southerntofu @ southerntofu @lemmy.ml

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4

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34

Joined

6 yr. ago

One side… that has 0% representation in current media for SOME reason.

That's definitely not true. You are the proof of this. While many national outlet are spewing NATO propaganda, others are spewing Kremlin propaganda. I'm hoping we can have more balanced information on lemmy.ml, that accounts for psyops on both sides of the conflict.

Quoting should help here, because Putin’s recent speech tells otherwise.

OK let's dissect Putin's speech together:

I am referring to the eastward expansion of NATO, which is moving its military infrastructure ever closer to the Russian border. (...) First a bloody military operation was waged against Belgrade. (...) Then came the turn of Iraq, Libya and Syria. (...) in the 1990s and the early 2000s, when the so-called collective West was actively supporting separatism and gangs of mercenaries in southern Russia

Geopolitical concerns between the two big empires (Russia and NATO), nothing about Ukrainian separatists. Though in this part of the speech, Putin presents separatism (in the Caucasus presumably) as morally wrong and dangerous.

they sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within, the attitudes they have been aggressively imposing on their countries, attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature.

Being slightly informed about Putin's fight for cis-hetero-patriarchy, this appears to be anti-LGBT propaganda. Nothing to do with ukrainian separatists.

Moreover, these past days NATO leadership has been blunt in its statements that they need to accelerate and step up efforts to bring the alliance’s infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders. (...) The problem is that in territories adjacent to Russia, which I have to note is our historical land, a hostile “anti-Russia” is taking shape.

Once again this is about sovereign nations and their choice of military alliances (i.e. not Russia), nothing to do with ukrainian separatists. Special note that Putin explicitly appropriates Ukraine territory ("our historical land") and in the same sentence acknowledges that his colonial stature fuels "anti-Russia" sentiment.

For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation. This is not an exaggeration; this is a fact. It is not only a very real threat to our interests but to the very existence of our state and to its sovereignty.

This is highly debatable. Russia is a major military power and has weapons capable of destroying half of Europe and Asia. In the "delicate balance of terror", there is no indication that the balance has been broken (despite NATO expansionism, Putin still has one-click "life-or-death" button over much of the world) and Putin is not providing any evidence for Russia to be under risk of military attacks.

For eight years, for eight endless years we have been doing everything possible to settle the situation by peaceful political means.

Saying "i won't destroy you if you don't become friends with my enemy" is not peaceful political means. It's threats.

We had to stop that atrocity, that genocide of the millions of people who live there and who pinned their hopes on Russia, on all of us. (...) the showdown between Russia and these forces cannot be avoided. It is only a matter of time

Putin talks about a genocide which beyond ordinary (and yes, unfair) State repression does not exist in Ukraine, and never provided any evidence for that. If anything, there is evidence that much of this spectacle was planned in advance (video metadata in official releases). And once again, Putin does not provide any evidence that Russia is in any way threatened.

Moreover, they went as far as aspire to acquire nuclear weapons.

There is exactly zero evidence for that that i could find. On the contrary, Ukraine used to be a major nuclear power in the times of the USSR and agreed to dismantle its entire arsenal in order to acquire relative peace with both Russia and NATO. This sounds a lot like the Bush administration's "weapons of mass-destruction" narrative in Iraq back in the early 2000s.

Russia accepted the new geopolitical reality after the dissolution of the USSR. We have been treating all new post-Soviet states with respect

As the military repression (some would say civil war) in muslim States (such as Checheny) and in Caucasus has shown, Russia has been treating separatists and ordinary citizens way worse than the Ukrainian has ever treated the people of Donetsk (at least from what we know publicly so far).

To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation. (...) It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force.

So they don't plan to occupy the country, yet they are bombing the capital and intend to impose ("not by force" ?!) their laws and judicial systems, as well as fully demilitarize a sovereign nation. Is that not a textbook example of a colonialist invasion?

You look to be on the side of Ukraine, that wants to prevent the oppressed people of DPR and LPR to have independence

I'm on the side of the people, against Nation States and borders. I recognize the autonomy of local community and am ready to support people struggling for their independence. I'm not on the side of Ukraine and i'm not on the side of Russia, and i'm certainly not on the side of NATO as i'm anti-France, but i also have to be against Russia on this because they're the ones who "fired" and keeps on shooting.

