If I would be US President, my first measure on day 1, would be to create a Manhattan Level top secret research program of 10 to 15 years. Budget of 50 to 100 Billion, solely dedicated to neutralize Nuclear Weapons. Nothing has higher importance.
Better bet would be an international new deal program to invest in renewable energy, which could help us avoid a recession, save us from being dependent on fossil fuel states and help us deal with climate change, all in one shot.
That is the argument not to do it. There are also arguments against the MAD strategy for example the assumption of a perfectly rational adversary.
Not sure if can be applied here or adversaries like North Korea.
I hesitate to add an opinion on this as I know that multiple generations have been conditioned to believe in MAD. I believe MAD does apply to NATO nations and for the most part would reduce the probability that NATO countries might nuke one another.
I do not however believe that Russian politicians and military recognize this concept beyond its application to NATO meaning that they would hope we believe in it. There isn't one document I can point to but rather all of their political and war history suggests they would believe a nuclear war can be won and they don't really care if half their population were wiped out. The political elites can hide in bunkers deep under ground for a very long time. They have been preparing for this since at least WWII. Add to this the evolution of smaller, faster more efficient tactical nuclear weapons and HANES EMP weapons would bolster their confidence in winning. I don't really know what winning means given they would be economically destroyed and the surviving civilian population would be starving and sick. I am just looking at this through Russian history tinted glasses.
Let's imagine a world in which nazi Germany occupied whole Europe and there was no WW2. Holocaust was finished. Jews, Slavs, Roma people, Muslims. Every "subhuman" minority gone. 50 years of 3rd Reich.
I understand that you're really passionate about Nazi Germany and are probably disappointed that the only thing which is like Nazi Germany continues to be Nazi Germany even in 2022.
Nevertheless.
Ukraine is very special and there’s no proof whatsoever that Russia is interested in conquering or attacking any EU/NATO countries. And they’ve also shown that they probably couldn’t manage it even without NATO or the nuclear deterrent.
> Ukraine is very special and there’s no proof whatsoever that Russia is interested in conquering or attacking any EU/NATO countries.
Russia wants NATO to be back into 1997 borders. Exactly because it wants to get EE countries back into its sphere of influence. If NATO allows this to happen (and there were people arguing for it) - Russia would blackmail these countries to become Russian vassals. And if they don't want to - it would invade them.
Russia already invaded Baltic states in 1991. Chechnya in 1994 and 1999. Georgia in 2008. Ukraine in 2014 and now.
It's not exactly a secret. Putin and his ideologues (Dugin for example) wrote about the need to "recreate Russian empire". The only reason they don't is because USA remains active in Europe and NATO remains a credible defensive alliance. But it's not guaranteed forever. There are political forces in US and the rest of NATO that consider it too costly.
They don't only want Crimea. They already had Crimea before this invasion. They are occupying large parts of Donetsk and Lugansk provinces and some other parts of Ukraine and they tried to siege the capital city and nearby provinces.
And why do you think they immediately took Crimea?...? It appears you're not really understanding the necessary observation I'm pointing out. I'm not talking about phase 2 here.
It's also not just about when they talked about NATO. There were already constructing ( shell of memory serves me right) gas extraction around Crimea. It was crippled during the invasion in 2014.
It could have probably replaced ALL Russian gas imports.
It’s about a new world order. The end of the transatlantic alliance and liberal world order. The expectance was for other nations to follow suite, including Germany to take over the EU under its mantle.
How do you know it hasn't been? I'm sure it has. So much money on defense makes it easy to fund massive projects without notice.
What will be hysterical is in fifty years when it all becomes unclassified after the new weapon has to be used outing its existence and we all learn that there was a deep state after all and they hid the existence of the weapon from Trump. I'll be long dead, but I would have enjoyed it immensely.
What would be even better is an announcement like, "The US has voluntarily destroyed all of its nuclear weapons and generators and welcomes the world to verify there is no longer any massively fisionable matter anywhere in the country. Also, along with this announcement we have constructed a 600 mile long accelerator which can instantly detect and detonate any such material found anywhere in the world, instantly. Everyone's nuclear weapons are now their own worst nightmare and we encourage all countries to rid themselves of such weapons as quickly as possible. Starting with you, Russia."
I was thinking about how the detection system would work. We'd send up a bunch of satellites with specific detectors on them, then we send out a burst of neutrinos which will ring all the dense fissionable material like a bell. The satellites then record the pinpoint location of where any of it is anywhere on the planet.
That could be the beginning of the novel/Netflix series/pre-announcement mystery as all the scientists in the world notice something just happened, but aren't sure what for a while...
I also love the idea of doing it all as a hoax. Like a bluff. We mock up fake demos and then convince the entire world we have this power to detonate any nuke anywhere as if we owned it... And say, "We really don't want to have to demonstrate it for real, but if we have to." And the world voluntarily disarms...
Hyperbole and pro-war propaganda are the norm for this topic, but historical accuracy does matter. Russia is the aggressor in the Ukraine war, but if Russia was 'Nazi Germany' they'd be building forced-labor concentration camps all across Ukraine, as Nazi Germany did in Poland, prior to the murder of millions of people in those camps.
Similar hyperbole is trotted out in every conflict. The Saudis are Nazis to the Yemeni people, the Israelis are Nazis to the Palestinian people, so we should have a mass boycott and divestment not just from Russia, but from Saudi Arabia and Israel as well. Of course this isn't going to happen, and thus the moral authority to condemn Russia's aggression doesn't actually exist for the United States (see Iraq as well).
As far as nukes, we'd be back in the large-scale tank battles of WWII without nukes. They generally have a stabilizing influence as the architects of wars are notably reluctant to place themselves on the firing line; sending kids off to die somewhere else is not a problem for them, but facing the nuclear annihilation of their own home is another matter.
