Crossposting from other active thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30449831): This is an unmitigated tragedy. There are reports of explosions even in the capital, Kyiv. I used to work in the region and Ukrainians are some of the brightest, hardest working, and passionate people (at least when it comes to advocating for democracy from the people I met in Kyiv) I've gotten to know. A freelance correspondent on twitter I follow posted a thread on charities to donate to for those so inclined (disclosure, I haven't done due diligence on them): https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1496486993848643584
I should make it clear, that these are not just any random nazi idiots which we could find existing in any country, but that this logo and the military division are official and endorsed part of the forces there.
It does appear that they recently removed the sunwheel part from the logo, but the wolfsangel is still there. How much of it is just image management vs actually booting the nazis is better answered by someone else.
This is such a tragedy. Two close countries with shared histories are being put to war and many innocents will die because of a crazed maniac who has been sitting on his chair for 20 years and who has delusions of grandeur.
Research: George Friedman, Peter Zeihan, John Mearsheimer, Peter Hitchens, Noam Chomsky (more of an ideologue), etc. on this issue. You can start on YouTube OR read their books, I guess.
We then openly backed the 2014 putsch in Kiev, an open act of aggression just as irresponsible as a military incursion. CIA John Brennan, Senator John McCain, and Diplomat Victoria Nuland were there in Ukraine when Yanukovych was being overthrown. There is also evidence to show that we were involved through NGOs in overthrowing and promoting an atmosphere desiring the overthrow of Yanukovych.
> I am for keeping Ukraine as a neutral buffer separating Russia and the US.
US is on another continent. It doesn't needs that buffer, Atlantic ocean is rather wide and deep.
You seems to ignore what Ukrainians want. NATO is an open alliance (open https://www.nato.int/ and read what they wrote there), not an American empire.
> We then openly backed the 2014 putsch in Kiev
That backing was limited to verbal expressions of support. Technically you're not wrong and this might count as "backing", but I don't believe that changed anything at all in the outcome.
>NATO is an open alliance, not an American empire.
NATO is an excuse for America to have their colonising army in Europe while making it look like something else. America can brainwash Europeans by using the media of these compromised nations and their own peasants via their corrupt corporate media... but don't expect outsiders, include Russia, to fall for this nonsense.
Do you not recall the Victoria Nuland tape that leaked? "F** the EU" she said -- knowing full well that the Germans and French would be against a coup in then-neutral Ukraine.
Notice how he did not even bother talking about the experts I cited. He just jumped to attacking the medium. I'm well aware that you have to be careful with YouTube. But, ignoring it as a video hosting site is just ignorant.
Chomsky is the very last person I'd go to for any "research", YouTube or not. His relationship with facts is practically non-existent. "USA Bad" and whatever facts need to be cherry-picked, massaged, or ignored, whatever history needs to be rewritten, whatever motives need to be speculated about to support that position is fair game as far as he is concerned. He regularly cites sources while stating something completely different than what they say and his tone frequently suggests this is not even a consideration of fact, but merely an exercise in interpretation as one might treat a work of fiction or artistic work.
Fun exercise for your research, do a search on "Chomsky genocide denial"
OK. Then, try listening to some of the other guys?
Yes, Chomsky is an ideologue. I disagree with him on many issues.
More importantly, it is surprising that you're just attacking him in general rather than specifically on what he said with regards to Russia/Ukraine. His thoughts on the matter seem perfectly reasonable to me.
And, can you please point me to where he denied genocides? I'd love to know. Like I said though, I don't worship him. He's wrong on many issues, IMO.
Chomsky literally said that the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo was US/NATO's fault. He's not an ideologue, he's just an old asshat way too many naive leftists put on a pedestal. Nothing positive about the west can get into his head.
I know there were issues about the genocides in the Balkans in the 1990s. But, in that case, he wasn't saying that there weren't massacres taking place -- he was saying that the US was selectively engaging for geopolitical reasons, not humanitarian ones.
He did say that, ignoring the fact that the real reason for this change was the election of Bill Clinton, and he also repeatedly, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, denied that Omarska was a concentration camp, he uses mocking language suggesting things like "because there's barbed wire and some people were thin people call it Auschwitz" (as it, in fact, was). He's been called on repeatedly to correct his previous statements and only doubles down.
Exactly, I keep trying to make people watch a talk from John Mearsheimer [1] from 2015 right after Crimea was invaded and I've been only met with aggressive retorts for a week, like I'm some kind of Russian government shill...
Temporary pause in licensing from Germany not 'shut down'. Germany has no choice but to buy Russian gas where else are they going to get energy from to run their huge GDP country
Gas makes up 10 percent of energy usage. More of a concern for heating and industries requiring it. But they can start investing in retrofitting and other sources now.
This needs to be repeated at every opportunity. I believe history will ultimately judge this as Merkel's greatest failure, and I say that as a fan of her's.
