[OFF TOPIC] Russia-Ukraine War

[LDOG 2,418]

3 hours ago, Dunadan said:

Don't agree, or better would agree if we were comparing two extremes, a very developed and rich democracy to a North Korea - which I don't think is the case. Anyway what do you suggest: no sanctions at all that could affect athletes? No sanctions that affect athletes only if they come from dictatorships?

Their job is to give good exposure to the Army (Navy, Air Force, whatever) - they do it all the time and is well within regulations. They compete for the Army sport club (probably not very noticeable unless for media mentions by only watching competitions for NTs/federations), wear their sports uniform, or military uniform (Italians in equestrian is a case of this), thank their club in interviews + all the times that they are used for soft internal propaganda (media and social media exposure, public ceremonies, etc... what pro athletes do with their sponsors, in this case the sponsor is also a public and military employer, directly tied to the government). If this happens with Italians and Russia is such a brutal dictatorship, I guess it's several times bigger there and in a more nationalistic way.

If the ban is just to "prevent internal propaganda" then yeah, i'm not for sporting sanctions.

We're overestimating the importance of sport. It's not gonna be a deterrent for a tyranic government. As proven by North Korea or Cuba they can even tank massive economic sanctions for decades without giving a damn (and Russia is much bigger/self-sufficent), why would a ban from something as trivial as sport achieve any better results? It'll only affect the athletes themselves at the end of the day.

 

Now, I think a better argument than the one about internal propaganda was the one dcro brought up, that ukranians cannot compete in equal conditions.

Yet, if we want to be fully coherent with this criteria a good bunch of countries should also be banned for leaving others in "non competitive conditions" (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc). I'm not necessarilly against banning Russia if we are fully coherent with this...

[Dunadan 1,103]

2 hours ago, LDOG said:

Yet, if we want to be fully coherent with this criteria a good bunch of countries should also be banned for leaving others in "non competitive conditions" (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc). I'm not necessarilly against banning Russia if we are fully coherent with this...

still not considering that Russia in sports has been in an unique situation for the past 6 years - with every possible intermediate sanction already used.

[Dunadan 1,103]

Meanwhile a long and detailed article by Russian state media explaining what they mean with denazification of Ukraine - and it is as bad as you can guess:

https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html

 

Spoiler

Denazification is necessary when a significant part of the people - most likely the majority - has been mastered and drawn into the Nazi regime in its politics. That is, when the hypothesis "the people are good - the government is bad" does not work. Recognition of this fact is the basis of the policy of denazification, of all its measures, and the fact itself is its subject matter.

 

 

Ukraine is in just such a situation. The fact that the Ukrainian voter voted for the "peace of Poroshenko" and "peace of Zelensky" should not be misleading - the Ukrainians were quite satisfied with the shortest path to peace through the blitzkrieg, which the last two Ukrainian presidents transparently hinted at when they were elected. It was this method of "appeasement" of internal anti-fascists - through total terror - that was used in Odessa , Kharkov , Dnepropetrovsk , Mariupol , and other Russian cities. And this quite suited the Ukrainian man in the street. Denazification is a set of measures in relation to the nazified mass of the population, which technically cannot be subjected to direct punishment as war criminals.

 

The Nazis who took up arms should be destroyed to the maximum on the battlefield. No significant distinction should be made between the APUand the so-called national battalions, as well as the territorial defense that joined these two types of military formations. All of them are equally involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, do not comply with the laws and customs of war. War criminals and active Nazis should be exemplarily and exponentially punished. There must be a total lustration. Any organizations that have associated themselves with the practice of Nazism have been liquidated and banned. However, in addition to the top, a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi power. The just punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, carried out with the utmost care and discretion in relation to civilians. Further denazification of this mass of the population consists in re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, but also necessarily in the sphere of culture and education. It was through culture and education that a deep mass nazification of the population was prepared and carried out, secured by the promise of dividends from the victory of the Nazi regime overRussia , Nazi propaganda, internal violence and terror, as well as an eight-year war with the people of Donbass who rebelled against Ukrainian Nazism .

