/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>486589
Of course they're making it up. They took pictures with an Asian-looking dead soldier in a Russian uniform. Russia has Asian-looking people in its army since Russia is geographically mostly in Asia.

They're really laying it on thick…

Tens of thousands of North Koreans fighing in Kursk… hundreds dead… but none captured, why? oH ueaj, that's right, they're all committing suicide to spite the Ukrops! Those dastardly Norks!!
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/12/28/7491084/

>>486621
Admittedly, it'd be more interesting if it's true.

>>486622
that doesn't make it true, though. if DPRK soldiers really were fighting Ukraine, we'd get more proof than a few blurry photos of dead bodies

>>486623
what we learned from the media is that all people in the DPRK have the Kim Yong Un hair cut, so they should be easily identifiable.
Also since everybody in the DPRK has starved to death several times over by now, they must have necromancer technology and their soldiers can't die. Also they have plastic weed and corn fields which means they must be able to digest plastic. So the undead guy with a distinctive hair-cut that's chomping down on plastic with gusto, that's the DPRK guy.

>>486621
>the sins I committed
How the fuck would north koreans know about the concept of sins? When religious uyghurshit was supposedly prohibited.

Never one to shy away from an opportunity for PR and self-promotion, World Famous Actor Volodymyr Zelensky sat down for three hours with Youtube interviewer Lex Fridman today. The frontlines collapsing all around, the Russian military making enormous territorial gains over the last several weeks, Zelensky himself preparing to give into Western demands and send 18-year-old Ukrainians to their deaths… This is quite an interesting time to be hobnobbing with e-celebs. What's this all about? Is Zelensky trying to sweeten up his popular image with the Western public to garner sympathy for his imminent escape from Ukraine?

>>486765
Ukraine just killed a battalion of North Koreans in 48 hours.
https://united24media.com/latest-news/zelenskyy-russia-loses-entire-north-korean-battalion-in-kursk-within-48-hours-4882
Crimea Beach Party 2025! Moscow by Christmas!

>>486765
I'm not masochistic enough to listen to a Zelesnskyy-ramble. Id say Chances of him getting out alive are slim. Converting teenagers into cannon fodder just to buy a few weeks of time is really macabre.

>>486768
This one's great too:
https://united24media.com/latest-news/zelenskyy-russia-burns-faces-of-north-korean-soldiers-to-conceal-their-identity-4889

I like how they'll brazenly admit to war crimes–mutilating the dead, a war crime under the Rome Statute of the ICC treaty that Ukraine signed–to facilitate their ridiculous war propaganda.

>>486765
>the Russian military making enormous territorial gains over the last several weeks
Elaborate on this?

The Guardian is so shameless holy fuck lmao.

>>486824
Maybe the guardian went to shit, but it could also be a violation of pressfreedom. As in journalists getting coerced to spew war propaganda.

Maybe we need to enhance the leverage of journalists to resist coercion. We could grant journalists the right to shoot anybody who tries to lean on them to skew their coverage. And include a few armed combat lessons in journalism school. It probably wouldn't solve the problem entirely but it would raise the difficulty of subjugating the media to the whims of warmongerers.

>>486776
>In 2023, they lost a total of about 540 sq km and liberated about 430 sq km.
Surprised to see that language from Pravda not complaining though.

>>486828
They're referring to the UA forces. In the title, Russians "seize" territory.

>>486899
Yeah, I got that, I just assumed it was Russian Pravda at first, hence why I was surprised. I didn't see the .ua after the .com. It would be weird if Russian Pravda phrased things this way.

>>486899
Does the language game pay off ? As in, is it really worth it to call governments one doesn't like "regimes" or like in this case say "seize" instead of "liberate".

Are we doing it wrong by not calling Ukraine "the democracy abandoned Bandarist neocon backed regime" or something like that ?

>>486901
… I mean, personally, "seized" and "liberate" are both perfectly accurate in this case. Like, I don't see that as particularly propagandistic - Ukraine objectively has a better claim to that territory than Russia does. Russia's best claim for reason to be there is security concerns, and that still doesn't entitle them, legally, to control of the territory or anything like that. I wouldn't even have commented on it at all if I hadn't mistakenly thought that the linked article was from regular Pravda instead of Ukraine's Pravda. It would be weird if Russian Pravda wrote it that way, but it would be weird if Ukrainian Pravda didn't.

