ICANN's rejection of Ukraine's request to sever Russia from the internet [pdf]
icann.org
icann.org
They need to see the misery of the war they are inflicting and the only way is via an open internet. Yes they will push their own propaganda to the west but we can deal with that.
Fire-walling them off will result in the people not knowing what is going on. Just look how China is able to hide what happened at Tienanmen square.
We can not allow Russia to run the narrative by cutting of the internet. We need our pictures and videos to reach them.
Russian media is purely State controlled and is preaching justifications for the invasion of Ukraine.
This is not a free speech situation.
The US media is often a propaganda arm of the government. The Russian government tries to ensure their propaganda is all you see. There's a massive difference.
Just one of many examples:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/chi-city-offers-62-m...
The scope of the arrests in Russia is much wider (as a percentage of those protesting and in raw numbers), and they're legal.
I know the scope is different, but it is also good to keep in mind that bad things don't only happen in Russia.
edit: s/mass protest/mass arrest
Do you have a source for this? The only instances of arrests I can find are things like the above (illegal arrests) or people who trespassed on private property and were arrested for that. Meanwhile I can find plenty of stories of perfectly legal thousands-strong protests, which sounds like "mass protest" to me.
> I know the scope is different, but it is also good to keep in mind that bad things don't only happen in Russia.
Yes, but it depends on the purpose of placing that emphasis. "Even in a democracy we must be vigilant" is one thing. "We shouldn't condemn Russia for their human rights abuses because we're no different" is a very different message, and one that is manifestly false.
This is the hinge on which false equivalences turn. The scope is different, they shouldn't be compared, and being able to correctly grasp and differentiate different scales of moral offense shouldn't be interpreted as "I guess they don't know bad stuff happens elsewhere." Those comparisons do more to obfuscate than clarify.
Then nothing can ever be compared, there is always going to be differences between situations. Even just cultural differences between Russia and the US.
There's a failure of vision, a failure to understand differences in scale that is driving these false equivalences, that then leads to a bunch of equivocation about whether the unlike comparisons can be similar. I think the original point stands and this remains a false equivalence.
800 illegally arrested in a single city, on a single day after the invasion. San Francisco had 2,200 protest arrests in the two days. [1]
> The biggest antiwar eruption in the U.S. took place in San Francisco, where protesters had vowed to shut down the city, and the police reported making more arrests than any time during the past two decades. The protests began during the morning rush hour, when activists used duct tape for purposes that Tom Ridge at the Office of Homeland Security would never recommend: blocking the intersection at Battery and Columbus, while handing out stickers that said "No War in My Name."
> During the morning rush hour, the city's Financial District was shut down by human blockades that stretched from the Embarcadero to Van Ness Avenue, stopping cars and bus traffic for hours and provoking a wave of arrests.
> By 4:30 p.m., several thousand protesters began sitting down at the busy intersection of Fifth and Market, where police began carting off dozens of them to a MUNI bus that had been commandeered as a paddy wagon.
Only 3% of media coverage was anti-war, they didn't need to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War...
That study says only 3% of individuals who were interviewed on the 6 studied channels were opposed to the war. They only studied coverage across 6 mainstream media outlets:
> The news programs studied were ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports, Fox’s Special Report with Brit Hume, and PBS’s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.
This doesn't tell me anything about the state of independent news outlets at the time.
Again, I agree that the US acted in a different way than Russia does right now, but the situation itself is also different. The US did not need to take the actions Russia has to take, because the majority of people in the US where pro-war during the invasion, with only 17% strongly opposing the illegal war [1].
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/8038/seventytwo-percent-america...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_pNIGoCybk https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk0Ktc21_lgVNiZRY9Py1Fg/vid...
https://twitter.com/ilya_shepelin/status/1499298510394601474
(I guess a result of the state media control)
The Russian people are completely controlled. They have no way, even if they knew exactly what was going on and understood it for what it is, to rally, no one to lead them, no way to resist.
The Russian people are not a mechanism by which the Russian leadership can be affected.
> We can not allow Russia to run the narrative by cutting of the internet.
I may be wrong, but I understood the request was to remove ".ru" and two other related top levels. It was not to cut them off from Internet access.
I am in favour of both the removal of ".ru" and related domains, and also of cutting Russia off from the net, if such a thing were possible, which I think it is not.
We've been having our fair share of anti-Russia propaganda as well, we're not innocent of what we're accusing Russia of.
> The Russian people are completely controlled. They have no way, even if they knew exactly what was going on and understood it for what it is, to rally, no one to lead them, no way to resist.
What exactly do you think would happen to the west if we censored Russian "propaganda"?
> I am in favour of both the removal of ".ru" and related domains
... And they'll move to another TLD just as easily as they were booted off the .ru or even worse; it moves outside the scope of the "accessible" web where their ideas are not challenged. Overall, a bad idea, IMO.
No. These are not comparable. In the West, you have a range of views and there is no deliberate censorship of views by the State. In Russia, you get and only get what the State produces, and what they've been producing over the last several years has been crazy; Ukraine is not a country, and we have a holy mission to liberate them.
> Overall, a bad idea, IMO.
It is sometimes better to act than not to act, even if what you do is not perfect; it all adds pressure and expresses that you are serious about what you're doing.
I would argue that big tech is making an effort to sway public opinion in certain favorable directions, if not outright censor them under the guise of safety or whatever generic excuse we've heard over the past decade. The information we've been digesting is essentially only what big tech allows to be heard.
Yes, there are several ways to access information from alternative methods but from what it seems like, only a fraction of both the West and Russia do that.
By censoring an opposing agenda, albeit anti-west propaganda, you will create exactly the same vacuum as you accuse the Russian government of.
> It is sometimes better to act than not to act, even if what you do is not perfect; it all adds pressure and expresses that you are serious about what you're doing.
Strong disagree. We should do the right thing rather than just anything that could put pressure on them.
You say that while thousands if not more Russians are protesting on the streets each night against this war, despite brutal repression. In any kind of regime, the consent of the people does matter - the way that consent is obtained just varies. Russia is not the USSR or China and it is certainly not North Korea - it is an authoritarian country, but nowhere near the level of dictatorial control where they can completely ignore their populace.
You are extremely, even naively optimistic. The gap between what you understand under the term democracy and what is "Russian democracy" is several times bigger than the difference between Russia's and N.Korea's "democracies".
You're the only one using the term "democracy".
Even under an authoritarian dictatorship without any pretense of democracy, the consent (or at least acquiescence) of the populace is necessary for the dictator to rule. Civilians far outnumber the rulers, after all, or even the military. Even if the entire Russian military sided with Putin—and against their own friends and relatives—there is no way he could stay in power in the face of a mass civilian uprising.
And even in the worst dictatorships, mass public protests will almost always lead to the regime being toppled (perhaps only to be replaced by a worse regime, unfortunately, but still toppled). The population of any country is simply too huge to completely ignore, if it turns against the regime en masse.
If you don't believe any of this, then tell me - why do you think Russia is investing so much resources in internal propaganda? Why are they pretending to hold free elections? Why does Putin pretend he has a noble goal in Ukraine? It's certainly not fooling world leaders, so if his own population can't do anything about it, why even bother?
do you think their propaganda might just be reciprocal to what you people are doing?
sure. pictures and videos of guantanamo bay are everywhere, so are the works leaked by wikileaks. they paint a similar picture of the american exceptionalism the way russians and the chinese do to their own people.
remember instead of trying the culprits of that helicopter video leaked by wikileaks, the us government is shooting the messenger and not targeting the message itself.
what i am saying is, every side of this mess has dirty laundry. there are no good or bad sides. you are taking one side because you live there or whatever.
how is it free speech if "russia today" is banned by youtube or facebook or twitter in the US or EU but if russia blocks facebook or CNN in russia then its "attack of free speech?" you want your agenda, your propaganda be heard by your enemies but you dont want your people to know the enemies agenda. sure fine. you can do that but its not exceptionalism.
Free speech does not include using speech to lie and defraud.
The Russian State controls the Russian media and what you get is and only is propaganda. It is there purely to defaud and deceive. This is not about freedom of speech, it's about crime.
If you meet a man lying through his teeth to sell you fake insurance, you do not protect his actions on the basis of freedom of speech.
>If you meet a man lying through his teeth to sell you fake insurance, you do not protect his actions on the basis of freedom of speech.
strawman argument. media isnt selling you fake insurance. even if it did, you have the power to change the channel and not buy it. by not allowing the fake salesman on the street, you are not letting market forces to decide for themselves.
why do you fear market forces would favour their lies over your alleged "truth"? if that is the case, the end users must surely be able to see white and black. let them decide.
Plato gives Socrates' answer in Gorgias. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html
The same rhetorics is used by Russian government when it tries restricting pro-western sources.
And it's not like they don't have a rather solid ground for it. Anyone living in Russia and reading western reports on it knows how much the real life is different from and image painted by journalists in some captivating (almost mythological) narrative way.
Does this mean that Russian government does good when it restricts access to information? Or does it rather teach us that universal unrestricted accees to information is imperative, and people should be able to make their own decisions, rather then consume what was provided by a local journalist?
It literally does. It also includes "hate speech" and all kinds of other stuff we find abhorrent. Otherwise it's not free speech.
The social media is full of misinformation published by the Ukrainians, eg:
https://observers.france24.com/en/europe/20220301-video-debu...
https://www.bbc.com/news/60554910
https://www.bbc.com/news/60554910
So, should we cut off Ukraine's internet access?
And we barely see any information from the Russian side. Is it not better to see the propaganda and expose it? Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
> Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
I used to believe that, too, but there's evidence that silencing misinformation results in less misinformation overall.
Huh? The comment you are replying to literally argues for less restrictions on information.
Here's the thing about free speech in America that people miss in these arguments. The U.S. government can neither compel nor deny your right to say or platform your speech as long as it isn't a call to act as a threat of violence or hate speech. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are private companies and don't need to platform anyone they don't want to, technically. They might be sued for discrimination, I guess, but not for infringement on your right to free speech. They aren't viewed as a "public square", as they aren't funded by the government.
How did consumer goods and food distribution actually happen in (commun|social)ist economies? As in, the last mile experience as a consumer?
Check this photo of a "bodega" in Cuba (first image in this page): https://www.cibercuba.com/noticias/2018-08-01-u1-e192519-s27...
