Russia-Ukraine War Political Discussion

[Agent23]

Great job regurgitating the Kremlin line comrade.

An Azov big boy for for U.

 

[WolfBear]

...I'm really not sure how you connect those cause-and-effect wise.

I'd actually expect it the other way around, that if the Ukrainians win, then it would create a more common cultural impression that the world does not need American troops jumping around to stick their noses into every war.

Ukraine will still want NATO security guarantees even if Ukraine itself will formally be neutral rather than a NATO member, though. Think of pre-WWI Belgium with its British security guarantees.

 

[sillygoose]

Source: Russian shills.

Red Cross says Russia barring evacuation buses and aid for Mariupol, seizing food

Russian forces seized 14 tons of food and medical supplies bound for Mariupol, according to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.

nypost.com

Go to a serious source like Red Cross and they say no word about Azov stopping them, just Russia.

Serious source? The org that stole most of the Haiti donantions?
What happened to Red Cross donations for Haiti? | PBS NewsHour

 

[Marduk]

An Azov big boy for for U.

Antifa level point. So Azov tolerates members with spicy views...
Until not very long ago, so did other extremist and controversial organizations like... the US Marine Corps!

2/10/12 MAJOR MRFF VICTORY - MRFF Pressure Compels Top Pentagon Leadership to Take Action on Marines Flying Nazi 'SS' Flag in Afghanistan

www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org

Groups decry deplorable actions of Marines; question continued presence of U.S. abroad - MintPress

Groups decry deplorable actions of Marines; question continued presence of U.S. abroad - MintPress

www.mintpressnews.com

Neo-Nazi Group Membership May Not Get You Booted from Military, Officials Say

Lawmakers expressed astonishment at the testimony of military top investigators.

www.military.com

"I am flummoxed by what I've heard today," Rep. Jackie Speier, D-California, chair of the Subcommittee, said after questioning Robert Grabosky, deputy director of Law Enforcement at the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.


Grabosky said that membership in a white nationalist group "is not prohibited," but "active participation" in the group could lead to an administrative discharge, at a commander's discretion.


"I find that astonishing," Speier said. "If you're a member, that's an activity. I think we need to take a look at that."

Guess you agree with the complaining democrats here and are outraged that Ukraine's government policy on similar matters is not following the recommendations of democrat comrades.

 

[Husky_Khan]

Serious source? The org that stole most of the Haiti donantions?
What happened to Red Cross donations for Haiti? | PBS NewsHour

Did you link the right source? The ProPublica Investigation your linking doesn't state anything was stolen, just that the overall overhead was actually 24% as opposed to 9% due to subcontracting to other local and specialized organizations and whatnot in one case. It also alleged a lot of other things, mostly difficulties in working in Haiti due to the lack of local professionals, housing and infrastructure projects locked up in land disputes and other bureaucracy and a lack of general expertise when it came to things beyond immediate direct aid (which is what the Red Cross is providing or attempting to in spite of alleged Russian aggression in Ukraine), which is a tragically common feature for many NGO's in general.

I actually did a keyword search for 'stole' and 'stolen' and didn't see a single word stating that any of the money was stolen, much less that most of it was.

Regardless this is a large red herring as your bringing up that the Red Cross (apparently due to overhead costs) was less effective in recovery operations in Haiti is somehow directly related to the allegations by pro-Russian media that Azov is the reason why Red Cross convoys cannot transit to Mariupol.

 

[Agent23]

Regurgitated gibberish.

NO!
You were spamming the same cope bullshit before, irrelevant and ignored, as before.

 

[Marduk]

NO!
You were spamming the same cope bullshit before, irrelevant and ignored, as before.

Source: Renowned cope experts in form of russiaboos.

 

[Agent23]

Source: Renowned cope experts in form of russiaboos.

Far better than butthurt polish crybaby cope juice.

 

[sillygoose]

Did you link the right source? The ProPublica Investigation your linking doesn't state anything was stolen, just that the overall overhead was actually 24% as opposed to 9% due to subcontracting to other local and specialized organizations and whatnot in one case. It also alleged a lot of other things, mostly difficulties in working in Haiti due to the lack of local professionals, housing and infrastructure projects locked up in land disputes and other bureaucracy and a lack of general expertise when it came to things beyond immediate direct aid (which is what the Red Cross is providing or attempting to in spite of alleged Russian aggression in Ukraine), which is a tragically common feature for many NGO's in general.

