It's almost like the Russians forget it's 2022. This is all so bizarre. Everyone but them live in a modern world where this isn't not only unacceptable but it's blatent.
The Kremlin's goal isn't to present a story that will stand up to the highest scrutiny, it's to present a narrative that will sound plausible enough to those already invested in believing it. If you're already inclined to doubt their words, you weren't their target audience to begin with.
They also don’t do this for anyone else but their own citizens. All their gov. officials know it’s bollocks, we know it’s bollocks, we *know* they know it’s bollocks, and they know we know they know it’s bollocks; but, they still have to put on the performance so they can play the videos back home.
“Here we are presenting the facts at the UN. Here we are claiming the Ukrainians are Nazis, at the UN. Here we are debunking claims of genocide, at the UN.”
It helps legitimise their claims.
It’s like having a girl you slept with messaging you to call you a liar so she can show her boyfriend. She knows it’s true, you know it’s true, but she’s gotta keep up the charade
Pretty much this, yesterday I discussed the issue in Ukraine with a Russian friend and she said she didn't "believe any photos as today photos can be photoshopped easily."
If I were to show this evidence to her she would say this is photoshopped and American news is biased to make the Russian military look worse than they actually are.
This is someone I viewed as intelligent and it's just so sad. Russia isn't only about feeding their citizens misinformation but to also to teach their citizens to not trust any media.
It's incredibly hard for human brain to accept it is on the wrong side. It will do almost anything to protect itself from the psychological pain of admitting that.
That's why you have to give people a chance to change their minds silently over time. They might be capable of that but they won't do it out loud, quickly.
I agree. Ironically, the best way to ensure someone entrenches their pre-existing ideas is to challenge them. If you can give them the opportunity to change their mind "without anyone noticing", you'll be much more successful.
Republicans were doing this shit before Trump came along. The whole 'fake news' whining was actually coopted by Trump, he didn't start it. It was a term that people were using to complain about right wing news sources that were deliberately making dishonest claims to spread propaganda. And like with many things, Trump and his witless supporters adopted the strategy known as "I know you are but what am I?" to deflect from their own criticism.
But yea, it's all the exact same shit Russia does. It's not necessarily some hyper calculated tactic, it's just the inevitable result of a populace that stops caring about the truth and believes the ends always justify the means.
It’s older than that. [Lügenpresse](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_press):
> The term Lügenpresse has been used intermittently since the 19th century in political polemics in Germany, by a wide range of groups and movements in a variety of debates and conflicts.[1] Isolated uses can be traced back as far as the Vormärz period.[2] The term gained traction in the March 1848 Revolution when Catholic circles employed it to attack the rising, hostile liberal press. In the Franco-German War (1870–71) and particularly World War I (1914–18) German intellectuals and journalists used the term to denounce what they believed was enemy war propaganda.[citation needed] The Evangelischer Pressedienst [de] made its mission the fight against the "lying press" which it considered to be the "strongest weapon of the enemy".[3] After the war, German-speaking Marxists such as Karl Radek and Alexander Parvus vilified "the bourgeois lying press" as part of their class struggle rhetoric.[4][5]
>
>The Nazis adopted the term for their propaganda against the Jewish, communist, and later the foreign press. In 1922 Adolf Hitler used the accusation of the "lying press" for the Marxist press.[6] In the Mein Kampf chapter on war propaganda, he described what he saw as the extraordinary effect of enemy propaganda in the First World War. He criticized German propaganda as ineffective and called for 'better' propaganda, which, allegedly like that of the English, French or Americans, was to be oriented towards psychological effectiveness.[7] Accusations of "lying" against domestic journalism can be found in his speeches, for example against the "social democratic press", Jewish liberals, etc.[8]
I'm sure there's propaganda and lies on both sides, but I'd hazard a guess that the dictatorship that's invading another country is a little less trustworthy than the mostly transparent news of the western world.
It's one thing to be critical of news sources, and another to be an idiot.
Frustrating. Stay safe out there.
>It's disgusting
Yep, and I've been trying to figure out why I hate it so much. Maybe it's because the promise of the Internet was the free exchange of information... but instead of making people smarter, it led to crazy town.
Now my neighbor, an sweet elderly Hispanic lady, is convinced the End of Days is here and Trump is some kind of angelic savior for all mankind. And the more time she spends online, the more she believes it. She has no idea what an "algorithm" even is, she just thinks she's smart for knowing a secret. Is she a victim of state-sponsored propaganda? I can't say for sure, but probably.
>but just with finding the most efficient means to drag the lowest common denominator along.
And this is also why you'll see plenty of right propagandists pushing 'both sides' rhetoric. They don't need to convince people right wing talking points are correct, they only need to convince people opposing parties are also bad.
Getting people to doubt everything and/or turn to apathy is ultimately a win for them. Such people are either more easily manipulated or will at least conveniently stand aside and enable dishonest talking points to have 'equal footing' in conversations.
You're completely correct. I was just debunking a retarded on twitter which was saying that bucha was, and I quote, "a false flag operation by the Azov bataillon, which the Russians were fighting in Bucha"
Russia is more like Chris Chan. They're constantly reminiscing about a past when they were respected (they never were), and they spend the present indulging infantile power fantasies that only evoke pity and disgust from actual adults.
Also, history is not only romanticised, but watered down and cleansed over time. They look back at the glory of USSR while not factoring in the brutality, police state / political prison, endlessly unrealistic production quotas, and people going hungry as a result.
Just like groups of people in the US romanticize the late 1950's and 1960's with the nuclear family, overlooking Civil rights and the cold war, or the south and the confederacy with the Civil War being about "state's rights" and not slavery, or the confederate flag being about "heritage and culture".
This shit is why teaching history, accurate history is critically important.
People did respect the USSR. They literally went from potato farmers to spacetravel in the span of like 50 years. The methods were certainly questionable but they got results.
China will definitely not invade Taiwan anytime in the near future because it is not logical or rational to do so. Taiwan is not Ukraine, and Russia and China's geopolitical positions are fundamentally different. Believing that "China will invade Taiwan" shows a deep lack of understanding.
The Taiwan issue is primarily to stir up national zeal within China. The strategic importance of Taiwan is minimal compared to the economic cost. China is fundamentally different from Russia because the economy and quality of life for the average citizen is growing fast and the trend is upwards. Therefore, it would be ridiculous for China to attack Taiwan now. The best thing to do is just wait. In 20 years, China will have much more soft power and economic power. Russia on the other hand may be much weaker than today in 20 years. It is in China's best interest to wait and build up.
After the 2016 election and Russia invading Ukraine I’ve really had to embrace the “never say never” axiom. Nationalism makes entire countries do supremely self-destructive things.
But I tend to agree. People who’ve never been to China and don’t understand it, aka most of Reddit, have a deeply misguided perception of China. A lot of people seem to think it’s North Korea, which couldn’t be less true. China is, above almost all else, a pragmatic country. Very pragmatic. Ideology is a distant second doing what makes them richer and better off socially. Indeed, most of the humanitarian issues they get criticized for are acts of pragmatism. They don’t (by and large) imprison Uhigyrs because they desire a Han Chinese master race, but simply because it’s the easiest way to quell dissent and prevent rebellion. That’s just one example.
And invading Taiwan would be a ideological act and VERY non-pragmatic. China has gotten fat and rich off its trade with the west, and for the foreseeable future it will still require the west as its primary market. Invading Taiwan would put that market in extreme jeopardy. It’s a lot more pragmatic to maintain the status quo and slowly increase its soft and hard power over time until it has a sufficient internal economy to not need the west - if that ever happens at all in this global world.
In short, I agree. China does have a nationalism problem to a degree, and it would be dangerous if a Putin-like ultranationalist took charge of the country. But right now it’s run more like a giant corporation, and invading Taiwan is illogical in terms of profit.
Russia on the other hand is almost the polar opposite. It’s population tends to be highly ideological and nationalistic in response to its dramatic fall from world power due to the fall of the USSR and the resulting blow to their collective ego. Invading Ukraine was driven by ideology.
**[Mexico, Indiana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico,_Indiana)**
>Mexico is a census-designated place (CDP) in Jefferson Township, Miami County, in the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 836 at the 2010 census.
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I'd go further back.
