Ukraine War

[Hornius Emeritus 12415]

1 hour ago, Huckleberry said:

 

Everybody here understands and recognizes that the United States has done some really bad shit and continues to selectively ignore really bad shit.

Sounds to me like you, HUABS, RomaVicta, and MAC are all in agreement.


 

[RomaVicta 29775]

2 hours ago, Anastasis said:

The information space is flooded right now. I assume that you have seen the videos of some of the "humane treatment" you are trumpeting?

I wasn't aware I was trumpeting anything. In the early part of the invasion, it appeared the Ukes were treating prisoners fine. If that's changed, I just don't know about it.

I wouldn't be surprised if it has changed since the Russians are willfully killing civilians with artillery and missile fire. If the Ukes treat prisoners badly, at least they vent their rage on foreign combatants. I'll not judge them harshly if they do.

Comparing the behavior of Ukrainians with Russians is like comparing the assault of a rapist with the victim scratching out one of his eyes. I have no sympathy for the attacker.

[RomaVicta 29775]

20 minutes ago, Hornius Emeritus said:

After reading pretty much this entire thread sounds to me like you and HUABS are on the same page here.  He pointed out that Americans have committed war crimes and you agree.

I didn't realize that there is a relevance meter that accompanies the posts here at Surly.  In fact, I would have been pretty sure there isn't, since I've made so many comments that were not relevant to the thread and never been called out on it by anybody. Hell, over on the Ewers thread on the recruiting board we had page after page of discussion about hamburger places that we miss. Were they irrelevant to Quinn Ewers? Yes. So what?

They make those threads miserable to read.

[Anastasis 23393]

2 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

If that's changed, I just don't know about it.

I understand. 

Edited April 4, 2022 by Anastasis
for clarity.

[956 Worldwide 34422]

6 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

The focus of some posters on America in the past instead of what is happening now in Ukraine is very telling about them. Basically they are being pieces of shit.

Let’s not talk about what happened in Ukraine yesterday. Let’s talk about what happened in America fifty years ago. 

[956 Worldwide 34422]

1 hour ago, RomaVicta said:

I wasn't aware I was trumpeting anything. In the early part of the invasion, it appeared the Ukes were treating prisoners fine. If that's changed, I just don't know about it.

I wouldn't be surprised if it has changed since the Russians are willfully killing civilians with artillery and missile fire. If the Ukes treat prisoners badly, at least they vent their rage on foreign combatants. I'll not judge them harshly if they do.

Comparing the behavior of Ukrainians with Russians is like comparing the assault of a rapist with the victim scratching out one of his eyes. I have no sympathy for the attacker.

Just so we keep our moral compass straight: The office of the president of Ukraine said that the video warranted an immediate investigation and warned that any guilty parties would be punished.

Russia claimed that the civilians massacred in Bucha were crisis actors, then said they were killed in Ukrainian shelling, then said that Ukrainian Nazis did it. 
 

Abu Ghraib! Guantanamo! My Lai! Wounded Knee! 

[956 Worldwide 34422]

6 hours ago, bolverk said:

Cross posting from the other thread, because I think it's important to get an unfiltered view of what's being read by domestic Russian audiences in their own state media about the motivations for invading Ukraine.

 

Total pain in the ass, but I put the entire article through the Google Translation machine. Full copypasta in the spoiler with a little bit about the author added in italics. The article appears in RIA Novosti, a state-owned news agency.

Btw, learned a new word: lustration (purification).

 

  Hide contents

What should Russia do with Ukraine?
Timofey Sergeytsev
Methodologist, philosopher, member of Rossiya Segodnya’s Zinoviev Club, co-founder of the Archive of the Moscow Methodological Club Foundation, research adviser of the Zinoviev International Research and Education Centre at the Department of Global Processes, Moscow State University
Zinovyev Club is a platform for expertise and analysis, created by the Zinovyev Biographical Institute together with the Rossiya Segodnya News Agency.
 

