frabbit

Empty condemnation of Russia while we simultaneously prosecute the publisher of information which helps us decide whether we are behaving in an immoral manner is not merely hypocritical: it's corrosive of the fundamentals of our society.

Right now the Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians that we murdered and the Yemenis that we are helping murder make condemnation of the Russians not just odd, but erodes all possibility of working in a fairer world.

"The notion of lie and truth works differently in Russia. Examples: The Terijoki government (Russian attempt to make puppet government to Finland in 1939) had a story that the working population of Finland was tired of the Mannerheim-Tanner (Marshal of the Finnish Defence Forces in the 1939) fascist junta and formed a government to liberate the Finnish people then when the Russians attacked they found out it wasn't quite the same as what the propaganda [had said]."

What is he insinuating here? This is in a section which does a "fifty words for snow in eskimo" attempt to claim that Russians are linguistically programmed to be liars. He has just discussed a picture which shows the "technological backwardness of Russia" in which the saviour is the German steamship coming up the the river in the far distance. Is he suggesting that all Finns were favour of the collaboration with the NAZIs². This is really weird.

Then he goes on to mix in the Russian poisoning of Skripal, some probably true information about Russian forces operating in Donbass and Crimea with some never-before-heard conspiracy theory about all the people on MH17 being dead already and the hotly disputed DNC and Clinton were hacked by the GRU. Basically a hodgepodge of whatever he wants to believe, all cherry picked with the intent of his stated aims of showing that the Russian leadership are genetic Mongols who have linguistically programmed their boyar and working classes to believe lies. This is poisonous, rock-bottom stuff.

1. https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=2465 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland_in_World_War_II#Finlan...

Again, what on earth is the academic institution allowing this drivel to be associated with their name?

Why does YouTube take down other racist, hate speech videos while leaving this one up? (I am completely against taking any videos or posts down for any reason, but the selective nature of their actions suggests that some racism and misinformation is deemed not just acceptable to them, but even palatable.)

1. https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=1263

What ones stand out for you? I am relatively ignorant on the subject. Your comment stimulated me to google a bit and I came up with this¹ critical (and currently topical) criticism of him for anti-semitism in which he is accused of blaming Jewish people for playing a leading role in the red terror:

His reported self defense included a reference to the Kiev/Kyiv Cheka (precursors to OGPU and NKVD): 'To explain the actions of the Kiev cheka [secret police] only by the fact that two thirds were Jews, is certainly incorrect."'

1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/25/russia.books

After he has already kicked off with the dubious statement that during the Mongol occupation "the only ways to survive were lying, corruption and violence" he follows up with the flat out bonkers statement: "[...] as the Mongols who had previously ruled the country merged into the leading layers, which is still visible. When looking at genetic inheritance they are pretty, pretty dark eyes for example. There are not many flax heads in Russia."

I hope no one flags the OP. I want this post to stay up so that we can all be aware of the racist, Russophobe undercurrents to much of the criticism of Russia's violent, unjustifiable aggression against the people of Ukraine.

There may be other worthwhile points throughout the lecture but that is insanely racist and useless as any sort of analysis.

It does not bode well for the rest of the lecture and reflects very poorly on the speaker and on the university that is allowing the promotion of this race hatred; both on the grounds of the simple-minded racism and then the lack of intelligence at expressing this in public.

As in this case, where this very calm account details what sounds like organized, wide-spread racism shown by Ukranian authorities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXBPKoqnsX0

I suppose I should not be surprised when there are neo-Nazis actually integrated in the Ukranian army: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/10/azov-far-right...

1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/28/nigeria-condem...

If you have further questions about these points please see what happened to the Iraqi women and children (and yes, also men). Great minds and moral leaders like Madeleine Albright[0] will provide you with a shining beacon of purifying truth.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright#Deaths_by_s...

Make it clear to Ukraine that their only hope really is being a neutral buffer state.

Roll back the Romanian and Polish missile bases and the Turkish tracking systems.

Sign the USA back up to all the missile treaties that they have backed out of.

That ought to secure another 40 years of fragile peace in Europe.

Or we could just keep shoving weapons into the Ukraine. Wonder how that will work out? I mean weapons always make things better.

I don't know enough about Russia's changing attitudes towards the USA: how much of it was hope that they could work things out together to jointly oppress the rest of the world; how much of it was biding time in a weakened state before they could mount a plausible defence against the USA.

But it does seem probable that the prospect of being left without the possibility of firing nuclear weapons at the US while staging bases are set up ever close to Russia would be undesirable to Russia.

Do not take from this that I am defending Russia's actions. I have no interest in either a US nor a Russian Imperium and think that the Ukranian right to manage their own affairs without being attacked is paramount. The same way that I believe that Venezuela and Iran have a right not to be attacked.

This was one of the pivotal moments: "US President George W Bush, in 2002, pulled the US out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which banned weapons designed to counter ballistic nuclear missiles." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49198565

Since then it has been slow and steady escalation https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/

while we fritter away the time that would allow us to deal with Climate Destruction.

Yes Putin == $BAD_MAN. Yes USA == $OTHER_BAD_MENS. No, neither of those justifies military action on either side.

This is a stupid waste of time.

You're never sure whether the Chinese submarine is "exercising its rights to international waters" or is preparing for a strike; or the US-Swedish troops are just making friends with each other or getting ready to invade.

That's totally apart from the obvious "sabre rattling" bit.

A shaming moment for Canada.

Specifically I am thinking about this interesting interview with Dr. Leah West onthe Michael Geist LawBytes podcast. From about 8 minutes onwards they discuss whether the terrorist justification or the foreign influence justification existed: https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2022/02/law-bytes-podcast-episod...

It is interesting to see some commentators in this HN thread trying to suggest Russian influence. (And also IMO not very convincing).

In any case, whatever opinion you have on this, it's a good podcast.

What about an online petition or a bake sale?

Less sarcastically: there are frequently situations in which a majority may democratically decide to make a minority behave in a certain way. I think it is relatively clear from opinion polls that a majority of Canadians do not agree with the behavior of the truckers. So writing to an MP or running for parliament will probably be a fruitless strategy. Hence the protests.

It would be trivial to find unpleasant, widely-condemned situations in which you and I would probably be united in our opposition.

The difficulty comes when the minority being forced to behave in a certain way are non-appealing in some way. Democracies need to find a way of dealing with them. It will be horse-trading, negotiation, cajoling, appealing and arguing.

None of those strategies were applied by the Trudeau government before they became hysterical and tried to claim they were having a Canadian version of Jan 6th.

I am certain that many Canadians both do not agree with the apparent demands of the truckers and simultaneously do not agree with the application of the Emergencies Act.

I found this podcast interesting: three interviews with people who were doxxed as donors. I disagreed with the first two, but the third one seemed like a very sane person: https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/756-how-i-ended-up-suppor...

I would argue that laws only mean what they are interpreted to mean by a particular governmental body at a particular time.

And you can in addition have a coherent, clear and easily interpretable body of laws and measures which result in a society which lacks many of the features of what people like to imagine is a "democracy".