I actually did a keyword search for 'stole' and 'stolen' and didn't see a single word stating that any of the money was stolen, much less that most of it was.

Regardless this is a large red herring as your bringing up that the Red Cross (apparently due to overhead costs) was less effective in recovery operations in Haiti is somehow directly related to the allegations by pro-Russian media that Azov is the reason why Red Cross convoys cannot transit to Mariupol.

They lied about constructing over 130,000 homes. They built 6.

In Search Of The Red Cross' $500 Million In Haiti Relief : NPR
The American Red Cross’ Haiti Scandal Not Isolated | Al Jazeera America
The Red Cross, Haiti and the 'black hole' of accountability for international aid | Haiti | The Guardian

The Scandalous History of the Red Cross - CounterPunch.org

I'm saying the Red Cross due to prior behavior is not a trustworthy org. You wanna 'sperg out about semantics that's your problem.

Oh and it is heavily involved with the governments it is associated with:
Red Cross Structure - How the American Red Cross Works | HowStuffWorks

The Red Cross is not completely independent of the United States government, however. The organization runs under a Congressional charter that has been in place since 1905. Under this charter, the Red Cross acts as an "instrument of the government," carrying out the duties and responsibilities of the Geneva Convention and other tasks that the federal government delegates to it [ref]. The Federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA) monitors the Red Cross' blood collection and storage programs.

It is an org that is associated with the government in the regions it operates, which in this case is Ukraine, is not an unbiased source.

 

[Marduk]

Far better than butthurt polish crybaby cope juice.

Still not bulgarian cucked into simping for russiaboo cope.
Guess you ran out of real arguments again.

It is an org that is associated with the government in the regions it operates, which in this case is Ukraine, is not an unbiased source.

Neutrality as a Fundamental Principle of the Red Cross

www.icrc.org

Ukraine Says New Red Cross Office In Russia Will Legitimize Moscow’s Alleged Abduction Of Civilians

The Red Cross is reportedly planning to build an office in Rostov-on-Don, which is temporarily housing thousands of Ukrainians extracted from the warzone.

www.forbes.com

Red Cross is principally neutral and still operates in Russia too.

 

[Terthna]

Far better than butthurt polish crybaby cope juice.

Look, just stop; you're not getting anywhere arguing with him, you're just stressing yourself out and damaging your health for no reason. He's already chosen his side in this conflict, just like you have; and both of you are acting like tantruming children. Not that you're alone in that regard; a lot of people seem to have regressed in maturity in the time since this whole mess started.

 

[Agent23]

*SNIP*

Your impotent reeing and mindless parroting is occasionally entertaining, I will give you that, birdboy.

 

[Zachowon]

They have to be neutral or else they become targets

 

[sillygoose]

Still not bulgarian cucked into simping for russiaboo cope.
Guess you ran out of real arguments again.

Neutrality as a Fundamental Principle of the Red Cross

www.icrc.org

Ukraine Says New Red Cross Office In Russia Will Legitimize Moscow’s Alleged Abduction Of Civilians

The Red Cross is reportedly planning to build an office in Rostov-on-Don, which is temporarily housing thousands of Ukrainians extracted from the warzone.

www.forbes.com

Red Cross is principally neutral and still operates in Russia too.

Uh huh:
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement - Wikipedia

Contrary to popular belief, the ICRC is not a non-governmental organization in the most common sense of the term, nor is it an international organization. As it limits its members (a process called cooptation) to Swiss nationals only, it does not have a policy of open and unrestricted membership for individuals like other legally defined NGOs. The word "international" in its name does not refer to its membership but to the worldwide scope of its activities as defined by the Geneva Conventions. The ICRC has special privileges and legal immunities in many countries, based on national law in these countries or through agreements between the committee and respective national governments.

The ICRC is not a non-government org and the Swiss have taken sides in this conflict unlike any other time in modern history:
Switzerland ditches neutrality to sanction Russia and Putin | CNN Business

 

[Agent23]

Look, just stop; you're not getting anywhere arguing with him, you're just stressing yourself out and damaging your health for no reason. He's already chosen his side in this conflict, just like you have; and both of you are acting like tantruming children. Not that you're alone in that regard; a lot of people seem to have regressed in maturity in the time since this whole mess started.