Back in April last year, we wrote about the inevitability of the denazification of Ukraine. Nazi, Bandera Ukraine, the enemy of Russia and the West's tool for the destruction of Russia, we do not need. Today, the issue of denazification has moved into a practical plane.
Denazification is necessary when a significant part of the people - most likely the majority - has been mastered and drawn into the Nazi regime in its politics. That is, when the hypothesis "the people are good - the government is bad" does not work. Recognition of this fact is the basis of the policy of denazification, of all its measures, and the fact itself is its subject matter.
Ukraine is in just such a situation. The fact that the Ukrainian voter voted for the "peace of Poroshenko" and "peace of Zelensky" should not be misleading - the Ukrainians were quite satisfied with the shortest path to peace through the blitzkrieg, which the last two Ukrainian presidents transparently hinted at when they were elected. It was this method of "appeasement" of internal anti-fascists - through total terror - that was used in Odessa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol, and other Russian cities. And this quite suited the Ukrainian man in the street. Denazification is a set of measures in relation to the nazified mass of the population, which technically cannot be subjected to direct punishment as war criminals.
The Nazis who took up arms should be destroyed to the maximum on the battlefield. There should be no significant differences between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the so-called national battalions, as well as the territorial defense that joined these two types of military formations. All of them are equally involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, do not comply with the laws and customs of war. War criminals and active Nazis should be exemplarily and exponentially punished. There must be a total lustration (purification). Any organizations that have associated themselves with the practice of Nazism have been liquidated and banned. However, in addition to the top, a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi power. The just punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, waged as carefully and prudently as possible in relation to civilians. Further denazification of this mass of the population consists in re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, but also necessarily in the sphere of culture and education. It was through culture and education that a deep mass nazification of the population was prepared and carried out, secured by the promise of dividends from the victory of the Nazi regime over Russia, Nazi propaganda, internal violence and terror, as well as the eight-year war with the people of Donbass who rebelled against Ukrainian Nazism.
Denazification can only be carried out by the winner, which implies (1) his absolute control over the denazification process and (2) the power to ensure such control. In this respect, a denazified country cannot be sovereign. The denazifying state - Russia - cannot proceed from a liberal approach with regard to denazification. The ideology of the denazifier cannot be disputed by the guilty party subjected to denazification. Russia's recognition of the need to denazify Ukraine means the recognition of the impossibility of the Crimean scenario for Ukraine as a whole. However, this scenario was impossible in 2014 and in the rebellious Donbass. Only eight years of resistance to Nazi violence and terror led to internal cohesion and a conscious unambiguous mass refusal to maintain any unity and connection with Ukraine, which defined itself as a Nazi society.
The terms of denazification can in no way be less than one generation, which must be born, grow up and reach maturity under the conditions of denazification. The nazification of Ukraine continued for more than 30 years, beginning at least in 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism received legal and legitimate forms of political expression and led the movement for "independence" towards Nazism.
The peculiarity of modern nazified Ukraine is in amorphousness and ambivalence, which allow Nazism to be disguised as a desire for "independence" and a "European" (Western, pro-American) path of "development" (in reality - to degradation), to assert that in Ukraine "there is no Nazism , only private individual excesses". After all, there is no main Nazi party, no Fuhrer, no full-fledged racial laws (only their truncated version in the form of repressions against the Russian language). As a result, there is no opposition and resistance to the regime.
However, all of the above does not make Ukrainian Nazism a "light version" of German Nazism during the first half of the 20th century. On the contrary, since Ukrainian Nazism is free from such "genre" (essentially political technology) frameworks and restrictions, it freely unfolds as the fundamental basis of any Nazism - as European and, in its most developed form, American racism. Therefore, denazification cannot be carried out in a compromise, on the basis of a formula like "NATO - no, EU - yes." The collective West itself is the designer, source and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism, while the Western Bandera cadres and their "historical memory" are only one of the tools for the Naziification of Ukraine. Ukronazism carries not less, but a greater threat to the world and Russia than German Nazism of the Hitlerite version.
