strange how the BBC remains completely radio silent regarding the Turkish mercenaries there, and the recent request from the Libyan Foreign Minister, for Turkish mercenaries to withdraw
Why are you distracting from Russian warcrimes? Whether or not the Turkish mercenaries are in Libya doesn't change that Wagner is killing prisoners and civilians. So why wouldn't the BBC report on this?
That's what journalism is, alleging something. Adding the word alleged in front of what they are reporting is only meant to distract from the allegation without adding anything substantive. Of course it's alleged. All human discourse is alleged.
Using Wikileaks, which probably uses anonymous sources more than anyone else, to prove that BBC is not real journalism for.. using anonymous source is great. Good job.
Well, but the thing in a civil war is, 2 (if not more sides) claim to be the official side.
I honestly do not dare to judge from the outside. I know it is a complicated mess, with lots of hypocrosy and lots of foreign powers playing geopolitics.
So, let me understand after Western axis destroyed Libya, ... and as the matter of fact the entire region, stole all gold and oil, now we blame Russia?
That's not at all what this article is saying. It is about Russian warcrimes, something that is clearly worth reporting on. Whether or not removing Qaddafi was a mistake has very little to do with whether BBC should be reporting about the Wagner group killing civilians and prisoners.
I feel articles like these are our personal propaganda. "Lets blame someone else, while our own war criminals roam free".
Tony Blair, Bush, Clinton ... they went into several wars without any approval of UN, made huge destruction, civilian deaths and suffering... and nothing, they live happily ever after ...
You are not disagreeing with me. You are just bringing up issues that Western countries have had and saying "don't report about Russian crimes, report about this.". But those things have been reported on and discussed in Western culture since those things happened many times. So no, BBC, a news service, shouldn't rehash a thirty year old argument (Clinton? Really?) when instead of talking about Russian war crimes.
No, I am not disagreeing, I am just fed up with all propaganda, soon I will read Russia is responsible for global warming and Moon rotation.
Few years ago we had The Panama Papers, Wiki leaks... huge number of document disclosing, war crimes, offshore banks, money laundering... except Iceland has any country done anything about those individuals?
Instead they hunted whistle blowers like a wild animals.
So, when someone asked me what are the world wide political system I have one answer - organised mafia aristocracies, everything else is just illusion and PR.
All your doing is derailing the conversation. Western reaction to whistleblowers has literally nothing to do with Russian war crimes. The bombing of Yugoslavia 25+ years ago has nothing to do with Russian war crimes. Why can't you just accept that this is a valid thing to report on? No is saying the news can't report on that other stuff, but this is clearly worth reporting on, so stop trying to distract or get us to ignore it.
Issue here is that you have narrow minded thinking, you are focused to one thing and you cannot attach anything that has any other association, and as such it is easy to manipulate you, and everyone else whom governments needs to approve more military spending for future wars in some foreign country for the sake of oil and gold (e.g protecting our economic interests) and with excuse of protecting democracy and giving better life to those people.
The parent did not see problem in reporting, only in selective reporting. He did not say Russia did not do it, just that we blame Russia for all of it.
The "war on terrorism" has its roots in US trying to get hold of the oil that happened to be present in those otherwise unremarkable countries.
For whatever reason US interest in "helping out" a country is correlated a lot with whether the country has oil or not.
Now the fallout of all this shady stuff that happened is a bunch of unhappy people that turned to terrorism with... drumrolls... help of people that were directly paid by US government.
Looking as a bystander it is really difficult to sympathize with US for doing all this and now crying foul when it turns on themselves or when other countries like Russia try to do similar.
And that has been reported on a million times in Western media. Why would any of this be a reason not to report on Russian war crimes? There is no reason. It just distracts.
Sure, but if there is going to be intellectually honest talk about problems in Libya then we should ... well. I suppose we might speculate that, possibly, hypothetically, the reason the Russians are committing war crimes in Libya is because the Libyan army was annihilated around 2011 by a helpful excursion by US/UK/etc troops onto Libyan soil.
The BBC article manages to go through 10 years of history here and appears to have missed the NATO invasion.
The BBC article doesn't talk about history at all. It's reporting on crimes that are currently being committed. Stop distracting from Russian war crimes.
Down the bottom, they have a little "Libya - a decade of turmoil" heading.
If we want to stop war crimes happening, NATO should hire me as an adviser. I could set them on the right path pretty quick with some simple observations: Invading a country doesn't make it more prosperous! Sometimes it makes things worse! All of the invasions in the Middle Eastern region have led to war crimes happening and it is a consistent pattern! Stop with the troops and the missiles!
But they won't hire me because they already know all that. Everyone knows.
It's better not to start wars, and sometimes troops need to stay, but a bad peace is better than a good war, so recent American withdrawal from Middle East could be overall good in the long run. We can remember Churchill, with his "Americans will always do the right thing, after trying all others", but things still go to the right direction.
Yeah yeah yeah. Intellectual honesty is only honest when the usa is being trashed. Intellectual honesty is playing the Russia is always the victim even when we admit the Russians are committing war crimes it's really the fault of the USA. Your muppets are the worst. If you're so insistent on thinking like a slave have the courtesy to keep your mouth shut like a slave too
> I suppose we might speculate that, possibly, hypothetically, the reason the Russians are committing war crimes in Libya is because the Libyan army was annihilated around 2011 by a helpful excursion by US/UK/etc troops onto Libyan soil.
Or we can speculate that the reason is the modern worldview of the Russian power as the zero-sum game with the west, where each problem delivered to the West is Russia's win, and excursions of troops of the other side is a helpful pretense.