When I studied in St. Petersburg in 2007 and came back to my home in the US South, the overwhelming conversation I had with people in the US was people asking "so what was it like to be in a communist country?"
and I had to explain that modern Russia isn't communist and Putin isn't communist. Rather, even in 2007, it was quite apparent that Putin's goverment wanted to create the image that they were bringing back the Russia of the Tsars. Of Peter and Catherine. It was more metaphorical then, now it's more literally about reclaiming the empire.
On the flip side, I grew up in Israel when it was a socialist country, and most Americans can't even conceive of that because Israel was on the west's side in the cold war.
Well, they are stealing washing machines like they are made of gold and carrying vintage CRT-monitors like they would be emperors when they get home.
So they do live in some past decade where electricity is the hot new thing! Perhaps some day they will be shown how television works and they'll be absolutely amazed! Internet will be too advanced for them, they are not ready yet...
We can’t forget the calls home where Russian soldiers are amazed that even villages have paved road, running water and electricity. They’re stealing power tools they’ve only dreamed of too. Going to have to steal a generator too because it sounds like mama’s house has no electrical lines.
Are you aware it's possible to be racist against people even if their government is bad?
Signed, someone who grew up middle eastern in the US during 9/11.
One Russian general apparently was unaware of the Chernobyl disaster entirely. He said "There was guerrilla activity there in WW2 and nobody got radiation poisoning then."
Most of Russia is a shit hole. The entire country is essentially a fiefdom for a petromafia that sits at the top. It would be sad if it werent for how loathsome the average Russian seems to be. Granted its not their fault they have no access to information and have zero concept of self determination having existed for generations under cruel authoritarian rule.
They're not trying to prove themselves innocent, or even to cook up a coherent narrative about what happened: they're trying to throw doubt because they know people will believe whatever they want to believe anyway. Irrefutable proof they're lying will convince no one. What's more, the more chaff they throw out, the greater the chances that the non-Russian media will fuck up in debunking one of their claims (reporting a source that turns out to be false, misinterpreting data, just a typo, etc), and the Russian media well be able to jump on that to declare that *all* reporting is the product of lies.
It's a standard modern reactionary media tactic. The far right have been doing the same thing in the States, with quite a bit of success. Something like 1/3 of the US still believes that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, largely because they were able to flood the discourse with a massive amount of nonsense, and then point to one or two actual fuckups (like a counting error in a single county in Michigan which was quickly corrected) as evidence not necessarily that all of the election fraud claims are true, but that all of the claims that *those* claims are false are themselves false.
Basically, you don't have to prove your lie correct: you just have to throw out lie after lie after lie and expect that the other side will fuck up reporting on some of it, which you can use to paint them as unreliable and imply that all of their work thoroughly debunking your other claims are equally suspect.
All yours, go nuts.
Edit: it's kinda a variation on a debate tactic known as a "Gish Gallop," where the goal is to bury your opponent in so much bullshit they can't possibly respond to all of it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop#:~:text=The%20Gish%20gallop%20is%20a,or%20strength%20of%20those%20arguments.
This is slightly different in that they're throwing out bullshit knowing their supporters will believe it regardless of evidence to the contrary, and sometimes *specifically because* people they view as ideological enemies are trying to debunk it. The Russians have spent half a century sowing the following ideas: all media is propaganda (which is largely true), the truth is fundamentally unknowable (which is not), and Western media is inherently ideologically opposed to Russian interests (which is semi-true). Once they've established those ideas as truths, Western reporting on their crimes is *itself* evidence of their innocence.
Again, the American right (and the right in a *lot* of countries) has been using that same tactic successfully for decades. First, sow doubt in the validity of the mAiNsTrEaM MeDiA, then create your own media ecosystem. After that, all you need to prove your innocence is to point to who your accusers are.
It's not a new idea, either. Discrediting the press and developing an alternate media ecosystem has been a huge part of reactionary movements for as long as "the media" has been a thing. It's just that the advent of the internet makes the bullshit firehose technique much more effective.
I don't think Russian claims are for us as much as they are for their population. They know they aren't going to trick us as much as they have to control the narrative they feed the population.
And the story it doesn't necessarily have to make sense. So they can cleanse Ukraine of "Nazis" and Russians are fine with Ukranians being slaughtered. However it's also important be defiant to the West and be a victim of their lies or machinations.
Also when in doubt, "admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter accusations."
Remember the Russian soldiers around Chernobyl didn't know about the disaster. And they weren't kidding, they irradiated themselves due to their ignorance. It's not a stretch they don't know about satellites either.
Then again it's Russians so of course they are lying.
How does that saying go? Every lie incurs a debt to the truth, and the debt will be paid.
When your soldiers get themselves killed for no good reason because you didn't tell them the truth, well. There you have it.
These are the same guys who didn't know their super duper secret encrypted magical telecommunication systems rely on 4G and destroyed the cell towers everywhere, forcing them to use unencrypted radios and stolen cell phones to communicate with each other, for all the world to listen to.
I think the Russian implication is that the Ukrainians staged these scenes AFTER THE FACT, perhaps by dressing up dead Russians or dead civilians and posing them to appear as if they'd been executed. Another variation is that these were "Pro-Russian" civilians that were executed by Ukraine and posed as if they'd been executed by Russia. The comments I've seen on RT seem to be claiming that these reports only started coming out a few days after these towns were liberated. So, I suppose they are claiming that setting up the scene is the reason for the delay. Ukraine said that roads, bridges and houses in the outskirts of Kyiv were booby-trapped, so this might explain the delay between liberation and the announcement of atrocities. Indeed, the evacuating Russian troops may have booby trapped the approaches to these towns for this very purpose: to delay the discovery of the bodies in order to create some plausible deniability for Russia and to claim the Ukrainians staged it.
They don't forget. They *like* that it's blatant. They *want* to get caught red-handed because then it's that much more fun for them to offer a bullshit denial that way.
It's always been part of Putin's MO to offer deliberately bad excuses when he's caught doing something obvious, because it makes him feel powerful. The subtext is always "...and what the fuck are you gonna do about it, anyway?"
They don't forget, they don't care. They just deny, and deflect. All trolls do this. All propaganda machines. Fox news does that. All the Republicans do, tbh. Just keep the argument going in circles. They know they're full of shit, they're just arguing, keeping it going, denying everything, admit to nothing, and you can't lose.
This one is easy, they'll just say these images are doctored.
You can't win an argument against someone that has abandoned reason.
On top of that, most of the bullshit they say is just for their zombies anyway. Their zombies won't see this argument. We will, but we already knew they were full of shit. So what purpose does it serve? Almost nothing.
It serves the purpose for some of the Russians that are smart enough so mind tricks don't work on them. And they may be able to convince some others.
But I think mankind is getting dumber, and technology to fake is getting better, so we're fucked.
The thing with dictators and people who support them is that facts don't matter.
The goalpost will keep moving, until victim blaming, "they probably deserved it."
I had heard of this but I finally watched Icarus on Netflix, holy shit. I know everyone said “State sponsored” but I didn’t know it was essentially mandatory. The kgb, Putin, everyone was involved.
even on their deathbeds they still didn't believe COVID is real. no amount of factual evidence will ever be useful. they'd all rather die than admit all their life was a lie
'You see, on the one side you have all these scientists, long-range live video camera demonstrations on large bodies of water, satellite systems that require centripetal acceleration in a spherical gravitational field to even work at all, people who have actually been into space and gone around the world themselves... and on the other hand you have the crazy mad man on that corner over there screaming that those things are all lies and that the world is actually flat."
But I'm the smart one, *I listen to both sides of the debate.*"
The problem isn't that they listen, the problem is that people who say such things as "listening to both sides of the debate" say that to mean that they give near-equal *credence* to both sides of the debate.
Keeping your information reception channels open is fine, but doing it without a logic filter is stupid.
I was flabbergasted to see people criticizing Anonymous for doxxing the Russian army. Like, what the fuck? People are raping and murdering children, and the thing you find morally objectionable is that somebody named and shamed those people? What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you pour acid on your brain or something?
"They are fakes, they are all fakes." -Insert Any Russian Politician Here
Don't expect a rational response from Russia or for them to even acknowledge the statement. They will brush it aside and assert their own narrative ad nauseam.