Ironically, Russia was pretty comfortably selling oil and gas until Putin decided he wanted to destroy his country's industry. I don't think anyone hates the Russian people as much as he does.
I agree, but the real plans are probably kept to a very small inner circle who are expected not to go around betting with that knowledge. It's why the stock market has been slow to react, too.
Became too partisan/political
People forget this is not twitter
Anyway Ukraine will be broke for a long time after this, there's no jobs during a war except fighting we can help there is tons of developers there who will be jobless probably tomorrow
+1 Ukraine was already hemorrhaging money because of decreased flights, decreased FDI, investments being pulled out, higher borrowing costs and now the economy is going to be crushed. Finding ways to hire Ukrainians or otherwise invest in the country is probably a pretty meaningful thing to do in the near term
We then openly backed the 2014 putsch in Kiev, an open act of aggression just as irresponsible as a military incursion. CIA John Brennan, Senator John McCain, and Diplomat Victoria Nuland were there in Ukraine when Yanukovych was being overthrown. There is also evidence to show that we were involved through NGOs in overthrowing and promoting an atmosphere desiring the overthrow of Yanukovych.
For weeks now we've been hearing from Moscow that Russian troops massing around Ukraine were just conducting a military exercise, that there were no plans to invade, and that any reports to the contrary were mere propaganda and hysteria.
What a coincidence that Russia's biggest deployment of troops since the Cold War just happened to come immediately before an actual invasion of Ukraine.
Now where are all those who kept claiming this was just an exercise and not a preparation for an invasion?
You missed a step. What a coincidence that Russia's biggest deployment of troops since the Cold War just happened to come immediately before the Russia-controlled-but-not-admitted occupied sections of Ukraine asked for military help.
And what a coincidence that all those troops just happened to be perfectly situated to jump into action in response to the request.
Nobody cared when Russia put military there last year. Then after Afghanistan disaster in the summer he doubled the amount of military, and still nothing happened in response. It's a highly corrupt country where opposition is in prison, and various foreign leaders launder money there. There is no appetite for investing in Ukraine, meaning multi-billions into real air defences and training military to use it instead we gave some pocket change and wished them the best while using their banks and oil companies as personal ATM.
Biden said that US is not going to war, but in fact there are many ways to slow down the Russians. You could have a voluntary army from western countries geared with weapons and supplies, like during the Spanish civil war in 1936 or eastern Ukraine since 2014. This will probably not save eastern Ukraine, but better than doing nothing.
It's similar to all news media where alternative news stories are prepared beforehand and are kept hidden until one of them gets published as soon as possible when events unravel.
News like these are huge enough to feature on HN, but at the same time I understand why PG always tried to mitigate this. Here you have a lot of people who are most likely technically smart in their fields, but a substantial fraction of the comments seem completely detached.
> atlgator says this is b/c Putin didn't get his gas pipeline, completely reversing the causality of why the pipeline was put on hold yesterday.
> warner_of_doom suggesting us to go read why this is more than Putin and to go into the Chomsky et al hole of crazyness.
> ComradePhil making this about why CNN is a propaganda war machine so we should watch Chomsky again
74 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sun_(symbol)
> Neo-Nazi Russian Attack Unit Hints It’s Going Back Into Ukraine Undercover
https://en.respublica.lt/signs-of-neo-nazi-ideology-amongst-...
> Signs of Neo-Nazi Ideology Amongst Russian Mercenaries
It does appear that they recently removed the sunwheel part from the logo, but the wolfsangel is still there. How much of it is just image management vs actually booting the nazis is better answered by someone else.
Research: George Friedman, Peter Zeihan, John Mearsheimer, Peter Hitchens, Noam Chomsky (more of an ideologue), etc. on this issue. You can start on YouTube OR read their books, I guess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mearsheimer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Friedman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Zeihan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hitchens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky
Does this being on YouTube make it any less meaningful?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbj1AR_aAcE
Are these all lies?: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=peter+zeihan+ru...
What about this?: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=peter+hitchens+...
And, here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=noam+chomsky+uk...
Is this unreasonable?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXsq0Z30ppA
The professor is clueless.
Before the war has started in 2014, Ukrainians din't want NATO expansion. Overwhelmingly, they wanted to stay neutral.
In 2008 NATO summit in Romania, Ukraine and Georgia were denied from getting NATO membership plan, not invited: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7328276.stm
The orange revolution of 2004 has nothing to do with the west. Ukrainians did it for internal reasons.
NATO proposed Ukrainian and Georgian membership of NATO in 2005-2008, in the clear knowledge that this would destabilize the situation.
