UKRAINE

i like the song better than the egoist manifesto but thanks

The first things that come to mind are Germany (and Europe in general) getting rid of their dependency on Russian energy. I think Germany already has reversed its anti-nuclear power stance, so that's a great start. The main things Russia can bully Europe with are oil and gas, so the less we need them the better.

The other thing (which has been a personal pet peeve for me for years) is that maybe the European leaders finally see that they need to increase their military spending (again, at least Germany has already announced that). Far too many leading politicians in Europe are these liberal leftists who are either naive (thinking that Russia will behave if we don't provoke them and just kiss their behind) or former communists that don't even see USSRv2 as such a bad thing (like former Finnish President Tarja Halonen who, as a youngster, preached how it would be a blessing if Finland would join USSR, and later did her best to ruin our defensive capabilities by pushing us into the treaty banning anti-personnel mines).

Putin and Russians are doing what they do because that's what Russia has always been (the 100+ years Finland has been independent we've only ever had one external threat). There's nothing surprising happening there today. But it's the west that has allowed (and allows) it to happen. The only way to stop this is to make Russia stop.

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It's really interesting learning about European dependency on Russian industry, I guess there's a line of thinking that's kinda similar to people in the US not wanting Saudi oil...apples and oranges I know, but that's something I've never even thought about before.


No opinion from me as in I have zero control over all this.

Re: wide media coverage

It's true. This will be the best-covered war in history. The sheer amount of amateur footage being uploaded to Twitter, Facebook, and Telegram each day is astounding. This is not a remote country at the peripheries of the world. This is a giant country in Europe with nine 500 thousand plus cities. Almost every citizen has a smartphone with active internet connectivity. As a result, we get almost real-time coverage of everything that's happening in the country.

Re: criticizing media for not covering other wars in the past as well as the war in Ukraine

Even if it's a valid point to some extent, constantly repeating it steers everybody's eyes and minds away from what's going on in Ukraine, which plays right into what Putin wants. Bringing up other issues while discussing one particular issue is a decades-long Russian strategy, so anybody who does that unconsciously helps Russia.

Re: Criticizing the one-sidedness of media

It's clear who is the aggressor in this war. Criticizing the one-sidedness of media makes it harder to know whether the person who does that does it in good faith or is merely a shill. Once again, widely criticizing one side helps the other side. Yes, the media is one-sided in this conflict, but there are at least two reasons for that:

• More info about casualties of one side than casualties of the other side helps boost and lower morale of the first and second sides, respectively. Official kill counts are either exaggerated or underestimated to either boost morale or try and hide the true incompetence of the army
• Spreading propaganda helps the information war both countries are waging at the moment. Proliferating propaganda of the side you support helps this side, even if only by boosting the morale of its army.

The propaganda of exaggeration is not nearly as heinous as the propaganda of clandestine silencing.

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San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.

Uh, no, you don’t have to, and shouldn’t, spread propaganda to help the right side. We’re already living in a post-truth world as it is, and I don’t agree that actively spreading more disinformation helps, even if it’s for the side you support. How bout we just stick to disseminating truth and facts and pointing out the inconsistencies of falsehoods? Because the facts are already on the side of right.

Ukraine has a long storied history of wanting, and fighting, for independence from Russian influence. We don’t need to murky the waters and give Russia yet another reason to bolster their populace by pointing out our lies.*

There’s a reason we documented and photographed the atrocities of WWII: Truth is a disinfectant, and anyone that argues with it becomes and marks themselves as a pariah.

EDIT: There are three ways to best fight the “firehose of falsehood” by Russia

1) warnings at the time of initial exposure to misinformation
(2) repetition of the retraction or refutation
(3) corrections that provide an alternative story to help fill the resulting gap in understanding when false “facts” are removed.

Sourced from RAND

https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

No point in this topic becoming political as everybody can do things better. The blame should be directed at who is committing any atrocities. All we can do is care and treat others well, and hopefully that leads to a better tomorrow.

The inner workings of information warfare are much more nuanced than that. If you support any side in an armed conflict, you do not speak out loud about their troop movements, equipment, and losses. This is intelligence data too. The attackers usually suffer heavier losses but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out Ukrainians have heavy casualties too. But the media publishes as little info as possible about that in order to not undermine Ukrainian morale.