>>486908
>I mean, personally, "seized" and "liberate" are both perfectly accurate in this case. Like, I don't see that as particularly propagandistic
Clearly these words are not synonymous, but i can't really be bothered to pick this apart.

>Ukraine objectively has a better claim to that territory than Russia does.
The Russians did a referendum, and while you can criticize that on the basis that it did not include people who fled the war, or that it was held while the Russian military was present, it's still more democratic than Ukraine's abolished elections. Technically Ukraine doesn't have a government until they hold elections.

>Russia's best claim for reason to be there is security concerns, and that still doesn't entitle them, legally, to control of the territory
The US invaded Ukraine via a covert war, you know the CIA arming and training groups like Azov. I don't know enough about international law to say for sure, but i think the Russians can claim that this was the US attempting to mass forces on Russia's boarders which technically is an act of war.

I think that it's pure ideological distortion to say this was a war between Ukraine and Russia. Nato poured so many weapons into Ukraine that it would best be described as a Russia-NATO proxy war. International law prohibits proxy wars too, so not sure where that leaves this.

Then there is the matter that some regions of formerly east Ukraine declared independence from Ukraine, that is something people can do. Democratic self determination and all that jazz. Lets not forget that the Ukrainian government was doing heavy discriminating against some parts of the population. You can only claim governance over people that are enfranchised. But wait there is more. At some point the Ukrainian military began shelling residential areas, they claimed to be part of Ukraine. I'm sorry but I don't really see how that tracks. I think that's the point when Kiefv relinquished it's claims. Governance by artillery that's not really a thing.

My preference was east Ukraine becoming a new country, instead of this war. The western governments would have needed to officially recognize it for that to happen. So i do get why this is fantasy-land.

The neocon approach to international law seems to be might makes right, in that sense Russia proved to have more might.

You have to understand where i'm coming from, I'm not willing to entertain a narrative that legitimizes neocon policy, i see that as a matter of principle equivalent to international law. The neocons are universal wreckers that seek to undermine organized human society. What they have been doing is destabilizing the US and Europe too, Russia is not their only target. When you looked at the legal dimension of the Ukraine war without any of the context, you triggered my "neocon narrative alarm neuron".

>>486901
>not calling Ukraine "the democracy abandoned Bandarist neocon backed regime" or something like that ?
Maybe you don't. I refer to Zelenskyy's govt. as "the Banderite regime".

>>486926
>The Russians did a referendum, and while you can criticize that on the basis that it did not include people who fled the war, or that it was held while the Russian military was present, it's still more democratic than Ukraine's abolished elections. Technically Ukraine doesn't have a government until they hold elections.
So:
1. Invade
2. Hold referendum in the territory you occupy
3. A year or more later, the country you invaded doesn't have an election
4. ???

See, steps 2 & 3 don't actually legally justify step 1.

>The US invaded Ukraine via a covert war, you know the CIA arming and training groups like Azov. I don't know enough about international law to say for sure, but i think the Russians can claim that this was the US attempting to mass forces on Russia's boarders which technically is an act of war.
Weren't Ukrainian factions in bed with those US factions tho?
It's really difficult either way for Russia to claim any of this was an act of war against Russia. I don't discount the claims of national security concern altogether, but they're not strong enough to justify the invasion, only to make me somewhat more sympathetic towards Russia than I otherwise would be.

>I think that it's pure ideological distortion to say this was a war between Ukraine and Russia. Nato poured so many weapons into Ukraine that it would best be described as a Russia-NATO proxy war. International law prohibits proxy wars too, so not sure where that leaves this.
I view it the opposite way.
It's a war between Ukraine and Russia. It's Ukrainians and Russians who are dying. Whether or not you see the Ukrainian gov't as legitimate, and there are plenty of reasons to question its legitimacy, the US clearly had something to attach to ideologically; namely, a long history of Ukrainian nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment. Russia made a huge mistake by invading because that antagonism was there, and this protracted war has only made it worse; whether Zelenskyy survives it or not, this will be a major problem for decades to come, and NATO hasn't had to lose a single soldier while Ukraine and Russia have lost thousands, with entire blocks of cities destroyed.