> building forced-labor concentration camps all across Ukraine, as Nazi Germany did in Poland
There's reports of Russia extracting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to camps within Russian borders. We don't know the exact scale or nature of these camps yet.
> Of course this isn't going to happen, and thus the moral authority to condemn Russia's aggression
Ah, whataboutism. We're not doing shit about one terrible situation, so we shouldn't do shit about any terrible situation.
OP's comment is weird, it's like "Only when you've passed this threshold can you be compared to Nazi Germany.". Maybe they should also have uniforms designed by Hugo Boss to qualify?
This article has 3 entries from 3 teenagers, the last one is from a teenager of a Pro-Russian family who have been relocated to Russia. He's writing they've been rescued from the "tyranny": https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/apr/01/w...
Countries with skeletons in their closets trying to play global policeman open themselves up to the charge of hypocrisy. A uniform standard of justice is a key requirement of any legal system of accountability, in my opinion. Pointing out hypocrisy could be called 'whataboutism' I suppose, but what about hypocrisy? Isn't hypocrisy - backing murderers here, opposing murderers there, justifying that support entirely on some vague notion of 'national interests' - something of a problem?
So just about any country... given that nations themselves are mostly-immoral geopolitical entities.
> trying to play global policeman open themselves up to the charge of hypocrisy.
Perhaps. But massive outrage at atrocities can't be blunted with "eh, your country didn't care about it elsewhere."
Your first comment is very strange. Russia seems to be following the expansionist genocide playbook. But they can't be compared to Nazi Germany because, uh, they've not managed to secure too much of the Ukrainian population yet, and there's not ironclad evidence of mass incarceration of Ukrainians yet?
> Countries with skeletons in their closets trying to play global policeman open themselves up to the charge of hypocrisy.
Every country has skeletons in its closet. Should we then just ignore crimes against humanity?
> Isn't hypocrisy - backing murderers here, opposing murderers there, justifying that support entirely on some vague notion of 'national interests' - something of a problem?
Nope, hypocrisy by itself isn't a problem. To understand why consider a criminal that once thought stealing is ok, then got caught, was in prison for his sentence, repented, and now thinks that stealing isn't ok. Can he complain to authorities that his neighbor was robbed?
You are saying he shouldn't. It's not only absurd - it's also morally repulsive. The only reason you could think avoiding hypocrisy justifies ignoring crimes against humanity is if you're trying to defend the murderers.
Oh no, not hypocrisy! Not when children are being raped! How terrible! First, we must not be hypocritical and only then can we oppose child rape and murder!!eleventyone!
> Countries with skeletons in their closets trying to play global policeman open themselves up to the charge of hypocrisy.
I recommend cracking a history book. That's literally every country.
> A uniform standard of justice is a key requirement of any legal system of accountability, in my opinion. Pointing out hypocrisy could be called 'whataboutism' I suppose, but what about hypocrisy? Isn't hypocrisy - backing murderers here, opposing murderers there, justifying that support entirely on some vague notion of 'national interests' - something of a problem?
I couldn't care less about your hypocrisy charges. If something is bad it should be stopped. Doesn't matter who. Doesn't matter by who. You can get your high-minded moralizations on once the dust settles. Moralizations are for the living - a champagne problem if you will.
You can argue nazis killed more people, but it's the same order of magnitude (millions).
Nobody was held responsible for these crimes against humanity. There was no Nuremberg trials for soviet mass murderers and torturers. These people often worked for NKVD/KGB and remained in power after it turned into FSB (which Putin was a member of).
These people (or their subordinates) are still ruling Russia. So there's no wonder they are still doing ethnic cleansings, mass murders and terror.
I stand by my opinion - Russia is a nazi germany with nukes.
No, Nazis did not kill more people. Actually they killed considerably less because they had less time to do it. Winning WWII allowed to start actual repressions against occupied nations.
I've seen estimates by pretty objective (certainly not pro-Russian) historians like Timothy Snyder that were re-evaluated recently and they've shown that nazis did kill more people. Not by much though.
In which former Soviet country were the rulers which were responsible for atrocities between ‘45-‘89 held responsible? Even the Nazis in Germany weren’t systematically purged - some had valuable information/skills and were given amnesty by the allies, others got even political functions in West Germany.
Soviet brutality is a fact, but suddenly bringing this up in 2022 when everybody’s obviously not bothered by it that much any more and drawing a parallel with Nazi Germany is bizarre to say the least. I think you must have realized yourself that the comparison was far fetched and you’re fishing for anything which would make it seem at least halfway logical.
Nazi Germany would not have hesitated to use nukes. Russia is not indiscriminately committing genocide. They are engaging in warfare. Quite distinct, but we do the exact same thing in the U.S. and the West. What country has killed the most people with bombs, tanks, etc, in the past 40 years?
Pro-war propaganda by condemning the aggressor? That is quite the "interesting" definition. Saying others have no right to condemn naked aggression and crimes against humanity and whataboutism is a far better fit for pro-war propaganda.
My hope is that in the light of Russian actions in Ukraine, the western world will review its attitude towards Russian/Soviet role in the context of WW2. So far the blame on starting WW2 was put almost solely on Nazi Germany, and painting Soviets almost as victims only. That is understandable, since they happened to be on the winners side, and therefore could write the history as they seem to fit for them. It is often forgotten that Soviets and Nazis agreed to divide Europe when they signed Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on August 23, 1939 [1], after which Nazis promptly invaded Poland a week later [2] and Soviets did so just weeks weeks after that. [3]. And while Germany was busy waging war on its western front [4], Soviets went on attacking Finland [5] and occupying Baltics [6].
