Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
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Same thoughts here. Based on every animal I’ve ever shot with a .30 calibre round, I would expect one delivered that close to do visible, catastrophic damage.
Exactly! Those guys are barely groaning and rolling about a little bit.
A Big Vlad combo sounds pretty delicious to be fair.
A Rally calling for amnesty for British Soldiers?
Anti-War protests?
Or probably both.
Oh my just wait until you read about how the british empire moved people like cattle to suit their machinations.
That is interesting. Only complaint being that we have censored Russian media which is a kind of state-directed infantilization of the people (not intelligent enough to try comprehend propaganda for themselves) and an incredibly illiberal policy. So that ironically it is a kind of propaganda that we have to take these statements on their own merit as we're denied access to the source.
Best alternatives are the likes of Russian Pravda
https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/150874-regime_change_washington/
which frame it slightly different but do report it.
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Banning media that is entirely controlled and directed by the state (which in Russia now means all media), and which lies about pretty much everything, is in my view justified in a situation where Russia, under Putin, can now only be seen as an enemy state. Should we have allowed Nazi-run newspapers to be published in Britain during WWII?
For decades, in the name of "liberal" tolerance, we allowed the likes of "Russia Today" to pump out their lies in the UK. But now the blinkers are off and we see Putin's regime for the brutal, deceitful enemy it really is. For as long as Putin is in power, we face an existential struggle between democracy and freedom vs. brutal dictatorship. No more Mr Nice Guy.
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Worth noting that we live in the era of QAnon
Indeed. Even now there are idiots out there claiming that the videos and images of Mariupol, a city that has been razed to the ground, are all faked and come from a specially-designed film set.
I don't agree with (probably never will). If Russian propaganda were that powerful, how come we know all the things they've done? It isn't a non-factor but it isn't the existential threat it's made out to be either. Historians and other professionals (including journalists) need access to all perspectives and also know how to make allowance for propagandistic value (they've been trained to do it).
True, but conspiracy has been around since the beginning of the internet and well before it, too (Protocols of Zion, Hitlerism). It's better to refute what is untrue rather than ban it if your interest is really in helping people see sense (if you were QAnon or pro-Kremlin before this, I doubt the ban will have moved you toward reason but probably entrenched you even further).
Let me repeat my question: Should we have allowed Nazi-run newspapers to be published in Britain during WWII?
As for "Historians and other professionals (including journalists)" ... historians can have access for their look back after the dust has settled, and professionals like journalists can I'm sure still access whatever they need to. The BBC, for example, continue to monitor all Russian TV and radio.
If someone’s bleeding, you stop the bleed. This Russian propaganda bullshit is a bleed that needs to be stopped. There’s folks in Russia who believe this invasion is a good thing and that things that are happening aren’t happening because of it, despite their family in Ukraine telling them what’s going on. Hell, I had in-laws who believed Covid was a hoax because of propaganda when their own daughter was running a Covid ICU. It’s nice to have ideals, but this is a war. That’s kinda where ideals go to die.
Exactly. That shit needs to be contained.
The issue is that both of your historical examples are also great examples of things that weren't banned, and where clear and obvious attempts were made to (successfully) refute their ideas in the public sphere, and the outcome of both was genocide.
"Remember when Russia massed a 40-mile mechanised column to mount an overwhelming attack on Kyiv? The convoy ground to a halt largely because of a series of night ambushes carried out by a team of 30 Ukrainian special forces & drone operators on quad bikes."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...he-russian-armoured-vehicles-heading-for-kyiv
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...he-russian-armoured-vehicles-heading-for-kyiv
Put this invasion into perspective. It is basically akin to the Soviet-Afghan War. There remained journalistic exchange and diplomatic exchange even at the height of the Cold War when US/USSR were fighting each other by proxy on simultaneous fronts.
