Russia is still selling their oil to india and china, and europe is slowly destroying itself with the anti-russian sanctions and many other internal things they do. Germany went from one of the strongest economies in the world to telling their people to wear sweaters at home, because they'll be cold, while countries oposing the sanctions still have cheap gas (eg 1.23eur/l in hungary).
Media is saying one thing, but people in the streets (and surprisingly, also in the comments everywhere, somehow not censored yet) complain and most not in the politically-correct way. Add to this the blatant censorship of media, eg banning RT in europe (let's be fair.. putin, being somewhat a dictator, banning CNN is perfectly understandable... but EU, "a pillar of democracy" banning RT, to me, seems a very very bad precedent), and stories like "evacuation of azovstal" (and not saying it was a "surrender") make people trust the media even less.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2022/may/17/evacua...
:)
This guy made an informative video about what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwu5Gp8AFnk
Dictator invades neighboring country, says their people don’t have a right to exist? The mainstream media is to blame for using a word I didn’t like. Dictator’s propaganda channel is removed from distribution? A conspiracy by the mainstream media and their political cronies. Etc.
It does make it much easier to understand the Americans who in 1939 were saying “Hitler is not our problem — at least he’s not a communist — look at the good job he’s done cleaning up the radical left — the press is out to get him — why should we hurt our own economy by not trading with Germany?”
Before 2022, we were listening about ukranians shelling russian settlements in ukraine. Ukraine had a nazi problem, Azov was nazis, and even the mainstream media said it: https://i.imgur.com/mRAaOo0.jpg Now they're acting as if none of this has ever happened.
On the other hand, we've let and activelly helped americans to the same thing to many, many different countries, lied about weapons of mass destruction, destroyed afghanistan for hiding obama in pakistan while bombing pakistani weddings while not being at war with them, plus of course syria, libya, etc. Now US troops are entering somalia. I live in a small EU country with a shitty almost non-existant army, and even we had soldiers in afghanistan (and still have them in eg. syria and lebanon). Yugoslavia was bombed for 78 days for doing the same as ukranians were doing to russian minorties, and civilian targets were intentionally chosen for the bombings.
Yes, the mainstream media is guilty of saying one thing until day X, and changing their narrative from day X+1.
> Dictator’s propaganda channel is removed from distribution?
You are aware that all of the media is just propaganda? CNN is propaganda, BBC is propaganda, and RT is propaganda. If we didn't ban the news outlets saying that iraq has WMDs, why are we banning RT? If RT saying that ukranians are nazis, why are we not banning all the mainstream media outlets from here: https://i.imgur.com/mRAaOo0.jpg ?
> It does make it much easier to understand the Americans who in 1939 were saying “Hitler is not our problem — at least he’s not a communist — look at the good job he’s done cleaning up the radical left — the press is out to get him — why should we hurt our own economy by not trading with Germany?”
Lets be fair.. for most of the world, americans are the largest problem for peace in their area. Russians are at worst, second, depending on how you look at saudi arabia vs yemen and israel vs palestine conflicts.
I do think that it is within a nations right and responsibility to defend against such actors.
Naturally there are no clear cut lines and things can get murky but this is the case with many aspects where we expect and accept government intervention.
The Nazi thing in Ukraine is just tired and old, especially since Russia has active ranks of Nazis (like the Wagner Group) that they send abroad. If the Nazi factions justify exterminating civilians in Ukraine, then for consistency's sake, the same could be said of extermination of Russians. (I support exterminating nobody)
America is wrong to start wars. Most people (especially outside of America) agree with that. That doesn't mean Russia gets a free pass to actively threaten Europe and commit genocide, and no amount of paragraphs will change that.
Of course russia doesn't get a free pass... but why do we get one? Why can my small shitty eu country (slovenia) get to have soldiers occupying foreign countries without sanctions? Why can americans do it without sanctions? The French? ...? Why do we treat russia differently for doing the same thing we are... and why are we hurting ourselves by those sanctions?
If Putin now decided to invade Finland, you’d presumably be here with the following arguments:
“Why is nobody talking about the Finnish Nazis? Media reported on that before, they’re not talking about it now. It’s all lies.”
“How do I know Russia is actually bombarding Helsinki? BBC is just propaganda and the Finnish media is probably controlled by the Nazis.”
“Finland sent peacekeeper troops to Afghanistan so they’ve implicitly supported American aggression. Why should we expect different from Russia. Can’t we sanction Finland too”
It’s safe for you to engage in this kind of nonsense pseudo-media-critical sophistry when nobody you know is getting killed.
At least I assume that Finland’s nazis don’t form militias and aren’t part of the armed forces and don’t receive military weapons from NATO.
This doesn’t excuse Russia’s war, but it does make one wonder why Western politicians condemn right-wing extremists so often and so thoroughly with not a peep about the nazis they’re literally sending weapons to.
Well, there was a bit of a scandal when an interview with an Azov neo-nazi was broadcasted in the Greek parliament, but even the Greeks were mostly criticizing themselves for allowing that to happen.
And then online posters would be using this is as proof that Russia has a point with the “denazification” tales they use to justify aggression on other countries’ sovereign territory. “Well, you have to ask why the Finnish army invites Nazis, and now NATO is supplying arms to them too. Just asking questions here that media doesn’t. I am very smart.”
And? Did anyone did anything so America wouldn't start wars? Why America has a free pass?
It is unconscionable we are not trying to increase supply in the US IN ORDER to harm Putin.
I mean how do people not see that Putin is probably laughing at the idea of $120 oil meant to harm him.
By not increasing US supply we are basically helping Putin and forcing other countries to burn more coal. It is just unconscionable but we tend to not really care in the US about actual results as long as the moral intentions are good.