> with Kremlin propaganda portraying Ukraine as a proto-fascist, neo-Nazi state
Kremlin propaganda... I mean the US did (publicly at least)suspend military aid to Ukranian militias over their overt neonazi and white supremacist ties¹(these militias were then simply subsumed into the National Guard). Furthermore, the American military has even published a publicly available analysis of such forces in Ukraine², confirming their existence.
None of the sources I've used here are in any way "Russian", they are all by Western sources. If quoting the American military's own reports is spreading "Kremlin propaganda", well then I can't help you.
If you think there is no weight to the neonazi presence in Ukraine, you've clearly fell for western propaganda, which the linked article gives itself away as being.
Are you implying that having a neo-nazi problems justifies the invasion? Because that’s what it sounds like.
There’s also some irony in dismissing this article as propaganda when all you’ve pointed out is that it, offhandedly I might say, called the situation Kremlin propaganda. Especially it since consists mostly predictions, an enormous amount of which have become true.
> Are you implying that having a neo-nazi problems justifies the invasion? Because that’s what it sounds like.
Not that I condone war, or the invasion, but going off the cuff here: If we take the context of what Russia has said, and to facts on the ground, the 2 largest Russian military operations are currently surrounding Kharkiv and Mariupol, which have shown to be 2 of the largest bases for the neo-nazi and far-right militia recruitment in Ukraine.
> There’s also some irony in dismissing this article as propaganda when all you’ve pointed out is that it, offhandedly I might say, called the situation Kremlin propaganda. Especially it since consists mostly predictions, an enormous amount of which have become true.
I don't doubt the validity of the article's predictions. I doubted the articles dismissal of the neo-nazi and far right presence as being "Kremlin propaganda". When I hear this line, it automatically makes me believe the writer is either ignorant, or intentionally spreading propaganda, as this kind of dismissal does not coincide with reality. I'm just trying to inform people, because I see this narrative constantly, and it's worth fighting back against.
> Kharkiv and Mariupol, which have shown to be 2 of the largest bases for the neo-nazi and far-right militia recruitment in Ukraine.
What are you talking about? Kharkiv and Mariupol are 95% russian speaking population. Before the Donbas events, these were very pro-russian cities, after Donabas the population learned what Russia is. The same amount of neo-nazis tehy can find in Minsk or St. Petersberg, may as well bomb these.
We're talking about neonazi and far right militias in the ground that are being trained and funded by America. You clearly didn't read any of the sources that I linked(which are Western, and in some cases, US military sources). I'm not talking about dumb neonazis larping somewhere, we're talking about well armed and funded militias that are being used to fight a proxy war, killing civilians.
Regarding Kharkiv and Mariupol I won't discuss further as you clearly are more motivated by rhetoric, than talking about actual facts.
The statements you make don't pass basic sniff test. America training anti-russian militias in Kharhiv, would be like Russia training anti-american militas in Toronto. Did America trains some small % of overal ukrainian army - yes, can you find some wierdoes there - sure. But large scale anti-russian milita training in kharhiv is nuts (well was nuts until last week, now it's different story)
About rethoric vs facts. Is Kharhiv not predominant russian speaking population? In 2010 elections Kharkiv voted 70% for Yanukovych, very pro-russian candidate (wanted to unite Ukraine with Russia which resulted in hime being booted in the end). Today Kharkiv is resisting russian invasion for 7th day, surrounded 40km from russain border, is all this resitance by american trained neo-nazis?
There are more Neo Nazi's in Moscow alone than in all of Ukraine. Heck, in NL they are sitting in Parliament. Germany the same. USA the same. The whole of the West has a Neo Nazi problem. And we will have to deal with that, but open societies, freedom of speech and democracies are an ideal breeding ground for this sort of thing.
If behaving like a Nazi justifies invasion, we need to plough some missiles into Moscow. Barrelling tanks into a resisting democracy is about as Nazi as one can get.
