It’s something, I guess.
The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday suspended Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council over reports of “gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights” by invading Russian troops in Ukraine.
It’s a token response to this (warning: grisly photos), but yeah, it’s something.
But the scale of the killings and the depravity with which they were committed are only just becoming apparent as police, local officials and regular citizens start the grim task of clearing Bucha of the hundreds of corpses decomposing on streets and in parks, apartment buildings and other locations.
As a team from the district prosecutor’s office moved slowly through Bucha on Wednesday, investigators uncovered evidence of torture before death, beheading and dismemberment, and the intentional burning of corpses.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what else we can do, short of escalating the war.
There is one major thing we can do besides that.
Document it and get the information out to the world for now and for future historians. Never forget what the Russians did and why. It is what we did with the Holocaust.
It might not help with the present situation with the Ukrainians but everyone who lives around and/or deals with the Russians will know they are dealing with brutal, amoral killers.
We can do quite a lot.
Nationalizing oil and gas industry to increase the supply and convince EU not to use oil and gas from Russia
Offering better deals to Venezuela and Iran for the same effect.
More weapons to Ukraine – not just manpads, send tanks, artillery, planes. Offer US built weapons to every country that has post soviet inventory that Ukrainians are trained to use.
Send fuel, food ammo and other supplies, including money
push the issue in UN. If necessary make it impossible to dodge: describe specific case and demand voting in UN to condemn it (the deed, not perpetrator) so China cannot pretend they are neutral on it, then prepare resolution that this deed was done by russians, so not voting yes would make it impossible without assuming bad faith.
Offer asylum to everyone who can show they are educated and in danger by staying in Russia (and basically one vkontakte post condemining the war is enough in Russia today)
Invest in propaganda – objective and good quality info broadcast through Radio, TV and internet – Everywhere where you can convince local government to broadcast it close to the border (Finland Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, KAzakhstan, Mongolia Japan) + satellite.
And more weapons supplies and money sent to Ukraine.
What I don’t see is why the Russians did this.
.1. Part of it is just terrorism. Random mass slaughter is a good way to subdue the population in the country you are occupying.
By the time the Russians took back Chechnya, 20% of the population had ended up dead.
.2. Part of it is genocide.
The Russians are trying to eliminate the Ukrainians any way they can. More ethnic cleansing.
Already there are 4 million refugees. Tens of thousands dead.
No wonder the Ukrainians are fighting so hard. They live there and what other choice do they have?
.3. Part of it I’m sure is just sadistic brutality.
No, I won’t explain it because I don’t understand it.
You want to avoid escalation? Forget it, that ship’s already sailed. We have a protracted barbaric war on our hands, and now that Russia is concentrating their attack on the eastern parts of Ukraine, we can expect to see EVEN MORE of the savagery that’s now coming to light around Kyiv. The only way this stops is if both Ukraine and NATO step in to make it stop. Russia is going as far as they’re going because no one stopped them earlier, and they’re going to keep on going until their neighbors stop worrying about “escalation” and do whatever is necessary to stop them.
Appeasement and equivocation to avoid escalation is how things got escalated this far.
I’m having problems getting more worked up about a few more dead people. Yes it’s a war crime, but so is the entire invasion. They’re bombing civilians, killing thousands. That’s the real crime, there is nothing legitimate about it.
“What I don’t see is why the Russians did this.”
Well, the Russians didn’t do this, PUTIN did.
The Russians have practically zero experience with democracy. For pretty much all of their history, they have been under the thumb of one dictator or another, call them kings, call them czars, call them secretaries of this committee or that, call them presidents, it doesn’t matter. The people of Russia have always been way down low on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: they worry about whether they can refill their pantry and whether they can get enough vodka to have a fun weekend, and that’s about as far as their psyches have been allowed to stretch.
Not that I am letting Americans off the hook. The fact that the orange greaseball got millions of votes in 2020, AFTER proving what an incompetent, lying, self-serving scumbag he is to the entire world, just proves that most homo sapiens are unfit for democracy. But, we have to work with the clay we are given.
Meanwhile, Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is tweeting:
She either thinks things will be worse than the Great Depression, or she’s not aware of that chapter in history. And other countries will shun America.
And, of course, it’s always about US.