> the reason the Russians are committing war crimes in Libya is because the Libyan army was annihilated around 2011
Is it? I don't see the causality there. I mean, Canada isn't comitting war crimes in Libya. Germany isn't. Australia isn't. They could, but they don't. Russia does, so there is some cause you're not accounting for in the above comment. What motivates Russia to do that and not the other countries? It isn't the NATO action in 2011.
If the Crips are keeping the hood safe, then the police bust them and the Bloods take over and disrespect everyone in the community, perhaps the police should not have left a power vacuum!
this is 'Manufacturing Consent' phase 2: the internet.
you wont see the other 1M articles about FUKUS/NATO on this shithole site called HN, which is now part of the MSM. do not point the elephant, it is called whataboutism.
No, that means first do your own, and then start bitching about others, because other way I do not see how are we better then those criminals in article.
Yes, I know, they are in our turf so now we need to bitch about them. What is the famous quote?, ah yes, "as we need to protect our economic interests" ...
This is a Fallacy. Example: Country A is active in genocide. Country B had genocide in it's history 150 years ago, during that time it was not considered immoral. Therefore Country A is not immoral.
Edit: downvotes. You don't think its a fallacy? hahaha
Yes, I think your sentence is fallacy (I am not the one who gave you downvotes). And at the same time that is reason why UK is trying so hard to hide taking part in slavery and oppression during the imperialistic conquest. Genocide is a genocide regardless of the period of time.
Some say that reparation cost to Jamaica because of the slavery would cost trillions, which of course UK does not, or will ever have any plans to do.
Also NATO waging wars around the globe was never legal or just, we were just going for oil and other resources using "shortcut". During NATO imperialistic conquest we have international laws and UN, but it seems that international organisation has more decorative purpose than anything else equally goes for Russia and China. Russia's war dogs would never be in Libya if we have not had destroyed that country first. During Roman empire at least they created roads, aqueducts, they gave writing system, what good did NATO give to any of those middle east countries?
You can try that. But you may find you alienate the allies who could help you to make that one thing better, thereby making nothing better. An even-handed approach seems moral, but if all you do is complain equally about everyone who doesn't fit your strict moral standards, you won't do anything useful in the real world. Sometimes, you have to pick a fight and not be too purist about choosing your allies.
Because I have limited empathy and scope insensitivity.
If I'm emotionally burnt out about the crimes of a strongman like Putin who I have zero ability to change how will I put pressure on my local police chief to fire bad cops?
At the level of nations, reporting war crimes doesn’t prevent a state from doing anything else. 1 reporter per million people is less than a rounding error.
> No, that means first do your own, and then start bitching about others, because other way I do not see how are we better then those criminals in article.
There's the proverb "sees a speck in another's eye, but does not notice a log in his own eye". No major country is innocent, yet dismissing them all as equally bad is wrong and unacceptable; they do allow comparison, and Western countries come much better for their record of wars over last decades than some others.
First doing their own is like asking to postpone space exploration until all problems on Earth will be solved. Not to mention that space exploration helps solving Earth problems; postponing flying to space can thus be indefinite, as on Earth you can almost always find problems. Western hemisphere only recently had a situation with no wars; you can then always point to smaller conflicts. West has to improve, yes; however that doesn't mean we shouldn't hold some non-Western countries as more accountable for bigger international problems.
>Western countries come much better for their record of wars over last decades than some others
Are you forgetting about jetting across the world to Iraq and Afghanistan on dubious pretences?
While I certainly don't condone (nor frankly know much about) Russia's involvement in Ukraine and Crimea, at least they share borders and have a large number of ethnic Russians there to be fighting over.
Number of Russians in neighboring Ukraine is a pretense. The real reason is so called "imperial phantom's pains", the worldview of the Russian power about how everything works, the Cold War era division into "them" and "us". They don't believe in the democracy, they never experienced that and were trained to be suspicious about it. For just about everybody - Russians on both sides of the border as well as Ukrainians - the conflict made things worse, and for a long time. Kremlin lives in a bad illusion, which it tries to induce into others.
It is Matthew 7:5
"Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
I feel that each human nation as soon as they becomes a supper power they adopt behavior of a bully having bullies sense of justice e.g. "domination, violence and exploit".
Comparing a good technological achievement with moral and ethical values is not good analogy, but I understand what was your attempt.
Speaking about the open space, i think that bully mindset is not really a behavior we want to carry with us.
Do we really think that if other intelligent life (if it exist of course and is more intelligent) will let us?
Another issue is that space gives a military upper hand, meaning who ever deploys Moon base or Mars base will have ability to produce nukes or commence meteor strike on opponent country without much chance to defend themselves. So, in some sense something noble can be easily tuned to eval means. If China builds a moon base on the far side, we need to pair with moon base and spying satellites so we can track what are they doing, crating new military race, all the while mother planet is burning because of Global Warming as trillions are diverted - due to inability of nations to cooperate with each other.
Thus, I am trying to say, more technological power requires higher level of consciousness (goodness), otherwise we are just raging monkeys that will blow them selves up in one way or another.
> more technological power requires higher level of consciousness (goodness)
IMO, problem here is you don't see it actually happening. Similarly Kremlin sees behavior of West with e.g. Kosovo as the same as what they did in Crimea. While West brings comparisons and differences, they are dismissed by the other side. A sort of stalemate in finding common ground, but in Russia the Kremlin's point of view is quite often shared by some selected few.
no, you need to read & understand 'Manufacturing Consent' and how propaganda works. would you please show me other 1M articles on HN about Libya? you know the country which the elepant in the room have devastated?
It is early US time but still mid-afternoon in Moscow. The perfect time to try to bury a story or derail any conversations into dead-ends and flaming tarpits of whataboutism.
I don’t think people who genuinely believe this are necessarily trolls.
It’s less contentious when someone defends their favorite sports team than a political organization, but I think it’s related in many ways. In the real world nothing is perfect, but everyone gives more slack to organizations they identify with be that religious, cultural, political, or personal reasons.
