Russian invasion of Ukraine

[Culprit]

Terrorism is just that, kill and injure people to scare others by any means and that is what the Russians are doing. Good to see the Russians blaming Ukrianians so they can send a few 100 missiles over and call it legit.

[swoop42]

The suspects have clearly been tortured. Given it's Russia no surprise.

I know people wont have much sympathy for them but given it's Russia you need to always wonder what is truth and what are lies.

They seem to have be detained rather quickly and one worries whether those captured are innocents who have been tortured until they falsely confess.

Even if guilty it's odd they were able to pull off this terrorist act (despite American warnings) under the watchful eyes of the FSB and yet weren't smart enough to evade capture for any significant period.

Given Putin is trying to link the suspects with Ukraine (denied by them and US intelligence) you have to at least wonder if this terrorist act was allowed to occur or an even worse was some kind of false flag operation against it's own people.

Nothing would surprise me when it comes to Putin.

[stui magpie]

^

damn straight they're being tortured, you connect an 80 volt battery to my gonads and I'll take responsibility for whatever you ask me to.

[Magpietothemax]

The suspects have clearly been tortured. Given it's Russia no surprise.

umm....it is actually the US that has pioneered the modern forms of torture (waterboarding, rectal feeding, Abu Ghraib.. , sites of rendition). Let us not use torture as a pretext to demonise the Russian government when the US government is up to its neck in it.

[Magpietothemax]

^

damn straight they're being tortured, you connect an 80 volt battery to my gonads and I'll take responsibility for whatever you ask me to.

Yeah, just ask the US torturers at Abu Ghraib.

[David]

[Magpietothemax]

[Tannin]

I take your point @Magpietothemax, and it is a good one, or it would be if you hadn't overstated the case. Putin is far, far worse than the Americans ever were, and I say that as a card-carrying anti-American ever since the 1970s.

Yes, the Americans did (and presumably still do) some truly awful things, but no-one in his right mind would put them in even the same league as Putin's regime, which is as evil as any government ever known in any country. (At least I cannot think of a worse one.)

[Magpietothemax]

I take your point @Magpietothemax, and it is a good one, or it
Yes, the Americans did (and presumably still do) some truly awful things, but no-one in his right mind would put them in even the same league as Putin's regime, which is as evil as any government ever known in any country. (At least I cannot think of a worse one.)

...and here I disagree with you.
The US government is by far the more violent, criminal and dangerous government than Putin's regime in Russia.
As i type, the Biden administration is supplying arms and money to israel so that it can continue to massacre Palestinians in Gaza. Already, at least
40000 are dead, in 6 months, in a population of 2.1 million. This rate of civilian mortality far surpasses anything that Russia is carrying out in Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine was deliberately engineered by the US and its NATO allies, as NATO expanded its borders ever closer to Russia and the US government deliberately sabotaged any attempts by the Zelensky regime to negotiate an agreement with Russia to avoid war.
The US and NATO continue to supply Ukraine's army with weapons, tanks airplanes and training, and are using the Ukrainian male population as cannon fodder in an un declared war against Russia.

On a world scale, the crimes committed by the Putin regime are clearly smaller. The Putin regime commits criminal violence and repression against the population in Russia and in Ukraine, but not against the population of the entire world, as the US government does. Thjs is not due to the fact that Putin is "less evil" than Biden. It is because Russia holds an entirely different position in the world economy compared to the US.
The US is the former economic hegemon, and its banks and financial institutions dominate the world economy. But the US is losing its grip on its economic ascendancy, so it is resorting more and more to criminality in an increasingly desperate and reckless attempt to preserve its economic dominance.
Compared to the US, Russia occupies a subordinate role. It is the US that can impose punitive economic and financial sanctions on Russia, and not vice verca. It is the US, not Russia, which has military bases scattered across the entire globe, encircling both Russia and China. It is the US, not Russia, nor China, that invades and destroys entire countries in wars based on lies (Iraq).

[Magpietothemax]

Article in the wsws quotes a report from the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor about the nature of the zelensky government in Ukraine.
Among the grave issues of human rights in Ukraine the report describes:

"enforced disappearance; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; restrictions on freedom of expression, including for members of the media, including violence or threats of violence against journalists, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, and censorship; serious restrictions on internet freedom; substantial interference with the freedoms of peaceful assembly and association; restrictions on freedom of movement; serious government corruption; extensive gender-based violence; systematic restrictions on workers’ freedom of association; and the existence of the worst forms of child labor. Some of these human rights issues stemmed from martial law, which continued to curtail democratic freedoms, including freedom of movement, freedom of the press, freedom of peaceful assembly, and legal protections.
Although the constitution and law prohibited torture and other cruel and unusual punishment, there were reports law enforcement authorities engaged in such abuse. Under normal circumstances, courts could not legally use confessions and statements made under duress to police by persons in custody as evidence in court proceedings, but the institution of martial law since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion permitted this."
Supposedly though, according to official propaganda, (including that of the Albanese government) the US is supporting democracy and freedom in Ukraine by arming the fascistic Zelensky regime to the hilt with yet another package of $60 billion

[Magpietothemax]

US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has just said to the NYTimes that it is inevitable that NATO troops will be deployed to Ukraine.