@#7
You know what, I don’t even hate MTG. A rat’s gonna do what a rat’s gonna do. Who I hate are the shitbags who keep voting for her.
Oh, for chrissakes, now she’s quoting Henry Kissinger:
My reply:
Best I can do on short notice.
He didn’t just get millions of votes; he got millions MORE than he got in 2016. He didn’t just keep his base, he won over new people. People who sat on the fence in 2016 went out to vote for him in 2020, because they liked what they saw.
You have a point here.
Just who is escalating the war in Ukraine right now anyway?
It is Russia.
They’ve gone beyond invasion and occupation to rape, mass murder of civilians, looting, and leveling whole cities like they did to Grozny or the Syrians did to Raqqa. It is starting to look a lot like ethnic cleansing and genocide.
And we are already following along out of necessity. Those defensive weapons we send the Ukrainians are now including tanks among others.
Who wants to just sit around and watch the slaughter without you know, trying to stop it?
But the scale of the killings and the depravity with which they were committed are only just becoming apparent
The GWB administration prefered to call it “Shock and Awe”.
LykeX
“People who sat on the fence in 2016 went out to vote for him in 2020, because they liked what they saw.”
Yep.
LykeX@10:
A guy Wife used to work for (he owns a restaurant, a bunch of rental houses, sells restaurant equipment, and owns a cigar store) voted for Trump in 16. He was disgusted by the incompetence, corruption and venality of the Trump misadministration. Yet he voted for Trump in 2020 because Trump isn’t as corrupt as the liberals, he pisses the liberals off, he saved America from liberal fascism, and he kept America out of wars. And he says, with a straight face, that Putin would never have tried this with Trump in office. (He leaves out the caveat to that statement)
This is a slap on the wrist. But it is movement in the right direction — further marginalizing Putin’s regime. So far, the Biden administration has been doing (in my limited view) of walking the tightrope between supporting Ukraine and localizing escalation to prevent, or at least slow down, a possible World War III. If the US and/or NATO get into an actual shooting war with Russia, the chances of the West losing control of the situation, or of Putin committing the ultimate atrocity, becomes that much more possible.
“the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.”
Such as…? Seriously, does Kissinger have any actual policy in mind?
“Unfortunately, I don’t know what else we can do, short of escalating the war.”
A couple of answers:
1. You could focus on what you can do in other places. The freezing of the Afghanistan’s funds by the US has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis there. WHO estimates a million children will die of starvation by the end of the year. I am sure, at least intellectually, you don’t see a brown child to be of less value than a white child. Emotionally it might be a different matter. Or not. Regardless, this is a US action and as a US citizen you have some clout. At the very least you could publicize the actions of Afghan and US women who are fighting against this slaughter such as Unfreeze Afghanistan (https://www.unfreezeafghanistan.org/)
2. Broaden your reading a bit. The Russian killing of civilians is unforgivable. Putin should be tried for crimes against humanity – not least for what he did in Chechnya. But this is war. Having lived through several I have seen how easy it is to remove the humanity of one “side” and how easy it is to believe the utter depravity of one “side” and the angelic nature of the other. After all who can forget those babies ripped out of the incubators by Iraqi soldiers. A quote from your comments section:
"Russia is a stupid country with stupid people. There’s no hope for that country in the short-term or even for a few generations. "
Do you really want to encourage bigotry of this sort? If not, perhaps read something from outside of the US media and reflect the view of the rest of the world in your posts. You don’t have to read things at RT or Sputnik if that really bothers you. But there is a world outside of Europe and the US. If you are limited by only knowing English there are plenty of international publications in English that could give you a non-US centered point of view. If nothing else read some of the Indian press and scholars.
You did kind of ask.
Also, it was Putin who started this war, and all the other wars that led up to this one; and he did all of that to distract attention away from his own failures as a tyrant/strongman/neo-tsar. So whether or not it accomplishes anything, demonizing Putin is TOTALLY APPROPRIATE here. It was his decision; no one else drove him to it, and no circumstances forced or required it.
this is nothing new the only thing new about it is the scale. When the Chechen separatist held the school children hostage it was Putin who sent the army in and killed everyone including the children not much happened.
