Sure, Western countries "aren't at war' with Russia, but somehow, billions of dollars in weapons and lots of qualified military personnel end up fighting Russia in Ukraine.
That is typical proxy war, NATO is definitely not fighting directly.
Also, they cannot be at war. At most in "a special military operation". After all, Putin said that it is not a war :)
Smok
1yr ago
"de-facto Jewish conspiracy exists and is a good thing as prevents world-wars" is a take that I have not seen before, so points for originality at least.
Smok
1yr ago
More likely, they know that excavations would disprove the prevailing narrative in both cases.
And what Holocaust-denialist claim about for example Jewish population in Poland? It never existed? Coincidentally they almost entirely died during WW II but it was unrelated to German Jew-obsessed terror? German-ordered ghettos also have not existed? They ascended to higher plane of existence?
Smok
1yr ago
deaths that arose were incidental owing to camp conditions
And they refuse to elaborate why Jews ended in camps, I guess?
Smok
1yr ago
If I have to accept the label of Holocaust denier to have this discussion, then fine. I don't care. My point is that I don't understand why getting details wrong about a historical event is a moral failing and that people who do it should be "damned to hell."
Depends on kind of detail. Bunch of Germans tried to murder/enslave my gradfathers and grandmothers and my entire ethic group. My parents lived in area "liberated" by Red Army fighting with their former ally. Nowadays Russia is invading neighbour country and accusing them of rampant Nazism. (It degenerated into ukro-jewish-nazi-satanism-sim3cardinism since that time).
See also a related "mistake"
It is kind of thing where historical inaccuracy has a real chance to end with me being dead/oppressed/enslaved. Got significantly lower as Russia fails in Ukraine and Germany fails to spend this promised 100 000 000 000 euro for military. But still, that is likely one of easiest ways to get a lot of people irritated and scared.
Though I would reserve "damned to hell" for denialists of communist/nazi mass murder.
Smok
1yr ago
“yeah, the Kurds got carried away and a few Armenians got caught in the crossfire, but it was like 50,000 and it wasn’t deliberate” is a denial of the Armenian genocide" I was blown away, I can't imagine not losing my shit if we had this conversation in real life. 50,000 is a few? Not genocide?
It would say that it would be a denial of genocide that happened, while murdering 50 000 Armenians for being Armenians would be still a genocide.
In the same way that claiming that WW II had happened worldwide but had death count 100 000 would be still denial of WW II but such war, if would happen instead, would be likely still named WW II.
So it is a denial of the genocide that happened by claiming a smaller genocide happened.
Smok
1yr ago
I am genuinely frustrated by this common sentiment that the more murders you carry out, the more monstrous you are. Maybe that's true if we're talking about murdering one person versus murdering their whole family, but when we're working with a scale that is beyond emotional comprehension for most (all?) people, I don't think the distinction is important.
Murdering 2 000 vs murdering 2 000 000 000 is beyond my emotional comprehension (if all of them lived far away and were not known to me and my friends and had no strong connection to them).
Nevertheless someone murdering 2 000 000 000 is far more monstrous than someone murdering 2 000 000 or 2 000.
Smok
1yr ago
I'm sure it was not flimsier than the Allied explanation for invading Iran or Iceland.
You are wrong.
Invading Poland by USSR in alliance with Third Reich Germany was done for much, much worse reasons.
And even if that claim would be true, it still does not explain why explicitly condemning the Yalta Treaty would be bad.
Smok
1yr ago
If Western countries choose, they can just say 'no, we don't want any immigration, close the borders'. They don't face invasion for doing so.
Note what Poland did when Belarus started sending migrants to our border: they were stopped (yes, using also outright illegal methods which was basically ignored*), fence was constructed and Belarus gave up.
Now border looks like this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Zh4JyE2THmc
*still not sure what I actually think about this
Smok
1yr ago
This feels like a Schelling gerrymander to me: you're finding a distinction, any distinction, between 1800s imperialism and 2000s mass immigration, and then claiming that constitutes the morally relevant crux difference when in fact it's an irrelevant difference.
On the other hand claiming that situation is the same is also not helpful. I am not convinced by claim that situation is so similar that using the same name is perfectly fine, it seem mostly trying to use "colonialism=bad" meme.
Smok
1yr ago
That is putting significant faith in Russian state following laws. To say nothing about fact that laws can be changed and that Putin’s mobilization decree has a secret clause.