Um, he is the one responding to me, if I could mute his ass and not listen to him I might do that.
Although he is just a ree pinata, he occasionally produces some funny gibberish when I tell him off.

Also, I do not back down from bullying, sanctimonious asshats like him.
Dunno what he is doing here, since he fits far better back in shitholes like SB and SV.

Anyways, here is more video analysis from CRP:


TL;DW More fakes, no wounds, no faces, very high quality video production, no dirt on places where there should be dirt, strange placement for corpses, fake blood.

 

[Husky_Khan]

They lied about constructing over 130,000 homes. They built 6.

In Search Of The Red Cross' $500 Million In Haiti Relief : NPR
The American Red Cross’ Haiti Scandal Not Isolated | Al Jazeera America
The Red Cross, Haiti and the 'black hole' of accountability for international aid | Haiti | The Guardian

I'm saying the Red Cross due to prior behavior is not a trustworthy org. You wanna 'sperg out about semantics that's your problem.

All three of those articles cite the same ProPublica Investigation that was brought up earlier. I'm sure if you are given five or ten or fifteen minutes that you can google all sorts of scathing articles about giant international organizations in order to flood the discussion with more Red Herrings.

The American Red Cross also never stated, at least according to the ProPublica investigation, of "construction over 130,000 homes" and only building six homes. The statement in the ProPublica report is:

"The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six."

So there's already one difference in wordplay there. However the Red Cross stated in regards to the 130,000 homes this:

The Red Cross has provided more than 132,000 people with safe and durable housing, through a variety of methods. Often, the fastest and most efficient way to get people into safer homes is through rental subsidies, or repairs and/or retrofitting of existing homes. We also build and repair infrastructure that is vital to neighborhood recovery – like schools, roadways and water distribution points. The bottom line is that there hasn’t been sufficient land available to build new homes – particularly in the most heavily affected areas of Port-au-Prince where people want to live. Haitians don’t want to leave the neighborhoods where they lived, worked and went to school before the earthquake. Red Cross has fulfilled our promise to make sure tens of thousands of Haitians are back in homes.

So it's apparent there is obvious inflationary and exaggerated statements being made by the Red Cross, but not to the degrees of magnitude alleged in the headlines. In fact the ProPublica Investigation actually states that in regards to housing, the Red Cross was counting repairing of housing in its totals. Not just permanent housing.

And there is a difference beyond "semantics." You stated that the American Red Cross stole most of the $500 million dollars. The ProPublica Investigation didn't use the term "stolen" once or even allege that there was theft going on by the American Red Cross. The strongest allegations was in regards to non-Haitian employees working in the project, though apparently the largest amount of compensation cited was a combined salary and benefits/compensation rated at $140,000 a year for a Project Manager. And as I stated in the prior post, the closest allegation of anything being 'stolen' would be that the Red Cross Overhead was actually 24% instead of the announced 9%.

And again regardless this is a large red herring as your bringing up that the American Red Cross (apparently due to overhead costs) was less effective in recovery operations in Haiti is somehow directly related to the allegations by pro-Russian media that Azov is the reason why non-American Red Cross convoys cannot transit to Mariupol. Stating that they're "not biased" isn't really an argument in and of itself since they operate internationally and with chapters in various countries.

 

[Aldarion]

Brussels views Ukraine crisis as opportunity to create EU superstate

The past weeks have shown the dangers of European conservative governments allowing themselves to be distracted by the ongoing war in Ukraine from the power grab in European Union headquarters in Brussels and Strasbourg. Calls for an EU army and abandoning member state’s right to veto the...

rmx.news

And the other shoe has finally dropped. I expected this a long time ago.

 

[Abhorsen]

So just as a general statement, if you are buying one side or the other whole hog, you are an idiot.

Azov are a buncha nazis, bad people, and the fact that the US and other nations are supplying them is awful. Also, banning men from leaving the country and forcing them to fight was a great evil, and worse, probably not a necessary one.

The Russians were wrong to invade Ukraine, and aren't doing well in this war. They are engaging in genocide via mass displacement, as well as looting, rape, and murder of civilians.

