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Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

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Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#881
post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I guess its time for some lessons of the history of Finland. Remind you of the collaboration with Nazi Germany. Also the forced removal of half a million people in Karelia. Treatment of native Sami people. discrimination and murder of many of those. Nothing different than any other country. Don't fool yourself in thinking you belong to the good guys. Its the concequence of propaganda.

> Remind you of the collaboration with Nazi Germany.

Let me quote Wikipedia:

After invading Poland, the Soviet Union sent ultimatums to the Baltic countries, where it demanded military bases on their soil. The Baltic states accepted Soviet demands, and lost their independence in the summer of 1940. In October 1939, the Soviet Union sent a similar request to Finland, but the Finns refused these demands. [1]

At that point Finland was neutral, but Soviet Union had a treaty with Nazi Germany and invaded Poland together (and also split the whole Eastern Europe between themselves in secret protocol of Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. See [2]

After the ultimatum Finland refused, Soviet Russia invaded, got repelled, and only THEN Finland allied with Nazi Germany.

> Nothing different than any other country.

One country invaded other. The other country defended itself. These are objectively not alike. Stop repeating russian propaganda. There is objective truth and it's not that hard to know it. People who try to make it fuzzy do it because they know it's not painting them in a good light.

Remember how Russia was pretending situation in Ukraine in 2014 is "complicated", and Ukrainians are "nazis" and these "green men" are just Ukrainian separatists, and westerners can't really know what's going on. They also pushed "both sides are bad, let's just ignore it" - and it worked back then. Thousands of people died because of useful idiots believing these lies. Nowadays Russia openly admits it was their army pretending to be Ukrainians.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Finland#Finland_in_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#882
post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Germany’s defense minister says damage to 2 Baltic data cables appears to be sabotage" - https://apnews.com/article/germany-finland-baltic-data-cable...

English isn't my first language, but isn't "appears to be" inconclusive? It is or it isn't, "appears to be" is still too vague for my liking.

The sibling comments are very relevant, but I wanted to provide a marginally different perspective. You have to take not only what is being said, but _who is saying it_ into perspective.

In this case, this is a government official speaking to the press (i.e. in an official capacity). If they were to say "this was sabotage," that is a definite declaration that the government believes - again, officially and on the record - that an outside party has deliberately done material damage to their country. Given the general situation, it is not a huge leap to come to the interpretation that "this was an attack against our country, and possibly an act of war."

No government official would want to be within miles (or kilometers) of that sort of statement unless they have pretty much already internally decided from the top-down to escalate the situation. Almost no single government agent has the authority to escalate the situation in that manner. So what we end up with is "appears to be." This overtly says 'all available evidence points to this being the case, however something else cannot be ruled out.' (As a sibling comment suggests, it can also act as a type of propaganda). So it is not an official government declaration that another nation has damaged them, but they have reasons (probably both apparent and not) to believe what they are saying publicly.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#883
post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Yeah, it's not like a line in the sand, admitted as such by both sides, was broken, one with explicit promises that it wouldn't be. Ah, your oddly-vague wording must of course be referring to how Russia explicitly promised to respect Ukraine's borders [0], a line they are violently crossing as we speak. First with an undeclared guerrilla-war and annexation, and more-recently with a massive "surprise" invasion--afte…

>Ah, your oddly-vague wording must of course be referring to how Russia explicitly promised to respect Ukraine's borders

After it was itself promised NATO wont expand eastwards and Ukraine will not be used to get their bases next to its borders. Not really strange how they broken this agreement after 30 years of broken promises, sanctions, open threats, an orange coup in their neighbor, among other things.

But sure, nothing more anti-imperialist by a coalition formed by the foremost imperialist power with its client states, expanding for "democracy"...

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#884

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. It all began when President Yanukovych rejected an agreement he promised to sign with the EU ( which was, and is, a public document with known the terms ) in exchange for a deal with Russia, of unknown terms and vague promises, and framed with threats. This was a 180 turn that led to the Maidan Revolution and the impeachment of the president. It was the decision of the President against the will of the majorit…

> After the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution and the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych, a divide between pro-European and pro-Russian factions in Ukraine became more pronounced. > In the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, many residents harbored pro-Russian sentiments due to historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to Russia. > Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, separatist groups in Donetsk and Luha…

That is merely coincidental.

What matters is that it's a false and misleading narrative.

These statements are false?

Yup - either false, or misleading/irrelevant. Time is short so we'll just go over 2 of them for now:

> In the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, many residents harbored pro-Russian sentiments due to historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to Russia.