Of course people can be trolls and also genuinely feel this way.
Let's start with the obvious - those are not Russian warcrimes since those are not Russian troops and its not a war.
And well - let's be honest whataboutism is actually a good defence. And there is a long list of very bad stuff done by regular armies in this century without repercussions.
So until we sort the American warcrimes by Blackwater and the likes no need to lose sleep over Wagner.
So just file it under - the world is a shitty place, be happy you are not there.
Lots of Russian bots here on specific topics. They are fairly easy to spot by the same talking points they've been rehashing for the past 20+ years. When somebody starts bringing up Bill Clinton and Yugoslavia in 2021, you know who you're talking to. Everyone else has forgotten it.
And HN is a prime target. So many people here may have influence over millions of people right now, or will in near future. There's a lot to gain from implanting a few untrue memes that dismiss Russian, Chinese, Saudi or whoever else's actions.
A popular one is to depict NATO as a aggressive organization that subjugates countries in Europe to encircle Russia, thus making Russia's actions "defensive". It's ridiculously untrue and totally detached from the actual political history of post-1991 Europe, but if you know nothing about NATO in Europe, then it may be believable and you may convince yourself or others that Russia's aggression (like the war in Ukraine) is justified, and that the US nor EU should not get involved in any way. That's what they want. That's Sun Tzu's Art of War in practice. It must have an amazing ROI given the ease of capturing Crimea, which they have fought over several times in their history, but without any human losses this time around. Amazing innovation in warfare!
Plus a lot of westerners are already inclined to self-whipping over the colonial guilt narrative, missing what rest of the world has been doing, and in many cases, is still doing. This supports the implanted ideas.
>Plus a lot of westerners are already inclined to self-whipping over the colonial guilt narrative, missing what rest of the world has been doing, and in many cases, is still doing.
People who think like that are progressives. However many Russia-firsters in the West are right-wingers.
>> Plus a lot of westerners are already inclined to self-whipping over the colonial guilt narrative, missing what rest of the world has been doing, and in many cases, is still doing.
> People who think like that are progressives. However many Russia-firsters in the West are right-wingers.
Which just goes to show that extreme distrust is eminently exploitable and often gets you to the same place regardless of where you started. There is very much a tendency by some on the left to take "anti-(US)-imperialism" to such an extreme that they become apologists for any anti-US imperialists they come across.
I've seen the same thing with COVID. Left-wing "anti-imperialist" websites pushing similar paranoid narratives about vaccines and lockdowns, etc. that would be at home on a far-right website.
> Lots of Russian bots here on specific topics. They are fairly easy to spot by the same talking points they've been rehashing for the past 20+ years. When somebody starts bringing up Bill Clinton and Yugoslavia in 2021, you know who you're talking to. Everyone else has forgotten it.
Yes, I noticed this pattern in most of the discussions about Ukraine. I wouldn't go as far as calling those people "bots" though as they are mostly either misguided westerners who are distrustful of their media and susceptible to influence by RT and similar organizations (I guess the ones who you called "self-whipping over the colonial guilt narrative" in last paragraph of your comment) or just ordinary Russians :)
Besides "Clinton in Yugoslavia", "NATO encircling Russia" you can usually spot them by "CIA and western NGOs destabilized X", "Nazi leader of country X", "russophobia", "russian-speaking people denied X in Y", "Russia was provoked to do X by Y" and similar narratives.
>When somebody starts bringing up Bill Clinton and Yugoslavia in 2021, you know who you're talking to. Everyone else has forgotten it.
Perhaps not everyone has forgotten that NATO bombed a civilian passenger train twice and then released sped up footage to justify it/explain it away. And they got away with no consequences.
I can't believe you'd just dismiss people as Russian bots that bring this up.
I'm quite happy for cases like that to be brought up. It's an unfortunate incident, but a good example of where an error was made and an explanation with supporting evidence was provided, and full co-operation was given to an independent investigation. Presumably you bring this up as an example of the kind of accountability and co-operation with investigations you think Russia should do more of?
>Presumably you bring this up as an example of the kind of accountability and co-operation with investigations you think Russia should do more of?
This has nothing to do with Russia.
>but a good example of where an error was made and an explanation with supporting evidence was provided, and full co-operation was given to an independent investigation.
Except they tried to cover it up and weaseled their way out of it by providing misleading (sped up) footage. 50-60 innocent people were killed on that train and there were no repercussions to the perpetrators. It's a miscarriage of justice and makes us in NATO look hypocritical whenever we demand that others behave better.
50-60 seems very implausibly high, and I note you only quote the very highest estimates not the full range of estimates. Only 8 victims were ever identified, and it's extremely unlikely 90% of victims would not have been identifiable. Most likely with the higher estimates the number of killed was conflated with the number of injured, or the number of people on the train.
The fact is the bridge was a legitimate target and no evidence was found that the train itself was targeted. NATO opened itself to an independent investigation and was committed to abiding by it's findings. We should push other countries and organisations to do the same, and face the same standards of scrutiny.
You literally made a list of all things wrong with NATO... and gave single war mongering point of propaganda view of Western mainstream media during 90'. Honestly I do not know how is this different than what Putin's media does in Russia or Lukashenko's media in Belorussia, so following the same thread of thought I can conclude you are the bot as well - just from the other side.
I personally know quite a few people from ex-Yugoslavia who still hold grudges. Learned about it, to my surprise (they never really manifested those grudges) during the Trump/Hillary campaign, when being pro-Hillary was unacceptable to those people regardless of how low they thought of Trump and his agenda.
