Ukraine Conflict - Es ist nichts schrecklicher als eine tätige Unwissenheit

[bugarup]

44 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Did you learn  Russian at school and when did you learn English and when did   you learn your home language? 

I interested about different languages people speak and how did they learn them?

Home language I learned in babby and toddler years as most people probably do.   My grandpa's Russian, so basic foundation's from there, then Russian lessons started from second year of primary school + socializing with fellow kids + media exposure + reading a lot + job stuff + Internet so here I am. English lessons started in middle school but were pretty rudimentary and I didn't have a break-through until my early twenties, when I started discovering books I really wanted to read, but there were no available translations. Then Internet and making foreign friends through it, job stuff, books, films. I can also passably read and understand Polish and Belarussian, but can't speak them at all. 

[BruceVC]

31 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

No. I started learning English at school when I was ten. I have visited the UK several times, but I have never lived there and certainly wasn't born there.

My bad, I thought you were the English Monty from these forums. But you a different Monty

Where do you live, sorry for the confusion 

 

 

[Mamoulian War]

19 hours ago, ComradeYellow said:

The key word there is "apparent" and wartime propaganda (both sides) is still in overdrive so I would be patient and wait a month after the war is over to get a more accurate analysis about the conduct.  Here is an equally relevant counter claim.

 

This was already proven false by satellite images made as soon as March 10th... Provided by Maxar

 

[Mamoulian War]

2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

We can't know if this is true, but it is very plausible. Fighting back on all fronts.

 

Looks like babushkas of Izyum successfully launched their planned "Special Culinary Operation".

[Mamoulian War]

Remember that one video, which we were not linking here? As @Zoraptor said, it can be told, that it was not faked, because the injuries were real. Judging the information arriving from Bucha hour by hour, it looks like he might be right, that the video was real. Still faked though, and I am willing to bet, that the guys shooting the people on the ground to were Russian soldiers and not Ukrainians. Today there was found a cellar in Bucha with corpses kneeing, with hands tied behind theirs back, and all of them were first shot in the knees and later to the back of the head.

 

Allegedly the occupiers in Bucha shot down every civilian who had served in the army since 2014, as well as everyone who had a Ukrainian trident tattooed. They had the personal information of some people.

 

and a testimony of a doctor from Zaporizhia:
A group of young girls were admitted to the hospital, the oldest being 10 years old. All had rectal and vaginal injuries. I feel sick...

Edited April 4, 2022 by Mamoulian War

[Malcador]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/europe/zelensky-nato-merkel-sarkozy.html

Sort of a strange approach to take, at this point

 

[Lexx]

BLASTS

 

God, I hate it when the media is using words like that in their headlines.

Edited April 4, 2022 by Lexx

[Malcador]

10 minutes ago, Lexx said:

BLASTS

 

God, I hate it when the media is using words like that in their headlines.

https://www.politico.eu/article/zelenskyy-calls-out-angela-merkel-nicolas-sarkozy-for-blocking-ukraines-nato-bid/

Is that better ?

[Lexx]

Yeah, feels a lot less sensationalist right away.

[kanisatha]

Finland in NATO may get fast-tracked (as I predicted may happen):

https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/finnish-president-says-nato-referendum-no-longer-necessary/

https://www.airforcemag.com/finland-reassesses-nato-entry-in-wake-of-russia-ukraine-conflict/

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/why-putin-faces-more-nato-arctic-after-ukraine-invasion-2022-04-04/

[kanisatha]

And then there's this, which also came up as a story back in late February, and has been rumoured for some time. This may or may not be true, but is certainly very interesting to me:

https://metro.co.uk/2022/04/03/putin-is-using-body-double-to-avoid-assassination-attempt-16396461/

[kanisatha]

8 hours ago, bugarup said:

Anyone up for a little piece of official russia state propaganda this nice Monday morning, in case if anyone doubts about Bucha being an outlier rather than part of a plan? And if reads like something out of the third reich, it's not your Google Translate's fault. It's just as chilling in russian.

https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html

 

Yeah this is the fundamental difference here: anecdotal versus systematic crimes.

In any war situation some individual soldiers will end up doing bad or criminal things. But that is a far cry from a situation where the government of a state involved in a war, as a matter of its official military policy and doctrine, deliberately and systematically commits horrific war crimes and atrocities. This is what Russia is doing in Ukraine. And it is documented fact.

[HoonDing]

WORSE THAN ISIS

[BruceVC]

19 minutes ago, HoonDing said:

WORSE THAN ISIS

Not yet, we not seeing things like  slavery and the open rape areas where basically any non-Sunni women were kept by ISIS to be raped by any ISIS militant at anytime in their camps and cities they controlled 

But I share your concern but we not their yet 

 

[ComradeYellow]

7 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

This was already proven false by satellite images made as soon as March 10th... Provided by Maxar

 

Yes anyone can "prove" anything if it fits their narrative.  White Western extremists and morally bankrupt Redditors hate Russia, I get it, no sense trying to convince people otherwise if they've made up their minds already.

