|
Ukraine Open Thread 2022-201
Only for news & views directly related to the Ukraine conflict.
The current open thread for other issues is here.
Please stick to the topic. Contribute facts. Do not attack other commentators.
Zelensky's lies about the Ukrainian missile strike in Poland have damaged his credibility.
 bigger
We can hope that the media will now be more careful when they report of all the other lies Zelensky and his team are uttering on a daily base.
thanks b…
regarding your last line – i can’t see it myself, unless they have another useful idiot to replace zelensky.. the media will not stop spinning its bullshit to serve the interests of the 1%… i just can’t see it… so, any change means they are preparing for a new person to take over zelensky.. but this i doubt.. i am sorry i am such a cynical sob.. this is just a temporary lapse – my take.. they have to appear to be objective from time to time!
i skimmed over the comments, but agree with @ juliania | Nov 17 2022 16:04 utc | 15 – this all has to stop.. but i don’t think it will.. i hope i am wrong too! the lies are what has gotten the world to this point… on a positive note, the integrity of people has gotten us to this point too.. which will win out?? this reminds me of the cherokee fable –
There is a Cherokee legend about an elderly Cherokee brave who tells his grandson about life.
“Son,” he says, “Within all of us there is a battle of two wolves. One is evil. He is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
He continued, “The other is good. He is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”
“The same fight is going on inside of you, and inside every other person, too,” explained the wise Cherokee elder.
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The grandfather simply replied, “The one you feed.”
fwiw… enjoy the day folks!
Posted by: james | Nov 17 2022 16:34 utc | 24
@29 Guy L’Estrange
Because Oligarchs don’t want their income streams f’d with.
Someone posted a great article about it on ‘The Saker’ (Credit: Heartlander from “The Saker’ forums)
“Attacks on Ukraine’s railroad and critical infrastructure prevent Russian oligarchs from delivering, Sivkov said.
The Ukrainian railway infrastructure has not yet been destroyed, because Russian, Ukrainian and Western oligarchs are interested in this, continuing to earn money together on business schemes that have not changed since the start of the NWO.
Konstantin Sivkov, Deputy President of the Russian Academy of Missile and Artillery Troops, stated this on ORT.
According to Sivkov, Russian titanium is delivered to the West via Ukrainian railways, on which a number of industries, including the military, critically depend.
“Under the existing sanctions that everyone must comply with, there is only one “gray” communication that connects Russia and Europe. These are Ukrainian railways.
Russia produces 87% of the world’s titanium. All this titanium used to go to the needs of the Soviet Union – submarines according to the American classification “Alpha”, according to ours – “Lira” of the 705th project – these were boats made entirely of titanium hulls. 3.5 thousand tons of titanium. The Americans were shocked, because titanium is considered to be at the level of gold in terms of value.
After the destruction of our country by the thieves’ nomenclature of the Soviet Union, titanium became “not needed” here, since there was an interest of the West, primarily the United States, to get this titanium. The whole titan went to the West.
They began to make aircraft wings from titanium, the Excalibur shells for the M777 cannon, which is used against us today, are made from our titanium. If titanium stops deliveries now, then all this will stop. This is worse than gas, because the construction of the latest combat aircraft depends on titanium, among other things.
Therefore, our oligarchy, the Ukrainian oligarchy and the West are objectively interested in ensuring that this railway communication runs smoothly,” Sivkov said.
The main (90%) volume of Western military and material assistance to the Kyiv regime, which lost over 70% of the weapons available on February 24, comes by rail from western Ukraine (Lviv), bordering Poland and Slovakia.
Vulnerabilities – three bridge crossings within the range of tactical missiles and airborne forces, which can be destroyed by three pinpoint strikes at known coordinates. In this case, communications that support the viability and military stability of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the regime as a whole will be destroyed with the prospect of restoration at least a month or two.
Alternative trucking by road does not compensate for the logistical disaster. However, this does not happen, just as many enterprises of the basic economic and defense structure controlled by Kyiv avoid missile and bomb raids.
Export goods and products manufactured at the enterprises of Ukrainian oligarchs and their Russian partners are also exported along the mentioned railway routes in the opposite direction, to the west. After all, after the blockade of air communications, maritime transport and international motor transport, the railway, which was removed from the limits of Western sanctions, remained the only logistical export-import communicator.