 

Denazification can only be carried out by the winner, which implies (1) his absolute control over the denazification process and (2) the power to ensure such control. In this respect, a denazified country cannot be sovereign. The denazifying state - Russia - cannot proceed from a liberal approach regarding denazification. The ideology of the denazifier cannot be disputed by the guilty party subjected to denazification. Russia's recognition of the need to denazify Ukraine means the recognition of the impossibility of the Crimean scenario for Ukraine as a whole. However, this scenario was impossible in 2014 and in the rebellious Donbass. Only eight years of resistance to Nazi violence and terror led to internal cohesion and a conscious unambiguous mass refusal to maintain any unity and connection with Ukraine,

The terms of denazification can in no way be less than one generation, which must be born, grow up and reach maturity under the conditions of denazification. The nazification of Ukraine continued for more than 30 years, beginning at least in 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism received legal and legitimate forms of political expression and led the movement for "independence" towards Nazism.

 

The peculiarity of modern nazified Ukraine is in amorphousness and ambivalence, which allow Nazism to be disguised as a desire for "independence" and a "European" (Western, pro-American) path of "development" (in reality - to degradation), to assert that in Ukraine "there is no Nazism , only private individual excesses". After all, there is no main Nazi party, no Fuhrer, no full-fledged racial laws (only their truncated version in the form of repressions against the Russian language). As a result, there is no opposition and resistance to the regime.

 

However, all of the above does not make Ukrainian Nazism a "light version" of German Nazism during the first half of the 20th century. On the contrary, since Ukrainian Nazism is free from such "genre" (essentially political technology) frameworks and restrictions, it freely unfolds as the fundamental basis of any Nazism - as European and, in its most developed form, American racism. Therefore, denazification cannot be carried out in a compromise, on the basis of a formula like " NATO - no, EU - yes." The collective West itself is the designer, source and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism, while the Western Bandera cadres and their "historical memory" are only one of the tools for the Naziification of Ukraine. Ukronazism carries not less, but a greater threat to the world and Russia,

 

The name "Ukraine" apparently cannot be retained as the title of any fully denazified state entity in a territory liberated from the Nazi regime. The people's republics newly created in the space free from Nazism should and will grow from the practice of economic self-government and social security, restoration and modernization of the life support systems of the population.

In fact, their political aspirations cannot be neutral - expiation of guilt before Russia for treating it as an enemy can be realized only by relying on Russia in the processes of restoration, revival and development. No "Marshall Plans" should be allowed for these territories. There can be no "neutrality" in the ideological and practical sense, compatible with denazification. The cadres and organizations that are the instrument of denazification in the newly denazified republics cannot but rely on Russia's direct military and organizational support.

 

Denazification will inevitably also be a de-Ukrainization - a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia, begun by the Soviet authorities. Being an instrument of the communist superpower, after its fall, artificial ethnocentrism did not remain ownerless. In this official capacity, he passed under the authority of another superpower (the power standing over the states) — the superpower of the West. It must be returned to its natural boundaries and deprived of political functionality.

 

Unlike, say, Georgia and the Baltic countries , Ukraine, as history has shown, is impossible as a nation state, and attempts to "build" one naturally lead to Nazism. Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that does not have its own civilizational content, a subordinate element of an alien and alien civilization. Debanderization by itself will not be enough for denazification - the Bandera element is only a performer and a screen, a disguise for the European project of Nazi Ukraine, therefore the denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.

The Bandera elite must be eliminated, its re-education is impossible. The social "bog", which actively and passively supported it by action and inaction, must survive the hardships of the war and assimilate the experience as a historical lesson and atonement for its guilt. Those who did not support the Nazi regime, suffered from it and the war unleashed by him in the Donbass, must be consolidated and organized, must become the pillar of the new government, its vertical and horizontal. Historical experience shows that the tragedies and dramas of wartime benefit peoples who have been tempted and carried away by the role of an enemy of Russia.

