Ukraine Conflict - "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."

[BruceVC]

48 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

And in other news, the Kadyrov family shines again, as Ramzan's son is filmed beating up a fellow in custody. The Mouth of Putin, i.e. Peskov, has bravely refused to comment on the matter before any questions were even asked.

It's interesting that there has been some vocal outrage among Russians who find it unseemly indeed that the Kadyrov family is allowed to break the law like this, apparently without repercussions. Contrast this with the almost complete lack of Russian outrage over the country's attempt to destroy Ukraine as a nation and Ukrainians as living human beings.

I agree, the outrage about Kadyrov son beating up people is a thing but invasions, rape, torture and killing of civilians is not an issue 

Its because its easier to deny the latter and also the general control of information in Russia means many Russians aren't  very well informed about the truth and the atrocities ongoing in Ukraine 

[Zoraptor]

6 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

And in other news, the Kadyrov family shines again, as Ramzan's son is filmed beating up a fellow in custody. The Mouth of Putin, i.e. Peskov, has bravely refused to comment on the matter before any questions were even asked.

For a spokesman Peskov doesn't seem to be actually commenting much on anything these days. They also couldn't get him to deny Kadyrov or Sokolov's deaths, which you'd think they'd be eager for him to do.

[xzar_monty]

8 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

For a spokesman Peskov doesn't seem to be actually commenting much on anything these days. They also couldn't get him to deny Kadyrov or Sokolov's deaths, which you'd think they'd be eager for him to do.

I wonder if his recent gaffe has something to do with it. He did let it slip that Russia's presidential elections are "not really democracy", after which he vanished from public view for three weeks or something.

It's also possible that the two were coincidental, of course, and that the gaffe was only in the eyes of the West.

[Zoraptor]

Think it goes back a bit further than that, those were just the examples I could think of since they were recent. He and Zakharova (?) were never particularly verbose/ responsive to western media anyway so it's not that much of a change in absolute terms.

[xzar_monty]

Zakharova is keen to comment on Finnish matters, I can tell you that! (Peskov much less so, at least since the war began.)

[xzar_monty]

Viktor Sokolov appears to be turning into another "is he or isn't he dead", with Peskov not saying anything and video evidence being inconclusive. The strike in Crimea seems like an effective one in any case.

[Malcador]

https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1707056671271399690

Slow day in the war, I guess

[xzar_monty]

It's not really certain whether this was a Wagner plane, but a Russian plane in any case and in Mali. Watching this landing really does make you wonder: what level of incompetence does it take to land your plane that far up the runway and not recognize there's no way there's enough of it left?

 

[Zoraptor]

8 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Viktor Sokolov appears to be turning into another "is he or isn't he dead", with Peskov not saying anything and video evidence being inconclusive. The strike in Crimea seems like an effective one in any case.

Given how poor both sides have been with 'x is dead' type predictions about high profile targets default has to be he's alive and Russia just doesn't really care about debunking it.

(None of the debunkings of the conference call video are compelling. The 'hospital bed propped up with pillows' one for example is clearly incorrect (and even if true: not dead) since he's provably used the same chair multiple times before. The only one that works is asserting it's an old/ faked video; which is the same assertion made about Kadyrov's stroll in Grozny a week or so ago...

The only high profile claim that may- may- have been accurate was Zaluzhny as I don't think anyone official on the Russian side claimed him as dead, just injured. Even then the evidence is scant- disappeared for a month with multiple provably faked pictures released in that time yes, and never regained the level or style of appearances prior, yes; but that's entirely circumstantial and there are multiple other explanations beyond him being injured)

[Malcador]

https://www.politico.eu/article/fight-against-ussr-nazi-waffen-ss-trooper-yaroslav-hunka-world-war-ii-soviet-union-germany/

Interesting take on whole kerfuffle here in Canada.  Not sure why he needs to stick up for the SS veteran, weird to imply that thinking the Waffen SS were all evil is a naive thing, either.

 

[Zoraptor]

Extremely obvious case of Russia Derangement Syndrome there from Mr Giles.

To say that 1st/ 14th was not specifically accused of war crimes at Nuremberg is extremely misleading at best and can probably best be described as utter sophistry- ie overt misinformation. All SS units were collectively found guilty of war crimes, there was no need to find them specifically guilty. The author obviously knows that due to the wording, and further because of the mention that foreigners got drafted into SS units. Draftees were specifically excluded from the 'intrinsic' nature of the SS war crimes, hence he can argue that Hunka, as a draftee, was innocent whereas if he volunteered for the SS he was not. He was by his own admission a volunteer, not a draftee. Of course, one suspects Mr Giles would not extend the same... generous interpretation on a draftees immunity from collective war crimes to even genuine Russian draftees, in the current conflict. Indeed, I'd put every cent I have in the bank against a bent penny that he wouldn't.

The most stupid thing about it was not giving Russia ammunition for misinformation because unfortunately they don't need misinformation for this, the truth is more than enough. No, the most stupid thing was it happening while Ukraine and Poland were already having a very public spat. Because, of course, the two countries that have found 1st/ 14th to have committed war crimes are Poland and Ukraine (funnily enough, not mentioned by the author) and this was always going to be an extremely obvious wedge issue. Writing a "I'm not trying to justify the Nazis but..." type article just prolongs things too.