There's also likely other bad stuff about both sides, that's just what I'm reasonably certain of.


What disappoints me is that a lot of people on the thread seem to just like one side and believe everything they say, then call the other side gullible. It'd be funny if it weren't sad.

So challenge: take a couple of days, honestly argue the other side. You'll win more than fake internet points, you'll learn stuff.


As part of this: I think that the Russians, despite initial misteps, are going to become more competent as time goes on, as political appointees are tossed to the side in favor of actual commanders. This is when one loosens the grip. The results of this can be seen in the decision to pull back from Kyiv and redirect that force to the Donbass regions. With competence, they'll likely be able to stabilize and consolidate here, and after wiping out the remaining defense in Mariupol, will control the land connection to Crimea. Then Russia will hold this stuff permanently post-war, with maybe a little land trading, but nothing major.

Brussels views Ukraine crisis as opportunity to create EU superstate

The past weeks have shown the dangers of European conservative governments allowing themselves to be distracted by the ongoing war in Ukraine from the power grab in European Union headquarters in Brussels and Strasbourg. Calls for an EU army and abandoning member state’s right to veto the...

rmx.news

And the other shoe has finally dropped. I expected this a long time ago.

This is very much true and basically inevitable. The EU was dying before Russia did this. Now with Russia at the gates, everybody is looking for protection. Oddly, NATO existing is the best defense against further support for the EU stuff, as without NATO, an EU superstate would basically be necessary to forestall Russian invasion.

Ukraine winning here is actually the best possible situation for EU skeptics, as it lowers the threat level of Russia, and thus lowers the urgency for new ties.

 

[sillygoose]

All three of those articles cite the same ProPublica Investigation that was brought up earlier.

NPR and Pro Publica both investigated:

NPR and ProPublica went in search of the nearly $500 million and found a string of poorly managed projects, questionable spending and dubious claims of success, according to a review of hundreds of pages of the charity's internal documents and emails, as well as interviews with a dozen current and former officials.

The other articles also cite other instances when the org did not live up to its claims either and was linked with US government orgs and foreign policy. But you instead cherry pick only the elements that back your narrative.

One part you ignored from the Al Jezeera article:

The Red Cross’ alliance with USAID, which considers development a means of promoting U.S. foreign policy objectives, is an invisible one. Many or even most of those who give to the Red Cross do not believe that they are promoting the agenda of any particular state, let alone the United States, whose billions in USAID spending can be and is accompanied by military occupations. This may not have been the case in Haiti, but it is certainly so in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unsurprisingly, as with the Red Cross in Haiti, USAID in Afghanistan blames Afghan customs for its many failed projects and reporting discrepancies. If local land disputes kept the Red Cross from building houses in Haiti, local tribal customs kept the USAID from empowering Afghan women. Waste and condescension are the hallmarks of both efforts.

I didn't want to start block quoting a bunch of text from multiple articles, not my fault you can't be bothered to read the articles.

The American Red Cross also never stated, at least according to the ProPublica investigation, of "construction over 130,000 homes" and only building six homes. The statement in the ProPublica report is:

"The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six."

From NPR:

NPR and ProPublica went in search of the nearly $500 million and found a string of poorly managed projects, questionable spending and dubious claims of success, according to a review of hundreds of pages of the charity's internal documents and emails, as well as interviews with a dozen current and former officials.

.....

It's not unheard of for the Red Cross to make such a claim. Not long ago, the charity hired a group of consultants to review one of its projects in the north of the country. They found the charity's math unreliable when it came to counting people it helped. There was double-counting, undercounting, and in one instance the Red Cross claimed to have helped more people than actually lived there.

Point being that the Red Cross claimed lots of things that didn't hold up when investigated. Including 'providing' 130,000 homes.

Then they took a massive series of cuts out of the donations for 'administrative fees' while refusing to provide documention of how money was spent:

First the Red Cross took a customary administrative cut, then the charities that received the money took their own fees. And then, according to the Red Cross' records, the charity took out an additional amount to pay for what it calls the "program costs incurred in managing" these third-party projects.

That's not the money that went to 3rd parties, just the Red Cross' :administration costs".

