17 ms·

Watching the World Wrecking

122 points by vitabenes 5y ago

praptak 5y ago
I believe no sane person can fully commit to "my country, right or wrong". Being Polish I admit that my country does some shitty things and I support the EU in their actions to stop that (fines, blocking of funds). Maybe you should be a patriot for the country, not the state. Germany the country transcended the Third Reich and is mostly fine today.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  My preferred addition, usually attributed to Carl Schurz, is to add "if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." to the phrase. That addition changes it from a statement of blind obedience to a statement of social responsibility.
- RobertoG 5y ago
  I think being a patriot is caring about the people of your country, all of them, even the ones you don't like, not the country or the state. If you do that, war is the last thing you want.
- petre 5y ago
  Well, Poland us doing the right thing right. Germany may have transcended the Third Reich but they are doing exactly the same mistake that the UK did pre 1939. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/chamberlain-and-hitler/#background https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/cham...
verisimi 5y ago
" I have trained myself to ignore the news, or rather I have trained myself to think I can ignore the news, or rather I thought news can ignore me and we both can mutually agree on ignoring without even temporarily igniting the interest or a glimpse of it towards each another." and then: "But now, a real war... A war, aggression, a direct invasion is something my consciousness cannot ignore. It devours all my attention, all my thoughts, all my emotions and feelings – everything." "Pain because of all countless stories, photos, videos, and live TikToks of destroyed cities and injured people, shootings, shoutings, explosions. Pain because I have friends from and in Ukraine. They tell me stories about their families and other people hiding in the undergrounds and basements, or desperately trying to leave their country, without food, shelter, or medicine." There was always stuff to be scared of on the news. But from his perspective, what's changed? He still doesn't have any personal experience of this war, any more than he had of the previous stories he saw or ignored. What's happened is that he is bought into it, because of the scale of what is being presented to him on screens. There are other wars, but somehow those are/were possible to ignore (eg Yemen, Afganistan, Iraq, Ukraine pre-2022, etc). Eg apparently 97 people were killed in Iraq last month: https://original.antiwar.com/updates/2022/03/31/iraq-monthly-roundup-97-killed-during-march/ https://original.antiwar.com/updates/2022/03/31/iraq-monthly... ... but this is NOT news. This war is only special because the media are putting it in our faces. The media is a part of this - they are playing a role. Their role is to increase fear, by bringing our attention to this all the time. It is likely to me that the media reaction plays a role in pushing people to do something - sign up to fight, flee their homes, etc. I don't trust the media nor what is presented. I'd like to understand better why this war is sucking in all the air, and why we have this being presented to us. I expect that the mass co-ordination of the media in promoting this story, at this time (immediately after covid) indicates that we are being manipulated.
- baq 5y ago
  Check out a history book about the lead up to 1939 (including an afterword why Russia doesn’t think 1939 is a special).
  - ailef 5y ago
    Do you believe there's a real risk of Russia invading and occupying other countries in Europe?
    - sharken 5y ago
      Georgia and Moldova are on the same path as Ukraine, they want to be members of the EU. All three countries are outside of NATO and EU, so they will have no one daring help them against a Russian invasion. Putin has shown that he is willing to take on 44 million Ukrainians with the invasion of Ukraine, so it's impossible to know if Georgia and Moldova are also on the list. Any country not a member of any defense pact are at risk, so membership of the EU is a sound but also dangerous choice. A regime change in Russia would of course change the dynamics, but that outcome seems highly unlikely.
      - YorkshireSeason 5y ago
        You are entirely correct, those countries have good reason to fear Russia (with the additional complexity of substantial numbers of ethnic Russians in those countries), but, as I wrote a month ago [1], there is a symmetry here and Russia also has good reason to fear NATO, for the latter, in the last 2 decades, have invaded (directly or through proxy forces): Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan. The sibling post [2] by "chrisco255" summrises some of the arrising issues. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30479658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30479658 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30887328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30887328
        sharken 5y ago
        The symmetry of NATO being involved in the named countries is hard to view as a threat to Russia. Yes, those countries are all in Asia, same as Russia, but apart from that it's a really weak argument that Russia should feel threatened. In no way can the invasion of Ukraine be justified and yet here we are, nobody can tell if Putin wants to invade Georgia or Moldova. It requires a paranoid person such as Putin, to think NATO has a master plan for attacking Russia.
incompatible 5y ago
I appreciated the link to Umberto Eco's essay on Ur-Fascism. Point 8 on the fascists is topical: 8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy. https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybook...
- pastacacioepepe 5y ago
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    People generally don't like imperialist apologia. You can certainly criticise NATO, but if you're using criticism of NATO to imply that they're the bad actors in the invasion of Ukraine, you're going to get called out on it.
    - pastacacioepepe 5y ago
      That's exactly what I'm referring to, thanks for providing an example.
      - beaconstudios 5y ago
        So what, you think that Russia invading Ukraine is a defensive war against NATO aggression? How can an invasion be defensive? I'm not "cancelling" you here by the way, more just calling you wrong. Just like other people appear to be doing so, but sure, if you want to be a victim over it then that's your choice I guess.
