American insistence that this war continue until Russia/Putin is “broken” is doing way more to end Ukrainian lives than Russia.
Welcome to Feb 2022 where every sane person said "agree or not with Putin, but this war must not be funded or it will be far more devastating to Ukraine AND Russia than letting Putin force his way on some issues."
Then everyone who said this was told "wow, Putin is literally Hitler though and you're appeasing modern Hitler who just wants to seize all of Ukraine and exterminate the Ukrainians! And then he will want the west!"
And there's just so many fucking things wrong with comparing Putin to Hitler that I won't even bother. There is something amazingly omega levels of liberal that allows libs to call Putin Hitler meanwhile siding with Israel. A total and complete lack of even surface level knowledge of WWII and what the Nazis did and why they did it (someone called analyzing why Nazis did genocide "Holocaust denialism" recently which I found, frankly, guffaw-inducing. "No, no don't read their reasoning or you'll figure out it's essentially the exact same as Israel now... and the US!" Just pure liberal "good guys vs bad guys" with zero analysis of why a man like Hitler came to power or why Israel elects and keeps in power openly genocidal warlords).
I've always been pretty clear of my criticisms of Putin. I think he's genuinely an immoral person. He's fine with the deaths of thousands at his command and on the other side for his ultimate goals which aren't necessarily "just" if your end goal or your justice, like mine, is more democratic control of everything in society. This is not Putin's goal, so, I don't agree with his actions. However, that doesn't mean he doesn't have reasons for his actions and the irony of the Ukraine war is the US would have done the exact same thing. I'm not sure if a definite equivalent exists, but the US has certainly done worse things than invading a neighboring basically cousin-nation (I mean, come on...) under false pretenses of liberation. The US just invades far off nations under those same vague and bullshit reasons.
I hate liberals. I really fucking do. I just want them to say "I don't care if Palestinians die. I do care when "white" Christian Ukrainians die. (But also not really)"Just be honest and dispense with the theatrics and posturing involved in pretending you give a shit at all. Everyone knows they don't care. The left knows it obviously, the right wingers even know it and meme on them for it, and surely the libs know it in whatever they have left that passes for a soul. A lot more have certainly been mask-off recently with their fervent hatred of Russians (generally, not even just the army) and Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims.
What libs fundamentally want is the “rules based order” where the credentialed people ruling the right countries make the rules and order everyone else around. Everything else they’re either paying lip service to or treat as a result of that order being in control, that the rules-based order being hegemonic means democracy and freedom must be flourishing, regardless of reality. Anything going against that order, regardless of how justified, they loathe with seething fury.
Genocide is a word that is becoming more meaningless with each passing day
I don't think so tbh. It is not like "woke" in the sense that the term genocide is very well defined and in cases like Palestine is easily provable. It's just that in western discourse liberals and left-liberals especially online ignore that and throw it around willy-nilly while parroting literal US state department lines.
It makes sense if you consider that the "international community" has benefited immensely from genocide. But the Western misuse is only a part of its purview even if its significant and the term itself won't be rendered meaningless by this.
99% of people who use the word "genocide" are not aware of the legal definition, and would dismiss it if it disagrees with what they think.
and
woulddo dismiss itifwhen it disagrees with what they think.
Its a frustrating conversation, because how do you describe a 3 year long war consisting primarily of artillery bombardments on civilian centers as anything but “genocide”?
It's not 3 years, it's over 9 at this point. If anything, there's been less civilian deaths since 2022 for both sides than in 2014-2022 in Donbas. BE is absolutely right, Russia is not doing anything close to genocide, but what Ukraine do can be called ethnic cleansing at least.
If anything, there's been less civilian deaths since 2022 for both sides than in 2014-2022 in Donbas.
I'd need to see some exceptionally reliable statistics on that. Since '22, I'm seeing casualties in excess of 150k.
Russia is not doing anything close to genocide, but what Ukraine do can be called ethnic cleansing at least.
After how the Russians made out in Chechnya and given the reputation Wagner has as a military force, I'm extremely skeptical of the claim that Russian military forces haven't engaged in anything resembling ethnically-themed mass murder. Which isn't to both-sides this shit. Its a war and the only practical way to prevent atrocities like this from happening is to not initiate war in the first place.
