Russia Attacks Ukraine

[Diogenes]

For the first time since 1939 a major European power, Russia, has attacked another country in Europe, Ukraine. We have not seen an analogous situation since Germany attacked Poland setting off World War 2. Surprisingly we have Neville Chamberlain like appeasement/isolationist responses from Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson. Besides the 180 turn from traditional Republican politics, to what extent are these events relevant to Christianity?

[Jose Fly]

When Americans Support Murderous Foreign Dictators

Smarter people than I will try to break down the myriad of reasons why people who claim to be patriotic citizens of this nation would become cheerleaders for and admirers of the highest-ranking Russian mobster as he encroaches on another sovereign nation, but heres what I do know:

People who place themselves in the camp of Vladimir Putin are not patriots, they arent America First, they arent Christians, and they arent pro-life.

Theyre also not people who get to drape themselves in the flag, or invoke allegiance to this nation, or feign offense at kneeling football players, or spout some red, white, and blue nationalistic nonsensebecause they never cared about any of it.

I can see you're quite outraged by all this aren't you Jose.

I'm just curious, why is open support for Putin more reprehensible than say open official government support for Saudi Arabia? The Cato institute rank countries by their "Freedom Index" and rate Russia as 6.23 and Saudi Arabia as 5.12, the lower number means worse over all human rights. (Turkey ranks at 5.79, worse than Russia yet oddly, is a NATO member).

In 2015 Saudi Arabia began an air bombardment of Yemen, "assisted by" the US and UK. So far this has led to 260,000 people dying, UN experts claim that war crimes have been committed by both sides.

Since March 2015, over 23,000 airstrikes have been launched by the coalition in Yemen, killing or injuring over 18,000 civilians. Living in a country subjected to an average of 10 airstrikes per day has left millions feeling far from safe. Although the frequency and intensity of airstrikes have fluctuated over the last four years, the Group of Eminent Experts has continued to observe their devastating impact on civilians. One paramedic, after visiting an airstrike site in Sanaa, stated: "One week later, I was in the area and, in the drainage of the hotel, we found more bodies. The dogs had started eating those bodies. One month later, I smelled around the area and when I went to the building, I found a leg in the drainage."

Isn't it odd how the Yemeni people's plight gets close to zero coverage on the nightly TV news? isn't it odd how we don't see thousands of people waving Yemeni flags, protesting in our streets to show solidarity with the Yemeni people? Most, odd.

From The Guardian, this January:

This is a far greater scandal than the parties in Downing Street. In a just world, it would prove the downfall of our prime minister. This week, airstrikes by the Saudis and their allies killed more than a dozen people in Yemen, civilians among them. Last month an estimated 32 civilians died as a result of the ongoing conflict. The country has been convulsed by civil war since 2014. For seven years, a Saudi-led coalition has been pummelling the impoverished country with bombs, many of them supplied by Britain. Through our staunch military alliance with the Saudi dictatorship, our government is directly complicit with these atrocities.

You can be forgiven for knowing nothing about any of this: Yemen does not matter, you see. Its people have been relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy of death, and most of our media show little interest in scrutinizing our government for slaughter that it is directly complicit in. The Saudi violence has only increased in Yemen since October, after the UN human rights council voted to end its war crimes investigation following intensive lobbying by the dictatorship in Riyadh.

and

Yet our government retains its tight alliance with the Saudi regime, which decapitates gay people and dissidents, brutalises women and provides, in words purportedly of Hillary Clinton, "clandestine financial and logistical support" to terrorists. This is the regime that chopped a journalist into pieces in a foreign embassy, and incinerated Yemeni children travelling on a school bus on their way back from a picnic an "apparent war crime", in the words of Human Rights Watch.

Perhaps we could apply sanctions to Saudi Arabia? they have lots of "oligarchs" too. How about disconnecting Saudi Arabia from SWIFT? Hey, maybe NATO could setup a no-fly zone to protect the Yemeni population, oh hold on, that probably wouldn't work, hold on, let me think about this more...