They do publish civilian casualties, yes, but only to piss off the Ukrainian army against the invader even more. Yes, Russian losses are greater than Ukrainian losses, but that's also because Ukraine has brilliant defensive weapons. One man with an MBT LAW can kill a dozen or more people, whether in a transporter or a tank. Stingers can kill a large group of soldiers in a landing helicopter with one rocket. This is a great advertisement for Western weaponry.

Russia doesn't need to point out our real white lies and exaggerations, anyway. They will fake proofs if needed or come up with idiotic propaganda that twists the entire thing 180 degrees. If saying Ukrainians killed 10K Russian soldiers so far even though they only killed 6K so far will boost the morale of Ukrainians, then let's do this. Russia does much worse things to excuse the terrorist and war criminal acts of their military.

True. But while most of the Western world can see through Putin's lies right away, Putin does not intend to convince us. His propaganda is meant for Russians themselves. It's supposed to increase their hate for Ukrainians and help them find excuses for the barbaric invasion and inhumane acts that followed it. How to find an excuse to murder people? You either make them subhuman as Nazis did, or you make them Nazis themselves as Putin does. An average Russian citizen is either pro-Putin or too afraid to be anti-Putin, and years of constant brainwashing are responsible for this state of affairs. Now that Russia is getting more and more secluded with each day, cut off from any alternative source of information, their doggedness will only increase.

Ukrainian myths such as the Ghost of Kyiv or Snake Island are not meant to vilify Russia any more than its barbaric acts would anyway. They are meant to consolidate the people and harden their souls.

Thank God for this one. I mean, the mind truly boggles. To argue that it’s fine and desirable to exaggerate the other side’s casualties and minimise your own is just plain mad. This is how we get to scientific data in other controversial political disputes being doctored to support the narrative. Reveals immediately that no one ever was, or intended to be, aiming for any sort of objectivity. And yes, I mean the “right” side. You can’t accuse Russia of manipulating data and then do the same because, well, they’re doing it, let’s all jump off the bridge then.

And is that the approach implicitly followed in this thread? Let’s all discuss Russian history like anyone has actually studied the thing? Raise your hand if anyone here actually knows anything about Russia that hasn’t been sourced from the internet…

I don’t think these myths vilify Russia at all. However, the entire tone of this thread does. Statements are made, as usual, in an authoritative way, “Russia always does”, “Russia always did”, no nuance, no nothing. Hilarious. Does anyone actually think this kind of generalisation is in no way similar to the “bad” propaganda?

I do not mean to take issue with that post itself, I see where that’s coming from and it’s fair, but that doesn’t mean it is not a gross, heinous generalisation, setting aside the lumping of Russians and Putin together. What is it that Russia “always does”? Or “always been”?

So basically what you’re saying is you want to spread misinformation that’s not even going to be seen by the people that need convincing? I hardly see how that helps. But eh, you do you.

I’m going to stick to pointing out the misinformation on both sides and let history speak for itself.

I’m just saying for someone who is so dead set against whataboutisms you seem to be whataboutisming an awful lot.

Yes, indeed.

I also fail to see how a nation, who’s entire history has been predicated on fighting for independence for the last 100 years, needs their morale boosted. Those guys are more fired up than they’ve ever been. Western propaganda is not what they need. They need weapons; a lot more than we’ve already given them. They need food and water; a lot more than we’ve already given them. They need logistical training; a lot more than we’ve already given them. They do not need more misinformation. They are too busy fighting for their independence to be concerned with propaganda in their favor. They already know they are in the right because their history is written in facts and blood.

Yup. On that note:

Thank you, Elon.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/e...-b2029215.html

Sure, it was all Hitler's fault.

I'll abstain from posting in this thread for some time.

It's absolutely true that the only (weak) advantage than any "good side" has in any context is truth. And that devaluing truth, for whatever reason, is always ultimately harmful to the "good side's" only anchor, its only compass, only recognizable trait. I'm always flaggerbasted when people can rely on misinformation, require it, yet continue picturing themselves as the good guys. It should be the alarm bell that makes you question your own side.

