Who also did a fluff piece on north Korea?
I don't remember them saying that. I do remember them showing US political and financial involvement in Ukraine.
>Who also did a fluff piece on north Korea?
Someone didn't get the humor and sarcasm I guess.
1. Eastern states joined NATO for defense
2. This redirected Russian aggression to Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine
3. Thus, the invading forces must themselves be acting with circumspection about NATO
This reasoning tends to prefer analysis rather than emphasize what invading armies do to civilians. We know what’s happening to civilians in each of those invasions. We do not know (and should not care) if each soldier has an opinion of NATO.
>I don't remember them saying that. I do remember them showing US political and financial involvement in Ukraine.
They stopped short of saying it explicitly, but it was strongly implied. The whole video basically lists out all of russia's motivation for the war, and then concludes with "now there's a war in europe [...] if there was only someone who have predicted it, someone with power to stop it" followed by a few sound bites/clips strongly alluding to Western defense officials.
...you say as you unilaterally assert that you're correct without trying to refute any of my previous points (ie. that the video didn't blame the west explicitly but strongly implied it).
They intentionally leaves out sources they claim to have, they cut crucial parts of video evidence (such as Joe Biden's statement, which changes the entire statement)
There's tons more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0p9-kjKdfY
>Someone didn't get the humor and sarcasm I guess.
By that logic then I guess glazing Nazi Germany is fine because it's just sarcasm & joke bro.
You need to understand that not everyone shares your addiction to YT's dopamine-jerking content feeds. In any case, no one has time to dig through that video to find whatever "evidence" you think is buried there.
I can't help it if you can't watch a video without feeling as if it's meant to be some "dopamine rush" for you, that's a you problem.
It does not in any way shape or form discard it from being evidence.
Especially when I specifically pointed out 2 issues with the boyboy video, which I assume you also haven't watched (or does boyboy somehow get a pass?) which then begs the question of why you're even replying.
Such crazy talk!
Who would have ever thought that pushing a cold-war coalition eastwards towards an ex-superpower, including shoving it in its very borders, which it has long declared a "red line", would ever cause an invasion?
It's not like everybody from real-politic scholars to the most experienced of foreign affairs like Kissinger explicitly said it was a bad idea, and that this will be the result!
Except that's not what happened. In you know, actual, physical reality.
It's just what the aggressor told you, in its propaganda.
https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2023/08/the-crucial-ques...
And we could forgive them for that small particular exaggeration, if that was all it was. But they took extra special care to double down on the "pushing" part, and dial it up a notch, to "shoving [it] its borders", which is unmistakably an intentional use of emotionally manipulative language.
Which to my ears indicates we have no reason to concern ourselves with whatever else they might have to say.
And which is the precise moment at which what they did say starts to sound like, you know, propaganda.
As to what you're saying.
Ukraine in NATO being "the brightest of red lines"
Except there was no concrete "push" in Ukraine's case.
And when you're completely cornered on one line of disinformation, not just maybe but sure enough -- somebody will chime in with another.
The coup/puppet narrative in relation to these events is simply bogus. You can do your homework on it if you want, or not. I don't particularly care.
Also Poroshenko wasn't in any way installed or a puppet, he was elected by Ukranians in an election that was fair and free followed by another fair and free election which he lost in a landslide. That's democracy.
Poroshenko may have not been the best leader but he was tons better then Yanukovych and it was pretty hard to run Ukraine even before Russia invaded.
Ivan Katchanovski is a Ukrainian-born Canadian political scientist who is definitely not a Russian sympathizer. He has studied the history of the Maidan uprising and argues convincingly (IMO) for this conclusion.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266855828_The_Snipe...
He also has a very interesting podcast with Robert Wright where he discusses this, among other issues related to the Ukraine war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rvx_M3_Yi0
I also recommend following his twitter account if you're interested in a fairly neutral perspective on the Ukraine war: https://x.com/I_Katchanovski
https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/panorama/archiv/2014/...
It uses the word "coup", but then says that the majority of the protesters demonstrated for a free Ukraine and were against the corruption of Yanukovich.
The rest of the article is about the Swoboda party, which is ultranationalist and had good contacts to the German NPD. The NPD is a fringe party without any substantial numbers of voters that is classified as ultra right wing.
It then mentions a Neonazi (their words) called Jarosch and his party "Right Sector". It goes on to say that the "Right Sector" was instrumental in ousting the old regime physically on the barricades.
It says that the members then established new security forces that replaced the police.