In one of the programs reviewed by NPR and ProPublica, these costs ate up a third of the money that was supposed to help Haitians.

But the charity will not provide a list of specific programs it ran, how much they cost or what their expenses were.

So there's already one difference in wordplay there. However the Red Cross stated in regards to the 130,000 homes this:

The Red Cross has provided more than 132,000 people with safe and durable housing, through a variety of methods. Often, the fastest and most efficient way to get people into safer homes is through rental subsidies, or repairs and/or retrofitting of existing homes. We also build and repair infrastructure that is vital to neighborhood recovery – like schools, roadways and water distribution points. The bottom line is that there hasn’t been sufficient land available to build new homes – particularly in the most heavily affected areas of Port-au-Prince where people want to live. Haitians don’t want to leave the neighborhoods where they lived, worked and went to school before the earthquake. Red Cross has fulfilled our promise to make sure tens of thousands of Haitians are back in homes.

Again that was their claims, but they refused to provide documentation of that. And the reports show they lied about what they said they did:

He explains in Creole that about three years ago the Red Cross came with glossy booklets saying it was going to build hundreds of new homes, a water and sanitation system and a health clinic.

None of that happened.

"We still have tents," he says. "I am going to show you that the Red Cross has not intervened here at all. If you're talking about change, people should not be living like this still."

The Red Cross promotes this project heavily in its annual reports and press releases, under the headline "Rebuilding Neighborhoods." It's costing $24 million.

The brochure says the project is scheduled to end next year. Far from new homes and new neighborhoods, it says the Red Cross will do smaller projects such as repairing some homes, walkways and schools. The Red Cross is also building a road. The brochure says the project is costing $24 million.

"I don't understand an organization like the Red Cross acting like that," Julnet says. "If they have received that kind of money, maybe they paid their employees with it? That is OK. But that kind of money spent here in the community? No, that cannot be said."

The Red Cross' internal emails and memos from the Campeche project show that the residents were right: The original plan was to build 700 new homes with living rooms and bathrooms. The Red Cross says it ran into problems acquiring land rights.

Their internal memos, however, show there were other serious problems, including multiple staffing changes and long bureaucratic delays. And then there was a period of almost a year when the whole project appears to have sat dormant.

He says the leadership, including Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern, seemed more concerned with which projects would generate good publicity.

It goes on and on like that about all their failures and false claims.

So it's apparent there is obvious inflationary and exaggerated statements being made by the Red Cross, but not to the degrees of magnitude alleged in the headlines. In fact the ProPublica Investigation actually states that in regards to housing, the Red Cross was counting repairing of housing in its totals. Not just permanent housing.

They also said they were planning on building hundreds of homes and failed to do so. Instead the claim administrative issues kept coming up, but they kept spending money on their administration without getting any significant results.
From Pro Publica:

The Red Cross’ initial plan said the focus would be building homes — an internal proposal put the number at 700. Each would have finished floors, toilets, showers, even rainwater collection systems. The houses were supposed to be finished in January 2013.

Shown an English-language press release from the Red Cross website, Flaubert was stunned to learn of the project’s $24 million budget — and that it is due to end next year.

The Red Cross said it has to scale back its housing plans because it couldn’t acquire the rights to land. No homes will be built.

Other Red Cross infrastructure projects also fizzled.

$24 million for home that were never built. What happened to that money?

In January 2011, McGovern announced a $30 million partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. The agency would build roads and other infrastructure in at least two locations where the Red Cross would build new homes.

But it took more than two and a half years, until August 2013, for the Red Cross just to sign an agreement with USAID on the program, and even that was for only one site. The program was ultimately canceled because of a land dispute.

What happened to that money that wasn't spent?
And why were other groups able to build thousands of homes without problem?

Other groups also ran into trouble with land titles and other issues. But they also ultimately built 9,000 homes compared to the Red Cross’ six.

And it wasn't simply an issue with getting land titles:

A Government Accountability Office report attributed the severe delays to problems “in securing land title and because of turnover in Red Cross leadership” in its Haiti program.

Wonder why?

The group said it responded quickly to internal concerns, including hiring an expert to train staff on cultural competency after St. Fort’s memo. While the group won’t provide a breakdown of its projects, the Red Cross said it has done more than 100. The projects include repairing 4,000 homes, giving several thousand families temporary shelters, donating $44 million for food after the earthquake, and helping fund the construction of a hospital.

