That there is no perfect defense. There is no protection. Being alive means being exposed; it’s the nature of life to be hazardous—it’s the stuff of living.
How is Ukraine’s government complicit in genocide?
What country do I want to invade and destroy their culture/language/society?
What are you on about?
I am Ukrainian, I live in Ukraine. I’ve also lived in the russia for 10 years and even to this day have a few russian friends.
I of course didn’t mean to imply that a strong majority of russians are interested in the destruction of only Ukrainians. The russians hate the Baltic nations with a passion (particularly “liberal opposition-mind” emigre russians) and others nations too of course. There is enough hate to go around.
Regarding, the quantitative side, I have read several Russian Field reports, for the latest one that I can access (May 23 to June 2) the results speak for themselves. Regarding non-response, there are methodologies such as list-based polling that can at least partially address this issue. The results once again align with what I mentioned earlier, albeit with a relatively small estimate for preference falsification (~10%) that moves the spectrum from an overwhelming majority (70-80%) to a strong majority (60-70%). To be honest I’ve given up using quantitative results as an argument, I find that any and all polling (no matter what methodology, topical focus) will always be dismissed unless it portrays russians in an innocent light.
History does not define a group of people. But there is also the matter of the timescales. 100 years? Sure, but almost everyone alive today is likely going to be dead by then. 30 years? 50 years? I have a life to live. Historical essentialism is the domain of professors living in NATO countries who do not have to deal with russians outside of sociological research, conferences and the academic equivalent of shitposting online.
A complex evil can indeed happen anywhere; there is nothing unique about russia in that sense. It can and has happened in Ukraine too (and not only in the 20th century). However, there are also practical consideration; reality if I may call it so. Uruguay is not going to land its marines in southern India and force locals to eat their steaks and send them to a torture basement if they refuse. Botswana is not going to send its navy to blockade Malaysia in order to strangle their economy.
And with respect to russia, the reality is that the non-central city that you reference will always (in our “collective” lifetimes, not necessarily for the next trillion years) choose the path of evil. Some might do it because they need money, other might do it due to conformism, another group might be very excited about seeing their country expand and exterminate the local language and culture. Some might simply not really care, they have their own things to worry about, right? But the practical, on-the-ground outcome will be that this town (just like all russian towns/cities/villages) will always be a source of evil for the countries that have the misfortune having russians as their neighbours.
And if you think I am being emotional or whatever (I’ve held these views since 2014, many Ukrainians were uncomfortable with my argumentation; all before Feb 24th of course), I will ask you to answer the following question:
Since my argumentation is allegedly based on historical essentialism, a misinterpretation of quantitative data, a biased view of qualitative data, a lack of empathy for russians (perhaps even understandable in your view), how and when will russia change from its current state?
With respect to the “when?” question, I will literally take anything other than “sometime in the future”, next 10 years? next 50 years? next million years?
The “how?” is the more impactful question. If a strong majority of russians are not genocidal imperialists, then it would make logical sense that russia would stop with its genocidal invasions, no? So how will we get to that point?
I never said all russians. That’s ridiculous, I personally know several who are good, reasonable people.
Your statements about Ukrainians’ thinking on NK/Artsakh seems knowingly provocative and exaggerated.
I think you’re trying to stir the pot a bit, because you don’t really have anything else to say.
Outside of the political sphere, life in russia is nothing like in NK.
I am aware of the such protests and of public condemnations that result in jail sentences and even acts for sobotage.
Realistically, there are three options 1. Do nothing (understandable) 2. Leave the country (not available to all) 3. Join rebel forces and/or engage in sabotage (this takes a lot of bravery, and people have dependents). [1] is the only realistic option for most.
That being said, I never claimed that the situation for those russians who oppose the full scale invasion (and genocidal imperialism in general) is not dire. Nor did I claim that every single russian is a genocidal imperialism.
I did claim that at least a strong majority (if not an overwhelming majority) are genocidal imperialist and provided some high level points with respect to quantitative and qualitative approaches.
I strongly disagree that my statement is a simplification and I tried to explain why.
Your welcome to say I am wrong or claim that the current situation is influencing my thinking (don’t forget, in my OP I did mention that I lived in russia for 10 years, this was before the invasion of Georgia) but you can’t say this is just a quick simplification; “a stereotype driven by a stressful situation” or something like that.
Agreed regarding access to information being a human right.
I was also surprised that Apple went with this and didn’t just ignore them. This is not China after all.