Part of my frustration with the western media sucking ass is that I'm very hard pressed to understand what is actually going on over there. Anything negative of Russia is easy to dismiss. At the same time, it is foolish to casually dismiss how the Russian military has acted since the end of the USSR and just assume this time Ukraine is different.
I’d need to see some exceptionally reliable statistics on that. Since '22, I’m seeing casualties in excess of 150k.
What??? CIVILIAN deaths. UN claims around 10k civilians died since '22, on both sides, and i would expect them to rather enlarge the number because Russia bad. By the way, the ratio of civilian to military deaths in this war means it's one of the most restrained wars since the dawn of industrial warfare, and certainly if you compare to any of US aerial massacres and terror campaigns they call "wars".
Part of my frustration with the western media sucking ass is that I’m very hard pressed to understand what is actually going on over there.
So you decided to accept their most extremist line of Russia doing genocide even though there is no shred of proof for this (not even the most of western rags going as far as this).
UN claims around 10k civilians died since '22, on both sides, and i would expect them to rather enlarge the number because Russia bad.
I mean, the game in Palestine is to insist everyone in the building you demolished was a terrorist. Same with Iraq/Afghanistan. There's also an impulse to minimize Ukrainian casualties - both civilian and military - because the running message is "Russia keeps firing rockets at us, but our missile shield catches them all so everything is actually fine". The constant narrative I see on places like Threads and Reddit is that Russian artillery doesn't do anything and Ukrainians all stay winning.
So you decided to accept their most extremist line of Russia doing genocide
Again, I'm hard pressed to believe you can do a war at the industrial scale and avoid a genocide. If nothing else, the mass displacement and the horrid conditions of the hundreds of thousands of refugees from the region comes close enough up to the line not to make a material difference.
The constant narrative I see on places like Threads and Reddit is that Russian artillery doesn’t do anything and Ukrainians all stay winning.
And at the same time they say there is unlimited genocide by Russia. You should easily recognize typical "enemy is weak and strong at the same time" nazi rhetoric.
I mean, the game in Palestine is to insist everyone in the building you demolished was a terrorist. Same with Iraq/Afghanistan.
Again you are coming out of baseless assumption that Russia wage war same as Israel and USA, where there are tons of proof they are not, and they have the same target as those where there is obvious they are not.
Again, I’m hard pressed to believe you can do a war at the industrial scale and avoid a genocide.
Genocide is not just when civilians die.
If nothing else, the mass displacement and the horrid conditions of the hundreds of thousands of refugees from the region comes close enough up to the line not to make a material difference.
By this metric every single war ever was a genocide.
And at the same time they say there is unlimited genocide by Russia.
Sure. I've seen people claiming that the Russian military murdered everyone in Crimea. Any territory Russia actually occupies gets retconned as "everyone dead" in the same way that we get a periodic "in China / Cuba / North Korea / Venezuela, everyone has starved to death and these countries are now empty".
Again you are coming out of baseless assumption that Russia wage war same as Israel and USA
Hardly baseless. Two wars in Chechnya and their support for Syria back in 2015 suggest they war just like everyone else.
Genocide is not just when civilians die.
I did not suggest that was the definition.
By this metric every single war ever was a genocide.
After how the Russians made out in Chechnya and given the reputation Wagner has as a military force, I'm extremely skeptical of the claim that Russian military forces haven't engaged in anything resembling ethnically-themed mass murder.
Slavs ethnically mass murdering other slavs? Not really sure what you're getting at here. "Ukrainian" is not an ethnicity no matter how much the ukronazis repeatedly claim that it is in order to try and drive a wedge between people that are brothers and sisters.
Saying Ukraine isn't an ethnicity is a bit of a stretch. Like Ukrainian is a separate language with a distinct history, it's deeply related but not identical to Russian. Like Ukrainian ethno nationalists can be wrong about without having to deny that there is an ethnic group there. Like I guess what I am saying is that north and southern crackers in the 1860's were distinct cultural groups but formed a single nation of crackerdom, you wouldbt say that like southerners "didnt exist" and were just yankees.
I strongly disagree. This is like saying Scots are a distinct ethnicity from the English because they have some different cultural history and a language. Or the Welsh. They're really fucking not and I will die on this hill. You can have the same ethnicity while having completely different languages and cultures, I'd argue MUCH more different to Ukraine vs Russia ffs too.
