Ukraine Conflict - "A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny"

[xzar_monty]

6 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

I'd have a lot less against journalists if they actually lived up to their self proclaimed list of virtues, but they don't.

Which list -- where is it proclaimed and what does it contain? By comparison, can you name an occupation whose representatives do live up to their list of virtues? This second question can also be phrased: do you regard journalists as worse than any/all people in other fields?

My experience in journalism started in the late 1980s, and I have, for example, interviewed an awful lot of people, including what might be called major world stars. My experience in the field doesn't confirm your claim, as I have seen, over the years, plenty of people work with impeccable integrity. Of course there is dross in journalism, but your blanket claim doesn't seem to hold true at all. Perhaps you're mostly referencing your world, i.e. the English-speaking one? I wouldn't hesitate to say that the rags in that culture are remarkably awful, although there is superb journalism, too.

Edited August 10, 2022 by xzar_monty

[bugarup]

8 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

They also betray a pretty crappy understanding of humanitarian law, ie it applies to those you like, not just those you don't. Ultimately the reason why you shouldn't use protected civilian infrastructure for basing and why it is a warcrime unless it's of military necessity is because it erodes the protection for every school, including those that are still used as schools. That's why both Hamas and Ukraine using schools as bases is bad, and a war crime, and despite Hamas' bases being a lot closer than the one at Bakhmut.

You know what else is a war crime? This entire Russian war against Ukraine. Nothing of this school-schmool thing would have happened if not for Russia's imperialistic delusions backed by tiny waxy garbage man's issues.

 This was the daily reminder of what is really responsible for all the awful things happening right now. (Hint: it's Russia).

[xzar_monty]

3 minutes ago, bugarup said:

You know what else is a war crime? This entire Russian war against Ukraine. Nothing of this school-schmool thing would have happened if not for Russia's imperialistic delusions backed by tiny waxy garbage man's issues.

This is a very salient point. All the other atrocities stem from Russia's initial atrocity. But of course, there are plenty of people, even outside Russia, who blame other parties than Russia for that, too. Which is a bit strange.

But then, there are so many strange things about the whole conflict. Like, reportedly, people in Russia "learn not to trust anyone because they know their government is corrupt and lies", or something to that effect, as is often claimed. But then the question arises, why do they trust Russian state propaganda right now, with this war going on? It's baffling.

[Gorth]

35 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

 But then the question arises, why do they trust Russian state propaganda right now, with this war going on? It's baffling.

Propaganda is very effective when you have a de facto monopoly on coverage. Russia and the state media, Murdoch media protecting even the worst of Australian right wing governments, China and their great firewall, Berlusconis complete media dominance in Italy, keeping even this most rotten of scoundrels in power for too long… add to list as people see fit. One sided media coverage in any direction creates totalitarian regimes that live by a code of rules are for everyone else

[BruceVC]

4 minutes ago, Gorth said:

Propaganda is very effective when you have a de facto monopoly on coverage. Russia and the state media, Murdoch media protecting even the worst of Australian right wing governments, China and their great firewall, Berlusconis complete media dominance in Italy, keeping even this most rotten of scoundrels in power for too long… add to list as people see fit. One sided media coverage in any direction creates totalitarian regimes that live by a code of rules are for everyone else

Do you consider Oz an example of a totalitarian\autocratic state similar to Russia or China because of Murdoch media ?

[xzar_monty]

11 minutes ago, Gorth said:

Propaganda is very effective when you have a de facto monopoly on coverage. Russia and the state media, Murdoch media protecting even the worst of Australian right wing governments, China and their great firewall, Berlusconis complete media dominance in Italy, keeping even this most rotten of scoundrels in power for too long… add to list as people see fit. One sided media coverage in any direction creates totalitarian regimes that live by a code of rules are for everyone else

I agree with much of this. But the paradox remains: the story of Russians as a people who do not trust their leaders -- but do trust them now. Why?

[Gorth]

4 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Do you consider Oz an example of a totalitarian\autocratic state similar to Russia or China because of Murdoch media ?

To a degree, yes. Eventually Murdoch won’t be around and maybe there will be room for competition. It doesn’t work when the dominant media protects the government and said government in return sics the federal police on any critical voices in acts of harassment and silencing any critics of the government (including comedians and YouTubers)

[Gorth]

11 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

I agree with much of this. But the paradox remains: the story of Russians as a people who do not trust their leaders -- but do trust them now. Why?

