"Damn Ukrainians should all be filling their varenyky w/anti-fascist liberty cabbage! That was the forum's preferred term for 'sauerkraut' back then, don't ya' know."

(Just a guess, but I'd imagine that Curry Comrade prefers eating pelmeni. Along w/a healthy serving of crow.)

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2024 11:28 am Just anecdotal, but I know three people from Eastern Ukraine. One of them indeed thinks this war is all NATO's fault.

On a related note, isn't it true that the business-political-mafia group running Donbas had been using their region-covering TV channels to Fox News the population with pro-Russia stuff?

kokorodoko wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2024 10:24 am

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2024 11:28 am Just anecdotal, but I know three people from Eastern Ukraine. One of them indeed thinks this war is all NATO's fault.

On a related note, isn't it true that the business-political-mafia group running Donbas had been using their region-covering TV channels to Fox News the population with pro-Russia stuff?

The woman in question was born over there but came to the States well prior to the war. So it really wouldn't apply to her.

But yeah, pretty much.

Although in some cases, it wasn't even necessary. B/c you can already get Russian tv and radio signals in most of Eastern Ukraine anyway.

Russian outsiders were also brought over the border to fill government posts and run disinformation campaigns.

To be fair, some of the population in Donbas consists of unemployed miners and factory workers who suffer from a fair amount of Soviet nostalgia. (Never mind that their economic woes have everything to do w/deindustrialization and nothing to do w/living in a country that began defying Moscow more and more. It's kind of like how many in the state of West Virginia wrongly see Trump as the guy who will bring back their jobs. Putin knew such people were easy marks for a Make Ukraine Great Again deal.)

Funny thing is that many who initially thought Russia might improve their life ended up changing their minds after the reality of the occupation sank in. They felt betrayed by both Kyiv and Moscow. B/c at least Kyiv wasn't starting a war.

(Warning, long read ahead!)

As for the Russian-spawned media operating w/in Eastern Ukraine:

https://rsf.org/en/ten-years-war-donets ... on-russian

"The “Luhansk People’s Republic” has had more than 200 Russian-controlled media outlets since 2019 while the “Donetsk People’s Republic” has had around 30. The “local authorities” also took over pre-existing Ukrainian media such as Union TV, which was turned into a Russia propaganda relay in 2014.

The occupation of the news media landscape has intensified since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Media from the Russian Federation have also officially established themselves in Donetsk and Luhansk. They include the Russian state radio and TV broadcaster VGTRK, which opened a subsidiary in Donetsk in September 2023. Some of these channels are accessible between 20 and 50 kilometreskilometers within the territory controlled by the Ukrainian government, on the other side of the front line.

The local Ukrainian journalists who have been arrested for refusing to cooperate with pro-Kremlin media include such as Stanislav Aseyev, a correspondent of the US broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Following his abduction in Donetsk in 2017, he was detained and tortured for nearly two years for “espionage,” until released as part of a prisoner exchange in 2019. In January 2024, the Ukrainian court system passed a 15-year prison sentence on his torturer.

Some local media outlets in the regions occupied by Russia for the past ten years relocated to other parts of Ukraine. They include the editorial staff of Realna Gazeta, an outlet that was based in Luhansk. They fled the city in July 2014. The media outlet is now registered in Kyiv, from where the editorial staff continue to cover the news in eastern Ukraine using information provided by local sources. Russia has nonetheless tightened its grip on the inhabitants of these regions since its largescale 2022 invasion, limiting the information getting out.

Russia continues to reinforce its control over reporting in the occupied Ukrainian regions by opening “journalism” schools and developing pro-Kremlin media."

---

The following applies to media manipulation efforts in Russia, Ukraine, and the West, starting well before the invasion of Crimea or Maidan. I'd argue that Russian media in Ukraine was already broadcasting all kinds of outlandish shit already when I was over there in 2009:

https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac ... _Final.pdf

"Ukraine has been a target of Russian state-sponsored disinformation campaigns since at least 2013, preceding Russia’s first military invasion. The goal of these campaigns is to weaken the Ukrainian state and its international support, to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty and national security....

During the Revolution of Dignity, Russian state media started a massive disinformation campaign about protests in Ukraine. Protesters, who represented
different regions and social strata, and spoke both Ukrainian and Russian, were branded as “Nazis”. False information about Kyiv streets being trashed by
marauders was disseminated by Russian government-controlled media. Russia’s partial invasion of Ukraine in 2014 went hand-in-hand with a huge
disinformation effort. Russian government and media lied about the identity of soldiers who seized government buildings in Crimea, presenting Russian military
personnel as “little green men” who came from nowhere. In order to stroke tensions in Eastern Ukraine and mobilize support for Russia, they tried to convince local
residents that the Ukrainian government was going to infringe upon their rights and attack civilians. Russian TV, which was still accessible in Ukraine, broadcast
propaganda about alleged crimes of the Ukrainian army....