You can find some white supremacist/neo-nazi fuckwits pretty much wherever you go, there are probably more then a few in most western militaries (and I wonder how many you could find in the Russian military). It's not grounds for overthrowing a democracy and murdering innocent civilians in the process, particularly when according to your sources:
However, the mobilization of far-right groups in Ukraine does not extend to political success;
> However, the mobilization of far-right groups in Ukraine does not extend to political success; in the 2019 parliamentary elections, they received little over two percent of the vote.
These groups don't need political success when they are already subsumed into the apparatus of the military, as the sources I have linked to also point out.
[0] seems to be the sole source of this, and even it doesn’t make any claim of power within the military outside of being protected. And that is ignoring that there are a lot of words like "ostensibly" or "seemingly" when explaining why the author is correct. Which brings us back to 2%.
Ukraine are supporting the Azov Battalion out of sheer desperation due to constant Russian aggression. They can't afford to pick and choose who will help them in their defence. The presence of neo-nazis in the general population is actually much lower in Ukraine than it is in Russia according to polling. And there's no evidence of a neo-nazi presence in Ukrainian leadership.
Ukraine has a neonazi problem that has been thoroughly analyzed and presented in the West. That's not exactly news.
However (and that's a big however) majority of Ukranians are not neonazis. And their political leadership is certainly not neonazis with Zelensky being a Jew. That kinda puts the 'ol Soviet playbook about "liberating people from neonazis" that's being used by Putin in a weird light. Maybe he's going to liberate USA next, because you know, KKK?
Yes, there are neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian military. There's neo-Nazis in the American military too, and the German military despite their extensive anti-Nazi efforts, along with neo-Nazis in the Russian military such as the Wagner group. Turns out militaristic authoritarians are attracted to military service wherever they are. I'm not saying that neo-Nazis in the military aren't a problem, but it's a problem like covid in the military is: something that's nigh inevitable as long as it exists, and something to be stamped out when evidence of its existence is found, regardless of which military it's in.
Well, you are not wrong to some extent. Even the mainstream media's 'blue eyes and blond hair' bias are playing into Putin's weak excuse to invade - making the media look like white supremacists. [0]
Just how they think wars cannot happen anywhere in the world and now they have been revealed to be and admitted white supremacists themselves on TV is just beyond me.
Azov is a single militia unit with plenty of non-neo-Nazi members, who joined because it's well equipped and has high morale rather than to advance some far-right cause.
The German Armed Forces have a right wing problem.
That's why a 100 billion Euro budget for these guys might not be the best idea without adressing the Nazi problem first.
I used to be a huge proponent of getting rid of conscription in Germany. Turned out that conscripts, being by definition from all walks of life and political backgrounds, offset the right wing problem a lot. But yes, we need to get a grip on that. I wouldn't worry abut the additional money, so. After all we spend 20+ million on the restauration of a sailing ship. A new one goes for around 4 to 5. Maybe we burn that money on a carrier? Forgetting the aircraft?
Oh, we had more than one scandal with neo-Nazis in the Armed Forces. One officer, who was flagged due to his master thesis by the French as a Nazi, posed as a refugee from Syria and tried to kill some politicians and blame it on refugees. One unit of the KSK was dissolved after some very Nazi-themed parties. One of their NCOs was found to have an underground depot of weapons and ammo in his garden.
And I could go on and on.
EDIT: In the official history of the Bundeswehr, neither the 3. Reich and the Wehrmacht nor the GDR does exist. Which is such a wasted opportunity to teach soldiers about the risk of serving oppressive regimes, facilitating genocide and not standing up for democracy. Anecdotally, I once passed their Officer Candidate Assessment center. In the welcome speech, an Air Force Major directly said something along the lines of "people with Antifa stickers on their bags can just drop out right away. You are not welcome". I kept my mouth shut, I did drop out after successfully passing due to other reasons, but it struck me as strange that, of all the armed forces, anti-fascists should be welcome in the German ones.