Despite the reputation, the government usually was very sensitive to the issue of keeping meat or at least a lot of bread on the table. When the DDR ran out of money to import coffee in the 70s, it was one of the more serious threats to their rule and it stimulated the development of the Vietnamese coffee industry in "socialist cooperation". (Fun fact: to this day Germany is still Vietnam's largest coffee buyer.). Prices were quite low in proportion to wages, effectively government subsidised. Hence shortages, though rarely for staples. Hunger was rare after 1950. Dietary boredom was not.
In the not so good economic years, or in many parts of the Soviet Union or less wealthy socialist countries, similar story, except meat shortages and too many turnips and your wages might not afford too many restaurant visits. Out in the country there was some subsistence agriculture in the poorer places like Vietnam. Some places never Stalin-style collectivised the farms, and there you saw small market or at least barter economies in small towns and rural areas consuming local product locally, farmer's markets basically.
> Products that use the words 'Russia' or 'Russian' in the brand name, advertising, or product description—along with products that depict Russian architecture or symbols colloquially associated with Russia—are all considered to be Russian-branded products and have been removed under the Governor's Executive Order[2]
It’s hard to see how that’s anything other than emotional. And, I would imagine, illegal.
[1](PDF)https://www.governor.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt336/files/in...
[2]https://www.newsweek.com/vodka-brands-remind-they-arent-russ...
Also, they are rightly concerned about the longer term effects of sanctions and instability as even if Russia pulled their troops out of Ukraine today (not going to happen), tensions aren't going to ease in the near term and sanctions are likely to remain in place for at least months, if not years. So it's not like business is going to come back in the short term. For the brands that depend on a 'squeaky clean' image, trying to keep as far from controversy as possible is good business.
[1] See, I just did it.
Companies that don’t severe ties with Russia as fast as possibly seem to be at a very real risk losing their customer bases here in Europe in the wake of the invasion.
I can’t even claim to be above it. I cancelled my Netflix subscription when it was aired that they complied with Russian broadcast laws. Something Netflix no longer does by the way.
I’ve never had an issue buying products from Russia before, so if I’m not the only one reacting like this, and it seems like my reaction has been amongst the milder here, then you may find some of the answer in that.
"How does this action help end the war in Ukraine?" should be the litmus test, and if the logic to get there is too tortured, maybe rethink the action.
That wasn't the main reason for my action. The main reason was to cease doing business with a nation behaving in brutal and barbaric ways we have long considered completely and utterly unacceptable, and haven't seen the like of since WWII. There has to be a cost, and this is an additional cost, albeit minor, on top of the existing sanctions. I'll consider re-subscribing when this is all over, perhaps. I might not have been able to renew the subscription in any case, now that making payments is nearly impossible.
We haven't even begun to see the full economic cost of the sanctions yet, but from what I can see I suspect it will be significant, way beyond what's been reported so far. Within just a few days of the freezing of the payments systems, commercial contracts can no longer be honoured and are being cancelled wholesale. That business is going to be redirected to other countries, and I'm afraid that's going to be extremely painful for the affected companies, employees and families. And that's including for internal business projects, and is on top of companies which are explicitly pulling out of consumer-facing Russian markets. Whether this will actually effect any change in policy I don't know, I hope it does, but doing nothing would have been worse.
Drone striking middle eastern children didn't do it for you? Something about this rhetoric I keep seeing is just so.. selective. So nakedly biased. If people feel so strongly about Russias actions in Europe, how is it that millions of dead Muslims are inconsequential?
That question is rhetorical, I think it's obvious why that really is
Now, those products are ubiquitous and it’s their withdrawal that might have some effect. Most kids through middle age adults in Russia don’t know what it’s like without those Western products.
The West seems happy to give Putin the full USSR glory days experience.
Interesting. As a young kid in the early 80's (USA), I remember going to a Disney movie with my mom and brothers called "Night Crossing," which was about a family in East Germany escaping to West Germany via a hot air balloon in the middle of the night that they constructed. Being less than 10, I had no clue what was going on in Europe or the effects of post-WW2, but that movie sure stuck with me even to this day. It prompted many healthy discussions as a child that would probably never have been brought up, or at least for another 10 years.
To be honest, not much would change then as of today.
I'm so flabbergasted people can't see past their nose regarding current events, it all reminds me very much of OIF/OEF propaganda levels. Be vigilant for real psyops (as opposed to the soft army stuff that hit frontpage recently)
Really makes you think...
Ukraine is a (mostly christian) democratic country who's main exports are not drugs or oil. The leadership doesnt declare holy war on other countries.
Also there's the focus on the history of the USSR and Ukraine in europe, alongside their efforts to join western alliances. Afganistan or Saudi Arabia or Iraq never tried to join the EU or NATO.
Cultures that are alike tend to by sympathetic to each other. That's it.
In regard to US vs Latin America - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_America%E2%80%93United_S...
Commercial interest and local defense. When Putin fueled separatist armies prior to the invasion, this was equivalent to the banana wars in Latin America, fueled by the US. The world stage generally ignores these kinds of regional 3rd party conflicts.
We shouldn't downplay the war in Ukraine just because US does what US does. Also what's happening there is not important just because "Ukraine is a (mostly christian) democratic country who's main exports are not drugs or oil." but because Ukrainians are fellow humans, like the rest of us, and are victim of an unfair confrontation against a bully few times bigger than them.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
Edit: grammar
There was no internet during these periods and the media was either complicit in omission or narrative (they were BAD democracies corrupted by the drug cartels!) so the outrage was limited. Again, this isn't some mystery to ponder. Tribalism is alive and well and the narratives do their job.
> Also what's happening there is not important just because "Ukraine is a (mostly christian) democratic country who's main exports are not drugs or oil."
I didn't say anything about importance. Please don't misquote me to push your agenda.
Afghanistan supplies drugs(opium poppy) to pharmaceutical companies for turning into American painkillers. I don't know why it should matter if a countries main export is oil anyways?
Also who exactly declared a holy war on other countries? That seems like a vaguely anti Islamic charge that doesn't really apply to most countries in the middle east. Perhaps Iran(long after western intervention I should add) and one or two others.
>Ukraine is a (mostly christian)
I think you said the quiet part out loud.
>Cultures that are alike tend to by sympathetic to each other. That's it.
So Saudi Arabia is like the US and that's why it is supported by them?
It is abhorrent what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Thankfully the international community is reacting appropriately. It is also equally abhorrent what is going on in Yemen (which the US has a part in). Unfortunately, the international community is not reacting appropriately here. It was also abhorrent when the US invaded Iraq (on false pretenses).
Makes me think EU and allies want to stop this war as early as possible, for some reason, and all these reactions is how they think that will happen.
Such an attack isn't something comparable to any war from WW2. If the world can't punish attackers painfully enough, we will see more similar events...
Which countries are the UK in bombing civilians right now?
And realistically, there is nothing UK can do that would prevent KSA killing people in Yemen, even if UK did want do.
It would have zero impact on normal residential and business internet connections inside the country, and would not impact anything sovereign within the country itself. It likely wouldn't prevent the government from getting and using the general internet as they'd just have to switch over to a normal business account, but their hosted services can't switch that quickly.
I would feel really bad for the IT staff that had to figure that out and work around it...
2. isn't it useful that people on the west at least know what kind of propaganda people in russia consume?
"Allied leaders also agreed at Bucharest that Georgia and Ukraine, which were already engaged in Intensified Dialogues with NATO, will one day become members. In December 2008, Allied foreign ministers decided to enhance opportunities for assisting the two countries in efforts to meet membership requirements by making use of the framework of the existing NATO-Ukraine Commission and NATO-Georgia Commission – without prejudice to further decisions which may be taken about their applications to join the MAP."
>NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm
Russia is the only country in the world with a massive formal alliance of major world powers reigned against it. This is because of continued Russian aggression and atrocities going back a long time.
April 2008 [1]
>NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.
After the meeting Putin said NATO expansion was a direct threat to Russia.
The Russo-Georgia War was August 2008.
So Georgia being attacked was clearly after attempted NATO expansion east.
In November 2013 the president of Ukraine, Yanukovych, decided to not agree to an EU deal. There were protests in Ukraine which would end in a coup. Some of the European countries try to work out a deal for an election but the protesters aren't going for it. Yanukovych then flees the country.
The new government is very pro West / EU. What then happens in Ukraine starts making anti-Russian moves like removing minority (Russian) language laws.
Russia then attacks Crimea in February 2014.
Again, Russia only attacked after Ukraine was attempting to work out a deal with the EU and after they showed they would use force (the coup) to get it.
Don't get me wrong. I am against Russia attacking both Georgia and Ukraine, but it seems quite clear that Russia only attacks after they start getting too cozy with the West.
[1] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm
I've been quite shocked when I moved to Europe and noticed that very strong Anti-Russia stance that's openly spoused here... if I were Russian, I would be genuinely worried about them having facilities to hold nuclear weapons, which is what happens when you join NATO [1]. NATO already borders Russia directly in the Baltic states, nearly touches it with Poland (the historic gateway of Western armies into Russia), and if Ukraine joined NATO, the Russian heartland would become vulnerable not only to nukes but to large-scale ground invasion, as the border with Ukraine is very long and completely devoid of geographical obstacles... so even though I despise Putin for starting this war (I despise anyone who starts a war... war is a remnant of our primitive, violent past where force was accepted as a viable solution to problems), I definitely don't hold the West as being blame-free in this story. Everyone involved knew there was no bigger provocation to Russian than installing nukes on its closer, until very recently friendly, neighbours.
John Pilger has been warning us that NATO/USA expansion even into the Chinese sphere [2] is making the world incredibly more dangerous, not less.
“American bases form a giant noose encircling China with missiles, bombers, warships – all the way from Australia through the Pacific to Asia and beyond,” Pilger says.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing
[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/12/6/john-pilger-qa-...
This would be a very tricky thing to "punish" and a tricky thing to implement in practice because this isn't a single government that would need to stop announcing these networks, but each private internet organization that is peering with Russia (think oversea cables and international peer exchanges). It could be mandated by governments for their own country, but to be actually effective it would have to be all the organizations peering with Russia agreeing to implement this. If one country or organization decides against the announcement filter you'd have to expand the route filtering to everyone that organization peers with. There would never be one target for the punishment.
