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Comment by mlindner | Hacker News Reader

Lots of weird extremely Russian-patriot sounding comments in this thread. Russia is sending paratroopers because they don't want another Ukraine situation. They don't want Kazakhstan to break away from Russia because of a popular uprising like Ukraine did. And it's a lot easier for them to prevent it than it was for Ukraine because Ukraine doesn't border Europe so the west won't protest it as much. I expect a whole lot of bloodshed is about to happen and I'm not looking forward to it. Best of luck to the Khazak populace.

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> Lots of weird extremely Russian-patriot sounding comments in this thread.

This kind of nonsense comments appear whenever there are people with positive comments on China or Russia. I guess my top level comment on this thread will be one of the "Russia-patriot" ones. For the record, I am an Indian living in Malaysia - I simply choose to read proper sources and be informed of geopolitical events rather than parrot US propaganda. I learned to do so after reading a book by an American, often mentioned in HN (the book is Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman).

When the world says one thing but Russian media says the opposite, you shouldn't be trusting the Russian media.

Treating anything by Noam Chomsky as a good thing to follow is pretty laughable though.

Also it appears your post was flagged and deleted.

Swallowing the American consensus after the Iraq War et al. is more laughable then being a Chomsky fan.

Agree about the Russian media, they do a cheap imitation of Western narrative building journalism and are far more clumsy about telegraphing their agenda.

Yeah its ok to be suspicious of these type of comments, we already know nation states do everything they can to make sure they have the proper PR optics. The US, especially China (genocide), and why not Russia too. The truth is self evident here, Kazak leadership is just another neo-colonial muppet for whoever is calling the shots on natural resources.

These are not Slavs and no they dont belong to Russia in any sense. You can look up the country demographics, the minorities are other former non-Slav soviet nations. Russia has no interest in the rights of the Kazak people, this is just their run up to reverting back to old fashioned imperialism.

The US uses the same play book, just dont get it twisted about Russia's intentions. In any case the whole world will watch and do nothing cause everyone has their own problems ?

If you read Noam Chomsky you will understand that propoganda is used by every country. But if you read enough history you know for damn sure there are no good intentions here, except people asking for their right to a decent way of life.

Slavic people do not belong to Russia in any sense either. Certainly I do not.

Even Russian speakers do not always want to associated themselves with Russia.

> Even Russian speakers do not always want to associated themselves with Russia.

You cannot speak for all of us.

It's kinda funny to see Chomsky make that point, considering he tolerates totally-not-genocides as long as the perpetrators are politically aligned with his views (or so he thinks).

I guess this is just taking the bait, but Noam Chomsky has never accepted any genocide as ok or rational. Stop with the poorly constrcuted strawman.

You're technically correct (AFAIK); genocide denial is not genocide apologia. But boy what a hair to split...

To those who aren't aware, Noam Chomsky vehemently denied Pol Pot's mass murder of millions in Cambodia.

The nom de guerre Pol Pot didn't appear in the New York Times until August 1976, which was after things calmed down in Cambodia. Which makes your assertion he was doing so at the time unlikely.

Vietnam invaded Cambodia and the US began arming Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s and 1980s, which again the Times covered, although slightly obliquely. Chomsky condemned the US arming Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

Buzz off with your revisionism. Chomsky said the numerous reports of mass murder were a sea of lies. History has proven him dead wrong. He should have known better but was blinded by his ideology; all too eager to believe America was making it all up, and all too eager to believe leftists wouldn't commit such crimes.

He later did the exact same thing during the Bosnian war and the Srebrenica massacre in particular (where Chomsky among other things defended a publication called "Living Marxism" which published a completely made up article alleging Western media turned a a "refugee center" into a concentration camp including faking photos including that particular photo that looked like a KZ you might remember from that war. Chomsky has defended and assumed the position of LM on this into the 2010s).

Now you might say "surely he has come to his senses", except Chomsky went on to spread lies about the Sarin gas attacks in Syria.

There's probably more.

This is what Chomsky wrote about Ponchaud's Cambodia book in June 1977

"Ponchaud’s book is serious and worth reading, as distinct from much of the commentary it has elicited. He gives a grisly account of what refugees have reported to him about the barbarity of their treatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge."

So a book about the barbarity of treatment by the Khmer Rouge is "serious and worth reading". That is what Chomsky actually wrote back then if anyone is actually curious. Does not sound like what you claim he was saying.