The name "Ukraine" apparently cannot be retained as the title of any fully denazified state entity in a territory liberated from the Nazi regime. The people's republics newly created in the space free from Nazism should and will grow from the practice of economic self-government and social security, restoration and modernization of the life support systems of the population.
In fact, their political aspirations cannot be neutral - expiation of guilt before Russia for treating it as an enemy can be realized only by relying on Russia in the processes of restoration, revival and development. No "Marshall Plans" should be allowed for these territories. There can be no "neutrality" in the ideological and practical sense, compatible with denazification. The cadres and organizations that are the instrument of denazification in the newly denazified republics cannot but rely on Russia's direct military and organizational support.
Denazification will inevitably also be a de-Ukrainization - a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia, begun by the Soviet authorities. Being an instrument of the communist superpower, after its fall, artificial ethnocentrism did not remain ownerless. In this official capacity, he passed under the authority of another superpower (the power standing over the states) — the superpower of the West. It must be returned to its natural boundaries and deprived of political functionality.
Unlike, say, Georgia and the Baltic countries, Ukraine, as history has shown, is impossible as a nation state, and attempts to "build" one naturally lead to Nazism. Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that does not have its own civilizational content, a subordinate element of an alien and alien civilization. Debanderization by itself will not be enough for denazification - the Bandera element is only a performer and a screen, a disguise for the European project of Nazi Ukraine, therefore the denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.
The Bandera elite must be liquidated, its re-education is impossible. The social "bog", which actively and passively supported it by action and inaction, must survive the hardships of the war and assimilate the experience as a historical lesson and atonement for its guilt. Those who did not support the Nazi regime, suffered from it and the war unleashed by him in the Donbass, must be consolidated and organized, must become the pillar of the new government, its vertical and horizontal. Historical experience shows that the tragedies and dramas of wartime benefit peoples who have been tempted and carried away by the role of an enemy of Russia.
Denazification as the goal of a special military operation within the framework of this operation itself is understood as a military victory over the Kiev regime, the liberation of territories from armed supporters of the Nazis, the elimination of implacable Nazis, the capture of war criminals, and the creation of systemic conditions for the subsequent denazification in peacetime.
The latter, in turn, should begin with the organization of local self-government, police and defense bodies, cleansed of Nazi elements, launching on their basis the founding processes of founding a new republican statehood, integrating this statehood into close cooperation with the Russian department for the denazification of Ukraine (newly created or remade, say, from Rossotrudnichestvo), from the adoption under Russian control of the republican regulatory framework (legislation) on denazification, the definition of the boundaries and framework for the direct application of Russian law and Russian jurisdiction in the liberated territory in the field of denazification, the creation of a tribunal for crimes against humanity in the former Ukraine. In this regard, Russia should act as the guardian of the Nuremberg Trials.
All of the above means that in order to achieve the goals of denazification, the support of the population is necessary, its transition to the side of Russia after liberation from terror, violence and ideological pressure of the Kiev regime, after the withdrawal from informational isolation. Of course, it will take some time for people to recover from the shock of hostilities, to be convinced of Russia's long-term intentions - that "they will not be abandoned." It is impossible to foresee in advance exactly in which territories such a mass of the population will constitute a critically needed majority. The "Catholic province" (Western Ukraine as part of five regions) is unlikely to become part of the pro-Russian territories. The line of alienation, however, will be found empirically. It will remain hostile to Russia, but forcibly neutral and demilitarized Ukraine with formally banned Nazism. The haters of Russia will go there. The guarantee of the preservation of this residual Ukraine in a neutral state should be the threat of an immediate continuation of the military operation in case of non-compliance with the listed requirements. Perhaps this will require a permanent Russian military presence on its territory. From the exclusion line to the Russian border there will be a territory of potential integration into Russian civilization, which is anti-fascist in its internal nature.
The operation to denazify Ukraine, which began with a military phase, will follow the same logic of stages in peacetime as a military operation. At each of them, it will be necessary to achieve irreversible changes, which will become the results of the corresponding stage. In this case, the necessary initial steps of denazification can be defined as follows:

• liquidation of armed Nazi formations (which means any armed formations of Ukraine, including the Armed Forces of Ukraine), as well as the military, informational, educational infrastructure that ensures their activity;
• the formation of public self-government bodies and militia (defense and law enforcement) of the liberated territories, protecting the population from the terror of underground Nazi groups;
• installation of the Russian information space;
• withdrawal of educational materials and prohibition of educational programs at all levels containing Nazi ideological guidelines;
• mass investigative actions to establish personal responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, the spread of Nazi ideology and support for the Nazi regime;
• lustration (purification), publication of the names of accomplices of the Nazi regime, involving them in forced labor to restore the destroyed infrastructure as punishment for Nazi activities (from among those who will not be subject to the death penalty or imprisonment);
• adoption at the local level, under the supervision of Russia, of primary normative acts of denazification "from below", a ban on all types and forms of the revival of Nazi ideology;
• the establishment of memorials, memorials, monuments to the victims of Ukrainian Nazism, perpetuating the memory of the heroes of the struggle against it;
• the inclusion of a complex of anti-fascist and denazification norms in the constitutions of the new people's republics;
• creation of permanent denazification bodies for a period of 25 years.

Russia will have no allies in the denazification of Ukraine. Since this is a purely Russian business. And also because not just the Bandera version of Nazi Ukraine will be eradicated, but including, and above all, Western totalitarianism, the imposed programs of civilizational degradation and disintegration, the mechanisms of subjugation to the superpower of the West and the United States.
In order to put the plan of denazification of Ukraine into practice, Russia itself will have to finally part with pro-European and pro-Western illusions, realize itself as the last instance of protecting and preserving those values of historical Europe (the Old World) that deserve it and which the West ultimately abandoned, losing the fight for himself. This struggle continued throughout the 20th century and was expressed in the world war and the Russian revolution, inextricably linked with each other.
Russia did everything possible to save the West in the 20th century. She implemented the main Western project, an alternative to capitalism, which won the nation-states - a socialist, red project. It crushed German Nazism, the monstrous offspring of the crisis of Western civilization. The last act of Russian altruism was the outstretched hand of friendship from Russia, for which Russia received a monstrous blow in the 1990s.
Everything that Russia has done for the West, it has done at its own expense, by making the greatest sacrifices. The West ultimately rejected all these sacrifices, devalued Russia's contribution to resolving the Western crisis, and decided to take revenge on Russia for the help that it selflessly provided. Further, Russia will go its own way, not worrying about the fate of the West, relying on another part of its heritage - leadership in the global process of decolonization.
As part of this process, Russia has a high potential for partnerships and allies with countries that the West has oppressed for centuries and which are not going to put on its yoke again. Without Russian sacrifice and struggle, these countries would not have been liberated. The denazification of Ukraine is at the same time its decolonization, which the people of Ukraine will have to understand as they begin to free themselves from the intoxication, temptation and dependence of the so-called European choice.

 

Let me direct your attention to the theories of social Darwinism popular among the Anglo-American elite during the reign of Queen Victoria and I ask you sir— who are the real fascists?

Lustration in this insane document is very different than the (sorely needed) lustration that took place in Poland and Czechoslovakia after the collapse of communism or even the more politicized lustration in Ukraine after Yanukovych. That’s where they got the word. 

Lustration in Poland and Czechoslovakia involved opening the records of the secret police and the Communist party and removing secret police informants and Communist party functionaries involved in abuses from the civil service and government offices.  The Poles took a judicial approach and the Czechoslovaks took a more bureaucratic tact.

In Ukraine, some civil servants who were most closely tied to Yanukovych and his Russian backers were prohibited from working in government for 5-10 years.

Prison sentences were not a part of this unless the involved were complicit in actual judicial crimes, and absolutely not work camps or reeducation. 
 

As usual, Russian propagandists completely abuse not just logic but language. 

[WhatTheBuck 28705]

Relevance talk not going away.  😛

[Woland 729]

This American Life did a chapter on breaking the propaganda bubble in Russia.

Quote

Producer Alix Spiegel tells the story of a Lithuanian man who devises a plan to solve a problem related to the war in Ukraine. (14 minutes)

Cold Calling Russia

[Hermanator 6933]

Regarding most of the last couple pages of this

[cactusflinthead 27594]

I wonder if he's thinking about Vietnam and Cambodia. Maybe the Banana Wars.