MatthiasWandel 5y ago
I think believing the propaganda for Russians is a matter of mental and physical self preservation. If you know it's a war and it's bad, what do you do? Remain silent - bad for mental health. Say or do anything about it - physically dangerous. It's easier and safer live in the comfortable "reality" presented by the propaganda, taking the attitude "just tell me what to believe so I will be safe"
- mckirk 5y ago
  This is also why, paradoxically, the more atrocious the actions of the state become, the more entrenched the people become in their belief in the propaganda. Because to question the propaganda would become dangerous existentially, if it would force you to accept the terrible things you've been party to, and the dire situation you are actually in. We've certainly seen that in Germany during WW2, when the people _wanted_ to believe that 'they were the good guys' and absolute victory was imminent, when in reality Germany was responsible for a shit-ton of unnecessary deaths and the front line was already in the next town over.
  - fit2rule 5y ago
- FrenchAmerican 5y ago
  There is a specific context though, that makes the propaganda far more believable to many Russians than what they read online through VPN or - for most Russians - through word of mouth. I watched a Russian elderly lady, who appeared like a decent person, respond to a western journalist. She said that she knew for sure that the news from the West were untrue "when they said that Russians troops were shelling Kiev and Kharkov - which is impossible". Many Russians - most in fact - consider that Ukraine is historically a part of Russia. Which is untrue, but that's "common knowledge". So Ukrainians are their cousins, their brethren. Hence the syllogism: if Putin has sent the Russian army to Ukraine, then: 1/ it doesn't make sense to kill civilians and shell cities to the ground 2/ the attack must have valid reasons ("Nazism", existential threat to Russia by joining the USA' side through NATO, ...) When you are in such representations, believing Putin's propaganda is quite rational. By the way, we should also be more skeptical of what we are told on our own channels. Our media are relying all the time information they get from the US government, the British intelligence and the Ukrainian government WITHOUT any possible way to cross-check them. No journalist can cross check the idea that Putin is being lied to by his generals, by his entourage and by the FSB. It is quite possible ; it would explain a lot of what happened during the last month ; it is logical since despotism reign by fear - and truly we have all seen how fearful these people appeared to be during the televised Russian security council. But our journalists are relying what our governments and the Ukrainian government say, without verification. Most mention that fact, directly or indirectly ("according to...") - but they five credit to this narrative anyway by propaging it. Russians are wrong to support this unprovoked and atrocious invasion of Ukraine - but they are rational, not gullible or escaping a disturbing reality because it's easier to cope with, even unconsciously. Humans are rational. Russians are rational and we are too in the West. A good reading about this: "the Savage Mind", 1962, by the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. He demonstrates that Natives' way of thinking in the Amazonia was as rational then as we are today, as were people in the Middle Age or ancient Greeks or ... jihadists from All Qaeda. Not that I like it - but just let's stop with the ideas that people we disagree with are not rational. Even Flat Earthers are rational people! It sounds absurd at first but it's really not. The Enlightenment movement of the XVIIIth century was precisely of discuting everything that was proclaimed as a Truth in common knowledge or by authorities (the Catholic Church, ...). It's not irrational to think that Earth is flat. Most of our day-to-day experience tend to prove this idea. Demonstrating that Earth is a globe is not that easy. It's easy to make simple experiments that hint that Earth is not flat, but explanations can be found to explain the discrepancies. Really proving to people that Earth is round without a mediation like films from space is not easy. Of course, the Flat Earthers are prone to detect conspiracies everywhere, so they discard the films as fabricated. Which is not irrational. The proof needs either a direct experience in which Flat Earthers would have total control, or a decent level in Mathematics and Physics. Most of people who are right to think that Earth is a globe don't know how to replicate the proof of it. They believe what Science says - which is a very rational attitude. The only way to change the mind of most Russians is to find people they trust (for any reason), send those to Ukraine with cameras and have them do their independent reporting. Showing the atrocious results of Putin's invasion, eg massive civilian casualties, destruction of whole cities, war crimes, ..., will create the emotion that humans need to reconsider what their rationality led them to think. Humans don't change their mind when confronted to a "rational presentation of facts". They need a strong motivation to accept to reconsider. Only emotions can provoke the shock required. Many experimental psychology studies have demonstrated that "rational demonstrations" by scientists to whatever-believers (antivax, ultra-nationalists, jihadists, flat Earthers) lead to ... the reinforcement of their beliefs. Our rationality is driven by our emotions. Which doesn't mean that we are not rational. Many scientists complain that they are perceived as super cold people, which they are absolutely not. But their very core of their job is to chase their own biases all day long. And that's a difficult task. Hence the crisis of reproducibility in many fields of Science, where the "publish or perish" tyranny nudges scientists to get results all the time. Some of them are just manipulators, of course, but the crisis of reproducibility is much deeper.
cracrecry 5y ago
As I heard a former war reporter that went to dozens of wars: War is always the same. Now in Ukraine the only difference it that they are blonde, blue eyes, white and European. But the suffering is the same in all wars. There were war before in Syria, promoted by the US and Saudi Arabia US friend. There was war in Libia before, promoted by France and the US. And of course there was war in Iraq and Afghanistan before, US invasions. Those wars were created because of geopolitical interest, just like Putin's war. Russia population believe Putin pretext in the same way the US population believed it was necessary to punish 20 terrorists from Saudi Arabia invading a country thousands of kilometers away or in weapons of mass destruction or what not. So it is not really "the World". It is your World, my World. The US has always exported war without dealing with the consequences as it is isolated by Oceans. Now Europeans have to deal with those wars closer and closer and its consequences. But it was always there.