I do not want to see a hot war between NATO and Russia but we have no control of what Putin will do and it has been very clear that he does not value human life much.
sanctions, aid of all kinds and open condemnation is all we can do for the moment.
we have in essence something very similar to a hostage situation I am sure that all our forces are on high alert
@3 raven
Because that is what they always did. My country was “liberated” by soviet forces so they only raped and looted without mass killings at least.
That’s how they wage war.
And because they have a complex about not being treated the way they deserve and their only point of glory in last 100 years is defeating Nazis, they just call everyone who is not pro-Russia “Nazi” and against Nazi everything is allowed.
@5 Erlend Meyer
There is huge difference. War crimes happen during every war and stop when fighting stops. Outright genocide happens relatively rarely and really speed up after aggressor wins.
If it would be war crimes we are talking about than deescalating military action would have some merits.
But this is planned genocide, it’s not about stopping war, it’s about defeating Russia. And the sooner the better, for economy and for humanity, not only for Ukrainians.
And any peace deal, any ceasefire is unacceptable. We cannot allow ethnic cleansing to be a way to influence future referendums, so at this moment the only solution that is fair is peace treaty with Ukraine getting back control over its all territories, including Donbas and Crimea.
@6 moarscienceplz
I’m sick and tired of people trying to push “Putin bad, Russians good”. NO, they aren’t. It wasn’t Pootin’s dick that raped all those women, and Pootin wasn’t personally ting people up torturing them and killing. Russians generally hate Ukrainians, don’t see them as separate nation and believe they deserve to be “destroyed”.
People who are against the war are just a tiny minority.
Yeah, they got shitty rulers for about 460 out of last 500 years and they have been maltreated and conditioned to be this way, but it is not something we can change. Every scenario where Russia won’t suffer crushing defeat will be just postponing the conflict for later.
@12 Ray Ceeya
I don’t remember mass rapes and executions being standard operational procedure in Iraq.
As someone from post soviet block country I had to dip my toes in both rivers. USA commits atrocities and is whole of people “Right or wrong, my country”, but there are also people who believe in “I want to right my country”. You study your crimes, you are ashamed of them, you make movies about them and sometimes you try to atone or at least to avoid them in the future.
Russia will always bury it’s wrongdoings, will send you to prison for talking about them and studies them only to learn how to do them more effectively next time.
That’s why NATO is so popular in Eastern Europe. Because it’s not Russia and Russia is afraid of it.
@16 arrow1
It is not bigotry when it’s true.
It’s not Pootin that cheated decent Russian nation into war, he read correctly what people want. They above all want a history of their country being big and important and not letting anyone else to stop them from subjugating someone like those subhuman hohols.
In my country there is a lot of dissidents from Russia and Belarus, there is a lot of my countrymen who live or lived in Russia, I have enough avenues for insight into what’s going on in Russia to lose any hope that anything except Russia’s military defeat and economic collapse can stop atrocities in Ukraine.
I tried some “non-west centric” sources of informations. And every time it was either russian propaganda or bothsideism attempting to give cover to russian propaganda. And every time any article strays into discussing matters I am familiar with personally, it becomes immediately obvious there’s no point reading further.
But if you have a source that you trust, please share. I’ll give it a try.
I am aware of Ukrainians and West having propaganda of their own, but there’s no comparison.
I have not followed the debate, here in Europe everything is obscured by the war.
I am interested in which accusations the Repubs tried to stick on her.
Satanist? A past as a gang member? The real killer of JFK?
Oops, wrong thread. My bad.
@ ^ birgerjohansson : her = ???
@ 2. Gorzki : I like your sugegstions there.
@ Various. Russian people are liek everyother peopel – peopel whoae individuals and diverse. many oppose the watr and have taken brave actions to protets it, many have left and sadly, many more have gone along with it. I dothink this war is all down toPutin’s ambitions and ego and his personal fault.
@ 21. birgerjohansson : Ah. That makes sense now, I’m guessing the newest SCOTUS Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson then?
I could swear the %$#@!@$# computer changes letters round on me.. sorry. Fix & expansions for clarity :
Russian people are like every other people – people (humans) who are individuals and diverse. Many of them oppose the war and have taken some incredibly brave actions to protest it, Many have left and sadly, many more have gone along with it. I do think this war is all down to Putin’s ambitions and ego and his personal fault..
