I don't understand anything I've seen you post other than to categorise it as irrationally ignorant war fever. You play this conflict like it's a football manager sim, I find it repulsive.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
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Also important for the credibility of the organization to report everything. This isn't the last war humanity will fight.
They’re obviously not working with Russia.
They should be objective in their reporting, but should also be aware of the effect their reporting may have when released at certain times. Not advising them how to do this but what they say does have some influence.
They should be objective in their reporting, but should also be aware of the effect their reporting may have when released at certain times. Not advising them how to do this but what they say does have some influence.
Russia is not under attack. Nobody has declared that Russia should not exist any more. Nobody is trying to annex Russia.
And if it was, and if they did, and if they did, then exploiting these situations as a pretext to strangle dissenting voices, censor free expression and attack anyone not marching completely in step with the views, aims and desires of military leaders, would be irresponsibly oppressive.
Very reasonable point.
What if the situation at a nuclear plant escalates? Would that be a reason for NATO to intervene?
The Zaporizhia plant isn't as dangerous as the Chernobyl one if I recall correctly. Even then, I doubt NATO would intervene.
You only need to watch what’s left from the contested territories (Mariupol, etc.) in the Donbas / Luhansk to understand how ridiculously stupid that report is. Those cities/towns/villages are like 90% destroyed due to the indiscriminate shelling, they use mostly dumb artillery that’s not precise at all and unless they would be staying out in the open fields it would have made no difference as to where they were staying. They just bomb the shit out of the places with heavy artillery and then move into the ruins.
I read that the radius of the potential impact would be around 100km.
You don’t need to be fighting just visit the frontline towns to get the understanding what indiscriminate shelling means and how the towns are totally destroyed without any consideration. Instead it will give Russian propaganda an easy cop-out which will be much more damaging than suggesting Ukrainian armed forces to move few meters up the road from the place which anyway will be subject to dumb shelling. Your example is quite a bit different because executing or not POWs is a choice but defending the cities isn’t as there are no viable alternatives. Also, the people have been warned to move out from frontlines cities since day 1 by Ukrainian gov. but many have chosen to stay at their own risk.
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Yeah. I've read one comment that also seemed to be spot on (at least for me). People at Amnesty do have this, let's say, a learned cognitive pattern of perceiving any military conflict from the perspective of civilian population and how they suffer from it and from the military combatants (regardless of the side that they're on). And of course the Ukrainian military doesn't do everything by the book.
So I can kinda understand where they're coming from and I very much doubt that they're being paid by Putin, they've just been completely inconsiderate of how their report would influence the war on the ground — especially since this is one of the first wars where the spread of information and misinformation is this crucial.
I wouldn’t be so sure, calling suffering Ukrainian people from genocide as trolls is giving it away I think.
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Looks grim
For someone who we are led to believe published the report out of the care to the civilian population this seems like and incredibly miss-placed arrogance.Looks grim
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But but ukrainian military endangers civilians, honestly, if you can look at this and think that Ukrainian army being a few blocks to the left or right would have made any difference given the Russian tactics of leveling towns to the ground you’re being a useful idiot and that Amnesty report has paid for itself already for Putin.
Do you believe Putin paid Amnesty to write a biased report against Ukraine?
Just to jump in here. The author of the report certainly seems to have an agenda and it would massivily surprise me if Russian Intelligence didn't attempt to manipulate organisations like this, it is what they do...
It's such an irresponsible report for a human rights group to publish, knowing fully well how it would be used and abused, that I would go out on a limb and say there is foul play at work here, imo. It leaves out so much context that its very difficult to call it objective.
Amnesty is a huge organisation though so it would be a huge stretch to suggest the whole thing is in Putin's pocket.
Russia have released more grain from Ukraine ports. To China, Turkey and Italy.
The same Italy where populist politicians with links to Russia, forced an anti-Russian and publicly well-liked PM to resign.
You can see Russia's longer-term plan start to emerge. With incoming huge grain shortages and drought in Africa, they're winning over governments that are the gatekeepers of Europe to the huge incoming immigration crisis. A poorer European population, having to cut gas and jobs, is not readily going to accept a huge wave of African refugees. I'd be surprised if the EU isn't pushing Ukraine to buckle to Russia's demands come spring.