- wozer 5y ago
  It's a bit different though because Russia and Ukraine are so close. It's a bit as if the US would attack Canada.
  - fuoqi 5y ago
    It's a bit as if the US attacked Canada after: - Pro-China forces got into power in Canada after unconstitutional coup. - China has started to actively train and supply Canadian military. Of course, solely for protecting Canadian sovereignty. /s - Anti-imperialistic (read anti-US) propaganda run rampant in the country. - Pro-US parties and media got either closed or pressured to the point of non-relevance. - The Canadian govement has declared that it wants close economic ties with China and to join its military bloc. - English was pressured in favor of French to protect Canadian culture. If you think it's too unrealistic, just remember the Cuban missile crisis.
    - orthoxerox 5y ago
      That attack would still be unwarranted.
    - 5y ago
causality0 5y ago
And the commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill” does not have an asterisk beside it, referring you to the bottom of the page, where there’s a list of instances where it is okay to kill people. I know he's just quoting someone, but as an interesting aside, it rather does. A more accurate translation is "thou shalt do no murder", and in historical-linguistic context it basically only applies to not killing Jewish people.
- eloisius 5y ago
  A Jewish friend once explained a similar thing about “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” Raised Christian, I was always taught it was broadly “do not lie,” but apparently it was more specific about not perjuring yourself in a court of law.
  - 542458 5y ago
    I don’t think there is good evidence for what you described on a theological basis (I also do not believe that what you described is a very common interpretation). The word translated as “murder” is “retzach”. Conveniently, the book of Numbers talks about “retzach” quite a bit, and it’s described as killing (including accidentally) outside of warfare. It is not distinguished by race or religion, and although there are a number of justified causes for retzach, none are as broad as “all non-Jews”. There’s a sort of precedent to “shalt not kill” in Genesis 9:6 as part of God’s covenant with Noah, and it’s very clear that it’s a prohibition to the murder of any human regardless of race or creed: “ Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” The old Jewish law contains a number of explicit protections for non-Jews, so it would seem very inconsistent if murder of non-Jews was viewed as not contrary to the law.
- jfengel 5y ago
  Much of the rest of the book is that footnote. The same deity orders numerous genocides, and mandates execution for a wide variety of offenses. As you say, it's better translated as "murder", which leaves open a wide range of killing.
- 5y ago
mynameishere 5y ago
The "World Wrecking"? It's a regional war over spheres of influence. Does NATO control Ukraine or does Russia? That's the question. Yes, if an artillery shell hits your apartment building, that's tragic, but most people--whether economic migrants (so-called "refugees") or executives at Raytheon, or Neocons, or WEF sociopaths, or the same Russophobes who brought you the Steele dossier, and so on, are all using this to advance their own interests. Try, this time, to not be a sucker.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Pretty sure NATO wasn’t planning to invade Ukraine. Shouldn’t the Ukrainian people themselves get to decide? Given that one side promises to defend them against attacks, and the other side attacks them, I know what I would choose were I in their position.
- glogla 5y ago
  What a profoundly monstrous view.
pastacacioepepe 5y ago
> There are no nazis or fascists in Ukraine apart from those who just invaded the country and now bringing woe to the land we have deep historical and cultural bonds, families, friends, memories. I mean, this is proved to be completely false. This article is really emotional and that's fine with me, but I would not pretend I can critically analyze and understand the situation when I'm in such a mental state.
- glogla 5y ago
  This is a semantics discussion, mostly. Ukrainian Nazis, while still ultra-right-wing and probably not nice people, trace their ideological lineage to WW2 Nazis not by believing in Hitler's vision (which would be dumb, Slavs were supposed to be genocided to make living space for more Germans) but because the Nazis treated (some of) Ukrainians better than the Soviets (some of the time). So they wear Nazi symbols but don't necessarily subscribe to clean race and taking over the world "for us better people" and genociding everyone else. Even the craziest Ukrainian Nazi is probably not looking to invade Poland and replace Poles with "superior Ukrainians". Meanwhile the Russian Z's are running aggressive war, consider themselves superior culture and want to take over most of Europe. They are doing war crimes left and right and their stated goal is a genocide of Ukraine (see "Ukraine is not a country, Ukrainians aren't people" statements from Putin) and rule of Europe. Genocide is of something Russians are fond of doing pretty often, see Holodomor and mass deportations and Russification for "more hard" and "softer" approaches. Oh and they're doing those things again right this moment - kidnapping people to Russia and attacking Ukrainian food stores and targeting fucking maternity wards of hospitals. So you could argue that despite swastikas on clothes, the Russians are "the true Nazis" here. What makes a Nazi, symbols or genocidal aggressive war backed by ideology of racial superiority? Normally, I'd say fuck all Nazis, but I can give a lot of leeway to people fighting to protect their homeland from genocidal murderous raping horde. Especially as repeating "but there are Ukrainian Nazis!" only helps Russia, and why the fuck would you want to help Russia?
  - pastacacioepepe 5y ago