What does the BBC say?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
The same U.S. that complains about election interference in Romania is picking candidates in Ukraine after the revolution.
As is Svoboda, these days.
Mainstream Western press like the Guardian and CNBC, both of which are fiercely pro-Ukraine now. In 2014, before the Crimea invasion:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/29/ukrain...
Nato's eastward expansion was halted by the Georgian war of 2008 and Yanukovych's later election on a platform of non-alignment. But any doubt that the EU's effort to woo Ukraine is closely connected with western military strategy was dispelled today by Nato's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who declared that the abortive pact with Ukraine would have been "a major boost to Euro-Atlantic security".
Notice that the Guardian's mention of "fascists" is also Russian propaganda now (given the propensity of the Western media to call anyone and anything "fascist" I do not attach too much value to that part, but it is there.)
Before the 2022 invasion, from CNBC:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/biden-didnt-accept-putins-re...
President Biden didn’t accept Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s “red lines” on Ukraine during their high-stakes video call that came as Russia’s military builds its presence on the Ukrainian border.
Namely, that means the U.S. isn’t accepting Putin’s demand that Ukraine be denied entrance into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is the world’s most powerful military alliance.
> Why is that?
Because they are standard mainstream sources. You seem to think that only a concrete and signed membership plan is a red line, whereas even CNBC cites Putin's red lines.
I agree by the way that the invasions by Russia are horrible, but please let's not rewrite history.
It's the only one that the commenter was referring to.
Whereas even CNBC cites Putin's red lines.
Except you're shifting goal posts. The "red lines" referred to by the CNBC are entirely different (and separated by 13 years) from those referred to by the previous commenter. And anyway that's just CNBC's misreading of the events. Suffice it to say there was a lot more to Putin's noises at the time. More specifically, by that point the West did not (as you are strongly implying) have the option of deterring the invasion by simply complying with some specific, reasonable request Putin was making.
And then we have this:
given the propensity of the Western media to call anyone and anything "fascist"
There is no such "propensity" within Western media. Or any other significant tendency. This is just complete nonsense.
Another day, another throwaway account with a throwaway argument.
Another day, another one of the 1000,000 Ukranian males in Western Europe evading military service while lecturing Westerners?
That's why the only years that matter (in terms of the "Ukraine/NATO caused it all" hypothesis) are 2008-2014.
Once Russia's regime did chose to invade, any moral capital it may have had in regard to the issue was instantly extinguished.
This is weird thing with anyone saying "NATO FAULT NATO FAULT", NATO explicitly DIDN'T want the eastern European countries to join, it was the eastern Europeans who begged and begged to be let in, including Ukraine and the west rejected them.
And even IF this was the case somehow that NATO pushed themselves into these countries:
1. Why did Russia give the thumbs up for these countries to join?
2. Why did Russia try and attempt to join NATO at one point
All of this by the way happened with Putin in charge, so unless we all believe in the dead-putin theory something doesn't add up here with the framing of "NATO FAULT".
>It's not like everybody from real-politic scholars to the most experienced of foreign affairs like Kissinger explicitly said it was a bad idea, and that this will be the result!
So you're saying that real-politik experts believe if Ukraine had joined back in say 2008 they today would've been invaded by Russia? Since it's in 2022 not 2008 they got full-blown invasion after having having been trying to be neutral and DESPITE that Russia still kept meddling in their affairs as if it was Belarus, leading up to 2014 crisis.
I would love to know how exactly Russia would be able to pull that off against the full NATO military force.
This lines up with what Russia says. "We do not want a military alliance that was built to destroy us expanding to our border."
Except Russia formally greenlighted at least partial NATO expansion (to CZ, HU, and PL) via a formal treaty it signed with NATO in 1997. Which right there, should suggest to you that there's something deeply broken with this narrative.
"We do not want a military alliance that was built to destroy us expanding to our border."
NATO wasn't built "to destroy" Russia.
You can say that NATO annoys Russia, or "is built to challenge Russia's influence outside its borders" if you want.
But to say it was built, or at any point even remotely intended "to destroy Russia" is just dumb, emotional manipulation.
Well, we can see this conversation is going at least.
In any case there's evidently no meaningful relationship to the actual word "destroy" in play here.
Seems they meant "irritates" or "offends".
The signatories to the treaty in 1997 may not have understood how the Russian population at large would perceive NATO expansion. When it happened, the russian people responded differently than they did in a much more idealistic period.
Destroying, irritating, and annoying are easy to understand between individuals, but in talking about nation states, what do these really mean? One nation state can annoy another into an economic collapse thus destroying it.