Ukraine will never be accepted into NATO, as the goal of the war was not for Ukraine to win, but rather to preoccupy Russia (while they were bogged down with this, Assad fell) and damage Russia's reputation internationally, and in Ukraine especially, with a long, brutal war. Whether or not these goals have been perfectly achieved to any permanent end (this I doubt), they have been furthered in ways which they had not been prior to the initiation of this war. If the US had had nothing, no patriotic substance, to grab onto, this would have collapsed much more quickly, they would have had to fight directly. But they didn't. They never did. So the Russians call the Ukrainians Nazis (some certainly are! Many aren't!) and celebrate the decimation of Ukrainian towns, the Ukrainians call the Russians orcs, and the two brutalize eachother while the weapons flow uninterrupted. It's a proxy war for the backers, but for those fighting it it's just a war.

>The neocon approach to international law seems to be might makes right, in that sense Russia proved to have more might.
It was never actually in question who had more might.

>The neocons are universal wreckers that seek to undermine organized human society.
And if they provoked this war then that was a pretty big success.

>>487045
Let me preface this with i will not agree with any argument that can be made to prolong this war. So if you are raising the question about the legitimacy of territorial claims in order to find a reason to keep this war going. Don't bother, ending this war, preferably yesterday, is what i would consider a premise of this debate. Basically peace takes priority.

>Steps 1 2 3 4
Ok lets do this again and fill in all the missing context. The current regime in Ukraine came to power via CIA regime change color revolution. That entailed gunning people down in Ukraine's capital city, that's basically sufficient reason already to no longer consider a government legitimate. A government comes from the people of a country not from the CIA. But that isn't where this story ends, it's just the beginning. They illegitimately banned religion and language. They enacted a hole slew of discriminatory legislation that disenfranchised a large part of their population. They shot with artillery and mortars at their own population, they banned most media outlets, they kidnapped masses of people from the streets, and then they also abandoned what was left of formal democracy. Let me iterate on this last point, it's never legitimate to do that. War can't be a loop-hole to abolish democracy. There are no exemptions to democracy.

You have to be drinking very potent ideological cool-aid to still consider, the regime that currently holds power in Ukraine, as legit after all that. I want to point out that Zelensky was elected on a very explicit promise to make peace with Russia and chart a course for Ukraine that was a middle way between the West and Russia. Neutral ground militarily and economic relations with both sides. Zelensky didn't have a mandate to fight a war. He had a peace-mandate which he betrayed the moment he withdrew Ukraine from the Istanbul peace talks, which was the last realistic chance for preventing a war. The Istanbul thing incidentally also preserved Ukraine's territory, meaning they would have retained the eastern part. (Crimea's succession from Ukraine happened with international observers present that witnessed no irregularities, so there is no basis for contesting that)

Basically democratic legitimacy was thrown out the window in Ukraine and it became an arena of might makes right. The neocons in the US, predominately the Kagen clan, wanted it that way because they thought a proxy war in Ukraine would enable them to bleed Russia which they consider a "great power rival" or something along those lines.

The Russians doing referenda in eastern Ukraine, is basically the only thing resembling democratic legitimization, in a otherwise democratic void.

Also the Ukrainian "government" tortured and killed Gonzalo Lira for youtube-rants. Fuck em.


>legally
<when we regime-change countries, that is OK
<when the Russian smash those, that is NOT OK
Well on paper we have international law, but you're delusional, if you think you can apply that selectively to serve a political agenda. It's basically a gentleman's agreement that only works if all the big powers play along. The neocons in the US don't even give lip-service to international law anymore. They waffle on and on about a "rules based order" and legislatively attack a number of UN institutions like the ICC for example. So… we get anarchy between states and it basically falls back to national law. And the Russians consider the NATO east-wards expansion after 1990 as a breach of the agreement they had with the US for removing their forces from eastern Europe. So they're not breaking any of their own laws. You can't evoke international law unless it means every country has to color inside the lines.

>Weren't Ukrainian factions in bed with those US factions tho?
It turned into a proxy war a decade ago, in 2014. 2022 was just a escalation. The US sided with fascistic elements , while the Russians sided with the social democrats and the communists in Ukraine.
>It's really difficult either way for Russia to claim any of this was an act of war against Russia.
The neocons have think-tanks that published strategy papers that stated they aimed to provoke a war in Ukraine in order to weaken Russia and then make the Russian state collapse via economic sanctions. In what world, is trying to make the other sides state collapse, not aggression ?

