The tank man image is relevant not because of the tanks but because of the dude. He stood up and made the whole line of tanks stop (momentarily). That's the kind of energy i like in my protesters.
You're 100% correct the cops in the US would probably just plow into him, though. Hell, they'd swerve to hit him.
It's not just one guy saying it, there's more evidence than that.
Also fuck you on the Holodomor. That kind of shit is why people don't take you seriously.
No, that does meet the standard of genocide. Not the "killed them all and threw them in mass graves" version but that's not the only way it can come.
Two points: First, the US engaged in a war of aggression and probably not specifically genocide in Iraq. This is a real difference of kind. Still criminal state activity and of course the US got away with it free (mostly) just like how it gets away with all its crimes against humanity or whatever. A better example would be the US commiting genocide on the native population, which was one of the most intense and successful ethnic extermination campaigns in history.
Second, it was pretty obvious at the time that all that shit was made up. I called it hard and was right. So did many, many others. They were just afraid to say it out loud because the county was very, very rapidly being pushed toward turning into a fascist nightmare. (Seriously, people forget how fucked up it was.) After Colin Powell'a speech to the UN my father and i had a conversation and made a bet. If what Powell said turned out to be false then my father would leave the Republican party and stop supporting that kind of crap. If it turned out to be true i would join. Now i really didn't want to vote Republican, had no intention of doing so, but i knew i wasn't going to lose that bet. My father, for his part, stayed true to his word.
Would you prefer if they said "deny or ignore serious and well-sourced accusations of genocide"?
When a country (for example) sets up forced labor camps for a specific ethnic minority people get pretty touchy about it even if the details are a little murky. Especially if the details are a little murky because the government in question also does its best to prevent anyone from clarifying them.
Earlier today i spent a bunch of time arguing with people from Hexbear about Russia's war in Ukraine, that's another one that looks pretty obvious to people (and imo remains pretty clear cut after investigation).
I guess putting it another way, it keeps coming back to that because Russia and China fucking suck. They don't uniquely suck and they don't even suck particularly worse than anyone else--though i very much do not want to live in either country right now.
What isn't true, however, is the narrative that they're the last lights in the world opposing capitalism and the West and being unfairly targeted by some apocalyptic CIA plot, or whatever. In this aforementioned argument, they claimed everything was a fucking CIA plot and that just isn't the reality. Yeah I'm sure the CIA would love to knock over Putin and install a pro-American toady in Russia but their actual influence over the situation in Ukraine is tiny compared to the local players.
There's also the fact that people just aren't used to taking a nuanced view of either China or Russia and the formal education in the West is super biased even if it does give people factual information. What's needed to overcome that is not bias in the other direction but instead exploration of the nuance. Unfortunately, that's super fucking hard to do...
I'd say it's more the other way around. Most of them seem pretty cool, albeit unwilling to put up with shit and definitely living in an echo chamber where some pretty weird ideas took hold. That has definitely been a shock for some of the people here, and tbh the ones who are getting turbo mad about it seem like they deserve it.
A few of them are mendacious, sleazy trolls that reply to everything and should be banned from both our instance and theirs.
As an anarchist: like all anarchists (in the English speaking West) do this, anarchism is a small movement.
At the same time, i just spent a bunch of time arguing with a pair of Hexbear accounts that are probably Russian state media so uh... yeesh.
Yeah. Your arguments (i.e. using multiple question marks so as to mug to the audience) are pretty fucking shameful.
I, uh, do not think you're going to get very far trying to claim the (if you prefer) 2014 Ukrainian revolution was some kind of Nazi plot. I don't really feel the need to engage further on this, I'll simply say: you are wrong.
Baby brain
Oh good, now we're doing this.
Yanukovych was couped precisely because he WASN’T leaning towards the west
Yeah, because there was a significant chunk of Ukraine that wanted to integrate more with the West while Yanukovych was a lot more hesitant. Like I said, there were two paths they could go on.