Literally you are just saying ethnicity doesn't exist then. Like Scots are literally a different ethnicity than the English this isnt my opinion is a historical fact. In fact language is one of the prime determinants of ethnic groupings, and the fact that Ukrainian exists is a strong inducator of an ethnic division. You can chose to die on this hill if you want, but it doesn't make you less wrong. Recognizing distinct ethnic groupings doesn't necessitate ceeding ground to ethno nationalism, it's just a recognition of historical grouping patterns.
The issue you have here is that all of Britain shares the same cultural history. It is all Celtish. And has barely had any clear distinct borders in its entire history, very much spreading that Celtish heritage in a way that muddies any distinction.
These are more accurately described as sub-groups of this single ethnic historical grouping. The strongest possible argument for a distinctly separate ethnicity among people of the british islands is Pictish vs non-Pictish. But even then these are just two different Celtish language groups.
I really don't know why you're being hostile about this.
It feels like you're overcooking the distinction between people here, where I actually live. It's significantly more of a smear than anything distinct. Celtish divided into Pictish/Non-Pictish then subdivided into Gaelic and Brittonic. Under which you have later subdivisions of modern Irish, Scottish and Manx vs Welsh, Cornish and English.
The issue you have is that all of these also spoke Common and had barely any borders. Travel was open, intermixing was open, and everything was muddy. The differences are not lines but more of a smear. The clearest distinction that can possibly be made is that the anglo-saxon settlers were a distinct ethnicity from the Celts at the time of settling. But with little limitation on the mixing between peoples and Old-English coming to replace Common-Brittonic that distinction is less clear.
I don't think many people from anywhere in Britain are going to seriously and straight-facedly say to you "I am a distinct and different ethnicity to the Welsh" in anything other than a completely mocking, circlejerky and entirely unserious way.
I am not intending to be hostile. I am just very confused as too what you think ethinc groups are, because you say that the Scottish are not a different ethnic group from the English and then in detail explain how the Scottish are actually a distinct group from the English. Like ethnic groups are not hard boundaries, some people move between them multiple times in their lives. For example tons of people n western anatolia who's ancestors 200 years ago would have considered themselves as Turkish and Greek and were only later forced to become solely Turkish due to the events after ww1. They may not have even changed anything about how they lived their lives, and may still even speak Greek as a second language. Like ethnicity isn't a genetic thing that can be tested for. It also isn't a permanent thing but something that can form expand shrink and be absorbed into another. Like Welsh is a good example of this, 100 years ago you could easily say that the Welsh ethnicity was on its way to extinction, while now it has made a huge comeback as Welsh language and culture have been encouraged in schools.
Like ethnicity also doesn't have to be a serious thing people die over. How ethnicity is handled in the US and Britain are actually one if the few things we have managed to handle well as societies.
The issue here is that the island has had a shared cultural history and language for its entire history. Common Brittonic, and later Old English.
These sub-groups had their own languages yes. But the whole island also spoke Common.
For the people in Britain this produces a distinctly blurring of groups. One where you have your own independent group and also one where you have the larger shared group. If language and culture are the two things you use to define ethnicity then among people on terf island you have the muddying effect of two ethnicities, the minor and the greater.
Are the English and Irish separate ethnicities by your schema then?
Yes. I'd definitely say that people here see a distinct ethnic difference there. If you look at "british" as a shared ethnicity, and view people in britain (not great britain, just britain IE the main island) as having two ethnicities (minor/greater), you can start to see why it wasn't necessary for any one single ethnicity here to wipe out the others in order to create the larger polity that exists.
Great Britain is the name of the largest island, hence 'the united kingdom of great Britain and Northern Island'.
If Irish is a separate ethnicity as it has a state but welsh is not despite sharing a common cultural history and being subject to much of the same processes of assimilation then the definition becomes tautological.
different cultural history and a language
Aren't these literally the key factors in defining ethnicity. Are you under the impression that ethnicity is purely genetic or something?
Well this is why it's more of a smear vs distinct division problem. There were different languages yes, but there was also Common-Brittonic, and later Old English.
So yes you can divide these up into smear groups but also they were mixed significantly enough to also maintain a single shared cultural language across Britain.