    So in order, nazism apology and inversion of the truth. I suggest you gather more evidence about the behavior and origin of Ukrainian Nazis, and the supposedly "genocidal murderous raping horde" that you call Russia. I'm curious to know how you would adjectivize the US though. With north of 300,000 civlians killed just during the post 9/11 wars. Aren't they genocidal as well? Aren't they behaving like a fucking gang? Let's skip the milions of slaughtered civilians in the last 50 years, beucase I don't even have an adjective that is offensive enough to describe such atrocities. You know that we don't "conquer" cities, like Russia is doing, we just carpet bomb them and destroy and kill everything in it in a matter of a day? > why the fuck would you want to help Russia? Why the fuck would you want to help NATO? It's a gang of genocidal murderers. I don't want to help anyone to be fair, just to be objective.
benknight87 5y ago
Unpopular opinion: the vast majority of people in the world do not need to get so emotionally invested in things happening in the world that don't directly affect them. As terrible as it is, in the broader context of all human history we are living in the most peaceful and prosperous time EVER RECORDED! (Suggested reading: Better Angels of our Nature by Stephen Pinker) There is a huge gap between the state of the world as viewed through statistics and scientific progress, versus the state of the world as viewed through Twitter. What concerns me more is what might happen when most people THINK the world is awful and lose hope.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  I tell my Mom this all the time. You don’t have to share in the misery of the news. Be informed enough to do the few things that actually make a difference, like voting. Any involvement and sharing of misery past that is hurting yourself and making the world no better of a place, only worse.
  - CrazyStat 5y ago
    I learned about Neil Postman's concept of the information-action ratio[1] about 15 years ago and it totally changed my life. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information%E2%80%93action_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information%E2%80%93action_rat...
    - sdoering 5y ago
      Interesting. I learned a similar concept from the late Hans Rosling in his book Factfulness. He described that we tend to not derive actionable insights from most news we consume (my wording). I felt the concept to be too similar to be a coincidence. He probably knew Postman's ideas.
- sneak 5y ago
  As someone who left friends and family and language behind to emigrate across an ocean in search of a place with lasting peace and the rule of law and a semblance of human rights, a large scale war in europe strikes deep at my hope that human beings in large groups are even capable of what might be termed civilization. I was of the hope that it is here and just not evenly distributed yet. I had hoped at least some of our species had learned enough from the big one that we may avoid a repeat. Time will tell, but it's definitely not 100% clear at this point. This isn't something just happening to others. This is a real-time experiment being run in whether or not humans as a concern can avoid pointless megadeaths whilst continuing to play our monkey status game.
hrdwdmrbl 5y ago
Isn’t this the website that applauds Brian Armstrong for enforcing workplace apolitical-ity?
mediumsmart 5y ago
First things first: https://twitter.com/monami060668/status/1510177121590824963 https://twitter.com/monami060668/status/1510177121590824963 then: https://thomasjbevan.substack.com/p/all-news-is-bad-news?s=r https://thomasjbevan.substack.com/p/all-news-is-bad-news?s=r if you still want to go down the rabbit hole - find out what is going on: ...friends from and in Ukraine. They tell me stories about their families and other people hiding in the undergrounds and basements... this has been going on since 2014 in Ukraine. https://rumble.com/vwxmyf-donbass-anne-laure-bonnel.html https://rumble.com/vwxmyf-donbass-anne-laure-bonnel.html arnolds candid truthful message to the russian people: https://rumble.com/vxs1p9-arnold-schwarzeneggers-candid-message-to-russians-i-have-to-tell-the-truth.html https://rumble.com/vxs1p9-arnold-schwarzeneggers-candid-mess... maryanas response to arnolds candid and truthful message: https://rumble.com/vy7ntz-a-sobering-message-for-arnold-schwarzenegger-from-donbas.html https://rumble.com/vy7ntz-a-sobering-message-for-arnold-schw... heres some background in case you need it: https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/29/russia-ukraine-the-law-of-war-crime-of-aggression/ https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/29/russia-ukraine-the-law... this one is about mariupol, no idea if its valid, decide for yourself. https://rumble.com/vzatht-mariupol-residents-speak-first-hand-accounts-2022.html https://rumble.com/vzatht-mariupol-residents-speak-first-han... the famous maternity hospital bombing, no idea if its valid decide for yourself: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/status/1510049555559194626 https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/status/151004955555919462... Germans and Nazi Symbol policy: https://twitter.com/politblogme/status/1510214906058006537 https://twitter.com/politblogme/status/1510214906058006537 the world has been wrecking for some time before you started watching: https://rumble.com/vvawdi-mike-prysner-and-vince-emanuele-iraq-veterans-tourned-truthers-give-testimo.html https://rumble.com/vvawdi-mike-prysner-and-vince-emanuele-ir... Nations are many - humanity is one.
mike_k 5y ago
Being in Ukraine, I appreciate such a cencire and public view on this war from a Russian citizen. I have two major objections, though. 1) Solzhenitsyn & Brodskiy are very anti-soviet and famous guys, but they only go thus far. The first one was still an imperialist (at least in his later years) to a large degree and the second one had example(s) of a very anti-Ukrainian position in his poetry. Not the best characters to mention in the current context. And probably they illustrate a broader problem: it is so deep in the culture (history), that can not be treated as an accident. 2) The Man on top was not born out of a vacuum. Many generations before and during his "rise" share at least some of the responsibility. I don't want to blame the nation or "all the citizens", but too many individuals encouraged that. There was a point, when it was safe to protest, now it is not... but it is still much safer than to be in Mariupol.
j0ba 5y ago
A lot of this stuff the Russians are doing is almost as bad as that time Iraqi soliders took the babies out of incubators in Kuwait
- xtian 5y ago
  We can only hope that Putin doesn’t have access to a human shredder

