Kharkiv Rubyist during the war: We are still here

What I am trying to explain is that "Slava Ukraine! Heroyam Slava!" is a direct calque from the German "Heil Hitler! Sieg Heil!".

"Slava" literally means "Heil" ("hail" in English). "Hitler" is replaced with "Ukraine" and "Sieg" (victory) with "Heroyam" (heroes).

This salute was coined and popularized by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators during WW2.

Now it's up to you to decide whether everyone that uses the phrase Heil Hitler (Long live Hitler) is also a Nazi or not.

It depends on the context. If you are on a bus and someone randomly stands and shouts Allahu Akbar, it would strike terror into those around them, so yes they could be a sort of terrorist, even if they aren’t actually about to blow themselves up.

But if you’re in a mosque, it’s not unusual to hear it exclaimed.

Yes, you're right. But there's a slight difference. No street, square, bridge etc. in Russia is named after Vlasov. And there are no monuments to Vlasov in Russia. Also Putin never said that praising a Nazi war criminal as a national hero is a normal and cool thing.

Zelensky: "There are indisputable heroes. Stepan Bandera is a hero for a certain part of Ukrainians, and this is a normal and cool thing." [0]

[0] - https://www.unian.info/politics/10521105-zelensky-on-bandera...

It seems to me more like Arendt's banality of evil is mostly at work (in many cases, anyway. There are certainly some people on this planet who I would say are truly evil but they are relatively uncommon): https://aeon.co/ideas/what-did-hannah-arendt-really-mean-by-...

My own views sort of shifted but not in the same way. I was 17 when the War in Iraq started. My view at the time was of very skeptical support; having lived through the 90s I had an engrained view that the world needed to use force to help prevent ethnic cleansing. We didn't intervene early enough or strongly enough in Rwanda, and that particularly bothered me. After the beginning of the war, I pretty quickly became anti-war when it became increasingly clear to me that the pretexts (WMD, Saddam is going to attack the Kurds again) were not justified. I would say by about mid-2004 I was pretty comfortably anti-war. When Bush called for the "surge" I was definitely all the way against the War in Iraq.

Today if you asked me what I thought about it, I would say Iraq was the worst and least justified misadventure America embarked on that had some ostensible humanitarian pretext. So I guess my position would be that I still wish we could prevent genocide, but I'm increasingly convinced it's difficult to tell justified reason from pretext in time to intervene, either as a country or as as individuals trying to hold our leaders to account. I guess I would say is that Bush struck me as a person who embodied the way in which misguided motivations could lead to terrible results.

But with Trump, there was no misgivings. He had terrible motivations. His view on the use of force was two fold: (1) I don't give a fuck about any other country, why should I? (2) We're number one and I'll blow you up with my bombs.

I think it's tempting for many to look at his isolationism as a repudiation of Clinton-Bush-Obama era, but it was a repudiation only of the duty to care about others. His frequent verbal escalations and tactical willingness to disregard collateral damage (in Iraq/Syria), as well as his weird outbursts like threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons, and his constant constant constant remarks expressing praise and respect for violent autocrats justified by admiration of their will to power make it clear that he was just as willing to use force, just as militaristic, just for somehow even worse reasons. I am very thankfully that none of the bubbling tensions ever came to a true head under him.

> Shipping weapons to Ukraine to defend its sovereign territory is also a good. But it creates evil by escalating battlefield lethality and depending on the service (and often sacrifice) of brave Ukrainians.

Shipping those weapons does not create evil. The evil (Russian military aggression) is already there, the evil is responding to the weapons with escalation in an attempt to overwhelm to prevent defeat.

The proof is in not shipping the weapons: subjugation, slavery, for the Ukrainian people (quite possibly for generations to come). It can mean the complete wiping out of their culture, in the style of Tibet.

The weapons draw out a more dramatic response from the attacking evil, they do not create more evil; and they - ideally - prevent an even greater evil, which is the enslavement of the Ukrainian people if the war effort is lost. All the weapons do is pull some of the future suffering forward in time (you suffer more now, so your people hopefully suffer dramatically less later), however the trade, the potential upside, is obviously the possibility to achieve freedom and vanquish the aggressor. The aggressor creates all of the evil, all of the suffering, they're solely morally responsible for it. The weapons make a positive possible, the lack of said weapons guarantee only darkness. Putin's conquest effort isn't going to be stopped by peaceful protest (some authoritarians might bend for that under some circumstances, he won't).

The point is, the evil is already there. If you leave it alone (don't challenge it), you'll suffer more over a longer period of time. If you challenge it, you may suffer more short-term, however that challenge isn't creating any additional evil, it's creating the potential for good for the people of Ukraine. The suffering and evil can't be avoided, the only choice is whether you want to try to defeat it, or roll over and hand yourself over to its long-term chains.

I think it’s too soon to make an assessment. Trump spent his whole presidency casting aspersions on NATO, and tried to cut defense aid to Ukraine. If this situation escalates further, he may be viewed as a James Buchanan figure.