These things take way longer than 20 years to erode. But many people that had nothing to do with the conflict at all may have forgotten indeed. Still Not "Everyone else" by far
The HN guidelines specifically ask you not to post like this about "bots", "astroturfing", etc. unless you have evidence, which you don't. Other users having different views than yours—even if you feel they're completely wrong—is not evidence of anything (other than that the community is divided). Please don't post like this to HN again.
Long, detailed experience has shown that these insinuations are based on literally nothing at all—just imagination and projection.
As far as I can tell after studying the data in detail for many years, here is what's really happening: the community is divided, different users have a wide range of views, and it's really hard for people to grok that the range of honest views is as wide as it actually is. Since that's hard (for whatever reason) to accept, users make up stories about other users being disingenuous "bots" and "trolls" and "spies" which are "easy to spot". They're only "easy to spot" because you've created them.
I'm not saying that real abuse and manipulation don't exist; I'm saying that accusations about it need something objective to point to—at least a shred of some evidence to go on—and setting that extremely minimal requirement easily rules out 99.9% of internet comments about this kind of thing. Meanwhile such comments are deeply poisonous to community, which is why we have the rule asking people not to post like this.
Incidentally, by referring to "self-whipping over the colonial guilt narrative", you've already (in a tendentious way) contradicted what you spent most of your comment claiming, since what you're describing there is a view that a lot of people happen to hold for whatever reasons of their own. You may think they're wrong, but that's hardly the same thing as them being "bots" that are "easy to spot". In fact, it's the opposite.
Seems plausible, it fits with the larger theme of mercenary misdoings and their use as an underhanded, unofficial military influence exercised by states. And Russia is particularly notorious for this sort of thing.
I wonder how necessary these things are geopolitically, or how they are justified by either sides. Dealing with mercenary forces and their total lack of accountability or ethics as a local civilian can only leave one disgusted, jaded, and with nothing but hatred for the nations which cause or let these things happen. Does anyone here have experience with this topic, and can say what the advantages are, if the goal is not purely to demoralize?
Not so much. It was glaringly obvious who these people were from day 1.
The idea here is not obvious to a person living in the free world: it is to prevent your "scary, and mighty" standing army shown as weak, and losing in case it got stomped.
Seeing the "tzar's army" being weak will inevitably invite a challenge to his power.
On some level it is also a huge insult from Russia by leaving just enough bread crumbs, intentionally or not, to essentially say "look, we're doing this and getting away with it; else we're not doing it". And it is part of their strategy for both cases to be equally plausible rather than to be overwhelmingly without blame.
It is disinformation-as-policy to bolster their political might without flexing their full military. The finest example of Hypernormalization.
Embarrassed that their government represents people of my heritage. Путин просто хуйло.
I think it's more than that. If the Russian army gets a bunch of casualties, eventually the Russian population gets unhappy and starts questioning the leadership. (This happened in Afghanistan, for instance.) But if Wagner does it, then the Russian government doesn't have to take the heat for the number of Russians dead.
There were plenty of Russian soldier deaths and no one can care about those questions - the best that Russians can do in these situations is standing on their knees when facing their leadership and accept their mistakes as some deeper maneuver that will bring fruits in the future. Also, the answer to those questions of unhappy population has been given already - "It sunk".
The reason why Wagner exists is quite simple - primarily it vents out all the people who has not found their place in Russia(and prevents their use against those who are in power in Russia) and their main and primary reason to serve in Wagner is being killed in the name of Russia. They are not expected to get back - in Ukraine conflict Wagner people were bombed by Russian army, when they decided to go back. They are expendables from the day they signed up.
I think they wanted people to know exactly who they are. Not only for the separatists themselves. But of course, the country gets a free card to deny involvement.
To be honest, if I was a local civilian, and someone is doing terrible things to me and my people, I don't think I cared too much about whether the people terrorising us is a mercenary or "a regular soldier" deployed by a country. There are examples of both soldiers and mercenaries getting away with horrible stuff. In the end both would leave me disgusted with both the people committing these crimes and their origin country.
Tangential, but this reminds me of the US practice of having military (SOF) personnel temporarily terminate their military term, sign a new contract for the three-letter-agency of choice, execute a clandestine operation, then reverse the prior steps to walk right back into the military as if nothing ever happened.
Statecraft is so strange in this way, that you or I as laymen will ask just what in the fuck is the point - but it's totally legitimate and not casus belli for our solider to magically become a spy for a day to execute an operation on another nation.
A more realistic answer is: To be honest, if I was a local civilian, and someone is doing terrible things to me and my people, I don't think I cared too much about whether the people terrorizing us is a mercenary or "a regular soldier" deployed by a country. I want my own "a regular solider" or mercenary to do worse to the other side.
Thing is, the soldier has a doctrine and there are rules governing just about everything. Especially if we’re talking NATO. The mercenary is by far worse because there aren’t any rules or authority to appeal to, it’s just some guy with weapons getting paid under the table and not giving a fuck. The mercenary also definitely feels less safe, less confident, so most likely more jumpy, more trigger-happy. And worst of all probably ex-military so fully skilled.
Myanmar military (which receives/buys arms from Russia mostly) is using the same tactic to squash the civilian uprising lately. They formed an armed "civilian" group called "Pyu-Saw-Htee" (one of the heroes in Myanmar's early history) and have these guys kill and arrest civilians who fight against the military rule. The military seem to think that they can avoid the blame from international observers when time comes, yet kill and jail as many civilians as they want.
Pakistan has followed this philosophy in India's Kashmir region for decades. They also used the same tactics against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 80s (with generous US funding, of course). For example, the 2008 attack on Mumbai[1] was planned in Karachi, Pakistan and carried out by Pakistani-trained and controlled operatives. More reading [2].
Regarding your observation; I might be wrong, but I think it depends on the time when political topcis are dominant and when hardcore tech stuff is being posted. It seems to me that in the (German) morning hours political stories dominate, in the evening tech stuff is dominant.