122 points by vitabenes 5y ago

I believe no sane person can fully commit to "my country, right or wrong". Being Polish I admit that my country does some shitty things and I support the EU in their actions to stop that (fines, blocking of funds). Maybe you should be a patriot for the country, not the state. Germany the country transcended the Third Reich and is mostly fine today.

MereInterest 5y ago
My preferred addition, usually attributed to Carl Schurz, is to add "if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." to the phrase. That addition changes it from a statement of blind obedience to a statement of social responsibility.
RobertoG 5y ago
I think being a patriot is caring about the people of your country, all of them, even the ones you don't like, not the country or the state. If you do that, war is the last thing you want.
petre 5y ago
Well, Poland us doing the right thing right. Germany may have transcended the Third Reich but they are doing exactly the same mistake that the UK did pre 1939. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/chamberlain-and-hitler/#background https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/cham...

verisimi 5y ago

" I have trained myself to ignore the news, or rather I have trained myself to think I can ignore the news, or rather I thought news can ignore me and we both can mutually agree on ignoring without even temporarily igniting the interest or a glimpse of it towards each another." and then: "But now, a real war... A war, aggression, a direct invasion is something my consciousness cannot ignore. It devours all my attention, all my thoughts, all my emotions and feelings – everything." "Pain because of all countless stories, photos, videos, and live TikToks of destroyed cities and injured people, shootings, shoutings, explosions. Pain because I have friends from and in Ukraine. They tell me stories about their families and other people hiding in the undergrounds and basements, or desperately trying to leave their country, without food, shelter, or medicine." There was always stuff to be scared of on the news. But from his perspective, what's changed? He still doesn't have any personal experience of this war, any more than he had of the previous stories he saw or ignored. What's happened is that he is bought into it, because of the scale of what is being presented to him on screens. There are other wars, but somehow those are/were possible to ignore (eg Yemen, Afganistan, Iraq, Ukraine pre-2022, etc). Eg apparently 97 people were killed in Iraq last month: https://original.antiwar.com/updates/2022/03/31/iraq-monthly-roundup-97-killed-during-march/ https://original.antiwar.com/updates/2022/03/31/iraq-monthly... ... but this is NOT news. This war is only special because the media are putting it in our faces. The media is a part of this - they are playing a role. Their role is to increase fear, by bringing our attention to this all the time. It is likely to me that the media reaction plays a role in pushing people to do something - sign up to fight, flee their homes, etc. I don't trust the media nor what is presented. I'd like to understand better why this war is sucking in all the air, and why we have this being presented to us. I expect that the mass co-ordination of the media in promoting this story, at this time (immediately after covid) indicates that we are being manipulated.

baq 5y ago
Check out a history book about the lead up to 1939 (including an afterword why Russia doesn’t think 1939 is a special).
- ailef 5y ago
  Do you believe there's a real risk of Russia invading and occupying other countries in Europe?
  - sharken 5y ago
    Georgia and Moldova are on the same path as Ukraine, they want to be members of the EU. All three countries are outside of NATO and EU, so they will have no one daring help them against a Russian invasion. Putin has shown that he is willing to take on 44 million Ukrainians with the invasion of Ukraine, so it's impossible to know if Georgia and Moldova are also on the list. Any country not a member of any defense pact are at risk, so membership of the EU is a sound but also dangerous choice. A regime change in Russia would of course change the dynamics, but that outcome seems highly unlikely.
    - YorkshireSeason 5y ago
      You are entirely correct, those countries have good reason to fear Russia (with the additional complexity of substantial numbers of ethnic Russians in those countries), but, as I wrote a month ago [1], there is a symmetry here and Russia also has good reason to fear NATO, for the latter, in the last 2 decades, have invaded (directly or through proxy forces): Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan. The sibling post [2] by "chrisco255" summrises some of the arrising issues. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30479658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30479658 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30887328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30887328
      - sharken 5y ago
        The symmetry of NATO being involved in the named countries is hard to view as a threat to Russia. Yes, those countries are all in Asia, same as Russia, but apart from that it's a really weak argument that Russia should feel threatened. In no way can the invasion of Ukraine be justified and yet here we are, nobody can tell if Putin wants to invade Georgia or Moldova. It requires a paranoid person such as Putin, to think NATO has a master plan for attacking Russia.

incompatible 5y ago

I appreciated the link to Umberto Eco's essay on Ur-Fascism. Point 8 on the fascists is topical: 8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy. https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybook...

pastacacioepepe 5y ago
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  People generally don't like imperialist apologia. You can certainly criticise NATO, but if you're using criticism of NATO to imply that they're the bad actors in the invasion of Ukraine, you're going to get called out on it.
  - pastacacioepepe 5y ago
    That's exactly what I'm referring to, thanks for providing an example.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      So what, you think that Russia invading Ukraine is a defensive war against NATO aggression? How can an invasion be defensive? I'm not "cancelling" you here by the way, more just calling you wrong. Just like other people appear to be doing so, but sure, if you want to be a victim over it then that's your choice I guess.