But that being said, manipulation and self-delusion is a complex topic, and drifting to exaggerations, half-truth or wishful thinking is easy to do for anyone, at various levels of complacency or self-awareness. And given that, there's a danger coming from the human mind's tendency to equalize quantities. Like, you learn there's 3% chances of A and 97% of B, your brain translates it as "there's a chance for A and a chance for B", which becomes more or less equal chances (in fact, it can even be reversed in some contexts, where your brain favors the underdog). You can see that process in discussions about climate change, covid vaccines, lotteries, migration, pseudo-sciences, etc. "Oh, see, two scientists out of thirty billions say that wearing a seatbelt under the full moon can induce cancer, so, it's still debated in the community, and if scientists disagree between each others then who's to say who's to say", "oh, see, petty crimes are mostly committed by poor ostracized people, and poor ostracized are often male members of a visible minority, therefore there's great chances for that male member of a visible minority to murder you in your sleep", "oh noes, this medicine has a 0,00004% rate of heavy side effects, are you trying to kill me", etc. And we're all victim of this bias depending on our weighted values, on what we consider acceptable or not (typically, I'm okay with taking a train to anywhere and I'm against nuclear plants - don't ask me to back this gut feeling with death statistics, I just forgive less a death by irradiation than a death by collision so it doesn't compute).

In this case here, the danger is that the (contextual) petty lies of the West/Ukraine get overblown in comparison with Russia's mass propaganda. It can be blown out of proportion through bad faith (Russian whataboutism) or through the mere effect of talking about it more (because Russian's is considered too obvious and goes without saying, or because ours is closer therefore easier to debunk, or because ours is our own responsibility and therefore requires our own vigilence all the more).

It's similar to socio-cultural self-criticism. As members of our own socioculture, we have a duty of being self-critical and make ourself progress towards more and more refined social justice, fairer inclusivity, more awareness of the symbolic violences and power differencials in our own blind spots. It's a never-ending quest for civilizational betterment, and it's a matter of perpetual tensions, self-accusation, reflexivity, and historiographical re-evaluations. It's good. But then, it's also used by less democratic societies to point our flaws. Which opens a door to two directions of whataboutism : "stop the self-hatred, those over there are worse anyway so we should feel satisfied with our to notch society" and "don't listen to their accusations, see how they admit that they're riddled with flaws anyway, they have no lesson to teach us". Transpose this to our media's relation to truth, and you see how our healthy self-criticism can be instrumented. It's like a debate between two politicians, where the clever, honest, hesitating one has lost in front of the gung-ho populist who never admits any doubt or any field of ignorance.

Ruthless rigor about truth is our most precious tool, and so is self-criticism. It just has to be kept in perspective. It doesn't mean any indulgence, it's way too precious and fragile for that (honesty is our only way out of human dilemmas and social conflicts). But we only have to be cautious, at a given time, not to let a twig's close up look equivalent to a distant trunk. Because false equivalences can have terrible consequences.

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Get working on your custom lists, people !

I fail to see how this is relevant. The only group pushing that narrative is Russian state media, and it isn’t even a primary reason for their invasion. It’s a one off in a long ending bombardment of misinformation.

Don’t bite the lure. Don’t entertain the falsehoods. Even jokingly, it serves to discredit the autonomy of Ukraine.

INTERMISSION



The reason of the strongest is always the best
We shall demonstrate it soon :

A lamb was quenching its thirst
In a stream of pure water
A wolf arrived, on an empty stomach
By hunger brought to the premises
« Who makes you so bold as to muddy my beverage
This animal said, full of rage
You will be punished for your temerity
- Sire, the lamb answers, may Your Majesty
Not get angry
But rather consider
That I'm quenching my thirst
More that twenty feel below Them
And that, by consequent, in no way
Can I muddy Their drink.
- You muddy it, repeated the cruel beast
And I know that you've spoken ill of me last year
- How could I if I wasn't born yet
The lamb retorted, I'm still suckling my mother
- If it's not you then it's your brother
- I don't have any - Then it's one of yours
For you hardly spare me, you, your shepherds and your dogs
I've been told so. I have to avenge myself. »
On this, to the deepest of the forest
The wolf takes it and eats it
Without any other form of trial.

- Jean de La Fontaine, 1668

These civilians are all dead. The only survivor is the small dog or cat in the carrier.

These photos just slayed me yesterday.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

If anyone is looking at photos or footage, have you seen the beautiful white dog? Slightly larger than a lab, I would say. At first I thought he belonged to someone. Now I’m not so sure as I haven’t seen him on leash. He’s throughly enjoying himself running with the people & even wading through water.

Poor thing. Makes me so sad.

Murdering people but leaving out dogs seems to be a thing with Russians.

There is footage of a father getting shot and the son recording him, taking cover. At the end of the video, the son seems to be shot too. A dog (presumably theirs) appears. Another video shows what happened next. The bodies of the father and the son lie in a ditch. The dog is still alive, sitting next to the bodies.