Your first question mixing Putin and NATO on the same side is a fallacy

On the contrary, it's the only reasonable analysis. Putin and NATO are two sides of the same dice of colonialist garbage. I stand with the people not with governments, as is a foundational principle of socialism (i strongly recommend some historical socialist/anarchist anti-war propaganda). Overall, i strongly recommend that you listen to the demands and cries of comrades on both sides of the border.

You are okay with NATO invading Russia and surrounding it with Aegis missile system

I'm not OK with either. But NATO did not invade Russia and AFAIK is not planning to. There is zero evidence to believe

Russia protecting Donbas citizens from Ukraine

I have no problems with that. But that's not what's happening: there is a full-scale invasion going on threatening the capital of Ukraine, where Putin's demands go far beyond independence for Donbass.

To you, Zelensky, who has a 25% approval rate and jailed the democratically elected Poroshenko and banning opposition media

What the hell are you talking about? I may be missing some details, but Poroshenko's wikipedia page does not mention incarceration, but mentions losing in the elections to Zelensky. To quote the article:

There was no true consensus (...) why Poroshenko lost (...) [:] opposition to intensifying nationalism, failure to stem corruption, dissatisfaction of overlooked Russian-speaking regions with his presidency (...) He is considered an oligarch due to the scale of his business holdings in the manufacturing, agriculture and financial sectors, his political influence that included several stints at government prior to his presidency, and ownership of an influential mass-media outlet. (...) His presidency was distilled into a three-word slogan, employed by both supporters and opponents: armiia, mova, vira. In translation from Ukrainian, it is: military, language, faith.

I'm not saying Zelensky is much better, but you seem to be ardent to defend an actual bourgeois fascist whose slogan is "military, language, faith" and inventing conspiracies around him? I mean if you do have reliable sources contradicting this Wikipedia article, please help improve it.

Or is it selective Cold War bias going on?

Yes there's selective cold war propaganda going on. And you're fully subscribed to one side of it. I personally am very critical of both sides of the propaganda, and supportive of the civilians and internationalist socialists/communists/anarchists suffering due to political repression on both sides of the border. As much as you dismiss Greenwald, he's doing a correct journalistic job on this topic: he's presenting the lies from both sides and supporting the victims (the populations). You're just a puppet of the Russian Empire. Which side are you on? Are you on the same side as Putin and NATO and other vampires playing the same game of geopolitics? Or are you on the side of the people who struggle against oppression and aim for self-organization at all levels of society?

I've read it. Some sources in there are interesting, but the material itself is completely disconnected from reality. In the sociopathic game of geopolitics, NATO expansion has certainly destabilized the balance of power and incentivized Russia to assert itself (and its claim on its former colonies). But you cannot compare countries forging military alliances, and a country invading another country... it's a completely different kind of escalation.

If anything, your article confirms that Putin is a colonialist bully just as much as NATO is in other parts of the world. It's just russian propaganda and does not account for mischief and imperialist ambitions on the part of Russia. If you want a more nuanced source, i'd recommend checking out Glenn Greewald's Twitter feed: it does a great job to denounce the hypocrisy of western powers, while at the same time acknowledging that invading a sovereign nation is always wrong, no matter what.

Ukronazi

What's this neologism? Are you not aware nazis are very well integrated in the State apparatus in many nations? It's not just Ukraine: it's also Russia, France, Germany... So why paint a single nation as nazis when more or less of all the parties involved in the conflict are varying brand of imperialism and racial/cultural supremacy?

supporting a planned Ukronazi attack on Donbass republics

What's the evidence that there was a wide-scale attack planned? If that was true, it could justify bringing military support to Donbass as an incentive for the central government not to attack, but how could it ever justify invading the rest of Ukraine?!

Russia also offered diplomatic solutions many times (since December, and in fact since 2014).