>My hope is that in the light of Russian actions in Ukraine, the western world will review its attitude towards Russian/Soviet role in the context of WW2
I don't know about you, but this gives me massive "We've always been at war with Eastasia" vibes. We really shouldn't be normalizing "reviews" of our attitude towards other countries in the context of history, based on whatever is politically expedient today.
Illusion of winning WWII or in Russia Great Patriotic War is the main influence behind these inhuman crimes. They believe that because they won Nazis, they can't be the bad guys ever and all they do is morally right.
>I don't know about you, but this gives me massive "We've always been at war with Eastasia" vibes. We really shouldn't be normalizing "reviews" of our attitude towards other countries in the context of history, based on whatever is politically expedient today.
I think you are misled about the degree to which much of our "history" is based on what _was_ politically expedient at the time. Nothing the parent poster has said is false, it is precisely addressing convenient myths that have been left to stand.
To provide some examples:
The Wehrmacht was not innocent when it comes to the holocaust, but it was politically expedient to pin the blame on the SS and promote the idea that the Wehrmacht was largely "clean". So until the past couple of decades, that's what the histories said.
Hitler wasn't single-handledly responsible for most of the decisions that were pinned on him by the German military high command after the war. But the German high command were tasks with writing the histories, and it was certainly in their best interests to do so.
A lot of "revisionism" is more akin to removing the convenient lies of the past than it is to your analogy.
>I think you are misled about the degree to which much of our "history" is based on what _was_ politically expedient at the time.
What changed between now and the cold war? You'd think that it'd be very expedient to do some revisionist history when they had nukes pointed at us, or were engaging in proxy wars all over the globe.
>A lot of "revisionism" is more akin to removing the convenient lies of the past than it is to your analogy.
Of course, the revisionism isn't going to be as blatant as "We've always been allied with Eastasia" today and "We've always been at war with Eastasia" tomorrow. This time it's going to be "removing the convenient lies of the past", and the next time (when we want to be allied with russia) it's going to be "judging them by the standards of the time" or whatever.
The disturbing thing is that there is direct correlation between those people glorifying Soviets during WW2 and justifying Russian actions in Ukraine today.
> My hope is that in the light of Russian actions in Ukraine, the western world will review its attitude towards Russian/Soviet role in the context of WW2. So far the blame on starting WW2 was put almost solely on Nazi Germany, and painting Soviets almost as victims only.
Don't worry, this has been already happening for years. Nazis are being normalized constantly.
btw you'll be surprised but England made a deal with Nazis a few years prior to Soviets. Another thing that may surprise you is that Poland occupied small part of Czechoslovakia when Germans conquer it (after they made deal with England).
Believe me, there are plenty of surprises for you once you decide to study history instead of being feed by mass media. You'll enjoy it.
> Don't worry, this has been already happening for years. Nazis are being normalized constantly.
No need to twist my words here. You know very well what I meant with it.
> Believe me, there are plenty of surprises for you once you decide to study history instead of being feed by mass media. You'll enjoy it.
I’ve lived in different political and economical systems and on both sides of the iron curtain which makes me think I have developed good immunity against all kinds of propaganda.
Everywhere you mention had been within the Russian Empire 20 years earlier.
Also the Russians made a peace treaty with Germany after the UK and France had. Neither the UK or France would agree with a mitual self-defense treaty with Russia prior to the Ribbentrop peace treaty.
Drawing a detailed map of neighboring countries with a line in the middle demarcating which part you are going to occupy and which part goes to your partner in crime is NOT a peace treaty FFS.
"In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement in the areas belonging to the Baltic States (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the northern boundary of Lithuania shall represent the boundary of the spheres of influence of Germany and U.S.S.R. In this connection the interest of Lithuania in the Vilna area is recognized by each party. Article II. In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state, the spheres of influence of Germany and the U.S.S.R. shall be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narev, Vistula and San. The question of whether the interests of both parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish States and how such a state should be bounded can only be definitely determined in the course of further political developments. In any event both Governments will resolve this question by means of a friendly agreement. Article III. With regard to Southeastern Europe attention is called by the Soviet side to its interest in Bessarabia. The German side declares its complete political disinteredness in these areas. Article IV. This protocol shall be treated by both parties as strictly secret." Moscow, August 23, 1939.
> Everywhere you mention had been within the Russian Empire 20 years earlier.
That is not really an argument. I can select an arbitrary time period (other than 20 years) and show that none of these were part of Russian empire at that time.
> Everywhere you mention had been within the Russian Empire 20 years earlier.
I mean, so what? Modern Russia is not the Russian Empire; it is a successor state of the Soviet Union. It formally seceded the same day as Ukraine (and Belarus). If it wasn't happy with this situation, then it shouldn't have done so.
Even if modern Russia _was_ a rump state of the Soviet Union (which, again, it isn't) it would have no more right than anyone else to former dependencies.
Programmatic or manual suppression of keywords and/or domains. Look at the points, time and comments count of the current front page when compared to this which is currently on the second page.
This:
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BBC: Killings in Bucha are deliberate massacre – Ukraine (bbc.co.uk)
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Others:
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Why to Care About Privacy After Years of Sharing Data (thenewoil.org)
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Rethinking Visual Programming with Go (divan.dev)
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Book Review: The Programmer's Brain (shkspr.mobi)
55 points by edent 3 hours ago | flag | hide | 11 comments
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Podcast-conversations with YC founders whose startups failed (spotify.com)
26 points by thinkwithlucie 3 hours ago | flag | hide | 2 comments
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The Science of Production (constructionphysics.substack.com)
9 points by sebg 1 hour ago | flag | hide | discuss
The level of discourse is squarely at “Russia is Nazi Germany with nukes” - written without correct capitalization.
