I donât call people traitors or Putin noshers.
Mind you, I also donât DM mods demanding other posters are banned.
Iâve never threatened to grass the site up to Tellmama and Iâve never demanded to be anonymised
So yeah, I reckon Barry and I are similar in some ways.
Let us know when the next boulder is leaving the greenhouse
To be clear, when I describe Barry as a zealot. Iâm not saying heâs like that about every belief he holds (One reason why banning him is not a good idea IMO) and we likely all have certain beliefs that we are uncompromising about. The belief I am attacking is the specific one I outlined above. If you spin the argument on Pap (or me), it doesnât hold up. Pap doesnât espouse the superiority of Russiaâs implemention of Russian values, Pap doesnât deny that Russian mainstream media is largely propagandistic fiction when it comes foreign policy, Pap doesnât deny that there are powerful agendaâs within Russian governance which are at odds with Russiaâs declared values or indeed his own values. Pap doesnât froth at the mouth, repeating bizarre statements about his desire for the US President to die of bum cancer and he doesnât call people who disagree with him Biden noshers.
The other problem with spinning the argument on Pap, is that its not really fair do so. Barryâs core belief is in defence of The global hegemonic power since the fall of the CCCP. There is an asymmetry here that is important. To some degree what Pap and Barry think about Russia is far less important than what they both think about the West not least because the West, unlike Russia, is something that they actually theoretically have some kind of democratic influence over.
I think you would struggle to give examples of any posts on the Ukraine thread that were indisputably pro-Russian or pro-invasion. Disputing the Western propaganda narative, and holding a view that Russia has a competent leadership and a competent army which is not on the brink of defeat and may actually be achieving their objectives does not in any way equate to being pro-invasion.
Wow, that escalated quickly 
Can you show me where I played the poster and not the post? (I specifically referred to 10 posts from Cobham and one post from you - the very definition of playing the post surely?)
I think he may be a little delicate at the moment.
I donât think many people dispute the Western propoganda narrative, even Bazza - however as we all know there is a Russian propoganda narrative.
Iâve asked on the thread for someone to tell us who we should believe, and no-one has yet told us what sources we can believe, ergo, we canât believe anything we hear.
One of the best examples of this was the sinking of the Russian ship. Bazza reported it, and was widely ridiculed because of the sources that were involved - and we all know how that one ended.
If weâre going to recognise the Western propoganda, the surely we need to recognise the Russian propoganda. I think there is no doubt, outside of any reports, that this has not gone the way the Russians have wanted it to go, and Putin is under huge pressure (hence the harding of the rhetoric over the last week or so).
Who knows. The war is a fault of the West, and everyone should know that. The way the war has played out, the atrocities, are a fault of Russia, and that should be in no doubt.
They want to pigeon hole me as a west loving zealot as it gives some form of argument, I hate Blair, the Iraq War, the tories, entitlement, privilege, the class system, arms sales, war, consumerism etc etc.
I also hate illegal invasions, war crimes and annexations.
I really donât understand why Schlong thinks Iâm a zealot, its cute in a kind of funny way, Iâm a democrat and want an open society for all to be what they want to be, most people do, its not controversial, what is however is consistently muddying the waters with dubious links, addingn whataboutery and denying things you donât happen to like.
An immature way of handling things.
Schlong said he was a humanitarian, admirable and I also consider myself one, what has he seen by this Russian invasion thatâs humanitarian?
Do you know what, that actually made me sad, it made me sad first and foremost lives were lost and then supposed adults were mocking an apparent falsehood.
Yes, The bit where you called me a conspiro-nut. The bit where you said you donât post here anymore because of me.
All in the context of âplaying the ball, not the manâ
Now Iâm largely unconcerned with the views of someone that visits a site only to decry it, but I reckon you might need to brush up on your internal logic and short term memory.
This is not correct. This website is rife with regurgitated bullshit. Barry is perhaps the only one who proudly proclaims the BBC as the gold standard of reporting and refuses to accept information that doesnât come from a mainstream source.
Youâre asking a difficult question. I donât know why you expect an answer. Books have been written on this topic. There is no one source you can believe.
This is not a good example at all.
The question was over the specific issue of whether it had been sunk. Barry claimed it had been and that the vast majority of the crew were dead. I wasnât convinced of this and had seen sources disputing this. Bazza called me out for hypocrisy for using the Pentagon (which was saying the ship was afloat under its own power and on the way to Sevastopol) as a source. My argument was that if both Russia and the Pentagon were saying the ship wasnât sunk then it almost certainly wasnât sunk. Subsequently it was announced by the Russians that the ship had sunk. This was taken by some and to be honest myself as well to mean that it had been sunk all along and thus resulted in a great victory for Barry.