True, but irrelevant. Simply put, that wasn't was caused hostilities to happen.

> Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk, supported by local pro-Russian factions, declared independence from Ukraine.

Except there were no indigenous "separatist groups" driving the action. It was entirely coordinated by Russia from the very start.

In other words: a foreign invasion.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. It all began when President Yanukovych rejected an agreement he promised to sign with the EU ( which was, and is, a public document with known the terms ) in exchange for a deal with Russia, of unknown terms and vague promises, and framed with threats. This was a 180 turn that led to the Maidan Revolution and the impeachment of the president. It was the decision of the President against the will of the majorit…

> After the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution and the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych, a divide between pro-European and pro-Russian factions in Ukraine became more pronounced. > In the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, many residents harbored pro-Russian sentiments due to historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to Russia. > Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, separatist groups in Donetsk and Luha…

> These statements are false?

Yes. The "separatists" were entirely a fiction created by Russian armed forces as a cover and pretext for their invasion. The lengthy verdict by the European Court of Human Rights[1] lays it all out and concludes that there is no reason to consider "separatists" anything less than unmarked members of Russian armed forces or security services. The entire story about ethnic tensions that resulted in "pro-Russian Ukrainians rising up against Kyiv government" and Russia coming to their support is a total bunk, a manufactured lie trying to misrepresent an unprovoked invasion by a foreign country as a stereotypical third world civil war that western audiences are accustomed to. Russians are playing directly into your stereotypes to erode support for Ukraine.

[1] https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-222889%...}

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#888

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listening to people who probably proclaim themselves "anti-imperialists" give full-throated defenses of imperialism never gets old. >prepared to fight their proxy war to the last of them The natural corollary to this ridiculous "fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian" argument, which you guys never seem to acknowledge, is that it already assumes that Russia will murder every last Ukrainian and take their land. That's…

> Listening to people who probably proclaim themselves "anti-imperialists" give full-throated defenses of imperialism never gets old. Yeah, nothing like nato when it comes to anti-imperialism...

The entire matter of NATO expansion is irrelevant, a dancing monkey to distract the credulous.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#889
post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I guess its time for some lessons of the history of Finland. Remind you of the collaboration with Nazi Germany. Also the forced removal of half a million people in Karelia. Treatment of native Sami people. discrimination and murder of many of those. Nothing different than any other country. Don't fool yourself in thinking you belong to the good guys. Its the concequence of propaganda.

Russian propaganda is all about claiming nobody has any values, and using hand picked historical errors and misattribution evidence of this. The intent is to sow doubt.

I see you are repeating the favourite tropes while avoiding the point - a colonizer attempting to strike down again at an old victim.

The point is not about not making mistakes. Everybody does those. They key thing about being among the good guys is a) recognizing those mistakes and b) not intentionally repeating them. Also not treating your own citizens as worthless pieces of flesh to throw in to the meatgrinder is a clear ”good guy bad guy” indicator if we want to use low brow moral qualifiers.

I guess you conveniently forgot to mention that Finland joined Germany only because Stalin was about to roll over Finland and nobody else was willing to oppose the invasion. The key thing what displays the character of Finland as country, is that Finland never let Germany take our jewish population. The only thing that made Germany truly evil was the holocaust. Finland did not participate in the holocaust. Jewish men served in the Finnish armed forces. When Germans wanted to implement their holocaust in Finland, the finns said basically ”piss off”.

You are quite right on the historical treatment of Sami. You forget to mention that Sami rights as a minority are now quite well protected, and we feel quite bad of this historical ill trearment.

This is in contrast with Russian values, for example, where the state not only refuses to admit the historical mistakes made, genocide, but happily sends hundreds of thousands of men to a pointless meat grinder. This is what true evil looks like. One needs to be a very special kind of fool not to see state institutions clearly being ”better” or ”worse” and Russia being of the very worst kind. The propaganda attempt you posted tries to argue in an off-hand manner that Russia can’t be the worst since all are equally bad. The claim is false. There is a clear gradient of human quality in state institutions and the Russian state is objectively at the worse end of the spectrum, and sliding ever lower sadly.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What do you mean with proxy war? Are you saying russia is a puppet and a proxy for Iran and North Korea who provide the weapons and even soldiers?

The folks parroting that phrase live inside an echo chamber. They’re so entrenched they never think to consider that their words might have an interpretation unfavourable to the Kremlin.
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