I'm an American and can tell you that whatever you think of Trump - the Democrats, MSNBC etc. chose to deal with him by implying, or even saying, that he was a Trojan horse put in by Putin, that the house of representatives was run by "Moscow" Mitch McConnell, that Trump was put in by Moscow fixing the elections etc. With little mention of US/CIA/NED involvement in subverting Russia within Russia, being involved in color revolutions etc. Victoria Neuland and people like her have been doing it almost openly, and she has shown contempt not just for Russia but Western Europe ("Fuck the EU") as well.

So you have upper middle class Europeans, and some upper middle class Europeans living in their media bubble. Other views outside this bubble are heretical and suspicious.

Even YC founder Paul Graham touched on this lightly in his essay about how "submarine" PR articles about men's formal suits make it into the press. Noam Chomsky (who also writes books about the language of Turing machines) covers the corporate media more thoroughly. People who actually talk about what the US is doing like journalist (and former programmer of open source port scanners) Julian Assange are imprisoned.

Also, Kazakhstan has troops coming in from Belarus, Tajikistan, Armenia and Russia. So just mentioning Russia in the headline is already a slant.

>I simply choose to read proper sources and be informed of geopolitical events rather than parrot US propaganda

And yet in your other comment you linked to "Moon of Alabama", anonymous blogger which always takes a pro-Kremlin position. How is that a "proper source"?

No. Yes, he is generally what I would consider "anti-US" but Media Bias Fact Check reports no failed fact check in last 5 years. Also, before people label him as "left-wing", he was a very strong supporter of Kyle Rittenhouse from the beginning (even supposedly good sources like The Intercept lamented the acquittal). I have linked to his article on the day of the verdict below.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/11/kyle-rittenhouse-is-no...

>No.

What kind of a reply is that? You can search what he wrote on every topic which is sensitive for Kremlin (Crimea, Donbass, MH17, Navalny, Skripals, Syrian chemical attacks) and in every post he would take a "Russia did nothing wrong" position.

I would say that if all facts point to the fact that Russia did nothing wrong, perhaps Russia did nothing wrong. And junk articles in NYT, WSJ, Guardian or BBC are not "evidence" that they did something wrong.

Another relatively neutral source on reporting on Central Asia is https://www.indianpunchline.com/about-me/ if you are interested.

In their quest to be more objective and critical, a lot of people fall into a simple, reflexive anti-American stance. There's a decades old term for these folks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

HUNGARY 56, and Czechoslovakia 67, Ukraine 2014, Kazakhstan 22, it's the same playbook.

Chomsky was an exemplary linguist, but his political writings are one dimensional.

Manufacturing consent correct points out malicious sounding actions by the US, but it never delves into how literally major or minor power in history has done exactly the same. He loves to shut on the US, while turning a blind eye to every other authoritarian nation and having his life's work be funded by Darpa.

Though I'm not supporter of Russian government, and I don't like current suppression of uprisings, it's Kazakhstan government that asked CSTO contries [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Org...] to send troopers, not a Russian initiative as one might imagine from the title.

On the other hand I see a lot of weird intelligence officer comments around. At the end of the day the regular people will be the ones paying the price for the war between the giants.

“When two elephants fight, it’s the grass that does suffer”

> Russia is sending paratroopers because they don't want another Ukraine situation.

I think Kremlin doesn't want Russians to have an idea that their detestable government can be overthrown. "Do you want it like in Ukraine" and "we need stability"/"lest there is no war in Russia" are the most common takes (and literal quotes) from their TV coverages of protests or any criticism of Putin & his friends.

One government has a complete soverreign right to ask another government to assist in a terrorist attack situation. That is as simple as it goes.

Sure. And that applies here, if you regard your own people as terrorists for being mad at the failures of the government. But if you buy that premise, you're excusing a tyrant who has figured out a new buzzword to justify his tyranny.

I recall a country with "Internal terrorists". Oh wait, I can't even name that country, right? That's completely different and does not apply in other cases, right?

You should not dismiss these views as just Russian-patriot sounding. These views acknowledge a realpolitik world view. They also acknowledge Russia as a "great power". And of course Russia has interests in the affairs of nations in their immediate periphery. The united states has done the same and would do the same again in a heart beat. I am as American as they come but I think the world would be safer if we were truthful about balance of power politics in international affairs.

Russia isn't a great power though. It only wants to be seen as a great power

I disagree. If not Russia, who do you see as a great power? I would put Russia third on my list, after the US and China. Russia certainly has the political might, intellectual depth, land area, nuclear arsenal, etc that gives them more power over other nations. Their position as a "great power" among all dimensions has certainly not been stable, but that doesn't mean it's not true now.

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