> In the official history of the Bundeswehr, neither the 3. Reich and the Wehrmacht nor the GDR does exist.
Uhm, no?
> Which is such a wasted opportunity to teach soldiers about the risk of serving oppressive regimes, facilitating genocide and not standing up for democracy.
Yes, and the portion of history I mentioned isn't shown in the official Bundeswehr museum nor is it considered part of their tradition. Maybe I worded it wrong, than.
Oh, this is simply the tip of the iceberg. Most people have absolutely no idea how compromised the information system is.
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, am I right? Unless people in government want to have you murdered for standing up against corruption, or for being an activist. Very, very deeply disturbing, actually.
If companies respected and paid platform/architecture engineers, or SecOps/SysAdmin types fair amounts of money and treated them with respect, instead of just throwing more and more money at hordes of mindless devs who are "pushing product", as virtually every single company does, maybe this problem wouldn't exist.
I've had this conversation too many times. Security isn't hard, it's just that nobody has respect for it. The guy who understands software security isn't getting the respect he deserves. The situation is so bad, some companies are literally hiring people who know the equivalent of script kiddie "penetration-testing".
Pay security engineers enough and listen very carefully to what they have to say. Literally the only companies who seem to understand this basic concept seem to be the intelligence agencies, and a few other high profile companies.
Someone remind me why Germany needs to be installing Israeli spyware onto citizens phones? We know this software's only purpose is to track down wrongthink and then murder dissidents.
Massive blow to the integrity of European telecoms.
Can you stop posting this bait in every single thread about the NSO? It's really annoying that you repeatedly drag people into shallow semantic arguments for dumb (nationalistic?) reasons: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Frankly, that is rich coming from you considering that you do this often enough that I have several of these specifically directed at you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25492587. Posting flamebait and then editing it to make the people who respond to you look stupid is against the guidelines. Posting "corrections" or "gotchas" every time a topic comes up is not striving for accuracy, it's being purposefully misleading to violate the guidelines. I am sick of you pretending each time that you aren't seeing the many people who tell you you're wrong or that you should stop. Until now I had held out hope that you were going to stop at some point, especially considering your productive contributions elsewhere, but I think I've given up now.
"The Guardian reported this year that hundreds of thousands of euros of Yana Peel’s legal bills were expensed to the NSO Group by her husband – another move that apparently angered his partners.
Stephen Peel’s lawyers said at that time that the “manner” in which the legal fees were paid had been approved by Kowski and Lueken, and he strongly disputed the suggestion that the payment of the expense claims was a source of disagreement between the partners.
Peel, Lueken and Kowski are all now involved in a legal dispute over the future ownership of the firm they created."
Irrelevant. The people who own the most morally corrupt and toxic companies, that are destroying the planet, have all the money in the world to advertise and influence "organically" when everything they do is as inorganic and unnatural as it gets.
Industrialists will be first to the guillotine(in Minecraft of course).
Do you honestly believe everyone would suddenly know about the Chicago Strangler if they were murdering only white meth addicts? This racial rhetoric is so tired.
Exactly. Just look at the Green River Killer. He’s not well known, but he killed 50 young women, mostly white, but also mostly runaways and sex workers.
I feel like the Green River Killer is quite well know...
But even if he's not as well known as Zodiac, again, look at the victim profile: runaways and sex workers. It's not just about skin color, although for some reason both of you zeroed in on that. I specified "marginalized groups" such as [mostly black] runaways. It's about being poor, unknown, and not white.
"Yet the Chicago Strangler [1], who is still active, still operating to this day, 50+ victims, few have heard of....because he attacks marginalized groups like black runaways rather than white people."
Your implication is that white people can't be marginalized. Economics cut across skin color.
In another comment in this thread, you mention that a condition of being marginalized is being non-white. The logical inverse of that is white people cannot be marginalized. Yet here, you acknowledge that white people can be marginalized.
