eveningcoffee

Yes, but do customers want plugin-hybrids instead of fully electric?

Based on the reaction of Russians, HIMARS are doing real damage to them and they are not happy at all.

First, she is not a German journalist but one working for Russia one. Second, she is not independent, as she is just distributing Russian propaganda.

This recent post touches perhaps it from the angle you are concerned about

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31976955

This post was about Russian capacity to create such conflicts completely out of blue. You can fear anything you chose to. Like I have explained many times, it is not this scalable because of fragmentation. Yes, there can be a mass hysteria like was for example after 9/11, but it is very difficult to suck something out of non event like was this plan to move some monument. I hope you notice the difference in significance between these two events.

I refer you to this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31965687 comment, that was written 1h before yours. I quote

"They think Ukraine and Russia has a shared destiny or some other completely unfounded bullshit like that."

No, it is not a war between the West and Russia. It is an idiotic military campaign Russia is waging because of some unfounded delusions. Nobody in Ukraine wants to have anything shared with Russia. The West was just dragged into this conflict because it just happens next to its border and the West is sympathetic with Ukraine and could not tolerate such unprovoked violence.

Now the important question for the context, because what you shared are clear Russian propaganda talking points, are you a Russian? If not, then what you think influenced you to come to this wrong conclusion? I'm trying to figure out some of the paths Russian propaganda is using to get into peoples minds. Thank you in advance if you decide to answer to this question.

Interesting. Some of the energy conscious home builders have used the same concept for quite some time but of course not many of them. This concept is also in my "energy efficient dream house" wish list. I think it demonstrates that in fact Europe can innovate when there is pressure on it.

War and propaganda go always hand in hand but the main difference here is in capability and scale.

Well, define "we" first.

How much American TV watch people in South America? How much English TV watches a German for example, or Italian? I would say, close to zero. So the first issue is that Western media landscape is fragmented. So it is difficult to project such possible attack to outside.

Second issue is media freedom. Media is truly privately owned and there is strong culture of press freedom. Still, there is probably also some level of cooperation with the government. So we should always pay attention if the government is trying to sell us something through media.

Last time such promise was given to African Union leader, they blew up large Ukrainian grain storage in Mykolaiv.

These are nonsense claims that do not have any actual honest resolve behind them.

Russia is threat to Europe the same way it is threat to Ukraine - it can launch a military operation that by rational thinking person would be not acceptable and Russian society would tolerate or even support it.

Russian army has lost over 35000 men and over 4000 units of armored vehicles (tanks, AFV, IFV etc) and yet it keeps going while in the Western world any such loss would have considered catastrophic.

We have mostly politically motivated twisting of the words against political opponents (like NYT is against Trump etc). I always recommend to look what was actually said and in what context.

In principle this happens every day in the West, at least partially. It is most noticeable in US because here the political landscape is very polarized.

There are two important differences though.

The main difference in this case is that there is no monopoly and complete central control, like Russian leadership has over Russian mass media.

Second difference is that Western media does not have direct influence over other populations, if it decides to weaponize its mass media, it can only direct it against the people in their own country. Everywhere else it will be filtered by local publishers.

Russia has (or now in many instances, had) also media control over large Russian population in neighboring countries (like was in this example).

Asymmetry in freedom of press and freedom of speech works strongly in favor of malicious actors with strong control over media and speech.

If you read the comments then there was plan to post more but I presume that the war happened and the poster has now something else to do.

This Youtube video was posted already somewhere in end of November, way before the Russian invasion in Ukraine started but I discovered it when I started to look into capacity of Russian propaganda to create and direct larger human conflicts in the West using coordinated manipulation of media and social media.

I'm not sure who is the target audience of this video based on this unique style but it looks to cover the matter fairly exhaustive and as far I could conclude based on review of these events, it appears to be a realistic and truthful interpretation.

I have recognized very similar patterns elsewhere. For example Russia used numerous of falsified reporting of real events and complete fabricated hoaxes to incite the war in Donbas. The information warfare was used against two separate groups of people - ethnic Russian speaking Ukrainians in Donbas area and Russians in Russia. Goal of the information attacks against Ukrainians was to great unrest and wider support toward Russian intervention. Goal of the information against Russians was to deceive them to join Russian armed groups against Ukraine.