If language and cultural history are the definition of ethnicity then these peoples are simultaneously two ethnicities, British and their own sub-groups of gaelic/brittonic/and further subdivisions depending on which point in the history of the island you want to look at and dig into. Like I said to the other user, the clearest and least blurred ethnic distinction historically is probably the anglo-saxon settlers at the specific time of their settling.
I think "ethnicity" requires a cultural component and that's what the original distinction from "race" was. It's muddied somewhat because the terms are so loaded
The Welsh identity has always been separate to the English and only ever weakly subsumed under the British identity.
They have their own language & their own separate cultural heritage, particularly focused on public performance of music and poetry. After incorporation into England a distinct Welsh sensibility was maintained through religion with the high numbers of non-conforming protestant churches inside Wales staying formally and doctrinally separate from the Church of England. There has been no established state Church in Wales for over 100 years at this point.
The process of state formation in Britain involved a conscious and continuous effort to denigrate the Welsh language & promote the Church of England as with similar processes in Ireland.
If this does not constitute a separate ethnicity then the Irish, the Finns, the Sami, the Basque & even the Hungarians are not separate ethnicities than the capitals that used to or still do rule over them.
Hell, are the English even really separate to the French? Are we all actually Anglos because we've grown up under modern capitalism?
If this does not constitute a separate ethnicity then the Irish, the Finns, the Sami, the Basque & even the Hungarians are not separate ethnicities than the capitals that used to or still do rule over them.
Lack of shared language?
Are we all actually Anglos because we've grown up under modern capitalism?
"The European Garden"
All the examples I gave have elites speaking a common language, be it Swedish, Castilian Spanish or Austrian German: in the same way Welsh, Gaelic and Irish elites spoke English while their subjects spoke their native languages prior to the process of state formation from the 18th century onwards.
Hence by this schema there is no English ethnicity prior to the modern era as the elites all spoke French and were part of the shared common cultural history; which is why I am dubious about the analytical value of this framing.
a 3 year long war consisting primarily of artillery bombardments on civilian centers
This is.... Not true?
It's significantly more accurate to describe the war as consisting primarily of artillery bombardments on trench systems. It's far closer to ww1 than anything else. Hundreds and hundreds of miles of trenches and minefields.
how do you describe a 3 year long war consisting primarily of artillery bombardments on civilian centers as anything but "genocide"?
Just take a page out of the
playbookIt was a kinetic engagement during which some civilians ceased to continue living
Decided to cease continuing to live* /s
Come on, we're a democracy!
As much as I don't like Bad Empanada, it's hilarious that these NAFO dorks think they could do anything to him.
BadEmpanada dunks on the Drew Pavlov guy every single tweet, that makes him worth following
Didn't one of them try to report him to the Javier Millei secret police as a foreign commie infiltrator, except the guy used google translate and the spanish was complete jibberish.
Reminder that this little weasel pushed the Uighur Genocide narrative hard and did a lot of damage.
Sure he can be funny when he's dunking on libs but he's an unprincipled grifter.
Do you mean BadEmpanada? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I vaguely recall seeing his video on it, and as I recall he rejected the genocide narrative. He had bad takes, sure, like that education programs are bad, but I wouldn't call it "pushing the genocide narrative". Didn't he just go through the UN report point for point and say "this stuff is bad" a bunch of times, while also pointing out that it wasn't a genocide (the UN report never refers to anything happening there as genocide)?
Yes him. I recall his video and him carrying water for the western propaganda initiative in general, including the UN report. I don't particularly care if he called it a genocide. China's response to the American led terrorism in the region should be an example to the world and not something to be criticised idealistically.
Here's Dr Asatar Bair's dismantling of this lib shithead's take on Xinjiang.
I agree with everything you said. I'm not going to bat for empanada, I know he has tons of shit takes. But if I can use this as a springboard to examine some of my own assumptions here, is there reason to assume the UN report is inaccurate?
I can't see your link unfortunately, as I don't have an account, sorry if it is covered there.
Here you go comrade. Unfortunately the video is a lot more one-sided than I remembered too https://nitter.net/asatarbair/status/1379986675103789058
Thanks for that, that is a good takedown. I distinctly remember thinking empanada was pretty radical when I first encountered his videos, but yeah, beyond that video replies imply that he has all sorts of anti-China takes.
At the time it cost me a lot of keystrokes to defend reality from the bullshit so I'm still bitter with him, even if I do enjoy some of his dunkings here and there.
