Hate to be that person, but WW3 trend on TikTok is not funny at all, especially your stupid POVs. Because no, Jessica from Chicago, you won’t have to hide in the basement to avoid being nuked and no, Kyle from LA, you won’t get drafted to the front lines.
You again missed the whole point and managed to make this situation all about yourself, so I’m going to assure your stupid ass - this war is not going to affect you in any way, but you know who it’s going to affect? Actual people from Ukraine, who are going to lose their lives and be displaced from their homes, just like for the past 8 years.
So congratulations on your stupidity, because it’s not about “I need a way to cope ”, it’s about you celebrating and making fun of other people’s death.
A quick message for all my ex-cult peeps and PIMOs :
This is not the end of the world, I know the media is acting like it and I know how whatever cult / religion you’ve come from or are currently in will be influencing this shocking event for their own gain, but its not the end.
This is not some precursor to a deity committing mass genocide, this is not a divine judgement, this is not a sign from above telling you to come back to the cult.
These are the actions of a mortal human, this is an attack by someone of our own species, this is not the first time it has happened and I doubt it will be the last.
So take 5 minutes to breathe and calm yourself, if you need to, stay off social media or avoid posts concerning the Ukraine + russian conflict, put yourself first and look after your mental health.
If you are in Ukraine, I know words are meaningless especially online but I hope you see this from a safe place, I hope you have enough to get by and I hope you aren’t in any physical pain. If you’re grieving or are scared out of your mind, I’m sorry for your loss and for what you’re going through, I wish I could hug you and support you as much as possible in person.
polish government has opened a website for ukrainians seeking safety and trying to cross the ukrainian-polish border:
ua.gov.pl
as of 13:10 polish time, it has been said as many people as possible will be let through the borders. they are also supposed to let through children who do not have passports, as to not divide families.
Polish person here, I’ve been on the website, it looks legit! Adding the full link here:
Information is available in Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and English
Please get the help available!
Other people, please boost this!!!!
Gov.pl is a legit website connected to the polish government i use it to look at tax info and school stuff (it has the lessons for the teachers written out) and driving license info. So this is legit!!!
Ukrainian friends, you can also cross the border to Slovakia, with or without a passport, or at least that’s the latest update from our Ministry of Interior. You must prepare yourselves for waiting in lines as they check every individual vehicle upon entering (waiting times according to our news are hours long because of shitty capacities but hopefully after today the officials will figure out a more effective system). If anybody has a link too, I’d be grateful as I haven’t found anything useful prior to adding to the post. I hope you all stay safe.
Romania is also willing to accept up to 500,000 refugees from Ukraine. Be prepared for long waiting times at the Siret border crossing.
If you can reach Germany, they are willing to accept refugees as well. Our minister of the interior, Nancy Fraeser, said that all Ukranians with a biometric passport can come to Germany even without a visa and stay there for 90 days.
you can also cross into romania though i have conflicting information about whether it’s possible to do so with only your national id or you need a passport.
while the romanian govt has indeed stated it’s willing to receive 500,000 refugees, the actual response from authorities has been in the vein of ‘we don’t really want to invite an influx of refugees and will act if absolutely necessary’.
however, the response from romanians themselves, both civil society orgs and ordinary people, is completely different and supportive of ukrainians entering the country. there’s an active facebook group where people offer housing, food, transportation and other basic necessities.if you’re entering romania from any point (not just siret) and need urgent help with something, i encourage you to post on that group and ask! you can post in ukrainian, by now there are volunteer translators on board. people will help you!
(i know less about the volunteering situation in moldova, but several moldovans have been posting on the group as well, so if you’re trying to cross there instead you can still post and ask for information).
update on crossing into romania with/without a passport + crossing with pets: the mayor of isaccea, one of the border checkpoints between ukraine and romania, explained that you can enter the country without a passport, at which point you’re registered as a refugee and the local authorities must give you support but you must stay in the town/city where you entered. if you have a passport you can enter romania and then travel normally.
also restrictions on bringing pets into romania are temporarily lifted so that your pet doesn’t need to be chipped or have other identification, but if it doesn’t have a valid rabies vaccine, it must have it administered after entry.