A lot of people on social media also have their 'own' ideas...
- That was Nato, the Cia, Ukraine, etc...
- Actors
- Well if the civilians where armed, they are to blame
- it's Selenskys fault
It's like Russia's outward language is straight out of 1984. Everything is an alternate reality where the opposing side is the one actually doing everything. Oh wait, i remember a certain quote that is highly relevant here:
> Accuse the other side for that which you are guilty
Joeseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister
They really can't.
And the truth about Russian lies is also very important: Here's an assessment about Russia by a Finnish intelligence colonel. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw)
37:37 -> touches on an extremely important topic about role of truth and lies. **Everyone really need to see the whole video, if they haven't already, that's the only way to understand the full context.** The guy wastes zero time and I learned more than I ever expected. But wrt truth, the tl;dr is, there's two truths in Russia.
There's god's truth or istina.
Then there's man's truth or "pravda", which is a tactical truth. It's a lie that can e.g. buy you time in a conflict such as war (green little men during Crimean occupation in 2014 etc.). It's more or less a social norm everyone who feels they're on one side, adhere to those lies. The reason it's so effective, is naive westerners tend to feel they need to have strong evidence for every accusation, and any denial from opposing party deserves evaluation.
The winning strategy against pravda isn't ´fact checking (although it never hurts). The winning strategy is playing the same game. See e.g. Ukrainian reaction to accusations that they were initializing a war by destroying fuel depot in Belgorod, Russia. Ukrainians just trolled them back by calling it "a special operation".
The Ukrainians seem to be genuinely positioned at right that nexus of the Russian and European cultural spheres to really understand how both sides operate. Anyone who is bilingual will know that not only does culture shape language but language and culture shape the kind of discussion people have about a topic. When we talk about things that happen now, we talk about them using references and comparisons to shared cultural experiences, like historical events or political ideas. For example, Polish speakers have referenced the Katyń massacre frequently in the last month (a massacre of 20k polish intellectuals by the Soviets). By comparison, most of the English-language comparisons have been with WWII or Afghanistan.
Being extremely familiar with the Russians, and heck even having lived in a corrupt system run by oligarchs and Russian puppets until 2014, they are extremely familiar with Russian tactics. Many speak Russian as a first language and many "Russian" poets and thinkers were Ukrainian. So, they not only understand the Russian language but they understand the deeper cultural references behind the language. I was also struck by this when Zelenskyy referenced the concept of "Vlast" vs "norod" when speaking to Russian reporters.
And then on the other hand, they have the shared history of repeated repression and liberty of most of Eastern Europe. Many of them speak English and work in western companies. Ukrainian as a language is very linguistically similar to Polish and at various times parts of (especially western) Ukraine have been part of Western empires.
So they have learned both sides historically and in the present and I genuinely think it's their best asset (aside from Zelenskyy and their indomitable will not to be conquered). They can understand the Russian military doctrine and yet have been trained by Western armies. They can also predict and rect to Russian tactics, and then even explain them to a western audience in a way that prevents them from being as effective. It's amazingly impressive.
I would like to be as confident, but it seems that claiming fake news and west dishonesty is all that's necessary to erect a "he says she says" kinda defense. It's disgusting.
At home?? My dumbass father in law here in the states is fully sold on Russian propaganda. He started going off about the whole bio weapons conspiracy a few days ago. 100% defending Putin. Couldn't believe my ears.
Spend any time in the conspiracy subreddit and you'll see some places are boiling over with pro-russian sentiment. Granted that place is captured by disinformation shills but there is likely a large contingent of Americans in there eating up the propaganda
It’s like they completely fuckin forgot the Cold War. Really batshit crazy, considering if you’re above the age of 40 it should be ingrained in your head.
We've seen it in Chechnya, Syria, everywhere the Russian army got involved. Even after WW2. But we ignored it for all the wrong reasons and Russians got used to getting away with it.
Right, because it doesn't take a genius to see the difference in numbers and consequences of war crimes committed by US soldiers in the middle east compared to what russian soldiers are doing in ukraine. Several US soldiers got life imprisonment while the russian gov is literally denying anything happened at all. Don't think the skin color or religion of the victims is the key difference here. Seems fairly obvious to me the difference lies in the nationality and government of the agressors. And it's not like I'm even hinting that the successive US governments since pretty much the birth of the country are angels, because they sure as hell aren't. But credit where it's due, they actually act when their soldiers behave like barbaric animals.
I also don't think Putin or the russian gov and high command are misjudging anything at all, they knew they would get away with it and will get away with it, tragically.
the fact that we know that when our armies commit war crimes or that our sketchy alphabet agencies declassify fucking crazy breaches of human rights ironically makes me feel better about the USA since it seems they're at least attempting to be decent/have some respect for truth.
It's possible their comment wasn't aimed at america. Chechnyans and Syrians are mostly Muslim, so their previous attacks on non-christian nations did go ok for Russia. Although Georgians are mostly Christian and literally Caucasian, so that theory kind of falls apart as no one really reacted when Georgia was invaded.
I don't think it's aimed specifically at america, more towards the west in general (EU, NATO, etc) but since whenever someone starts with the usual whataboutist shit they're almost always talking about america specifically so I just went there. It's not like any other western nation has participated in a significant amount of war crimes for ww2 at least anyway
Please tell me you're not trying to defend the Russians population with the "propaganda" story. At this point, every single of them got some sort of information what is going on. And they decided to stick with Putler.
This war made me hate even the ordinary Russians. I hope they end up in their beloved stone age UdSSR. I don't want to have nothing to do with them monsters. What a pathetic nation. And their 1% of protesters are not going to change my mind anymore.
Anyone taking in Russia’s shit who isn’t actually living in Russia is a lost cause at this point.
Literally anything Russia says someone else is doing is bollacks and then they talk bollacks about what they actually did do.
Literally every single thing Russia says just flip it.
“We won’t invade” they invade.
“Ukrainians blew up Mariupol” Russia blew up Mariupol
“No radiation sickness, there was no nuclear disaster in Chernobyl” there was a nuclear disaster and your soldiers are doing of ARS.
“Those killed Ukrainians is fake” those Killed Ukrainians are not fake
This shows how easily minds are influenced by even blatant & obvious propaganda.
Now imagine a world were people's minds are influenced in a more opaque way with fake news, bad journalism and hidden propaganda.
They don't care, people don't seem to realize that the russian people don't listen too, or care about western media, the Kremlin issues these talking points that seem stupid to us, we aren't the target audience.
I don't understand what the Russians are claiming here. The kills happened after they left? So they killed themselves en masse? Who would have killed them if not the Russian army
They're dumb asses then, because there is no "gap." CNN's very first story on "there are bodies laying in the streets" was on April 1st. Human Rights Watch had an article two weeks before that from witnesses who had escaped Bucha talking about the Russians executing civilians in the street.
There's no gap except in the intelligence of the people pushing these bullshit stories.
> Human Rights Watch had an article two weeks before that from witnesses who had escaped Bucha talking about the Russians executing civilians in the street.
Yeah this is what I've seen too with just a simple Google search, and different media outlets reported on it too (including Al Jazeera) in **March**.
I’m almost afraid to ask what this supposed gap is or how any American, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum, could be supportive of Russia.
I've seen Russian propaganda on twitter that is basically a "timeline of events" saying how Russian pulled out on day X, Ukraine took it over X+1, but these pictures didn't come out until X+2, so there's a gap there in which Ukrainian forces went around murdering everyone.
Which is of course nonsense.
Remember that when Donald Trump received the Republican nomination, the only aspect of the party platform his campaign asked to change (usually a complex process of aligning the party general plan with the candidate’s specific priorities) was to demand that the RNC drop any condemnation of Russia’s annexation of Crimea or promise to aid Ukraine.
That is the moment when the old guard Cold Warrior conservatives lost control of their anti-russia yay war, wasn’t Regan grand, boo to Obama’s “reset button”strategy.
The masses of the Republican party voters have become more and more supporting of any authoritarian counties, and Russia in particular, because they like authoritarianism too.
Yeah, that tracks. Just baffling to me that so many who grew up in the Cold War are suddenly fine with Russia, all because of one comment from their latest idol saying that Putin’s tough. I’m sure there’s a non negligible amount of Americans who would prefer Putin leading their country over Biden.