@19. Gorzki :
From what I gather – and maybe I’m wrong but pretty sure – a lot of Russians have Ukrainian relatives and vice-versa. Do you really think they see their own relatives as “sub-human”” or haven’t visited them and met other non-related Ukrainians who they see as people like them?
I think that’s backwards and its really that bigotry is not true and if something is true then it will contradict bigotry. Russia’s population is not amonolith of like-minded clones. Didn’t we learn that in the Cold War? As sung in Leningrad
Fair enough. However, I don’t think that menas allRussians support Putin’s war or are stupid or blinded by propaganda. Indeed it contradicts it. Many Russian s – like many Australians, Americans, Madagascans or whatever other nationities you care to name are stupid, do fallfor teh propganda, do support awful things – and many also don’t. Blaming allRussians for what Putin does makes as much sense as bblaming all Americans for Trump or all Aussies for what Scummo does. I’ve learnt thehard way that no group of people is all bad or all thinks the same. Blame people for what they do and say not for theri national aand ethnic background. Blame Putin? Absolutely! he has proven he is an eil soiopathic tyrant and wanna-be Tsar. Condemn those who follow him for following him? Sure. Blame all Russians? No, just, no.
Oh FFS! Leningrad song link take II
Hopefully that will work now?
To those interested in a view that does not glorify the slaughter of people – “ours” or “theirs” – this article by Jeremy Corbin is worth reading.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/03/jeremy-corbyn-ukraine-russia-putin-peace-stop-war
From that article:
“Nobody actually ever wins a war. Even having a war is a defeat for all of us. And so the question is how to halt the wars as quickly as possible and move on to a process of peace, understanding, and recognition. The worst-case scenario in the current conflict in Ukraine is a complete occupation, huge loss of life, and then the outbreak of resistance of a civil war, which could go on for a very long time.”
“Some say that being antiwar is a sign of weakness. The opposite is true. It’s a sign of strength that you are prepared to look at the current conflict and say this has to be resolved and we have to bring about peace. So, what we need is more voices for peace, more anti-war activists around the world to expose the dangers and the folly of war and oppose what their governments are doing.”
@arrow1 #26
Ukrainians are currently being slaughtered by the Russians, Russia itself has openly announced that they wish to ethnically cleanse the place so any more villages, towns and cities falling into Russian hands means more deliberate butchery.
The “we” are the people who oppose such efforts, the “them” are the people supporting those efforts.
There’s no middle way because the middle way immediately places you in “them” territory. You are either for genocide or against it.
Si vis pacem para bellum
arrow1 @26: Well, that was a masterclass in wishy-washy from Corbyn. “War is bad”. “Why can’t we all just get along?”. Barf.
@AugustusVerger #27
You exemplify what I am trying somewhat inarticulately to say. When you see the situation as us versus them there is an increasing tendency to make stuff up in order to show how horrible they are and how glorious we are. You say:
“Russia itself has openly announced that they wish to ethnically cleanse the place ”
That, I am sure you are aware, is not true. Even if the Russians wanted to ethnically cleanse the place they would not “openly announce” such a thing. The reason you say what you know to be false is it “shows” the brutality of the other.
There are definitely ways to proceed in which people don’t have to die. But in order to find those ways you have to give up the posturing and the desire to score, care more about the suffering, and less about winning.
@28. Rob Grigjanis : War is bad. (Understatement.)
It would be better if people could & did get along.
What part of those is wrong let alone vomit-worthy exactly? Motherhood statements, maybe but still.
Or do you think what? War isn’t bad? People shouldn’t get along and try to find ways of doing so if at all possible?
Within some reasonable limits admittedly.
Too obvs?
What part of what Corbyn said do you disagree with and why precisely?
FWIW. I think Putin is to personally to blame for this whole war and needs removing but anyhow. Still.
@arrow1 #29
See, I had you immediately pegged down as a tanky or russbot with your first post. I gave you a chance and you blew it by engaging in the usual gaslighting efforts.