ZeroHedge I would guess. A news site that is nominally about financial markets. It sits in some really weird political spot as a world news site that I don‘t quite understand.
The Russians didn't commit such war crimes before. It's very unfortunate because in Europe we would probably like to enjoy a better relationship with them. Is would be a win economically. Unfortunately things like this will only serve to lengthen existing sanctions and perhaps get Russians prosecuted by the ICC.
Who's paying these Russian nationals? Russia or Libya?
The USA has done every kind of outrage. But it'd somehow be a bit worse if Libyans were paying the USA for American nationals to come fight.
Splitting hairs, I know. Bush 41 turned a profit on the first invasion of Iraq. And there's plenty of off-the-books operations like the Iran-Contra scandal.
I believe “pay” is subjective here. These are paid in geopolitical tokens. Libya is a major “exporter” of refugees to Europe, and control over that “trade route” is itself a major “token” to be traded for.
As a Russian I actually don't want to comment on such posts at all.
As I see here and in other similar topics, the main result is a "Russian paid bot/troll account" label, and it's widely accepted as a normal response.
So much for "freedom of speech". At least the "correct" point of view doesn't get muc arguments against it, right?
"Freedom of Speech" doesn't mean people are supposed to automatically respect or agree with whatever random thing you say. The definition is closer to "Don't kill people like Navalny because they filmed your dacha". A foreign concept in contemporary Russia.
Contextually, the person is arguing that being called a russian troll / bot is reducing the quality of discussion and is also shutting up alternative viewpoints.
The "freedom of speech" comment is merely a vent, and such generalizations is rarely fact... just like "A foreign concept in contemporary Russia" is a vent and generalization as well.
You are wrong.
I'm not saying everybody should automatically like what I say.
The issue here is that virtually nobody (here) cares about what you say as long as you can be "labeled", i.e., labeled as a Russian bot/troll account.
That's it.
Your comment history when I replied was precisely one comment. Nobody knows what you want to say, nor what your views are. Generally, you should just say what you want to say and no worry about being down or upvoted.
But if your views are indistinguishable from a paid troll's views, that's no one's problem but yours. Maybe you should even reconsider them? At least those guys get paid for posting their talking points.
You're saying that I should consider changing my views not to be equal to views of accounts who are called "paid trolls" by somebody.
Nice approach to self-censorship.
Don't be silenced while you still have the freedom in this forum. Even if tar and feathers come out and 70% of HN'ers hate on you, doesn't mean you're not being heard by some.
I PARTICULARLY extremely dislike the mere concept of being humiliated on a basic of association with a particular country or nation (Russia in this case).
(Any association with Russia is considered utterly negative on its own).
This doesn't smell right.
I don't think many people are going to downvote you just because you admit to being Russian. If you start parroting the Russian line, then... yeah, expect people to downvote you.
i disagree. most people here have very superficial views about geopolitics , base their opinions on political party affiliations and are often manipulated. Sophie Zhang's revelations show that
Sure, but it is unfortunately normal throughout history. Certain groups become demonized and it is fashionable to demonize them. Orwell had "2 minutes hate" in his book "1984". Jews were demonized in the late 1800s leading up through WW 2. It is now fashionable to demonize Russians. It is fashionable lately to demonize white people in USA. Notice the recent rise of the term "Karen" to describe white women behaving badly, but the non-existence of any correlary terms like "Shaniqua", "Maria", "Liu", or "Adita".
You know, i wasn't really going for whataboutism as much as deconstructing the messenger. You see, turkey has been using these syrian fighters (who, for all we know could be former ISIS members) as literal cannon fodder in the nagorno-karabakh war: they were thrown in the frontlines so that the enemy would shoot them and reveal their positions. In return for its involvement in libya , turkey got a maritime delineation deal that is explicitly contrary to international law. And the BBC is not an unbiased source, it is british, and UK has been steadily supporting Ankara's misdoings in recent years like, obstructing security council resolutions for both the NK war and recent cyprus developments. So yeah, what about all that? I m positive that wagner is commiting war crimes, but i fear we ve slid into an un-polar world where world order is unprincipled, opportunist and immoral.
I think it's helpful to keep in mind Russia's grand global strategy, which is simple and informs everything from supporting insurgencies, climate change denialism, election interference, etc.
Putin has been in power for 20+ years and he'll remain in power until he dies (he's only 68). During this time, Russia has not seen great improvements as a society. For a few years in the early-to-mid naughts things were getting better as Russia was riding high on high oil prices and recovery from the dismal 90s. But this didn't last long - it all came crashing down in '08 and things have not recovered. Russian gdp per capita was the same in 2019 as in 2008. Covid killed masses of people which they've "cleverly" hidden with stats (it's not clever at all, you can just see the excess deaths). As the world shifts away from fossil fuels, their heavily oil-dependent budget is only going to get harder to manage. Politics-wise, any opposition figure will be killed if they become high-profile enough
Things are grim and there's no realistic hope of things improving. For all their many, many, many faults, the soviets actually aspired to improve the lives of people. They ultimately proved inept at it, but they did believe they should and could improve people's lives. Putinism has no such aspirations. Instead the idea is to breed cynicism, fatalism and nihilism into people such that no one should ever expect anything better. To have hope, to act morally and ethically, to dream is to be a fucking idiot.
Thus, Putin's MO is demonstrate to his people that the rest of the world is just as shitty as his Russia is. That no one is better than him, because everyone is a hypocrite, everyone is corrupt, everyone is a murderer. This worldview is very useful for many people in the West, hence the charges of "Russian bots" are not quite right. The scores of people defending Russia are not Russia bots, they're regular folk, they just find this worldview useful and want to import it. It's like the IRA and their trolls created a self-sustaining cycle.