Not sure. Maybe something about familiarity and the devil you know? Especially if the other devil is portrayed as worse (the truth is irrelevant in that situation, it’s what people believe that matters). As some clever person once figured out, one of the best weapons against terrorists is winning the hearts and minds of people. But, not being Russian, I can only speculate 

 

Edit: as the allied found out during wwii, no amount of “terror bombing” and maximising civilian casualties will do the job. It had the opposite effect, which is also why I think sanctions of anything other than things of military use runs the  risk of being counter productive. Not saying it is, but risk is there (based on the wwii lessons)

[pmp10]

Seems Ukrainians are slowing backing down from taking any offensive actions.
Kherson is both an example that Russia can referendum-away any territory and a springboard for a future push on Odessa.
They wouldn't give-up on it if there were any chances of success.

A bad indication for future of Ukraine.

[BruceVC]

13 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

I agree with much of this. But the paradox remains: the story of Russians as a people who do not trust their leaders -- but do trust them now. Why?

But many Russians dont trust there leaders and you can see this from the decline in voting numbers in Russia. Citizens give up on things like voting where a state starts sliding into autocracy and you cant influence any political change. Its always a good sign of lack of belief in leadership

The US for example has always had about 45% of US citizens who never vote or arent registered. But if you look at the 2020 US elections more people voted than ever before so despite the left vs right culture wars rhetoric the people in the US that do vote did vote. So you see how voting turnout is a example of citizens who still believe you can see political change and do believe in there governments 

I know several Russians on Codex who dislike Putin and dont trust him at all but they live in Russia and they know there is nothing they can do to change the autocratic nature of the country. Putin definitely has his supporters in Russia and I would argue before the invasion of Ukraine it was probably 55-60% of the population but now it will be less. But end of the day we wont get accurate data from the country anyway so we only hear what Putin wants us to hear and what the state controlled media reports on

 

[xzar_monty]

20 minutes ago, Gorth said:

Edit: as the allied found out during wwii, no amount of “terror bombing” and maximising civilian casualties will do the job. It had the opposite effect, which is also why I think sanctions of anything other than things of military use runs the  risk of being counter productive. Not saying it is, but risk is there (based on the wwii lessons)

Agreed. Another WWII lesson perhaps less pertinent to this is that Russians may not back or break down.

In WWII, the incidence of psychiatric breakdown (stress, mental fatigue, madness and all the rest of it) was much higher among the allies. Various speculations have been put forth. Probably the most likely answer is that the Brits and the Americans were used to something resembling a good life, whereas the Russians knew that life is awful, the Germans were rabidly nazified and the Japanese had their code of honor which always gave suicide as a good option. So, the shocks of war were most shocking to the Allies.

The Italians, according to Hemingway(*), were likely to cry "Il Duce!" in the event of a fairly painless flesh wound, but a shattered bone or a shot in the stomach raised almost no patriotic fervor at all.

(*) in an article written somewhere and subsequently published in the book By-Line. Not going to check out the direct source now.

[Mamoulian War]

7 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Agreed. Another WWII lesson perhaps less pertinent to this is that Russians may not back or break down.

In WWII, the incidence of psychiatric breakdown (stress, mental fatigue, madness and all the rest of it) was much higher among the allies. Various speculations have been put forth. Probably the most likely answer is that the Brits and the Americans were used to something resembling a good life, whereas the Russians knew that life is awful, the Germans were rabidly nazified and the Japanese had their code of honor which always gave suicide as a good option. So, the shocks of war were most shocking to the Allies.

The Italians, according to Hemingway(*), were likely to cry "Il Duce!" in the event of a fairly painless flesh wound, but a shattered bone or a shot in the stomach raised almost no patriotic fervor at all.

(*) in an article written somewhere and subsequently published in the book By-Line. Not going to check out the direct source now.

The thing is, which you also need to take into account is, that most of the war in Soviet Union has happened in Ukraine, and nowadays, most of the fighting on the side of Russia are done by ethnic non-russians, which was not the case during WWII. So if we look back at WWII lessons, that Ukraine has an advantage in this regard as well.

Edited August 10, 2022 by Mamoulian War

[Mamoulian War]

42 minutes ago, pmp10 said:

Seems Ukrainians are slowing backing down from taking any offensive actions.
Kherson is both an example that Russia can referendum-away any territory and a springboard for a future push on Odessa.
They wouldn't give-up on it if there were any chances of success.