The same Italy where populist politicians with links to Russia, forced an anti-Russian and publicly well-liked PM to resign.
You can see Russia's longer-term plan start to emerge. With incoming huge grain shortages and drought in Africa, they're winning over governments that are the gatekeepers of Europe to the huge incoming immigration crisis. A poorer European population, having to cut gas and jobs, is not readily going to accept a huge wave of African refugees. I'd be surprised if the EU isn't pushing Ukraine to buckle to Russia's demands come spring.
i really don't think there's foul play at all. the woman said russia had continuously committed war crimes.
but it's not the first time people are angry at them for reporting on abuses in asymmetric warfare as if the field were symmetric. but i don't think they're any more in the pocket of russia as they are in that of israel. just "politically incorrect" and counterproductive if you're on the other side, as finklestein is above and everyone is here, but they often publish material no one wants to read.
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After reading about the situation in the news today, I'm also wondering if Amnesty thought it was time for a report that's critical of Ukraine, just to provide a little balance in their reporting, and with that more credibility for their criticism of Russia.
I might be making that up though, and it would be silly (wrong) reasoning if true.
That guy is talking a lot sense,
they should have published 10 thousand reports on Russia atrocities before committing one to Ukraine for the ratio to be accurate with respect to endangering civilians. I’m not sure it’s a stretch to believe they’re being the influenced by the agents from Israeli or Russian securities services.
i agree, but the fact that you agree with finkelstein here tells you all you need to know about amnesty's independence because you'd be unlikely to agree with him on russia's invasion of ukraine. in fact, you'd conclude that he was in the pocket of the kremlin or a putin propagandist much faster than you'd say the same about amnesty. which demonstrates that this is not an anti-ukrainian agenda but a systemic constant in amnesty's reporting and methodology.
having watched as much of the above as you can before you turn it off, you'll realise that your mutual agreement on amnesty comes down to a political rather than logical agreement. you each dislike their reporting because of their ignorance of symmetry and asymmetry in warfare. finkelstein for their politically blind but morally accurate description of gaza and you for their same political blindness but moral correctness in ukraine. the point being that neither finkelstein nor amnesty are in the pocket of russia any more than you're in the pocket of ukraine. it's just when you're in the corner of one side and an organization produces something unfavourable, or even politicaly incorrect, but not without truth, you tend to demonize them because that's the natural thing to do.
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I don’t know the guy but he well could be, one thing doesn’t necessarily prove anything. If he fails to be consistent then that raises serious concerns about his motives.
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he isn't. for example israel demonized amnesty over the apartheid conclusion. finkelstein has no problems with that report. russia have denounced amnesty for their reporting on russian warcrimes. ukraine has no problems with those reports. amnesty is typically more consistent and more impartial than the people who are taking entrenched political sides. it's their impartiality that infuriates everyone, not their partisanship.
Can't it be both? I think the borders are blurring. I'm fully convinced there are enough people within Amnesty who are buying into Russian propaganda but that doesn't mean that this is the (sole) motivation behind this report. Lots of left leaning people are very criticital with the West and it's actions as well as military. They like to point out double standards and possibly they believe when they criticize Russia, they also have to criticize Ukraine in some sort. They believe this is what objectivity means but get the proportions wrong.
And that's ignoring the fact that the report apparently lacks the necessary insights about warfare. In the end, they're just supporting the Kremlin in its quest to divide Western society. And having spoken to people who are into conspiracy theories and love to feel ahead of their social circle by swimming against the throne, trust me, it works. There are so many who'll tell you that you are a naive idiot for believing everything the Western media claims and that Ukraine and NATO is evil, too, and they will feel confirmed now.
Well put.