If you don’t want your civilians to be hit by rocket fire then you shouldn’t use them as human shields
This is, uh, a fucking disgraceful argument to make. Yeah you found one example of where the Ukrainian military got a little too close to civilians. Now how about the rest of them?
A few samples from the article:
The Commission’s evidence shows that in areas that came under their control, Russian authorities have committed wilful killings of civilians or persons not involved in fighting (hors de combat), which are war crimes and violations of the right to life. [...]
The Commission established a pattern of widespread unlawful confinement in areas controlled by Russian armed forces, targeting broad categories of men, women and children. Confinement in dedicated facilities across Ukraine and in the Russian Federation was accompanied by consistent methods of torture against certain categories of persons by Russian authorities.
The Commission found numerous instances of rape and sexual and gender-based violence committed by Russian authorities as they undertook house-to-house searches in localities that came under their control and during unlawful confinement...
And yes, they did find some Ukrainian war crimes were committed, but not on the same scale:
The Commission also documented a small number of violations committed by Ukrainian armed forces, including likely indiscriminate attacks and two incidents qualifying as war crimes, where Russian prisoners of war were shot, wounded and tortured.
Russia and Ukraine are basically the same politically...
Now you're just saying shit you wish were true. Come on. There are some pretty big differences.
...except for there are more Nazis in power in Ukraine.
The president of Ukraine is Jewish and his family fought and died in WW2. This doesn't mean there's no problem, but that is not indicative of a country overcome by Nazis.
Your characterization is grotesque and you're literally repeating Russia's propaganda about the war. Do you not see that? Or do you see it? Do you know what you are doing with that argument?
they overthrew their democratically elected president in 2014 in a CIA backed coup
This is great, you pro-Russia fuckers are all using the same arguments so i get to re-use my links! You're referring to the Revolution of Dignity, here, for those who don't know.
And you're going to have to provide a source and some details as far as what, exactly, you claim the CIA did. I haven't heard any credible claim that they were more than indirectly involved in propaganda and if that's the standard then Russia was doing the same damn thing if not more.
...we can listen to Nuland picking the government on leaked phone calls...
Presumably you're referring to these leaks, where she talks about how (for example) she doesn't think Vitaly Klitschko should "go into the government". Well, Klitschko became Mayor of Kyiv in 2014 so that's a bit of a blow to your theory.
...they’ve banned political opposition and all leftist parties (not pro-Russia, just all leftists. Being leftist generally means having semi sane takes like not wanting everybody in the country to die, so they had to be banned by the Nazi regime).
And this is just straight up factually wrong. None of this is correct.
Also I didn’t say Russia is a free country, but Ukraine is easily just as bad if not worse
I didn't say you did. I asked: on what merit is Ukraine worse than Russia? You have made that claim multiple times but have not provided one, I see, and nor have you provided a source for your claim. Surely you're not seriously going to claim elections or civil liberties, where Russia is much worse than Ukraine and not just a little worse.
Zelenksy was openly threatening to host nuclear weapons for Nato on the eve of the invasion
Do you understand that there's a difference between hosting weapons in your country and (let's say) invading another country and (for example) launching missile strikes at civilians? (And can i just say? That Wikipedia page just keeps going and going.)
Let's also not forget about Russia continuously threatening to nuke Ukraine without commensurate nuclear threat from the other side. (They just keep doing it!)
Really, if we go back to the start of this (the pre-Crimea days), Ukraine had two futures. In one, it grew closer to Russia and came under the Russian sphere of influence. In the other, it grew closer to the West likewise. It was leaning in the direction of the West, but when Russia attacked it sure as hell pushed hard in that direction. Now everyone in the region wants to get in on NATO and Russia is claiming that's "provocation". That's nonsense, and it's shameful and pretty slimy to carry water for their nonsense.
They didn’t invade; they were already there...