A bad indication for future of Ukraine.

It might have been psyops, to get as much of Russians into a place, where Ukraine can completely control the logistics of the enemy, which is pretty much what really happened. There are 25000 Russian soldiers in Kherson, being supplied by two improvisional ferries and a single damaged bridge near Nova Kakhovka dam. Every other way into the region was destroyed by UA army. I might be mistaken, but I cannot see a single possitive outcome for Russian soldiers out of this situation in the long term.

The situation will be a stalemate for a long time, but in last two weeks, Ukraine have liberated more land, than they have lost, especially around Izyum, and in Kherson, despite all Russians running there. Also, there are slowly emerging reports, that because of Russians employing new soldiers with very low training, and Wagner are recruiting criminals, that the resistance in occupied Ukraine is raising even among the Ukrainians, which were more favourable towards Russia. All of that is happening, because these new “recruits” are acting pretty much as complete utter garbage and ****… but yes, conflict will be long, with Ukraine hitting away all of the Russian military infrastruction, even in the territories, which Russia will referendum away, like what happened now in Crimea. 40 SU-25 is probably year and half of presanction Russian production in aviation industry, lost overnight. With sanctions in place, it will take Russia in some sectors twice or thrice as long to replace lost equipment than before the war. The only thing which is immune to sanctions is pretty much artillery, and as everyone can see, after the HIMARS spree, the artillery strikes dropped tenfold compared to the times around Sieverodonetsk/Lysychansk siege.

 

Will the Ukraine win this war? I do not know, but if the West stays behind them and will supply them through the winter, they will have a slight advantage in the war of attrition against Russia, due tomthe fact, that Russia does not have industry fit enough to sustain all the damage at the pace the Ukraine is destroying their army. It is clear that the current strategy is, that Russia wants to take as much of land as possible by sham referendums, and blackmail the west to peace out. That’s why they turned off the oil flowing to their only ally in EU yesterday, as they hope Orban will break first and starts to sabotage the EU working together.

Edited August 10, 2022 by Mamoulian War

[xzar_monty]

Regarding the strikes / explosions in Crimea, I found this very interesting:

 

[Mamoulian War]

From local radio news: According to Ukrainian military sources, 10 aircrafts have been destroyed at Crimea. 
 

The damage might be even bigger as it is impossible to assess from the satellite images, how many of the aircraft were made inoperable by smaller shrapnel damage from explosion. As the geolocated pictures shows destroyed cars 600meters away from the closest ammunition warehouse, which was destroyed, the number of such damaged aircrafts is probably in higher than lower numbers.

 

[xzar_monty]

I wonder if the Russian-built Crimean bridge will become a target soon. Surely the Russians must regard it as a realistic possibility, unless they hold on to the fantasy that these recent explosions resulted from careless smoking or too much beans in the soup or something.

But bridges, of course, are notoriously difficult to destroy, so it might be viable for Ukraine to target something else.

[xzar_monty]

4 hours ago, Gorth said:

To a degree, yes. Eventually Murdoch won’t be around and maybe there will be room for competition. It doesn’t work when the dominant media protects the government and said government in return sics the federal police on any critical voices in acts of harassment and silencing any critics of the government (including comedians and YouTubers)

Do you have a cogent view on how Australia ended up like this? The situation is awful if it is as you describe, and even if it isn't that dire, I do know that it's not particularly good. But it would be really interesting to know how it got to be that way. What was the starting point and what were the steps.

As much as there are things to be deplored in state-funded media, their Scandinavian version appears to work remarkably well, especially because commercial media exist right beside them (and therefore state-funded stuff is not the only stuff you get, like in perhaps North Korea). So, there are these media outlets whose interests aren't entirely 100% commercial and who have at least of degree of impartiality. I think this is good. I know that the US, for instance, has stuff like the NPR, but it's such an insignificant player that it makes no difference.

The world where all media is strictly commercial has a tendency to make people more cynical, because there is always ample room and reason for the question, "What are they trying to sell me by saying this?" Like David Foster Wallace pointed out in one of his essays, the average American citizen is inundated with so many commercial messages that he finds it difficult to conceptualize the idea that there might be messages whose interests aren't strictly commercial.

This cynicism sometimes manifests itself in such a way that when I say something like this, I get a response where I'm regarded as a hopelessly naive and brainwashed child of socialism. The conversation rarely progresses much after that.