France, Germany, and others were against this. The proposal began the issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJBQikfYyKs
We then openly backed the 2014 putsch in Kiev, an open act of aggression just as irresponsible as a military incursion. CIA John Brennan, Senator John McCain, and Diplomat Victoria Nuland were there in Ukraine when Yanukovych was being overthrown. There is also evidence to show that we were involved through NGOs in overthrowing and promoting an atmosphere desiring the overthrow of Yanukovych.
US is on another continent. It doesn't needs that buffer, Atlantic ocean is rather wide and deep.
You seems to ignore what Ukrainians want. NATO is an open alliance (open https://www.nato.int/ and read what they wrote there), not an American empire.
> We then openly backed the 2014 putsch in Kiev
That backing was limited to verbal expressions of support. Technically you're not wrong and this might count as "backing", but I don't believe that changed anything at all in the outcome.
NATO is an excuse for America to have their colonising army in Europe while making it look like something else. America can brainwash Europeans by using the media of these compromised nations and their own peasants via their corrupt corporate media... but don't expect outsiders, include Russia, to fall for this nonsense.
WARNING: Troll factory catchphrase ["putsch"].
And it just happens that they all have pro-Kremlin views. You just selected experts which say things that you personally like.
They are pro-peace pro-realpolitik. Not "pro-Kremlim".
Peter Zeihan is openly not pro-Kremlim. He predicts that Russia will collapse. As does George Friedman.
Please think before you type?
Fun exercise for your research, do a search on "Chomsky genocide denial"
Yes, Chomsky is an ideologue. I disagree with him on many issues.
More importantly, it is surprising that you're just attacking him in general rather than specifically on what he said with regards to Russia/Ukraine. His thoughts on the matter seem perfectly reasonable to me.
And, can you please point me to where he denied genocides? I'd love to know. Like I said though, I don't worship him. He's wrong on many issues, IMO.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
See https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-25/what-t...
Winter is 2/3rds over.
If it's only about oil - this is incredibly short sighted.
As others have mentioned - Nord Stream 2 circumvented Ukraine. All was well for oil. This blows that up in his face.
The ruble is down ~14% since this started. MOEX is down ~20% on top of that. Corporate debt yields are up from ~1% to ~8%.
This has erased almost 40% of Russia's private wealth in the span of a month.
For anyone thinking - BUT THE PRICE OF OIL IS GOING UP!!1!
Not Russian Oil - it's going down: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/2/22/russian-oil-sell...
Just wait until Putin announces the pívot to the metaverse.
Anyway Ukraine will be broke for a long time after this, there's no jobs during a war except fighting we can help there is tons of developers there who will be jobless probably tomorrow
I am for keeping Ukraine as a neutral buffer separating Russia and the US.
NATO proposed Ukrainian and Georgian membership of NATO in 2005-2008, in the clear knowledge that this would destabilize the situation.
France, Germany, and others were against this. The proposal began the issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJBQikfYyKs
We then openly backed the 2014 putsch in Kiev, an open act of aggression just as irresponsible as a military incursion. CIA John Brennan, Senator John McCain, and Diplomat Victoria Nuland were there in Ukraine when Yanukovych was being overthrown. There is also evidence to show that we were involved through NGOs in overthrowing and promoting an atmosphere desiring the overthrow of Yanukovych.
What does Ukraine want?
What did Austria want?
To be left alone so that it doesn't suffer casualties.
That's what Ukraine wanted, but we pushed them into non-neutrality and anti-Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7ZbVufqW3s
https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/14966928962164572...
edit: Also verified by the NYT -- their screenshot looks identical to the video source above:
>"The Times’s Visual Investigations team verified the location of the explosions, which were captured on a webcam just outside Kharkhiv."
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/23/world/russia-ukraine
What a coincidence that Russia's biggest deployment of troops since the Cold War just happened to come immediately before an actual invasion of Ukraine.
Now where are all those who kept claiming this was just an exercise and not a preparation for an invasion?
And what a coincidence that all those troops just happened to be perfectly situated to jump into action in response to the request.
Nobody cared when Russia put military there last year. Then after Afghanistan disaster in the summer he doubled the amount of military, and still nothing happened in response. It's a highly corrupt country where opposition is in prison, and various foreign leaders launder money there. There is no appetite for investing in Ukraine, meaning multi-billions into real air defences and training military to use it instead we gave some pocket change and wished them the best while using their banks and oil companies as personal ATM.
https://twitter.com/JenGriffinFNC/status/1496705752114900993
> atlgator says this is b/c Putin didn't get his gas pipeline, completely reversing the causality of why the pipeline was put on hold yesterday.
> warner_of_doom suggesting us to go read why this is more than Putin and to go into the Chomsky et al hole of crazyness.
> ComradePhil making this about why CNN is a propaganda war machine so we should watch Chomsky again
Etc.
If you prefer, you can read some of the more anti-Russia scholars I cited, like Peter Zeihand: https://twitter.com/PeterZeihan/status/1495884492480913409/p...