In general I’ve seen a handful of insightful comments on the Russia-Ukraine war, most comments are various levels of moral outrage or repeat the mainstream story without much critical thought.
This. I really don't understand why, but virtually all the comments seem to devolve into a prose version of yellow-and-blue watermark over one's facebook profile photo.
Yup! According to dang, the reason they don't ban TV news sites entirely (CNN, BBC, Fox News, etc.) is because they do occasionally surface an on-topic story.
Personally, I flagged this, because I don't see any evidence of "interesting new phenomenon" (quoting the guidelines again). War is not a new phenomenon, countries engaged in war being accused of war crimes is not a new phenomenon... hell, I grew up at the tail end of the cold war, so Russia being accused of war crimes is not a new phenomenon.
There are a million places on the internet to discuss politics and world affairs. Hacker News generally isn't one of them. I don't ask my book club to talk about MMA, I'm not sure why people insist on discussing the war in Ukraine here.
I don't really understand this 'I vote for them and they're accountable to me, but I'm not responsible - regardless of whether the ones I voted for got in or not' narrative.
Your government does something bad, then you should push back against it, or you are to an extent complicit and you should understand if other countries don't trade with you as a result.
However, my conscience is not clear. I'd like to see a more peaceful world.
But I am not, and cannot possibly be responsible for the actions of any other man or woman. I never asked anyone to go kill anyone else. However, I am not doing everything in my power to stop people from doing so. So there is some conflict here.
Yeah I get it, and I think this is the most common way of thinking about it. Here's where I ended up though:
I was taught that the government acts on behalf of its citizens in the interests of its citizens. I largely don't think that's true, but if it is to any extent, then to that same extent we are culpable for its actions. If not then we're knowingly casting away our responsibility, essentially the bystander effect on a grand scale.
If it's not true at all and the government doesn't act on my behalf or for my benefit, then there is a coercive, violent force acting in my name without my consent.
Either way, whether or not I am responsible, I must oppose its violence.
> then there is a coercive, violent force acting in my name without my consent.
There is. Or really, there are people that believe they are doing what is right in the name of government.
I did not vote for the people who claim to have the right to rule. Even if I did, could they prove they are acting as my agents? They are simply doing what they chose, using their own free will, either for good or for evil. Not once did I delegate any of my authority to them, even if I could.
Here's a thought: let's say that 2/3rds of a group of people decide it would be nice to have a place where the downtrodden can go get free meals, which sounds like an admirable goal. However, instead of using their own effort to build this place, they instead decide to appoint another group of people, they label "the government" to do so. They cast votes anonymously, and select 10 people to act as "the government". These people decided that in order to build their place to feed the downtrodden, they will go and take (by force if necessary), the property of other people, such as money, land goods, etc.
Is there really a government, or are there people that believe there is a government, and act as if they have the right to use force?
Another question, how are you opposing its violence? I ask because with all my talk, I am only taking baby steps to oppose it, and maybe you have come up with a better way.
How is the Russian state so effectively able to hide these types of things from its population? An independent study showed that Putin's approval rating went up, not down, and it's in the 70's. Russians believe they're fighting fascism, that Ukrainians are Nazis, and that they're welcomed as liberators.
But bodybags don't lie, and there's hundreds or maybe thousands of videos that show the opposite of the above narrative.
How is Russia able to withstand that? Is it cultural ? Or are we the ones not getting the full picture here?
They don't try that hard to hide it. Russia had an open internet until this month and still foreigners can participate in unblocked social networks (unlike China where not only everything has been blocked for over a decade but they make it very difficult for foreigners to participate or even read discussions). Russian propaganda works by assaulting credibility in general. Just imagine if every network and authority in the country is constantly calling everything "fake news" then basically people decide nothing anyone says is that believable, and they are free to believe whatever they want or what makes them feel right.
One factor might be the exodus of people with internationally facing jobs, those with contact on the outside. By some accounts this is getting into hundreds of thousands of workers and their families.
Russian propaganda right now (also notice how Kyiv is on lower case intentionally):
Why the “Buchan Massacre” is fake
Ukraine is spreading a new “crime against humanity”. Entering the cities of the kyiv region, which the Russian troops abandoned as part of the regroupment, the nationalists of the terbats suddenly found the streets littered with the corpses of civilians. Traces of torture, tied hands, scarlet blood: images of the city of Bucha shake the soul.
Ukrainian propaganda paints a terrible picture of the “Russian occupation”, under which real sadists intimidated the locals. Here it is, Ukrainian Srebrenica. By analogy with the “massacre” of Bosnian Muslims in Yugoslavia, of which the Serbs were accused. Although his version, which was significantly inferior in scale to the official one, no one took it into account.
I will now explain why Srebrenica in Bucha is a lie.
You underestimate the power of propaganda. I guess you can find some Russia Today videos or maybe some translated recordings from the Russia's state TV and check for yourself. They are very good at this. Some of the otherwise kind and humane people I know believe in this BS (yes, they really believe that Russia is fighting Nazis and liberating people). Arguing with them is useless (I told they are otherwise kind and humane, I did not say anything about them being smart). And I don't see reasons for this to change anytime soon.
Consider how well it works on you. Do you do any research when you read news (especially such terrifying news)? Most people do not - they have some opinion and then reinforce it. This is war and all parties lie, and there are questions to be asked (if you, for some silly reason, want to get closer to the "truth").
Their media isn't telling them that, though, and that's extremely powerful.
Like, the US has a largely free (if not particularly competitive) media landscape, and ~30% of Americans believe that Trump won the election; this is _highly_ correlated with what media they consume. It's obvious nonsense, and ~nobody _outside_ the US believes that, but if the only media you consume tells you that all other media in the world is fake news... If it's like that in a country with independent media, imagine how much worse it'll be in a country with no significant independent media.