You want a peaceful end to this war with minimal bloodshed? Here’s the simplest way: Putin retreats from Ukraine, including the stolen territories of Donbass and Krimea immediately and unconditionally and stops attacking Ukrainian territory. Then a peace can be maybe achieved diplomatically despite Putin having about lost all credibility, but it’s a start.
The only thing that keeps Russia attacking Ukraine is Putin wanting it to be so. The only reason people are dying there right now is him. He could stop this at any time,
And please no hand-wringing about Russian security concerns or whatever, Russia about lost all justication for that when they invaded Ukraine.
@24 StevoR
Let’s backtrack a bit: people are generally similar everywhere – they are loving their friends and hate their enemies, they want to hep others but also want to get stuff for free.
While your genetics defines quite a lot the in-group differences are always bigger than between-groups differences, so much that genetically between group differences are irrelevant.
But most of what humans are, are malleable. That’s why you get stereotypes of national trends. Most funny map I saw about that was percentage of women working fulll time job in Europe, with big spike in Nordic countries and USA, with big spike in Midwest. It was never about blond hairs, but about role models you brought from home passed through generations.
And while being raised in specific place also doesn’t define you, there are trends that will be visible. Traits you get from your family and those you imprint on yourself when learning history of your country as a kid. Probably that’s why Poles (our history for last 2 centuries are just a string of insurrections and fighting all around the world “for our and yours freedom” and being really free for last 33 years) understand Ukrainians so well (national mythos built on cossacks, free people opposing both polish and russian invaders and being subjugated until last 31 years) and why Russians will never understand them – 450 out of last 500 years just being ruled by one tyrant or another who kept his population poor and uneducated so it could only cope with no personal agency by being proud how Russia is big and powerful and defeats other countries. That’s not my words, that almost exact quote from russian journalist and activist.
My comment on bigotry was an answer to appeal not to blame Russians for the war. That not all russians are evil.
Of course not. In group differences are always bigger. All russians are met personally are great and loving people. But the trends are overwhelming.
People in big cities know Europe, use internet, they are practically the same as people from EU, some of them are happy that Putin is showing NATO how strong Russia is, most are indifferent, they have their life, few of them protests.
But if you want to keep numbers fair, talking about protesting russians to describe russia is like talking about Azov to describe Ukrainians or talking about rioters during BLM protests to describe Afroamericans in the USA. It’s distorting the image.
Most people in the province just have no other source of information than state propaganda and they were molded by it. If you listen to propaganda and you see it doesn’t make sense, you can confront it with reality, you get inoculated to it. But people inside russian province have no defence. no cross reference. That’s why I suggested radio and TV stations along the russian border, because it worked in communist occupied Poland.
Most of Russian support vicious nationalistic war and it’s not their fault at all but it’s nothing we can do about.
I’ve listened to enough stories from common people and celebrities from Ukraine who tried to tell their families in Russia what’s going on in Ukraine, but where told “you must be lying, our military shoots only nazis and they don’t attack the civilians. It must be Ukrainians who bombed you”.
QAnon, antivax, pro-russia, what’s the difference….
You say “Blame people for what they do and say not for theri national aand ethnic background. Blame Putin? Absolutely! he has proven he is an eil soiopathic tyrant and wanna-be Tsar. Condemn those who follow him for following him? Sure. Blame all Russians? No, just, no.”
And you imply by that to blame “some russians” but not “most russians”.
I agree with you to blame people for what they do and say. To condemn those who follow Pootin. But my point is that it will be “most russians” not “some russians”
I’m against attacking specific people until they show they deserve it. But I believe we can blame Germans of 1930s for the holocaust and we can blame Russians for this war, even while we still understand that they weren’t born evil, they just didn’t oppose evil enough to stop it before it consumed the soul of the nation.
@29 arrow1
What are exactly ways that would allow people not to die?
Pootin openly admitted, that Ukraine is not a country and should be brought back
https://www.vox.com/2022/2/24/22948944/putin-ukraine-nazi-russia-speech-declare-war
RIA novosti, state affiliated media that voices what Kremlin allows it to explained to us what the plan was, even if by mistake
https://central.asia-news.com/en_GB/articles/cnmi_ca/features/2022/03/02/feature-02
and recently published the new plan for Ukraine
https://medium.com/@kravchenko_mm/what-should-russia-do-with-ukraine-translation-of-a-propaganda-article-by-a-russian-journalist-a3e92e3cb64
and now we see widespread rape, torture, murder and looting in occupied towns.
you wrote “That, I am sure you are aware, is not true. Even if the Russians wanted to ethnically cleanse the place they would not “openly announce” such a thing. The reason you say what you know to be false is it “shows” the brutality of the other.” because you don’t believe any aggressor would admit to it, your opinion on what’s reasonable is your evidence, so you don’t believe it could happen.