Where is your outrage Jose? where is your sympathy for the Yemeni victims? how come you haven't posted about the inexcusable support for Saudi Arabia we see from various well know public figures? I'd really like an answer to this please, perhaps this might elicit just a little bit of outrage:

The bigger question is why you're constantly engaging in whataboutism and being what an Irish reporter called (to a Russian diplomat) "an apologist for slaughter".

https://www.irishcentral.com/news/david ... ambassador

[Sherlock Holmes]

When Americans Support Murderous Foreign Dictators

Smarter people than I will try to break down the myriad of reasons why people who claim to be patriotic citizens of this nation would become cheerleaders for and admirers of the highest-ranking Russian mobster as he encroaches on another sovereign nation, but heres what I do know:

People who place themselves in the camp of Vladimir Putin are not patriots, they arent America First, they arent Christians, and they arent pro-life.

Theyre also not people who get to drape themselves in the flag, or invoke allegiance to this nation, or feign offense at kneeling football players, or spout some red, white, and blue nationalistic nonsensebecause they never cared about any of it.

I can see you're quite outraged by all this aren't you Jose.

I'm just curious, why is open support for Putin more reprehensible than say open official government support for Saudi Arabia? The Cato institute rank countries by their "Freedom Index" and rate Russia as 6.23 and Saudi Arabia as 5.12, the lower number means worse over all human rights. (Turkey ranks at 5.79, worse than Russia yet oddly, is a NATO member).

In 2015 Saudi Arabia began an air bombardment of Yemen, "assisted by" the US and UK. So far this has led to 260,000 people dying, UN experts claim that war crimes have been committed by both sides.

Since March 2015, over 23,000 airstrikes have been launched by the coalition in Yemen, killing or injuring over 18,000 civilians. Living in a country subjected to an average of 10 airstrikes per day has left millions feeling far from safe. Although the frequency and intensity of airstrikes have fluctuated over the last four years, the Group of Eminent Experts has continued to observe their devastating impact on civilians. One paramedic, after visiting an airstrike site in Sanaa, stated: "One week later, I was in the area and, in the drainage of the hotel, we found more bodies. The dogs had started eating those bodies. One month later, I smelled around the area and when I went to the building, I found a leg in the drainage."

Isn't it odd how the Yemeni people's plight gets close to zero coverage on the nightly TV news? isn't it odd how we don't see thousands of people waving Yemeni flags, protesting in our streets to show solidarity with the Yemeni people? Most, odd.

From The Guardian, this January:

This is a far greater scandal than the parties in Downing Street. In a just world, it would prove the downfall of our prime minister. This week, airstrikes by the Saudis and their allies killed more than a dozen people in Yemen, civilians among them. Last month an estimated 32 civilians died as a result of the ongoing conflict. The country has been convulsed by civil war since 2014. For seven years, a Saudi-led coalition has been pummelling the impoverished country with bombs, many of them supplied by Britain. Through our staunch military alliance with the Saudi dictatorship, our government is directly complicit with these atrocities.

You can be forgiven for knowing nothing about any of this: Yemen does not matter, you see. Its people have been relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy of death, and most of our media show little interest in scrutinizing our government for slaughter that it is directly complicit in. The Saudi violence has only increased in Yemen since October, after the UN human rights council voted to end its war crimes investigation following intensive lobbying by the dictatorship in Riyadh.

and

Yet our government retains its tight alliance with the Saudi regime, which decapitates gay people and dissidents, brutalises women and provides, in words purportedly of Hillary Clinton, "clandestine financial and logistical support" to terrorists. This is the regime that chopped a journalist into pieces in a foreign embassy, and incinerated Yemeni children travelling on a school bus on their way back from a picnic an "apparent war crime", in the words of Human Rights Watch.

Perhaps we could apply sanctions to Saudi Arabia? they have lots of "oligarchs" too. How about disconnecting Saudi Arabia from SWIFT? Hey, maybe NATO could setup a no-fly zone to protect the Yemeni population, oh hold on, that probably wouldn't work, hold on, let me think about this more...