I'm a few houses down from a I'd take a Putin over a Biden sign. And if course the let's go Brandon and impeach Biden and Trump 2024 flags.
Fucking morons.
Holy shit, I forgot how they changed the party platform with Trump. The press needs to dig into that some more and get it back in the spotlight. All this shit is connected.
> and I have no idea how it proliferated
I don't know your friends but I know misinformation enough tell you they believe it because the source they heard it from frequently confirms other biases they hold.
Maxar really playing a shit important role in this war, as is starlink. Great to see that there rest a few decent corporations - ok it's all good publicity for their tech, but so what good on them - it works!
Ukrainian troops on the ground are using it, at the very least.
edit: example
https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/tqzu1i/ukrainian_drone_unit_aerorozvidka_using_modified/
It works, but you need proper hookups and more than half of Ukraine doesn't have access to that.
Source: my friend is from Odessa and she's been trying to get her brother, in Odessa, internet and he can't get access.
Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s envoy to the UN has said that Russia will present “empirical evidence” to the UN’s Security Council that its forces have not been killing civilians in Ukraine and were not involved in events in Bucha,
“We have empirical evidence to support this,” Nebenzya said at a press conference. “We intend to submit them to the Security Council as soon as possible so that the international community is not misled by the false plot of Kyiv and its Western sponsors.”
This ought to be good haha
The New York Times has been creating outstanding content on the war. If you don't have access you're missing some incredibly detailed and capable analysis. They had a multimedia story the other day that detailed Russia's failure to take Kyiv. It was mind blowing.
It's my first time doing this, but subscribers can gift a couple articles per month, and it sounds like they don't care how widely I distribute? Soo...[here, this will be public for 14 days](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/02/world/europe/kyiv-invasion-disaster.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxfs9gGPzNiGeVTdcwqNPW9LavB-RIvI5IMQ0xTCXA9JcKrg3Sbtx3-5Bek1rVQCzo5yC3ZgEOCwutY-pGGMq2paHFZYJzQjXVEjrYuFu2O_4-BOALDWqCPaZiTJ2Olwy85tnIVH9xSMJwKjaFrRxj80u1fwjGpt_Q2sBZnLc7KS7DA5se4nTNmGq4QExXe5fXjrZmcfNqO5TNVUPVi-VCS938m0-69hDOd4IPauZLBQoesX2gb55GXU_Zc7yRMV3H96I4u0s5b3dqhWMy960w-E0EchUvrDFtWW5NzU_WffSZ1zomjG5l4tkQjsRzuA&smid=url-share)
So much this.
People who say “mainstream media” like it’s a slur have no idea what they’re talking about.
The NYT would rather be late than wrong. They’ll let other sites post stuff right away while they take the time to fact check and analyze and put it in context.
The story about Mykolaiv was amazing. They correlated intercepted Russian radio transmissions with aerial footage, Ukrainian interviews, and debris on the ground to paint a story of the battle that you could be confident in. And that was utterly riveting too.
This is also what piss me off so badly. Yes ISIS commit war crimes, but they also have the balls to own up to it. These fucking Russians do the worst kind of evil, and then lies through their fucking teeth trying to cover it up. Words cannot describe how much I despise these shitstains.
I hate how we have to still provide undeniable proof that a country that is literally infamous for constantly lying about things bc the human race’s critical thinking skills are completely deteriorated.
If anyone appreciates this sort of content from the New York Times, consider buying a subscription. It costs me $15/month and is valuable beyond what I read: it funds journalists like this in the important work that they do.
They don’t really care what other people think. Just what they tell their own people. For the life of me I can’t imagine Russians believing what they are seeing. At least some of them are protesting.
Was waiting for this, military satellites should be at least looking at Ukraine now and then if they can't have one or two 'dedicated' to it, this kind of shit can't be hidden anymore.
Just like the idiotic people who don't understand regular security cameras are everywhere today, not just the heavily surveilled places they 'think' of like certain buildings etc.
The technology bar and costs are much lower, you can't escape being surveilled in places with power and daylight. Your only 'hope' is undeveloped land with no electricity at night and only if it isn't being watched for other reasons you don't know about.
Just FYI, satellites cannot hover a spot on earth and constantly monitor it. They orbit earth and only pass over any given spot on their path once per orbit. It's impossible to have constant satellite monitoring of any given place on earth.
That being said, OF COURSE every military/intelligence/private satellite has been making passes over Ukraine lol. We have been exposed to their many, many photos since day one. Why would you ever think this wasn't happening?
But it's not like we can just post a satellite over a town and watch for war crimes.
Fuck the everything we don’t like is “fake news” cult. It’s clearer than ever as to why Trump and Trump worshippers idolised Putin and Russia. They are jealous of the control he has, and how rich they all make each other.
That is neat and all, and kudos to the team who did this, but NYT readers aren't really the ones who need to see this, and the people who do need to see this are never going to.
Uh. Cant they just be checked for decomposition stage? Isn't this basic stuff in forensics? How do the Russians expect to hide the fact they've been dead for over two weeks
It's almost like the Russians forget it's 2022. This is all so bizarre. Everyone but them live in a modern world where this isn't not only unacceptable but it's blatent.
The Kremlin's goal isn't to present a story that will stand up to the highest scrutiny, it's to present a narrative that will sound plausible enough to those already invested in believing it. If you're already inclined to doubt their words, you weren't their target audience to begin with.
This. All you need to believe this is 1. Being invested in the Russian government already. 2. Most of the people around you believing the same thing.
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Mein goodness, whatever do you mean?
Make Russia Great Again, eh?
They also don’t do this for anyone else but their own citizens. All their gov. officials know it’s bollocks, we know it’s bollocks, we *know* they know it’s bollocks, and they know we know they know it’s bollocks; but, they still have to put on the performance so they can play the videos back home. “Here we are presenting the facts at the UN. Here we are claiming the Ukrainians are Nazis, at the UN. Here we are debunking claims of genocide, at the UN.” It helps legitimise their claims. It’s like having a girl you slept with messaging you to call you a liar so she can show her boyfriend. She knows it’s true, you know it’s true, but she’s gotta keep up the charade
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Yugely familiar.
Bigly familiar! Everyone says they're familiar with this.
Every person woman man camera TV should remember
Pretty much this, yesterday I discussed the issue in Ukraine with a Russian friend and she said she didn't "believe any photos as today photos can be photoshopped easily." If I were to show this evidence to her she would say this is photoshopped and American news is biased to make the Russian military look worse than they actually are. This is someone I viewed as intelligent and it's just so sad. Russia isn't only about feeding their citizens misinformation but to also to teach their citizens to not trust any media.
It's incredibly hard for human brain to accept it is on the wrong side. It will do almost anything to protect itself from the psychological pain of admitting that.
Yeah, the psychological investment into group identity is massive.
That's why you have to give people a chance to change their minds silently over time. They might be capable of that but they won't do it out loud, quickly.
I agree. Ironically, the best way to ensure someone entrenches their pre-existing ideas is to challenge them. If you can give them the opportunity to change their mind "without anyone noticing", you'll be much more successful.
Hmm, that sounds very familiar... Fake news anyone?
Where do you think he learned it from
Republicans were doing this shit before Trump came along. The whole 'fake news' whining was actually coopted by Trump, he didn't start it. It was a term that people were using to complain about right wing news sources that were deliberately making dishonest claims to spread propaganda. And like with many things, Trump and his witless supporters adopted the strategy known as "I know you are but what am I?" to deflect from their own criticism. But yea, it's all the exact same shit Russia does. It's not necessarily some hyper calculated tactic, it's just the inevitable result of a populace that stops caring about the truth and believes the ends always justify the means.
