6 ms·

Ah, it was a mistake to mention anything else with you, even in parenthesis... You are not going to touch that the international community, not only US and Swe

by berntb 10y ago

Ah, it was a mistake to mention anything else with you, even in parenthesis... You are not going to touch that the international community, not only US and Sweden, agree that Putin's Russia is much worse. (As you are certainly well aware of: The democratic peace theory discuss wars, not involvements in coups during the second "great game", that of the Cold War.) 4 comments (in 2 places) without touching my point... :-( You are not serious, bye.

dleslie 10y ago
I did touch it; I stated that it doesn't matter what the international community things. "Foo did something wrong." "Bar did the wrong thing as well." "So what, Quz, Qid and Qaz agree that Foo did something wrong." It doesn't matter what Quz, Qid and Qaz think. Plurality does not justify propaganda.
- berntb 10y ago
  I have not talked about the "international community", I talked about that the democratic countries agree, regarding Putin's propaganda. Elegant rewrite, by the way. And so on.
  - dleslie 10y ago
    You said Western Democracies agree; and I asked why not All Democracies, and stated that it doesn't matter who agrees. But I wonder, why do you reject non-Western Democracies?
    - berntb 10y ago
      Why do you care? You claim -- just like Putin's employees -- that there are no real differences between dictatorships and democracies anyway. And you won't touch if human rights, freedom, media freedom and so on are irrelevant... (The academic measurements of them are part of the conspiracy against Russia?) Edit: Enough. I'm not going to get my account banned over a 350 karma troll. Bait away, making more weird claims. :-)
- berntb 10y ago
  Let me put the simple point like this: Every country do something wrong. To go from "no country is perfect" to "all countries are equally bad" is Putin's propaganda position -- and the whole democratic world disagrees with your and Putin on this.
  - dleslie 10y ago
    It's not a competition; there is no objective yardstick by which to measure which country is worse. Both do wrong, and none can objectively say whether one does more wrong than the other. What we can do is call a spade a spade whenever we see one.
    - berntb 10y ago
      >> there is no objective yardstick by which to measure which country is worse. That can't be intellectually honest. There are lots of metrics. E.g. human rights compliance, press freedom, number of murdered journalists in the country/year, freedom indexes and so on. Bye.
      - dleslie 10y ago
        There is no objective yardstick because the ethical conditions are subjective. For instance, in this very thread it is evident that agreement cannot be found upon whether or not cooperating with Government agencies on messaging is an unethical journalistic practice[0]. There are many metrics, but very few of them are objective; that doesn't mean that those which are not objective are not meaningful, but it means that finding agreement is likely impossible. To be clear: I do not believe that Russia is in the right, in terms of their concealed use of propaganda. That does not mean I must hold my nose and accept that the Americans engage in clandestine propaganda in collusion with private media. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379153
        berntb 10y ago
        >> There is no objective yardstick because the ethical conditions are subjective. So the yardsticks measuring differences between dictatorships and dictators are relative..? THAT is an uncommon claim these days -- it was common before 1989, from communists supporting Soviet. And then you ignored my examples: - Human rights - State control of media - Personal freedom indexes - Risks for critical journalists to be murdered This is just funny.

by berntb 10y ago

dleslie 10y ago

I did touch it; I stated that it doesn't matter what the international community things. "Foo did something wrong." "Bar did the wrong thing as well." "So what, Quz, Qid and Qaz agree that Foo did something wrong." It doesn't matter what Quz, Qid and Qaz think. Plurality does not justify propaganda.

berntb 10y ago
I have not talked about the "international community", I talked about that the democratic countries agree, regarding Putin's propaganda. Elegant rewrite, by the way. And so on.
- dleslie 10y ago
  You said Western Democracies agree; and I asked why not All Democracies, and stated that it doesn't matter who agrees. But I wonder, why do you reject non-Western Democracies?
  - berntb 10y ago
    Why do you care? You claim -- just like Putin's employees -- that there are no real differences between dictatorships and democracies anyway. And you won't touch if human rights, freedom, media freedom and so on are irrelevant... (The academic measurements of them are part of the conspiracy against Russia?) Edit: Enough. I'm not going to get my account banned over a 350 karma troll. Bait away, making more weird claims. :-)
berntb 10y ago
Let me put the simple point like this: Every country do something wrong. To go from "no country is perfect" to "all countries are equally bad" is Putin's propaganda position -- and the whole democratic world disagrees with your and Putin on this.
- dleslie 10y ago
  It's not a competition; there is no objective yardstick by which to measure which country is worse. Both do wrong, and none can objectively say whether one does more wrong than the other. What we can do is call a spade a spade whenever we see one.
  - berntb 10y ago
    >> there is no objective yardstick by which to measure which country is worse. That can't be intellectually honest. There are lots of metrics. E.g. human rights compliance, press freedom, number of murdered journalists in the country/year, freedom indexes and so on. Bye.
    - dleslie 10y ago
      There is no objective yardstick because the ethical conditions are subjective. For instance, in this very thread it is evident that agreement cannot be found upon whether or not cooperating with Government agencies on messaging is an unethical journalistic practice[0]. There are many metrics, but very few of them are objective; that doesn't mean that those which are not objective are not meaningful, but it means that finding agreement is likely impossible. To be clear: I do not believe that Russia is in the right, in terms of their concealed use of propaganda. That does not mean I must hold my nose and accept that the Americans engage in clandestine propaganda in collusion with private media. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379153
      - berntb 10y ago
        >> There is no objective yardstick because the ethical conditions are subjective. So the yardsticks measuring differences between dictatorships and dictators are relative..? THAT is an uncommon claim these days -- it was common before 1989, from communists supporting Soviet. And then you ignored my examples: - Human rights - State control of media - Personal freedom indexes - Risks for critical journalists to be murdered This is just funny.