Since the play by play will remain woefully inaccurate for the time being, I'll just post some badass pics in the meantime.

Russian tankers near Izyum, very 'Tankie'.

 

 

[Zoraptor]

10 hours ago, pmp10 said:

Yes, but that is propaganda.
It's never easy to tell how common views like this are in the Russian society and more importantly how much they are willing to suffer for that vision.

Eh, it's pretty much the same pattern it always is: older, poorer, more conservative, and more rural --> more enthusiastic; and for the poorer less to lose anyway. Middle class and educated urban young people --> not.

For enthusiasm, and susceptibility to propaganda, Goering is still relevant:

“Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Edited April 4, 2022 by Zoraptor

[HoonDing]

Imagine the Germans having Twitter in 1944

[kanisatha]

This article provides the gritty, horrific details of what the Russian rabble did to civilians in Bucha, directly from the words of the people who got to witness these things being done to their loved ones:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/russia-bucha-killings-war-crimes-genocide/629470/?utm_source=feed

[kanisatha]

China's lessons from Russia's Ukraine invasion:

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2022/04/what-lessons-china-taking-ukraine-war/363915/

[Malcador]

31 minutes ago, HoonDing said:

Imagine the Germans having Twitter in 1944

Well, don't really have to imagine Nazis on social media...

[Elerond]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-bodies.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

It seems that Russians for some reason let Ukraine/US framing/decor teams to set up scenes of civilian massacre weeks beforehand as it is seen in satellite images that shows the prop bodies on Bucha's streets for weeks (appeared in images between 9th to 11th of March)   

[Chairchucker]

Extremely badass photos of war criminals on this page.

[rjshae]

I just finished watching one of those historical colorized film versions of World War II history; in particular, the Barbarossa operation and German treatment of civilians in Russia and the Ukraine. The parallels are spooky. I suppose it's true; war never changes.

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, rjshae said:

I just finished watching one of those historical colorized film versions of World War II history; in particular, the Barbarossa operation and German treatment of civilians in Russia and the Ukraine. The parallels are spooky. I suppose it's true; war never changes.

It does change, but the parallels are spooky.

A German named Herbert Backe divided much of Russia into "surplus" and "deficit" zones in his planning. The idea was to take the surplus zone (much of which was in Ukraine, btw, because of its extremely rich soil) and disregard the deficit zone. As the Germans themselves wrote in the minutes of the big meeting concerning this, "as a result, x million people will doubtlessly starve, if that which is necessary for us is extracted from the land" (translated from the German, obviously, for everone's convenience).

In may 1941, they also had an official document called Guidelines for the Behaviour of Troops in Russia, which stated, for example, that everyone suspected of working against German interests were to be tried on the spot and shot if found guilty, regardless of whether they were soldiers or civilians.

All of this happened such a short while ago that there are still people alive from that time.

The remarkable thing is that at least two countries that have committed terrible atrocities have taken a serious look at themselves and made profound changes: Germany and Japan. While there is almost certainly at least some somescreening involved in this, I have no doubt that genuine progress has also been made. The depressing thing is that nothing like this has even been attempted in Russia. Consider how Hitler is viewed in Germany, and then consider how Stalin is viewed in Russia. There is a world of difference right there. It is true that Russia is full of cenotaphs and other memorials with a plaque saying something along the lines of "No one has been forgotten, nothing has been forgotten" (a translation from a fairly poor memory, please don't put me down if this is somewhat incorrect, but I'm certain it is not totally incorrect). But this is not true at all: Russia's memory has been selective in the extreme. Everything inconvenient has been forgotten and deliberately suppressed, and right now we are in a situation where if you bring any of it up, you're facing up to 15 years in jail. Historians had a terrible time in Russia even before this most recent period of atrocities.

Along with so much else, Russia is also suffering from a terrible curse of resources: it doesn't need societal change. It doesn't need development. It doesn't need better universal education(*). It doesn't need the kind of society where ideas are thrown around and discussed and criticized and occasionally implemented, too. It has resources. It sells them. That's enough, financially speaking. This is extremely bad for Russia.

 

(*) In the US, much of education can be dreadfully poor. But some of it is also almost certainly the best in the world -- as a late friend of mine, a professor from Iowa, said to me, "All the stereotypes about the US are true, but their opposites are also true". Russia has good education in some areas, especially some natural sciences. But not the kind of culture that leads to a flowering of ideas.

Edited April 5, 2022 by xzar_monty

[Malcador]

Bah, wrong thread.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Malcador