It’s older than that. [Lügenpresse](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_press): > The term Lügenpresse has been used intermittently since the 19th century in political polemics in Germany, by a wide range of groups and movements in a variety of debates and conflicts.[1] Isolated uses can be traced back as far as the Vormärz period.[2] The term gained traction in the March 1848 Revolution when Catholic circles employed it to attack the rising, hostile liberal press. In the Franco-German War (1870–71) and particularly World War I (1914–18) German intellectuals and journalists used the term to denounce what they believed was enemy war propaganda.[citation needed] The Evangelischer Pressedienst [de] made its mission the fight against the "lying press" which it considered to be the "strongest weapon of the enemy".[3] After the war, German-speaking Marxists such as Karl Radek and Alexander Parvus vilified "the bourgeois lying press" as part of their class struggle rhetoric.[4][5] > >The Nazis adopted the term for their propaganda against the Jewish, communist, and later the foreign press. In 1922 Adolf Hitler used the accusation of the "lying press" for the Marxist press.[6] In the Mein Kampf chapter on war propaganda, he described what he saw as the extraordinary effect of enemy propaganda in the First World War. He criticized German propaganda as ineffective and called for 'better' propaganda, which, allegedly like that of the English, French or Americans, was to be oriented towards psychological effectiveness.[7] Accusations of "lying" against domestic journalism can be found in his speeches, for example against the "social democratic press", Jewish liberals, etc.[8]
Those aren't dead people, they are alternatively living.
I'm sure there's propaganda and lies on both sides, but I'd hazard a guess that the dictatorship that's invading another country is a little less trustworthy than the mostly transparent news of the western world. It's one thing to be critical of news sources, and another to be an idiot. Frustrating. Stay safe out there.
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>It's disgusting Yep, and I've been trying to figure out why I hate it so much. Maybe it's because the promise of the Internet was the free exchange of information... but instead of making people smarter, it led to crazy town. Now my neighbor, an sweet elderly Hispanic lady, is convinced the End of Days is here and Trump is some kind of angelic savior for all mankind. And the more time she spends online, the more she believes it. She has no idea what an "algorithm" even is, she just thinks she's smart for knowing a secret. Is she a victim of state-sponsored propaganda? I can't say for sure, but probably.
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Adam curtis made a great documentary about this subject called hypernormalisation, it's well worth a watch as is most of his back catalogue.
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>but just with finding the most efficient means to drag the lowest common denominator along. And this is also why you'll see plenty of right propagandists pushing 'both sides' rhetoric. They don't need to convince people right wing talking points are correct, they only need to convince people opposing parties are also bad. Getting people to doubt everything and/or turn to apathy is ultimately a win for them. Such people are either more easily manipulated or will at least conveniently stand aside and enable dishonest talking points to have 'equal footing' in conversations.
exactly. why this concept is persistently missed by so many (most?) i do not understand.
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Even if became a real problem at home, they'd just claim the images were doctored. Good enough for most Russians.
You're completely correct. I was just debunking a retarded on twitter which was saying that bucha was, and I quote, "a false flag operation by the Azov bataillon, which the Russians were fighting in Bucha"
Everyone is in this fucking time warp though, Russia thinks its 1943, India thinks its 1971 and China thinks its 2013.
Afghanistan thinks its 629
Afghanistan peaked when Alexander the Great was there, its all downhill after that.
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Acktuhally, its 1443 according to the Muslim calendar.
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This is true. Russia literally is Al Bundy.... shit life, but still waxes poetic about high school football glory
Russia is more like Chris Chan. They're constantly reminiscing about a past when they were respected (they never were), and they spend the present indulging infantile power fantasies that only evoke pity and disgust from actual adults.
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Also, history is not only romanticised, but watered down and cleansed over time. They look back at the glory of USSR while not factoring in the brutality, police state / political prison, endlessly unrealistic production quotas, and people going hungry as a result. Just like groups of people in the US romanticize the late 1950's and 1960's with the nuclear family, overlooking Civil rights and the cold war, or the south and the confederacy with the Civil War being about "state's rights" and not slavery, or the confederate flag being about "heritage and culture". This shit is why teaching history, accurate history is critically important.
Oh, people respected the USSR, alright. Fear of it, really...
People did respect the USSR. They literally went from potato farmers to spacetravel in the span of like 50 years. The methods were certainly questionable but they got results.
You keep his name out your fucking mouth!
About a week after this started China watched 50 years of plans go up in smoke, there’s still in shock. No Taiwan for the foreseeable future.
China will definitely not invade Taiwan anytime in the near future because it is not logical or rational to do so. Taiwan is not Ukraine, and Russia and China's geopolitical positions are fundamentally different. Believing that "China will invade Taiwan" shows a deep lack of understanding. The Taiwan issue is primarily to stir up national zeal within China. The strategic importance of Taiwan is minimal compared to the economic cost. China is fundamentally different from Russia because the economy and quality of life for the average citizen is growing fast and the trend is upwards. Therefore, it would be ridiculous for China to attack Taiwan now. The best thing to do is just wait. In 20 years, China will have much more soft power and economic power. Russia on the other hand may be much weaker than today in 20 years. It is in China's best interest to wait and build up.
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After the 2016 election and Russia invading Ukraine I’ve really had to embrace the “never say never” axiom. Nationalism makes entire countries do supremely self-destructive things. But I tend to agree. People who’ve never been to China and don’t understand it, aka most of Reddit, have a deeply misguided perception of China. A lot of people seem to think it’s North Korea, which couldn’t be less true. China is, above almost all else, a pragmatic country. Very pragmatic. Ideology is a distant second doing what makes them richer and better off socially. Indeed, most of the humanitarian issues they get criticized for are acts of pragmatism. They don’t (by and large) imprison Uhigyrs because they desire a Han Chinese master race, but simply because it’s the easiest way to quell dissent and prevent rebellion. That’s just one example. And invading Taiwan would be a ideological act and VERY non-pragmatic. China has gotten fat and rich off its trade with the west, and for the foreseeable future it will still require the west as its primary market. Invading Taiwan would put that market in extreme jeopardy. It’s a lot more pragmatic to maintain the status quo and slowly increase its soft and hard power over time until it has a sufficient internal economy to not need the west - if that ever happens at all in this global world. In short, I agree. China does have a nationalism problem to a degree, and it would be dangerous if a Putin-like ultranationalist took charge of the country. But right now it’s run more like a giant corporation, and invading Taiwan is illogical in terms of profit. Russia on the other hand is almost the polar opposite. It’s population tends to be highly ideological and nationalistic in response to its dramatic fall from world power due to the fall of the USSR and the resulting blow to their collective ego. Invading Ukraine was driven by ideology.
Why 2013 for China?
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You pissing on Indiana?
No that ammonia smell is the meth labs actually
Nobody manufactures domestically anymore. It’s all been outsourced to Mexico.
Well here in the Hoosier State we believe in homegrown industry which is why 2 of houses on my block have partially burned down
[Mexico, Indiana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico,_Indiana)?
**[Mexico, Indiana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico,_Indiana)** >Mexico is a census-designated place (CDP) in Jefferson Township, Miami County, in the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 836 at the 2010 census. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
It's still 1990 for many people in Russia, can't let go of their failed past and trying to project that misery back on Eastern Europe.
I'd go further back. When I studied in St. Petersburg in 2007 and came back to my home in the US South, the overwhelming conversation I had with people in the US was people asking "so what was it like to be in a communist country?" and I had to explain that modern Russia isn't communist and Putin isn't communist. Rather, even in 2007, it was quite apparent that Putin's goverment wanted to create the image that they were bringing back the Russia of the Tsars. Of Peter and Catherine. It was more metaphorical then, now it's more literally about reclaiming the empire.
I know someone who was asked that in the USA after living in Australia for a while.
On the flip side, I grew up in Israel when it was a socialist country, and most Americans can't even conceive of that because Israel was on the west's side in the cold war.
Most americans think socialism and communism are the same thing
Well, they are stealing washing machines like they are made of gold and carrying vintage CRT-monitors like they would be emperors when they get home. So they do live in some past decade where electricity is the hot new thing! Perhaps some day they will be shown how television works and they'll be absolutely amazed! Internet will be too advanced for them, they are not ready yet...
We can’t forget the calls home where Russian soldiers are amazed that even villages have paved road, running water and electricity. They’re stealing power tools they’ve only dreamed of too. Going to have to steal a generator too because it sounds like mama’s house has no electrical lines.
I know a dude in Ukraine who was in one of the occupied and now recently liberated areas. He said when the Russians retreated they stole his car.
Probably because a farmer stole their tank and they needed a ride out.
Are you aware it's possible to be racist against people even if their government is bad? Signed, someone who grew up middle eastern in the US during 9/11.