I'm from the outside the US and i tell you that those elections had an extreme bias by social networks favouring biden and suppressing trump. Also, election results are far from being obvious nonsense. Watching rigged elections all my adult life, a lot of telling signs of a fraud were there, and methods of suppression of dissent about them were eerily similar to how it's being done in Russia.
One simple thing: only a very misguided person would claim that voter id laws are an "assault on democracy". Oh, it makes harder to vote? Good! Voting is a right, if a voter isn't willing to lift a finger to exercise this right, then it's fair that his opinion doesn't count.
Many (if not most) Azov members are Russian-speaking ethnic Russians. And vice versa, many of those fighting Azov are ethnic Ukrainians. The question is not the language or ethnicity but where one supports the Euromaidan or not. And Russia's biggest mistakes were recognizing that Western puppet regime, trying to negotiate with them (Minsk) and going the Nord Stream 2 way. And it's not clear why Putin went this way and tried to leave Donbass and Luhansk with Ukraine even though the population demanded the opposite. Maybe he believed Medvedchuk but more likely we just don't see the whole picture.
Also war still has not been declared officially and the Russian side is still fulfilling the obligation to Kolomoyski, that is the pipelines are still pumping gas and oil. And why Russia destroyed storage tanks at Kolomoyski's oil refinery only a few days ago? Has it something to do with Kolomoyski's friend Abramovich taking part in the negotiations recently? Obviously, we don't see the full picture here and unlikely will.
Regarding to what happened in Bucha we still have no names of the victims, not to mention a forensic report which is infinitely harder to fake than a news video. On the other hand we see videos where Ukrainian troops torturing their Russian army prisoners (shooting legs, cutting throats) and numerous reports from civilians in Mariupol of Azov shooting them while they were trying to leave the city and using them as a human shield, occupying higher floors in residential buildings and placing their firing points there etc.
Has the BBC ever lied to support the political objectives of the British Government? Just saying, it's a war, Britain and the rest of NATO are sending very advanced weapons to Ukraine and there are extremely big stakes here, so I wouldn't necessarily fault them for doing their patriotic duty and lying their asses off, or applying the lightest of all fact checks to encourage people to hate the Russians. It's all in our national best interest in the long run for Russia to lose this war, and if thinking Russia is "Nazi Germany with nukes", instead of being run by "Uncle Joe" and Beria being the head of the Russian equivalent of the FBI, as the March 29 1943 Life Magazine puff piece on Stalin's Regime put it, then great.[3] Btw, if you can get ahold of it, this Life Magazine is a marvel of absurdly positively spun propaganda.
Recently, we had the Nayirah Testimony[1] that was widely reported as true prior to the first gulf war, and the well known weapons of mass destruction present in Iraq testimony before the second one.
There was also the Dr Rola testimony that later turned out to be fake that was widely reported during the Syrian civil war[2].
Anyway, it is possible to want Russia to lose this war and simultaneously be aware that one's own government has a good reason to, and perhaps is lying and exaggerating for war propaganda purposes.
This isn't like [1] due to multiple independent lines of corroborating evidence, including multiple eye-witness accounts, photographic evidence, and satellite imagery from two weeks ago that corroborates this evidence.
It is fine to reserve judgement where there is no good evidence, but that's not what you're doing by comparing it to [1].
The null should be that the Kremlin is lying, especially in the context of fairly solid lines of evidence, and given their recent history of lying about everything and denying everything, even that which we can observe with our eyes (e.g. Lavrov's "We are not invading Ukraine" -- said in March).
107 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 197 ms ] thread"Neutrino beam could neutralise nuclear bombs":
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3734-neutrino-beam-co...
EDIT: removed uncited rumor
See "MAD -Criticism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction#Cri...
I would argue for the top secret program.
I do not however believe that Russian politicians and military recognize this concept beyond its application to NATO meaning that they would hope we believe in it. There isn't one document I can point to but rather all of their political and war history suggests they would believe a nuclear war can be won and they don't really care if half their population were wiped out. The political elites can hide in bunkers deep under ground for a very long time. They have been preparing for this since at least WWII. Add to this the evolution of smaller, faster more efficient tactical nuclear weapons and HANES EMP weapons would bolster their confidence in winning. I don't really know what winning means given they would be economically destroyed and the surviving civilian population would be starving and sick. I am just looking at this through Russian history tinted glasses.
But UK got better medical care and education.
Nevertheless.
Ukraine is very special and there’s no proof whatsoever that Russia is interested in conquering or attacking any EU/NATO countries. And they’ve also shown that they probably couldn’t manage it even without NATO or the nuclear deterrent.
Russia wants NATO to be back into 1997 borders. Exactly because it wants to get EE countries back into its sphere of influence. If NATO allows this to happen (and there were people arguing for it) - Russia would blackmail these countries to become Russian vassals. And if they don't want to - it would invade them.
Russia already invaded Baltic states in 1991. Chechnya in 1994 and 1999. Georgia in 2008. Ukraine in 2014 and now.
It's not exactly a secret. Putin and his ideologues (Dugin for example) wrote about the need to "recreate Russian empire". The only reason they don't is because USA remains active in Europe and NATO remains a credible defensive alliance. But it's not guaranteed forever. There are political forces in US and the rest of NATO that consider it too costly.
It's about the gas that was found there.
Their current actions seems to have made NATO stronger ( eg. Finland and Sweden possibly joining). Don't believe Russian rethoric too much.
They don't only want Crimea. They already had Crimea before this invasion. They are occupying large parts of Donetsk and Lugansk provinces and some other parts of Ukraine and they tried to siege the capital city and nearby provinces.
It's also not just about when they talked about NATO. There were already constructing ( shell of memory serves me right) gas extraction around Crimea. It was crippled during the invasion in 2014.