MatthiasWandel 5y ago

I think believing the propaganda for Russians is a matter of mental and physical self preservation. If you know it's a war and it's bad, what do you do? Remain silent - bad for mental health. Say or do anything about it - physically dangerous. It's easier and safer live in the comfortable "reality" presented by the propaganda, taking the attitude "just tell me what to believe so I will be safe"

mckirk 5y ago
This is also why, paradoxically, the more atrocious the actions of the state become, the more entrenched the people become in their belief in the propaganda. Because to question the propaganda would become dangerous existentially, if it would force you to accept the terrible things you've been party to, and the dire situation you are actually in. We've certainly seen that in Germany during WW2, when the people _wanted_ to believe that 'they were the good guys' and absolute victory was imminent, when in reality Germany was responsible for a shit-ton of unnecessary deaths and the front line was already in the next town over.
- fit2rule 5y ago
FrenchAmerican 5y ago
There is a specific context though, that makes the propaganda far more believable to many Russians than what they read online through VPN or - for most Russians - through word of mouth. I watched a Russian elderly lady, who appeared like a decent person, respond to a western journalist. She said that she knew for sure that the news from the West were untrue "when they said that Russians troops were shelling Kiev and Kharkov - which is impossible". Many Russians - most in fact - consider that Ukraine is historically a part of Russia. Which is untrue, but that's "common knowledge". So Ukrainians are their cousins, their brethren. Hence the syllogism: if Putin has sent the Russian army to Ukraine, then: 1/ it doesn't make sense to kill civilians and shell cities to the ground 2/ the attack must have valid reasons ("Nazism", existential threat to Russia by joining the USA' side through NATO, ...) When you are in such representations, believing Putin's propaganda is quite rational. By the way, we should also be more skeptical of what we are told on our own channels. Our media are relying all the time information they get from the US government, the British intelligence and the Ukrainian government WITHOUT any possible way to cross-check them. No journalist can cross check the idea that Putin is being lied to by his generals, by his entourage and by the FSB. It is quite possible ; it would explain a lot of what happened during the last month ; it is logical since despotism reign by fear - and truly we have all seen how fearful these people appeared to be during the televised Russian security council. But our journalists are relying what our governments and the Ukrainian government say, without verification. Most mention that fact, directly or indirectly ("according to...") - but they five credit to this narrative anyway by propaging it. Russians are wrong to support this unprovoked and atrocious invasion of Ukraine - but they are rational, not gullible or escaping a disturbing reality because it's easier to cope with, even unconsciously. Humans are rational. Russians are rational and we are too in the West. A good reading about this: "the Savage Mind", 1962, by the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. He demonstrates that Natives' way of thinking in the Amazonia was as rational then as we are today, as were people in the Middle Age or ancient Greeks or ... jihadists from All Qaeda. Not that I like it - but just let's stop with the ideas that people we disagree with are not rational. Even Flat Earthers are rational people! It sounds absurd at first but it's really not. The Enlightenment movement of the XVIIIth century was precisely of discuting everything that was proclaimed as a Truth in common knowledge or by authorities (the Catholic Church, ...). It's not irrational to think that Earth is flat. Most of our day-to-day experience tend to prove this idea. Demonstrating that Earth is a globe is not that easy. It's easy to make simple experiments that hint that Earth is not flat, but explanations can be found to explain the discrepancies. Really proving to people that Earth is round without a mediation like films from space is not easy. Of course, the Flat Earthers are prone to detect conspiracies everywhere, so they discard the films as fabricated. Which is not irrational. The proof needs either a direct experience in which Flat Earthers would have total control, or a decent level in Mathematics and Physics. Most of people who are right to think that Earth is a globe don't know how to replicate the proof of it. They believe what Science says - which is a very rational attitude. The only way to change the mind of most Russians is to find people they trust (for any reason), send those to Ukraine with cameras and have them do their independent reporting. Showing the atrocious results of Putin's invasion, eg massive civilian casualties, destruction of whole cities, war crimes, ..., will create the emotion that humans need to reconsider what their rationality led them to think. Humans don't change their mind when confronted to a "rational presentation of facts". They need a strong motivation to accept to reconsider. Only emotions can provoke the shock required. Many experimental psychology studies have demonstrated that "rational demonstrations" by scientists to whatever-believers (antivax, ultra-nationalists, jihadists, flat Earthers) lead to ... the reinforcement of their beliefs. Our rationality is driven by our emotions. Which doesn't mean that we are not rational. Many scientists complain that they are perceived as super cold people, which they are absolutely not. But their very core of their job is to chase their own biases all day long. And that's a difficult task. Hence the crisis of reproducibility in many fields of Science, where the "publish or perish" tyranny nudges scientists to get results all the time. Some of them are just manipulators, of course, but the crisis of reproducibility is much deeper.

cracrecry 5y ago

As I heard a former war reporter that went to dozens of wars: War is always the same. Now in Ukraine the only difference it that they are blonde, blue eyes, white and European. But the suffering is the same in all wars. There were war before in Syria, promoted by the US and Saudi Arabia US friend. There was war in Libia before, promoted by France and the US. And of course there was war in Iraq and Afghanistan before, US invasions. Those wars were created because of geopolitical interest, just like Putin's war. Russia population believe Putin pretext in the same way the US population believed it was necessary to punish 20 terrorists from Saudi Arabia invading a country thousands of kilometers away or in weapons of mass destruction or what not. So it is not really "the World". It is your World, my World. The US has always exported war without dealing with the consequences as it is isolated by Oceans. Now Europeans have to deal with those wars closer and closer and its consequences. But it was always there.