They only repaired 4,000 homes and given thousands of temporary shelters.

From the Guardian link:

But the organization has faced accusations of mismanagement before, including withholding funds after 9/11, delays of emergency supplies after hurricane Katrina and disarrayed and selective relief after hurricane Sandy. Indeed, members of Congress are currently waiting for the results of an audit into the American Red Cross’s disaster relief efforts.

So the org has a habit of lying and misrepresenting what they actually did that did not stand up to scrutiny in Haiti and they were sandbagging reporting to congress about what was going on.

International aid groups largely operate in a “black hole” of accountability, charity watchdogs have said, as fresh allegations emerged this week of the Red Cross’s misrepresentations of its accomplishments after Haiti’s devastating earthquake in 2010.
Officials at nonprofit watchdogs were not surprised by a ProPublica and NPR investigation which found the Red Cross had misrepresented its efforts in Haiti and delivered only a portion of the $488m it raised to Haitians, in spite of a pledge to give “91 cents” of every dollar.

Experts said there are virtually no ways to monitor how nonprofits operate, nor for governments or disaster victims to hold them accountable for deliberate or accidental mismanagement.
“There’s a lot of waste and abuse that’s allowed to go on just because there is no accountability,” said Daniel Borochoff, president of the nonprofit CharityWatch. They exist in “a black hole” of accountability, he said, especially in the realm of international grants.

And there is a difference beyond "semantics." You stated that the American Red Cross stole most of the $500 million dollars. The ProPublica Investigation didn't use the term "stolen" once or even allege that there was theft going on by the American Red Cross. The strongest allegations was in regards to non-Haitian employees working in the project, though apparently the largest amount of compensation cited was a combined salary and benefits/compensation rated at $140,000 a year for a Project Manager. And as I stated in the prior post, the closest allegation of anything being 'stolen' would be that the Red Cross Overhead was actually 24% instead of the announced 9%.

I never said they stole most of the money, I said they stole money the Haiti relief donations, which they did via administrative costs and very dubious claims of how the money was actually spent. Just because for legal reasons the report didn't use that specific word doesn't mean it isn't accurate. When they claimed 91 cents on the dollar were going to help people in Haiti but one investigation demonstrated that at least 33% of that money was instead used on 'administrative costs' that is a pretty blatant lie. It was 1/3rd of the money, not 24%:

In one of the programs reviewed by NPR and ProPublica, these costs ate up a third of the money that was supposed to help Haitians.

That was just administrative costs, not including the money that was allocated for housing construction that never got off the ground and the money was unaccounted for thereafter.
Plus as all the articles state this was only one of many such disasters for which there is extremely dubious accounting.

And again regardless this is a large red herring as your bringing up that the American Red Cross (apparently due to overhead costs) was less effective in recovery operations in Haiti is somehow directly related to the allegations by pro-Russian media that Azov is the reason why non-American Red Cross convoys cannot transit to Mariupol. Stating that they're "not biased" isn't really an argument in and of itself since they operate internationally and with chapters in various countries.

It was also the International org as well:
Red Cross Built Exactly 6 Homes For Haiti With Nearly Half A Billion Dollars In Donations | HuffPost Impact

In one case, the Red Cross sent $6 million to the International Federation of the Red Cross for rental subsidies to help Haitians leave tent camps. The IFRC then took out 26 percent for overhead and what the IFRC described as program-related “administration, finance, human resources” and similar costs.

It was far more than lying about how much administrative cost there was, which of course you blithely ignore after butting into a response I made to Marduke not you. Then you lied about what the articles and reports said!

The articles point out how the orgs are tied to various nations, including acting as US foreign policy. Not only that, but you entirely ignored the parts of my posts that show that the ICRC is not a non-governmental org, but a Swiss only org that is linked to the government, a government that abandoned its historical neutrality for the first time in hundreds of years to side against Russia.

My entire point was that the ICRC is not a neutral org representing a neutral state in this conflict.

Also note what the ICRC actually did say:
Ukraine: ICRC team unable to reach Mariupol; Renewed attempt tomorrow | ICRC

The ICRC team, which consists of three vehicles and nine personnel, did not reach Mariupol or facilitate the safe passage of civilians today. They will try again on Saturday to facilitate the safe passage of civilians from Mariupol.