>I don't discount the claims of national security concern altogether, but they're not strong enough to justify the invasion, only to make me somewhat more sympathetic towards Russia than I otherwise would be.
Ukraine was a medium sized country between two big power blocks. As such they had 2 options:
<either remain neutral
or
<get destroyed as the battle ground for a proxy war between big powers.
The Russians offered Ukraine a deal where they would remain a neutral country, while the US did not, therefore the Russians were correct.
You are essentially trying to negotiate how close the US ought to be allowed to creep up on Russia. I'm growing tired of this, because it's an argument for giving the war-monger-gang a longer leash to play cold-war. I don't want cold war, i want detente. I want a peace dividend not rising military spending.

>It's a war between Ukraine and Russia.
Yeah given how much NATO weapons stockpiles were poured into Ukraine, this is a ridiculess statement even with your ideological blinders.

>Whether or not you see the Ukrainian gov't as legitimate, and there are plenty of reasons to question its legitimacy,
They tied people to posts for street-lights/signs in their underwear during winter and called them saboteurs.
>the US clearly had something to attach to ideologically; namely, a long history of Ukrainian nationalism
You mean the history of where the "hero" of Ukrainian nationalism Stephan Bandera joined forced with Hitler, to among other things, holocaust the Jews. Maybe that's not something one should attach to.
>and anti-Russian sentiment.
Basically Fascist being mad about getting crushed in ww2.
>Russia made a huge mistake by invading because that antagonism was there
How ? They won, Nato lost
>and this protracted war has only made it worse
protracted ?
2 years certainly isn't a short war, but given that they depleted vast NATO weapons stockpiles, it doesn't seem particularly slow.
>whether Zelenskyy survives it or not, this will be a major problem for decades to come
decades ? do you own stock of weapons companies ?
I think this will get wrapped up in 2025
>If the US had nothing, no patriotic substance, to grab onto
WTF ? This thing was a racket that ran on bribes, and they imposed a draft, their recruitment abducted people as if they were slave-catchers , which proves Ukrainians did not want to fight. "Patriotic substance" my ass.

> So the Russians call the Ukrainians Nazis (some certainly are! Many aren't!)
>the Ukrainians call the Russians orcs
How is that equivalent ?
Have you seen any green Russians with large canine teeth sticking out of their mouths ?
>the weapons flow uninterrupted. It's a proxy war for the backers, but for those fighting it it's just a war.
Except that the Russians had a voluntary military while Ukraine didn't.
>It was never actually in question who had more might.
So the neocons picked a loosing fight because of Geopolitical masochism ?
>And if they provoked this war then that was a pretty big success.
But they lost. The US lost a lot of imperial leverage because the sanctions war caused a dramatic surge in de-dollarrization. Europe's economy was destroyed on top of it.

>>487054
Don't forget that there were a series of mass murders of anti-Maidan activists on the heels of the coup. Once in the Kiev trade union building, and against to a bus full of people on their drive back to Crimea.

>>487055
Don't forget the union members the neo-nazis burned alive in Odessa while the Ukrainian police stood and watched.

>>487179
I think I got Kiev and Odessa confused. The attack on the historic Odessa trade union building was the big one everyone talks about. The bus massacre in Crimea nobody remembers.

Now that Trump has cut off the USAID gravy train, is the rest of Europe about to very quickly realize that the emperor has no clothes?

>>487343
Hopefully! No, it won't happen in time.

>>487347
In time for what, anon?

NOOOOO NOT THE HECKIN ELECTIONERINOS
YOU FORGOT TO CONSULT ME ABOUT THIS

>>487369
For Europe to stop acting retarded.

Trump reportedly announced a negotiated settlement.

>>487575
The Lensky banned diplomacy, there is no point in consulting him

>>487577
Really ? that would have been quick, what does the settlement say ?

>>487584
I haven't seen it. I heard it on… uh… Owen Jones, I think mentioned it. I haven't looked into it yet, let us know if you beat me to it.

Zelensky is suddenly going after all his remaining political rivals (particularly the ones propped up by the US after the Maidan coup in that infamous Victoria Nuland phone call) the moment it looks like he might finally have to face elections again. Z-bros, is he gonna make it out of this alive?

>>487588
>Z-bros, is he gonna make it out of this alive?
The US certainly isn't going to airlift him Saigon-embassy-style if he ruins their backup vassal puppets. So probably not.

Then again maybe the UK wants to save him, because they want to bring him to international diplomatic events to mildly irritate Russian diplomats with pettiness..

Maybe the Russians save him to prosecute him for war-crimes or something.