You still disregard the proportionality aspect now, you can’t call yourself impartial in that case and you gonna get rightly called out as a result. That’s not how impartiality works.
that's finkelstein's exact argument about amnesty's report on hamas in gaza. he concluded israeli propaganda. you all conclude russian propaganda.
i think it's much more simple. technically amnesty were correct in their criticism of hamas but it was felt to be propaganda because what else are you supposed to do in gaza? everywhere is a civilian area. the same thing is now playing out in ukraine. when it's ubran warfare, what do you do? it's still technically correct but it infuriates people because they feel amnesty should take an editorial side which they have always refused to do. if they do that it compromises them. all human rights orgs have said it over and over. states love us one day and despise us the next. that's usually a good sign that you're doing your job right even if i personally don't like what you're saying because i think it should be more political than it is.
What exactly should be Israeli propaganda?
the lack of proportionality in amnesty's report on gaza. they criticised the use of civilian areas but as has been pointed out gaza is the world's most densely populated civilian area. there is no non-civilian land you can go and defend yourself. the same will be true in ukraine if the fighting moves into cities which it has. the report isn't wrong it just lacks proportionality. finkelstein wants them to say "this all happens but what else can you do?" and the ukrainian regime will want them to say roughly the same thing. the point is that they aren't israeli or russian mouthpieces as each of those states will tell you if you look through amnesty's history of condemning each, and recently, too.
Except that Ukraine isn't densely populated at all, even in its most populated areas (which is not where the fighting currently is in most places). A better example would be Mosul or Fallujah.
But that's not what I meant. By publishing this report, Ukrainian violations of the Genever Conventions or similar rule sets is overrepresented in the public perception. As an analogy, imagine a political TV show that is discussing a controversial topic such as, say, climate change, with five guests. Now, say, 95% of society believe in climate change and only 5% deny it. Still, of his five guests, the host of the show feels obligated to invite at least one who's denying it because he wants togive the opposition a voice, too. But is this correct? In the public perception, suddenly 20% think climate change isn't real, significantly overrepresenting this opinion - and we as humans usually work this way: The more people believe in it, the more likely we are to believe it, too.
The same effect is at work with this report. It is overrepresenting the Ukrainian wrong doings because in order to get the proportionality right, Amnesty would probably have had to publish hundreds or thousands of reports about Russian war crimes before story was covered. In some cases it might have been out of the right intentions (seeing the conflict from different perspectives), in some cases out of the wrong ones (Russian propaganda) but either way, it is harmful.
yeah which makes the gaza example more egregious if you follow a consistent logic imo. anyway the russians are using a nuclear power plant to store weapons because the ukrainians can't attack it or everyone dies. did the ukrainians do what amnesty said? i'd be surprised if they didn't. but it's about proportionality.
when they publish more reports into russian war crimes as they inevitably will, how can you then turn around and say "it's russian propaganda". their report seems accurate factually which is their job but i understand why it irritates people politically because the same thing has happened many times before. it's the way most human rights orgs tend to work. they aren't perfect but they aren't state propaganda either.
israel calls amnesty a hamas propaganda machine
russia calls amnesty a cia outfit
hamas labels amnesty dangerous and pro-israel
the us calls amnesty reprehensible over gitmo
states work in propaganda for their national interest. they take the "good" reports and make use of them and then smear the same orgs when they publish reports that they don't like. it's always been like this. non state actors like amnesty know this because the situation is nothing new.
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if you look at human rights methodology you'll see none of this is novel. the organizations are always working at behest of the state they operate within and according to the restrictions put in place. they make allowances for it. same thing happened in iraq during the 90s. and you could find dozens and dozens of examples like that. it's almost a universal principle. for example, the ukrainian forces oversee amnesty in ukraine. does that make their findings of russian warcrimes illegitimate? no. same in palestine. and every other site they've ever done work with some exceptions.
trying to discredit amnesty is not a good look. they do great work all around the world and ukraine has benefited from that in the past and will in the future too.
How reliable are stratcom considering who they are? But anyway, I havnt followed this discussion much at all.
I've watched a comment from a Ukrainian human right activist (she isn't with the Amnesty) and she said that the thing that concerned her the most wasn't the report but the press release. In the Amnesty's report the proportion of Russian to Ukrainian crimes was about right but for whatever reason when they've tried to translate that into a shorter form it began to look like there's barely any difference between the two.
I mean it’s pretty obvious after they have excluded Ukrainian amnesty team from ‘investigation’.
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