• GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Just an endless slew of clickbait “China bad” headlines all the time. Really makes you wonder about if there is some sort of systemic problem with western media.

  • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    China: sends Russia six helicopters (before the war), some children’s toys, a box of consumer-grade hunting scopes, and metal. They are the bad guys who are prolonging the war.

    NATO: sends Ukraine weapons and military vehicles worth more than China’s entire military budget, and provides training and logistics support. They are the good guys trying to end the war.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The liberals only read the titles and then come straight to the comment sections so they don’t actually realise any of this unless you spell it out for them.

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Does your definition of “attack” include locking people in a church and burning them alive? How about sponsoring Neo-Nazi paramilitaries to murder and rape people for seaking a language? Shelling cities and civilians in defiance of international cease fire treaties?

        • figaro@lemdro.id
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          1 year ago

          I don’t mean to get in an argument, because that isn’t at all productive.

          I wonder though - if Russia hadn’t illegally occupied Ukraine/Crimea, would that have happened?

          • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            I wonder though - if Russia hadn’t illegally occupied Ukraine/Crimea, would that have happened?

            If Ukrainian neo-Nazis hadn’t trapped ethnic Russians in a building and burned them alive, would Russia have invaded?

            My point is: there are no good guys in this conflict. Just two bad guys duking it out, with regular schmucks like you and me getting murdered for no reason. Anything that prolongs the conflict is bad.

            • figaro@lemdro.id
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              1 year ago

              For the record - I agree that burning people alive in a building is bad, and war should be avoided if possible.

              You didn’t really answer my question though. Why do the resistance groups exist in the first place?

              • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                We’ve got a document that lays out the timeline in some detail, but I can’t find it right now.

