Taking out all of them is not justice, revenge, or some blood lust, but simply that such depraved people in such a massive destructive force cannot be allowed to exist as a risk. — Christoffer
with the rocket attack on Kramatorsk only the latest evidence
War is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means.
Karl Von Clausewitz
media reports are simply war by other means.
Given that our world is primarily image-driven, it is natural to find this influence permeating the mass media complex, which would include advertising, news, print, radio, television, plays, film, graphic novels, and so on. The old military psychological warfare tactics have thus been combined with the advertising and media propaganda studies to create a massive complex that, in my estimation, is well intertwined.
Mar 7, 2022 · Russian Orthodox Church Leader Blames Invasion on Ukraine's 'Gay Pride' (Newsweek) — jorndoe
The church leader characterized pride parades as "loyalty tests," and said that countries looking to ally with Western powers must embrace them or be shunned
Ultimately, Kirill called the invasion of Ukraine a conflict about things "far more important than politics," and insinuated that the embrace of progressive western values would lead to the end of civilization.
"In Ukraine, rivers of blood and tears are flowing," the Pope said on Sunday while addressing followers in St. Peter's Square. "This is not just a military operation but a war which sows death, destruction and misery."
Vatican City, (CNA/EWTN News) - Praying a 'Hail Mary' for the people of Yemen, the pope urged people Feb. 3 to "pray hard, because there are children who are hungry, who are thirsty, who have no medicine, and are in danger of death," adding that "we take this thought home with us."
Francis was greeted by Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who escorted him to meet Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Egypt's Al-Azhar mosque and university, one of the main seats of learning of Sunni Islam. The pontiff embraced him. Both men will hold meetings with Pope Francis on Monday. The UAE plays a leading role in the Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis in Yemen.
ROME — While people can be indifferent to wars in distant lands, they cannot afford to look the other way when war is at their doorstep, Pope Francis said.
The Pope called for more international dialogue in order to put an end to the conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and other regions of the world
Before this war, Western media coverage presented a Ukrainian far right that was uniquely well-organized, well-connected to both the Ukrainian state and private benefactors, increasingly emboldened, violent, and threatening to democracy, and on the march in terms of its influence. Suddenly, this same media is now telling us all of this is simply lies and Russian propaganda, in line with the favored talking point of the neo-Nazis themselves. Calling this “Orwellian” doesn’t do it justice.
...Before the war, the German government–funded Counter Extremism Project had warned that Ukraine’s paramilitary training infrastructure “presents the risk that violence-oriented right-wing extremist and terrorist individuals from abroad obtain weapons and explosives training in Ukraine,” potentially “increas[ing] the effectiveness of the violence that these individuals may perpetrate in their home countries.” Yet despite years of media fixation on the threat of far-right terrorism — a threat that’s still relatively small at this stage but has the potential to get much worse — this concern, when it’s not dismissed as a Kremlin talking point, goes almost entirely undiscussed in the Western press, even as thousands of foreign fighters, some of them homegrown extremists, stream into the country.
There are serious risks for Ukraine, too. A Western public uninformed about the dangers of the far right is watching its governments, with no debate, send an avalanche of weaponry into the country, where it will fall (and some has already fallen) into the hands of extremists — the same extremists who have serially attacked vulnerable groups, want to institute a dictatorship, have repeatedly threatened and carried out violence against the government, and have already helped overthrow one president. With Zelensky now envisioning a postwar Ukrainian society with more armed people in the streets, and members of the military and National Guard — both institutions where extremists have made a home — patrolling everyday locations, this risk is all the bigger.
Putin’s war on Ukraine has, ironically, been a boon to its far right, which has been further legitimized, better equipped, and supplied with volunteers as a result of his attack. Tragically, the Western press is now also assisting this process, unwittingly advancing extremists’ preferred talking points. We don’t have to pretend there’s no far right problem in Ukraine to give the country our support and solidarity. But by rewriting history and doing PR for literal Nazis, we may be sleepwalking into more disaster.
The evening news programs of the three dominant U.S. television networks devoted more coverage to the war in Ukraine last month than in any other month during all wars, including those in which the U.S. military was directly engaged, since the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, according to the authoritative Tyndall Report. The only exception was the last war in which U.S. forces participated in Europe, the 1999 Kosovo campaign.
Combined, the three networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — devoted 562 minutes to the first full month of the war in Ukraine. That was more time than in the first month of the U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989 (240 mins), its intervention in Somalia in 1992 (423 mins), and even the first month of its invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001 (306 minutes), according to a commentary published Thursday by Andrew Tyndall, who has monitored and coded the three networks’ nightly news each weekday since 1988.
The way NATO was waging its war was clearly not aimed at helping the Kosovars [in Yugoslavia] ,but using their plight as a pretext; similarly, Milosevic’s accelerated war against the Kosovars, while using NATO’s attack as a pretext, obviously had nothing to do with defending Serbia from NATO. Nevertheless, a prominent section of the left supported NATO’s war [against Yugoslavia]. As the war became more and more destructive and obviously counterproductive, it was difficult to withdraw support: if you had concluded that NATO was finally acting on behalf of the oppressed, even if unwittingly, you could only insist it finish the job.
Leftists like Ken Livingstone hence found themselves on the same platform as the likes of Margaret Thatcher. Of course, that may happen in peculiar instances. Yet to be allied to a warmongering section of Western imperialism on the issue of war must surely be a worry. NATO was not being dragged in and reluctantly carrying out actions that helped the oppressed. On the contrary, once it decided on war, it launched it with all the destructiveness and callous disregard for civilian life that it usually displays, while assiduously not helping the oppressed Kosovars.