To put it more succinctly, in most countries (especially in the west) there are clear lines of demarcation between the public, private and criminal sectors. (The lines aren't impermeable. But the lines exist.)
In Russia, those lines have been eliminated. One group controls all three sectors.
There wouldn't be any Russian mercenaries in Libya in the first place, had it not been for the complete destruction of the country by Western forces a couple of years ago.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] threadAlleged warcimes.
It's not journalism if it's based on "this anonymous guy said it's true so it's true". Wikileaks is journalism, not this.
I honestly do not dare to judge from the outside. I know it is a complicated mess, with lots of hypocrosy and lots of foreign powers playing geopolitics.
Not mercenaries, but a standing Turkish army unit, which by the way completely stomped them.
Turkey - Col. Okan Altınay † (Turkish military officer)[36]
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54547304
That's the quality journalism I expect to see from BBC, right here.
Neat...
I mean we quite hold high moral ground in this...
I feel articles like these are our personal propaganda. "Lets blame someone else, while our own war criminals roam free".
Tony Blair, Bush, Clinton ... they went into several wars without any approval of UN, made huge destruction, civilian deaths and suffering... and nothing, they live happily ever after ...
Few years ago we had The Panama Papers, Wiki leaks... huge number of document disclosing, war crimes, offshore banks, money laundering... except Iceland has any country done anything about those individuals?
Instead they hunted whistle blowers like a wild animals.
So, when someone asked me what are the world wide political system I have one answer - organised mafia aristocracies, everything else is just illusion and PR.
Clinton - NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
The parent did not see problem in reporting, only in selective reporting. He did not say Russia did not do it, just that we blame Russia for all of it.
The "war on terrorism" has its roots in US trying to get hold of the oil that happened to be present in those otherwise unremarkable countries.
For whatever reason US interest in "helping out" a country is correlated a lot with whether the country has oil or not.
Now the fallout of all this shady stuff that happened is a bunch of unhappy people that turned to terrorism with... drumrolls... help of people that were directly paid by US government.
Looking as a bystander it is really difficult to sympathize with US for doing all this and now crying foul when it turns on themselves or when other countries like Russia try to do similar.
I believe all crimes should be reported.
Just don't try to pin all blame on the other side when you share in it.
The BBC article manages to go through 10 years of history here and appears to have missed the NATO invasion.
If we want to stop war crimes happening, NATO should hire me as an adviser. I could set them on the right path pretty quick with some simple observations: Invading a country doesn't make it more prosperous! Sometimes it makes things worse! All of the invasions in the Middle Eastern region have led to war crimes happening and it is a consistent pattern! Stop with the troops and the missiles!
But they won't hire me because they already know all that. Everyone knows.
Or we can speculate that the reason is the modern worldview of the Russian power as the zero-sum game with the west, where each problem delivered to the West is Russia's win, and excursions of troops of the other side is a helpful pretense.
Is it? I don't see the causality there. I mean, Canada isn't comitting war crimes in Libya. Germany isn't. Australia isn't. They could, but they don't. Russia does, so there is some cause you're not accounting for in the above comment. What motivates Russia to do that and not the other countries? It isn't the NATO action in 2011.
Clean in front of your house first before you start complaining about neighbor's front yard.
Edit: I got -2 point for saying "lets not be hypocrites". I love it. :))) Surely this says something about state of some people sense of justice.
Yes, I know, they are in our turf so now we need to bitch about them. What is the famous quote?, ah yes, "as we need to protect our economic interests" ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
Edit: downvotes. You don't think its a fallacy? hahaha
Also NATO waging wars around the globe was never legal or just, we were just going for oil and other resources using "shortcut". During NATO imperialistic conquest we have international laws and UN, but it seems that international organisation has more decorative purpose than anything else equally goes for Russia and China. Russia's war dogs would never be in Libya if we have not had destroyed that country first. During Roman empire at least they created roads, aqueducts, they gave writing system, what good did NATO give to any of those middle east countries?
Approved by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1efOs0BsE0g
If I'm emotionally burnt out about the crimes of a strongman like Putin who I have zero ability to change how will I put pressure on my local police chief to fire bad cops?
There's the proverb "sees a speck in another's eye, but does not notice a log in his own eye". No major country is innocent, yet dismissing them all as equally bad is wrong and unacceptable; they do allow comparison, and Western countries come much better for their record of wars over last decades than some others.
First doing their own is like asking to postpone space exploration until all problems on Earth will be solved. Not to mention that space exploration helps solving Earth problems; postponing flying to space can thus be indefinite, as on Earth you can almost always find problems. Western hemisphere only recently had a situation with no wars; you can then always point to smaller conflicts. West has to improve, yes; however that doesn't mean we shouldn't hold some non-Western countries as more accountable for bigger international problems.
Are you forgetting about jetting across the world to Iraq and Afghanistan on dubious pretences?
While I certainly don't condone (nor frankly know much about) Russia's involvement in Ukraine and Crimea, at least they share borders and have a large number of ethnic Russians there to be fighting over.
Number of Russians in neighboring Ukraine is a pretense. The real reason is so called "imperial phantom's pains", the worldview of the Russian power about how everything works, the Cold War era division into "them" and "us". They don't believe in the democracy, they never experienced that and were trained to be suspicious about it. For just about everybody - Russians on both sides of the border as well as Ukrainians - the conflict made things worse, and for a long time. Kremlin lives in a bad illusion, which it tries to induce into others.
I feel that each human nation as soon as they becomes a supper power they adopt behavior of a bully having bullies sense of justice e.g. "domination, violence and exploit".
Comparing a good technological achievement with moral and ethical values is not good analogy, but I understand what was your attempt. Speaking about the open space, i think that bully mindset is not really a behavior we want to carry with us. Do we really think that if other intelligent life (if it exist of course and is more intelligent) will let us?