And I do think things may get worse. Currently a sovereign country is being invaded and civilians are being targeted. The second order effects might be even worse

* If Russia pulls resources from Syria then the civil war might come to a head. The regime leans heavily on Russian air support

* Russian paramilitary provides defense for unpopular governments like Tanzania’s. If they got pulled these countries might go into civil war

* Ukraine and Russia are two of the worlds largest exporters of grain. Countries like Egypt are big importers (Egypt actually subsidizes the purchases heavily). If grain costs go up (and other commodities like oil) this could cause unrest

* Nuclear war

* Cyber war targeting key infrastructure. The possibility of massive collateral damage is high (see Not Petya)

Some of these things are not intrinsically bad (I have no love for despotic governments for example) but the potential sum total of events could throw the world into chaos.

The War on Terror was a massive mistake. America needs to keep the crazy evangelicals who want to bring on the end times by attacking the Middle East far from the oval office. But taking on an isolationist position in response to the 2000’s would be a massive mistake. It’s clearer than ever that power vacuums have to be filled

> The Democrats did the same exact thing with Russiagate. Both in terms of the accusation and pursuing it through legal channels, all based on fictional evidence to boot.

It’s incredible that this is still being parroted even after the Russian invasion. Go and read at the actual Muller report and Senate Intel report vol 5. The findings of the us senate and special counsel are that Russia hacked the 2016 election with the intent of helping Trump, and the Trump campaign worked willingly with them on this effort and lied about it to everyone.

Most notably, Trump’s campaign manager was sharing internal campaign data with a Russian Intel officer, who transmitted the data to the GRU. This is the collusion we had all claimed was happening, and it was found. Calling this a hoax at this point is willingly spreading Russian disinformation. This is the position of Vladimir Putin, that Russian interference in 2016 was a hoax. Think about that, as he bombs and targets civilians. Why are you still carrying their water for them on this front? What if, actually, after all these years, you are wrong about that? What evidence would it take to change your mind?

Let me ask you this, as you say the Russian scandal was based on fictional evidence, how many pages of the Mueller report and Senate Intel report have you personally actually read?

Here’s their bottom line:

  It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modern era.

Trump and his associates participated and enabled hacking of his rivals in 2016. Russian collusion. Republicans authored that report, btw. What’s your position on the 2016 election after reading that?

Yeah it seems like the globalist mindset that much of the west adopted blinded it to the geopolitical realities that still govern international relations. Remember the "Russian reset"[1]? It was a big red button that was supposed to reset Russian relations. Remember when Obama criticized Romney for saying the biggest threat in the future would be Russia? Obama laughed it off because "this isn't the cold war anymore." Remember when Clinton gave China the NAFTA deal? GWB was cut from the same cloth as these other globalist-minded presidents.

The western globalist attitude involves giving power to our rivals in the hopes they will become our friends. Guess what...they're still our rivals.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset

> Squandered overnight the enormous goodwill USA carried from successful 199X

What X? Bombing Serbia in 1999?

I see it as a useful simplification. To be more long winded about it is fine but the bottom line is we have to be willing to fight for what we have

The reasons for the immediate action might be logical, but looking at the medium term consequences it breaks down completely in my mind. The only two possibilities I can see going forward is either a forever-war as in Afghanistan, or a forever-sanction situation like Iran or DPRK.

I don't see how any listed benefits would outweigh the costs of either option. It troubles me a lot, because Putin has seemed to me to be a carefully calculating player up until this. It makes me wonder if he has truly lost it. Or if there is some grand plan which this is only a small part of. Both are scary.

My knowledge of (not Russian but) post-Soviet bureaucrats comes from personal experience, I speak fluent Russian and follow their news/politics sporadically but over the past few decades. I think the way they are portrayed in Chernobyl is brilliant. It's a structure so permeated by apathy, corruption, bullying and grandstanding that it simply cannot effectively transmit information in either direction, whether top-down or bottom-up (but especially bottom up). It's clear that Putin was fed a steady diet of his own wishful thinking / propaganda, and he bought into it fully. If he had a realistic view of the world around him, he would have prepared a lot better for this war of aggression that he staked everything on.

And, as an aside, I think COVID started for the exact same reason as what's portrayed in Chernobyl. Chinese model of governance is not that different. When accurate sober assessments of facts on the ground are needed and speed is of the essence, its ineffectiveness takes over. Once the genie is out of the bottle and there's nothing to hide from superiors, and once Beijing sends over some adults to whip things into shape, the sheer scale of China's economy allows it to power through and suppress the crisis using draconian means. But for the first who knows how many weeks (certainly well before Jan 1 2020), it was much slower motion Chernobyl.

They have the largest militaries and nobody can really tell them what to do. Simple as that.

See: US invasion of Iraq, Russian invasion of Georgia and Ukraine.

Nukes and the power to use them worldwide.

Nukes. The unspoken requirement.

That doesn't mean the rest of the world needs to give Russia and Putin a free pass.

Two wrongs does not make a right.

That said, Russia just as USA have nukes, so Putin will never go to ICC, and its waist of time discussing it.

It might not be nice, just or fair but if you have nuke, you are for all intense and purpose immune, unless your own country prosecutes you or gives you ower.