Where is your outrage Jose? where is your sympathy for the Yemeni victims? how come you haven't posted about the inexcusable support for Saudi Arabia we see from various well know public figures? I'd really like an answer to this please, perhaps this might elicit just a little bit of outrage:

The bigger question is why you're constantly engaging in whataboutism and being what an Irish reporter called (to a Russian diplomat) "an apologist for slaughter".

https://www.irishcentral.com/news/david ... ambassador

I'd rather you simply answered my reasonable question Jose, by all means call me perverse names if you must but it won't help your case.

By way of a reminder this is from one of my earlier posts here about this:

The military assault on Ukraine is a violation of international law according to the UN Charter, of that there's no doubt (one could argue the legitimacy of the current Ukraine government given they violently overthrew the prior democratically elected government in 2014, but I won't digress).

But such violations of sovereignty and international law (as defined by the UN Charter) are actually quite commonplace, many eliciting little if any disapproval from Republican and Democrats alike or the dominant Western newspapers.

I do not see how you can interpret that position as me being an "apologist for slaughter", do you disagree with the above? As I said what is happening in Ukraine is indeed a violation of international law, it is horrifying, it is sickening but it is also far from a rare thing, it is going on right now in many places and some of it is being done by the West. Ukraine is not a new kind of event, and it should not be portrayed as being. Instead the press and media should stop their prejudiced reporting and cover all victims with the same concern irrespective of which power is to blame, am I being unreasonable when I say this?

Where is your outrage for Yemeni victims or Palestinian victims? or is slaughter carried out by the West and its allies always justified, morally right, in your view?

[AgnosticBoy]

Just an observation...

A lot of people find it odd that some Americans are not cheering along with every success that the West has against Russia. Many are happy to see all of the social media coverage, all of the news media coverage of Ukraine success stories, Russians being captured, Russian sanctions, etc. The Americans that aren't as celebratory or who are even critical tend to get labelled as being pro-Russian or anti-democracy.

But from reading information on this site and elsewhere, it's apparent that we can't paint everyone as anti-democracy Putin lovers just because they're not on the Western bandwagon as much as the majority might be. While some are praising the West for whatever harm they can inflict on Russia, others see hypocrisy. To the latter group, it's hard to cheer for the West when it engages in some of the same wrongdoings that it accuses Russia of doing.

[Sherlock Holmes]

McCullagh's questioning is indeed appropriate Jose, but it is selective, those questions and that tone are reserved for those who are not our "allies".

The very same questions could be asked right now of Boris Johnson about Yemen, but they won't be, Yemen isn't news just now, nobody in the major press or media outlets cares about Yemeni victims, their destroyed homes, bombed schools etc. No rush visa programs are being prepared to get these victims safely into the EU or Britain.

There is as we speak a huge humanitarian crisis in Yemen, arguably worse than what is currently underway in Ukraine, The UN are on record as calling it the "the worst humanitarian crisis".

Key facts

• At least 24.3 million people are in need, including 14.4 million people in acute need.

• More than four million people are displaced of which 80% have been displaced for over a year. Up to 1.6 million of the displaced Yemenis are living in one of 2,200 hosting sites.

• There were 19,894 families (or 119,364 individuals) newly displaced in 2021.

• Women and children represent 79% of the displaced population.

• More than 16 million people face food insecurity.

• Food costs have increased by more than 60% in 2021

• Approximately 47% of Yemenis survive on less than $2 a day.

• In Sept. 2021, the value of the rial in the south was YER 1,200 per USD representing a drop against the dollar of over 40%.

• Inadequate food consumption in the south is over 45%, but in the north where the rial is more stable it is 37%.

• It is estimated that Yemen economys shrank by 8.5% in 2020. GDP has dropped 40% since 2015.