I dunno how to tell you this but the entirety of Crimea is not Russia's private naval base. No, not even if Vladimir Putin really wants it.
...western backed coup...
You mean the Revolution of Dignity??? That's what you're talking about here, right?
Well that’s just fucking stupid. Peace treaties don’t count if they came after a war?
No, that's not the argument. The argument is that whether or not they broke a cease fire has no bearing on whether past or future invasions of their country are justified. The Russian invasion was unjustified from the start. It doesn't magically become justified because Russia claims the other side broke a peace treaty. Russia could withdraw at any time. They could have even withdrawn to Crimea and probably been fine. Again, they claimed to not even be party to the treaty!
These are some pretty shameful arguments, overall.
Finland allied with the Nazis after the Winter War, in an attempt to regain their sovereignty from the USSR. They were not allied with Nazi Germany during the Winter War--and after the war, the leadership of the USSR agreed that Finland was not a particular risk and could be left alone.
Also lmao at calling Ukraine a free country compared to Russia
Ukraine is a far, far freer country than Russia. Of that there should be no doubt. On what merit, what axis, is Russia a freer society? Perhaps there is one, but Russia today is a corrupt, dictatorial, fascist state whose ruling party routinely imprisons or assassinates its political opposition or just general dissidents. They're also hardcore anti-gay, among other things.
Ukraine did suspend a number of pro-Russia political parties recently. Even if it was specifically targeting left-wing parties that still pales in comparison to Russia's treatment of political opposition and let's not forget that Ukraine is currently waging a defensive war against Russia. Also Zelensky is Jewish so i doubt he is putting up Nazi statues or in favor of doing so. I presume you're referring to activity of the Azov Battalion or some other group inside Ukraine and while those are dangerous and problematic, the Nazis in the Russian army are (I suspect) a more serious threat to the Ukrainian people right now.
Do you not believe Ukraine broke both Minsk I and II as a lead up to the war?
What I think is that it doesn't matter in the context of an aggressive war against a country that was not threatening Russia.
Minsk I came about after the Russian military had invaded and annexed Ukrainian territory. The first of these two agreements is already taking place after the initial aggression and thus are not really factors in the question of whether Ukraine should defend itself from that aggression.
With that said, Minsk I saw violations on both sides and fell apart for that reason. Minsk II was fundamentally similar to Minsk I and thus was going to struggle to escape the same fate. While the Russians claimed that Ukraine violated the terms of Minsk II, they also claimed that they were not a party to Minsk II and thus were not violating it with their own troop buildup. Of course, they also claim that Ukraine's supposed violations of Minsk II were justification for further Russian invasion, despite claiming to not be a party to the treaty. That's some duplicitous behavior and, again, if I were in Ukraine I would not want the Russian military in my country.
All that said, the point that Minsk I and II are not justification for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They sure as hell were not justification for the initial invasion of Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk (not existing yet during those) and they're not justification of Russia's continued invasion deeper into Ukraine.
Oh, so Russia deciding to invade Ukraine is the fault of the Ukrainians? Cool. Very normal opinion.
This isn't about us. What "we" should do is to support and show solidarity with the side being attacked by an imperialist, dictatorial state and help them defend themselves.
When the Finnish were defending themselves in the Winter War it would not have been just to say "they should just surrender to save their lives". The Finns did eventually surrender, but only after they had stomped the Soviet army all across Finland. They continued fighting not to die but so that they could live.
The Ukrainians are fighting now not to die but so that they can live in (relative) freedom.
Again, this "we should just capitulate to whatever warmongers want" stuff is shameful and cowardly, doubly so for people on the Left.
Are we in charge of the Ukrainian military? Not that it really matters, but still.
Russia can unilaterally end the conflict. Ukraine cannot (yet). Calling on Ukrainians to surrender while they still want to defend themselves is cowardice. I would rather support their continued struggle.
The natives were chill and their help was the only reason the settlers survived in a lot of cases, but uhh... the same could not be said the other way around.