                The short version is that this is a continuation of a very, very long conflict between the western powers and Russia for control of Russia’s resources. Like in a broad sense this geopolitical conflict as been going on for hundreds of years - Europe and now the USA want access to Russia’s resources and to do that they have to get rid of the government currently in charge of Russia. In the past this was all kinds of great power bullshit, Napoleon’s attempt to invade Moscow. Then it was the Russian civil war, where all the Western powers invaded Russia to try to stop the Reds, then WWII when the Nazis and their allies wanted to conquer everything east of them, exterminate or enslave the Slavs, and do Westward Expansion 2.0: Eastward Edition. Then the Cold War, where NATO was formed to counter and eventually destroy the Eastern Block. Well, 1991 happened, the USSR was destroyed, A few coups and murders and the shock doctrine ensured that the capitalists could loot everything, but ultimately the West didn’t get the complete control of Russian territory and resources they wanted. Too many former Soviet Oligarchs and gangsters got in the way and control of the region stayed more or less in local hands - Russian Oligarchs in Russia, Ukrainian Oligarchs in Ukraine, and so on. NATO didn’t disband after 1991, and didn’t let Russia join when Putin tried a few times,because NATO’s purpose is conquest of Russia and they hadn’t pulled that off yet. NATO started annexing countries and moving it’s borders towards Russia, forward positioning troops and weapons, and gradually encircling Russia on it’s populous Western borders. When NATO started talking about moving in to Georgia the Russian’s responded, invaded Georgia, and put an end to that. At some point later NATO decided to move on Ukraine, take control, and use it as a proxy to weaken Russia. They used the same tactic by supporting the Islamists in Afghanistan decades prior, and they’d used it in the middle east and few other places. The basic program is - destabilize a country, flood it with weapons, then let their neighbors bleed themselves dry trying to contain the insurgency. In pursuit of this NATO deployed a bunch of Ukrainian Nazis they’d saved after WWII for exactly this purpose and were gradually able to expand their influence in the country. 2013, the President of Ukraine doesn’t want to sign a shitty deal with Europe both because it would fuck over Ukraine and it would fuck over Ukraine’s trade with Russia, and the Nazis, almost entirely headquartered in Western Ukraine, use this as an excuse to take control of popular unrest and stage a coup. It gets nasty, Ukrainian Nationalists burn a bunch of Russian speaking Ukrainians to death, they throw the president out, the new coup government immediately passes laws making the previously legal Russian language illegal. Out East in the regions where most Ukrainians speak Russian, they see a bunch of Nazis who want them exterminated couping the government, they see the new coup government passing laws against their language, they say “Fuck this, we know what comes next” and take up arms demanding that Kiev grant them autonomy - some government autonomy, guarantees on their right to speak their language and protect their culture, basic shit. Kiev says no, tries to send the army in to Donbass to crush them, the army tells Kiev “Fuck you”. Kiev isn’t giving up so they arm all the Nazis and send them in to Donbass and they start murdering people. This turns in to a civil war. During the civil war NATO moves in. They start re-structuring, training, and arming the Ukrainian military loyal to Kiev. They stockpile all kinds of weapons and shit. The Nazis are rotating back from the front lines with combat experience and are getting integrated in to army units while their civilian Nazi counterparts are getting more and more control over western Ukraine’s government, civic institutions, and culture. This goes on for years, Ukrainians kill thousands of Ukrainians. Meanwhile Russia, who doesn’t want any of this shit happening in their neighborhood, is trying to get some kind of peace negotiations going to stop the conflict and stabilize Ukraine before it falls apart and turns in to a failed state. Well, Ukraine and a bunch of NATO goverments say yes, we’ll talk, lets resolve this, then the Ukrainian Nazis break all the ceasefires and shitcan the peace talks. Happens twice, the accords were called Minsk I and Minsk II. We later find out that Germany and France, who were acting as restaurants of the peace talks, never had any intention of fulfilling the peace conditions and were just buying time to arm Ukraine. Eventually it’s 2020 or something. Ukrainians are sick of this, they don’t want to be at war with their own countrymen, they don’t want to get dragged in to war with Russia because of Nazi psychos, so they vote for Zelensky. Zelensky’s a very charismatic guy, well known from television, speaks Ukrainian and Russia. He runs on a peace platform, says he’s going to uphold the cease fire and start negotiations. Well, once he takes office he goes out to the front and tells the guys at the front to shot shelling Donbass. The guys who are running the Front are Nazi fanatics, they tell him he’s not in charge and he can go fuck himself and they keep shelling. So now Zelensky knows how Ukraine really works, he starts working with NATO and the Nationalists as basically a cheer-leader for Kiev and Galacia’s agenda. Doesn’t really have any power but he looks good on TV. This whole thing finally comes to a head when someone decides that the Ukrainian army, with all it’s NATO training and equipment and guns and NATO provided Nazis, is ready to go crush Donbass. There’s a big build-up - Ukraine is mobilizing it’s army to go in to the east of the country and fight the Donbass republics plus whatever Specops guys Russia has sent in there. Russia is mobilizing part of it’s army at the Ukrainian border and making threatening noises.

                Now, it’s February of 2022. Russia has it’s troops on Ukraine’s border. Ukrainian troops are moving East in to Donbass. Putin is making threatening noises, but no one thinks he’ll actually pull the trigger and cross the border. Well, for whatever reason, and it’s still unclear what he was thinking, he pulls the trigger. He claims that he’s doing it to protect Russian speaking Ukrainians from the Banderite Nazis who intend to genocide them (probably in the driving them from their homes sense rather than the extermination of all men, women, and children sense but who knows with Nazis?). That might even be true. But other reasons are that he was finally sick of putting up with NATOs bullshit after decades of post-cold-war hostility, or he had a bad understanding of the situation and thought he could win a decisive victory with that swift attack on Kiev, or maybe he thought people in Ukraine were more angry with their government than they were and would demand some kind of end of hostilities? Who knows, high level commanders and presidents aren’t always very bright and aren’t always getting good intel. Whatever happened, Russia made us all look like idiots by invading (pretty much no one, including me, thought he’d actually do it), and now there was a hot war between NATO forces and Russian forces, except everyone inside NATO pretends that it’s between Ukraine and Russia.