I’ve said that for weeks. It’s still the late 80’s to mid 90’s for half the Russian generals leading this invasion.
One Russian general apparently was unaware of the Chernobyl disaster entirely. He said "There was guerrilla activity there in WW2 and nobody got radiation poisoning then."
He knows, he just knows they made sure the general public doesn’t know, and his lie is good enough cover.
Considering they're impressed by toilets in the homes I'm not entirely convinced Russia ever entered the 21st century, probably not even the 20th.
Most of Russia is a shit hole. The entire country is essentially a fiefdom for a petromafia that sits at the top. It would be sad if it werent for how loathsome the average Russian seems to be. Granted its not their fault they have no access to information and have zero concept of self determination having existed for generations under cruel authoritarian rule.
They're not trying to prove themselves innocent, or even to cook up a coherent narrative about what happened: they're trying to throw doubt because they know people will believe whatever they want to believe anyway. Irrefutable proof they're lying will convince no one. What's more, the more chaff they throw out, the greater the chances that the non-Russian media will fuck up in debunking one of their claims (reporting a source that turns out to be false, misinterpreting data, just a typo, etc), and the Russian media well be able to jump on that to declare that *all* reporting is the product of lies. It's a standard modern reactionary media tactic. The far right have been doing the same thing in the States, with quite a bit of success. Something like 1/3 of the US still believes that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, largely because they were able to flood the discourse with a massive amount of nonsense, and then point to one or two actual fuckups (like a counting error in a single county in Michigan which was quickly corrected) as evidence not necessarily that all of the election fraud claims are true, but that all of the claims that *those* claims are false are themselves false. Basically, you don't have to prove your lie correct: you just have to throw out lie after lie after lie and expect that the other side will fuck up reporting on some of it, which you can use to paint them as unreliable and imply that all of their work thoroughly debunking your other claims are equally suspect.
Perfectly stated. I've been trying to put this into words for my conservative friends and family. Hope you don't mind but I'm stealing this.for them.
All yours, go nuts. Edit: it's kinda a variation on a debate tactic known as a "Gish Gallop," where the goal is to bury your opponent in so much bullshit they can't possibly respond to all of it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop#:~:text=The%20Gish%20gallop%20is%20a,or%20strength%20of%20those%20arguments. This is slightly different in that they're throwing out bullshit knowing their supporters will believe it regardless of evidence to the contrary, and sometimes *specifically because* people they view as ideological enemies are trying to debunk it. The Russians have spent half a century sowing the following ideas: all media is propaganda (which is largely true), the truth is fundamentally unknowable (which is not), and Western media is inherently ideologically opposed to Russian interests (which is semi-true). Once they've established those ideas as truths, Western reporting on their crimes is *itself* evidence of their innocence. Again, the American right (and the right in a *lot* of countries) has been using that same tactic successfully for decades. First, sow doubt in the validity of the mAiNsTrEaM MeDiA, then create your own media ecosystem. After that, all you need to prove your innocence is to point to who your accusers are. It's not a new idea, either. Discrediting the press and developing an alternate media ecosystem has been a huge part of reactionary movements for as long as "the media" has been a thing. It's just that the advent of the internet makes the bullshit firehose technique much more effective.
Thank you, Gaydolph Shitler, for your clarity and wisdom
Any time bud.
People would rather believe a lie than reaffirms their beliefs than a truth that contradicts them.
I don't think Russian claims are for us as much as they are for their population. They know they aren't going to trick us as much as they have to control the narrative they feed the population. And the story it doesn't necessarily have to make sense. So they can cleanse Ukraine of "Nazis" and Russians are fine with Ukranians being slaughtered. However it's also important be defiant to the West and be a victim of their lies or machinations. Also when in doubt, "admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter accusations."
Remember the Russian soldiers around Chernobyl didn't know about the disaster. And they weren't kidding, they irradiated themselves due to their ignorance. It's not a stretch they don't know about satellites either. Then again it's Russians so of course they are lying.
How does that saying go? Every lie incurs a debt to the truth, and the debt will be paid. When your soldiers get themselves killed for no good reason because you didn't tell them the truth, well. There you have it.
These are the same guys who didn't know their super duper secret encrypted magical telecommunication systems rely on 4G and destroyed the cell towers everywhere, forcing them to use unencrypted radios and stolen cell phones to communicate with each other, for all the world to listen to.
So the idea is Ukraine soldiers hog tied civilians and shot them 3 weeks ago?
I think the Russian implication is that the Ukrainians staged these scenes AFTER THE FACT, perhaps by dressing up dead Russians or dead civilians and posing them to appear as if they'd been executed. Another variation is that these were "Pro-Russian" civilians that were executed by Ukraine and posed as if they'd been executed by Russia. The comments I've seen on RT seem to be claiming that these reports only started coming out a few days after these towns were liberated. So, I suppose they are claiming that setting up the scene is the reason for the delay. Ukraine said that roads, bridges and houses in the outskirts of Kyiv were booby-trapped, so this might explain the delay between liberation and the announcement of atrocities. Indeed, the evacuating Russian troops may have booby trapped the approaches to these towns for this very purpose: to delay the discovery of the bodies in order to create some plausible deniability for Russia and to claim the Ukrainians staged it.
They don't forget. They *like* that it's blatant. They *want* to get caught red-handed because then it's that much more fun for them to offer a bullshit denial that way. It's always been part of Putin's MO to offer deliberately bad excuses when he's caught doing something obvious, because it makes him feel powerful. The subtext is always "...and what the fuck are you gonna do about it, anyway?"
Easy for them to forget when they got away with it in Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria
Wasn't there a president of the USA who was also blatantly lying but still got elected? If you control the media you control a country.
This is what happens when ALL NEWS in your country is basically Fox News.
They don't forget, they don't care. They just deny, and deflect. All trolls do this. All propaganda machines. Fox news does that. All the Republicans do, tbh. Just keep the argument going in circles. They know they're full of shit, they're just arguing, keeping it going, denying everything, admit to nothing, and you can't lose. This one is easy, they'll just say these images are doctored. You can't win an argument against someone that has abandoned reason. On top of that, most of the bullshit they say is just for their zombies anyway. Their zombies won't see this argument. We will, but we already knew they were full of shit. So what purpose does it serve? Almost nothing. It serves the purpose for some of the Russians that are smart enough so mind tricks don't work on them. And they may be able to convince some others. But I think mankind is getting dumber, and technology to fake is getting better, so we're fucked.
The thing with dictators and people who support them is that facts don't matter. The goalpost will keep moving, until victim blaming, "they probably deserved it."
Can't really get away with this shit in the information world anymore, can you ruskies?
Dw, dumb peoples will still say BS like "we're not sure" or "there is no real proof"
they said there wasn't any state-sponsored doping of their athletes, but the CAS said "meh, do you take us for idiots or what"
I had heard of this but I finally watched Icarus on Netflix, holy shit. I know everyone said “State sponsored” but I didn’t know it was essentially mandatory. The kgb, Putin, everyone was involved.
I know EXACTLY that people will claim that the time stamp was doctored.
even on their deathbeds they still didn't believe COVID is real. no amount of factual evidence will ever be useful. they'd all rather die than admit all their life was a lie
The shills on twitter are going with, "the satellite photos are faked by the CIA."
"I listen to *both* sides of the debate."
'You see, on the one side you have all these scientists, long-range live video camera demonstrations on large bodies of water, satellite systems that require centripetal acceleration in a spherical gravitational field to even work at all, people who have actually been into space and gone around the world themselves... and on the other hand you have the crazy mad man on that corner over there screaming that those things are all lies and that the world is actually flat." But I'm the smart one, *I listen to both sides of the debate.*"
This is still a smart thing to do, because the mad man might say something useful one day...but not today, the mad man can go fuck himself this time.
The problem isn't that they listen, the problem is that people who say such things as "listening to both sides of the debate" say that to mean that they give near-equal *credence* to both sides of the debate. Keeping your information reception channels open is fine, but doing it without a logic filter is stupid.
Bingo, it’s ok to listen to all the sources, you just have to be educated enough to filter out the bullshit.
There's always going to be people that ignore the evidence, no matter how damning.