wozer 5y ago
It's a bit different though because Russia and Ukraine are so close. It's a bit as if the US would attack Canada.
- fuoqi 5y ago
  It's a bit as if the US attacked Canada after: - Pro-China forces got into power in Canada after unconstitutional coup. - China has started to actively train and supply Canadian military. Of course, solely for protecting Canadian sovereignty. /s - Anti-imperialistic (read anti-US) propaganda run rampant in the country. - Pro-US parties and media got either closed or pressured to the point of non-relevance. - The Canadian govement has declared that it wants close economic ties with China and to join its military bloc. - English was pressured in favor of French to protect Canadian culture. If you think it's too unrealistic, just remember the Cuban missile crisis.
  - orthoxerox 5y ago
    That attack would still be unwarranted.
  - 5y ago

causality0 5y ago

And the commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill” does not have an asterisk beside it, referring you to the bottom of the page, where there’s a list of instances where it is okay to kill people. I know he's just quoting someone, but as an interesting aside, it rather does. A more accurate translation is "thou shalt do no murder", and in historical-linguistic context it basically only applies to not killing Jewish people.

eloisius 5y ago
A Jewish friend once explained a similar thing about “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” Raised Christian, I was always taught it was broadly “do not lie,” but apparently it was more specific about not perjuring yourself in a court of law.
- 542458 5y ago
  I don’t think there is good evidence for what you described on a theological basis (I also do not believe that what you described is a very common interpretation). The word translated as “murder” is “retzach”. Conveniently, the book of Numbers talks about “retzach” quite a bit, and it’s described as killing (including accidentally) outside of warfare. It is not distinguished by race or religion, and although there are a number of justified causes for retzach, none are as broad as “all non-Jews”. There’s a sort of precedent to “shalt not kill” in Genesis 9:6 as part of God’s covenant with Noah, and it’s very clear that it’s a prohibition to the murder of any human regardless of race or creed: “ Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” The old Jewish law contains a number of explicit protections for non-Jews, so it would seem very inconsistent if murder of non-Jews was viewed as not contrary to the law.
jfengel 5y ago
Much of the rest of the book is that footnote. The same deity orders numerous genocides, and mandates execution for a wide variety of offenses. As you say, it's better translated as "murder", which leaves open a wide range of killing.
5y ago

mynameishere 5y ago

The "World Wrecking"? It's a regional war over spheres of influence. Does NATO control Ukraine or does Russia? That's the question. Yes, if an artillery shell hits your apartment building, that's tragic, but most people--whether economic migrants (so-called "refugees") or executives at Raytheon, or Neocons, or WEF sociopaths, or the same Russophobes who brought you the Steele dossier, and so on, are all using this to advance their own interests. Try, this time, to not be a sucker.

amanaplanacanal 5y ago
Pretty sure NATO wasn’t planning to invade Ukraine. Shouldn’t the Ukrainian people themselves get to decide? Given that one side promises to defend them against attacks, and the other side attacks them, I know what I would choose were I in their position.
glogla 5y ago
What a profoundly monstrous view.

pastacacioepepe 5y ago

> There are no nazis or fascists in Ukraine apart from those who just invaded the country and now bringing woe to the land we have deep historical and cultural bonds, families, friends, memories. I mean, this is proved to be completely false. This article is really emotional and that's fine with me, but I would not pretend I can critically analyze and understand the situation when I'm in such a mental state.

glogla 5y ago
This is a semantics discussion, mostly. Ukrainian Nazis, while still ultra-right-wing and probably not nice people, trace their ideological lineage to WW2 Nazis not by believing in Hitler's vision (which would be dumb, Slavs were supposed to be genocided to make living space for more Germans) but because the Nazis treated (some of) Ukrainians better than the Soviets (some of the time). So they wear Nazi symbols but don't necessarily subscribe to clean race and taking over the world "for us better people" and genociding everyone else. Even the craziest Ukrainian Nazi is probably not looking to invade Poland and replace Poles with "superior Ukrainians". Meanwhile the Russian Z's are running aggressive war, consider themselves superior culture and want to take over most of Europe. They are doing war crimes left and right and their stated goal is a genocide of Ukraine (see "Ukraine is not a country, Ukrainians aren't people" statements from Putin) and rule of Europe. Genocide is of something Russians are fond of doing pretty often, see Holodomor and mass deportations and Russification for "more hard" and "softer" approaches. Oh and they're doing those things again right this moment - kidnapping people to Russia and attacking Ukrainian food stores and targeting fucking maternity wards of hospitals. So you could argue that despite swastikas on clothes, the Russians are "the true Nazis" here. What makes a Nazi, symbols or genocidal aggressive war backed by ideology of racial superiority? Normally, I'd say fuck all Nazis, but I can give a lot of leeway to people fighting to protect their homeland from genocidal murderous raping horde. Especially as repeating "but there are Ukrainian Nazis!" only helps Russia, and why the fuck would you want to help Russia?
- pastacacioepepe 5y ago
  So in order, nazism apology and inversion of the truth. I suggest you gather more evidence about the behavior and origin of Ukrainian Nazis, and the supposedly "genocidal murderous raping horde" that you call Russia. I'm curious to know how you would adjectivize the US though. With north of 300,000 civlians killed just during the post 9/11 wars. Aren't they genocidal as well? Aren't they behaving like a fucking gang? Let's skip the milions of slaughtered civilians in the last 50 years, beucase I don't even have an adjective that is offensive enough to describe such atrocities. You know that we don't "conquer" cities, like Russia is doing, we just carpet bomb them and destroy and kill everything in it in a matter of a day? > why the fuck would you want to help Russia? Why the fuck would you want to help NATO? It's a gang of genocidal murderers. I don't want to help anyone to be fair, just to be objective.