From this article, the demands formulated by Russia amount to saying eastern european countries can't have military alliances except with them (neocolonialism, much?). Interviewed russian foreign ministry says:

This is not about us giving some kind of ultimatum, there is none. The thing is that the seriousness of our warning should not be underestimated

That's not a diplomatic solution, that's extortion/bullying. "Do what i say, or else..." has nothing to do with diplomacy and nothing to do with the political autonomy of specific regions.

just a few days ago Ukraine threatened to develop nuclear weapons. That was obviously a red line for Russia

Iran did pursue to develop nuclear weapon for decades. Has that ever justified a full-scale military invasion from the USA? Oh yes, the USA fascists and hard-liners from the republicans would have loved that. Just like the various fascists, traditionalists and neo-nazis of Russia who love the flag and the military really love the idea of conquering Ukraine and reforming a Great Russia (like historical nazis liked their Great Germany). I did not think i would ever say this in my entire life, but do you realize you're spitting propaganda from actual fascists in the name of fighting against nazism?

Where has the US been which provoked the war and said it "stands with Ukraine?"

I have yet to see any evidence that western powers are in any way responsible for the war. If you consider the war is caused by the ukrainian government not respecting the Minsk agreements, then it's an internal policy matter and i fail to understand how that implicates the USA. Moreover, from all i could see western powers (at least in open/official channels) have been preaching for de-escalation whereas Putin was openly calling/threatening for escalation.

I hate the US and French colonial empires, but come on it's hard to blame them when another major colonial empire invades a country (which just so happens to be its former colony). In true internationalist spirit, we should be supportive of people struggling for freedom & equality on both sides across continents and borders. Fuck nation states and military organizations, vive la commune!

Yes there is a lot of russophobia and sinophobia on the part of conservative elements of society (remnants of anti-bolshevik propaganda), but there is also legitimate concerns against imperialist behavior on all sides. A lot of people you see criticizing Putin for invading territories are the same people you saw criticizing France invading Mali or USA invading Iraq/Afghanistan. A lot of the people here in France concerned with russian invasion of Ukraine are the same people who were very much against France joining NATO.

Not all of us are media-driven puppet who have to choose a side between equally-evil sides. I personally side with the people/communities who struggle against imperialism, whether it's zapatistas in Chiapas, various communities in Rojava, popular movements in Hong Kong, independentists in various french colonies (Guadeloupe, Kanaky, Bretagne), or the people of Ukraine who are facing military invasion at the hand of their former colonizer.

Of course we need to keep a critical look at western propaganda in this matter, and how separatists in certain parts of Ukraine are treated, but that does not mean we should support another colonial empire in this geopolitical game of sociopaths, and it certainly doesn't mean that people disgusted by military invasion saying "fuck putin" on internet forums are puppets of NATO interests.

Though it's fair to point out that the global empathy toward ukrainian people is both media-manufactured and based on ethnocentric principles of "white people are affected" and "it's a European country being invaded, not some African/Asian country". But in order to deconstruct these racist narratives and revive the internationalist movement, it's not a good start to support a dictatorial regime who's rebuilding the former Russian empire, is increasingly reinforcing the cis-heteropatriarchal dogma hand-in-hand with the orthodox fundamentalists, and has zero insightful criticism in regards to its own history of genocide and political repression (against muslim populations of the USSR, against anarchists in Russia/Ukraine, etc).

I'm not sure changing phone very often helps avoid "detection". I heard so as well, but i doubt this "breach" is gonna stay open very long, because it's very trivial to check how often you change phone number which could trigger a flag for account review.

You only need a SIM to register the account, you don't need to renew/change it every week :)

Hello, sorry i don't know what phone guide you're referring to ("privacy" and "phone" in the same sentence sound really weird to me), but there's plenty of resources for "opsec"/"infosec" in a selfhosted context.

Here is a nice list of gamified challenges to reach. In addition, you may want to ensure you have Full Disk Encryption on your server (huge tradeoff: can't restart the server without entering your passphrase). Riseup also has tons of cool resources in their docs.

Like you admitted yourself, security and privacy are not the same. Running your own selfhosted services will probably leak more metadata than using shared services. For your personal conversations and your friends, it's a good approach. To organize political agitation against your nefarious nation-state, it's probably a risky strategy: breaking into your home to backdoor your server is easier and more discreet than to do the same for a shared host like riseup.

If you would like to give more specific about what kind of info you're looking for then maybe we can provide more detailed answer. Like poVoq said, we are interested to publish more guides on joinjabber.Org (we just started that project) to answer common questions/concerns. We have a draft FAQ (not merged on the website yet) about security concerns, please let me know if it's informative to you or if you have more questions.