As for learning about the propaganda, a large part of what we learn is from Russian state TV and actors inside of Russia itself which this wouldn't impact. Since the major official propaganda channels have already been blocked on YouTube and the social media platforms, this would likely only impact the propaganda being spread through much smaller and harder to track sites if at all since posting of that propaganda could still be done from a cell or normal business internet connection. Some official government supported programs (such as the GRU hacking operations) already operate on regular business connections to avoid the direct association with government IP blocks, I have to imagine their propaganda machines do likewise.
2. They could always know. But they don't, because they don't care. And for the sake of their brains, I wouldn't recommend it. Besides, are you proposing to feed Russian propaganda to western public?
How, in the past similar propaganda happened in the west, when the average american thought civilians in afganistan or iraq weren't really hurt when the US "surgically" tried to punish the "bad guys". I get it; and in the same vein I wouldn't think that the solution for that propaganda was to cut off the american population from actually getting information from abroad.
But it's also easy to find opposition points of view. Case in point, mask mandates and convoys. Propaganda still works, same as marketing and advertisements, but it really does not seem equivalent when it's so easy to access information critical of what your government is doing.
Unlike when all media critical of the government gets banned. No one tried to arrest me for protesting the Iraq war, or Guantanamo, or Afghanistan, or...
But the "mainstream" media definitely has huge blind spots, implicit racism, and other nasty features from either habit or laziness.
That said, I'd take this hypocrisy every day instead of people being actually killed.
I mean it's not a videogame for cry ing out loud, these are people's lives. War is a fucking hell.
I think you just don't remember or know about the general opinion back in 2003 so you think this sort of complete disconnect is unique to Russia. Yes the opinion later changed and anti war sentiment became mainstream but that wasn't in 2003 or even 2004.
We aren't talking about just ignorance about civilian casualties in the Middle East but an almost complete belief that the invasion of Iraq was righteous and that they were actually freeing the country. You can't just downplay how pervasive that belief to claim that it is a false equivalency.
I get that Americans had a diverse media and that it wasn't state controlled, but does that matter when you get a 80-90% public support for such a disgusting act of aggression?
That could be perceived as a posture of war by adversaries. And it's a really bad idea. Have you considered for the innocent Russian people who doesn't agree with the war? What about their daily lives in Russia where they need to get driver's license online to be renewed but couldn't because their DMV website is inaccessible?
Economical / sports / Internet sanctions are double edge sword. There are unintended consequences and unfortunately no way to do it without collateral damages.
I struggle to imagine a less consequential outcome... A whole country of people are being bombed out of their houses, vs some portion of people maybe won't be able to renew their driver's licenses?
You've convinced me; cut the internet.
https://twitter.com/mathieuvonrohr/status/149952892745850880...
I assume that a Russian accessing a Russian website would be unaffected by any such measures.
Also, I wonder what backdoor facilities the NSA put into Apple and Android phones? The US would very much like to continue getting any such intelligence.
Also, why should Ukrainian cities be bombed every day, while Russians just happily go about their daily lives? It's morally inexcusable.
> they need to get driver's license online to be renewed but couldn't because their DMV website is inaccessible
Perhaps, they can go to the DMV office?
Do you not see how dangerous that rhetoric is?
You don't _choose_ a dictator..
Dictators stay in power by force: they kill, torture, jail and brainwash people. They control the media and monitor all communications and anyone who speaks against them will suffer dire consequences.
Perhaps you ask, well why don't people just "rise up"? Take up arms and overthrow the regime? Well in that case, the government would rather flatten the entire nation with airstrikes than let the rebels win..
Even after painting the streets with their own blood and somehow accomplishing this, there is no guarantee that a democracy would take place if the central government is weakened..
Still don't believe me? Look at the Arab spring and where it led the people of Egypt and Syria.
Honestly, the comments on HN regarding this matter are very naive..
PS: If you think you have the stomach for it and want to _actually_ see what this path ends up looking like, have a look at The Cave: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7178226 (Warning: very graphic)
IMHO, Putin's Russia has gotten really good at exploiting "fears about perceptions" to get away with a lot of shit, because it's "sensible" adversaries pull their punches.
> Have you considered for the innocent Russian people who doesn't agree with the war? What about their daily lives in Russia where they need to get driver's license online to be renewed but couldn't because their DMV website is inaccessible?
I doubt a Russian DMV site is running on a foreign sever. Didn't Russia itself do some kind of test disconnection from the internet a year or two ago?
China isn't hiding anything. They try, but it's a fool's errand. The more they try the more people want to know about it. No one in China that lived during that atrocity is unaware.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/us/texas-history-1836-pro... - Texas, Idaho, etc
They are already doing this, Russian media is going full propaganda everything they say is a blatant lie simply to reduce the signal to noise.
The more important aspect is their cyber attacks on Ukraine that prevent civilians and militias from organising to escape the violence or repel it.
Russia's state sponsored cyber attacks show it has no interest in contributing to a healthy internet, they should be banned.
Do you want to be cutting off Russia's anti-war protesters from the world?
Honestly, I'm not surprised. Though they were going to march under a neutral flag, they'd have still been emissaries of their governments. That's what the Olympics and Paralympics are for. Plus, the IPC's decision was probably easier because of repeated incidents of Russian athletes doping, which is why they were already under a neutral flag.
[0] https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/russian-athletes-par...
They have been preparing for it for many years, and they had an exercise in 2021, which was based on the law introduced in 2019.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/russia-disconnected-globa...
Should the global community have targeted all Americans for the actions of the Bush Presidency invading Iraq under false pretenses? Or how about Vietnam?
Realize that our next Iraq or Vietnam this new standard could be applied to us or any other country. Will bloodthirsty Twitter be cheering on the digital and economic destruction of civilians then? Cooler heads need to start prevailing.
Is that a bad thing?
For the wealthy and powerful who make the decisions? No.
Assuming we haven’t all been convinced via propaganda that this is all a conspiracy to weaken us and we need to band together under $glorious_leader anyway.
I disagree. This is war - it's not meant to be comfortable - and a government does represent the people. Putin's approval rating over the years has been really high, in the mid-high 70s [1]. The only way this ends with minimal bloodshed is if the populace exerts sufficient pressure against leadership. That means protests, that means civil disobedience.
If the populace doesn't feel the impact of the war, then there's no pressure for the administration to end it.
Think of it more like less-lethal weapons. Yah you don't want to get hit by a rubber bullet but you certainly don't want to get hit by a real bullet. If things escalate then the people may get hit by real bullets metaphorically and literally.
[edit] > Punishing civilians for the actions of its government is absolutely insane and will backfire badly.
This is an interesting argument, especially for a representative government.
"You can't blame me for what the people I pick do!"
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-ra...
... first? Why first? Which western country is actively invading anyone right now? Which western country started a land-war in Europe last week? Why would I cut off someone not doing anything for something that happened 20 years ago when there's a land-war in the Ukraine now?
> You've US who voted to invade Iraq based on a lie (along with UK).
On bad pretenses sure, but to overturn a despot who used chemical weapons against his own people. He wasn't a threat to the US, and the pretenses were wrong - and I didn't support the war at the time. But is it the same thing? Not even close.
> Or are you implying that Russian invasion of Ukraine matter more than all these examples, and if you do so, I wonder why that is? (fyi, it's a rhetorical question, I know why that is)
Yeah because the Russians launched an un-provoked land war in Europe to re-create the Soviet Union - on the premise of "de-Nazifying" a country run by a Jewish PM.
Save your whataboutism for once this is resolved.
> On bad pretenses sure, but to overturn a despot who used chemical weapons against his own people. He wasn't a threat to the US, and the pretenses were wrong - and I didn't support the war at the time.
Yeah, looks like US actively knew and helped him gas his own people though because Iran would've been too powerful otherwise, and US can't have that.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-pro...
> But is it the same thing? Not even close.
Yeah it isn't, while the world looks to sanction Russia (which they should btw), US blackmailed other countries into invading Iraq and no country got sanctioned. But like you said, US only got pretenses wrong, s who whore cares that millions of lives were lost as a result and a country has been destabilized and destroyed.
> Save your whataboutism for once this is resolved.
Reddit's favourite term to use when you point out double standards. I don't support this invasion either, it's just the hypocrisy in the outrage that is astonishing. But hey I guess, as the media puts it, world cares more when it's white people with blonde hair and blue eyes that are dying and not brown people you've in middle east, so it's different this time.
I can oppose Yemen, I can support Palestine, I can oppose the coup in Guatemala - all while I reject the actions of the Russians in Ukraine. These are not mutually exclusive positions and there is nothing hypocritical about it.
Having Russia missile a few steps away frim Germany has caused them to bring back their military.
People act in their own self interest. What other lives do you think did not get their due?
i know and understand that governments are supposed to be acting in their own interests. This does not surprise me one bit.
What bothers me ( again I understand this is selfish), is that the same people that preach about democracy/human rights/freedom know their governments are guilty of egregious crimes like Russia’s and arguably worse. I find it hypocritical when they started lecturing and posturing about respecting a country’s independence.
I hope this explains my pov better.
It can absolutely be a moral good/evil situation. As would such a war on the other side of Russia even if folks reacted differently.
> I find it hypocritical when they started lecturing and posturing about respecting a country’s independence.
They can be right this time, and wrong other times. I do think supporting them when they're right and opposing them when they're wrong is the play.
Iraq? Evil dictator. Libya? Evil dictator. Syria? Gruesome terrorists/evil dictator.
Israel/Palestine? Messed up and the world still doesn't like it, but not on the same scale and certainly more complicated.
You’re wildly out of touch if you actually believe if those dictators didn’t do everything with blessings from the US..
yemen is also 100 times worse off than ukraine its not even close
Look at what Iraq and Libya is right now. Libya has literal slaves right now, I'm sure US feels pretty good about themselves. Heck Obama won a noble peace price for it.
US supported Pakistan in 1971 when Pakistan was committing mass genocide in East Pakistan (Bangladesh now). They overthrew a government that people wanted in Iran because that govt. was going to nationalize oil and take it away from western oil companies. These things have been happening forever in the third world, but because it's brown people dying, people didn't care as much.
Anyways my enitre point is again, it's dumb to blame an average Russian person for the actions of Putin like how it would be equally dumb to blame american person for the actions of US govt. and military industrial complex.