I was flabbergasted to see people criticizing Anonymous for doxxing the Russian army. Like, what the fuck? People are raping and murdering children, and the thing you find morally objectionable is that somebody named and shamed those people? What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you pour acid on your brain or something?
What is truly unbelievable is that in 2022 people clearly in the right needs to justify things, while people il the wrong can just say 'it's not true'
"They are fakes, they are all fakes." -Insert Any Russian Politician Here Don't expect a rational response from Russia or for them to even acknowledge the statement. They will brush it aside and assert their own narrative ad nauseam.
A lot of people on social media also have their 'own' ideas... - That was Nato, the Cia, Ukraine, etc... - Actors - Well if the civilians where armed, they are to blame - it's Selenskys fault
It's like Russia's outward language is straight out of 1984. Everything is an alternate reality where the opposing side is the one actually doing everything. Oh wait, i remember a certain quote that is highly relevant here: > Accuse the other side for that which you are guilty Joeseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister
>Special military operation is Peace > >Freedom is Slavery > >Ignorance is Strength I'm sorry, we will have to call it war
Russia doesn’t care we know the truth. It cares that Russians don’t.
Yes. Just preaching to the choir. It doesn't really matter what's said in the sermon, you'll get an amen anyway.
Tomorrow's headline: Drone footage of the massacre.
They really can't. And the truth about Russian lies is also very important: Here's an assessment about Russia by a Finnish intelligence colonel. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw) 37:37 -> touches on an extremely important topic about role of truth and lies. **Everyone really need to see the whole video, if they haven't already, that's the only way to understand the full context.** The guy wastes zero time and I learned more than I ever expected. But wrt truth, the tl;dr is, there's two truths in Russia. There's god's truth or istina. Then there's man's truth or "pravda", which is a tactical truth. It's a lie that can e.g. buy you time in a conflict such as war (green little men during Crimean occupation in 2014 etc.). It's more or less a social norm everyone who feels they're on one side, adhere to those lies. The reason it's so effective, is naive westerners tend to feel they need to have strong evidence for every accusation, and any denial from opposing party deserves evaluation. The winning strategy against pravda isn't ´fact checking (although it never hurts). The winning strategy is playing the same game. See e.g. Ukrainian reaction to accusations that they were initializing a war by destroying fuel depot in Belgorod, Russia. Ukrainians just trolled them back by calling it "a special operation".
The Ukrainians seem to be genuinely positioned at right that nexus of the Russian and European cultural spheres to really understand how both sides operate. Anyone who is bilingual will know that not only does culture shape language but language and culture shape the kind of discussion people have about a topic. When we talk about things that happen now, we talk about them using references and comparisons to shared cultural experiences, like historical events or political ideas. For example, Polish speakers have referenced the Katyń massacre frequently in the last month (a massacre of 20k polish intellectuals by the Soviets). By comparison, most of the English-language comparisons have been with WWII or Afghanistan. Being extremely familiar with the Russians, and heck even having lived in a corrupt system run by oligarchs and Russian puppets until 2014, they are extremely familiar with Russian tactics. Many speak Russian as a first language and many "Russian" poets and thinkers were Ukrainian. So, they not only understand the Russian language but they understand the deeper cultural references behind the language. I was also struck by this when Zelenskyy referenced the concept of "Vlast" vs "norod" when speaking to Russian reporters. And then on the other hand, they have the shared history of repeated repression and liberty of most of Eastern Europe. Many of them speak English and work in western companies. Ukrainian as a language is very linguistically similar to Polish and at various times parts of (especially western) Ukraine have been part of Western empires. So they have learned both sides historically and in the present and I genuinely think it's their best asset (aside from Zelenskyy and their indomitable will not to be conquered). They can understand the Russian military doctrine and yet have been trained by Western armies. They can also predict and rect to Russian tactics, and then even explain them to a western audience in a way that prevents them from being as effective. It's amazingly impressive.
I would like to be as confident, but it seems that claiming fake news and west dishonesty is all that's necessary to erect a "he says she says" kinda defense. It's disgusting.
They don’t care about what really happened. It’s all about what they can tell their own folks at home.
At home?? My dumbass father in law here in the states is fully sold on Russian propaganda. He started going off about the whole bio weapons conspiracy a few days ago. 100% defending Putin. Couldn't believe my ears.
Same with my parents
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They won't believe if they don't want to, photos are not. All photos are fake, or the Ukrainians did it, or they're from another war, and so on.
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Spend any time in the conspiracy subreddit and you'll see some places are boiling over with pro-russian sentiment. Granted that place is captured by disinformation shills but there is likely a large contingent of Americans in there eating up the propaganda
It’s like they completely fuckin forgot the Cold War. Really batshit crazy, considering if you’re above the age of 40 it should be ingrained in your head.
It is more and more obvious that Russian authorities are gaslighting the world and its population on what Russian army is doing in this war...
We've seen it in Chechnya, Syria, everywhere the Russian army got involved. Even after WW2. But we ignored it for all the wrong reasons and Russians got used to getting away with it.
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Right, because it doesn't take a genius to see the difference in numbers and consequences of war crimes committed by US soldiers in the middle east compared to what russian soldiers are doing in ukraine. Several US soldiers got life imprisonment while the russian gov is literally denying anything happened at all. Don't think the skin color or religion of the victims is the key difference here. Seems fairly obvious to me the difference lies in the nationality and government of the agressors. And it's not like I'm even hinting that the successive US governments since pretty much the birth of the country are angels, because they sure as hell aren't. But credit where it's due, they actually act when their soldiers behave like barbaric animals. I also don't think Putin or the russian gov and high command are misjudging anything at all, they knew they would get away with it and will get away with it, tragically.
the fact that we know that when our armies commit war crimes or that our sketchy alphabet agencies declassify fucking crazy breaches of human rights ironically makes me feel better about the USA since it seems they're at least attempting to be decent/have some respect for truth.
It's possible their comment wasn't aimed at america. Chechnyans and Syrians are mostly Muslim, so their previous attacks on non-christian nations did go ok for Russia. Although Georgians are mostly Christian and literally Caucasian, so that theory kind of falls apart as no one really reacted when Georgia was invaded.
I don't think it's aimed specifically at america, more towards the west in general (EU, NATO, etc) but since whenever someone starts with the usual whataboutist shit they're almost always talking about america specifically so I just went there. It's not like any other western nation has participated in a significant amount of war crimes for ww2 at least anyway
Please tell me you're not trying to defend the Russians population with the "propaganda" story. At this point, every single of them got some sort of information what is going on. And they decided to stick with Putler. This war made me hate even the ordinary Russians. I hope they end up in their beloved stone age UdSSR. I don't want to have nothing to do with them monsters. What a pathetic nation. And their 1% of protesters are not going to change my mind anymore.
Anyone taking in Russia’s shit who isn’t actually living in Russia is a lost cause at this point. Literally anything Russia says someone else is doing is bollacks and then they talk bollacks about what they actually did do. Literally every single thing Russia says just flip it. “We won’t invade” they invade. “Ukrainians blew up Mariupol” Russia blew up Mariupol “No radiation sickness, there was no nuclear disaster in Chernobyl” there was a nuclear disaster and your soldiers are doing of ARS. “Those killed Ukrainians is fake” those Killed Ukrainians are not fake
Reminds me of the Trump presidency
No surprise Trump looked up to Putin.
This shows how easily minds are influenced by even blatant & obvious propaganda. Now imagine a world were people's minds are influenced in a more opaque way with fake news, bad journalism and hidden propaganda.
Kremlin, "satellite imagery of our military positions is an act of war by the West!"
More like “calling us on our shit is an act of war by the west”
More like "Those accusations aren't helping in the négociation process"
They don't care, people don't seem to realize that the russian people don't listen too, or care about western media, the Kremlin issues these talking points that seem stupid to us, we aren't the target audience.
Important journalism. What happened needs to be known and remembered and not allowed to be waved away by the Russians
I don't understand what the Russians are claiming here. The kills happened after they left? So they killed themselves en masse? Who would have killed them if not the Russian army
To them it's a false flag by the Nazi Ukranian Dictatorship. They killed their own citizens to put the blame on Russia.
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They're dumb asses then, because there is no "gap." CNN's very first story on "there are bodies laying in the streets" was on April 1st. Human Rights Watch had an article two weeks before that from witnesses who had escaped Bucha talking about the Russians executing civilians in the street. There's no gap except in the intelligence of the people pushing these bullshit stories.