He was making a good point. Huge multinationals often have departments with wildly different behaviors/policies. These departments are often in conflict with one another, or don't know so much about one another. I agree with you trusting anything remotely associated to Google is utterly stupid when it comes to privacy, but the argument exposed was not stupid.

It was in fact solid insider's advice, to know to exploit differences between branches of a given tentacular company in some circumstances. For example, Debian's cooperation with Lenovo for better hardware support is in fact a collaboration with a specific department within Lenovo, and has a lot of blocking points from other departments.

EDIT: Also another good point was that selfhosting services (eg. services just for "me") often leaks more metadata than using shared services which other folks connect to as well.

So i never heard about citadel project before... From their Code of Conduct (or lack thereof):

Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) are prohibited from participating in the Citadel community.

Not that i identify with this SJW label, but my interpretation is they're pretty happy without most of us :)

I prefer having this filter rather than not having it, mostly because of the systemic effects I explained.

That's also the case for me, in case that was not clear :)

I think some words are almost always meant to harm, and can be easily replace by more positive or neutral term.

I don't think it's that easy, because of the context. Should all usage of the n***** word by black people be prevented? Should all usage of w****/b**** words by queer/femmes folks in a sex-positive context be prevented? etc.. I agree with you using these words is most times inappropriate and we can find better words for that, however white male technologists have a long history of dictating how the software can be used (and who it's for) and i believe there's something wrong in that power dynamic in and of itself. It's not uncommon that measures of control introduced "to protect the oppressed" turn into serious popular repression.

Still, like i said i like this filter in practice, and it's part of the reason i'm here (no fascism policy). As a militant antifascist AFK, i need to reflect on this and ponder whether automatic censorship is ok in the name of antifascism: it seems pretty efficient so far, if only as a psychological barrier. And i strongly believe we should moderate speech and advertise why we consider certain words/concepts to be mental barriers, but i'm really bothered on an ethical level to just dismiss content without human interaction. Isn't that precisely what we critique in Youtube/Facebook/etc? I'm not exactly placing these examples on the same level as a slur filter though ;)

The devs explain here a clear intention to make this change difficult enough to prevent at least partially the migration of some communities they don’t want to support and/or give a platform to.

I'm happy it's becoming harder for neonazis to find a home online, however i'm not happy that this makes lemmy english-centric, and i'm not happy that honest discussion about some topics (including thoughtful criticism) will be made harder.

Related example: on another message board a few weeks back i couldn't post a message containing my criticism of "bitcoin" because bitcoin was part of the slur filter to filter out the crypto-capitalist clique... i understand and appreciate why it was put in place, but i felt really powerless as a user that a machine who lacks understanding of the context of me using this word, decided i had no right to post it. I appreciate strong moderation, but i don't trust machine to police/judge our activities.

Well it depends what type of "communism" we're talking about. Fascism has usually a pretty clear understanding: repression of political dissent, emphasis on a national feeling and a sense of unique destiny to destroy/conquer whoever disagrees, various forms of eugenism (in the sense of killing people because they're homosexual or handicapped), the cult of work as a duty to your homeland, as in some cases also strong racism (to my knowledge this is not a feature of italian fascism, but rather other forms of nazism/fascism).

So now, what is communism? According to marxists and anarchists, communism is the stateless, peaceful, egalitarian society. However, marxists believe an intermediary step is required to reach communism: the dictatorship of the proletariat, which has led to countless deaths and suffering. So if "dictatorship of the proletariat" is your definition of communism, then i would almost agree with you "communism" is just as bad as "fascism". However, there still are some differences:

• women's rights (and often gay rights) are faring well under marxism-leninism ; that is, women are equal in their right to be exploited by the State
• most leninist regimes, despite their atrocities, are not known for putting forward racial theories and committing genocides (although Stalin in the USSR had quite some genociding on his hands)

So no, it's not the same. And in any way, most people you will meet through life will talk about communism as the principle free and equal society. That is, the abolition of privileges (remember 1789?) and freedom and equality for all. In this anarchist understanding of communism, then really there's nothing wrong with communism.

Free association + Mutual aid + Solidarity against domination = <3 Short introduction to anarchism i wrote in another topic