Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Again, context matters and we are likely not talking in a "let us decide whom to invade" context.

BTW "Declaring your neighbor "politically unstable" and presenting yourself as its savior was the clearest way in the 20th Century to declare war without any casus belli" is not really true, sometimes this happened, but wars have been declared for all sorts of putative reasons, like "our particular minority is being oppressed" or "the neighbouring government plotted against the life of our sovereign" or "they are infidels, go get them".

Anyway I don't really see what you propose. Binning expressions because someone someday used them in bad faith, in the belief that this will stop future invasions from happening?

This seems to be somewhat futile to me. Invasions aren't fundamentally caused by words. Words only work as a cloak and one cloak can be easily substituted by another, and it will, depending on the current state of politics in the invader and invadee country.

Note that the Russians explained their invasion into Ukraine by calling them "fascists". Should the Western civilization drop the word forever because of that?

The cloak of words has always been needed, for some reason, to convince a population to make the sacrifices necessary to go to war.

Yes, there have been other spoken reasons for invading a peaceful sovereign country. This does not change the fact that Russia is the belligerent party against Ukraine, or that China is the belligerent against a completely harmless and peaceful Taiwan.

Taiwan's situation right now is very similar to Czechoslovakia's in 1938. There is no international treaty with teeth to protect it. There is every reason for China to create a rationale for invading it. The people there have a decent life and don't want to live under occupation. And the reasons for invasion look similar; taking over industrial capacity under the guise of saving people from their confused political state.

> The cloak of words has always been needed, for some reason

Needed? Probably not. There is just no reason not to use that cloak of words.

It is indeed somewhat similar (though the sea is a better barrier + they don't have a major fifth column on their territory). And I would smell rat if it was a Chinese CCP official uttering the words about "political instability", but that would exactly be the change of context necessary.

If a HW/SW engineer speaks about "political instability", they simply acknowledge that there is no way to tell what will happen in context of their own jobs.

Ahhahah. For SWEs I think the phrase is "undefined behavior".

FWIW, my friend, I'm a Jew and I spent 5 years in France, Spain and Germany before coming to Prague. Czechia was the one place I felt welcome and safe in the EU. The noble history of the Czechs played a big role in that, but you could feel it every day in the way people treated each other. There is something incredible there about the people, the family, the place and the intelligence of Czechia. It is about keeping a small land for your family and people. I would say it's similar in many ways to Israel.

Now someone will come and shoot me, heheh.

But - there was a point. This is also why I defend Taiwan and I think everyone should. People should be free to get together to decide that they want to be part of something, not swallowed up by neighbors who despise their way of life.

Czechia is the most Jewish-friendly country in the EU, and will likely stay so. Our Jewish community used to be very vibrant and it is sorely missed.

We should indeed defend Taiwan, but we (as "the entire EU") seem to be lukewarm even about defending Ukraine which is much closer to us and in a hot war. Some people just prefer sticking their head in the sand.

Maybe the Jewish people are better at discerning building-up danger, because of their long history of persecution.

I hope it remains so. I felt an affinity from even before I stepped off the train from Munich. It's a funny story - my passport was examined by German police in the bar car of the train. My passport was not in order and they were radio calling to see whether to haul me back to Munich and detain me. I played for time as the border approached. The bartender was Czech, and he watched all this quietly. As soon as we stopped at the last town on the border, the police decided to tell me to have a nice trip, and he took me into the store room on the train, opened the window and poured shots and lit a cigarette for me as we crossed the border and said "fucking Germans. Welcome to Czechia... anything is possible!" And immediately I fell in love with the country. I would say, God bless that bartender on the train but almost everyone I met in the next year in Prague was equally kind and wonderful.

I can't speak for all Jewish people, but yes we are raised reading history to understand the way that threats can build up over time, and the multiple masks that threats can wear. For me, personally, I see this as an affinity to all small, powerless but free people... Kurds, Taiwanese, Ukrainians, Tibetans, Yazidis... particularly those who don't evangelize but simply want to be left alone to prosper and live in peace with their own people. Czechs are similar to that as the most "western-facing Slavic people" and I grew up in America enthralled by Vaclav Havel as a beacon for individuals and every small nation wanting freedom.

You are of course right that this history of persecution raises one's antennae and evokes horror at anything that seems to favor totalitarian modes of thinking. But the Czechs level of paranoia made me laugh sometimes, maybe because it was so similar.

"The bartender was Czech, and he watched all this quietly. As soon as we stopped at the last town on the border, the police decided to tell me to have a nice trip, and he took me into the store room on the train, opened the window and poured shots and lit a cigarette for me as we crossed the border and said "fucking Germans. Welcome to Czechia... anything is possible!""

I can almost hear him. That is basically the essence of Czechdom :)

It is interesting how some aspects of culture are essentially the same and others diverge wildly once you cross the border. When it comes to Bier and Schnitzel and snowy Christmas, Czechs are almost indistinguishable from Bavarians. But in other aspects it is just as you saw it, two worlds apart.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com