• In 2019 and 2020, more than 3,500 children suffered at least one grave violation for a total of 8,526 grave violations against children. These include denial of humanitarian access (movement within the country, access to aid, etc.), killing and maiming, and the recruitment and use of children to engage in military activities.

• In Oct. 2021, UNICEF reported that since the fighting began in March 2015, 10,000 children have been killed or maimed. This is the equivalent of four children every day.

• More than 11 million children, (four in five) are in need of humanitarian assistance in Yemen. At least 400,000 children suffer from severe acute malnutrition.

• There are more than two million children out of school and more than 170,000 teachers (two-thirds of teaching workforce) have not received a regular salary for more than four years.

• Some 1.7 million children are internally displaced and 15 million people (more than half of whom are children) do not have access to safe water, sanitation, or hygiene.

• Many refugees who have left Yemen flee to Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.

(Sources: UNOCHA, World Bank (1), World Bank (2), UN Security Council, UNICEF, UNHCR (1) and UNHCR (2))

It would be good if McCullagh would interview the British ambassador to Ireland Paul Johnson and give him the same treatment.

[Jose Fly]

I'd rather you simply answered my reasonable question Jose, by all means call me perverse names if you must but it won't help your case.

Where is your outrage for Yemeni victims or Palestinian victims? or is slaughter carried out by the West and its allies always justified, morally right, in your view?

Tell you what....if you ever see me engaging in apologetics for what's going on in Yemen or with Palestinians, I'll be more than happy to discuss those things. Until that occurs however, there's no reason to bring them into this thread except as part of a broader "Yeah but..." exercise, which again begs the question.....why are you running cover for Putin's invasion and the deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians?

[Sherlock Holmes]

I'd rather you simply answered my reasonable question Jose, by all means call me perverse names if you must but it won't help your case.

Where is your outrage for Yemeni victims or Palestinian victims? or is slaughter carried out by the West and its allies always justified, morally right, in your view?

Tell you what....if you ever see me engaging in apologetics for what's going on in Yemen or with Palestinians, I'll be more than happy to discuss those things. Until that occurs however, there's no reason to bring them into this thread except as part of a broader "Yeah but..." exercise, which again begs the question.....why are you running cover for Putin's invasion and the deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians?

Do you disagree with something I wrote? It would help to know what it was. My position Jose is that the situation in Ukraine is simply not news when judged by the standards of the press and media and how they report on other equally barbarous military assaults.

[AgnosticBoy]

why are you running cover for Putin's invasion and the deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians?

Come on... it's not as if he's celebrating every Russian take over of Ukranian cities. Sherlock is just being critical of the West. Also consider this observation in my last post...

But from reading information on this site and elsewhere, it's apparent that we can't paint everyone as anti-democracy Putin lovers just because they're not on the Western bandwagon as much as the majority might be. While some are praising the West for whatever harm they can inflict on Russia, others see hypocrisy. To the latter group, it's hard to cheer for the West when it engages in some of the same wrongdoings that it accuses Russia of doing.

[Jose Fly]

Do you disagree with something I wrote? It would help to know what it was.

I've already explained.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Do you disagree with something I wrote? It would help to know what it was.

I've already explained.

No, you've simply complained and failed to quote a single sentence I wrote.

My position Jose is that the situation in Ukraine is simply not news when judged by the standards of the press and media and how they report on other equally barbarous military assaults.

[Jose Fly]

why are you running cover for Putin's invasion and the deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians?

Come on... it's not as if he's celebrating every Russian take over of Ukranian cities. Sherlock is just being critical of the West. Also consider this observation in my last post...

But from reading information on this site and elsewhere, it's apparent that we can't paint everyone as anti-democracy Putin lovers just because they're not on the Western bandwagon as much as the majority might be. While some are praising the West for whatever harm they can inflict on Russia, others see hypocrisy. To the latter group, it's hard to cheer for the West when it engages in some of the same wrongdoings that it accuses Russia of doing.

I can just see it in 1939....as Hitler invades sovereign European countries, some folks are like "Yeah but, what about how the US killed all those Native Americans?"