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> "We don't want to spend half a year of our lives locked up in barracks, being trained in drill and obedience and learning to kill," the organisers of the prot
by appreciatorBus 11mo ago
> "We don't want to spend half a year of our lives locked up in barracks, being trained in drill and obedience and learning to kill," the organisers of the protests wrote in a statement posted on social media.
"War offers no prospects for the future and destroys our livelihoods."
Is the idea that it’s better for your livelihood to just start learning how speak Russian now?
- anonym29 11mo ago[flagged]
- crooked-v 11mo agoThe problem is, if Russian takes over they'll just conscript you and send you to die in a ditch anyway.
- anonym29 11mo agoGreat, I'll go sign up to die in a ditch for a war I oppose to avoid being forced to die in a ditch for a war I oppose.
- appreciatorBus 11mo agoIt sounds like you believe life in western democracy is exactly the same as life in modern imperial Russia, like if you could choose, you would have no preference whatsoever?
- anonym29 11mo ago[flagged]
- crooked-v 11mo agoRussia, because just by existing there as a male in a certain age bracket you have a realistic chance of being tasered and beaten until you sign "voluntary" military service papers so that they can send you to die on the front lines of a war of conquest (https://theins.ru/en/society/277452 https://theins.ru/en/society/277452).
- anonym29 11mo ago[flagged]
- K0balt 11mo agoYou seem to be forgetting that Russia is clearly the aggressor, and Ukraine clearly the defender. None of this would be happening if Russia simply abided by international law and common decency. It’s simple. Don’t invade your neighbors. While it’s all reprehensible, I’ll give a pass to horrific recruitment practices in a nation fighting for its survival. Not so much to a nation working to commit genocide on their neighbor in an adventuristic invasion. I’d be saying the same thing about Ukraine if they had been the ones to invade Russia. Russia chose to be the bully here. This “both sides” rhetoric is just gaslighting and victim blaming BS.
- fifilura 11mo agoHousing is cheap in Somalia too. Freedom is not prices of rent - it’s whether the police can arrest you for criticizing the government.
- jasonvorhe 11mo agoYou're also describing Germany and most of Europe will follow suit. Political elites wanting war will make it so that being against the government will be punishable by law. See UK, see Germany where posts on social media will get you visits by police. Everything the media has been hammering Russia for is being setup right here in Europe.
- fifilura 11mo agoNo it is not comparable. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/22/russia-hands-down-criminal-charges-following-rare-large-protest https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/22/russia-hands-down-c...
- xanderlewis 11mo ago> The UK locks up more people for speech crimes than Russia does. Do you think there might be a fairly obvious reason for that?
- appreciatorBus 11mo agoHow is it a proxy war if Russia invades and you fight back?
- anonym29 11mo agoBecause both sides are funded and armed by much larger players using their respective proxies to deplete the resources of the other side. NATO is using Ukraine like a bullet sponge to deplete Russian resources, China is using Russia as a bullet sponge to deplete NATO resources. NATO sends Ukraine equipment, happy to send hundreds of thousands of Ukranians who have no say in the matter to their deaths. China sends Russia raw materials and manufacturing equipment for weapon systems, happy to send hundreds of thousands of Russians who have no say in the matter to their deaths. Western defense contractors and Chinese industrial suppliers profit. Russians and Ukranians alike die.
- geoka9 11mo agoOf course, it's just a question of Ukraine knowing what's good for it (and the poor Russians) and folding so that all of the dying stops! Nice one, аноним29; I hope you made your day's quota!
- anonym29 11mo agoYou must have missed my comment about opposing the war. But this kind of bad faith accusation is really disappointing to see on HN. The caliber of discourse here is usually much higher - people engaging with the actual merits of the points being raised, not reverting to attacking strawmen that only exist in their head as if this was Facebook. Ordinary Russian and Ukranian people are both victims of this war. It is being waged for reasons neither of them chose, that neither of them asked for, that neither of them wanted. Civilians are being killed on both sides, and the people most vested in the continuation of the conflict are those that reap all of the profits from the war while paying none of the human costs. This is a classic principal-agent problem. If you can't see the inhumanity in the structural forces at play and want to play a game of "attack the strawman" to score meaningless internet points while millions die needlessly over a pointless war, I can't force you to stop, but I'd at least hope you can grow up and take the tragedy and human suffering seriously enough at some point to care more about that than you do about your HN rep.