However, although the story ended there on this site. Thatâs not where it ended in real life. Pictures emerged some days later of the ship during daylight hours shortly before it had sunk. So in fact the pentagon source and the Russian sources and thus my assertions also that the ship was not sunk were all correct at the time they were made. The situation obviously developed from that point. I never denied the ship had been hit, I strongly suspected it had been. I simply denied that it been sunk. Which it hadnâtâŚat the time. The sources Barry and others cited as fact were only partially correct and lied about the number of deaths, claiming more than 500 sailors had died (since disproven after a video emerged of the surviving sailors being addressed and redeployed) and that the ship had been sunk that night.
There were also earnest claims made on this site by Barry and others about the major significance of this event for the war. I stated that although it was embarrassing for Russia it was unlikely to have any real impact on the outcome of the war, which it hasnât. In other words I was refuting Western propaganda, not espousing a pro invasion position.
What Russian propaganda? Do you read or watch the Russian news? Are there masses of Russian MSM articles being posted on this site? You canât even watch RT anymore. There are plenty of gaurdian articles being posted however. You are making a completely false equivalence.
So I think what weâve established is that there are no sources we can trust, so unless any of us are actually there, nothing anyone says on here about actual events in the war is worth reading, regurgitating or believing. How do we know how many Russianâs have died for instance- whoâs tally should we use?
No, all weâve established is that there is no one source we can trust indiscriminately. It doesnât mean we need to dismiss everything we read in every source, it just means we have to be more discerning about what we believe. The example I gave above of the pentagon and Russian media agreeing on particular facts is a case in point.
Is it propaganda you could get up to 15 years for calling it a war or protesting against it in Russia? Is that false or true?
Novaya Gazeta, what happened to them, would you even have believed them?
It seems on every question or statement concerning Russia youâre unwilling to say theyâre wrong and give an equivalence when none is needed nor required ie Iraq War.
So when two opposing sources agree, we can believe them - ie when everyone is reporting the same thing? That goes without saying, but what about everything else? Can we only believe the BBC sometimes, or RT sometimes? How do know when we can trust them?
And this is where agenda biased truth comes in, people only want to believe theyâre right so they go to echo chambers by and large.
Theyâll look all over then internet for views that agree with them or they agree with no matter how dark or dubious, they canât even condemn Russian actions and the invasion without a whatabout or well if, its childish, address the point at hand, use equivalence if needed and its valid but not to distract or compare, I hated the Iraq War and I hate this.
You have stated that you are a nationalist Barry. All those things you claim to hate were perpetrated by your nation.
The problem is that you say those things but at the same time take entirely inconsistent positions such as claiming the BBC is the gold standard of journalism and Western values being superior to those of the rest of the world. The BBC (and their ilk) and Western values are at the root of all the things you purport to hate. Itâs not nuanced, itâs inconsistent
and irrational.
I note that you both ignored this point. Barry youâre a kept man sat in his PJâs in Liverpool playing fantasy computer games bought with your wifeâs jaguar/Landrover salary. I think deposing Putin in the Kremlin is beyond you. Why donât you concentrate on pointing out the failings of politicians closer to home whom you can actually wield a bit of influence over.
What am I wrong about Barry? You have misunderstood my point. My point is weâre not especially subjected to Russian propaganda on this site not that Russian propaganda doesnât exist.
I donât personally think I was âplaying the poster not the postâ because I wasnât engaging with your posts at the time, so I suppose I was just âplaying the posterâ full stop 
By the way, I take back the âconspiro-nutâ jibe if it deeply offends you - I didnât realise you were sensitive to it (I thought youâd mentioned in the past that you embraced the insult, but I apologise if I misremembered).
And I also didnât realise you were offended by people saying they left because of you - I thought that was pretty obvious given that quite a few people have left because of you.
Context Schlong, civic nationalist. As a civic nationalist I couldnât agree with the bombing of innocents under the reasons given.
And where have I said the BBC is the gold standard? Theyâre certainly one of the best but where have I held them up to be the best?
Are western values better than other around the World?
Yes and some are worse.
Really? News to me.
Why should our moral responsibility stop at our borders? That would be a nirvana for you, forget about Putin and Russia and the illegal invasion, its not going to happen.
Good post of full reaching and desperation though.
I donât give a fuck what anyone calls me, or thinks of me, which is probably one of the reasons you donât like my posting style.
Another potential reason is that Iâm fairly direct in calling stuff as I see it.
Under the circumstances, Iâd have called you a hypocrite if youâd called me a poo-head. The term mattered little. The fact that you were bang to rights doing what you accuse others of did.