Probably the most blatant example of this was a fake story about a “crucified boy”, aired by Russian main TV Channel One in July 2014. “Reporters” interviewed a
woman who claimed that a 3-year-old boy was allegedly crucified by Ukrainian soldiers in the central square in Sloviansk, Donetsk region. It was established by
independent journalists several weeks later that this had never happened and the woman who featured in a Russian TV report was a paid actor....

the Kremlin’s disinformation efforts to discredit Ukraine were not only targeting audiences in Ukraine and Russia; many Ukraine-related disinformation campaigns in and after 2014 focused on swaying the public abroad. Up until 2022, Russia was able to build a well-developed global infrastructure of state-sponsored media targeting foreign audiences, such as RT, Sputnik, TASS, in addition to a network of websites in different languages, and local outlets in various countries spreading Kremlin narratives.

One of the most prominent Russian disinformation campaigns prior to 2022 was related to the downing of the civilian Malaysian Airlines jet over Eastern Ukraine in
July 2014. Almost 300 people, travelling on Flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, were killed. Russian state media and various online and social media
channels came up with dozens of conspiracy theories about what might have caused the crash. Most of them blamed Ukraine for a missile attack on the aircraft, but more sophisticated conspiracies claimed that all passengers on board were already dead before the plane fell from the sky. A Dutch court ruled in late 2022 that MH17 was shot down by a Russian missile on direct orders from the Kremlin. It took eight years to establish the truth in court, and, in all those years, Russian media and
Kremlin’s foreign agents of influence continued to deny Moscow’s involvement and blame Ukraine.

The goal of this, and other Kremlin disinformation campaigns related to Ukraine, was (and largely still is) the following:

1. to mislead foreign audiences about the real situation in Ukraine so that a confused public loses interest;

2. to deny Russia’s involvement in the annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas, and, since 2022, in committing numerous war crimes in Ukraine
after the full-scale invasion;

3. to undermine international support for Ukraine, a country facing military aggression and violation of its sovereignty and borders by a powerful
neighbour;

4. to distract the attention from the fact that the territory of a sovereign country has been illegally annexed for the first time in Europe since the
World War Two;

5. to soften international reaction to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and depict sanctions against Russia as detrimental for countries imposing
them.

In general, since 2014, Russian disinformation about Ukraine revolved around several recurring narratives. Most of them are unfounded, but were mentioned in a
speech by Russian president Putin when he announced the launch of a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Here are some main
disinformation narratives:

• Ukraine is a country that is ruled by Nazis and needs to be de-Nazified;

• Ukrainian army and the government have been killing civilian population and "committing genocide" in Donbas since 2014;

• Ukraine is the same as Russia and it doesn’t have a right to exist as an independent state;

• Ukraine discriminates against ethnic Russians and Russian speakers;

• Ukraine is a puppet of the West and a failed state, and therefore its current government needs to be brought down.

What was clear to much of the world since 2014 became crystallized after February 2022: Russia is using information as a weapon. The genocidal rhetoric about Ukraine
on Russian state-controlled TV – where presenters, guests and journalists repeatedly denied its right to exist and dehumanizingly compared Ukrainians to
“cockroaches” – resulted in real-life mass executions of Ukrainian civilians by the invading Russian military forces."

Sure, but what exactly from the above doesn't apply to coverage of the situation from Western news sources in the opposite? Obviously in place to continue to justify their continued investment in the conflict to their taxpayers while Ukrainian people are dying for foreign interests. Perhaps it would be less glaringly obvious if they weren't also doing simultaneous spin on what's going on in the middle east and other things.

Is the Russian stance message so unfamiliar? Take for instance the US peeing their pants that China is opening a masive shipping port in Peru....

As nervous US military hawks have pointed out, if Chancay can accommodate ultra-large container vessels, it can also handle Chinese warships.

They're all cut from the same cloth.

zorg wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2024 2:52 pm Sure, but what exactly from the above doesn't apply to coverage of the situation from Western news sources in the opposite? Obviously in place to continue to justify their continued investment in the conflict to their taxpayers while Ukrainian people are dying for foreign interests. Perhaps it would be less glaringly obvious if they weren't also doing simultaneous spin on what's going on in the middle east and other things.

Is the Russian stance message so unfamiliar? Take for instance the US peeing their pants that China is opening a masive shipping port in Peru....

As nervous US military hawks have pointed out, if Chancay can accommodate ultra-large container vessels, it can also handle Chinese warships.

They're all cut from the same cloth.

Sorta, kinda, at best? But it's not remotely a comparable level of spin, deception, and far-fetched absurdity.

The U.S. media trades in a fair amount of bullshit and agenda. Absolutely! And in certain ways—regurgitating certain government talking points and PR—it might be getting worse. Can't dispute that in any way, shape, or form.

But it's a question of degree. And there's a huge difference that's harder to appreciate b/c most of us have never spent much time w/Russian news.

Large, respected sections of our media also openly and loudly question the actions of the U.S. From the landing in Granada during the '80s (so many jokes about its stupidity) to the Iraq wars. Never mind the open criticism of Israel in many mainstream circles (which is coming decades too late, but it's still a thing). There's discord and opposing voices. We'll see how the second Trump term affects this.