Brown’s statement that NATO will send troops to Ukraine, after US President Joe Biden categorically ruled out such a move because it would lead to “World War III,” continues the pattern: Every time the White House has said it would not do something in Ukraine, it has subsequently done it.
Biden said originally that he would not authorise the delivery of tanks to Ukraine, but later he did. Biden said that he would never send weapons to Ukraine that could strike Russian territory, then he did.

2 years ago Biden promised that US/NATO troops would never be sent to Ukraine, but now a high ranking US military official is declaring to the NYTimes that this is "inevitable".

In other words, the US strategy of fighting Russia to the last drop of Ukrainian blood is now exhausting itself, through lack of Ukrainian cannon fodder. So now it will be necessary to prosecute the war with NATO troops.

What if Russia feels that it is under existential threat from NATO as a result, and resorts to its only possible answer: a nuclear strike?

Biden of course will never explain why he should risk the existence of human civilisation in order to guarantee that Ukraine becomes a member of NATO (the reason why Russia invaded when it did was because the Zelensky government, backed by Biden, refused to give such a guarantee).

As time goes on, the real nature of this war is becoming ever clearer: it is a war led by the US, with its NATO allies at its heels, against Russia.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/0 ... s-m17.html

[pietillidie]

^The US has very clearly had to be dragged kicking and screaming into this because it gains them absolutely nothing, and in contrast to times yore is not even a political win for Biden because with Trump there, finances tight, Iraq in the back of mind, and the national draw bridge up, the context is very different.

The EU has been begging Biden for more help, and everyone is rattling cans to defend Ukraine at a time no one has the stomach for war after financially debilitating crises worsened by Putin's inflation blackmail.

You can't hold a single axiom that resonated with you in 1980 forever, no matter what happens in reality and what the clear facts say. That is the very definition of religion. Are you sure you're not still trying to prove your younger self 'right' to the doubters of your past?

Ambiguity of motive is the human condition, even for those you may dislike, especially at group scale where people coalesce on the surface despite being individuals of varying views and motives.

It's so frustrating watching you cling to this stuff to your own detriment. Find your own feet for today, M2M.

[Magpietothemax]

^The US has very clearly had to be dragged kicking and screaming into this because it gains them absolutely nothing,.

Sorry PTiD, but this is just rubbish. The US instigated this war. The US government sees no other way to defend the dollar and its declining manurfacturing base other than through war.

[pietillidie]

^Defend the dollar? Oh my goodness. You don't understand the economics, nor do you follow the economic policy. Last month the news was all about the Trump team's secret plan to devalue the dollar. Please, stop going on about things you of which you don't even have an entry-level knowledge. There are advantages and disadvantages to either depending on strategy or context.

You get away with inventing stuff in your mind's eye and blurting it out only because people around you aren't into economics. It's so unethical. I would come to you for insight on the dark side of the moon before I'd come to you for economics analysis. Have some self-awareness, for goodness' sake.

[Magpietothemax]

^Defend the dollar? Oh my goodness. You don't understand the economics, nor do you follow the economic policy. Last month the news was all about the Trump team's secret plan to devalue the dollar. Please, stop going on about things you of which you don't even have an entry-level knowledge. There are advantages and disadvantages to either depending on strategy or context.

You get away with inventing stuff in your mind's eye and blurting it out only because people around you aren't into economics. It's so unethical. I would come to you for insight on the dark side of the moon before I'd come to you for economics analysis. Have some self-awareness, for goodness' sake.

The US state is bankrupt. The national debt has ballooned exponentially. The US financial elite has moved from manufacturing commodities as a source of profits to speculation and financial parasitism.
The Chinese industrial and manufacturing base is far outstipping the American industrial base, which means that since profit ultimately depends not on parasitism but extraction of value from production of commodities, the US financial oligarchy is threatened with an existential crisis. It cannot compete with China's super efficient manufacturing base. Ironicially, this is not due to the "genius of China", but due to the fact that in the late 80's and onwards, US corporations in search of the cheapest labour made possible by the globalisation of production processes abandoned the US and went to China with the most modern production processes. It was good for a while for American capitalism. But the eroded industrial base in America meant that China has rapidly become the industrial/manufacturing hegemon, and the US capitalists are now just desperately cashing in stock market dividends, without the industrial base. If you follow US politics, you will realise that many US politicans have referenced the increasingly parlous state o fthe US dollar. It is only a matter of time before financial markets refuse to believe that the US can actually guarantee the interest payments on its gigantic national debt.
To declare that I am unethical is your usual manner of argument, unfortunately. You try to denigrate those who expose the truth whenever the truth is not to your liking.