                So, that’s the very, very, very short, basically no details, rough sketch version of what lead up to the war. I didn’t even mention stuff like the activities of Ukrainian Nazis in Canada and the US, or all of Russia’s security concerns, or the weird fucked up relationship between the Russiand government and the US government, or how Russia didn’t really invade Crimea because the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet and tons of support personnel were already stationed in Crimea so they really just changed the flags, or the role of propaganda in NATOs decisions on which weapons to send and which weapons to withhold, or what Trump’s trade war bullshit likely had to do with all this, or a trillion other things.

                Suffice to say, there’s a lot of history behind this conflict. And since it’s very unlikely either side will definitively win there will probably be more wars in this on-going geopolitical struggle between whoever is in charge of the west and whoever is in charge of Russia in the future, even if NATO and the Russian federation both collapse tomorrow. There’s no way we’re going to make it through the 21st century without intense wars over the vast unexploited resources of Siberia.

                Either way, that’s the very short summary.

              • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                In 2014, the Ukrainian government was overthrown and the new government shifted towards Western alignment while banning opposition parties. Many people in Ukraine, especially in the east, have cultural ties to Russia and disagreed with the change, but were left with no means of having their voices heard because they were cut out of the democratic process, and that’s why the resistance groups exist in the first place.

            • figaro@lemdro.id
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              1 year ago

              Ah, by argue I meant something along the lines of “have an upset and angry discussion.” I disagree with some of the premise of what he said though, so I am going to push back on that.

        • figaro@lemdro.id
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          1 year ago

          I think my question was misunderstood.

          Your original post makes it seem like you think NATO are the bad guys here because they are supplying weapons to Ukraine to defend themselves.

          I asked “who attacked who” because to me, it seems pretty clear that Russia, a dictatorship whose government has a history of human rights violations and disregard for human life, is doing a bad thing when they invade a neighboring country and start shooting missiles at civilian homes on a daily basis for a year and half.

          Could you explain how this is not a clear “Russia doing bad thing, we should help Ukraine” situation?

          • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            NATO is mostly responsible for the dead Ukrainians. Ukraine has no reason to fight this war. If they lose, fine, the Russian part gets renamed and a higher minimum wage. Only rich assholes lose out. If Ukraine wins they get dead sons and burned schools but the US oil companies are happy.

            It is pretty clear Ukraine shouldn’t be fighting this war for the US companies.

            • figaro@lemdro.id
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              1 year ago

              What percentage of Ukrainians support defending their country?

              Should it be their decision whether to keep fighting?

              • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                If it were up to Ukrainians to collectively decide whether or not to continue the conflict, Zelensky would not have canceled the elections for his position later this year.

                • figaro@lemdro.id
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                  1 year ago

                  The Ukrainian constitution does not allow for elections to be held during periods of martial law, which was declared at the start of the war.

                  If there is ever a good time to declare martial law, being invaded by a neighboring country might qualify as a justifiable time.

                  In any case, it’s constitutional, but Ukrainian political process isn’t what we are here to talk about.

                  Fundamentally, I agree with you - If the majority of Ukrainians were to decide they don’t want the war to continue, the war should stop. The number show, however, that the people are not ready to give up.

                • figaro@lemdro.id
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                  1 year ago

                  While humorous, that isn’t actually how polls work. I’d suggest looking up the statistics. The majority of Ukrainians, even in the Eastern regions, still support defending themselves.

                  Does that mean that the majority of Ukrainians support fighting the war for the sake of US companies? Or could there be something else they are fighting for?

          • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            I understood. It’s an unserious question, so I gave an unserious answer. China isn’t militarily supporting Russia. They sent some kids toys and the same raw materials they exported everywhere anyway.