You don't really get that kind of polyphony and plurality in the Russian media. Not at all these days, really. What feeble voices there once were kind of faded in the '10s and were pretty well snuffed out after the most recent Ukraine invasion.

And mainstream, reputable news sources here aren't cynically peddling knowingly fake stories about crucified kids or accusing foreign agents of stuffing jets full of cadavers. Or giving accounts of a riot in Odesa that are easily refuted by video footage. I'd say that would be "unfamiliar" to most people outside of Alex Jones's old target audience. Makes FOX seem sober.

The government here also isn't quite as keen on torturing and/or assassinating journalists. (Yet?)

The Russian equivalent re: that port would be claiming that the shipping is the work of Peruvian-Chinese terrorists conspiring to oppress and harm Americans living in South America.

America's fabled big stick keeps getting smaller, in favor of (increasingly inept, if perhaps preferable) soft power. Whereas Russia even managed to indefinitely occupy parts of foreign countries (two of 'em!) during the 1990s, when it could barely stay afloat as an economy, much less as an empire.

losthighway wrote: Sat Nov 23, 2024 6:10 pm

Curry Pervert wrote: Sat Nov 23, 2024 4:09 pm If you two nazi apologists have quite finished your circle-jerk,

Ugh, that's such a bullshit move it makes it almost impossible to even bother with all the work you put into the rest of it.

Oh, so these two regularly throw insults at me and attemp to portray me as a trump supporter and that's all fine, but 'nazi apologist' has crossed a line?

Dude, it's not even inaccurate. The very next post after yours:

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Nov 23, 2024 8:06 pm phantom "Nazis"

ErickC wrote: Mon Nov 25, 2024 2:35 am y'all were fine with Chris Hall back then despite the fact that even a klutz like me could tell he was a shady arrogant douche when I joined in 2009.

I don't remember that specific name but there were a lot more dodgepots/trolls/wind up merchants back then, pretty much across the internet. These days they mostly seem to have herded themselves into specific places like 4chan and the like.

Also, there have been a couple of occasions when I have been offline for an extended period. I seem to have missed some controversies on this forum, which I have gathered reading posts that alluded to them but didn't give specifics. I did see someone mention Tommy in relation to DV and I think someone else alluded to some pedo stuff but I don't know who that was in relation to. Feel free to furnish more info if you so choose - or not, I understand if people don't want to be digging up old shit or airing dirtly laundry.

ErickC wrote: Mon Nov 25, 2024 2:35 am Maybe "the past" isn't some kind of benchmark for "good."

This place may well have improved in some areas but going soft on nazis isn't one of them.

ErickC wrote: Mon Nov 25, 2024 2:35 am I'm not insinuating that I don't think Ukraine has a far-right and Nazi resurgence problem - most of the western world does at this point. That's obvious.

Obvious? Not to these two - months of "it's all Russian propaganda" and "Ukraine doesn't have nazis" attest to that.

Curry Pervert wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2024 4:40 pm

losthighway wrote: Sat Nov 23, 2024 6:10 pm

Curry Pervert wrote: Sat Nov 23, 2024 4:09 pm If you two nazi apologists have quite finished your circle-jerk,

Ugh, that's such a bullshit move it makes it almost impossible to even bother with all the work you put into the rest of it.

Oh, so these two regularly throw insults at me and attemp to portray me as a trump supporter and that's all fine, but 'nazi apologist' has crossed a line?

Dude, it's not even inaccurate. The very next post after yours:

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Nov 23, 2024 8:06 pm phantom "Nazis"

So, "The people you're calling nazis are not nazis" is not being a nazi apologist. A nazi apologist would be explaining why some person they acknowledge is actually a nazi really isn't so bad.

However, some of your favorite talking points on the Ukraine issue would get you a high five and a hell yeah from Tulsi Gabbard at a cocktail party. That might not make you someone who's rooting for Trump, but it does show overlap with his policy.

I think what you're also missing above is this: white supremacists can be found in the police force and scattered around the military in every western nation. This is a problem, even/especially in the U.S. It does not give Mexico justification to invade the U.S. Just as "look that asshole in the Ukrainian marines has a swastika pin" doesn't manically make Putin right.

Curry Pervert wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2024 4:55 pm

ErickC wrote: Mon Nov 25, 2024 2:35 am y'all were fine with Chris Hall [from chicago] back then despite the fact that even a klutz like me could tell he was a shady arrogant douche when I joined in 2009.

I don't remember that specific name but there were a lot more dodgepots/trolls/wind up merchants back then, pretty much across the internet. These days they mostly seem to have herded themselves into specific places like 4chan and the like.

Also, there have been a couple of occasions when I have been offline for an extended period. I seem to have missed some controversies on this forum, which I have gathered reading posts that alluded to them but didn't give specifics. I did see someone mention Tommy in relation to DV and I think someone else alluded to some pedo stuff but I don't know who that was in relation to. Feel free to furnish more info if you so choose - or not, I understand if people don't want to be digging up old shit or airing dirtly laundry.

I think if you ask chatbot who is the pedophile, and show it what you both just typed, it will tell you.