No mention of why the convoy failed to get through or that the Russians were the cause. Never mind that they're actually trying to move through an active war zone so safe passage is going to be hard to find when there is a bunch of shooting going on.

In fact it turns out some unspecified assailant opened fire on the convoy on Saturday's follow up attempt:
Aid organizations try again to evacuate besieged Mariupol (msn.com)

The ICRC’s role in the evacuation effort was to accompany humanitarian convoys from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia, indicating that the vehicles are civilian and not military targets. Friday’s mission was to escort about 54 buses of evacuees, as well as civilians in private vehicles. However, the terms of the ceasefire were unclear as of Thursday, and some buses in the convoy came under fire as they approached the city of Berdyansk on Thursday afternoon, according to Tetiana Ignatenkova, a spokesperson for the Donetsk regional administration.

War zones aren't exactly known to be safe even when ceasefires have been agreed to. Everyone gets jumpy and orders doesn't necessarily make their way to everyone on time or get followed by the boots on the ground which then results in cease fires breaking down.

 

[Husky_Khan]

NPR and Pro Publica both investigated:

The other articles also cite other instances when the org did not live up to its claims either and was linked with US government orgs and foreign policy. But you instead cherry pick only the elements that back your narrative.

One part you ignored from the Al Jezeera article:

I didn't want to start block quoting a bunch of text from multiple articles, not my fault you can't be bothered to read the articles.

I didn't ignore that part. You were bringing up Haiti. Like I stated before I'm sure if you are given five or ten or fifteen minutes that you can google all sorts of scathing articles about giant international organizations in order to flood the discussion with more Red Herrings. And stating that the Red Cross is working with the occupying government in Afghanistan and Iraq and that local customs and corruption got in the way of aid programs shouldn't be remarkable. It is Iraq and Afghanistan. But working with governments is what a lot of NGO's have to do. The Red Cross, regardless of affiliation, has always worked with governments. In Mariupol they were negotiating with the Russian and presumably Ukrainian governments for the aid convoys after all.

From NPR:

Point being that the Red Cross claimed lots of things that didn't hold up when investigated. Including 'providing' 130,000 homes.

They also said they were planning on building hundreds of homes and failed to do so. Instead the claim administrative issues kept coming up, but they kept spending money on their administration without getting any significant results.

Already addressed:

The American Red Cross also never stated, at least according to the ProPublica investigation, of "construction over 130,000 homes" and only building six homes. The statement in the ProPublica report is:

"The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six."

So there's already one difference in wordplay there. However the Red Cross stated in regards to the 130,000 homes this:

The Red Cross has provided more than 132,000 people with safe and durable housing, through a variety of methods. Often, the fastest and most efficient way to get people into safer homes is through rental subsidies, or repairs and/or retrofitting of existing homes. We also build and repair infrastructure that is vital to neighborhood recovery – like schools, roadways and water distribution points. The bottom line is that there hasn’t been sufficient land available to build new homes – particularly in the most heavily affected areas of Port-au-Prince where people want to live. Haitians don’t want to leave the neighborhoods where they lived, worked and went to school before the earthquake. Red Cross has fulfilled our promise to make sure tens of thousands of Haitians are back in homes.

And why were other groups able to build thousands of homes without problem?

Did you read that article?

You mean the tent city that Sean Penn's air organization erected? Or the temporary (apparently they last a decade) housing cited later in the article? Because no aid groups were the ones to build "thousands of homes without problem."

Many residents see the transitional shelters as little boxes in the desert: small, hot and, especially, remote.

“There is nothing to do here: no activities, no work,” Antoine Jean Mejne, a barber, said. “When they first moved us here, they had a cash-for-work program and we complained about the pay” — $5 a day. “But now all we have are the shelters. You can’t eat a shelter.”

Exeline Belcombe, an elegant 25-year-old who traverses the rock-strewed settlement in a gauzy turquoise skirt, high heels and blue eye shadow, helped persuade people to move there. She lived in a tent among them and served as a paid liaison between the community and Mr. Penn’s group.
Now, she said, she feels a little guilty and disappointed, too. “These are not real houses. Imagine seven or eight people, 10 to 12 people in a one-room shelter? It’s not a life.”