 

Denazification as the goal of a special military operation within the framework of this operation itself is understood as a military victory over the Kiev regime, the liberation of territories from armed supporters of the Nazis, the elimination of implacable Nazis, the capture of war criminals, and the creation of systemic conditions for the subsequent denazification in peacetime.

 

The latter, in turn, should begin with the organization of local self-government, police and defense bodies, cleansed of Nazi elements, launching on their basis the founding processes of founding a new republican statehood, integrating this statehood into close cooperation with the Russian department for the denazification of Ukraine (newly created or converted, say, from Rossotrudnichestvo), with the adoption under Russian control of the republican regulatory framework (legislation) on denazification, the definition of the boundaries and framework for the direct application of Russian law and Russian jurisdiction in the liberated territory in the field of denazification, the creation of a tribunal for crimes against humanity in the former Ukraine. In this regard, Russia should act as the guardian of the Nuremberg Trials.

All of the above means that in order to achieve the goals of denazification, the support of the population is necessary, its transition to the side of Russia after liberation from terror, violence and ideological pressure of the Kiev regime, after the withdrawal from informational isolation. Of course, it will take some time for people to recover from the shock of hostilities, to be convinced of Russia's long-term intentions - that "they will not be abandoned." It is impossible to foresee in advance exactly in which territories such a mass of the population will constitute a critically needed majority. The "Catholic province" (Western Ukraine as part of five regions) is unlikely to become part of the pro-Russian territories. The line of alienation, however, will be found empirically. Behind it will remain hostile to Russia, but forcibly neutral and demilitarized Ukraine with formally banned Nazism. The haters of Russia will go there. The guarantee of the preservation of this residual Ukraine in a neutral state should be the threat of an immediate continuation of the military operation in case of non-compliance with the listed requirements. Perhaps this will require a permanent Russian military presence on its territory. From the exclusion line to the Russian border there will be a territory of potential integration into Russian civilization, which is anti-fascist in its internal nature. this would require a permanent Russian military presence on its territory. From the exclusion line to the Russian border there will be a territory of potential integration into Russian civilization, which is anti-fascist in its internal nature. this would require a permanent Russian military presence on its territory. From the exclusion line to the Russian border there will be a territory of potential integration into Russian civilization, which is anti-fascist in its internal nature.

 

• —
  liquidation of armed Nazi formations (which means any armed formations of Ukraine, including the Armed Forces of Ukraine), as well as the military, informational, educational infrastructure that ensures their activity;
• —
  formation of bodies of people's self-government and militia (defense and law enforcement) of the liberated territories, protecting the population from the terror of underground Nazi groups;
• —
  installation of the Russian information space;
• —
  the withdrawal of educational materials and the prohibition of educational programs at all levels containing Nazi ideological guidelines;
• —
  mass investigative actions to establish personal responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, the spread of Nazi ideology and support for the Nazi regime;
• —
  lustration, publication of the names of accomplices of the Nazi regime, involving them in forced labor to restore the destroyed infrastructure as punishment for Nazi activities (from among those who will not be subject to the death penalty or imprisonment);
• —
  the adoption at the local level, under the supervision of Russia, of primary normative acts of denazification "from below", a ban on all types and forms of the revival of Nazi ideology;
• —
  the establishment of memorials, commemorative signs, monuments to the victims of Ukrainian Nazism, perpetuating the memory of the heroes of the struggle against it;
• —
  the inclusion of a complex of anti-fascist and denazification norms in the constitutions of the new people's republics;
• —
  creation of permanent denazification bodies for a period of 25 years.
•  

Russia will have no allies in the denazification of Ukraine. Since this is a purely Russian business. And also because not just the Bandera version of Nazi Ukraine will be eradicated, but also, and above all, Western totalitarianism, the imposed programs of civilizational degradation and disintegration, the mechanisms of subjugation to the superpower of the West and the United States .

 

In order to put the plan of denazification of Ukraine into practice, Russia itself will have to finally part with pro-European and pro-Western illusions, realize itself as the last instance of protecting and preserving those values of historical Europe (the Old World) that deserve it and which the West ultimately abandoned, losing the fight for himself. This struggle continued throughout the 20th century and was expressed in the world war and the Russian revolution, inextricably linked with each other.