I have also suspicion that Canadian Freedom convoy movement might have been initiated and controlled by Russian propaganda through widely available Russian TV channels like RT and Sputnik France and social media. Many movement spokespersons shared beliefs propagated by Russian propaganda. This suspicion was further bolstered with the research that people against vaccination were more likely supportive of Russian invasion by large margin, that suggest that these people were more likely under Russian propaganda influence.

My personal conclusion is that Russian propaganda machinery can build very persistent and resilient but completely fabricated representations of realities that are very often held by the people under its influence even when confronted with undeniable facts. These fabricated realities are very important tool to direct attitudes of the targeted people.

This is important aspect when planning the communication with the groups under Russian propaganda influence.

For example it is widely held false belief that Ukrainian army has shelled Donbas civilian structures while none of this has been independently confirmed by the OECD mission there. Even worse, there have been at least 3 recent occasions where Russia's controlled forces have either bombed or shelled civilian structures like markets or even hospitals while it has been not feasible by Ukrainian forces because they have been out of range. Main motivation behind these attacks appears to be to maintain negative attitudes against Ukrainian armed forces.

These are complicated issues but must be taken into account in my opinion when communication with the people under strong Russian propaganda influence is planned.

I do not agree with this. While there is not much actual tactical advantage for Russia then they are not distinguishable by very sane judgements. Any same person would have concluded that attacking Ukraine would inflict huge losses, yet this decision was made. This means that ruling out Russia using nuclear weapon against Ukraine is not possible based on this principle.

I have heard former head of US European forces to say that there will be response for sure. Most likely first non-nuclear but conventional. Most likely using air force to wipe Ukraine clean from Russian forces. His estimation was that for F-35 it would take about 1 week.

If you are one then you know what it means, but for the sake of other argument and for the others to understand, being a "Russian agent" means foremost being a member of criminal enterprise and by this I mean real a state level criminal enterprise because Russia is built up as criminal organization and not as normal democratic governance.

In the context of HN, it means mainly comments and submissions with the aim to influence overall attitude in this community toward direction favorable to Russia, or more precisely, favorable to its current criminal leadership.

It is important to notice such possible actors as such actors most likely do not act in good faith. They do not provide correct information, instead of actual discussion, they attempt to create more confusion in readers. It is always not necessary (or even possible) to make somebody to believe completely fabricated reflection of reality. It may be simply sufficient to create enough confusion such that the reader could not differentiate anymore between the real and unreal or important and unimportant.

It is important to notice such possible actors not only here but all around, because like it was first explained, they are part of criminal enterprise, their goal is not to participate is mutually beneficial cooperation but to undermine the very core of the value system our societies stand on, replacing transparency with corruption and consensus with division.

In practice it means that possible "Russian agent" in HN community works for Russian propaganda "department", or "works", as being itself an useful idiot, being fooled by it to the level being indistinguishable from the actual "agent".

One of such clear examples is the claim that Patrick Lancaster is an independent and a journalist while neither of these claims is true. In reality Patrick Lancaster is a tool of Russian propaganda who produces scripted falsifications.

An open democratic society is in very unfavorable position against such manipulations while the attacker has strong media and social media control that is provably capable to create completely fabricated representations of very wide scale reality within the society it holds control over.

Therefore the responsibility is on the shoulders of the individuals of the open democratic society to first acknowledge existence of such agents and second notice their presence.

In practice it means that when such individuals are observed, caution should be applied, meaning that the factual claims should be not trusted but verified, their deceptive manipulative techniques should be observed and ignored.

I hope this comment provided enough content about "Russian agents" and also some tools to handle them.

PS. dang I think it is also something for your consideration.

Thank you for clarifying what parts of the guidelines you think I broke.

If you read my comment carefully then you can notice that pointing out comment author possible affiliation is not the main argument of my comment. Author has formed the comment as personal inner reflection and claims that Slavoj Žižek is wrong because he made a bad philosophical argument. My comment calls this claim out.

Either way, I try to be less snarky, as it is indeed not a good practice. I will also send in the future possible suspicions of "foreign agents" to the mentioned email address instead. I think that in this case HN has failed to sneak out such account despite the claim being good at it. My personal take on this agrees with HN as it indeed is very likely that people can sincerely hold differing views, but this case clearly stands out as different.

"Putin's decision to concentrate his firepower on the eastern front has largely succeeded at bringing the conflict to a grinding stalemate."