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, Gorth said:

t (including comedians and YouTubers)

Gorthfuscious please tell me you not saying what I think you saying, if the hotties have been banned then the Oz government is WORSE than Russia 

Juice Media forever 

[Chilloutman]

7 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Gorthfuscious please tell me you not saying what I think you saying, if the hotties have been banned then the Oz government is WORSE than Russia 

Juice Media forever 

 

[Gorth]

38 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Gorthfuscious please tell me you not saying what I think you saying, if the hotties have been banned then the Oz government is WORSE than Russia 

Juice Media forever 

Juice Media is alive and well. It was other popular social media  critics that got arrested and jailed for criticising the Morrison government 

 

exit: TheFriendlyJordies being one of the channels

[Zoraptor]

7 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Which list -- where is it proclaimed and what does it contain? By comparison, can you name an occupation whose representatives do live up to their list of virtues? This second question can also be phrased: do you regard journalists as worse than any/all people in other fields?

My experience in journalism started in the late 1980s, and I have, for example, interviewed an awful lot of people, including what might be called major world stars. My experience in the field doesn't confirm your claim, as I have seen, over the years, plenty of people work with impeccable integrity. Of course there is dross in journalism, but your blanket claim doesn't seem to hold true at all. Perhaps you're mostly referencing your world, i.e. the English-speaking one? I wouldn't hesitate to say that the rags in that culture are remarkably awful, although there is superb journalism, too.

Eh, it's a figurative list, not a literal one. Talk to any journalist(s) as a collective group though and you'll get talk about honesty, getting the truth out for/ informing people, being balanced etc. You won't get much about clickbait, sensationalism and agenda driving though and that's the majority of journalism nowadays. There are plenty of professions that do, more or less, live up to their claims.

Drifting rather off topic, but you can always do an english language search for most/ least trusted professions- in which journalists reliably are only beaten by politicians as least trustworthy; in contrast those involved in science and medicine are typically most trusted.

Plenty of journalists do work with integrity, plenty don't- and plenty think they do but are simply not very good at ignoring their own biases.

Quote

This is a very salient point. All the other atrocities stem from Russia's initial atrocity.

It actually isn't, at least so far as the question of war crimes goes.

It isn't either a zero sum game where "well, they killed 1000 people unjustifiably, we only killed 100, therefore they are guilty of killing 900 and we are innocent!" works; nor can you go "well they started it, therefore everything is their fault so we cannot commit war crimes"- though both are frequently tried.

Consider the 2003 Iraq war- is the US responsible for everything stemming from that? Maybe in theory- but not practically in terms of war crimes. The people responsible for those are the people committing them, not the US because it invaded.

Edited August 10, 2022 by Zoraptor

[BruceVC]

38 minutes ago, Chilloutman said:

 

That was hilarious ...and it makes sense 

[BruceVC]

5 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

 

Consider the 2003 Iraq war- is the US responsible for everything stemming from that? Maybe in theory- but not practically in terms of war crimes. The people responsible for those are the people committing them, not the US because it invaded.

You make a good point about Iraq but the wars are very different. As you know there were external  sectarian groups killing each other, Iraq Sunni vs Iraq Shia and foreign fighters involved. Not everyone was just trying to kill US and its allies like the UK

Putins War is much simpler, its about Russia vs Ukraine and the war crimes committed are almost always committed by Russian soldiers. The Ukrainians arent going to rape and kill there own civilians because its not Iraq

[Malcador]

3 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Regarding the strikes / explosions in Crimea, I found this very interesting:

 

What's interesting about that?

[xzar_monty]

55 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

It isn't either a zero sum game where "well, they killed 1000 people unjustifiably, we only killed 100, therefore they are guilty of killing 900 and we are innocent!" works; nor can you go "well they started it, therefore everything is their fault so we cannot commit war crimes"- though both are frequently tried.

Are they? Where, and by whom? In my view, both claims are stupid enough to sound like something equivalent to a strawman -- and anyone making claims along those lines certainly isn't worthy of respect, or worth taking seriously.

So yes, it is neither of the claims you describe, but both the claims you describe are utterly ridiculous, and I haven't seen any proper source making claims along those lines. I've followed the coverage since the war began and genuinely haven't seen what you describe; perhaps our sources are just utterly different.

Edited August 10, 2022 by xzar_monty