Maybe those are crocodile tears of a crisis actor.

He doesn't know that Russia is entitled to his land.

 

[cactusflinthead 27594]

“Every break between curfew and bombing I was looking for emergency contraception instead of a basic first aid kit,” she said. “My mother tried to reassure me: ‘This is not a war like that, they don’t exist anymore, they are from old movies.’ I have been a feminist for eight years, and I cried in silence, because all wars are like this.”

It is not only Russian soldiers Ukrainian women may have to protect themselves from. In Vinnytsia, a town in the west of the country, a teacher reported to police that a member of the territorial defence services dragged her into the school library and tried to rape her. The man was arrested.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/03/all-wars-are-like-this-used-as-a-weapon-of-war-in-ukraine

[Hermanator 6933]

1 hour ago, cactusflinthead said:

I wonder if he's thinking about Vietnam and Cambodia. Maybe the Banana Wars.

Maybe those are crocodile tears of a crisis actor.

He doesn't know that Russia is entitled to his land.

 

I don't know, if I just walked out of a cellar after 2 weeks my beard would be out of control...

[cactusflinthead 27594]

6 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

I don't know, if I just walked out of a cellar after 2 weeks my beard would be out of control...

Looking at him that might be the first thing he did was shower and shave. 

[cactusflinthead 27594]

 

[WhatTheBuck 28705]

7 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

I don't know, if I just walked out of a cellar after 2 weeks my beard would be out of control...

Unless, you know, you had a razor with you. Probably a toothbrush too. 

[Hermanator 6933]

7 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Looking at him that might be the first thing he did was shower and shave. 

 

6 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Unless, you know, you had a razor with you. Probably a toothbrush too. 

I guess I forgot to put the /Maga at the end of that

[Biff Tannen 45491]

9 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

Uh, wtf?

[956 Worldwide 34422]

As we wait to see what Mariupol looks like; a Russian official outlet is BRAGGING about what they’re doing.  Looking forward to MAC warning us about Ukrainian propaganda after the obvious results are known.

”First hand footage of the cleaning of houses in Mariupol. Russian soldiers and fighters of the Donetsk People’s Republic Armed Forces are checking basements; performing document checks and the presence of Nazi tattoos among the population.”

 

[Asithappens 974]

It better not be "recognized" by the world as genocide. 

If it is then genocide has no meaning.

[jimmyjazz 45546]

"cleaning of houses in Mariupol"

That's just sick.

[Neonmoon 38127]

I'm sorry, I'm going to need third party verification of these supposed concentration camps. There's a lot of Jewish propaganda out there and I wouldn't want to mischaracterize the invading army - MAC 1941

[Caponata 151]

Should the US sanction India if they continue to purchase Russian oil at a discounted price?

[wildcat09 29224]

59 minutes ago, Asithappens said:

It better not be "recognized" by the world as genocide. 

If it is then genocide has no meaning.

I dunno, Russia's pretty explicitly announcing their intent to commit genocide at this point.

[Brisketexan 104557]

59 minutes ago, Asithappens said:

It better not be "recognized" by the world as genocide. 

If it is then genocide has no meaning.

Genocide actually has a defined meaning.  Literally, it was defined as a war crime in the 1948 genocide convention.  It's a difficult bar to clear, but not impossible, even knowing what is likely happening in Ukraine.

Quote

Definition

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Elements of the crime

The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible. The same article establishes the obligation of the contracting parties to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide.

The popular understanding of what constitutes genocide tends to be broader than the content of the norm under international law. Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:

A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and

A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:

Killing members of the group

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

The intent is the most difficult element to determine. To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group. It is this special intent, or dolus specialis, that makes the crime of genocide so unique. In addition, case law has associated intent with the existence of a State or organizational plan or policy, even if the definition of genocide in international law does not include that element.

Importantly, the victims of genocide are deliberately targeted - not randomly – because of their real or perceived membership of one of the four groups protected under the Convention (which excludes political groups, for example). This means that the target of destruction must be the group, as such, and not its members as individuals. Genocide can also be committed against only a part of the group, as long as that part is identifiable (including within a geographically limited area) and “substantial.”

