The State of Freedom in Ukraine
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Tuesday, September 9, 2025 04:23
VIEWED: 12109
PAGE 5 of 12
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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
Grozny, Russia, 2000:
Welcome to Mr Putin's Grozny - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/welcome-to-mr-putins-gr
ozny-719434.html
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It is the first large city to be destroyed by military action in Europe since 1945. Two months after the Russian army captured Grozny, the capital of Chechnya and once home to 400,000 people, its ruins look like pictures of Stalingrad or Dresden immediately after the Second World War. Russian shells and bombs have turned apartment blocks into grey concrete sandwiches, one floor collapsed on top of another.
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When several long-range, ground-to-ground missiles plummeted into a Grozny marketplace last October, killing some 200 people, Mr Putin simply denied that it had happened. He showed no signs of embarrassment when the official Russian military spokesman blithely confirmed the attack a few hours later.
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Critics of Mr Putin during his visit to Britain have focused on killings and torture by Russian forces in Chechnya. This tends to obscure the fact that for the first time in 55 years, a whole European city has been destroyed -deliberately, by its own government.
It's not personal. It's just war.
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"Welcome to Mr Putin's Grozny"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War
The Second Chechen War was launched by the Russian Federation, starting 26 August 1999, in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the Islamic International Brigade (IIB).
In war, it really matters who started it. And the Islamists who decided to pick a fight with Russia probably should have given it a second thought. But I'm sure the BBC would never leave out important information like that ...
... HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA Ha ha ha ha ha ha ...
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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Quote:
In war, it really matters who started it. And the Islamists who decided to pick a fight with Russia probably should have given it a second thought.
Truly wondrous hypocrisy from someone who howls in outrage at relatively small numbers of civilian casualties killed by Ukraine's forces. When it comes to Russia killing tens of thousands and levelling an entire city with indiscriminate bombing - you are all tough talk and "those Chechens had it coming".
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... HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA Ha ha ha ha ha ha ...
Yep. Seems about right.
It's not personal. It's just war.
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"How Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Sabotaged the Reform Process"
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/how-ukraine-s-pro
secutor-general-sabotaged-the-reform-process
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SIGNY: "You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns."
Grozny, Russia, 2000:
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Yes, I believe I mentioned Grozny. I believe I said that the results were "Biblical"- "not one stone standing on top of another".
As I understand it, the city was surrounded, and people were given a chance to leave but had to pass thru checkpoints. I'm sure there were those who couldn't leave, by reason of disability or perhaps being held hostage by the terrorists who had taken over Grozny. For those, it was indeed a tragedy. For the terrorists in Grozny- like those who killed 200 young schoolchildren in Beslan - not so much.
Yanno, it's funny, you hate Russia so much that even when they are fighting what EVERYONE (except you!) sees as an international scourge of religiously-propelled barbarism ... EVEN THEN you manage to criticize them!
I think your ethics are so twisted by hatred of Russia ... it seeps into every post and every thread ... that you literally can't see anything but "bad Russia".
I tried to get a discussion going on a direct comparison between Syria and Ukraine. That way, we could tease apart answers to "Who is a terrorist?" and "When is violence morally acceptable?" because we could compare events which might arouse opposite sympathies: If the rebels in Donbas are "terrorists", what about the rebels in Syria? If the assistance that Russia is providing in Ukraine is an "invasion", what about the assistance that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the USA are providing in Syria?" "What do we do if the process of voting does not result is a "liberal democracy"? Are national borders sacrosanct? What about separation movements?
Yanno, a good way to disentangle our immediate sympathies from our ethics.
But YOU wouldn't have it. Oh, no! A reasoned, dispassionate examination of similar situations involving different actors .... So not your cup of tea! You'd rather go off, half-cocked, all full of righteous anger for SOME people. God forbid you should ever examine your sympathies and morals and find out that you were wrong 50% of the time!
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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WHY I ABHOR RUSSIA
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=60306
Yes, please- do explain.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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The human rights situation in Russian/separatist-occupied eastern Ukraine continues to be far worse than in the rest of Ukraine - 100+ news websites blocked in Luhansk: https://globalvoices.org/2016/01/14/ukrainian-separatists-block-100-ne
ws-websites-in-lugansk-peoples-republic/
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Quote:
I'm sure there were those who couldn't leave, by reason of disability or perhaps being held hostage by the terrorists who had taken over Grozny.
Even if that were true, and I notice you provide no evidence, that makes it ok for Putin to go ahead and carpet bomb the whole city?
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For the terrorists in Grozny- like those who killed 200 young schoolchildren in Beslan
Any tears for the hundreds if not thousands of children killed by Putin's carpet bombing of Grozny?
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That way, we could tease apart answers to "Who is a terrorist?" and "When is violence morally acceptable?"
You and I have both been on these boards a long time and I've had these discussions with you before. You change your definition of 'terrorism' from post to post, and your position on separatism and national borders and the right of self-determination changes with whichever way the wind is blowing (or rather whichever way supports Russia, and damns the USA). In 2014 when Russia was annexing Crimea and fomenting separatist war in Ukraine you were all for separatism, and peoples' right to self-determination. But in 2015 when international attention switched to Syria, and the popular Sunni uprising there, you immediately came out with your firm belief that Russia's campaign to crush the rebels was the best thing ever.
We can debate principles of democracy, national sovereignty, terrorism, the right to self-determination etc, but in 6 months time your positions will have completely changed to be in line with Russia's latest war.
Why debate or have a discussion with someone whose principles are completely fluid?
For the record this was my attempt to have a rational discussion with you on this subject back in 2014:
KPO (2014):
Quote:
Independence/secessionist movements need to be considered on a case by case basis, balancing such priniciples as the right of self-determination, national sovereignty, and the region's unique history. No two situations are the same, and no two people will balance all these factors in the same way. It should be noted that different Western countries have different stances on accepting Kosovo's independence or not.
In the case of Kosovo ethnic Serbs see the land as belonging to their country, but the people living there don't feel they belong to Serbia at all. They are mostly ethnic Albanian, and for nearly 500 years they lived under Muslim, Ottoman control. But the key factor in support for Kosovan independence is the campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing that the Serb government carried out against the ethnic Albanian population in the 90's. The UN ruled that Serbia had carried out a "systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe maltreatments" and cited several war crimes and crimes against humanity including massacres of unarmed men, women and children, and the forced displacement of tens of thousands.
For me personally, I think it's quite harsh to expect the Kosovans to live again under Serbian rule, given the way the Serbian government treated them in the 1990s.
And what was your response?
Signy (2014):
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And, on what grounds are these movements to be "considered"? Because as far as I can tell, the metric that you apply is: pro-western= good, not pro-western=bad. All of your blah blah blah about history and such is so much rationalization. You don't have a rigorous, well-thought-out view that you could apply equally to all situations; so you'll just grab whatever excuse you need to justify whatever you want to see happen.
In other words, you have a purely self-centered, exceptionalist* view of the world...
And you went on like that, completely ignoring everything I said and eventually quoting some bullshit RT story about mass graves of raped and murdered victims in a poor attempt at false equivalence.
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=58499&p=8
If you can
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Thanks G, I had to do some digging back through the old threads but at least I've shut up Signy's superior and utterly bullshit "If only someone would have a rational discussion with me" line.
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