That's not the fault of civilians. That goes even more so for those under authoritarian regimes. That's Russia. The people are under the thumb of a dictator and bathed in propaganda 24/7. And who the hell knows how many actually support him or do so out of fear.
How about North Korea? Should we punish their citizens too for not rising against their dictator? I think it's clear that we shouldn't.
Yes, it is, in the specific case of Iraq. The debunkings of the propaganda (and even the internal documentation of the propaganda effort) were widely published in US/UK media prior to the war.
The war was able to be sold not because the truth was concealed, but because enough people didn't want to hear the truth, they wanted a story which provided an easy outlet for their racist bloodlust.
Was that average pro-war citizens as guilty as the people actively marketing the war? No. But they weren't innocent, either.
Citizenship comes with responsibility.
No, it's not, because most terrorism is, as was the thing for which the name was coined, state terrorism directed at citizens of the state (states who engage in such terrorism tend to prefer to put the focus on other terrorism, of course.) But, even for the kinds of terrorism for which it is true, this part of the rationale is not the problem with terrorism, in the same way that “people are responsible for their own actions” is central to the justification for cruel and unusual punishment for crimes, but is not the problem with that punishment.
To quote the New York Times' ombudsman (a position that doesn't exist any more) [0]:
> To anyone who read the paper between September 2002 and June 2003, the impression that Saddam Hussein possessed, or was acquiring, a frightening arsenal of W.M.D. seemed unmistakable.
This was the message that the US government, the New York Times, and countless other media organizations were pushing. People who objected were viewed as eccentric, naive, or possibly even cowards who were doing the bidding of a dictator.
0. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/weekinreview/the-public-ed...
If this is what you want then cutting Russians out of the Internet is a terrible idea: consider that most are just now learning that they are actually at war and not in a freedom military operation (as the state media is making them believe).
I agree. I don't think they should be cut off from the Internet. But I do wholeheartedly support economic sanctions.
And ‘punishing civilians’ when they are part of a society (yes, society) who is allowing a dictator to hungrily invade a neighbor is about the only way anyone can do anything here.
Sanctions CAN impact the economy enough that it starved the ability of the nation to make war - but if the country keeps doubling down, that is going to require extreme measures and produce extreme misery. It would be a blockade essentially.
Russia has experience switching to a war time economy, and if anything it makes a ‘strong dictator’ more appealing. Stalin did quite well during this time, despite making massive mistakes that cost an insane number of Russian lives.
In the west we seem to be under the impression some relatively cheap to us financial sanctions will solve this, but don’t bet on it.
The equivalent post WW1 in Germany just stoked WW2. Not the same scenario, but there are similarities.
That doesn't sound like a country that is rallying behind the flag in support of an offensive war against Ukraine.
At this point, I also doubt anyone (including Putin) has reliable data - from what I do know, it’s common place for all the low level folks (equivalent of mayors, low level bureaucrats, city police departments) to fudge numbers the way it’s expected to look.
Even opposition politicians, independent reporters (even those that have fled the country), and folks I know with family there have been pretty straightforward in saying he has historically been very popular however.
The 60-70% polled support number has seemed quite legit to them. Propaganda is powerful, and most of the base of support he needs to keep the country running isn’t (ever) going to hang out on Twitter, post on Reddit, etc.
And the propaganda for a long time has been how the west is trying to bring otherwise strong Russia down. Which is, rather explicitly what the west is doing now (albeit for legit imo reasons).
If the opposition can muster enough support to meaningfully impact things, then that’s awesome!
That he does seem to be sweating means maybe it will work, I hope it does.
I’m just hoping to make the dynamic more visible, and caution against the same kind of thinking that had everyone seemingly convinced that Trump wouldn’t get elected in 2016.
If you're in any country but Ukraine think about WHY you're picking sides and who told you to do that.
The countries near Russia expect to be next. Part of Germany was under Russian control prior Fall of USSR. Which is why European countries care. NATO has multiple members that are members for this reason. EU has multiple members that see this as an active threat to them.
The USA should care, because they promised protection to Ukraine in exchange of Ukraine getting rid of nuclear arsenal back in nineties. Not that USA would be reliable, but they should not be completely unreliable.
And that USA is member of nato for own interests and that first time there is actual threat to nato they should not ignore it entirely is also fascinatingly ignored argument.
And they surrounding countries taking in refugees is not not particular oddity since surrounding countries always have to take refugees when aggressor goes in is also ignored argument.
Yes. If anything people in democracies are more culpable for the misdeeds of their government than the people of autocratic states.
btw, I was and remain anti-Iraq war but your equivocation is clearly wrong.
> So what if it was based on a lie?
Jeez, it's that easy for you to say that eh. Say that to a person who lost his family in that invasion.
You could make the argument that the world could have stood up and sanctioned the US - but likely they did not because they probably agreed with the action, whether they could say so directly or not. 'Should' is not the bar. The fact it took a lie to convince folks to go in is neither here nor there, IMO. Again, I was against the war.
> Jeez, it's that easy for you to say that eh. Say that to a person who lost his family in that invasion.
Say that to someone in Kurdistan who suffered life-long debilitating injuries due to the sarin and VX gas attacks that were then followed by a Napalm run. [1] Saddam launched some of the worst chemical attacks in history against his own citizens. We can go back and forth on this all day.
It was life frozen. Life had stopped, like watching a film and suddenly it hangs on one frame. It was a new kind of death to me. (…) The aftermath was worse. Victims were still being brought in. Some villagers came to our chopper. They had 15 or 16 beautiful children, begging us to take them to hospital. So all the press sat there and we were each handed a child to carry. As we took off, fluid came out of my little girl's mouth and she died in my arms.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_massacre#Chemical_atta...
We supported him when he did that. And during the 90s, we instituted sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children. That's 100 children for every single person who died in Halabja. If the question is would you rather be a modern country ruled by the iron will of a belligerent despot, or bombed into medieval times with every cultural institution shattered and orders of magnitude more body count than your dictator ever generated, spawning ISIS...
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/10/are-1-million-ch...
And that's irrelevant to whether taking him down was a good decision. Either before or after. Once again, I didn't support the war at the time, and I think the casualties are horrifying. However, it's not even close to the same thing.
> And during the 90s, we instituted sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children. That's 100 children for every single person who died in Halabja.
You don't really weigh moral wars this way. For instance, the Nazis killed 6 million in the concentration camps. However, an estimated total of 70–85 million people perished in World War 2, or about 3% of the 1940 world population. However, nobody frames World War 2 as "costing 10 lives for everyone who died in the camps" and therefore a bad idea.
Your framework allows for invasions over fake WMDs and fake Nazis alike. Russia didn't sanction the US over Iraq, in the spirit of peace and cooperation between nuclear states the US could afford them the same courtesy.
If you can justify Iraq you can justify Ukraine. Personally I don't agree with invasions anywhere for any reason not do I believe in the concept of "world police". That's just forcing one people's will upon another and denying them the right to destroy their own tyrants and seize their own destiny.
Absolutely, unequivocally not.
My framework does no such thing.
Also it's pretty apparent that you view a white life is greater than a brown life and you view invading middle eastern countries as something that's okay and are going to justify no matter what, so there really is no point in this discussion.
Re: your source, go do some more digging, it was the CIA that helped Saddam deploy those chemical weapons.
You have no idea what my positions are, and you're doing a bunch of wild finger pointing.
US invasion: For Democracy, Freedom and Kumbaya!, Millions died for the Greater Good. (hugs & kisses)
Do you really think you were the first person to come up with the idea of assassinating a head of state as a means to end a war? It doesn't really work that way.
It wasn't 1M, it was about 1/5 of that. I'm not of course justifying the loss of life, however it behooves us to speak precisely instead of hyperbolically. [1]
> I did hear a rumor that it was all about the oil anyway LoLz.
That rumor makes no sense if you actually dig in. 72% of America's foreign oil imports come from Canada and Mexico. Only about 3% from Iraq. And Iraq was exporting oil before the war, too. [2] 2T was spent in the Middle East. That buys you a heck of a lot of market-rate oil.
[1] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/20...
[2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
Oil is sold at a global price. The US has an incentive to keeping prices low so Americans have cheap gas. Plus it strips away power from oil financed nations which is in the US interest.
> If you dig in a little more you realize control of the oil and contracts went to US and British firms after the war where previously other nations had those contracts.
And that return is pennies on the dollar compared to the two trillion spent on the war. $2T buys you a whole whack of oil you can subsidize for your people.
The economic arguments just don't hold up.
The 2T doesn't disappear it goes into jobs and new technology. Those oil contracts employ many in the US.
More important is the US gains control.
Yeh? Source pls.
Wrong question. Whether they "should" in any moral sense is not a useful way to think about things because geopolitics isn't a morality play. Clearly effective sanctions against USA were a non-starter because it is too big and rich a country and does a lot of trade with the outside world.
> Realize that our next Iraq or Vietnam this new standard could be applied to us or any other country.
Nope. Effective sanctions won't happen against big powerful countries (or coalitions of countries, e.g. EU, NATO).
The Saudis have been waging an offensive war for years in Yemen. Yet there hasn't been a single peep about cutting them off SWIFT, sanctioning their royal oligarchs, freezing their western assets, etc, etc.
It seems to send a message that yes, repressive petrostate dictatorships can get away with waging offensive wars... Well, at least some of them can.
A head-and-shoulders decapitation of a regime change in Russia, Chinese irredentism over outer Manchuria, a Han-supremacist lebensraum movement targeting Asia east of the Urals…
Lack of actual policy making to me is more that the US empire was at the peak of its power. Being punished by America at the time would be worse than trying to maintain a rules based.
> On February 15 [2003, before the invasion started], millions of people protested, in approximately 800 cities around the world. Listed by the 2004 Guinness Book of Records as the largest protest in human history, protests occurred among others in the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Republic of Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Syria, India, Russia, South Korea, Japan, and even McMurdo Station in Antarctica.
I don't think "the largest protest in human history" qualifies as "mostly shrugs and silence" ;)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War
Your complete inability to be a fair global hegemon is the reason nobody respects or trusts your government. Cuba is still needing to ask Uncle Sam for permission to import syringes during a global health crisis, we're still backing a genocide in Yemen, doing all of these terrible things while acting like global arbitrage. USA isn't the global police. If you're going to undercut the WHO, the UN, etc. then you don't get to act like it's about freedom and democracy or the rule of law.