It could have probably replaced ALL Russian gas imports.
This was supposed to be just the beginning.
What will be hysterical is in fifty years when it all becomes unclassified after the new weapon has to be used outing its existence and we all learn that there was a deep state after all and they hid the existence of the weapon from Trump. I'll be long dead, but I would have enjoyed it immensely.
What would be even better is an announcement like, "The US has voluntarily destroyed all of its nuclear weapons and generators and welcomes the world to verify there is no longer any massively fisionable matter anywhere in the country. Also, along with this announcement we have constructed a 600 mile long accelerator which can instantly detect and detonate any such material found anywhere in the world, instantly. Everyone's nuclear weapons are now their own worst nightmare and we encourage all countries to rid themselves of such weapons as quickly as possible. Starting with you, Russia."
Can you imagine?
- Neutrino accelerators.
- EMP weapons.
- Human Engineering.
- Espionage.
- Real time tracking 24/7 of the location of government officials that could give such order.
- A type of SEAL Team 6 team ready to go anywhere and disable them.
- Most important you need an EMP solution to disable Nuclear submarines.
That could be the beginning of the novel/Netflix series/pre-announcement mystery as all the scientists in the world notice something just happened, but aren't sure what for a while...
I also love the idea of doing it all as a hoax. Like a bluff. We mock up fake demos and then convince the entire world we have this power to detonate any nuke anywhere as if we owned it... And say, "We really don't want to have to demonstrate it for real, but if we have to." And the world voluntarily disarms...
"How to dismantle a nuclear bomb" (2019)
"MIT team successfully tests a new method for verification of weapons reduction."
https://news.mit.edu/2019/verify-dismantle-nuclear-bombs-092...
Similar hyperbole is trotted out in every conflict. The Saudis are Nazis to the Yemeni people, the Israelis are Nazis to the Palestinian people, so we should have a mass boycott and divestment not just from Russia, but from Saudi Arabia and Israel as well. Of course this isn't going to happen, and thus the moral authority to condemn Russia's aggression doesn't actually exist for the United States (see Iraq as well).
As far as nukes, we'd be back in the large-scale tank battles of WWII without nukes. They generally have a stabilizing influence as the architects of wars are notably reluctant to place themselves on the firing line; sending kids off to die somewhere else is not a problem for them, but facing the nuclear annihilation of their own home is another matter.
There's reports of Russia extracting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to camps within Russian borders. We don't know the exact scale or nature of these camps yet.
> Of course this isn't going to happen, and thus the moral authority to condemn Russia's aggression
Ah, whataboutism. We're not doing shit about one terrible situation, so we shouldn't do shit about any terrible situation.
This article has 3 entries from 3 teenagers, the last one is from a teenager of a Pro-Russian family who have been relocated to Russia. He's writing they've been rescued from the "tyranny": https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/apr/01/w...
So just about any country... given that nations themselves are mostly-immoral geopolitical entities.
> trying to play global policeman open themselves up to the charge of hypocrisy.
Perhaps. But massive outrage at atrocities can't be blunted with "eh, your country didn't care about it elsewhere."
Your first comment is very strange. Russia seems to be following the expansionist genocide playbook. But they can't be compared to Nazi Germany because, uh, they've not managed to secure too much of the Ukrainian population yet, and there's not ironclad evidence of mass incarceration of Ukrainians yet?
Every country has skeletons in its closet. Should we then just ignore crimes against humanity?
> Isn't hypocrisy - backing murderers here, opposing murderers there, justifying that support entirely on some vague notion of 'national interests' - something of a problem?
Nope, hypocrisy by itself isn't a problem. To understand why consider a criminal that once thought stealing is ok, then got caught, was in prison for his sentence, repented, and now thinks that stealing isn't ok. Can he complain to authorities that his neighbor was robbed?
You are saying he shouldn't. It's not only absurd - it's also morally repulsive. The only reason you could think avoiding hypocrisy justifies ignoring crimes against humanity is if you're trying to defend the murderers.
Dude. Just don’t.
I recommend cracking a history book. That's literally every country.
> A uniform standard of justice is a key requirement of any legal system of accountability, in my opinion. Pointing out hypocrisy could be called 'whataboutism' I suppose, but what about hypocrisy? Isn't hypocrisy - backing murderers here, opposing murderers there, justifying that support entirely on some vague notion of 'national interests' - something of a problem?
I couldn't care less about your hypocrisy charges. If something is bad it should be stopped. Doesn't matter who. Doesn't matter by who. You can get your high-minded moralizations on once the dust settles. Moralizations are for the living - a champagne problem if you will.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
This system of forced labor concentration camps was active in USSR till 1987.
> The tentative consensus in contemporary Soviet historiography is that roughly 1,600,000[b] died due to detention in the camps
That's on top of outright mass killings and ethnic (yes - ethnic) cleansings done by USSR. For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
You can argue nazis killed more people, but it's the same order of magnitude (millions).
Nobody was held responsible for these crimes against humanity. There was no Nuremberg trials for soviet mass murderers and torturers. These people often worked for NKVD/KGB and remained in power after it turned into FSB (which Putin was a member of).
These people (or their subordinates) are still ruling Russia. So there's no wonder they are still doing ethnic cleansings, mass murders and terror.
I stand by my opinion - Russia is a nazi germany with nukes.
For example there were many pogroms, some inspired by Russia some by Germany, many were "grassroots".
Soviet brutality is a fact, but suddenly bringing this up in 2022 when everybody’s obviously not bothered by it that much any more and drawing a parallel with Nazi Germany is bizarre to say the least. I think you must have realized yourself that the comparison was far fetched and you’re fishing for anything which would make it seem at least halfway logical.