Well, it happened.
You may pretend it’s just a journalist. Well, If Trump nationalized Fox News and Sean Hannity made similar statement, would you believe this is what Trump thinks?
I have no idea if reports on mobile crematorias being used in Mariupol to cover the issue or if kidnapping civillians from donbas, taking away their documents and sending them to Sachalin witout the right to travel for years are true.
But I constantly hear not to compare Pootin to Hitler, not compare war in ukraine to holocaust. And with every week we have another step in that direction and we still hear that’s not the same and we should just look for a peace talks.
Okay, we have peace talks. Any decision that would legitimize annexation of crimea or suggest some referendums in donbas in the future, would only mean, that if you are ready to sacrifice some soldiers’ lives, you can take territory, ethnically cleanse it and annex it via referendum.
And there are world leaders, that would prefer “forever owning” an extra piece of land over some money and people that you can get back. They are wrong but that is what drives their decisions.
StevoR @30: What part of ‘wishy washy’ don’t you understand? Corbyn offered nothing but platitudes. I even agree with them, but how does that even remotely help? Can you tell from that article whether Corbyn favours supplying Ukrainians with weapons?
@AugustusVerger@31
“See, I had you immediately pegged down as a tanky or russbot with your first post. I gave you a chance and you blew it by engaging in the usual gaslighting efforts.”
Oops, cover blown! I am “them” now and life became simple again.
Following on from #33:
The problem is that Putin would agree. He’d much prefer if people just surrender without a fight and let him rule forever. It would be much cheaper.
Everyone agrees that peace is preferable, but some people are okay with making a desert to get it. Personally, I’d prefer a peace that doesn’t include a massive genocide first.
And that’s the part that’s left out of Corbin’s response: How do we get there? More to the point: How do we get Putin to agree to a peace without letting him kill however-many people? It’s all well and good to wish for unicorns and caramels, but how do we get them?
Singing Kumbaya may be inspiring, but it won’t stop the white phosphorous from melting your skin.
‘It needs but one foe to breed a war, not two, Master Warden,’ answered Éowyn. ‘And those who have not swords can still die upon them.”
no they would not necessarily say it out loud i am sure. They never lie or bend the truth at all and the special military action is not an invasion it is just to get rid of the national socialist cabal that has taken over. they are not targeting cities and train stations, hospitals and theaters and other places of civilian shelter either.
It is often said and is always true actions speak louder then words
Interesting is, on open, unencrypted radio, Russian soldiers discussed and received orders to murder civilians and Germany intercepted those transmissions and handed them to the press.
Laughably, the press then jumped on whataboutism over Ukrainian forces killing Russian soldiers that were prisoners, apparently not bothering to learn what Geneva Convention reprisals are, or even care, it bleeds, it leads, screw the civilians to sell their news product.
If the press of today was reporting on post D-day military action, they’d go on and on about allied war crimes in executing Waffen SS troops that had just murdered hundreds of Allied POW’s and just before, exterminated entire French towns. They’d report that Nazi concentration camps weren’t that bad because the US had concentration camps, glossing over the entire genocide thing.
In other joyous news, Russian troops dug in in the “Red Forest” at Chernobyl, spreading contamination far and wide and likely bringing it back out with them when they departed.
Alas, it’s likely that they’ll mostly spread it around eastern and southern Ukraine, rather than just taking the crap home with them.
It’s not high level any longer, but it’s just high enough to be easily detected and hence, be a royal pain in the gonads to decontaminate equipment. They also looted the reactor complex and its warehouses.
So, here’s to hoping that they grabbed a gross of cobalt-60.
Which would never be stored at a reactor complex.
If you want to see tankies and russbots Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin, and Yanis Vaoufakis of Stop the War here is a link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87342019553