This is propaganda and you don't even know it... People get silenced in the US every day because they have a different opinions on current events, for example the US proxy war with Russia.
I always noticed when certain amount of decades pass it's okay to say certain things, like "Allende was assassinated by the CIA", but back then you'd get persecuted to even mention that.
Yes, when it doesn't matter you can say whatever you want, god bless the USA... Because of opinions like yours is that America is the empire who gets the "Okay" to be the police of the world, and it's terrible at that.
Ukraine had seen proxy war just for a few months in spring/summer 2014, until Russia moved in its regular troops to save its sponsored para-militaries in Donbas. Right now it's a war of invaded nation against invader nation, non conspiracist mr refused_cov_vax.
Yeah, as a Ukrainian, this triggers me well, good job.
I think that it is good that you feel being silenced.
The world in which a person who have absolutely zero idea what he is talking about will feel cheered, is a very scary to me. Until then, there is hope.
A better question to ask, is why has the "2nd most powerful military" on earth failing to capture a city <=300km from their own borders? and with there current rate of advancement will take all of Ukraine in ~30/40 years.
i wouldnt call russias military anywhere near "2nd most powerful", very very far from it.
but the reason is simply, russia isnt out to destroy ukraine as a mortal enemy, as such, there are huge limitations to what can be done, and ukraine has some advantages here. if russia wanted to, they could simply bomb ukraine to pieces, all over ukraine, if they wanted to. They clearly done
> but the reason is simply, russia isnt out to destroy ukraine as a mortal enemy, as such, there are huge limitations to what can be done, and ukraine has some advantages here. if russia wanted to, they could simply bomb ukraine to pieces, all over ukraine, if they wanted to. They clearly done
Have you seen what Bakhmut looks like?. Russia is totally out to wipe Ukraine off the map that is their entire intention just like how Grozny looked after the Russians rolled through.
The difference is they are wholly incapable of implementing what they want to do.
i am not denying what bakhmut looks like, but are you suggesting they couldnt simply megabomb all major ukranian cities without any regard for what happens?
I dont buy your motives for what russia is doing. Also, supposing you are in a war, REGARLDESS of reasons, good or bad, what would you suggest happen when there is an active conflict? Now sure, you can say(and im not arguing that this would be wrong): "russia can just not invade ukraine", and then there would be no destruction at all. Thats true, but suppose the decision has been made, as it has, even if you dont intend to destroy for the sake of destruction, things are gonna be destroyed in a conflict, would you not agree?
now I for one would prefer the money the state steals from me does not go to fund that destruction. I do not like to be partly funding a proxy war with russia.
> i am not denying what bakhmut looks like, but are you suggesting they couldnt simply megabomb all major ukranian cities without any regard for what happens?
Pretty much, Bakhmut is mostly due to artillery then anything else, I dont think they have enough missiles to reduce all cities in Ukraine to anything like that with missiles outside of using nukes, which instantly ends the Russian federation as a country itself.
> I dont buy your motives for what russia is doing. Also, supposing you are in a war, REGARLDESS of reasons, good or bad, what would you suggest happen when there is an active conflict? Now sure, you can say(and im not arguing that this would be wrong): "russia can just not invade ukraine", and then there would be no destruction at all. Thats true, but suppose the decision has been made, as it has, even if you dont intend to destroy for the sake of destruction, things are gonna be destroyed in a conflict, would you not agree?
You could not target civilian infrastructure on purpose, something that Russia continually does.
Why else would Russia lob missiles designed by the Soviet Union to take out aircraft carriers at malls in Kyiv?.
You could try your best not imitate the Nazis during WW2 when they where blitzing the British, but Russia seems incapable of rising above anything.
> now I for one would prefer the money the state steals from me does not go to fund that destruction. I do not like to be partly funding a proxy war with russia.
It's not funding its destruction, its funding its protection, this war would have happened regardless.
This war is not a proxy war but an imperialist war of conquest by Russia, the only thing stopping Russia from raping and torturing more Ukrainian men, women and children is the aid from the west.
This is before we get to the fact that aid to Ukraine currently makes up less then 10% of the American yearly military budget and most stuff they are getting is either getting phased out our old enough that it may be expiring.