Personally, I want the Russian perspective as well as the Ukrainian perspective and the Western perspective and the rest of the world's perspective, too. I can understand arguments against it, but despite legitimate concerns it's not something I'm going to agree with. If the Russians were an actual, immediate, threat (war-threat) to us, I would agree. They're not, though. The only threat here is a potential nuclear war because if it goes hot then it will go nuclear as a matter of fact and all the propaganda won't matter a bit. Also, the people who swallow Russian propaganda are the same people you should be convincing of its absurdity (by pointing out the absurdity of our own propaganda, too). And these people will find a way to get that content somewhere else. All you're doing is pushing them further into individualistc silos.
If we're going to be told about Russian media by Western media, then the first thing I'm going to do is go straight to Russian media because of a healthy distrust of Western media (cultivated over a lifetime and based in their outright lies and manipulative tactics). One set of half-truths against another with the two being weighed by the self-interest of different ruling classes in different states (or different states if you don't buy the class line). It just means I have to read against the grain of Pravda instead of RT. And if that goes, then some other Russian outlet.
Just on the covid thing. That was mostly Western people in my experience. Not saying Russians might not have tried to push it, but there was enormous vaccine hesitancy in Russia, too. And social media was the biggest problem there, not Russian media (the conspiracies you saw predated Russian broadcast establishments in many cases including anti-Semitic theories). Also, the US has to be the greatest exporter of conspiracy theories in modern history (well before Russia).
The perspective is actually that this is the first time - or the 2nd time if we include the annexation of Crimea - since the end of WWII that Russia/USSR has invaded an independent European country. It's an historical watershed event that is not comparable to the Soviet-Afghan War.
Third time if we include Chechnya. It's a momentous event and I'm not downplaying it, I just don't see the logic behind repeating Russian propaganda in Western media if you're going to ban Russian media because it is propaganda.
I used to think like that. There’s even posts you can pull up by me on here from 5 or so years back talking about it. I don’t believe that way anymore. Events, and people’s responses to them, have changed that opinion in me.
Yeah, that's fair enough.
You make no distinction between the plurality of Western media - hundreds of different TV channels, radio stations and newspapers, not to mention internet access - and the single monolith of the Russian state that now controls all Russian media and has cut off access to the internet for most of its citizens? Unbelievable.
I'm sorry, but I'm done responding further to such idiocy.
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The Russian state controlled media is not the same as Western media, I agree. But Western media, despite its plurality, is largely dominated by a corporate nexus. There are facts about this war which the Western media have tried their best to suppress or marginalize. You had to either know the history or know reliable independent journalists/scholars to get those facts because it wasn't in the West's (corporate) interest to tell you. I understand the West wants to propagandize to serve their interests, that's fine. Russia does it all the time. But I also have an interest in discerning what is true and objective from what is loaded and selectively framed.
We won't agree but I think it's because you misunderstand my point (I know what plurality there is and isn't in the Western mediascape and am not saying it is the same as Russian state media). It's not a massive issue either way.
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Things like this are a problem. If you know the Donziger story, you'll understand that corporate media has basically refused to report it. I don't even like Hedges but this carpet banning of people you disagree with is insane.
For a different thread.
Things like this are a problem. If you know the Donziger story, you'll understand that corporate media has basically refused to report it. I don't even like Hedges but this carpet banning of people you disagree with is insane.
For a different thread.
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Apparently Russia in its various forms had been transplanting Ukranians out of Ukraine and moving Russians in for hundreds of years.
I assume this is to jam or also triangulate signals coming from Belarus or the Black Sea for those distance missile launches like that into Lviv?
Yes. I think they can jam Russian signals on behalf of the Ukrainians without ever entering Ukrainian airspace.
Semi-NFZ for Western Ukraine then? Or further?
Wont they need to work very closely or even closer with the Ukrainians so as not to jam their own frequencies too?