Everything thing you say ignores what the Russians have been saying about NATO expansionism, and I think that is more key to understanding both sides of the issue. I only suggested that actions of NATO contributed to the "irritation" that drug Russia into conflict.
The trouble with this narrative is that it has no connection with reality whatsoever. It is a cover story produced to lull distant foreigners into sleep; it is not connected to the actual developments in Russia or Russian relations with its neighbors. Nobody takes this story seriously in Russia; it is not discussed in military or policy circles. It is a pretext very much in the same tradition as German excuses for invading Poland.
Few people can offer better insight into "understanding both sides" than Andrei Kozyrev, the first foreign minister of Russian Federation, in office 1990-1996 and in charge of rebuilding foreign relations of the entire country after USSR's demise. And he openly calls this narrative bullshit and people who fall for it idiots. Most key figures from pre-Putin Russia hold the same view.
NATO is a pain in the butt for Russia for the very simple reason that Russia still carries imperialist desire to roll over its neighbors, and a country being in NATO makes it much more difficult for them to invade. Without support from allies, Ukraine would've lost years ago, but with international support, they persist and have caused incredible losses to Russians. It's simple calculus. Without NATO, Russian invasion of Poland would face only the fairly limited Polish conventional forces. With NATO, they would be potentially facing anything up to US carrier groups and British nuclear missiles. Risks associated with invading their neighbors go way up if they are in NATO, enough to deter from invading.
Understanding this, joining NATO and other international organizations has been a top foreign policy priority for most countries in Eastern Europe. "Expansionism" is a completely wrong word to use when the initiative for joining NATO has always been very intense in Eastern Europe, out of fear of Russian invasion, against lukewarm and skeptical acceptance by the existing members, who believed such fears to be overblown.
And this take showcases the fundamental problem with giving a fuck about major narratives, and our perceived overlap with or opposition to them.
As in: "Oh gosh, in taking position X, it looks like I'm overlapping with the received narrative, which happens to roughly include position X. Which is Bad, because that narrative is on the whole Bad. Therefore I should check myself and start importing positions from, or expressing empathy with narratives from the supposedly opposite direction. Because the enemy of my enemy can't be such a bad guy, once you get to know him", or something like that.
Which seems to be what drives about 90 percent of the "If you just listen to Putin, it turns out he actually has a point with Ukraine" take. (Along with an uncritical acceptance of the web of factual distortions about what actually did happen).
When it happened, the russian people responded differently than they did in a much more idealistic period.
Except it wasn't "the Russian people" responding back then. And it certainly isn't "the Russian people" who decided to launch the current invasion.
One nation state can annoy another into an economic collapse thus destroying it.
Okay I guess, and evidently you're alluding to the 90s shock therapy advice given to Russia and associated shenanigans. Fine enough, but that wasn't "NATO". And it's when one starts boldly and utterly conflating the two (I'm guessing on the principle that they're both "The West") where things start to get loopy.
Everything thing you say ignores what the Russians have been saying about NATO expansionism, and I think that is more key to understanding both sides of the issue.
That's the thing -- we don't get to hear from "the Russians" as a people in any meaningful sense these days. By and large, we only get to hear what its current regime says (and the various statements it pretends to believe). Which has some relation to what Russians as a people think, but is at best a highly distorted and manipulated representation of what they think.
I only suggested that actions of NATO contributed to the "irritation" that drug Russia into conflict.
Your words said a lot more than that, I'm afraid. Let's replay the tape:
This lines up with what Russia says. "We do not want a military alliance that was built to destroy us expanding to our border."
Instead of treating it as the obvious hogwash that it is, that no reasonably sane and informed person would ever believe.
You haven't been on HN long enough if you never saw it.
> > It's crazy to think people still deny current US involvement in other countries, given all this past evidence.
Although the past is used as a sort of implied argument here.
You're moving the goalposts on the original sin, while I was discussing the issues of today or at least recent past (Iranian revolution was only in 1979, Invasion of Iraq was in 2003, Arab spring in 2011, Taliban rule form 2021).
You can't just wave away decades or even centuries of oppression and intervention in other countries' affairs that changed them forever (that sill happen to this day BTW, and by the same powers), with "whatever mate, it was in the past", as if you broke my phone screen in junior school. No mate, it wasn't just in the past, it's still happening.
Except colonialism today is less about large sailing wooden ships and conquistadors with muskets straight up stealing your shit from your town at gunpoint and shipping abroad along with slaves, but more alphabet agency black-ops and monetary/economic levers to topple your leader and replace him with a friendly puppet one who will willingly and legally sign off your country's resources and your peoples' labor to western corporations as salves, for way below market price. This isn't the original sin anymore, this is its modern version.