 

Russia did everything possible to save the West in the 20th century. She implemented the main Western project, an alternative to capitalism, which won the nation-states - a socialist, red project. It crushed German Nazism, the monstrous offspring of the crisis of Western civilization. The last act of Russian altruism was the outstretched hand of friendship from Russia, for which Russia received a monstrous blow in the 1990s.

 

Everything that Russia has done for the West, it has done at its own expense, by making the greatest sacrifices. The West ultimately rejected all these sacrifices, devalued Russia's contribution to resolving the Western crisis, and decided to take revenge on Russia for the help that it selflessly provided. Further, Russia will go its own way, not worrying about the fate of the West, relying on another part of its heritage - leadership in the global process of decolonization.

As part of this process, Russia has a high potential for partnerships and allies with countries that the West has oppressed for centuries and which are not going to put on its yoke again. Without Russian sacrifice and struggle, these countries would not have been liberated. The denazification of Ukraine is at the same time its decolonization, which the population of Ukraine will have to understand as it begins to free itself from the intoxication, temptation and dependence of the so-called European choice.

 

[heywoodu 15,168]

34 minutes ago, Dunadan said:

In this regard, Russia should act as the guardian of the Nuremberg Trials.

Lol.

 

(Just in case someone misreads: article's words, not Dunadan's words )

[bestmen 2,822]

according to Moscow , USA  has never stopped buying Russian petrol 

 

[Griff88 1,952]

In an unrelated event, Israeli badminton player just defeated a Chinese player and the comments were filled with Indonesians and Malays condemning BWF for allowing Israel to play while banning Russia (also condemning why the BWF result bot showed Israeli flag but not the Chinese Taipei flag - which is actually caused by emoji limitation)

 

The pro Russian sentiment in Indonesia (not the government, but the common folks) is unusually high to the point that it is included in Wikipedia 

[Vic Liu 1,682]

2 hours ago, Griff88 said:

In an unrelated event, Israeli badminton player just defeated a Chinese player and the comments were filled with Indonesians and Malays condemning BWF for allowing Israel to play while banning Russia (also condemning why the BWF result bot showed Israeli flag but not the Chinese Taipei flag - which is actually caused by emoji limitation)

 

The pro Russian sentiment in Indonesia (not the government, but the common folks) is unusually high to the point that it is included in Wikipedia 

Haha. It exactly shows how different people have different angles and views towards the same thing. Chinese fans are furious about our talent star lost to a 33 year-old player who also play mixed double paired with his 63 year-old mother. And no one in China will leverage it to the Ukraine conflict or Muslim-Israel battle. But it also somehow explains to me why the West always interfere sports with politics which is annoying for me but total justice for them.

[dcro 10,210]

Sigh, "politics and sport shouldn't mix" always sounds great in a speech because everyone knows it's a total bullshit.

 

If politics played no part, then we would not have nations funding sports programs. Heck, then all athletes would have competed under .

 

Russians love to use it in their propaganda speech even though they mix sport and politics more than anyone else. But it still sounds great. Can't resist 

 

 

[Dolby 735]

49 minutes ago, Vic Liu said:

Haha. It exactly shows how different people have different angles and views towards the same thing. Chinese fans are furious about our talent star lost to a 33 year-old player who also play mixed double paired with his 63 year-old mother. And no one in China will leverage it to the Ukraine conflict or Muslim-Israel battle. But it also somehow explains to me why the West always interfere sports with politics which is annoying for me but total justice for them.

To be frank, everyone mixes politics and sports. It is not limited to West. I am sure all of us can collectively list instances involving all the major countries. 

[Vic Liu 1,682]

45 minutes ago, Dolby said:

To be frank, everyone mixes politics and sports. It is not limited to West. I am sure all of us can collectively list instances involving all the major countries. 

That’s true. When I mix politics and sports, from my point of view, I stand for justice and claiming it’s not politics. So maybe no one is playing the game or everyone is playing it.