It wouldn’t be a NFZ since Russians could still fly in uncontested airspace. What it would do is jam and confuse Russian air defenses thereby allowing Ukrainian planes to fly with a lesser Russian air defense threat. That could be valuable in allowing Ukrainian air power to go after entrenched Russian units around Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaev, and Mariupol.
Cheers!!
I know you're pushing this across multiple threads but it isn't really true is it?
Firstly, what's reported on Russian TV in Russian will be different to what is reported on Russian state TV in English/French/Arabic. This is echoed across other authoritarian blocks worldwide.
Its the likes of Russia Today which have been banned from western media (in English/French etc), in such a way that the people who were consuming it before will still be able to consume it online. Not Russian state media (in Russian) which almost nobody but Russians would have been consuming in the west previously.
Regardless, the original post was talking about what's available to Russians in Russian language media and how its being reported to Russian speakers. Now either you speak Russian fluently, meaning you can still access those media reports yourself and corroborate the information. Or you can't speak Russian and therefore you wouldn't have been able to corroborate it even before any banning of Russian media.
All of which indicates to me yet another attempt to push a certain narrative (the propaganda in the West, the illiberal nature of this society) as opposed to an actual point regarding your ability to corroborate Russian language state media.
@Mciahel Goodman even in the 80s, in NI Gerry Adams was censored on TV. It’s actually hilariously ridiculous thinking back, his words were still put out but just voiced by an actor.
Censorship is found everywhere, whether it’s small or large; it’s been in action for decades
Censorship is found everywhere, whether it’s small or large; it’s been in action for decades
Much like the British in Ireland. That went well too.
Comparing western media to Putin's fascism is silly. Journalists in Russia who try to be objective can lose their lives. Seven Novaya Gazeta journalists have been murdered since 2000! That's one newspaper only. Which is closed as of today...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...vaya-gazeta-to-close-until-end-of-ukraine-war
Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s last remaining independent news outlets, has said it will cease operations until the end of the war in Ukraine after it received a second warning from the state censor for allegedly violating the country’s “foreign agent” law.
The warning came a day after its editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, spoke with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a group interview with Russian journalists that was quickly banned by the state media watchdog, Roskomnadzor.
Novaya Gazeta is one of the country’s most important independent publications. A number of its journalists have been killed since the 1990s in retaliation for their reporting, including on the war in Chechnya.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...vaya-gazeta-to-close-until-end-of-ukraine-war
Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s last remaining independent news outlets, has said it will cease operations until the end of the war in Ukraine after it received a second warning from the state censor for allegedly violating the country’s “foreign agent” law.
The warning came a day after its editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, spoke with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a group interview with Russian journalists that was quickly banned by the state media watchdog, Roskomnadzor.
Novaya Gazeta is one of the country’s most important independent publications. A number of its journalists have been killed since the 1990s in retaliation for their reporting, including on the war in Chechnya.
That's how I see it, too. The Russian propaganda machinery has designed narratives specifically for the conspiracy scene and right wing extremists in the West, like they have done all those previous years to harm us. I see absolutely no reason to allow that.
Then there's also the broad casting of Russian TV usually consumed by ethnic Russians in Europe or the US. Basically the broadcasting of what is seen in Russia as well. I believe that this should be available "for research purposes" but it should not be as easily accessible as it is currently.
That's insane. I know there's a law and I've seen the Russians very strictly call it "special military operation". That has to be more ridiculous than anything else (there are pro-Putin people in the West talking about invasion speed, plus Russian media links this to clear examples of other invasions that they don't agree with
).No you've misunderstood. I have lots of problems with western media but this is just about access to the Russia perspective (I've been following a broad spectrum of left/right/centre views from Western/Arab/Asian and Latin/South American news since the outbreak; that's all this is).
That's true. It isn't new. And you can make the argument that it isn't always bad, too I guess.
Unfookingbelievable. I wonder if the German minister will comment on this.
With much of his armies advance ground to a halt and in some case forced back in Ukraine, Putin's 'make believe enemy at the door' is turning into a real one.