Comment by thbw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thbw | Hacker News Reader

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

This is hypocrisy of Western democracy. I can't recall when Google was removed after US invaded so many countries. Why do Western companies oppress free speech when it doesn't match their narrative (Julian Assange, now Russian media)?

Why not give Russian "propaganda" tell its narratives and let people decide? Are you afraid of their truth/"truth" or are you afraid people will follow them? If you think people are stupid to decide, why do you allow them to even vote for a President of a country?

Why US thinks it is ok to expand NATO to the borders of Russia, but didn't think Soviet military in Cuba is ok?

Where are all liberals fighting for human rights and free speech?

* US invasion - good guys killing bad guys

* Russian invasion - bad guys killing good guys

* China human right violations - "west" only condemns, because we are too much dependent on cheap products.

* US tells Iraq has biological weapons - yeah let's start the war.

* Russia tells Ukraine has biological weapons - yeah, propaganda as usual.

I have so many questions, but pretty sure no one is going to answer them constructively thanks to cancel culture (and the reason for throw away account) where "liberals" cancel you if they don't agree with you, responses I might get "whataboutism"

I am anti-war in all countries, because at the end of the day ordinary people suffer. But why people are demanding protests from Russian people to overthrow Putin (which I doubt they can, unless their military people decide to support) when they weren't able to stop war in Iraq, Afghanistan or any other US invaded country by protesting? Do you think you have moral rights to ask Russian people to do something when you were silent, when you couldn't even save Julian Assange? (by the way I am not Russian)

Stop pretending you are right!

Give other side chance to speak!

As a long time Firefox user, this saddens me!

I think there are a lot of moral compromises, contradictions, and hypocrisy as you outline.

However, the alternative to throwing everything non-violent at Russia, is actual military intervention. Essentially, very high risk of real WW3.

The Iraq invasion was a huge mistake. Russia's invading Ukraine is a huge mistake. Generally, war is a huge mistake.

If there is anything non-violent left to try, I can't blame anybody for trying that. This is one tiny, tiny small thing.

> Generally, war is a huge mistake.

100% agree with you! Now our politicians made this mess, we shouldn't make it even messier by making people suffer

The people who are suffering are the Ukrainians so it's just thing to apply as much non-lethal suffering back on to the country causing it as is possible. Every little bit helps.

How is Mozilla choosing which search engines to show in their browser oppressing of free speech?

"Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

Are they blocking users from going to those sites? No. Are they preventing those sites from loading in the browser? No. Are they stopping anyone from creating a website and saying whatever they want? No.

Just because you don't agree with Mozilla on this action doesn't make it oppression of free speech. This is simply one organization deciding not to have a relationship with another organization. Not everything is an attack on free speech or expression.

> How is Mozilla choosing which search engines to show in their browser oppressing of free speech?

Because similar action wasn't taken against Google when US invaded so many countries!

> Just because you don't agree with Mozilla on this action doesn't make it oppression of free speech. This is simply one organization deciding not to have a relationship with another organization.

In this case taking away choice from Russians not from organization. Of course they are going to use just website, but still there is clear signal to selectively support one side, even though action of other parties were equally bad. Why open source software is making decisions based on politics happening around.

> How is Mozilla choosing which search engines to show in their browser oppressing of free speech?

> "Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

This is explicitly Mozilla retaliating against Yandex for things they've said.

> Are they blocking users from going to those sites? No. Are they preventing those sites from loading in the browser? No. Are they stopping anyone from creating a website and saying whatever they want? No.

This is disingenuous. They're very deliberately making it less convenient for users to access Yandex.

In general, it sounds like you're suggesting that if everyone can't be punished for doing something bad, no one should be. I'm not sure that logic would really fly with other situations. Ex. A murderer was able to flee to a country without an extradition treaty, so punishing Jeffrey Dahmer would be hypocritical.

The US being less likely to do things like, you know, lie about biological weapons as a pretense for an invasion of a country that murders tens to hundreds of thousands of innocents and destabilizes an already not-so-stable part of the world would be a good thing. That the rest of the world wasn't able to rally together at the time to say "Yo, not cool" doesn't mean that they wouldn't have been right to. That it didn't happen then doesn't mean it shouldn't happen next time. Or now, in the case of Russia re: Ukraine.

> In general, it sounds like you're suggesting that if everyone can't be punished for doing something bad, no one should be

I am not saying this, I am saying we shouldn't be politicizing software and punish ordinary people. I know Ukrainians are suffering and suffering of Russians at this moment is very small compared to them, but this doesn't mean we should make them suffer even more. Do you think Russians will like these actions? No, I think their hate will increase and they would support Putin even more.

> That it didn't happen then doesn't mean it shouldn't happen next time. Or now, in the case of Russia re: Ukraine.

Somehow I am pretty sure if US invades any other country now, there would be another excuse and no sanctions at all. I don't hold knowledge of the future, but past events are super clear what would happen. Iraq, Libya, ....

Also why not same support for Palestinian people? do you think they are terrorists? I mean 100% of them? Do you think Palestine has power to withstand Israeli attacks or similar military capacity? Why West not sanctioning Israel, which is happening now?

Not saying we shouldn't support Ukraine, what I am saying is we should equally support everyone who is suffering. And we shouldn't make people suffer even more.

Well said. We here in the west have to stop pretending we are at the absolute center of truth and justice, and stop silencing all the sensible voices that try to bring attention to our own hypocrisy.

I fail to see "sensible voices" in advocating a completely unprovoked mass murder of civilians.

The world isn't that simple.

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