We'll see how it ultimately shakes out.  At present, it looks like we have very good evidence of multiple, systematic war crimes.  Whether they rise to the full definition of genocide remains to be seen, but there are definitely genocide-y flavors to this already.  And when you read the manifesto published by the Russian official state media, they aren't shy about stating their cleansing goals, and they are broad as shit against the people of Ukraine.

[Dahobbs 17437]

1 hour ago, Asithappens said:

It better not be "recognized" by the world as genocide. 

If it is then genocide has no meaning.

Literally their stated goal is the eradication of the Ukranians ethnic identity, including by liquidating portions of the population and forced reeducation. Unless you buy the Russia story that Ukrainian isn't really a separate ethnicity from Russian, then yes, that is genocide. 

Go read the translation of the piece published by Russian state media on the prior page. Then come back here to retract your hot take. 

Edited April 4, 2022 by Dahobbs

[wildcat09 29224]

The difficulty with determining whether something qualifies as a "genocide" or not is due to the fact that the definition itself doesn't have any clear numeric threshold for how many have to die (nor should it), but everyone sort of implicitly agrees that there is one and it's a high number. At the beginning of the invasion I'm pretty sure there was no requisite intent for the war to qualify as a genocide, no matter how many civilians they killed, but the intent has clearly changed. So now the only question left to determine whether it qualifies or not is how many civilians have they killed and is that "enough." And even if it isn't "enough" for most people, that's only due to Ukraine's success at repelling them so that's not exactly a moral point in Russia's favor. 

[DigglerontheHoof 21052]

1 hour ago, Asithappens said:

It better not be "recognized" by the world as genocide. 

If it is then genocide has no meaning.

[RomaVicta 29775]

Genocide is a word too often used by journalists and other people when describing a brutal slaughter. It creates the atmosphere for scholars and opinion panels to debate whether genocide is present. Then you get to a point in general discussion where a slaughter isn't really as bad as a genocide.

It becomes a silly parlor game that is picked up by the hoi polloi. Who cares?

What appears to be happening is horrific no matter the name. 

 

ps I don't mean this as a criticism of the above posters. I'm more adding to their point about specific definitions. 

[Macanudo 12925]

1 hour ago, Neonmoon said:

I'm sorry, I'm going to need third party verification of these supposed concentration camps. There's a lot of Jewish propaganda out there and I wouldn't want to mischaracterize the invading army - MAC 1941

1941?   He'd be asking the same questions in 1945.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

Who cares if it's genocide or not (it doesn't really meet the definition of genocide for a few reasons). It's the intentional murder of the civilian population of a sovereign state by an invading army for the purposes of subjugation, and terror. It's not a damned bit better than genocide, just ask the victims.

[Brisketexan 104557]

2 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Who cares if it's genocide or not (it doesn't really meet the definition of genocide for a few reasons). It's the intentional murder of the civilian population of a sovereign state by an invading army for the purposes of subjugation, and terror. It's not a damned bit better than genocide, just ask the victims.

Oh, no doubt we're talking about horrific systematic war crimes.  And that's plenty bad enough.  In a just world, a shitload of Russian soldiers and commanders would hang.  But I do think the conversation and consideration of whether it is genocide is worth having.  Reaching that conclusion isn't necessary for the world to see that what we have here is a criminal state, but if we end up there, it sure as shit would seal the deal.

[Dahobbs 17437]

7 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Who cares if it's genocide or not (it doesn't really meet the definition of genocide for a few reasons). It's the intentional murder of the civilian population of a sovereign state by an invading army for the purposes of subjugation, and terror. It's not a damned bit better than genocide, just ask the victims.

I don't see how doesn't meet that definition. If you look at Russia's stated objective, it is the eradication of the Ukrainian ethnicity via liquidation of a portion of the population. What else would that be?

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Oh, no doubt we're talking about horrific systematic war crimes.  And that's plenty bad enough.  In a just world, a shitload of Russian soldiers and commanders would hang.  But I do think the conversation and consideration of whether it is genocide is worth having.  Reaching that conclusion isn't necessary for the world to see that what we have here is a criminal state, but if we end up there, it sure as shit would seal the deal.