At this times many of us ukrainians are remembering this song, СТАСІК - Колискова для ворога (A lullaby for my enemy) that was released two years ago. This woman is a veteran and she also studied folkloristics at KNU Tarasa Shevchenka just like me, so I feel a special connection with her. I want you to watch this because it’s really powerful. She uses traditional ukrainian singing technique.
Translation:
Year by year, again and again I sing this lullaby. Obey my word, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.
I pity you, my enemy who chose this path. You run to death like a mad one. Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.
Leave the anger, leave the fatigue for you don’t need them anymore. You will drawn in dreams forever. Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.
You will sleep in a cold soil like a child in my womb. Forever captured. Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.
Didn’t you want this land? Then become mixed with it. You will become my land itself. Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.
war protesters in russia are getting brutally arrested so this evening anti-putin russians are going to mass protests against war under the disguise of celebrating maslyanitsa. maslyanitsa is a holiday widely celebrated among slavs that symbolizes the defeat of winter and the birth of new sun. god if they succeed this will be so epic
there is a little romani boy in a basement with us who doesn’t speak ukrainian or russian but hes making friends with two other children and it seems like they speak their own baby language. recently he happily screamed ababa!! www!!! and kissed the other boy on the nose. sorry im gonna cry
3 years ago, when I was living in the US, if you would have asked me what I miss from home, sure I would have mentioned the pain au raisin, the centuries-old cities, being a 1h flight away from completely different countries…
But one of the thing I missed the most, quite surprisingly, was the news. The big old news on TV, an efficient, unbiased recap of what happened in the world in the last 24 hours. I craved information. I craved geopolitics. I felt like I was always missing something, that I was always behind in some way, not completely grasping what the hell was going on in this world.
So when I came back, I made it my personal mission to stay informed as much as possible. This includes watching the news in the morning, watching the news in the evening, watching our French equivalent of a talk show after that. Every day.
Did exposing myself to terrible news day after day has an effect my (already poor back then) mental health? Quite certainly. But at least I felt in control again. I knew about things.
Flash forward almost 3 years later, April 4th 2022. I wake up at 7:50, fix myself some breakfast, sit in the couch, turn on the TV. The news are about to start. I’m unemployed, I have depression, I have nothing else to do.
8:00, the news start. I have a cup of coffee in one hand. A toast in another. I’m ready to take in everything I am about to take in. Shower me with information pretty lady on the TV!
Except I don’t thing anyone is ready to wake up to dead bodies laying on a street of the Ukrainian city of Boutcha.
And as I lay there in the couch, watery eyes lost in the void, I think to myself “did we become so used to the horror of the world that we don’t even take the time to blur dead bodies on national tv anymore?”. Hell it was 8:00am. Some kids somewhere were probably putting their shoes in front of the tv before going to school and saw that too.
And I know! I know what you’re going to say! “You wanted information? Here you go!” (this one’s is a little bit on me I’ll admit it) or “consider yourself lucky to have access to unbiased, uncensored information about the world!” and yes I am grateful for that, or even “that’s the whole point the images are supposed to shock people so they can realize what’s truly going on there!” and yes probably, but at what cost?
Don’t you think those people, those victims of an atrocious war crime, deserve more respect? Don’t you think their friends and family shouldn’t have to watch the bodies of their loved ones on tv?
The number of victims is already shocking. I truly don’t think showing long shots of boots sticking out of a common grave was needed.
Tonight for the 1st time is almost 3 years I didn’t watch the news. Because I can’t take it anymore. Because apparently the dead bodies at 8:00am were the last drop before I lost faith in this world to the point I don’t want to hear about it anymore
“But it is not just about skin colour and Ukrainians “looking like Europeans”. The double standard is also a reflection of western foreign policy, and the ways in which such policies and priorities can be reflected in media coverage.”
Leftists generally speaking know that there is always some kind of awful bombing going on in the world. We know that there are drone strikes and flybys, we’ve read about the children who grow up afraid of a clear sky.
Yemen is actually a great example. Yemen is something that I see discussed almost exclusively in leftist circles, and Saudi Arabia’s use of US-manufactured bombs against civilian populations in Yemen is one of the things that leftists have been yelling about for most of a decade. So on an abstract level, if you were a leftist and you saw that graphic, you probably felt two things:
1) Superiority: “I *DID* know, at least in a general and abstract way, about the other people getting hit with airstrikes yesterday. I *HAVE* talked about US imperialism in Somalia; god, does anyone remember when the military was getting all high and mighty about Somali pirates who were the result of a political environment the US helped to create? I remember! And we’re still bombing them! And nobody cares! And Biden just said he’s not going to do anything to get justice for Khashoggi so we know he’s just going to keep selling arms to Saudi Arabia! Fuck! I’m going to share this so that other people remember too, because I didn’t forget but I know my aunt Tilly on FaceBook wasn’t talking about Syrian refugees last week like she’s talking about Ukranian refugees this week.”