Might makes right is an inane policy for Machiavellian wonks. Just because you can do whatever you want doesn't mean you should. The US imports a lot of things too, and a concerted global effort would at the very least require an isolationist USA. Where are you going to get your silicon chips from if the Republic of China reunifies with the People's Republic of China?
US wants to play by different rules than everyone else, not sure that works long term. Either invasions are globally kosher or they aren't, over a million dead and 38 million displaced over a "war on terror" that didn't do shit is a war crime. If we're not going to call an invasion on false pretexts that killed and displaced millions of civilians a war crime the word has no meaning and the discussion is moot.
And if the US can do war crimes but only China/Russia/Iran face consequences for them because we're a "big powerful country" I hope you're ready for the era of multiple US-hostile nuclear powers. Almost ruined the Earth when only two nuclear powers were butting heads in the 20th century and now we've got several to pick from :)
If they want to, that's up to them. It wouldn't surprise me if China did do something like this.
> Your complete inability to be a fair global hegemon
Hey, (1) I personally am not a global hegemon. (2) I was describing the way things are not how they ought to be. You should work on distinguishing is from ought; if you can't you'll never understand anything.
FWIW I personaslly think a fair bit of US policy is both immoral and self defeating. But, again, that's irrelevant, because as I said, geopolitics isn't a morality play.
> Where are you going to get your silicon chips from if the Republic of China reunifies with the People's Republic of China?
I'm European and I think the EU should be self-sufficient in chips. This is because any polity that isn't won't in the long term be fully independent.
> US wants to play by different rules than everyone else, not sure that works long term.
"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" is a rule thast's worked so for for all 5000 years of recorded history (with a few counterexamples). Is that lnog term enough for you? Is that just? No. Does it matter (i.e. affect the course of events)? Not usually.
> I hope you're ready for the era of multiple US-hostile nuclear powers.
A world with lots more nuclear powers may well happen, depending on the result of the present Russia-Ukraine war.
While I personally agree with this Realpolitik view, I don't believe it's actually universal among leaders. Many things that have happened historically did because leaders felt some grand moral imperative (national unification, stopping an atrocity, helping one's close ethnic allies in a defensive war, offensive "defences" when the momentum felt like it was being lost -- take your pick).
A moral imperative (although one rather out of place in the 21st century) seems to be behind Putin's actions, IMO. Restore the glory of the Russian empire, practical barriers to that will be ignored. It just must be done, for the sake of itself. Righteous causes eventually sort themselves out, right?
Which brings me to the sanctions. I've not actually seen much discussion on whether sanctions against Russia will achieve Western geopolitical goals. Much of the discussion is presently framed as a moral imperative. We must act to punish Putin.
I agree, actually. For example, the original Islamic expansion, and later the crusades that were a response to it, were both explained in moral terms. (these demonstrate how manipulating consensus reality is a core competency for rulers). And the people who fought in these wars genuinely honestly believed they were acting morally and serving a higher purpose.
Or, a more recent example: part of the reason NATO intervened in Kosovo in 1999 was that they were ashamed they hadn't done so in Bosnia a few years earlier.
Right now Zelinskyy and Ukraine are covering themselves in a lot more glory than Putin and Russia.
> Righteous causes eventually sort themselves out, right?
I think Putin psyched himself up into believing his own propaganda. He's probably surrounded by yes-men who tell him what he wants to hear, too. Oops.
> Much of the discussion is presently framed as a moral imperative. We must act to punish Putin.
Sure. Morality is intuitive game theory, after all.
The US is applying sanctions to China. The US doesn't see any limits to the target of their sanctions, as you seem to believe.
Of course the Russian people are morally responsible for their culture and its products (including the war in Ukraine). That culture has produced the conquest obsessed Russian state (including Putin, he is a product of that culture). The Russian people have reveled in the atmosphere of power, greatness, empire, return to glory, and all that bullshit propaganda that Putin has been feeding them for two decades. They cheerily rode the highs with him during the good oil years, applauding as he stripped away human rights one after another, refusing to go against him en masse. They now bear the moral responsibility for tolerating him from the very beginning (dictators quite often only get more difficult to remove with time). Oh now you can't get rid of him? No kidding. Oh now a lot of people would have to die to remove him from power? No kidding - like the people being killed in the name of the Russian people in Ukraine.
The Russian people are responsible for what ideas they hold, what they believe, who they follow, what propaganda they accept or reject (and they've been willingly drinking the propaganda by the liter for a very long time). They tolerated Putin's power grab and abuses for many years early on and did next to nothing to try to stop him. They have celebrated him often, he has been widely popular for most of his reign. How many more centuries of authoritarianism need to go by before people figure out that the Russian people are responsible for their culture and their culture is producing the authoritarianism. It's not bad luck producing those repeat results. Raise your hand if you think the Nazi ideology magically, spontaneously appeared - no, it was an assembled mash of ideas that were popular at the time, prevalent in the culture of the German region, commonly held by the people there. Putin's authoritarianism, his obsession with the Russian ethnic superstate (which is quite similar to Hitler's obsession with the German ethnic superstate), also did not appear out of nowhere, it's directly from their culture.
And - speaking as an American - of course the American people are morally responsible if their government does something similarly horrible as what Russia is doing in Ukraine. That very obviously also goes for what happened in Vietnam. The US Government and its presidents are the product of the American culture, which the American people are responsible for.
If the other empires of Europe changed (Germany, Spain, Britain, France, etc) - their people changed those empire, conquest obsessed cultures - then Russia too can and must change. Russia is the last major power in Europe still clinging to those decrepit, backwards ways. Russia must give up the notion of empire culturally and that means its people must fully abandon all the related ideas that propel and sustain that ideology (which endlessly spawns monsters like Putin (who is just another Russian Tsar type)). Until the people of Russia change their beliefs, the authoritarianism will just keep repeating.
It's not an 'if'. The US did a lot of stuff on par with what Putin is doing now in Ukraine. The people and government of the US never were held responsible. Yes, they went through the motions of getting the UN approval, etc., but that does not make the actions morally justifiable. And this is what Russian propaganda uses to justify its actions.
I don't like pinning Putins actions on ordinary citizens. Putin is a dictator. In 2012 there was a big rally against him, and it was suppressed pretty violently, and since then there were no attempts on the same scale. Look at how Belorussians tried to topple Lukashenko. They made a much stronger attempt, but sill it did not work out. Are they morally responsible for the Belarus participation in this war? Are the people like me who moved out are responsible? When does that moral responsibility start? 2000s or 2010s?
Sure, there is a large chunk of population that supports Putin. They maybe are morally responsible for supporting the war. But I don't think they will actually be swayed by economic sanctions. Their culture won't change. They will be happy to severe ties with 'rotten West' -- they will feel like they are soldiers of the economic war. What will happen, I am afraid, is Russia turning into a second North Korea (or Venezuela).
> If the other empires of Europe changed (Germany, Spain, Britain, France, etc) - their people changed those empire, conquest obsessed cultures - then Russia too can and must change. Russia is the last major power in Europe still clinging to those decrepit, backwards ways. Russia must give up the notion of empire culturally and that means its people must fully abandon all the related ideas that propel and sustain that ideology (which endlessly spawns monsters like Putin (who is just another Russian Tsar type)). Until the people of Russia change their beliefs, the authoritarianism will just keep repeating.
In my rather uneducated opinion, the culture did not go away. The US is an empire. It is built differently, but it effectively is. China is or is becoming one. European culture is dominating the world in many subtile and not so subtile ways. Russia wants to be an empire, but it fails to recognize that empires are being built differently now, and tries to build a 19-th/20-th century one.
Disclaimer: I am from Russia, and live in the US. Have extended family in Russia. Unfortunately, some of them are brainwashed by the propaganda. Some are unable to leave as their whole life is to work in government-funded research (thankfully not military in any way). Fuck Putin and fuck the war. My best wishes to Ukrain and its people -- you will will regardless of how this war turns out.
PS. Apologies for the long rant...
..in Russia
The "West" response need to be carefully thoughtout to not trigger an escalation while protecting our borders like a knife wielding psycho that somehow still tolerates "mistakes".
Todays western politicians are acting in an insane way. Look how India and China instinctively stay out of this.
Putin will be dead or out of power in 10 years. There is a tomorrow without him too.
So, as the planet, shall we let him be? Or what's the right course of action?
The important part is to give the Russian state a fake victory. They know it is fake. We know it. But it is still a victory.
Prepare for a post-Putin Russia and prevent chaos when he dies by economic support and a hug. We don't want those nukes in the hand of a regional warchief ...
They’re crazy/brave enough to defend their democracy and organize militias to bolster their armed forces and have already taken out a Chechen special forces unit and a Spetznaz Maj Gen.
I’ll let you explain your plan to them.
Ukraine is not a vital interest to the West nor NATO, but it is to Russia, and short of WWIII which generates a very real risk of a nuclear exchange in Europe the situation in Ukraine is not changing. This is the same opinion Barack Obama held in 2014. People need to think about this on a timeline longer than their emotional attachment to this issue demands.
Recall when prominent American leaders, Hillary Clinton among them, demanded a NATO enforced no-fly zone over Syria as an addendum to arming Islamists in the country. This absolutely would’ve resulted in NATO and Russian direct combat, and with it war. Cooler heads prevailed then and I pray they do so now.
IMO the best reasonable outcome I see for this war is for Russia to annex the Donbas, and possibly the Azov coast. Ukraine will commit to neutrality from NATO and no missiles, but leave open the possibility to join the EU as an economic partner.
Ukraine is shattered right now. There is no good reason to further seal their fate by handing Zelenskyy to that short arsed madman on a silver platter and turning them into a shithole like Russia.
Their analysis does not have to be correct for them acting on it. Was Iraq a significant security threat to the US? Or, did the war decrease it?
I agree on your best outcome.
This looks "nice" on paper, but how would this neutrality be actually enforced? I'd imagine that a situation where Ukraine has a relatively small army and commits to not hosting either NATO or Russian military bases would be a) quite uncomfortable for Ukrainians and b) highly unstable, with the balance bound to tip to one of the sides sooner or later. Are there any historical precedents of a similar arrangement that worked?