From an academic, water cooler discussion maybe, but those folks are dead regardless of how we label their deaths.  I don't think it changes anything about the fact they were murdered.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33834]

you fuckers will argue about anything. jesus. who gives a shit what it's called? it's fucking murder. and people should hang over it

[cactusflinthead 27594]

 

[Brisketexan 104557]

6 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

From an academic, water cooler discussion maybe, but those folks are dead regardless of how we label their deaths.  I don't think it changes anything about the fact they were murdered.

In a perfect world -- where we can bring all the culpable to justice -- it may change the criminal charges and those who can be convicted.  But that depends on how a lot of facts shake out.  Hell, this entire conversation is academic because the chances of actually bringing Russian war criminals to trial is very, very low.

Which is why Russia should be frozen out of the civilized world for the foreseeable future.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

2 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I don't see how doesn't meet that definition. If you look at Russia's stated objective, it is the eradication of the Ukrainian ethnicity via liquidation of a portion of the population. What else would that be?

Straight up murder.  I think based on the definition of genocide I just googled it can be called genocide, but I'd say that wasn't Russias intent. Is it Russias intent to wipe out the Ukranian population or just use these murders as a terror tactic ?  I'd say it's more a terrorist act rather than straight up genocide.  In the end those people are still dead however, so it's all academic.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

7 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

In a perfect world -- where we can bring all the culpable to justice -- it may change the criminal charges and those who can be convicted.  But that depends on how a lot of facts shake out.  Hell, this entire conversation is academic because the chances of actually bringing Russian war criminals to trial is very, very low.

Which is why Russia should be frozen out of the civilized world for the foreseeable future.

Well yeah, it's going to make a difference in the nature of the charges in the Hague when they hold a trial with Putin in absentia.  And yes, Russia is and should be   a pariah state if they don't get rid of Putin.

[956 Worldwide 34422]

Two things: Many international law scholars hold that permanent security council members have a duty to act, including unilateral intervention, if a determination of genocide is made.  That is why the declaration and word used matters deeply.

Second: It’s well known that the Red Army indiscriminately murdered and raped its way through occupied lands, collaborator states, and Germany itself.  This is almost wholly an academic subject and bringing it up publicly in the affected nations is taboo, especially Germany.  They’ve been given a complete pass because they were fighting real Nazis.  Russia has done zero soul searching, even to the admittedly low official level we have done with regards to indiscriminate bombing raids or the atomic bomb.

When Russia announced a campaign against Nazis, this was the intended and entirely predictable result. 

[crash_davis 23083]

2 hours ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

 

21 hours ago, cactusflinthead said:

Yeah, Crisis actors. 

[Huckleberry 32694]

16 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Straight up murder.  I think based on the definition of genocide I just googled it can be called genocide, but I'd say that wasn't Russias intent. Is it Russias intent to wipe out the Ukranian population or just use these murders as a terror tactic ?  I'd say it's more a terrorist act rather than straight up genocide.  In the end those people are still dead however, so it's all academic.

It's genuinely amazing how many people these days refuse to believe it when bad people explicitly tell them what they're going to do and why they're going to do it. 

"Oh they didn't really mean that. They're murdering and raping and exterminating for a possibly less evil reason."

[cactusflinthead 27594]

Same article as yesterday. It seems we need a refresher on the intentions of Russia.

[jimmyjazz 45546]

Eh, they're just cleansing them of Nazis.

[956 Worldwide 34422]

34 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Same article as yesterday. It seems we need a refresher on the intentions of Russia.

The most remarkable paragraph:

Quote

The current nazified Ukraine is characterized by its formlessness and ambivalence, which allow it to disguise Nazism as the aspiration to “independence” and the “European” (Western, pro-American) path of “development” (in reality, to degradation) and claim that “there is no Nazism” in Ukraine, “only few sporadic incidents.” Indeed, there isn’t a main Nazi party, no Führer, no full-fledged racial laws (only a cutdown version in the form of repressions against the Russian language). As a result — no opposition or resistance against the regime.