benknight87 5y ago

Unpopular opinion: the vast majority of people in the world do not need to get so emotionally invested in things happening in the world that don't directly affect them. As terrible as it is, in the broader context of all human history we are living in the most peaceful and prosperous time EVER RECORDED! (Suggested reading: Better Angels of our Nature by Stephen Pinker) There is a huge gap between the state of the world as viewed through statistics and scientific progress, versus the state of the world as viewed through Twitter. What concerns me more is what might happen when most people THINK the world is awful and lose hope.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
I tell my Mom this all the time. You don’t have to share in the misery of the news. Be informed enough to do the few things that actually make a difference, like voting. Any involvement and sharing of misery past that is hurting yourself and making the world no better of a place, only worse.
- CrazyStat 5y ago
  I learned about Neil Postman's concept of the information-action ratio[1] about 15 years ago and it totally changed my life. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information%E2%80%93action_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information%E2%80%93action_rat...
  - sdoering 5y ago
    Interesting. I learned a similar concept from the late Hans Rosling in his book Factfulness. He described that we tend to not derive actionable insights from most news we consume (my wording). I felt the concept to be too similar to be a coincidence. He probably knew Postman's ideas.
sneak 5y ago
As someone who left friends and family and language behind to emigrate across an ocean in search of a place with lasting peace and the rule of law and a semblance of human rights, a large scale war in europe strikes deep at my hope that human beings in large groups are even capable of what might be termed civilization. I was of the hope that it is here and just not evenly distributed yet. I had hoped at least some of our species had learned enough from the big one that we may avoid a repeat. Time will tell, but it's definitely not 100% clear at this point. This isn't something just happening to others. This is a real-time experiment being run in whether or not humans as a concern can avoid pointless megadeaths whilst continuing to play our monkey status game.

hrdwdmrbl 5y ago

Isn’t this the website that applauds Brian Armstrong for enforcing workplace apolitical-ity?

mediumsmart 5y ago

First things first: https://twitter.com/monami060668/status/1510177121590824963 https://twitter.com/monami060668/status/1510177121590824963 then: https://thomasjbevan.substack.com/p/all-news-is-bad-news?s=r https://thomasjbevan.substack.com/p/all-news-is-bad-news?s=r if you still want to go down the rabbit hole - find out what is going on: ...friends from and in Ukraine. They tell me stories about their families and other people hiding in the undergrounds and basements... this has been going on since 2014 in Ukraine. https://rumble.com/vwxmyf-donbass-anne-laure-bonnel.html https://rumble.com/vwxmyf-donbass-anne-laure-bonnel.html arnolds candid truthful message to the russian people: https://rumble.com/vxs1p9-arnold-schwarzeneggers-candid-message-to-russians-i-have-to-tell-the-truth.html https://rumble.com/vxs1p9-arnold-schwarzeneggers-candid-mess... maryanas response to arnolds candid and truthful message: https://rumble.com/vy7ntz-a-sobering-message-for-arnold-schwarzenegger-from-donbas.html https://rumble.com/vy7ntz-a-sobering-message-for-arnold-schw... heres some background in case you need it: https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/29/russia-ukraine-the-law-of-war-crime-of-aggression/ https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/29/russia-ukraine-the-law... this one is about mariupol, no idea if its valid, decide for yourself. https://rumble.com/vzatht-mariupol-residents-speak-first-hand-accounts-2022.html https://rumble.com/vzatht-mariupol-residents-speak-first-han... the famous maternity hospital bombing, no idea if its valid decide for yourself: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/status/1510049555559194626 https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/status/151004955555919462... Germans and Nazi Symbol policy: https://twitter.com/politblogme/status/1510214906058006537 https://twitter.com/politblogme/status/1510214906058006537 the world has been wrecking for some time before you started watching: https://rumble.com/vvawdi-mike-prysner-and-vince-emanuele-iraq-veterans-tourned-truthers-give-testimo.html https://rumble.com/vvawdi-mike-prysner-and-vince-emanuele-ir... Nations are many - humanity is one.

mike_k 5y ago

Being in Ukraine, I appreciate such a cencire and public view on this war from a Russian citizen. I have two major objections, though. 1) Solzhenitsyn & Brodskiy are very anti-soviet and famous guys, but they only go thus far. The first one was still an imperialist (at least in his later years) to a large degree and the second one had example(s) of a very anti-Ukrainian position in his poetry. Not the best characters to mention in the current context. And probably they illustrate a broader problem: it is so deep in the culture (history), that can not be treated as an accident. 2) The Man on top was not born out of a vacuum. Many generations before and during his "rise" share at least some of the responsibility. I don't want to blame the nation or "all the citizens", but too many individuals encouraged that. There was a point, when it was safe to protest, now it is not... but it is still much safer than to be in Mariupol.

j0ba 5y ago

A lot of this stuff the Russians are doing is almost as bad as that time Iraqi soliders took the babies out of incubators in Kuwait

xtian 5y ago
We can only hope that Putin doesn’t have access to a human shredder