Biden and Putin are the only players with agency here.
Furthermore, RemarkEon's answer is excellent.
I'm also to really sure why should it be different when Russia decides it wants to invade, say, Estonia? Obviously, they'e in NATO, but so what? Why shouldn't we throw them to the wolves as well? Better that than to risk nuclear war, yeah?
Regarding second paragraph, would existence of NATO even make sense if it won't defend one of its members?
This clearly doesn't work if you look at the history, both with Russia and other similar states.
They are power hungry and will try to take more land after a few years, all the while engaging in psypops and propaganda to destabilize their enemy and its allies
I feel many people think this happening is Hitler invading Checkoslovakia were he should have been stopped with the benefit of hindsight. There is no reason to believe history has to be repeating it self. A fair warning, yes. A profetia, no.
I don't know what we should do, but take it chill and cold is one of those things.
You shouldn’t censor yourself because of meaningless internet points. Getting downvoted doesn’t hurt, I promise.
Seems like the initial anger is being replaced with fear among people, which gives room for cold reasoning. A good thing I guess ...
That is what I meant with I was glad I was not downvoted.
Somebody already told that, but when one looks to Russia's history, they'll see that, the goal is to get bigger and bigger for centuries. They want access to warmer waters (i.e. Mediterranean waters) for at least two centuries now.
So, there's no fake victory, and there's no stopping for them. Also, this is not related to Putin only. Russia is one of the countries which have a stable strategy for at least a century, and they just want to make their goals a reality.
This reads like a personal take on things. Russia doesn't have a strategy lasting much longer than the life of its current leader. It is as chaotic as any other large organization.
Because money, not cooler heads.
I donno how instinctive it is given the hard lessons they have been learning.
The countries have stationed tens of thousands of soldiers backed by artillery, tanks and fighter jets along their de facto border, called the Line of Actual Control. In 2020, 20 Indian troops were killed in a clash with Chinese soldiers involving clubs, stones and fists. China said it lost four soldiers.
I wish people would realize that this is what most of our sanctions do as well.
Except in the case of sanctions, you aren't even actively engaging in violence (which some moral systems would take issue with). You're simply choosing to not cooperate.
The suffering of Russian civilians is nothing compared to what is happening to civilians in Ukraine.
Some brave Russian people are now suffering in Putin's prisons for speaking out against war. Some mothers will never know how or where their children died. Some African students in Ukraine are suffering from racism perpetrated by other war victims.
It's all bad and they all deserve compassion.
They can of course go much further than any of this, but we need to make it clear how we feel about their regime and it's actions. We need to provide a motivation to resist. Yes it sucks, the Russian people are not our enemies, I know and work with Russians, including close colleagues. Sanctioning the Russian state, and struggling against it from within are two sides of the same coin. It sucks that anyone has to do any of it, but that's the fight we're in whether we chose it or not.
This is not realistic due to the fact that the US is at least an order of magnitude more powerful than Russia, both economically and militarily. We also made it look less sketchy by bribing/begging Britain (and others) to join the Iraq invasion and invoking Article 5 for Afghanistan. Sanctions against the US were not tenable.
I don't think it's fair to compare the democratically elected government of an European country to a blood thirsty middle eastern dictatorship. At least, they certainly didn't garner the same sympathy from people.
As for Vietnam, it’s interesting to see that the loosing side was where people desperately fled, often risking their lives in makeshift rafts. That the people would risk their lives for a shot at maybe getting refugee status in America rather than live in a communist nation should tell us a lot. Same goes for failed states like Venezuela and Cuba.
This would not set up a precedent, it's almost the entirety of US foreign policy.
That isn't always true. Obviously, if the actions of the government are bad enough, it sometimes becomes necessary to kill many of its citizens. Since that's morally justifiable, lesser economic damage is morally justifiable.
It sucks. They're innocent. If damage can be avoided, great. But if it's necessary, the blame falls on the aggressor nation.
Who realistically could have done this, keeping in mind the Coalition of the Willing [0]? The global "community" was clearly not of one mind about this. Sanctions are working against Russia because most of the richest countries are behind the sanctions.
Other commenters have alluded to sanctioning US/UK over Yemen, which sounds reasonable, however, in that the case, too, why would European countries impose sanctions for conflicts they're taking part in themselves [1]?
Also, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is merely the (very large) straw that broke the camel's back with regards to these sanctions. Russia went it alone. Let's not pretend that Russia was on good terms with NA/EU or that Putin had any built up good will, either. The situations are vastly different. I'm not sure the precedent being set is what you think it is.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing
1 - https://www.adhrb.org/2021/01/european-involvement-in-the-hu...
I'm guessing the word "complicit" is not in your moral vocabulary. Or for some reason you don't feel it applies to doing business and helping to enrich a society that is murdering their neighboors.
Apparently refusing to be complicit with Russian aggression is "punishment".
Let's just same I'm less than impressed with this moral argument.
Maybe it's true of Americans for the war in Iraq or whatever but my objection is specifically to the weird (to me) use of the word "punishment" in the post I replied to.
I'd say don't talk about "punishment" as if your position has a moral high ground. Let's talk about being complicit.
The post above argues we should help fund the war efforts to kill Ukrainians through profitable business relations with the Russians, and the poster apparently thinks they have the moral high ground given the use of the word "punishment" to describe the the idea we shouldn't help the Russians continue to fund their efforts to kill people.
(Arguably, 9/11 indeed backfired badly for the perpetrators.)
Since it wasn't I see your response as pretty irrelevant.
(On that matter, the last major instance of another country confiscating Western assets I'm aware of was the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Persian_Oil_Company, which was answered with a CIA-instigated coup.)
Another completely irrelevant non sequetor.
Its already accepted that non violent means that nevertheless still negatively impact civilians are appropriate measures to apply political pressure. That's what economic sanctions are. I don't see how that can be considered acceptable yet cutting off digital communications is a bridge too far. I consider economic sanctions more severe than blocking the Russians from the global internet. One means you lose access to information. The other means your economy may collapse and you might not be able to afford food.
As for the 9/11 attacks, they were deliberate attacks on civilian targets which are traditionally considered war crimes when carried out by state actors and terrorist attacks when not. They are definitely far worse than softer measures like sanctions and not directly comparable.
And there is nothing arguable about it. They definitely backfired. Bin Laden did not hide his intentions or feelings. In fact he wrote extensively and publicly on it. He expected that the American public, who were broadly ignorant to US foreign policy at the time would empathize with him and blame their government. The opposite happened.
America is a democracy, so influencing the citizens is effective. Cooler heads still need to prevail - you can't use all your non-war tools, or you'll only be left with going to war
Or how about aggression on Yugoslavia?
That's what sanctions do. That's what military responses do. There's no real way out of the box. If a country responds forcefully to an aggressor's actions, the aggressor's civilians will pay a large part of the price.
Fuck yes they should have. Absolutely
Americans were complicit because it didn't (immediately and viscerally) effect them, just like Russians have been so far. If it effects them enough they'll stop working.
> Punishing civilians for the actions of its government
With few exceptions, governments serve the people under them. Pray tell, How popular is Putin in Russia right now?
Except neither the cabinet nor the oligarchs are the one doing the killing, it's the grunts at the bottom.
If every Russian deposed arms, there would be no war.
I mean, yes?
America is a functioning democracy. The leaders have been elected, and stay in power based on the mercy of the electorate. Some recent challenges in that respect notwithstanding, I feel it's almost a tautology that America and Americans should be held responsible for things that America and Americans do - even MORE than in authoritarian countries. Same for Canada and UK et cetera et cetera.
I don't know what viable alternative to sanctions affecting citizenry anybody is proposing - targeted assassination of heads of state one disagrees with? Mlitary response? Just ignoring it? Yelling loudly? How else do we propose to send a message to a state "Please don't DO that" without involving the electorate that either demanded, participated, or allowed such actions?
Is this about the chemical weapons, that were confirmed to exist by the NYT itself, as well as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons?
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/world/middleeast/question...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/world/middleeast/thousand...
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/cia-is-said-to-have...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/03/world/middlee...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middlee...
Agreed. Keeping the net open helps the West win this war. Russians turn to e.g. the BBC, because they know its more reliable than their own media.
The request wasn't to cut off Russia from the net.
It was to let .ru domains expire, and not issue SSL certificates for them. It would only affect .ru and .рф websites.
Russians would still be able to get their news from bbc.com — but maybe not ria.ru
We all would have been better off. There's currently little-to-nothing of value on .ru websites.
You have three big search engines: google, bing and yandex (4 if you count baidu).
Exactly. IIRC, Russia is actually taking steps to build a great firewall to do that deliberately. They're just not there yet.
But once they have the technology to connect to the internet on Putin's terms, cutting them off will make more sense. Maybe not enough sense to actually do, but the option should be re-evaluated.
But like with the Chinese firewall, information find its way. Unless Russia wants to set itself back to 70s, they still need to access Github, Cloudflare, Amazon Cloudfront, etc. For the Russian IT business to work.
Software development and Internet were built on scientific principles, criticism, criticial thinking. This requires free flow of information. You cannot have one without the other, or you are going to end up with very inferior and inefficient software ecosystem.
Don't be so optimistic. It isn't the 90s anymore. "Information [will] find its way [through]," but probably not in ways that can change anything.
> Software development and Internet were built on scientific principles, criticism, criticial thinking. This requires free flow of information. You cannot have one without the other, or you are going to end up with very inferior and inefficient software ecosystem.
It's doubtful if that's true, but even if it is, the response of dictators everywhere is: "so?" A strong "software ecosystem" might be a top priority for you, but they care more about other things.
A primer on this subject is Sontag's "Regarding the Pain of Others".
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52373.Regarding_the_Pain...
The only losses televised were American soldiers. People are nationalistic to the bone.
> The Iraq Body Count project documents 185,000–208,000 violent civilian deaths through February 2020 in their table.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
> About 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zone since 2001. More than 71,000 of those killed have been civilians.
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/af...
Perhaps if an incredibly comprehensive package of sanctions could have been part of the package, it would have changed more minds faster.
[1] He's rehabilitated his political image, somewhat, since then, but man, oh man, that was quite the foreign policy plan.
> We can not allow Russia to run the narrative by cutting of the internet. We need our pictures and videos to reach them.