Laura Blank, spokeswoman for World Vision, the group that constructed the shelters and a school there, said, “Building permanent housing is not part of World Vision’s general program objective.” She added that the shelters were sturdier than the “lower-quality shelters built by other organizations” and could last up to a decade “if well maintained.”

So the groups that the ProPublica group cited in the article were also erecting temporary shelters, not the permanent housing that the Pro Publica investigation was focusing on. Again the claim was that the Red Cross somehow built 130,000 permanent houses but they apparently never made that claim AFAIK. Sadly it seems that, as I've stated repeatedly, large NGO's and other relief organizations seem to have trouble dealing with these very difficult problems of the third world beyond providing direct aid.

Then again, if solving these problems were easy, then there wouldn't be much of a Third/Developing World.

Also there was actually a great deal of problems... but the article refers to a group of communities that after land disputes and title issues and eminent domain issues with the government, decided to build some communities off the grid.

After the government claimed the land around Corail through eminent domain, about 50,000 displaced Haitians resettled themselves in the off-the-grid communities they named Canaan, Jerusalem and Obama. Some erected tents or shanties, but thousands have built homes without outside help.

“Out here, we depend on nobody but each other,” Fabienor Chada, 43, said. “We owe nothing to foreigners and nothing to our government. We look only to God for aid, though a small loan or grant would come in handy.”

Mr. Chada, a tailor, never moved his family to a tent camp and so never got counted as a potential beneficiary. He moved his family from one relative’s house to another until he heard about Canaan. He said he paid a fee to “some men” for the hilltop he now “owns,” by the Wild West logic of the frontier land.

And it wasn't simply an issue with getting land titles:

Wonder why?

I never alleged it was just issues with getting land titles. As I stated in my very first response.

It also alleged a lot of other things, mostly difficulties in working in Haiti due to the lack of local professionals, housing and infrastructure projects locked up in land disputes and other bureaucracy and a lack of general expertise when it came to things beyond immediate direct aid (which is what the Red Cross is providing or attempting to in spite of alleged Russian aggression in Ukraine), which is a tragically common feature for many NGO's in general.

I never said they stole most of the money, I said they stole money the Haiti relief donations,

Lets go back and see...

Serious source? The org that stole most of the Haiti donantions?

No looks like you stated "The Org" stole MOST of the Haiti Donations. If that's not what you meant, then you didn't make it clear in your original post.

Then they took a massive series of cuts out of the donations for 'administrative fees' while refusing to provide documention of how money was spent:

That's not the money that went to 3rd parties, just the Red Cross' :administration costs".

Again that was their claims, but they refused to provide documentation of that. And the reports show they lied about what they said they did:

It goes on and on like that about all their failures and false claims.
which they did via administrative costs and very dubious claims of how the money was actually spent. Just because for legal reasons the report didn't use that specific word doesn't mean it isn't accurate. When they claimed 91 cents on the dollar were going to help people in Haiti but one investigation demonstrated that at least 33% of that money was instead used on 'administrative costs' that is a pretty blatant lie. It was 1/3rd of the money, not 24%:

That was just administrative costs, not including the money that was allocated for housing construction that never got off the ground and the money was unaccounted for thereafter.
Plus as all the articles state this was only one of many such disasters for which there is extremely dubious accounting.

Yes 24% of it was overhead, as your linked Pro Publica article cited:

You can obfuscate as much as you want saying this or that project had more overhead then the other but overall this is what your source is citing.

The articles point out how the orgs are tied to various nations, including acting as US foreign policy. Not only that, but you entirely ignored the parts of my posts that show that the ICRC is not a non-governmental org, but a Swiss only org that is linked to the government, a government that abandoned its historical neutrality for the first time in hundreds of years to side against Russia.

My entire point was that the ICRC is not a neutral org representing a neutral state in this conflict.

I actually didn't ignore that because that was a different post then the one I was replying to. If anything you should be thankful, considering how sensitive you are that I "butted into your conversation" with Marduk or somesuch.

EDIT:

LOL been so long since I've been involved in such pointlessly long pasta posts arguing minutiae no one actually reads!