... Regimes which are the greatest violators of human rights have always been useful for enforcing the ruthless exploitation of labour. There was no fundamental Western interest in intervening in Yugoslavia just because of aggression and human rights violations. There were plenty of examples of non-intervention when it was simply a humanitarian concern (Rwanda 1994). This was even the case with Iraq when it was gassing Kurds, rather than occupying the Western protectorate of Kuwait. From this one can understand that if the West does use “human rights” to justify a war against a tyrannical regime, it must really have some other interests in mind.
The support for NATO by a section of the left in 1999 had its mirror image in a very prominent section of the left which decided instead that, since an imperialist bloc like NATO was attacking Milosevic’s Serbia, the latter must be doing something right. The aim of this section of the left was to play down the crimes of Milosevic. In the most extreme cases, this meant pretending, that ethnic cleansing was not taking place and that the Kosovar refugees were “fleeing NATO bombs”.
....A number of left-oriented writers [demonstrated] the large-scale Western economic intervention into Yugoslavia, particularly through the free market radicalism imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the dramatic effects of which played a role in driving people to nationalism ... The dictates of the IMF and World Bank played the decisive role in shaping the Western policy of insisting on Yugoslav centralism, undermining traditional republican privileges. Some impressive works— Susan Woodward’s Balkan Tragedy and Branka Magas’ The Destruction of Yugoslavia — have documented this extensive relationship, correctly situating the rise of Milosevic in this context.
Edmund Adam writes:
Analysis: Ukraine war: The history of conflict shows how elective wars ultimately fail (Mar 29, 2022) — jorndoe
It's like this stuff follows a script. — StreetlightX
If anyone can find a similar statement from His Holiness the Pope on the other parts of the world where the same rivers are flowing, please post it here. — FreeEmotion
Also there were the language laws, which actually were raised by other neighboring countries as Ukraine has a vast amount of different ethnic minorities, not only Russians. As mentioned earlier, the role of the right-wing parties in the later stages of the Maidan revolution is obvious as a) they were organized and were a parliamentary party (the Right sector) and b) obviously militant extremists are at home in riots. Yet to dismiss or to forget that the neo-nazis lost later in elections is wrong. Claiming that the present administration has ties to neo-nazis cannot be done just by referring to articles from 2014.It's not dismissed but also not relevant as to when Putin annexed Crimea. Those elections were afterwards and the damage of fraternising with nationalist and neo-Nazis was already done; there was genuine worry in Crimea as Russians weren't Ukrainians in the eyes of the nationalist. — Benkei
The extreme right exists just as the extreme left. If Ukraine has a nazi problem, then a many countries have a similar problem and we should put the issue in it's true context. I think that there is a genuine need for this discussion in general, but it shouldn't be used as the way to attack the present Ukrainian adminstration as Putin's talk of neonazis and drug addicts running Ukraine and the need for "denazification" is simply delusional propaganda only intended to keep his own people from realizing the reality of the conflict.And in a sense, there's still a Nazi problem; it doesn't seem like a good idea to arm them even if they like to position themselves as a "Christian taliban" to fight against the Russian invaders. — Benkei
Yeah, but it isn't so bad as in Russia ...or Ukraine. At least in Ukraine they openly admit and understand the problem. Zelensky's election victory just shows how desperately Ukrainians want a change to the system.The US is run by oligarchs as well — Benkei
A team of Amazon workers has forced the technology giant to recognise a trade union in the US for the first time. Workers at a New York warehouse voted 55% in favour of joining the Amazon Labor Union. The group is led by former Amazon worker Chris Smalls, who made his name protesting against safety conditions at the retail giant during the pandemic. Mr Smalls' victory marks a major defeat for Amazon, which had fiercely fought against unionisation.
which is why it's so important Europe becomes a real alternative with multi-party representation instead of an effective lapdog for US foreign policy. — Benkei
The lure of using brute force to achieve quick economic and geopolitical gains has created a rolling tide of military mobilization that has carried countries into battle.
History often repeats itself in that those battles trigger the downfall of the stronger party who unnecessarily drew the first blood.
This reality has been something that Russians do know well. There is things they say and have to say publicly, and then there is the totally different realm they can say in their kitchen when with people they trust. Hence there are several words for truth in Russian, just as there are for falsehood.So the question is, what steps are we willing to take to win those hearts and minds, especially in a situation where a dictator like Vladimir Putin is playing by his own rules, deploying a kind of censorship and propaganda that we thought had been banned. — Olivier5
↪neomac
You know we can just follow the link, right? You don't need to copy-paste the entire thing here. — SophistiCat
If you want to see something even more candid and unrestrained, read this article that was published about a week ago by the Russian state news agency RIA: What Russia Should Do with Ukraine (offsite English translation). It is a true fascist manifesto. — SophistiCat
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 threat of an immediate continuation of the military operation in case of non-compliance with the listed requirements will be the the guarantee of the preservation of this residual Ukraine in a neutral state. Perhaps this will require a permanent Russian military presence on its territory.
The second time I checked, it was behind a paywall, so I just wanted to spare you the hassle. — neomac
You can notice it some rhetoric from the 1930's. That mr Hitler has done wonders with fighting unemployment. That there was this feeling of a new Germany. So some people were "understanding" Hitler, not totally adhering to the ideology. Surely leaders are reasonable when it comes to realpolitik, surely? — ssu
I live in arguably one of the best establishments of this kind of system and it ranks us very high on indexes of life quality and freedom. — Christoffer
Everyone has a right to exist. — FreeEmotion
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