You forgot to mention that USSR and Germany cooperated in starting WW II - both in developing military power before, joint strategy planning, invading Poland and holding a military parade after victory.
what Red Army should have done?
Do not help Germans.
Do not attack Polish Army (also in 1920).
Leave after WW II ended.
Murder, rape and loot less.
Smok
1yr ago
But, then again, there was some shit that I can't see being beneficial to fraud and really does look like stupid/lazy people simply not bothering with rules: e.g. the revelation that they apparently paid expenses via chat emojis.
I do not understand why handling expense claims via Discord or Slack bot is somehow problematic. This emoji thing gets repeated together with other clearly problematic ones and I do not understand it.
Smok
1yr ago
Related case: by all info known to me Tether is a scam. But my reaction is to "lets not invest anything into it or anything related" not "spend effort on making people aware what is going on".
The same goes for FTX - if someone believed lies of 15% risk free returns and is not my family member/friends then I am not going to bother with it.
Smok
1yr ago
Because murdering 2 000 000 000 is far worse than murdering 2 000 (being 100% pure consequentialist is a pure ethics system, but consequences also matter and murder is bad)
Smok
1yr ago
I assumed that Slack/Discord would be used as interface, with bot archiving it to some persistent less mutable database.
Or channel being configured in way blocking editing - for example with bot reposting message.
Given that it was crypto and specifically FTX I assume that expense claim process was filled with fraud with bad implementation serving as smoke screen (deliberately or accidentally).
But I still do not see problem with emoji specifically
If the insider has admin permissions on the discord they could even delete the bots message perhaps wiping away any trace the expense existed.
That is possible also with software specifically for managing expenses, there someone with admin permissions also can tamper with database. It is also possible with paper.
Smok
1yr ago
who all have online LDRs with some Ukrainian chatbot with pretty pictures to back it up
If such law would be passed I bet that you would not even need a chatbot - I expect that there would be enough interest on both sides (ranging from treating it as actual relationship to very thinly disguised prostitution).
Smok
1yr ago
I mean, I think what I'm clearly suggesting isn't that the Marines are seduced by an AI chatbot
Yes, obviously.
Though if for some reason they would do this - they likely could do without lying in that part.
Smok
1yr ago
The British have been cocooned quite safely in their little island as well.
UK was bombed a bit during WW II (total death count lower than single big German massacre in occupied areas).
USA mainland was technically actually bombed during WW II with some civilian death - 6 in total ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendiary_balloon#Fu-Go ). But it is extreme nitpicking.
Compare with Belarus (occupied by USSR at that time) where 25% of population died/was murdered, or Poland where 16% of population was killed/murdered during war.
Smok
1yr ago
Not necessarily "will get" but it helps to enable this.
It also increases risk of this happening again.
Smok
1yr ago
Why you think that lawful evil would not result in this? We have plenty of examples of exactly this problem happening.
Smok
1yr ago
Why you think so?
German Third Reich was very lawful evil. Technically they ended with vertical firing squad rather than circular firing squads, but problems in the end were very similar.
(maybe there could be treated as pragmatic with "Jews are evil" axiom, still society they created was far from flourishing due to their own actions)
(it is about Yalta Conference AKA Crimea Conference AKA Argonaut, right?)
why that would be weird? USSR got there permission for brutal colonization of Central and Eastern Europe. I understand why USA and England was not interested in continuing war. At least Poland got a bit smarter about its international relationships since that time.
But why condemning this would be bad?
one of main roles - yes
the main role? Not really. And no, share of effectiveness does not scale linearly with soldier death count, especially when deaths are caused by idiotic and murderous leadership.
Denying role in the victory over Germany is lying. Denying role in liberation is quite accurate as Soviet victory was not liberation, just a different oppressor. There was kind of improvement as they were less genocidal and were running outright extermination on far lesser scale and targeting different groups. But "only some subset of you will be murdered and enslaved" is quite a low bar. And they stayed for far longer, so total damage was still very significant.
Unqualified describing Red Army victory as "liberation" and omitting USSR-Germany alliance that started WW II is as big omission as denying the Soviet role in final victory over Germany.
Pity that war happened, but self-destruction of Russia in the war they stupidly started is delicious. And no, Russia is not entitled to empire in Eastern Europe, or Central Europe. And fortunately nowadays they have also no strength for that.
Finally consequences of USSR and their empire caught up with them.
More awareness of various Russia/Russian empire/USSR evils is just one of that nice things.
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