Completely agree. I think popular website owners should go even further and target content specifically to Russian IP informing them of the causalities in Ukraine and protests going around in Russia.
IMHO, shut off their internet, send their economy and comms back to the effin dark ages. Block all flight over Russian air space (we can legit shoot planes down from well outside the country). See if putin survives 6 months then. Russians like comfort. Russians like a modern life. Strip it from them for their actions. They will fight to get it back on their own soil.
Until them. F russia. F putin. F the russian people for letting this happen. They are complacent. They are responsible. The behavior you walk past is the standard you set.
not to everybody at once, ideally to selected audiences, so it would be spotted & counteracted latter than sooner.
Russia getting cut off from financial services is also a huge problem for every day people with families there. Right when the Ruble collapses, we have fewer and fewer means of supporting our families over there. I get the why, we are trying to cut off Putin and the oligarchs at the knees, but it's sad that everyone else is getting swept up in it.
Do I think they made the right call? Yeah, but I'm a dum dum on the Internet who has thought about this for all of 5 minutes. There might be some better form of this argument that's more nuanced than I have time to understand, so I want to be able to leave it up to ICANN to figure stuff out like this and do what's best.
Yes, but it isn't a fallacy which is occurring here. Provisionally accepting the reasoned opinion of a domain expert is a rational choice in situations where re-evaluating everything from first principles is not an option. This is not an appeal to authority unless their conclusion is taken to be true simply because they are an authority, without regard for how that conclusion was reached. There is naturally room for error; you're trusting in the expert's skill, experience, logic, motivation, and above all honesty to collaboratively assembly an argument larger than you could put together on your own, and each party must do their part. If the expert's reasoning is deceptive, flawed, or misinterpreted, then the argument falls apart—but you're not just taking their word as fact, you're trusting them to produce rational conclusions from the evidence in the same way that you would if you had their knowledge and experience (and unlimited time).
Naturally, some experts are more trustworthy in any given domain than others. Anyone relying on Putin for conclusions on just about anything (even his own self-interest) is likely to be disappointed.
But I absolutely agree that ICANN made the right decision. It would have set a horrible precedent.
If they keep at it, they will win; the military balance is too much in their favour.
Having conquered, they will then block out all content which carries truth and replace it with propaganda, just as it is in Russia.
You argue we must keep the Internet open and accessable to Russia, both in this situation, and for it to be used in this way.
Without physical intervention.
I don't think this is true. The root DNS servers ICANN runs could stop handling requests for anything on the .ru/.su Russian TLDs. Though Russia runs the .ru servers internally, from ripn.net, there's still reliance on the root servers to point there. This would break Russian internal access to their own services.
If you run `dig +trace government.ru` you can see your first query is to the various "*.root-servers.net" name servers. When I did this my queries went like this:
A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET -> B.DNS.RIPN.NET -> NS2.GOV.RU
Now, to be fair, significant, though temporary, damage could be done to them from the outside (who knows how many Russian systems have their DNS configured to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8, for example).
There's a discussion to be had about modernization and what this means in practical terms. The philosophical internet exists in a space unpolluted by things like critical infrastructure becoming internet-connected. It's not a safe space for these things and was never designed to be one.
Governments have been doing a poor to terrible job of threat modeling their critical infrastructure. You saw this in Florida[1] and in Texas[2] last year. These sorts of things should not be accessible via the Internet.
[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/11/us/florida-water-plant-hack/i...
[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/15/us-energy-pi...
Should this be decided by ICANN, though?
Responding and explaining that is really all they can do.
Same with ICANN here.
>The globally agreed policies do not provide for ICANN to take unilateral action to disconnect these domains as you request.
Shouldn't be that hard to read a one-and-a-half page long document!
> I agree that this was the right move by ICANN.
Which turned out not to be a "move", really.
0: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/icann-ru-letters...
https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/new-gtld-dotl...
In fact, the world will benefit greatly from cutting out Russia from the internet! Imagine all the horrible cyberattacks and thefts of sensitive private info, money, ransomware attacks on cities schools and hospitals, and national security secrets stolen. China and Russia both deserve to be removed from the internet. They are abusive malicious actors using their access to the internet to do nothing but attack the responsible internet users.
The naive high horse, think of the slippery slope attitudes from know it all HN commenters are part of the downfall of the West and freedom and liberty, principles directly opposed by those two dictatorships. Those who benefit from those principles, yet allow them to be turned around and used by the enemy of those principles to destroy those principles, don’t deserve those principles. Freedom and liberty are privileges whose rights belong to those who jealously guard them rather than let them be molested and abused by their enemies.
Can't you already do this if you control your own firewall? You can, right now, block all access from IP address ranges in Russia and China.
How else will we get information of Bad Deeds (TM) of state actors or otherwise when SHTF.
While most countries took a pro-Ukraine stance, there's a non-negligible amount of neutral countries. In particular are India and China. I'm sure they wont be very happy if IANA effectively breaks their internet connectivity to Russia.
It's like having a criminal break into your house.
If my neighbours are unhappy with me taking action against that criminal - maybe they're friends with him - I'm not much inclined, in the situation, to have much sympathy.
I hate all of them, but I wonder why wars in the middle east don't trigger sanctions and media attention and this invasion does.
Ukrainians know what’s next, just like my ancestors did: genocide
Isn't that headline patently false clickbait? The second paragraph:
"You have asked that ICANN target Russia’s access to the Internet by revoking specific countrycode top-level domains operated from within Russia, arranging the revocation of SSL certificates issued within those domains, and shutting down a subset of root servers located in Russia."
According to the .ru ccTLD agreement documents [1], the "Coordination Center for TLD RU" (the entity which operates the .ru TLD) voluntarily agrees to pay to ICANN $30k USD annually. The document is worded that ICANN's obligation to continue letting them use it will cease if the payment isn't made, but it also states "this review will take into account all relevant circumstances."
The way I read this is it's an agreement to donate per year to cover the infrastructure/overhead of ICANN, but doesn't state it's a contractual fee or payment _for_ the ccTLD. If I had to guess, if this payment does fall under sanctions/restrictions, that would be covered under "relevant circumstances" to which ICANN wouldn't just pull the rug out from Russia in the name of Internet stability.
[1] https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/icann-ru-letters...
Move along, this person has no idea what they're talking about except poorly mis-regurgitating Kremlin propaganda
If you read through their other comments, they are doing everything they can to spread pro-Russia misinformation throughout HN many times a day.
God save you if you ever hear an opinion that is in disagreement with your beliefs.
No, not at all. I can believe in free speech and still believe that it's harmful to spread misinformation.
> God save you if you ever hear an opinion that is in disagreement with your beliefs.
The problem is not the fact that your opinion is in disagreement; it's the fact that your opinion is objectively, demonstrably wrong. People who point that out aren't clutching their pearls because they're so offended you have a dissenting opinion.
I believe I'm telling the truth and you are spreading misinformation.
> it's the fact that your opinion is objectively, demonstrably wrong
Prove it then! Less words, more facts.
Good for you, but that's a non-sequitur. The point is that "if you believe in free speech then it shouldn't matter what I say" is wrong-headed.
Also, this is my main account and it's 5 years old. Can't say the same for you, really. Why are you ashamed of your opinions?
What's even weirder is that Ukraine is not part of EU and it's not part of NATO.
Double standards indeed.
I'm not sure if it's because of racism (they're attacking a country with white people), if it's because we need something to forget that covid became irrelevant but the restrictions of our freedom are still there or if the west need to justify sanctioning Russia for whatever reason.
[1] https://www.benjerry.com/about-us/media-center/opt-statement
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/opinion/ben-and-jerry-isr...
There are international groups and loose movements for boycotting Israel, especially things related to the occupied territories. They're not popular outside of Muslim-majority countries, but it's a thing.
They are considered enough of a threat that places that like to claim they have freedom of speech have felt the need to actively suppress them, including an absolute majority of US states.
I assure you that I don't feel that way, but I understand why. It's the same reason people often want to help "their own" before helping others.
It starts with helping your nuclear family then to extended then to friends then to the city then to the state then to the country then to the ethnicity (country and ethnicity may switch priorities).
No one can care for the whole world so we have to prioritize by some means.
There's also a point to be made that Israel and Palestine are already fucked as its been happening for decades now. The world has a chance to stop an atrocity from happening now.
Another point can be made that the Israeli and Palestinian conflict isn't as obvious as Russian invading Ukraine.
And the final thing I would note is that this post could be construed as classic whataboutism.
I live in the balkans, and I'm against any kind of war (obviously)... but even now, people here are more afraid of americans stirring shit up and starting a war here, than of russians.
One of these things is not like the other. Serbia was a conflict in which NATO intervened; the US wasn't acting unilaterally to murder civilians. So it's not strange that they didn't face blowback from the broader community of nations. In general, the US is going to tread much more carefully on the European continent than it does in the developing world; don't expect drone strikes in Athens or Berlin.
> but even now, people here are more afraid of americans stirring shit up and starting a war here, than of russians
That's your prerogative, but of the US and Russia, only one of them is invading one of your neighbors without provocation and it's not the US. And most of the Balkans aren't members of NATO, so ...
I support fighting propaganda with better more believable information. Censoring information is not the answer.
I don't think cutting off a country in a situation like that is helpful at all. If anything, it is making it easier for pro-Putin propaganda.
I would also remind that Russia itself build capability to cut itself off from the Internet. Yes, we would be doing them a favour because right now they might hesitate to do it by themselves fearing backlash from people who do not care about politics or anybody else at all but do care about having Internet access.
Why would the internet entertain a country that has set its mind on destroying it?
The only argument I see in comments is that letting Russian citizens get on VK is more important than allowing Ukrainian citizens to communicate and organise evacuations before the Russian tanks turn up. Are you all on crack or something?
The only Q would be would Russia retaliate by going all china with a great firewall, thereby them actually severing themselves from the internet.
For humanitarian reasons we should make it easy for Russians to defect to the west if they want no part in what the Russian state is doing.
I don’t want to economically hurt Russian civilians more than we really need to in order to save Ukraine.
All the Western cutting ties with Russia has made most people I know (we are all Chinese) much more favorable towards the Great Firewall. If the West cut the ties with China, the damage is much less given that we are already in an effective LAN.
The response here would suggest the opposite.