- venturecruelty 11mo agoI think a lot of young people look at all of the wars waged post-WWII and are rightfully opposed to fighting for their governments. Would you want to die for nothing in Vietnam? Probably not, and a lot of other people didn't want to as well. Some of them did anyway, and it was all for nothing. So please have some grace if today's kids have looked back at our miserable history and have decided that they'd rather not die for a country that doesn't seem to give a shit about them.
- fabian2k 11mo agoGermany didn't fight in Vietnam.
- venturecruelty 11mo agoMissing the point.
- bgwalter 11mo agoThey were in Afghanistan and the U.S. would have no problems with setting up other EU countries as proxies against Russia in order to get Russia out of countries like Syria and Venezuela (as has now happened, courtesy of the Ukrainians). The Venezuelan escalation happened after the Alaska Summit, and God knows what tradeoffs were made there verbally and with full deniability. A strong army is only good if you have a strong, independent foreign policy. German chancellors used to be able to contradict the U.S., but that is no longer a given.
- appreciatorBus 11mo agoPutin will happily take over your home, even if you thought Viet Nam was a waste.
- jasonvorhe 11mo agoHad to imagine Putin moving into someone's 45sqm flat in the suburbs after his evil empire invaded somewhere. Had to chuckle, thanks for that.
- aleph_minus_one 11mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- consumer451 11mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBG3Gdt5OGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBG3Gdt5OGs
- aleph_minus_one 10mo agoUse, for example, Google Translate on the (Russian) explanations of the lyrics at https://genius.com/Ic3peak-no-more-death-lyrics https://genius.com/Ic3peak-no-more-death-lyrics to understand the context of this song.
- consumer451 10mo agoJust turning CC=on in the video does a great job as well. They translated well, I think?
- aleph_minus_one 10mo agoIn my opinion understanding even the translated text requires a little bit more (cultural) context, which genius.com provides.
- consumer451 10mo agoThanks for that. I had never used genius.com for translation along with user comments. Great use case.
- poplarsol 11mo agoThe German government will be the first ones to tell you that the German language and ancestry is totally unrelated to the idea of who gets to be German.
- hopelite 11mo ago[flagged]
- friendlyasparag 11mo agoWhat the heck is this racist drivel
- morkalork 11mo ago[flagged]
- RobertoG 11mo agoOn the other hand, we know that a lot of those who want the Germans fighting the Russians speak English.
- 439857498203 11mo ago[flagged]
- hopelite 11mo ago[flagged]
- m000 11mo ago> If things are as the governments claim Leaving aside your xenophobic ramblings, that's a VERY BIG "if".
- jltsiren 11mo agoThat's the traditional recipe for military coups. When the ones with the weapons, training, and combat experience have no particular loyalty to the regime, they often start thinking that they would be more qualified to rule.
- sunshine-o 11mo agoSimply because all bets are off when they come back armed, trained, hardened and angry.
- frmersdog 11mo agoWars are won on resolve, and mercenaries don't have any. The reason so many of these people fled to Europe in the first place was to avoid getting caught up in violence. They have zero reason to fight anything except the insistence that they fight. Also, this is racist as hell, why isn't it flagged to death yet?
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- wkat4242 11mo agoIn my opinion pitting our youth against theirs man to man means we have already lost anyway. Lots of people that don't deserve it would have to die. We need to be able to destroy them at the push of a button so they don't even think about invading us. And then we don't need to order kids around to their deaths. In other words we need a nuclear umbrella. Now that America is no longer our friend we need to build our own. It has worked very well to keep us safe since the 50s. And I don't think the French + English ones are sufficient deterrence anymore.
- klipklop 11mo agoThis is not how reality works at all. Nuclear war is a last resort, not a first response to a ground invasion. Ground troops are essential for defense, even in the era of nukes and drones.
- hopelite 11mo ago[flagged]
- ihsw 11mo ago[dead]
- frmersdog 11mo agoHistory shows that the best way to resist, in these circumstances, might be to let them in, and then blow them up in the streets and countryside until they leave. It's cheaper and (morbidly enough) probably has a lower human cost.
- Hackbraten 11mo agoWouldn't that require military training, too?
- frmersdog 11mo agoSure, but it doesn't require throwing young people who don't care to fight into pitched battle meat grinders. Obviously, either path is undesirable. It would be nice if we could use some of those "undermining and overthrowing regimes we don't like" expertise on actual threats instead of countries that just want to nationalize their resources.