Russia literally invaded Ukraine and mass murdered civilians in occupied cities.
Putin made a speech in which he said Ukraine is a "fake nation" and that "Ukrainian question must be solved".
There were lists of people to be eliminated prepared before the invasion.
Thousands of Ukrainians from occupied cities were moved to Russia against their will. It's not clear what happened to them.
Russians have pseudomilitary training for kids and population is wearing stylized Z symbols to show their support for the "operation".
Calling the "operation" a war is an offence for which people go to jail. So is criticizing the Russian army.
And you're saying it's "bizzare" to compare this to nazi Germany?
What do you want - a signed letter from Putin admitting it?
If Russia wasn't behaving like USSR in its totalitarian period I wouldn't be reminding people of these examples. But it is.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Front_(World_War_II) [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_the_Balti...
I don't know about you, but this gives me massive "We've always been at war with Eastasia" vibes. We really shouldn't be normalizing "reviews" of our attitude towards other countries in the context of history, based on whatever is politically expedient today.
I think you are misled about the degree to which much of our "history" is based on what _was_ politically expedient at the time. Nothing the parent poster has said is false, it is precisely addressing convenient myths that have been left to stand.
To provide some examples:
The Wehrmacht was not innocent when it comes to the holocaust, but it was politically expedient to pin the blame on the SS and promote the idea that the Wehrmacht was largely "clean". So until the past couple of decades, that's what the histories said.
Hitler wasn't single-handledly responsible for most of the decisions that were pinned on him by the German military high command after the war. But the German high command were tasks with writing the histories, and it was certainly in their best interests to do so.
A lot of "revisionism" is more akin to removing the convenient lies of the past than it is to your analogy.
As to how this applies to the Russian myths of WWII, here is a thread from a historian: https://mobile.twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/14973067463306...
What changed between now and the cold war? You'd think that it'd be very expedient to do some revisionist history when they had nukes pointed at us, or were engaging in proxy wars all over the globe.
>A lot of "revisionism" is more akin to removing the convenient lies of the past than it is to your analogy.
Of course, the revisionism isn't going to be as blatant as "We've always been allied with Eastasia" today and "We've always been at war with Eastasia" tomorrow. This time it's going to be "removing the convenient lies of the past", and the next time (when we want to be allied with russia) it's going to be "judging them by the standards of the time" or whatever.
Don't worry, this has been already happening for years. Nazis are being normalized constantly.
btw you'll be surprised but England made a deal with Nazis a few years prior to Soviets. Another thing that may surprise you is that Poland occupied small part of Czechoslovakia when Germans conquer it (after they made deal with England).
Believe me, there are plenty of surprises for you once you decide to study history instead of being feed by mass media. You'll enjoy it.
No need to twist my words here. You know very well what I meant with it.
> Believe me, there are plenty of surprises for you once you decide to study history instead of being feed by mass media. You'll enjoy it.
I’ve lived in different political and economical systems and on both sides of the iron curtain which makes me think I have developed good immunity against all kinds of propaganda.
Also the Russians made a peace treaty with Germany after the UK and France had. Neither the UK or France would agree with a mitual self-defense treaty with Russia prior to the Ribbentrop peace treaty.
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1939pact.asp
"In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement in the areas belonging to the Baltic States (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the northern boundary of Lithuania shall represent the boundary of the spheres of influence of Germany and U.S.S.R. In this connection the interest of Lithuania in the Vilna area is recognized by each party. Article II. In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state, the spheres of influence of Germany and the U.S.S.R. shall be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narev, Vistula and San. The question of whether the interests of both parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish States and how such a state should be bounded can only be definitely determined in the course of further political developments. In any event both Governments will resolve this question by means of a friendly agreement. Article III. With regard to Southeastern Europe attention is called by the Soviet side to its interest in Bessarabia. The German side declares its complete political disinteredness in these areas. Article IV. This protocol shall be treated by both parties as strictly secret." Moscow, August 23, 1939.
That is not really an argument. I can select an arbitrary time period (other than 20 years) and show that none of these were part of Russian empire at that time.
I mean, so what? Modern Russia is not the Russian Empire; it is a successor state of the Soviet Union. It formally seceded the same day as Ukraine (and Belarus). If it wasn't happy with this situation, then it shouldn't have done so.
Even if modern Russia _was_ a rump state of the Soviet Union (which, again, it isn't) it would have no more right than anyone else to former dependencies.
It’s strange that these stories never make it anywhere near the top.
This:
33. BBC: Killings in Bucha are deliberate massacre – Ukraine (bbc.co.uk) 34 points by rendall 57 minutes ago | unvote | flag | hide | 5 comments
Others:
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11. The Science of Production (constructionphysics.substack.com) 9 points by sebg 1 hour ago | flag | hide | discuss
In general I’ve seen a handful of insightful comments on the Russia-Ukraine war, most comments are various levels of moral outrage or repeat the mainstream story without much critical thought.
Seems like many miss it.
Personally, I flagged this, because I don't see any evidence of "interesting new phenomenon" (quoting the guidelines again). War is not a new phenomenon, countries engaged in war being accused of war crimes is not a new phenomenon... hell, I grew up at the tail end of the cold war, so Russia being accused of war crimes is not a new phenomenon.
There are a million places on the internet to discuss politics and world affairs. Hacker News generally isn't one of them. I don't ask my book club to talk about MMA, I'm not sure why people insist on discussing the war in Ukraine here.
I'd much rather come to Hacker News to discuss these events as i find the moderation and general attitude of commenters to be very good.
And yes Hacker News is absolutely much more, but it's hard to ignore what is currently going on in Ukraine.
At the end of the day we need to accept that this is just how superpowers act. They go in, kill millions, and nothing ever changes.