And its bullshit. And the audience walks out on that story, wherever its told. It has no explanation power any-more and if you tell a story without explanation power, it just gives credence to the assholes you pushed of the stage. Thus tooting that horn, is like glueing MAGA WAS RIGHT to every fence in town.
I'll have to leave you right there, since I can't reason someone through argumentation from a position they did not reason themselves into in the first place, so this will go nowhere.
Absurd take...
Some examples:
Brazil's democracy was put on hold during the whole period of growth post WW2, it has social impacts to this day both in wasteful investments done through 20+ years of dictatorship saddling the country with debt and disinvestment being paid to this day by current generations: lack of education, bad infrastructure, a fragile democracy since only 2 generations of voters have lived completely under it.
The whole Middle East has sectarian violence caused by the borders drawn from colonial powers in control of regions up to the 1960s. The same is true for African civil wars ringing out to this day, nations (aka tribes) split into 2-3 countries to be more easily controlled by different colonial powers.
To this day the USA meddles directly with governments south of it, the doctrine of strong-arming what the USA considers its backyard is still strong, American influence in South American politics is everywhere.
> and all that shit usually blamed at the west, turns out to be just murderous local land empires, blaming all the things they do to gain power on western influence or history, but actually doing the same thing they did before the west rolled up
As I mentioned, colonial powers drew borders to divide-and-conquer nations who are now fighting each other from all the bad blood caused by these divisions, do you actually really believe some 4-5 decades would be enough to erase all the infighting encouraged by colonial powers to keep the locals weak and scattered?
I really can't believe someone thinks the issues of colonialism can't have echoes way past the end of the colonial age...
One of the dramatically underappreciated aspects of imperialism is the degree to which it involves local political actors attempting to solicit foreign (imperial) support and/or intervention to service their local political needs. This isn't always the case, but it's important not to whitewash the influence of such local concerns. It's thus especially telling that one of your "examples" of modern imperialism is actually something that was entirely a spontaneous, endogenous reaction to local politics and local concerns that literally left all of the "imperialists" flat-footed exclaiming "wait, what?"
You are very much correct, and "their local political needs" are generally large amounts of money being transfered to them personally.
Corrupt locals screwing over everyone else for their own benefit are an integral part of imperialism, not an exception to it.
See the recent viral monologue from the CEO of Palantir where he says we need to dominate and have everyone live in fear of us (and if you disagree, you’re a woke pagan).
Xi Jinping painting China as the champion of free trade versus the isolationist America. It strikes a chord with my country let me tell you that.
The objectives and contradictions are very different now. The first 14 James Bond movies were trying to avert a madman obsessed with triggering a nuclear first strike. The next 13 were not. The cool Russians who avoided hysteria devoted a generation of resources on real bad decisions made in Afghanistan. The only constant is how you’re treated if you get in the way of profit.
The anti-communist paranoia is what also brought a lot of rights and perks to workers in the US and Europe. The ruling elite had to concede some demands to the working class to prevent the read scare from spreading. Now that threat is gone, we're seeing a claw-back (defanging unions, etc).
Not at all, the global left at the time was actually into things like racial and gender equality and so on, it was not just a paranoid delusion among elites in the USA. So called communist states actually built people's armies, actually brought people out of poverty and taught them to read and write and study, actually sent soldiers to colonies to fight the colonisers.
The anti-left propaganda obviously did not want to put these things into focus, since it had clearly inspired rather successful revolutions and reform projects in Europe and elsewhere. Instead we got these medicalised narratives where socialism or communism is presented as a viral epidemic, or leftist leaders described as profoundly evil persons bent on subjugating the world under tyranny.
From a previous discussion [0]:
> I wish they'd not bury the lead here's what it is: For three decades, Chevron dumped billions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste into the rivers and streams of the Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador.
> This produced a devastating environmental catastrophe that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Indigenous peoples and farmers. Even today, Indigenous communities continue to face imminent risk of death due to exposure to Chevron’s toxic waste.
> https://chuffed.org/campaign/free-donziger/bb
> The youtube video description doesn't even explain it.
Here's a link to their Patreon to continue to support such informative creators [1], and a link to the Free Donzinger campaign [2].
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41848861
Just look what Chevron is doing today: UFC 2.0.
https://youtu.be/9OtIAZMqrZE?si=11uBrlWr-pSL4APj