Can you think of something better your tax dollars could go towards, you know instead of protecting foreign men, women and children from being raped, tortured and murdered by a imperialist country trying to conquer them?.
> People get silenced in the US every day because they have a different opinions on current events, for example the US proxy war with Russia.
Uh, sorry what? It was Russia that decided to invade a sovereign country for annexation. Not the other way around.
And of course everyone is free to disagree with your take. You are not being "silenced" or "canceled", you are being told your opinion is completely contrary to facts.
Both things can be true. Yes, Russia is 100% responsible for this war, and yes, the US (and others) are fighting a proxy war through Ukraine in good old cold war style.
I am not trying to argue with you or change your mind, but I will write a few reasons why I see the term proxy war often used by pro-Putin commenters to push a narrative. Not saying you are. Using the term proxy war:
1. Makes it sound as if the USA is the cause of this war (they are in a proxy war) instead of an attack on Ukraine, and Ukraine seeking help from allies. As if the USA were driving the whole thing.
2. It perpetuates a cold war approach and vocabulary, making Russia look like the superpower it was (and is not anymore).
3. The cold war way of talking about it, additionally, makes it look like there are two sides, two alternatives, which are equally valid and justified.
Because of these reasons, I say there is a narrative, and do not consider the term neutral. I personally avoid the term proxy war because of the connotations above.
> It perpetuates a cold war approach and vocabulary, making Russia look like the superpower it was (and is not anymore).
It isn't the "superpower" status of Russia that makes this a cold war, but the "nuclear power" status. It is precisely a proxy war because you have two nuclear powers that are explicitly avoiding direct conflict due to the risk of nuclear war.
However, One might argue that the true cold war is between the USA and China and that both Ukraine and Russia are proxies.
> The cold war way of talking about it, additionally, makes it look like there are two sides, two alternatives, which are equally valid and justified.
In what way? "Cold war" absolutely doesn't have any connotation of moral equivalence between the two sides.
This is the sort of weird absolutism and rejection of nuance that is a hallmark of propaganda. It is absolutely possible to assign culpability to certain actions taken by the US without even remotely asserting that both sides are equally culpable for the war in Ukraine.
It is possible to think that containing an expansionist nuclear power without triggering a nuclear war is hard and requires a walking a fine line while also thinking that there are powerful forces inside the US that stand to gain a lot by encouraging and then prolonging this conflict.
Part of the power of narratives is that they become an easy way to group and dismiss dissent without engaging with any of the specific concerns expressed in that dissent.
Are the allies of Ukraine supposed to look away at the first time since the OG 1933-45 Nazis that someone tries to re-draw borders and annex countries using war?!
What Russia did was a complete and utter shart on the international rule of law.
Propaganda’s working very well if you actually believe this is the first war since WWII to redraw land borders. And I’m not even counting the invade-and-install-a-puppet kind of wars.
> Propaganda’s working very well if you actually believe this is the first war since WWII to redraw land borders.
I was talking about annexation wars. Not about countries fighting for independence / collapse aftermaths (like the former Yugoslavian countries or the Vietnam war).
But yes, you're correct, I forgot about the first Iraq war where Iraq tried to annex Kuwait and the US (and others) responded under UNSC authorization. And I completely ignored Africa, because honestly I don't have much knowledge about these and to be frank they aren't really relevant.
The annexations, and proxy wars in Africa weren't relevant?
I'm struggling a little to reconcile your two statements, that you simultaneously don't have much knowledge about the situation, but seemingly enough to decide that the deaths of thousands/millions of people in proxy wars is irrelevant to the discussion.
Whatever goes on in Africa hasn't concerned Western politicians at all for decades, it was not relevant for policy discussions anywhere - not even the worldwide Kony 2012 campaign had a real measurable effect. That only began to change with the rise of al-Quaeda and Islamic State-linked terrorists, but even that didn't warrant more attention than throwing some bombs.
Nowadays, China and Russia's Wagner group have essentially carte blanche to do whatever the fuck they want in Africa. The US didn't care before, they sure won't care in the future, and us Europeans are way too disjoint (and busy with Ukraine) to go and clean up the place, not to mention our very own very shady history with Africa complicating matters even more. All we're realistically gonna do is make even more people attempting to flee from that hellhole drown in the Mediterranean or die in Libyan concentration camps.