Ukrainian Nazis are the worst kind of Nazis— the “not a Nazi Nazi.”

[cactusflinthead 27594]

Ok here ya go @MaybeACoordinator

The Nation

 

[Dahobbs 17437]

1 hour ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Straight up murder.  I think based on the definition of genocide I just googled it can be called genocide, but I'd say that wasn't Russias intent. Is it Russias intent to wipe out the Ukranian population or just use these murders as a terror tactic ?  I'd say it's more a terrorist act rather than straight up genocide.  In the end those people are still dead however, so it's all academic.

They stated their intent here:

 

I highlighted some of the translation earlier in the thread. It is attempted genocide by definition: 

"Denazification is necessary when a significant part of the people - most likely the majority - has been mastered and drawn into the Nazi regime in its politics. That is, when the hypothesis "the people are good - the government is bad" does not work. Recognition of this fact is the basis of the policy of denazification, of all its measures, and the fact itself is its subject matter.
Ukraine is in just such a situation.

* * * 

However, in addition to the top, a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi power. The just punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, waged as carefully and prudently as possible in relation to civilians. Further denazification of this mass of the population consists in re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, but also necessarily in the sphere of culture and education.

* * * 

Denazification will inevitably also be a de-Ukrainization - a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia, begun by the Soviet authorities.

* * * 

Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that does not have its own civilizational content, a subordinate element of an alien and alien civilization. Debanderization by itself will not be enough for denazification - the Bandera element is only a performer and a screen, a disguise for the European project of Nazi Ukraine, therefore the denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.
The Bandera elite must be liquidated, its re-education is impossible. "

 

 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

27 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

They stated their intent here:

 

I highlighted some of the translation earlier in the thread. It is attempted genocide by definition: 

"Denazification is necessary when a significant part of the people - most likely the majority - has been mastered and drawn into the Nazi regime in its politics. That is, when the hypothesis "the people are good - the government is bad" does not work. Recognition of this fact is the basis of the policy of denazification, of all its measures, and the fact itself is its subject matter.
Ukraine is in just such a situation.

* * * 

However, in addition to the top, a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi power. The just punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, waged as carefully and prudently as possible in relation to civilians. Further denazification of this mass of the population consists in re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, but also necessarily in the sphere of culture and education.

* * * 

Denazification will inevitably also be a de-Ukrainization - a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia, begun by the Soviet authorities.

* * * 

Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that does not have its own civilizational content, a subordinate element of an alien and alien civilization. Debanderization by itself will not be enough for denazification - the Bandera element is only a performer and a screen, a disguise for the European project of Nazi Ukraine, therefore the denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.
The Bandera elite must be liquidated, its re-education is impossible. "

 

 

Based on that propaganda piece it does meet the threshold, my fault for thinking otherwise, and it still doesn't matter one bit as the victims are still all dead.

So, I don't care what you call it, in the end it's straight up murder.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33834]

glad we fucking have that cleared up 🙄

[Guest]

56 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

They stated their intent here:

 

I highlighted some of the translation earlier in the thread. It is attempted genocide by definition: 

"Denazification is necessary when a significant part of the people - most likely the majority - has been mastered and drawn into the Nazi regime in its politics. That is, when the hypothesis "the people are good - the government is bad" does not work. Recognition of this fact is the basis of the policy of denazification, of all its measures, and the fact itself is its subject matter.
Ukraine is in just such a situation.

* * * 

However, in addition to the top, a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi power. The just punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, waged as carefully and prudently as possible in relation to civilians. Further denazification of this mass of the population consists in re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, but also necessarily in the sphere of culture and education.

* * * 

Denazification will inevitably also be a de-Ukrainization - a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia, begun by the Soviet authorities.

* * * 

Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that does not have its own civilizational content, a subordinate element of an alien and alien civilization. Debanderization by itself will not be enough for denazification - the Bandera element is only a performer and a screen, a disguise for the European project of Nazi Ukraine, therefore the denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.
The Bandera elite must be liquidated, its re-education is impossible. "

 

 

Bandera elite you say?