Edited October 3, 2023 by Zoraptor

[Keyrock]

2 hours ago, Malcador said:

https://www.politico.eu/article/fight-against-ussr-nazi-waffen-ss-trooper-yaroslav-hunka-world-war-ii-soviet-union-germany/

Interesting take on whole kerfuffle here in Canada.  Not sure why he needs to stick up for the SS veteran, weird to imply that thinking the Waffen SS were all evil is a naive thing, either.

 

And to think, this whole thing could have been avoided with a 10 minute cursory background check. Too much work, I guess, couldn't be bothered. I mean, even without a background check, if they were fighting the soviets in WW2 that puts them on the Axis side. As much as western media would like to rewrite history and as much as Stalin was a horrific monster, the soviets were on the Allies side in WW2. They're so desperate to portray Ukranians as pure hearted heroic people that never did anything bad in their entire history and Russians as cartoon villains that they're willing to overlook The Holocaust. I mean, what's a little ethnic cleansing?

[Sarex]

To make things a double whammy, this just enforces to the Russian people that they are fighting Nazis.

[uuuhhii]

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

And to think, this whole thing could have been avoided with a 10 minute cursory background check. Too much work, I guess, couldn't be bothered. I mean, even without a background check, if they were fighting the soviets in WW2 that puts them on the Axis side. As much as western media would like to rewrite history and as much as Stalin was a horrific monster, the soviets were on the Allies side in WW2. They're so desperate to portray Ukranians as pure hearted heroic people that never did anything bad in their entire history and Russians as cartoon villains that they're willing to overlook The Holocaust. I mean, what's a little ethnic cleansing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WFbTZ6rnXo&t=0s

 

history are easily interpreted in any convenient way

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

4 hours ago, Malcador said:

https://www.politico.eu/article/fight-against-ussr-nazi-waffen-ss-trooper-yaroslav-hunka-world-war-ii-soviet-union-germany/

Interesting take on whole kerfuffle here in Canada.  Not sure why he needs to stick up for the SS veteran, weird to imply that thinking the Waffen SS were all evil is a naive thing, either.

 

I saw without any exaggeration that this is the worst thing I have read all year.

"This history is complicated because fighting against the USSR at the time didn’t necessarily make you a Nazi, just someone who had an excruciating choice over which of these two terror regimes to resist. However, the idea that foreign volunteers and conscripts were being allocated to the Waffen-SS rather than the Wehrmacht on administrative rather than ideological grounds is a hard sell for audiences conditioned to believe the SS’s primary task was genocide. And simple narratives like “everybody in the SS was guilty of war crimes” are more pervasive because they’re much simpler to grasp.

Holocaust denial by the fifth paragraph.

"According to Russia’s ambassador in Canada, Hunka’s unit “committed multiple war crimes, including mass murder, against the Russian people, ethnic Russians. This is a proven fact.” But whenever a Russian official calls something a “proven fact,” it should set off alarms. And sure enough, here too the facts were invented out of thin air. Repeated exhaustive investigations — including by not only the Nuremberg trials but also the British, Canadian and even Soviet authorities — led to the conclusion that no war crimes or atrocities had been committed by this particular unit."

Nuremberg found ALL Waffen SS divisions to be criminal organizations. By being a volunteer for the SS Hunka was a member of an organization explicitly dedicated to genocide by eliminationism and the enforcement of racial hierarchy. That he may not have personally fired a bullet does not nullify his complicity in an organization built for atrocity.

"And given Moscow’s own history of aggression and atrocities during World War II and its aftermath, there’s a special cynicism underlying the Russian accusations. Russia feels comfortable shouting about “Nazis,” real or imaginary, in Ukraine or elsewhere, because unlike Nazi Germany, leaders and soldiers of the Soviet Union were never put on trial for their war crimes. Russia clings to the Nuremberg trials as a benchmark of legitimacy because as a victorious power, it was never subjected to the same reckoning. And yet, both before and after their collaborative effort to carve up eastern Europe between them, the Soviets and the Nazis had so much in common that it’s now illegal to point these similarities out in Russia."

As bad as the USSR, the US, and all of the other powers/actors in WW2 were during during WW2 no one is worse than the Nazis. Equivocating the USSR's WW2 atrocities to that of the Nazis is at best an ignorant both sides brain rot and at worst flagrant holocaust denial.

There is no goddamn reason you have to carry water for this dried up old Nazi **** who should have been shot in the head, along with every other SS member, after WW2. You are taking a **** on the graves of 12 million people murdered by the Nazis and pissing on the legacy of everyone (including a lot of Ukrainians) who fought to end their reign of terror. You are neither going to help Ukraine nor own the Russian government by engaging in this kind of ****, if anything you are going to lend credence to their (hysterical, opportunistic, and untrue) accusations of Nazism. Giles should never write again and the editor should quit in shame.

[Sarex]

9 minutes ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

As bad as the USSR, the US, and all of the other powers/actors in WW2 were during during WW2 no one is worse than the Nazis.

