruders", which means they can shoot without checking. Same for those out in the streets during curfew.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2022/02/28/7326764/

…

Another thought is, if Russia wanted to get rid of civilians, why would it be taking the difficult land route to get into the cities, it could have just hit with missiles like it does with military objects. Current technologies probably allow for destruction of anything without even entering the country... please don't quote me on that, this may be wrong) Probably a military expert would be able to tell.

…
Attacks on the Church

Something else that's escalating right now is attacks on the church and related people. For background, there is Ukrainian Orthodox Church that's always been around. Сanonically it is related with the Russian Orthodox Church, but it's an independent body. There is also Orthodox Church of Ukraine organized by Poroshenko and Patriarch Bartholomew in 2019. The names are very similar but these are different entities.

Ever since the beginning of the conflict in 2014 the church has been labeled "russian" and it's clergy are "russian spies", since the church refused to preach that Russia is an enemy. It said that church is not about politics. These past couple of days there have been a number of reports about attacks on church buildings and clergy. Usually this is done by nationalists. They had done it before, but now they also have an excuse of the russian invasion.

After 2019, the new church supported by the government began to seize buildings of the 'usual' church. Nationalistic groups are used for that. When this is happening, police don't do anything. The groups break in, change the locks, re-register ownership, and that's it.

I'm probably talking too much today.

[jalanlong]

A suspicious eye makes perfect sense. But to automatically believe that whatever the media says automatically can't be true means two things:
1) You are under their control exactly as much as anybody who unthinkingly swallows everything, and
2) No reconciliation in this country is possible even in theory. We are past the point of no return.

So, I believe such a stance to be dangerous.

That's a great summary, especially point 2. I'm very concerned about exactly this.

Not to be argumentative but what does this mean exactly, no reconciliation is possible? Are we going with the narrative that American is more divided now then ever? If so I can quote a lot of history and also current surveys that suggest that is not true and that we perceive ourselves to be a lot more polarized than we actually are. We have a lot of cognitive bias towards focusing on our differences because we hear much more about that than we hear about our commonalities. I have read research studies (I can find them if necessary) that suggest that measurements of behavior amongst people broken down by sex, social class, income and geography has stayed remarkably consistent over the last 50 years. That makes it appear to me that the media is just parroting the "division" narrative without a lot of hard evidence.

It's like every election when pundits declare this will be the dirtiest election ever. They obviously don't remember the 1800 election where Adams stated that if Jefferson were elected he would create a nation where murder, rape and incest are openly taught and practiced. Or Stephen Douglas accusing Lincoln of drinking more liquor than an entire town put together.

[ppnewbie]

I think the west (this means the US) is collectively clutching their pearls. How dare Russia put their country next to all of our military bases. They want war!

[dualstow]

Here is a non-media report from Ukraine. The writer is an associate of Matt Smith, who is the interviewer of Doug Casey on the Youtube channel "Doug Casey's Take."… here's the letter that Smith published today on Substack.
… { viewtopic.php?f=15&t=12525&p=238526#p238522 }

My executive summary: some Ukrainians are going overboard and murdering suspected spies, collaborators, surrenderers.

I can believe that. War is messy. Fog of war. I don’t think anyone expects us to believe that Ukrainians are perfectly noble in every way, nor that the government was free of corruption before the war.. The stories of WWII and, in ‘Savage Continent’ post-world war II are still coming out.

Recently, one can find reports of Poles receiving white Christian Ukrainian refugees with more enthusiasm than refugees of African heritage. Sad, but almost certainly true. It’s an almost entirely white, almost entirely Catholic nation. A melting pot it is not.But they are taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees. Similarly, there are reports of Ukrainians putting those same people in the back of the line when fleeing. Again: plausible.

None of this has me rejecting what I see in the Wall Street Journal or Foreign Affairs, or videos I see on the major broadcast channels, ie the mainstream narrative.

[ppnewbie]

Time for a communist era joke from my Ukrainian friend.

Person was calling to make an appointment to have their phone line installed. Installer was making the appointment for 3 years from the current date because things moved slowly during the old Soviet Union days. Installer asked "do you want your appointment in the morning or the afternoon". Customer thought it makes no difference because its in three years but said the morning would be good.

Installer - "I'm glad you said that because I have a dentist appointment in the afternoon"

[vnatale]

I liked your post but I agree with Xan — was it Xan? — who said the strange thing is the preemptive mistrust. That’s how I feel. With any significantly large event, as long as it’s coming from the mainstream media, some people are ready to discount it. I don’t know what to say to that. Is there a lot of crap in the papers? Sure. We have to scrutinize.