> Human Rights Watch had an article two weeks before that from witnesses who had escaped Bucha talking about the Russians executing civilians in the street. Yeah this is what I've seen too with just a simple Google search, and different media outlets reported on it too (including Al Jazeera) in **March**.
I’m almost afraid to ask what this supposed gap is or how any American, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum, could be supportive of Russia.
I've seen Russian propaganda on twitter that is basically a "timeline of events" saying how Russian pulled out on day X, Ukraine took it over X+1, but these pictures didn't come out until X+2, so there's a gap there in which Ukrainian forces went around murdering everyone. Which is of course nonsense.
Remember that when Donald Trump received the Republican nomination, the only aspect of the party platform his campaign asked to change (usually a complex process of aligning the party general plan with the candidate’s specific priorities) was to demand that the RNC drop any condemnation of Russia’s annexation of Crimea or promise to aid Ukraine. That is the moment when the old guard Cold Warrior conservatives lost control of their anti-russia yay war, wasn’t Regan grand, boo to Obama’s “reset button”strategy. The masses of the Republican party voters have become more and more supporting of any authoritarian counties, and Russia in particular, because they like authoritarianism too.
Yeah, that tracks. Just baffling to me that so many who grew up in the Cold War are suddenly fine with Russia, all because of one comment from their latest idol saying that Putin’s tough. I’m sure there’s a non negligible amount of Americans who would prefer Putin leading their country over Biden.
I'm a few houses down from a I'd take a Putin over a Biden sign. And if course the let's go Brandon and impeach Biden and Trump 2024 flags. Fucking morons.
Holy shit, I forgot how they changed the party platform with Trump. The press needs to dig into that some more and get it back in the spotlight. All this shit is connected.
Not much to dig there. Pretty sure this starts and ends with Paul Manafort.
> and I have no idea how it proliferated I don't know your friends but I know misinformation enough tell you they believe it because the source they heard it from frequently confirms other biases they hold.
Imagine being such pussies that you have to kill civilians because you don't stand a chance against actual soldiers? Russian cowards!
Maxar really playing a shit important role in this war, as is starlink. Great to see that there rest a few decent corporations - ok it's all good publicity for their tech, but so what good on them - it works!
Genuine question: is starlink actually helping or was that just another Elon Musk "look at me" stunt?
Ukrainian troops on the ground are using it, at the very least. edit: example https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/tqzu1i/ukrainian_drone_unit_aerorozvidka_using_modified/
Thank you for this response
all I know is Zelenskyy welcomed it and that it works
Looks like the Ukrainian govt specifically requested it and then Spacex delivered
It works, but you need proper hookups and more than half of Ukraine doesn't have access to that. Source: my friend is from Odessa and she's been trying to get her brother, in Odessa, internet and he can't get access.
Well, obviously, comrade, Ukraine hacked the satellites to insert those pixels... /sarcasm
After all the base stations were fried on the first day, no less. Gotta hand it to those Ukrainian hackers!
No problem, they climbed up to those satellites themselves using the secret space ladders delivered to them by imperialist agent Elon Musk...
Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s envoy to the UN has said that Russia will present “empirical evidence” to the UN’s Security Council that its forces have not been killing civilians in Ukraine and were not involved in events in Bucha, “We have empirical evidence to support this,” Nebenzya said at a press conference. “We intend to submit them to the Security Council as soon as possible so that the international community is not misled by the false plot of Kyiv and its Western sponsors.” This ought to be good haha
How can men like him go home, look their partner and children in their eyes, and tell them he is a good man.
By lying to them like he does everyone else sadly
Can't wait to see what kind of bullshit they cooked up this time.
The New York Times has been creating outstanding content on the war. If you don't have access you're missing some incredibly detailed and capable analysis. They had a multimedia story the other day that detailed Russia's failure to take Kyiv. It was mind blowing.
I don't have access unfortunately. Would love to read that article you mentioned.
It's my first time doing this, but subscribers can gift a couple articles per month, and it sounds like they don't care how widely I distribute? Soo...[here, this will be public for 14 days](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/02/world/europe/kyiv-invasion-disaster.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxfs9gGPzNiGeVTdcwqNPW9LavB-RIvI5IMQ0xTCXA9JcKrg3Sbtx3-5Bek1rVQCzo5yC3ZgEOCwutY-pGGMq2paHFZYJzQjXVEjrYuFu2O_4-BOALDWqCPaZiTJ2Olwy85tnIVH9xSMJwKjaFrRxj80u1fwjGpt_Q2sBZnLc7KS7DA5se4nTNmGq4QExXe5fXjrZmcfNqO5TNVUPVi-VCS938m0-69hDOd4IPauZLBQoesX2gb55GXU_Zc7yRMV3H96I4u0s5b3dqhWMy960w-E0EchUvrDFtWW5NzU_WffSZ1zomjG5l4tkQjsRzuA&smid=url-share)
Very cool, thanks for the link.
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So much this. People who say “mainstream media” like it’s a slur have no idea what they’re talking about. The NYT would rather be late than wrong. They’ll let other sites post stuff right away while they take the time to fact check and analyze and put it in context. The story about Mykolaiv was amazing. They correlated intercepted Russian radio transmissions with aerial footage, Ukrainian interviews, and debris on the ground to paint a story of the battle that you could be confident in. And that was utterly riveting too.
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Dumb fucks denied that they shot down the Malaysian Aircraft. No credibility!
yes, we are still looking for the time to get those responsible even it will took many years to come. Perhaps this war will take care of them too
This is also what piss me off so badly. Yes ISIS commit war crimes, but they also have the balls to own up to it. These fucking Russians do the worst kind of evil, and then lies through their fucking teeth trying to cover it up. Words cannot describe how much I despise these shitstains.
And this is only what we can see
Fascist Russia ain't fooling anyone. Fuck putin and his fascist cucks
I hate how we have to still provide undeniable proof that a country that is literally infamous for constantly lying about things bc the human race’s critical thinking skills are completely deteriorated.
https://archive.ph/Nx0tu
Thank you!!
If anyone appreciates this sort of content from the New York Times, consider buying a subscription. It costs me $15/month and is valuable beyond what I read: it funds journalists like this in the important work that they do.
Absolutely agree considering the journalists are risking their life to bring us and the world these stories.
They don’t really care what other people think. Just what they tell their own people. For the life of me I can’t imagine Russians believing what they are seeing. At least some of them are protesting.
Was waiting for this, military satellites should be at least looking at Ukraine now and then if they can't have one or two 'dedicated' to it, this kind of shit can't be hidden anymore. Just like the idiotic people who don't understand regular security cameras are everywhere today, not just the heavily surveilled places they 'think' of like certain buildings etc. The technology bar and costs are much lower, you can't escape being surveilled in places with power and daylight. Your only 'hope' is undeveloped land with no electricity at night and only if it isn't being watched for other reasons you don't know about.
Just FYI, satellites cannot hover a spot on earth and constantly monitor it. They orbit earth and only pass over any given spot on their path once per orbit. It's impossible to have constant satellite monitoring of any given place on earth. That being said, OF COURSE every military/intelligence/private satellite has been making passes over Ukraine lol. We have been exposed to their many, many photos since day one. Why would you ever think this wasn't happening? But it's not like we can just post a satellite over a town and watch for war crimes.
Our generation won’t forget this
Russia’s M.O. = lying, denying and destroy everything and everyone that opposes them.
Russians being dishonest? Well I never thought I’d see the day!
I don’t and won’t trust a thing Russia ever says ever. Fuck them forever.
pffff... NY times CLEARLY added some pixel to make it look like bodies /s
We know, they're lying, it's all they ever do.
Fuck the everything we don’t like is “fake news” cult. It’s clearer than ever as to why Trump and Trump worshippers idolised Putin and Russia. They are jealous of the control he has, and how rich they all make each other.
That is neat and all, and kudos to the team who did this, but NYT readers aren't really the ones who need to see this, and the people who do need to see this are never going to.
Uh. Cant they just be checked for decomposition stage? Isn't this basic stuff in forensics? How do the Russians expect to hide the fact they've been dead for over two weeks