If ICANN kicks out a country, we'd very soon see the end of ICANN because other countries will have no trust left in the organization.
I'm just ridiculing the comment that said 'go ahead, we don't need it'.
The Great Firewall just makes you used to not having free access to information, which would happen when a network is isolated.
When this happens in the West, you see a lot of political discord, as is occurring right now. But when it happened in the USSR, discontent built up behind the scenes until it exploded in a series of revolts that led to a decade of stagnation and corruption in eastern Europe.
So, critique appreciated, but I'll take our flaws over your flaws.
Russia has not been cut off from the internet. It is suffering highly focused DDoS attacks which are not originating due to any type of sanction or new law, or as a protest measure from companies. These are actions of individual hackers or hacker groups. Compared to the actions of REvil or Conti, these are absolutely harmless.
The western ideal of the internet is very well described in that rejection letter, which might as well become a historical document in what it is trying to express. Now, what commercial network providers decide to route or not, is a very different story. But, from the looks of it, no routes have been dropped, and should that happen, peering agreements could provide workarounds, even around countries. It's usually the non-western countries which are implementing blocking so that their citizens have a restricted access, not the other way around.
You seem to confuse the internet with the global market. From the perspective of the global markets' current sanctions, I can obviously understand your concern and motivation to be prepared in the future. But we are also concerned, because the harm goes both ways. It's an almost unnecessary recession which will affect many areas, where specially spaceflight-related decisions are already being very noticeable events, since they are so highly dependent on collaboration. Collaboration which was successful, until now.
The Minsk Agreement could have been implemented within one or two years, the will to do so was there.
Does a side benefit come with a differently censored internet Russia provides where copyright is ignored?
Would it be easier to appeal directly to Tier 1 networks instead?
It's not a solution in the real world
The Russian government actively promotes hacking against the west and refuses to prosecute anyone for it.
Does that even matter? The access to the general internet isn't something you have to "earn". You're not more entitled to be in this space more than the next person regardless of your contribution, beliefs or identity.
> The Russian government actively promotes hacking against the west and refuses to prosecute anyone for it.
Our government friends at the NSA are equally guilty of that as well, I'm not seeing much outrage over that either.
Indeed, all those NSA ransomware attacks on hospitals have to stop!
Perhaps they’re not actually equally guilty and the NSA is far more careful with their approach than the Russians?
The NotPetya wiper worm was released by the Russian government, the NSA has never been accused of anything similar.
This kind of false equivalency is nothing but dishonest, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Indeed. When the US released Stuxnet it was specifically made to be discreet and dormant unless activated on a specific target.
Russia just throws a pipe bomb into the room and hopes the door is thick enough to withstand the blast.
Of course it has. The NSA was accused of created Stuxnet, the worm that targeted Iran industrial control systems (such as nuclear power plants). Wikipedia[0] says:
> On 1 June 2012, an article in The New York Times said that Stuxnet is part of a US and Israeli intelligence operation named Operation Olympic Games, devised by the NSA under President George W. Bush and executed under President Barack Obama.
and:
> A Wired magazine article about US General Keith B. Alexander stated: "And he and his cyber warriors have already launched their first attack. The cyber weapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s."
Petya was an international crisis.
> Our government friends at the NSA are equally guilty of that as well, I'm not seeing much outrage over that either.
Not the same. In Russia the only cybercrime that goes to court is Russian on Russian crime. Crime against the west isn't a crime. Russians are allowed to write malware and defraud targets... just so long as those targets are not Russian.
If I ripped off 10,000 Russian grandmothers as an American; the FBI would find me and prosecute me.
> You're not more entitled to be in this space more than the next person regardless of your contribution, beliefs or identity.
You probably typed your message on an Intel, AMD, or ARM CPU running on 95% American code. Russians are entitled to what the west decides to give them unless they want to do a better job themselves.
Please get off your high horse, that's just disgusting. Yikes.
Nonsense, that's not how it works.
> Russians are allowed to write malware and defraud targets... just so long as those targets are not Russian.
Nope. Article 273 of the Criminal Code.
> If I ripped off 10,000 Russian grandmothers as an American; the FBI would find me and prosecute me.
Unlikely.
It seems like you are not entirely aware that we don't actually have functioning global anti-crybercrime mechanisms. If you think FBI would care what you do with Russian part of the internet, you are deluded. Try hosting something in Russia, you will quickly change your assumptions of the threat model.
Really, it's surprising to see people on Hackernews who don't understand how infosec is a thing and why cybercrime actually works, when technology-wise everything should be more or less traceable.
You can make similar assumptions about a lot of different ethnic groups.
Yes; in fact, on this specific population. The collapse of the Soviet Union was, in part, helped by increased access to information about conditions outside of it, and to external goods and services.
Which may happen anyway from Putin's side if he declares martial law, which is rumored might happen tomorrow.
In fact if there was a holocaust in Ukraine right now being perpetrated by the west wouldn't they just deny it?
The point of Russian propaganda is to create noise it doesn't have to be right it just has to make noise.
Holocaust: It happened mostly away from the cities, so that's likely how it would be happenig now, too. So if Russians wanted to reveal that that is happening, all that would need to happen was for them to send some scouts/spies/infiltrators to the locations where the mass extermination is happening and make a bunch of videos and publish them. There would be no need to shell and try to siege cities, shoot into civilians, etc.
Instead of this, all we get is a ton of imagery of destroyed Ukranian cities, and killings of civilians.
We can't maybe disprove the negative, but we don't need to. Russia needs to prove the positive.
Russia faked satellite pictures of a Ukraine fighter jet shooting down MH17. They are obvious fakes too the plane is missing Malaysia markings but any western news source that proves they are fake is considered western propaganda / fake news, any Russian critics are labeled as western spies and are arrested.
Putin is in power he doesn't need the consent of his citizens or the rest of the world he doesn't need facts or truth and can easily poison that well until no one can drink from it which is exactly what we are seeing with Putins holocaust claims.
Yeah they are very much entitled to do this, they're getting bombed after all... but something about it makes me uneasy. If I had a time machine I'd check if in a few decades they'd be walking around oppresing their neighbors feeling entitled, since they're a victim now.
I'd also support individual services extending this to e.g. tagging user accounts. That way you could:
- mark posts in forums based on if they originated in ru i.e. better detection of Russian bots/shills in forums where Russian-based participation doesn't make a lot of sense.
- firewall forums s.t. different groups of users cannot see each other.
War has changed significantly with modern communication and there aren't many wartime secrets any more; troop movements and logistics are readily seen from satellites and aircraft. It's arguable that censoring communication between countries at war has no practical war benefit.
As a sanction it is also arguably not effective because as an example North Korea enforces extreme Internet censorship and this hardship on North Korean citizens does not meaningfully weaken the regime. If anything, maintaining open communication to combat propaganda is likely the most beneficial approach. There's a video circulating of a captured Russian soldier in Ukraine face-timing his mother in Russia which would have been blocked by severing Russia from the Internet, to what end? Further isolating and estranging neighbors and family during a time of extreme stress? Finding common shared humanity is always more important than tactical warfare because it usually obviates the need for continued warfare.
Sad that it has to get this far for people to suddenly get squeamish about it.
ICANN's responsibilities are very different than CloudFlare's, and the proposed action has much wider scope and impact on innocents in the dispute. They're not at all comparable scenarios, and I believe CloudFlare and ICANN both made the right decisions in the respective cases.
But very unsurprising. [0] It really was expected to be rejected. I mean just look at this extremely weak 'reason' from [1]:
> All of these measures will help users seek for reliable information in alternative domain zones, preventing propaganda and disinformation.
Just like how RIPE [2] took a neutral stance, there would be no chance ICANN would bend and take a side in this either.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30509849
Has anyone talked about doing that?
But cutting Russia off from the Internet isn't a good idea.
North Korea is a bad example here since they have little internet or trade, but included them anyways.
The barrel of options against Russia needs to be exhausted. The only way to stop a bully such as this is to hit them the hardest, most brutal way, earliest. Putin and anyone supporting him should have been routed in the early 2000s. This decision here is nothing short of appeasement.
Only if we had the same attitude against European countries or the US. It really seems like a one-sided stance most of the time.
One of the few times that a European or US (allay) receives similar treatment as they dish out, they completely freak out, making outrageous demands or requests such as the one to ICANN.
> The barrel of options against Russia needs to be exhausted.
Strong disagree, we should just retaliate in any way just for the sake of it- that's just not effective.
edit: formatting
The Iraq invasion was unprovoked and unjustified we lied about our reasons for doing it if other countries stood up to us maybe we would have responded differently.
I protested our government when we did what Russia is doing I haven't changed my position one inch, maybe no one else has, maybe other westerners are just trying to justify Russia in hopes it will some how justify US actions, it doesn't both countries are bullies and deserve the same response.
Russia is bombing Ukrainian communication towers, spreading malware, coordinating attacks, in an active unprovoked invasion.
From my perspective, I see one country invading another country saying "If you try and stop us then we'll nuke the world."
That is not how nuclear deterrence has worked in the past and if it not challenged then it will become the norm. Call their bluff. Hope that it is a bluff, because if it isn't, then it only will delay the inevitable until we are all in a worse bargaining place.
To let evil flourish while you sit and do nothing is the same as doing evil. If we all die, then let us die doing what is right, in good conscience, protecting the vulnerable, upholding civilized order.
On the other hand, Russian-language countries are a major source of malware and other serious cybercrimes.
/thread
Not a single Russian should be able to receive a single dollar from anywhere outside the country until Putin is overthrown and they're out of Ukraine completely.
Good job Ukraine on helping Putin establish a monopoly on information spread in Russia.
I think the 1 decision that could be made by the Sanctioning countries... At the big tier 1 peering exchanges you could blacklist all of Russia. Don't have to worry about cyber attacks coming from Russia directly anymore.
Yes I know. That's why i said 'directly from', sure attacks will be proxied through bots or whatever.
Russia has been preparing to be isolated for 15-20 years. They are largely self-reliant and have four massive trade partners in Brazil, China, Iran and India. Plus Germany needs their fuel and have no alternative.
The more the west sanctions the worse it’ll be for the west and better it’ll be for Russia. Ultimately, the war is over. Russia supposedly wants an independent neutral country; I suspect they’ll take half the country and force the other half to be neutral.