Another issue is that space gives a military upper hand, meaning who ever deploys Moon base or Mars base will have ability to produce nukes or commence meteor strike on opponent country without much chance to defend themselves. So, in some sense something noble can be easily tuned to eval means. If China builds a moon base on the far side, we need to pair with moon base and spying satellites so we can track what are they doing, crating new military race, all the while mother planet is burning because of Global Warming as trillions are diverted - due to inability of nations to cooperate with each other.
Thus, I am trying to say, more technological power requires higher level of consciousness (goodness), otherwise we are just raging monkeys that will blow them selves up in one way or another.
IMO, problem here is you don't see it actually happening. Similarly Kremlin sees behavior of West with e.g. Kosovo as the same as what they did in Crimea. While West brings comparisons and differences, they are dismissed by the other side. A sort of stalemate in finding common ground, but in Russia the Kremlin's point of view is quite often shared by some selected few.
It’s less contentious when someone defends their favorite sports team than a political organization, but I think it’s related in many ways. In the real world nothing is perfect, but everyone gives more slack to organizations they identify with be that religious, cultural, political, or personal reasons.
Of course people can be trolls and also genuinely feel this way.
And well - let's be honest whataboutism is actually a good defence. And there is a long list of very bad stuff done by regular armies in this century without repercussions.
So until we sort the American warcrimes by Blackwater and the likes no need to lose sleep over Wagner.
So just file it under - the world is a shitty place, be happy you are not there.
And HN is a prime target. So many people here may have influence over millions of people right now, or will in near future. There's a lot to gain from implanting a few untrue memes that dismiss Russian, Chinese, Saudi or whoever else's actions.
A popular one is to depict NATO as a aggressive organization that subjugates countries in Europe to encircle Russia, thus making Russia's actions "defensive". It's ridiculously untrue and totally detached from the actual political history of post-1991 Europe, but if you know nothing about NATO in Europe, then it may be believable and you may convince yourself or others that Russia's aggression (like the war in Ukraine) is justified, and that the US nor EU should not get involved in any way. That's what they want. That's Sun Tzu's Art of War in practice. It must have an amazing ROI given the ease of capturing Crimea, which they have fought over several times in their history, but without any human losses this time around. Amazing innovation in warfare!
Plus a lot of westerners are already inclined to self-whipping over the colonial guilt narrative, missing what rest of the world has been doing, and in many cases, is still doing. This supports the implanted ideas.
People who think like that are progressives. However many Russia-firsters in the West are right-wingers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
> People who think like that are progressives. However many Russia-firsters in the West are right-wingers.
Which just goes to show that extreme distrust is eminently exploitable and often gets you to the same place regardless of where you started. There is very much a tendency by some on the left to take "anti-(US)-imperialism" to such an extreme that they become apologists for any anti-US imperialists they come across.
I've seen the same thing with COVID. Left-wing "anti-imperialist" websites pushing similar paranoid narratives about vaccines and lockdowns, etc. that would be at home on a far-right website.
Yes, I noticed this pattern in most of the discussions about Ukraine. I wouldn't go as far as calling those people "bots" though as they are mostly either misguided westerners who are distrustful of their media and susceptible to influence by RT and similar organizations (I guess the ones who you called "self-whipping over the colonial guilt narrative" in last paragraph of your comment) or just ordinary Russians :)
Besides "Clinton in Yugoslavia", "NATO encircling Russia" you can usually spot them by "CIA and western NGOs destabilized X", "Nazi leader of country X", "russophobia", "russian-speaking people denied X in Y", "Russia was provoked to do X by Y" and similar narratives.
Perhaps not everyone has forgotten that NATO bombed a civilian passenger train twice and then released sped up footage to justify it/explain it away. And they got away with no consequences.
I can't believe you'd just dismiss people as Russian bots that bring this up.
This has nothing to do with Russia.
>but a good example of where an error was made and an explanation with supporting evidence was provided, and full co-operation was given to an independent investigation.
Except they tried to cover it up and weaseled their way out of it by providing misleading (sped up) footage. 50-60 innocent people were killed on that train and there were no repercussions to the perpetrators. It's a miscarriage of justice and makes us in NATO look hypocritical whenever we demand that others behave better.
The fact is the bridge was a legitimate target and no evidence was found that the train itself was targeted. NATO opened itself to an independent investigation and was committed to abiding by it's findings. We should push other countries and organisations to do the same, and face the same standards of scrutiny.
I personally know quite a few people from ex-Yugoslavia who still hold grudges. Learned about it, to my surprise (they never really manifested those grudges) during the Trump/Hillary campaign, when being pro-Hillary was unacceptable to those people regardless of how low they thought of Trump and his agenda.
These things take way longer than 20 years to erode. But many people that had nothing to do with the conflict at all may have forgotten indeed. Still Not "Everyone else" by far
Especially the victims and relatives
>"There's a lot to gain from implanting a few untrue memes that dismiss Russian, Chinese, Saudi or whoever else's actions"
"whoever else" - quite a modesty you have here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Long, detailed experience has shown that these insinuations are based on literally nothing at all—just imagination and projection.
As far as I can tell after studying the data in detail for many years, here is what's really happening: the community is divided, different users have a wide range of views, and it's really hard for people to grok that the range of honest views is as wide as it actually is. Since that's hard (for whatever reason) to accept, users make up stories about other users being disingenuous "bots" and "trolls" and "spies" which are "easy to spot". They're only "easy to spot" because you've created them.
I'm not saying that real abuse and manipulation don't exist; I'm saying that accusations about it need something objective to point to—at least a shred of some evidence to go on—and setting that extremely minimal requirement easily rules out 99.9% of internet comments about this kind of thing. Meanwhile such comments are deeply poisonous to community, which is why we have the rule asking people not to post like this.