- fifilura 11mo agoWhat history shows that?
- frmersdog 11mo agoRussia in Afghanistan. America in Afghanistan. America in Iraq. America and France in Vietnam. France in Algeria. France in Haiti. Britain in Ireland. Honorable mention to Britain in America and Germany in France, where guerilla/resistance forces were instrumental in the eventual allied victories, even though the invaders were eventually toppled by outside armies. I dunno, maybe Berliners would prefer becoming Ukrainian War-era Kyiv instead of WWII-era Paris after all.
- fifilura 11mo agoNo. That is really bloody and a last resort. And horrible for civilians. Bucha and Irpin are counter-examples. Russians should only be treated with a very long stick. Guerilla warfare is not winning, it is making things a huge mess.
- geoka9 11mo agoThat wouldn't be half as bad, by comparison. But it's more like learning how to survive in the Russian "meat wave" corps a bit longer than your peers. Looking at the parts of Eastern Ukraine that were under Russian occupation since 2014 and are now almost devoid of male population, that's what happens if you're not willing to fight in your own (European) army: sooner or later you end up fighting in the Russian one.
- CjHuber 11mo agoWhy not, at that guy cares about his country
- lawn 11mo agoLearning to speak Russian, and to live with the massive amount of corruption, prosecution, genocide, and much lower quality of life. Assuming you survive the initial wave of plunder, rape and murder of course.
- jasonvorhe 11mo ago[flagged]
- disgruntledphd2 11mo agoDo you think Russians have a better quality of life than Germans?
- jasonvorhe 11mo ago[flagged]
- fifilura 11mo agoMaybe you should look for other sources than random YouTube videos of people shopping in central Moscow. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/02/indoor-plumbing-still-a-pipe-dream-for-20-of-russian-households-reports-say-a65049 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/02/indoor-plumbing-st...
- jasonvorhe 11mo agoAnd you're posting a 6+ years old news report about indoor plumbing for a country with the lowest population density (in squared kilometers) of ~8.5 compared to ~35 (US) and ~100 (all of the EU) as if it had any meaning. Good luck, man.
- fifilura 11mo agoSays the guy who is "Looking at various videos of people going shopping in Russia I see lots of full cabinets"
- 4gotunameagain 11mo ago[flagged]
- jasonvorhe 11mo ago[flagged]
- whatevaa 11mo agoHi, Russian propaganda.
- justsomejew 11mo ago[flagged]
- 4gotunameagain 11mo agoahahah really ? I would suggest you study some geopolitics. I am not pro Russia, I am anti war. There are no winners in war. And the US betrayed us (I live in Germany).
- roenxi 11mo ago[flagged]
- derelicta 11mo agoBut that they learn how to speak English is not an issue for you, is it?
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- IAmBroom 10mo agoVoluntarily? Nope.
- jasonvorhe 11mo agoI'd rather learn Russian than to get drilled to shoot Russians. Current Germany/Europe doesn't have anything to offer that I'd raise a weapon for. Each to their own.
- IAmBroom 10mo agoSo, leave. Emigration to Russia isn't that hard. Seriously, you're just an internet poser.
- ekianjo 11mo ago> your livelihood to just start learning how speak Russian now? that was a thing in East Germany not that long ago
- port11 11mo agoWhat are you suggesting? That without forced military service Russia will take over Germany? It's not impossible, but basic military service likely does little to thwart invasion by a powerful Russian army — powerful by your suggestion. This is quite an expensive program and a questionable use of taxpayer money.
- IAmBroom 10mo agoTechnically correct, but more importantly: the lack of trained military personnel does even less to thwart invasion. "Likely little" >> nothing.
- port11 10mo agoOf course, but a trained military is achieved by proper incentives to have people enlist — willingly. I would make a terrible soldier, but I attended an info session laat year about how civilians can contribute their skills to the military. Force me into service and all you'd get is resentment. Ironically I can't actually do anything for the military since I don't have citizenship here.
- ashoeafoot 11mo ago[dead]
- DrPimienta 10mo agoThe idea is that it apparently doesn't matter who is the government, German or Russian, because these young men can't start normal lives anyway. Why fight for a nation that is keen on giving away your taxes to random immigrants? Then forcing you to fight and die?