A fallacy fallacy doesn't really get you anywhere. Businesses are already complicit with murder considering majority of them operate in the US.
What about this basic fact makes you uncomfortable?
"Lithuania cuts off Russian gas imports, urges EU to do same" https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/lithuania-cuts-off...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30812718
Your government does something bad, then you should push back against it, or you are to an extent complicit and you should understand if other countries don't trade with you as a result.
We don't owe our geopolitical enemies trade. Nobody owes anyone trade.
However, my conscience is not clear. I'd like to see a more peaceful world.
But I am not, and cannot possibly be responsible for the actions of any other man or woman. I never asked anyone to go kill anyone else. However, I am not doing everything in my power to stop people from doing so. So there is some conflict here.
I was taught that the government acts on behalf of its citizens in the interests of its citizens. I largely don't think that's true, but if it is to any extent, then to that same extent we are culpable for its actions. If not then we're knowingly casting away our responsibility, essentially the bystander effect on a grand scale.
If it's not true at all and the government doesn't act on my behalf or for my benefit, then there is a coercive, violent force acting in my name without my consent.
Either way, whether or not I am responsible, I must oppose its violence.
There is. Or really, there are people that believe they are doing what is right in the name of government.
I did not vote for the people who claim to have the right to rule. Even if I did, could they prove they are acting as my agents? They are simply doing what they chose, using their own free will, either for good or for evil. Not once did I delegate any of my authority to them, even if I could.
Here's a thought: let's say that 2/3rds of a group of people decide it would be nice to have a place where the downtrodden can go get free meals, which sounds like an admirable goal. However, instead of using their own effort to build this place, they instead decide to appoint another group of people, they label "the government" to do so. They cast votes anonymously, and select 10 people to act as "the government". These people decided that in order to build their place to feed the downtrodden, they will go and take (by force if necessary), the property of other people, such as money, land goods, etc.
Is there really a government, or are there people that believe there is a government, and act as if they have the right to use force?
Another question, how are you opposing its violence? I ask because with all my talk, I am only taking baby steps to oppose it, and maybe you have come up with a better way.
But bodybags don't lie, and there's hundreds or maybe thousands of videos that show the opposite of the above narrative.
How is Russia able to withstand that? Is it cultural ? Or are we the ones not getting the full picture here?
Why the “Buchan Massacre” is fake
Ukraine is spreading a new “crime against humanity”. Entering the cities of the kyiv region, which the Russian troops abandoned as part of the regroupment, the nationalists of the terbats suddenly found the streets littered with the corpses of civilians. Traces of torture, tied hands, scarlet blood: images of the city of Bucha shake the soul.
Ukrainian propaganda paints a terrible picture of the “Russian occupation”, under which real sadists intimidated the locals. Here it is, Ukrainian Srebrenica. By analogy with the “massacre” of Bosnian Muslims in Yugoslavia, of which the Serbs were accused. Although his version, which was significantly inferior in scale to the official one, no one took it into account.
I will now explain why Srebrenica in Bucha is a lie.
...
---------------------
I did not put link intentionally.
This is the core of tribalism. You don't need to prove or disprove, you just need to rouse
"Massacre" in quotes reminds that Russia officially denies that what happened in Srebrenica was genocide.
Consider how well it works on you. Do you do any research when you read news (especially such terrifying news)? Most people do not - they have some opinion and then reinforce it. This is war and all parties lie, and there are questions to be asked (if you, for some silly reason, want to get closer to the "truth").
Like, the US has a largely free (if not particularly competitive) media landscape, and ~30% of Americans believe that Trump won the election; this is _highly_ correlated with what media they consume. It's obvious nonsense, and ~nobody _outside_ the US believes that, but if the only media you consume tells you that all other media in the world is fake news... If it's like that in a country with independent media, imagine how much worse it'll be in a country with no significant independent media.
One simple thing: only a very misguided person would claim that voter id laws are an "assault on democracy". Oh, it makes harder to vote? Good! Voting is a right, if a voter isn't willing to lift a finger to exercise this right, then it's fair that his opinion doesn't count.
Also war still has not been declared officially and the Russian side is still fulfilling the obligation to Kolomoyski, that is the pipelines are still pumping gas and oil. And why Russia destroyed storage tanks at Kolomoyski's oil refinery only a few days ago? Has it something to do with Kolomoyski's friend Abramovich taking part in the negotiations recently? Obviously, we don't see the full picture here and unlikely will.
Regarding to what happened in Bucha we still have no names of the victims, not to mention a forensic report which is infinitely harder to fake than a news video. On the other hand we see videos where Ukrainian troops torturing their Russian army prisoners (shooting legs, cutting throats) and numerous reports from civilians in Mariupol of Azov shooting them while they were trying to leave the city and using them as a human shield, occupying higher floors in residential buildings and placing their firing points there etc.
"The Ukrainian mother who had to bury her own son"
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60977889
Recently, we had the Nayirah Testimony[1] that was widely reported as true prior to the first gulf war, and the well known weapons of mass destruction present in Iraq testimony before the second one. There was also the Dr Rola testimony that later turned out to be fake that was widely reported during the Syrian civil war[2].
Anyway, it is possible to want Russia to lose this war and simultaneously be aware that one's own government has a good reason to, and perhaps is lying and exaggerating for war propaganda purposes.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony [2]https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Dr_Rola [3]https://books.google.com.vn/books/content?id=A1AEAAAAMBAJ&hl...
It is fine to reserve judgement where there is no good evidence, but that's not what you're doing by comparing it to [1].
The null should be that the Kremlin is lying, especially in the context of fairly solid lines of evidence, and given their recent history of lying about everything and denying everything, even that which we can observe with our eyes (e.g. Lavrov's "We are not invading Ukraine" -- said in March).