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Comment by sega_sai | Hacker News Reader

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.

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This war is about more than just Putin.

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.

Youtube is great for fixing a chair or a wheel but it is a blazing trash fire for anything involving politics.

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.

Chomsky was wrong on aspects of the Khmer Rouge in the 70s due to lack of information, but he absolutely does not deny it as genocide.

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.

I listened to all of these and didn't hear anything concerning: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chomsky+yugosla...

Do you have a source for this?

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...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

It's about controlling the supply of oil and gas to Europe. Putin didn't get his pipeline. This is the unfortunate alternative.

No. He was about to get Nord Stream 2 through, which doens't run through Ukraine, and now he got it shut down.

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.

Too bad Germany decided to shut down its nuclear plants.

See https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-25/what-t...

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.

This is going to be the strongest push to get Europe of Russia's gas ever seen.

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...

> This has erased almost 40% of Russia's private wealth in the span of a month.

Just wait until Putin announces the pívot to the metaverse.

This is why Russia has been quietly funding all the anti-nuclear movements in the west. ...to keep the west addicted to his oil and gas.

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