2) Guilt: “Oh god, I was so wrapped up in what was going on in Ukraine that I *didn’t* hear about the 37 airstrikes in Yemen in the last two days [that may or may not have actually happened in the timeframe described] or hear about Israel firing on Damascus. The eurocentrist media has an excuse but I don’t, is this because of pro-white bias? Am I more concerned about what’s happening in Ukraine than Somalia because the refugees are blonde, just like the reporters are saying? That’s horrible! I’d better share this as a reminder to myself and to other people who maybe got caught up in the eurocentrism. It’s important to remember that war everywhere is bad, this isn’t especially bad just because it’s white people on the TV.”
I think this is actually a really interesting weaponization of identity politics. The graphic is suggesting that if *RIGHT NOW* you care more about an invasion that is creating literally millions of refugees overnight then you’re forgetting about all the people around the globe who are suffering. It’s why redfish is also responsible for one of the supercuts of journalists talking about white, blonde refugees. Those journalists absolutely said those things, and those things are repugnant, but you want to make sure you’re not repugnant in the same way as the journalists in the clip so you share the clip, or the map with the other drone strikes, instead of possibly investing too much time into talking about Ukraine specifically. If you’re talking about Ukraine specifically, you’re not condemning war everywhere.
Anyway. This is your reminder that if an infographic or a video clip or an article makes you immediately feel rage or guilt or frustration it was probably *specifically constructed* to get you to feel that way so that you would share or react without taking a moment to think about the information being presented to you.
Also: this is a chaotic time. If you are sharing any news or information you ensure that it has at leastone (though preferably all three) of the following visible somewhere on the post:
A clear source that you are familiar with
A date
A link
If a post sharing purported information about an ongoing crisis doesn’t have any of those things, don’t share it. If you want to share it and it doesn’t have any of those things, go find those things for yourself before you hit the reblog button.
It *DOES* take a hell of a lot more effort to use social media when you’re doing those things, but it also limits the reach of mis/disinformation and will help you personally to get better at recognizing when a clickbait headline is supposed to short-circuit your thought process or when an infographic is trying to prey on your guilt instead of your rational understanding of the world.
Thank you for this post. I think this should be a lesson to all of us on how not to be fooled by Russian disinformation. For anyone still wondering why the Redfish map is misleading, here’s what I wrote on another post about this, and I want to add it here as well.
I want to talk about what specifically is misleading about the Redfish map. Here it is:
First of all, the map puts concrete numbers on the other countries, but in Ukraine it just says “dozens.” I don’t know what the real number of airstrikes was in Ukraine during the 48 hour period that this was talking about, but it was almost certainly higher than “dozens,” given that Russia has been conducting airstrikes across the entire country indiscriminately every day and night… The vagueness of “dozens” is a red flag.
The second misleading thing about this map is that it’s decided to limit itself to the last 48 hours, and leaves out the fact that Russia has also been conducting airstrikes in Syria recently.
The third misleading thing is of course that these other countries are not trying to annex the territories they’re attacking. Russia istrying to annex Ukraine. And I want to be clear that I am totally against all of these airstrikes, and no matter the purported reason for conducting them, they are wrong. But acting like these other countries’ airstrikes are comparable with Russia’s is not accurate; Russia is trying to annex Ukraine anddestroy its statehood.
The fourth misleading thing about this map is that it focuses on airstrikes at all. Russia has of course been conducting airstrikes in Ukraine, but it has also fired hundreds of missiles at cities, and has an invasion force of moving in on the ground.
To be clear, we should absolutely condemn airstrikes in Somalia, Yemen and Syria. But we’ve got to be careful of misleading graphics like these. “Condemn war everywhere” is a sentiment that a lot of people can get behind, but then they won’t dig any deeper to see if the map is actually misleading.
Ultimately, this map is not really designed to criticize war everywhere; it’s designed to make the situation in Ukraine seem like it’s not a big deal.