Sad to say it, but there's nothing we can do to help the people in Africa, no matter how much they'd deserve having actual, sustainable help instead of their agriculture and textile industries getting destroyed by Western "donations".
I have some sympathy for contrarians, not because of their accuracy but because they are the canary in the mine for freedom of speech. Wrong statements also give the opportunity for argument and thus replacement of dogma with reasoning.
I upvoted you above, and I believe your opinion on the proxy war is valid. Victimizing yourself though means that you are unable to stand by your arguments and are just poisoning the well for others who can. Having a different opinion requires effort and often disparagement.
> More propaganda, listen to the other side... oh well it's banned everywhere.
This is just low effort.
Can you please provide some examples of “the other side” that have been banned? I’m not in the US, but a country tightly aligned with the US, and I am able to access rt.com just fine.
I also don't live in the west, rather the global south, in a not so allied country.
When in Europe and in the US. You'll get something like this on twitter, and obviously you cannot access the site either:
@ActualidadRT's account has been withheld in Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Germany, Greece, Romania, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Austria, Luxembourg, Latvia, United Kingdom, Denmark, Lithuania, Croatia, Estonia, Cyprus, France, Spain, Belgium in response to a legal demand. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/tweet-withhel...
> More propaganda, listen to the other side... oh well it's banned everywhere.
What are you talking about this, is literally false, I see pro Russian narratives everywhere, including here, you guys don't get banned despite how despicable the views you hold are.
Support Russias genocidal, torturous, raping war in Ukraine all you want, but don't shout about being banned when you get shouted down by facts.
Yes Russia did invade Ukraine, but wouldn't the US invade Canada if Russia had organized a coup there to get rid of Trudeau then put a Russian puppet there? Of course the US would... Or would you argue that the 2014 Ukrainian coup wasn't supported by the US?
The thing we never mention is how agressive Nato (the US since it has military bases in Turkey for example, while Turkey doesn't have military bases in the US) has been at pushing its borders towards Russia.
In the end we can call this whatever we want, the facts are clear, if Zelensky had resigned less Ukrainians would have died, and the only ones profiting from this are the US, you can't fight a country like Russia, they have 7000 nukes, it's like thinking Mike Tyson is losing against you because he's too nice to punch you in the face... eventually he will.
The arguments used today are the same as ever (we're freeing the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, etc.), if you look at it as it really is, less dead people is better than more dead people, eventually Ukraine will be destroyed and the US will not even help to rebuild it, if you think they will then look at Iraq.
> you can't fight a country like Russia, they have 7000 nukes, it's like thinking Mike Tyson is losing against you because he's too nice to punch you in the face... eventually he will.
Russia likes to rattle there nuclear sabre about everything regarding Ukraine (and beyond) because that is all Russia is capable of doing with there nuclear weapons without causing the quick, fast and hard collapse of there entire country.
7,000 nukes doesn't make a country win a war instantly, Russia lost in the first Chechen war even with all there nukes, they lost in Afghanistan with all the nukes, the US lost in a whole number of wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc) whilst having shit loads of nukes.
Russia is throwing everything they have at Ukraine including mad max inspired franken vehicles and T-54 tanks, to pretend they are fighting with one hand behind their back is disingenuous.
It may look like Russia is fighting with one hand behind their back, but the reality is, that this is all Russia has.
> The arguments used today are the same as ever (we're freeing the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, etc.), if you look at it as it really is, less dead people is better than more dead people, eventually Ukraine will be destroyed and the US will not even help to rebuild it, if you think they will then look at Iraq.
The only one who has the power to decide the number of dead people is Russia, when Russia leaves the killing stops, until then the Ukrainians have to kill Russians until enough die and they decide to go home.
> Or would you argue that the 2014 Ukrainian coup wasn't supported by the US?
Yanukovich fled the country all on his own, after police didn't back his government any more following months of massive protests. These protests in turn came from Yanukovich not signing an agreement with the EU that was already ratified by the parliament.
> the facts are clear, if Zelensky had resigned less Ukrainians would have died
Lol. Just look on Butcha and all the other places where Russian troops massacred the local population, or where they eradicated everything Ukrainian, from street signs to library books. There would have been no freedom under Russian rule.