What can I say, it honestly does not look like winning. It was not expected that Ukraine could do quickly large counter offensive in Donbas. It was not expected that Ukraine can quickly recapture Mariupol and it was known that Russia will attempt to launch very concentrated and massive offensive in Donbas to make a breakthrough there. So far Ukraine is holding despite quite sizable risk they are taking and despite losses. Either way, Russia does not really advance. There has not been any breakthrough yet.

I don't think it does. Civilian surveillance has been always used on friendly grounds.

Sounds like failure to me.

First, US was a close partner to Ukraine, as were some other states. US is not taking sides, it has continuously supported Ukraine.

And why shouldn't anybody support a democratic country against illegal invasion?

If you don't buy an appropriate ticket, your change of winning is zero. Ukraine winning the war is certainly >0.

I call it theater because if the vaccine is as good as Western ones, you really do not need these draconian measures.

1) The fact that you are not paying attention does not mean that other are not. My-Lai was not genocide because there was no genocidal intent what is the main difference in Ukraine.

> "A "genocide" is, by definition, the attempt to "kill a people". Given that Russia denies Ukrainians are actually a people" ...

Can you explain what is gong on here? It is not genocide because Russia thinks Ukrainians are not people?

2) Did anybody claim that Europe is currently in perfect shape? This is again pointless whataboutism that does not change direction of Europe or general picture.

3) You don't know winter then if you think that somebody in Italy is going to freeze. Either way, there is nothing we can do anymore and escalation is the only option, do we like it or not and faster we escalate, faster it would be over.

4) Tried undermine Russian governance, like be an actual political opposition, like be against Putin? Are you for real? Being against Putin is not being against Russia, or is this too complicated concept for you? It looks like.

So lets see, supporting a little something that could provide restoration of actual democracy in Russia vs undermining democratic structures by using targeted media and social media attacks. Yes, totally the same thing, much hypocrisy.

Do you understand how stupid it sounds, what you claim?

I'm sure that we in the West understand now much better who is Putin and what is Russia.

5) I see, because nothing is perfect, you dismiss the values and go for the genocidal option because you just close your eyes and ears and because it is cheaper for now (is it really cheaper anymore, uh?).

Because Europe is not perfect at the moment, lets go to the rock bottom and choose a genocidal despot who is in war against us. Yes, it makes perfect sense.

Yes, he is in war against us. This is what HE believes. Again, if you have not noticed this, then it is your problem, not the lack of evidence.

6) I think you misunderstood. I do not think Russia will change. But if Europe can satisfy its energy needs internally (from Ukraine, North Sea etc) then it can become stronger democracy and also support more democratic values outside of Europe because it does not have to rely on undemocratic powers for its energy needs.

Yes, Ukraine is not without flaws but these flaws are non-existent in comparison to Russia and can be worked on, that is unfortunately not a realistic possibility for Russia.

Against what are these efficacy comparisons? Omicron? Other variant?

I have not paid attention to COVID-19 recently and I recall that Chinese vaccines were problematic against Omicron.

If it is so efficient then why the hell they have this security theater in China?

There is then perhaps not enough discussion about certain aspects of the invasion and public justification by Putin and rhetoric in Russian media.

It is clear that the main reason behind the invasion is to take control over Ukrainian land and natural resources (especially oil and natural gas that was discovered in 2012). This is clearly an imperialist ambition, but by itself does not make this invasion a genocide.

What makes it genocide is the plan how to solve the Ukrainian question, that is, what to do with the people who oppose Russian invasion in Ukraine and do not accept that Ukraine will become Russian territory.

So far 5 parliaments (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Canada) have declared Russian actions in Ukraine as genocide.

If you think that these parliaments are too much politically motivated, then here is one independent legal analysis

https://newlinesinstitute.org/russia/an-independent-legal-an...

Historian and holocaust researcher Timothy Snyder has written about the topic on multiple occasions.

The following was written after Russian state news agency RIA Novosti published an article about "Ukrainian question" just after revelation of the Bucha massacre:

https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-genocide-handbook

This writing helps to understand the ideology behind these actions and justifications:

https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-easter-offensive

Here is a video in Russian (switch on subtitles) that helps to put everything into better context

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaRUepc-7VQ

He criticizes hard US but when it comes to Russia, he agrees that it is perhaps bad, but still US is much, much, much worse. He completely dismisses genocidal aspect of the invasion like he denies genocide by Serbians on Balkan.

It looks like everything you care about is you wallet and your bottom (line).