Edit: What I didn’t notice before, somehow, and I’m really shocked I didn’t see it until now, is that the area highlighted as Ukraine does not include Crimea. That’s a huge red flag too.
I’ve been really frustrated to see people I was following reposting Kremlin propaganda. Some of you are under the impression that propaganda is only obvious stuff like “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is completely justified” and so you think you can’t fall prey to it. But a lot of disinformation and propaganda about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is less overt than that.
So here are some examples of Kremlin propaganda that I have seen being spread around and shared uncritically by people who should really know better:
1) The idea that NATO is responsible for the war in Ukraine or the idea that Ukraine itself is responsible for Russia’s invasion.
Russia invaded Ukraine—I don’t know why I should have to spell this out, but the country literally sending soldiers, tanks and missiles into a neighboring country is the one that is at fault for the war, and that country is Russia. In addition, the narrative that NATO expansion caused the current conflict ignores the agency of Eastern European countries; it is Ukraineand other Eastern European countries that have sought to join NATO, not the other way around. And why shouldn’t they? Russia’s aggression against Ukraine illustrates exactly why many countries have sought to join NATO in the first place. I’m not saying that NATO cannot be criticized (for instance, NATO has bombed countries in the Middle East). But it is inaccurate to claim that NATO caused the current conflict. As for the idea that Ukraine is to blame for the war, that is also patently false: before Russia invaded, it built up over 100,000 troops on its side of the border. Ukraine did not do the same.
2) The idea that Ukraine is a right-wing state governed by Neo-Nazis.
Propaganda will often take a small grain of truth and completely blow it out of proportion. There areNeo-Nazis in Ukraine, like there unfortunately are in most European countries. But they are not in power—Zelenskyy’s government is not far right, and he is certainly not a Neo-Nazi; he is a Jew who lost family members in the Holocaust. Putin has pushed the lie that Ukraine is led by Neo-Nazis to justify his invasion, probably in part to garner support among Russians who feel proud of the Soviet Union’s victory against Nazi Germany. But, obviously, Ukraine is not Nazi Germany. And the very existenceof far-right groups in Ukraine cannot justify Russia’s invasion and the subsequent loss of life. People who are spreading the idea that Ukraine is led by the far right/Neo-Nazis are doing Putin’s work for him.
3) The idea that the Ukrainian government represses Russian speakers and the idea that Russian speakers should be part of Russia.
Ukraine does not oppress Russian speakers, as Putin has claimed. Many Ukrainians are bilingual, and Zelenskyy himself is a native Russian speaker. There have been efforts to popularize the Ukrainian language in recent years—attempting to reverse the effects of the Soviet Union’s systematic eradication of Ukrainian language and culture—but that is not the same thing as oppressing Russian speakers, although the Kremlin has tried to frame it as such. In addition, it is absurd to claim that just because there are Russian speakers in Ukraine, they should be part of Russia. Should all English-speaking countries be subsumed back into the British Empire? Should all Spanish-speaking countries become part of Spain? The answer is obviously no.
4) The idea that there are “no good guys” in the war.
I’ve seen a lot of people spreading the idea that Russia’s invasion is wrong, but Ukraine’s government is bad too (often using the other pieces of Kremlin propaganda about Ukraine as evidence). This is bothsidesism at its worst. The narrative that there are “no good guys” seeks to draw attention awayfrom Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, its killing of innocent civilians and children, its blatant violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and self-determination, etc. and instead frame the conflict as something in which both sides are equally bad, somehow.
But the idea of “no good guys” in the Russia-Ukraine war places some of the blame on Putin, so how could that be Kremlin propaganda, you ask? This brings me to another important point:
If you think something isn’t Kremlin propaganda because it does criticize Putin, you don’t understand how Kremlin propaganda works.
Kremlin propaganda that is aimed to influence Western audiences can and doescriticize Putin and Russia so that it can slip under your radar. You have to ask yourself: who benefits from the narrative that there are “no good guys”? The Kremlin benefits. Because that narrative is designed to reduce sympathy for Ukraine and to reduce people’s desire to help Ukraine. Kremlin propaganda isn’t going to necessarily try to convince people living in Western countries to support Putin. But it isgoing to try to convince you to notsupport Ukraine.
Always fact check. Always ask yourself: who benefits from this narrative?