> you can't fight a country like Russia
Of course one can fight a country like Russia. They lost 100.000 units fighting over Bakhmut in the last months and made absolutely zero progress in their war.
> they have 7000 nukes, it's like thinking Mike Tyson is losing against you because he's too nice to punch you in the face... eventually he will.
That assumes two things: first, that the nuclear weapons and their launch systems actually work - the sorry state of the ordinary Russian troops makes me seriously question just how much of the rest of their military has gone downhill. The second thing is, it assumes Putin is completely lost in madness. China and the US have it made very clear behind the doors that using anything nuclear is something Putin does not want to do, and in exchange the US and Ukraine's other allies have placed the condition on all major arms deliveries that these are not to be used to attack targets in Russia. Seems to have worked out pretty well so far.
>> you can't fight a country like Russia, they have 7000 nukes
That's why people join NATO: Access to nuclear firepower. NATO serves as a list of countries that cannot be invaded, because they have bent at the knee to US hegemony, and thus the US is (at least convincingly postured as) willing to use its world-ending nuclear arsenal to defend them.
That's the post-WWII world order: sovereignty belongs to those with the power to wipe out any other country on Earth. You can either be a nuclear power, join in on one's protection scheme, or pray you stay irrelevant enough to not get conquered.
What you're misconstruing as "NATO's aggressive expansion" is countries scrambling to get the US's protection, because the alternative is Russian occupation. NATO was founded specifically to counter Russia's aggressive expansionism.
> This is propaganda and you don't even know it... People get silenced in the US every day because they have a different opinions on current events, for example the US proxy war with Russia.
The irony of your blatantly false statements is that half of what people express on the war in Ukraine here would cause them to end up in jail in Russia, but the opposite views don't cause you to end up in jail in the west.
First they freeze your assets, and only then if you're foolish enough to subject yourself to the due process, you might end up in jail.
There's an handful of people from the west who went to Donbass to report the situation. They are (of course?) mostly supportive of Russia, so you shouldn't delude yourself in thinking that they are unbiased... but they have regularly been threatened with prosecution if/when they'll return, example:
I feel like you're trying to poke holes in other people's arguments, and not really engaging with an open mind.
The straightforward answer is: you don't need a warrant to risk ending up in jail.
I'm not a German jurist, but I believe that warrants are used if there's a risk that a suspect would commit violent crimes or alternatively if prosecution found someone guilty in absentia. For Alina Lipp, the prosecution just started.
It's not the only case, btw. Another famous case is Steven's Dozinger. I think that Legaleagle's video is quite evenhanded and yet entertaining in explaining his situation:
My point is that being silenced in such ways in the west is more likely than people think. Dissenting speech gets granted a lot of leeway, but that's only until it has few chances to influence people.
As soon as dissent can actually threaten the establishment, that's when you start to see a reaction against it.
Of course, in wartime little leeway will be granted for dissent.
> Four US citizens charged with working for Russia spy agency to interfere with elections
Wow talking about stretching for a story, ill accept that Steven's Dozinger is not a good look but to have to lower yourself to saying being jailed for espionage is being silenced is such a stretch im surprised you even brought it up, it weakens your argument more then including it strengthens it.
You can have a free press even without secret services that spy on its citizens and the world, spread fake news, topple governments, torture and assassinate people without being held accountable.
Don't forget about the Marshall plan or the massive amounts of technical advancements due to the US or the billions of people lifted out of poverty due to the US secured global order.
The US has been an imperfect superpower but objectively the most benevolent.
Realistically, what would be a better alternative to US hegemony?
I'm sorry, but that does not absolve anything. The US's humanitarian engagement is 100% a ploy to increase trade and/or military installations abroad. What's more, even in the outlier organizations like the Red Cross or the Peace Corps, they are forced to cowtow to the political agendas of the region. For example, PC cannot promote birth-control in a lot of impoverished areas of South America due to Catholicism. This illustrates quite plainly that despite the best intentions of their members, these organizations are political power plays, not acts of benevolence.
> The US has been an imperfect superpower but objectively the most benevolent.
I'm sure the south americans that get a golpe every time they try to have a democratic elections disagree.
Possibly also the afghan women that had equal rights during communism might feel that USA wasn't very benevolent.