            • figaro@lemdro.id
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              1 year ago

              Ah, I see what happened. I didn’t address the China part of your original question because I actually agree with you there. They aren’t militarily supporting Russia based on this article. I don’t see why China would do that, since it wouldn’t really benefit them.

              I was addressing part 2 of your comment, where you implied that NATO is doing a bad thing by supporting Ukraine. Unless I misunderstood - I assumed “They are the good guys trying to end the war” was sarcasm.

    • tfc@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Yes because giving some one the ability to defend their country, and supporting an invasion have the same moral implications

        • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          The Pentagon is mad that Congress forced them to stop buying Chinese drones. Apparently there are no available replacements in some categories and even where there are, they are many times more expensive.

              • forcequit [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago
                australia doing the same shit

                Banned from tendering in the National Broadband Network in 2012, banned from participating in the 5G network in 2018, called for removal of surveillance/security cameras in 2018, funded undersea cables in the pacific to block Huawei in 2018, purchased Digicel to prevent Chinese involvement in 2021

                US, UK, CAN & AU, 5eyes has been frothing over this for a while

                The $2.1 billion deal to acquire and run Digicel Pacific is being funded largely by the government, which will provide $1.9 billion toward the acquisition.

                Telstra said it would contribute $360 million and own 100 per cent of the company’s ordinary equity.

                “Australian officials were concerned about whether a Chinese company or potentially a Chinese state-owned entity might look to buy Digicel’s Pacific arm and there were some geopolitical and geostrategic concerns about a Chinese company owning a major telecommunication company in the Pacific region, which is of course so close to Australia,” said Amanda Watson, an expert in Pacific communications at the Australian National University.

                That’s especially since Digicel Pacific uses a 4,700km undersea cable from Sydney that was largely funded by the Australian government in 2018 in an effort to prevent PNG and the Solomon Islands from contracting Huawei for the project.

                Ahh my bad, that was 3 years earlier instead

                https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-25/telstra-digicel-pacific-telecommunications-deal-finalised/100564976

            • SexMachineStalin [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Somehow on my phone in :estonia-burning: I can access RT and came across this article where the US was coping at South Africa to abandon it’s partnerships with Huawei because “you need to use :lmayo::amerikkka: technologies”. Anyways, South Africa told :amerikkka: to :PIGPOOPBALLS:

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            I love watching Congress fuck over the Pentagon. Just the worst people in the world slapfighting over fake money. Probably a bad idea to let hundreds of lead huffing jet ski dealers whose only qualification is buying more TV add time than their opponents run a global empire.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        That’s gotta be in some cyberpunk book somewhere. Especially if they start giving different ratings to the equipment and flaming each other over it.

  • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Focusing on Chinese drones that end up in Russia while completely ignoring the Chinese drones that end up in the Ukraine is some cherry picking I expected from the Telegraph. Products and components are made in China, which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

        • Parsani [love/loves, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          I thought they had some for some reason

          People need to start distinguishing between the little quadcopters you can buy at walmart, and fucking reaper drones. Headlines like “China is selling drones to Russia” makes it seem like it isn’t a $150 drone bought off fucking aliexpress

          • GaveUp [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            That lack of distinction is 100% on purpose since China dominates the consumer drones market and they’re so versatile and capable that countries all over the world including the US buy DJI drones for military operations

            Can blame China for giving every country “drones”

          • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            They do. They have Bayraktar drones.

            I do agree that the lack of distinction is kind of stupid.

              • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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                However, a year later, nearly all of them are believed to have been shot down by Russian forces.

                The remaining killer drones are now reduced to reconnaissance duties, an expert said.

                This would mean they still have some.

        • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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          I don’t think you can buy Bayraktar drones from your local general store…

  • mar_k [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The Telegraph is the only one reporting this, we’re supposed to believe a sensationalist conservative tabloid?

    • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      well if you trade metal to Russia, and metal goes in weapons, you are basically handing them weapons of mass destruction if you think about it smuglord

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It looks like the data is from Malfar Group which dubs itself as open source intelligence (whatever that means). Looking at their website, it is all Ukraine related. That’s fine in and of itself but it should be noted by them or The Telegraph. But The Telegraph is not exactly a paragon of journalistic integrity.

  • jonhanson@lemmy.ml
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    China is widely suspected of supplying Russia with equipment and materials to support their war, however no-one has adduced anything concrete to support that theory so far.

    The article itself doesn’t cite much in the way of sources or evidence, other than mentioning a report by Molfar, the open source intelligence agency. Molfar has published reports on the same topic in the past, but there hasn’t been anything recently.

    If the Telegraph had new information or evidence they would be shouting a lot louder than this. This is most likely them covering up for a quiet day by dredging up some old rumours and repackaging them as news.

    • zephyreks@programming.dev
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      In other news, China is also widely suspected of supplying Ukraine with equipment and materials to support their war.

      Turns out, China isn’t a single entity but a bunch of companies that want to make a whole ton of money by profiteering off of war.

      The CCP doesn’t care about the conflict so long as they can claim neutrality.

      • Kangie@lemmy.srcfiles.zip
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        Taiwan (Republic of China) and China (People’s Republic of China) are different governments that both lay claim to the same territory.

        The TL;DR is that in 1949 the communists won the Chinese civil war and the remaining nationalist opposition retreated to Taiwan, beginning the state of affairs that we have today.

        PRC considers Taiwan part of its core territory and will not renounce its claims. RoC has, since 1991, officially recognised that they can’t retake the mainland, but there’s ongoing debate about whether or not Taiwanese reunification or an independent Taiwan is the end state.

      • silvercove@lemdro.id
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        Not according to Taiwan. Taiwan sees itself as the legitimate China, with territorial claims on the mainland.

  • postmeridiem@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Dual-use goods

    Such goods are classified as dual-use, meaning they also have civilian purposes, allowing China to skirt international sanctions and claim that it conducts only legal trade with Russia

    The “international sanctions” btw:

    You can’t just unilaterally decree someone can’t be traded dual use goods

    • YeeHaw@beehaw.org
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      Those are pretty international, y’know. What would your criteria be for calling sanctions international?

      • postmeridiem@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz
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        A large majority of the world engaging in sanctions and not the usual suspects regularly framed in the press as the “international community.” It’s framed that way to imply that the entire world is doing it besides a few “rogue states” like China, North Korea or Venezuela, as if they were handed down by the UN or the world is united in agreement with the western sanctions regime. What would be far more accurate than “international sanctions” would be “western sanctions.”

        For a more immediate example of how framing effects perception, look at all the people in this thread upset about China giving Russia weapons. No weapons are listed, just drones, helicopters, and metals. Upon opening the article you’ll see the drones arrived before the war and are presumably consumer electronics, and there are six undefined types of helicopters. Some posters even mentioned attack helicopters, as if the Telegraph would not be screaming about attack helicopters and not helicopters if that was the case.

        It’s a complete nothingburger and like all nothingburgers it plays with language to let you fill in the gaps using the context they have provided. Russia is being “armed” with some consumer drones, six personal helicopters, and metal, and the whole world is in uproar about it.

        • YeeHaw@beehaw.org
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          But, this is about as international as sanctions get. These are among the largest sanctions in history, in fact. Under your definition, no such thing as international sanctions ever happened. And the word “international” doesn’t imply global, planetary or a majority.

          • postmeridiem@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz
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            But, this is about as international as sanctions get.

            Not true, North Korea is sanctioned by everyone via the UNSC with more specific sanctions from other countries and bodies like the EU.

            And the word “international” doesn’t imply global, planetary or a majority.

            Right, when they say the international sanctions by the international community they’re definitely not trying to imply anything. I wonder in that case what they mean when they mention the rules based international order.