Well if you have a child or friend who continually either outright lies or spins everything they say for an ulterior motive then at a certain point, it would be human nature to cast a suspicious eye over everything they said.

definitely, but there’s a difference between scrutinizing what one reads and maybe discarding 30% of it (or 70% if you like) vs ‘the entire free press is a lie’. State run media is a lie. There’s an old joke in Russia, whose two traditional newspapers are called Truth and News. The joke is that there is no news in Truth and no truth in News. But this is not the old Soviet Union or present day North Korea. We may have a heavily influenced press, but it’s still a free press.

I personally wonder why this particular military action has gotten so much media attention

You’re wondering why a ground war in Europe is getting a lot of media attention? Syria got a lot of attention for a very long time until people tired of it, and that’s in a region that’s always in conflict. In Europe, this is the biggest event since, what, Kosovo? Since World War II?

Conspiracy theorists, and even some non theorists but…hard core skeptics have constantly been telling us how covid is just a vast conspiracy. If that were true, wouldn’t “they” want to downplay this massive invasion?
This is a big deal. It could spread to other countries. It could end with Putin being deposed. Anything could happen.

DEFINITELY World War II

[vnatale]

A suspicious eye makes perfect sense. But to automatically believe that whatever the media says automatically can't be true means two things:
1) You are under their control exactly as much as anybody who unthinkingly swallows everything, and
2) No reconciliation in this country is possible even in theory. We are past the point of no return.

So, I believe such a stance to be dangerous.

That's a great summary, especially point 2. I'm very concerned about exactly this.

Not to be argumentative but what does this mean exactly, no reconciliation is possible? Are we going with the narrative that American is more divided now then ever? If so I can quote a lot of history and also current surveys that suggest that is not true and that we perceive ourselves to be a lot more polarized than we actually are. We have a lot of cognitive bias towards focusing on our differences because we hear much more about that than we hear about our commonalities. I have read research studies (I can find them if necessary) that suggest that measurements of behavior amongst people broken down by sex, social class, income and geography has stayed remarkably consistent over the last 50 years. That makes it appear to me that the media is just parroting the "division" narrative without a lot of hard evidence.

It's like every election when pundits declare this will be the dirtiest election ever. They obviously don't remember the 1800 election where Adams stated that if Jefferson were elected he would create a nation where murder, rape and incest are openly taught and practiced. Or Stephen Douglas accusing Lincoln of drinking more liquor than an entire town put together.

Your Exhibit A would be a four year actual Civil War!

[dualstow]

Time for a communist era joke from my Ukrainian friend.

Person was calling to make an appointment to have their phone line installed. Installer was making the appointment for 3 years from the current date because things moved slowly during the old Soviet Union days. Installer asked "do you want your appointment in the morning or the afternoon". Customer thought it makes no difference because its in three years but said the morning would be good.

Installer - "I'm glad you said that because I have a dentist appointment in the afternoon"

[vnatale]

Map shows those who support, are against and are neutral in Russia’s war

https://metro.co.uk/2022/03/02/putin-le ... -16205437/

[Xan]

Map shows those who support, are against and are neutral in Russia’s war

https://metro.co.uk/2022/03/02/putin-le ... -16205437/

Interesting, thanks. And the "neutral" China is the big variable on the map..

Surely they'd love to do the same to Taiwan. If Putin gets away with this, why wouldn't they?

[dualstow]

Surely they'd love to do the same to Taiwan. If Putin gets away with this, why wouldn't they?

Yup. And although China’s economy dwarfs that of Russia, there’s the other side of that coin.

[Don]

Biden's weakness and his abysmal performance in Afghanistan brought this on.

[ppnewbie]

Map shows those who support, are against and are neutral in Russia’s war

https://metro.co.uk/2022/03/02/putin-le ... -16205437/

Interesting, thanks. And the "neutral" China is the big variable on the map..

Surely they'd love to do the same to Taiwan. If Putin gets away with this, why wouldn't they?

I have been hearing that if NATO engages in a kinetic war then China will go after Taiwan.

[dualstow]

The way everyone is coming together to boycott Russia is a beautful thing.
I hate what it’s doing to the average Russian but if Putin goes down, maybe it’ll be better for them too in the long run.

[dualstow]

Reading about Chechens

When I asked my students in Moscow about Chechens, well, let’s say they didn’t even try to be politically correct. Anyway,
military:
1)
https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1 ... 4287945733

2)

Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a new war-within-a-war is unfolding.
This time, between countrymen: the Chechens sent by the republic’s pro-Russian leader, strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, and those fighting against him, on the side of Ukraine.

https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/chech ... n-ukraine/