Ustase were worse, but that may be a tad subjective. They may not have had the impact the Nazis did, but the things they did were worse.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

15 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Ustase were worse, but that may be a tad subjective. They may not have had the impact the Nazis did, but the things they did were worse.

It's historical flattening on my part, but on a macro level I view Nazi client states/organizations like the Ustase as an extension of the Nazis. Not only do they share ideological currents but they were often installed by the Nazis as part of the larger political project in occupied areas precisely because they would enact the genocide(s) nazi fascism was predicated upon. What I said about all SS members deserving to be shot can also be applied to fellow travellers like the Ustase.

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

Holocaust denial by the fifth paragraph.

Eh... I wouldn't quite give it that label since he doesn't say that the holocaust didn't happen.

He didn't actually say that the SS didn't contribute to it either, just that it wasn't their primary role. Which is... arguably true, though it's splitting hairs and a specious argument that relies on the SS'- the armed wing of the Nazi Party- primary role being combat, in the service of a genocidal entity, rather than genocide itself. Not an argument I'd care to defend as anything other than an example of sophistry though.

Strangest thing about that article is not that Mr Giles decided to write it- people write stupid crap all the time thinking they're pearls of wisdom- but that Politico decided to publish it.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

Eh... I wouldn't quite give it that label since he doesn't say that the holocaust didn't happen.

I would, and I'd argue that denial isn't a binary of acknowledgment, but if you prefer revisionism to denial then go ahead with that. Regardless of what you want to call it the article itself is at best so afflicted with RDS it carries water for a SS member and at worst it's just ****ing evil. Either way it's vile and Hunka should have been shot.

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

Strangest thing about that article is not that Mr Giles decided to write it- people write stupid crap all the time thinking they're pearls of wisdom- but that Politico decided to publish it.

Maybe they replaced editors with AI. Certainly makes more sense than someone working for a major publication to give this the green light.

[xzar_monty]

8 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Extremely obvious case of Russia Derangement Syndrome there from Mr Giles.

Ha, seeing this critical tone and the name Giles, my instant thought was: "Has to be Keir Giles." Sure enough, it was. Not a particularly trustworthy writer, that one.

England continues to produce some highly eccentric characters (like, to be fair, does everyone else). Here's another, knock yourself out: https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/09/the-postmodern-theatre-of-the-ukrainian-counter-offensive

[pmp10]

On 10/4/2023 at 7:00 AM, xzar_monty said:

Ha, seeing this critical tone and the name Giles, my instant thought was: "Has to be Keir Giles." Sure enough, it was. Not a particularly trustworthy writer, that one.

England continues to produce some highly eccentric characters (like, to be fair, does everyone else). Here's another, knock yourself out: https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/09/the-postmodern-theatre-of-the-ukrainian-counter-offensive

He's not wrong that the offensive is no longer a military operation, but a political spectacle sacrificing Ukrainian lives in a play for sympathy.
But I wonder what other suggestion does he have to keep the west engaged?

Fundamentally political games during war are always played by spending human lives. 

[xzar_monty]

1 minute ago, pmp10 said:

He's not wrong that the offensive is no longer a military operation, but a political spectacle sacrificing Ukrainian lives in a play for sympathy.

I'm sorry but that's just utter nonsense. How is it not a military operation if territories are being fought over with armies using weapons? How would you define a military operation, then, if this is not one? The fact that it has political overtones does not mean that it is not a military operation, too.

(The following is not a comment intended directly at you, but I find it very curious that the internet has appeared to significantly increase the kind of discussion culture where things have to be either one or the other and where multiplicity and simultaneity are not possible, even conceptually. It's both fascinating and quite disheartening.)

[Malcador]

On 10/3/2023 at 4:59 PM, Sarex said:

To make things a double whammy, this just enforces to the Russian people that they are fighting Nazis.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-neo-nazis-white-nationalists-go-on-pilgrimage-to-galicia-waffen-ss/

This whole deal gets funnier and funnier. 

 

[Sarex]

28 minutes ago, Malcador said:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-neo-nazis-white-nationalists-go-on-pilgrimage-to-galicia-waffen-ss/

This whole deal gets funnier and funnier.

[BruceVC]

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

I'm sorry but that's just utter nonsense. How is it not a military operation if territories are being fought over with armies using weapons? How would you define a military operation, then, if this is not one? The fact that it has political overtones does not mean that it is not a military operation, too.

(The following is not a comment intended directly at you, but I find it very curious that the internet has appeared to significantly increase the kind of discussion culture where things have to be either one or the other and where multiplicity and simultaneity are not possible, even conceptually. It's both fascinating and quite disheartening.)

Its fairly common this incredibly inaccurate  framing of the war but repeated  more as a  form of Russian propaganda and or Vatnik cope 

Can you imagine any war where a country is invaded and when people fight back its considered " a play for sympathy " 

Tell the Mujahedeen that during the Soviet invasion or Serbia when they fought against the Austrian Hungarians in WW1. In fact have you ever heard of any war where people defend there sovereign territory as "people looking for sympathy " 

Only in the world of Internet fake news and misinformation