Incidentally, by referring to "self-whipping over the colonial guilt narrative", you've already (in a tendentious way) contradicted what you spent most of your comment claiming, since what you're describing there is a view that a lot of people happen to hold for whatever reasons of their own. You may think they're wrong, but that's hardly the same thing as them being "bots" that are "easy to spot". In fact, it's the opposite.
I wrote a detailed explanation about this a couple of months ago, if anyone wants to learn more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725. And there are many years' worth of long, detailed explanations accessible by scrolling back through https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
("The phrase useful idiot has often been attributed to Vladimir Lenin, but he is not documented as ever having used the phrase.")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
I wonder how necessary these things are geopolitically, or how they are justified by either sides. Dealing with mercenary forces and their total lack of accountability or ethics as a local civilian can only leave one disgusted, jaded, and with nothing but hatred for the nations which cause or let these things happen. Does anyone here have experience with this topic, and can say what the advantages are, if the goal is not purely to demoralize?
"The group was first identified in 2014 when it was backing pro-Russian separatists in the conflict in eastern Ukraine."
Same reason Russia didn't send their uniformed troops into Ukraine.
The idea here is not obvious to a person living in the free world: it is to prevent your "scary, and mighty" standing army shown as weak, and losing in case it got stomped.
Seeing the "tzar's army" being weak will inevitably invite a challenge to his power.
It is disinformation-as-policy to bolster their political might without flexing their full military. The finest example of Hypernormalization.
Embarrassed that their government represents people of my heritage. Путин просто хуйло.
That doesn't really matter, though. The thin veneer lets them use their veto in the Security Council, and probably gets China to do so as well.
Same scenario as OJ Simpson publishing the "(if) I did it" book. Everyone knows what's going on. No one can do anything about it.
The reason why Wagner exists is quite simple - primarily it vents out all the people who has not found their place in Russia(and prevents their use against those who are in power in Russia) and their main and primary reason to serve in Wagner is being killed in the name of Russia. They are not expected to get back - in Ukraine conflict Wagner people were bombed by Russian army, when they decided to go back. They are expendables from the day they signed up.
Statecraft is so strange in this way, that you or I as laymen will ask just what in the fuck is the point - but it's totally legitimate and not casus belli for our solider to magically become a spy for a day to execute an operation on another nation.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2014/12/21/in-2008-mumbai-attacks-piles...
[2] https://abc7chicago.com/rare-extradition-in-works-for-chicag...
Regarding your observation; I might be wrong, but I think it depends on the time when political topcis are dominant and when hardcore tech stuff is being posted. It seems to me that in the (German) morning hours political stories dominate, in the evening tech stuff is dominant.
The USA has done every kind of outrage. But it'd somehow be a bit worse if Libyans were paying the USA for American nationals to come fight.
Splitting hairs, I know. Bush 41 turned a profit on the first invasion of Iraq. And there's plenty of off-the-books operations like the Iran-Contra scandal.
Lest we forget “we came, we see, he died”
The "freedom of speech" comment is merely a vent, and such generalizations is rarely fact... just like "A foreign concept in contemporary Russia" is a vent and generalization as well.
But if your views are indistinguishable from a paid troll's views, that's no one's problem but yours. Maybe you should even reconsider them? At least those guys get paid for posting their talking points.
Sure, technically true, but still something to consider a bit.
Happy?
I suppose we agree about this at least, but disagree about the degree of its effectiveness on us both.
I know that I'm affected by western propaganda. Are you similarily aware?
It's like crying out loud about being persecuted before anyone actually did anything to you.
I assume people who call you that are real bot/trolls most likely paid in Kraft dinners.
Western media is cancer
https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-africa-679a6d6fc549bd...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-55238803
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya_(GNA)%E2%80%93Turkey_mar...
- https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1165307/anastasiades-point...
They have covered those mercenaries, the first bit is about a different conflict but it also covers Libya later.
Putin has been in power for 20+ years and he'll remain in power until he dies (he's only 68). During this time, Russia has not seen great improvements as a society. For a few years in the early-to-mid naughts things were getting better as Russia was riding high on high oil prices and recovery from the dismal 90s. But this didn't last long - it all came crashing down in '08 and things have not recovered. Russian gdp per capita was the same in 2019 as in 2008. Covid killed masses of people which they've "cleverly" hidden with stats (it's not clever at all, you can just see the excess deaths). As the world shifts away from fossil fuels, their heavily oil-dependent budget is only going to get harder to manage. Politics-wise, any opposition figure will be killed if they become high-profile enough
Things are grim and there's no realistic hope of things improving. For all their many, many, many faults, the soviets actually aspired to improve the lives of people. They ultimately proved inept at it, but they did believe they should and could improve people's lives. Putinism has no such aspirations. Instead the idea is to breed cynicism, fatalism and nihilism into people such that no one should ever expect anything better. To have hope, to act morally and ethically, to dream is to be a fucking idiot.
Thus, Putin's MO is demonstrate to his people that the rest of the world is just as shitty as his Russia is. That no one is better than him, because everyone is a hypocrite, everyone is corrupt, everyone is a murderer. This worldview is very useful for many people in the West, hence the charges of "Russian bots" are not quite right. The scores of people defending Russia are not Russia bots, they're regular folk, they just find this worldview useful and want to import it. It's like the IRA and their trolls created a self-sustaining cycle.
To put it more succinctly, in most countries (especially in the west) there are clear lines of demarcation between the public, private and criminal sectors. (The lines aren't impermeable. But the lines exist.)
In Russia, those lines have been eliminated. One group controls all three sectors.
I've heard plenty of stories from Special Forces acquaintances...