>>486565
Propaganda is really the thing stopping leftism in the west, and it's terrifyingly effective. At it's best it makes people think the complete opposite of what the reality is.

If socialists ever decide to fight a western government they should seize the media as a priority.

We did it…
We won!

>>487626
didnt watch it

>>487626
I watched it, but at what cost?

>>487626
At some point all i could here is Hugh Crane is winning, like spectator commentary for a local Pie throwing contest.

I had to stop listening to mainstream media because, at some point my brain started to invert everything they said in to the opposite, like subconsciously. They went so hard with the reality distortion that it triggered a bio-heuristic cognitive adaptation. Like when you wear those gimmick-glasses that make you see everything upside down, if you wear those glasses for long enough your brain compensates and you see everything normal again.

>>487627
give it a go, it's humorous.

>>487629
kek at that head-line speak.

So Trump just called Zelensky a dictator in a Truth Social post. Naturally neocon/CIA rags are rushing to correct him.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114031332924234939

>>487706
damn.. is Trump based in an accelerationist kind of way?

>>487707
Is pulling the world back from the brink of nuclear exchange and dismantling NATO actually accelerationist though? If anything it was Biden who accelerated the contradictions to a breaking point.

The European Union and NATO are the geopolitical arm of America's unconstitutional fourth branch of government.

American liberals are always looking to 'civilized Europe' for hope and guidance for a reason.

The hypocrisy of 'civilized Europe' is now being exposed to the world.

It is entirely dependent upon American military aggression and the colonial exploitation of Africa.

It's 'civilized Europe' which appears to be attempting to sabatoge peace negotiations in Ukraine and which, in the loudest and strongest terms, condemns proposals for the withdrawal of US troops from the continent.

It is also the reason Trump will fail utterly in confronting the fourth branch.

'Civilized Europe' will not allow America to cast off the parasitical fetters to world peace it calls 'human rights.'

And when the constitutional crisis inevitably leads to full-blown civil war in America - a war that has already begun at the highest levels of government,

'Civilized Europe' will be the main intervening power, to ensure the preservation of the occupation regime maintaining the global system for which global financial capitalist parasites are the main beneficiaries.

The only question is: Does America still have some barbaric pride left in it to resist this?

>>487706
>So Trump just called Zelensky a dictator in a Truth Social post. Naturally neocon/CIA rags are rushing to correct him.
The Lensky clearly isn't elected anymore, so that would make him a tator indeed. How did they "correct" him ? Did they say "he isn't a dictator, he's our vassal"

>>487707
>>487708
Neither are accelerationist imho. President Blinken was just a wrecker, Trump pulling out was rational (you know, lost war, lost cause), but we also don't really know what Trump's motivations are.

I guess it's also correct that nuclear war risk has decreased since diplomatic relations between the US and Russia have resumed.

>>487714
It's mainly Macron and Starmer doing this, the former was voted out already and probably shouldn't have any political power anymore. The latter is saying crazy shit, i wonder how long he'll remain in power.

>>487718
Just a simple Google search on this dictator thing is hilarious. From CNN to WashPo to Axios, they all are running damage control for the Z man. Most of these rags don't even have the basic journalistic integrity to directly link their source on Truth Social.

I didn't realize the context of Trump's outburst until now, but it seems this was in response to Zelensky and his Ukrainian/CIA propaganda apparatus trying to frame Trump as having said that "Ukraine was to blame for the war". Trump actually didn't say this, but Zelensky then had a scolding press conference where he acted like a Western "fact checker" in response to this media straw man and said that Trump was in a "disinformation bubble" and was being misled by Russia. Trump of course was the victim of a four year long propaganda campaign claiming he was an agent of Putin. Zelensky also talked about how totally popular he was in Ukraine but still can't have elections again.

The man of Z fucked up big this time and this is quite probably a career ender for him.

>>487720
They're idiots for Russia-gating Trump again, he gained political energy from that the first time around and strawmaning people is stupid too.

The "disinformation bubble" rhetoric is nothing more than a thought termination mechanism. Maybe we should co-opt the word and use it for something else, like diss-information, as in information useful for dissing somebody in combative poetry. That way it would have an actual meaning. Although it is tempting to call legacy media as the "war-monger information bubble".

>The man of Z fucked up big this time and this is quite probably a career ender for him.
True but the Lensky might be dead in a few months, because the Banderites might off him. They already made public threats.