So, which is it?
The common thread seems to be economic status as another commenter stated.
Alright, my previous comment was too fuzzy, let me try to be more clear.
Directly contrasting a specific "non-white marginalized group" with "all white people" does, for me, evoke the impression as if the assumption was that there were no people among "white people" that could be marginalized the same way.
> He only said that that serial killer targets black runaways, and that that is a marginalized group.
This is the part of the comment I was replying to that I took issue with and felt I had to rebut, because it's simply a false summary. The original comment definitely was a stronger statement than that through the broad comparison it drew.
If the original post had been phrased "... rather than white middle class people" (which I believe was the intention), I would completely agree with it.
Yes. The police have had a long history of chalking up death in impoverished black neighborhoods to “gang violence” and closing investigations. Topically, Chapelle had a famous stand up bit about it.
This really seems far fetched and disingenuous. I'm assuming that holocaust deniers are only 100% successfully deplatformed when the SPLC has absolutely free reign over which obscure groups and individual statements it may flag. In other words when the SPLC has literally 100% full control over the public discussion. How is this not totalitarian?
I've seen entire microcosms of people on twitter and facebook call for the murder of white people, I wonder if the SPLC would use some of their extremely extensive public funding to study that instead. (Hint: no)
> The people who visit this website are the people who are paid to create and administer all of this technology.
Exactly, some falsely assume all technologists somehow share an enthusiasm for morality. Many of the most successful technologists I know simply work for the highest pay from military/intelligence contracts.
The term "hacker" in "hacker news" is too misleading, especially those of us who use the more RMS-esque definition of it. Petition to change to something more appropos.
I personally agree that the more RMS-esque or Steven Levy definition of "hacker" is a good idea. However, we must acknowledge that "hackers" is not never a homogeneous group, and even more so today. I know some greyhat hackers who do brilliant technical works that rightfully entitie them "hacker", but they have questionable ethics. Normally I use the generic definition from RFC 1392 as the compromise.
> hacker: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.
Using this definition, calling this site "Hacker News" is not exactly accurate, but also not too far-off. I think this website is 40% "Silicon Valley & Startup" News, 40% "Hacker" News, and 20% misc.
To add to that, even if the word "hacker" has a malicious connotation, today, the meaning of the word is closer to "the one who knows his/her stuff well and enjoys breaking them down and creating new things".
One of my favourite sites is the IKEAhackers.net (no affiliation). That site truly shows what a "hacker" does, in the furiture domain, but still, decomposing, redesigning, reusing.
Exactly like the RFC 1392 (aka "Internet Users' Glossary") as you mention. There is a distinction to the word "cracker" which shows malicious intent (what our dear friends on EF + NSA are doing).
This piece of news should also be a reminder to ALL, that these agencies that "protect" us (irrespective of flag) cannot and should not be trusted with/for anything. Especially not with the truth.
we should made labels by hashing publicly registered semi-precise definitions, and maybe add markers to indicate how closely what we mean fits said registered definition of the label.
(I don't actually think this is what people should do, but I do think it might be a cool expirament.)
Your comment implies that working for military/intelligence is automatically immoral. Nothing could be further from the truth. Believing that freedom is "free" is highly delusional. This civilization that we have, and enjoy, almost entirely depends on having more, better, bigger guns than the "bad guys" (in fact, having more, better, bigger guns is the best way to ensure you don't have to use them).
What you do with the guns is a different issue, but there's clearly many nations worldwide that focus on defense but not offense (maybe not US, but probably Switzerland).
> I had to "confess" that i'm racist and promise to do better or it would have consequences for my career. Sidenote: I volunteer at a refugee center and took in a syrian family.
It's almost like making generalisations about people's actions only by their skin colour or ethnic background is somehow wrong. Weird to think that basically anyone studying social science or humanities is being taught this stuff and that it is at this point basically accepted as fact.