I've also met refugees who had to leave their country because of USA bombing them (for made up chemical weapons). They also don't see the USA as benevolent.
I think it's better to frame it in a advantageous/disadvantageous for me situation.
Clearly USA is advantageous for you (and me!) but I wouldn't presume it is for the majority of people.
I live in a former eastern bloc country and I think that. That doesn't mean I think the US hasn't committed crimes of its own. I wouldn't live in the US either due to its social issues. But between the US or Russia, I'd choose the US any day.
Russia's been in the wrong not just right now but for centuries.
If you have ever used "GPT" (I guess they meant "ChatGPT") you know that's not true, the grammar and it's way too colloquial / lazy for it to be generated by it
Yes, if it's regarding some unimportant foreign entity or just general inconsequential political banter.
Find a controversial topic (covid, January 6th protest, anything non-mainstream lgbt, ukraine, etc.), you get "censored" (in one way or another) in most social networks.
Actually have some real info? You get Epsteined. Or well, the Assange treatment just for reporting it.
But yeah, you can scream "Fuck <that politician>" at the wall, all you like, that's true.
There's a lot of differences. For example, NATO doesn't force countries to join, and doesn't invade countries if they want to leave or join another alliance. See France.
In fact - previous instance of russian CIS - Warsaw Pact - was unique among military alliances in the fact that it only invaded its members (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan). It was a prison not a military alliance.
And in current CIS Russia sent army to Belarus to pacify million-strong protests against faked elections in 2020. And recently did the same in Kazakhstan.
The west isn't innocent. But it is infinitely better than the authoritarian alternative China, Russia, Iran and North Korea offer.
> For example, NATO doesn't force countries to join, and doesn't invade countries if they want to leave or join another alliance. See France.
France never actually left NATO the organisation – they just withdrew from NATO's military command structure (1966), only to later rejoin it (2009). No country has ever sought to leave NATO the organisation. There is a clear procedure for doing so (Article 13), but no member has ever invoked it.
Interestingly, Article 13 actually says that prior to 1969, none of the members are allowed to leave. I doubt the US would have invaded any of them if they'd broken that clause though.
They're fundamentally different wars in their motivation as well.
The US invaded foolishly invaded Iraq and Afghanistan with the ultimate end goal of destroying evil power structures Sadam/Taliban and trying to establish liberal institutions. No one was trying to destroy local cultures or languages.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine, just like WW2 Germany's, has the end goal of genociding Ukrainian culture and subjugating the Ukrainian people
Ah yes, the ultimate goal of the Iraq war was to liberate the Iraqi citizens from the evil Baathist regime stockpiling WMDs and totally not protecting American oil interests and destabilizing a competitor to our friends in the Gulf.
Snowden would be a better example I think, as Assange just published everything classified he could get his hands on.
So there were also bits of wrongdoings here and there, but they seemed more random and the "collateral murder" as the shining example way overblown and missrepresented (as unprovoked murder of journalists, when they were in fact covering insurgents, who were engaged in combat in that area)
I'm not sure if you read the link you posted but I would consider the following wrongdoings:
>The leaked cables revealed that diplomats of the U.S. and Britain eavesdropped on Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, in apparent violation of international treaties prohibiting spying at the UN.[27][28] The intelligence information the diplomats were ordered to gather included biometric information, passwords, and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.[28][29] It also included Internet and intranet usernames, e-mail addresses, web site URLs useful for identification, credit card numbers, frequent flier account numbers, and work schedules.[28][30][31] The targeted human intelligence was requested in a process known as the National Humint Collection Directive, and was aimed at foreign diplomats of US allies as well.[31] WikiLeaks released the cable on 28 November 2010.
and yet, the CIA, like its equivalents in all other countries, runs completely out of control.
I will happily let you call me names, if i can somehow fool you into simply letting me do WHATEVER i want.
a sitting US democratic senator even went so far as go on national TV and say "the intelligence community has six ways from sunday to get back at you".
Sorry for the offtopicness but could you please remove "All of my posts are GPT-generated" from your profile? Based on your comments I assume it's not true (but rather some kind of witticism). But it's having the effect of trolling the threads - e.g. the sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36055724, and I think I've seen similar cases elsewhere.