Rear Admiral John Kirby, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said that, contrary to the logic of hostilities, US intelligence did not record a single attempt by the Russian Armed Forces and the LDNR by any means to block the flow of American and European weapons coming to the disposal of the front-line units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from late February to mid-April.
Probably, this explains the “indistinct” position of the majority of the Russian oligarchy and many of the most influential figures in the Russian Forbes list in relation to the US and EU hybrid aggression against Russia, including its most sensitive component – the fighting in Ukraine, and this also explains the strange course of the special operation.
The country must know its “heroes”…”
Posted by: Bob Jenkins | Nov 17 2022 17:15 utc | 37
Ukraine is fascist. It is not formally fascist in the sense that openly fascist political parties hold the majority of seats in the Verkhovna Rada nor is the president an avowed fascist. It is fascist because fascist political/military formations are incorporated into the armed forces and police of the Ukrainian state; because legal restriction, force, intimidation and violence promote the fundamentals of fascist ideology in Ukraine, especially the foundational myth of the Holodomor; because all working-class and socialist/communist political parties and trade unions are forbidden. (It is likely that the bourgeois media are already covering up incidents of anti-Semitic violence, especially against any groups not affiliated with Chabad, so closely associated with Ihor Kolomoyskiy, a major funder of fascist groups. I could be wrong of course but unfortunately there’s no way to track fascist violence in Ukraine and won’t be for an indefinite period, and it seems to me far more probable the fascists are not so disciplined they are restricting their fun to ethnic Russians/Russian-speakers. This is also true of gypsies, gays, militant feminists, likely other ethnic groups like Rusyns, Hungarians, etc., but very few people care about them, or even approve of patriotic repressions of evil ideas from libertine West.)
As a fascist country, Ukraine necessarily has difficulties in its relationships with bourgeois democracies. Both bourgeois democracies and fascist states are dedicated to imperialism, so there is an inevitable rivalry. Ukraine is not a friend to Poland. It considers lands cleansed of Poles to be Ukrainian territory and the massacre of Poles to be “Glory to Ukraine.” For its part, Poland, which has a powerful fascist trend of the ostentatiously Roman Catholic/less modernist flavor—more like Franco’s or Salazar’s or Tiso’s variants of fascism—is increasingly discovering its appetites for Galicia, Kaliningrad, perhaps Vilnius and surrounds in Lithuania (if not all Lithuania, in a revival of the Jagiellonian realm,) and western Belarus. But there is also a disharmony in the fundamentals of how politics works. The fascists are not keen on a Jew in official power, for one. Zelensky’s real powers are far below those officially held because the core of the state (or the cutting edge, perhaps?) the security forces are not in his control. But the ones remaining are still an obstacle to the dreams of the fascists, especially those who see themselves as the fuehrer instead of a comic actor. As a representative of foreign ideology, still supported by outside forces, Zelensky et al. still hamper the full gleichschaltung of fascist program, policy, personnel.
The thing is, that although Ukraine and Zelensky in particular are sensibly called puppets, everyone who forgets this term is a metaphor, that these are still people, not actual unliving things that couldn’t dream of cutting the strings, much less doing that, will mislead themselves. Thus, the suggestion (found in WSWS for one) that the Ukrainians deliberately fired a missile at Poland is not nutty conspiracy mongering. The US/NATO/EU are still capable of pretending there is a “controversy” about the origin, then when convenient suddenly talking about how the errant Ukrainian air defense missile was at some vague point in time “debunked” by somebody or other in some report that is rarely read, but often cited. But at this point, a one missile Ukrainian assault, like the murder of Dugina, is a weak actor’s attempt to spread the conflict at their convenience, not their rivals/ideological opponents.
Those who favor fascism and/or deem the liberal woke values of the wicked West maybe will tend to favor absurd explanations like a deep scheme to pretend there’s a conflict between Ukraine, all the better to, well, something not quite clear, but presumably nefarious betrayal is both inevitable and unexpected.
Likely there will be another favorite explanation, that Zelensky is merely desperate because, victory is at hand! The problem there is that bombing Poland cannot be expected to get NATO’s favorable attention *unless it is done with NATO’s approval, by some powerful faction therein at least.* The possibility that it really was an accident and Zelensky is simply stupid is not impossible…but Hanlon’s razor I think is much duller than people imagine. It’s much easier to pretend to be stupid than to confess.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Nov 17 2022 17:58 utc | 56
|