I disagree. While my statement did not include any kind of elaboration. This is not a simplification.
At the very least a strong majority (and I am being conservative) support the annexation of Ukrainian territories and elimination of Ukrainian culture and language in areas under occupation. On the quantitative side this is confirmed by various polling initiatives that use different methodologies (including in-direct polling with attempts to estimate preference falsification).
On the qualitative side, you can look at genocides committed in the last ~100 years by the russians (and there are several, includes less well known ones) and review the attitudes towards these crimes among various socio-political groups (not necessarily in a purely quantitative manner).
I have one interesting anecdote. Currently among the “liberal” russian opposition there is a big debate around a 3 hour YT series about the 90s in russia.
One bit topic that was completely excluded was the actions of russians in Chechnya; the creators (Navalniy’s organization) said it was out of scope.
During their intervention in Chechnya in the 90s, they killed approximately 5% of the civilian population; it would be like if 7.5 million russian civilians were killed.
Don’t get me wrong, a relatively small % of russians would openly admit to that they support extermination of Ukrainian identity (still 10s of millions). But even among the reminder, there is a strong undercurrent of supremacism, a desire of expansion that de facto is support for genocide.
Fascinating assumptions on your part!
There is different people in different countries. No question about that. And free information channels are definitely very important. My argument is that in the case of russia, this factors don’t really come into play in a meaningful way.
Information channels even after the full scale invasion are available and easy to access, it was less restrictive before Feb 24 2022, but the difference is somewhat marginal. Access to information isn’t going to magically change the imperialist, supremacist mindset of the overwhelming majority of russians.
It’s not an access to information problem, it’s a social and cultural problem. I’ve lived there for 10 years (in addition to living a decade in north america and many years in asia), the imperialist/genocidal mindset has survived 3 regimes (Tsarism, USSR, authoritarian capitalism) with very different technological currents and economic structure profiles. It’s not going away just like that.
Full disclosure: I am Ukrainian, but I would argue you can come to the same conclusions by taking a critical look at their history, current attitudes (even among the “liberal” opposition) and broad worldview.
Just wanted to share my thoughts. Re-reading my posts, I think I come off a bit more pushy than I wanted to.
The vast majority of russians support imperialism and a majority hold genocidal views (they would never openly agree to this, but on an outcome basis they do support eradication of Ukrainian culture and not only).
Even to this day, every russian with a smartphone has access to uncensored youtube available within 10 secs on their phone.
Not saying what apple did was right, just pointing out the “lack of factual information” narrative is largely incorrect. It’s more a lack of respect for the rights others, nihilism and overwhelming supremacism; no VPN or technology is going to solve this.
Penalties seem pretty mild, especially for the CEO and CFO. For some reason I suspect their $1 M and $250 K penalties aren’t all that material relative to the amounts they made via Silvergate.
The stuff about tech companies going carbon neutral or whatever was such bullshit. It was clear this was mostly PR and if there was a need to massively increase carbon emissions (as happened with current “AI” trends), they wouldn’t think twice.
The Texas judge is an almost like a satire of justice.
You would think that whole judicial district would be shut due to corruption by this point.
Hahaha, that’s a pretty wild read.
The fucking Gamaverse,
It all depends on what areas of technology interest you. Some context (e.g. in the body of the lemmy post) for more niche areas is always helpful.
Do you have any more info on this?
I use Mastadon pretty regularly and I feel like I somewhat know how it works, yet I read the Threads FAQ on federation and I have no clue what’s going on.
But yes, the ability to subscribe to “mainstream” accounts in Threads from mastadon servers (if they allow federation with Meta) would be a good feature.
Some context on what the fuck is rabbit and r1 would have been helpful.
While a lot of the technical details are beyond my paygrade, this seems to be a potentially large game-changer in the medium term (with possibly a massive impact on Nvidia’s share price).
I personally wouldn’t expect massive innovation.
Smartphones have been around for ~20 years, it’s a very mature product category.
“AI” tech does have potential in the smartphone space, but I thing the useful use cases are going to overshadowed by the hype.
The Wikipedia article is a good starting point if you wanted to actually get an alternative perspective.
But you don’t.
What other states have recognized NK/Artsakh as independent or part of Armenia? What’s Armenia take on this specific issue?
I am going by memory, but hasn’t Armenia itself not recognized Artsakh as independent and legally they consider it to be part of Azerbaijan? If this is correct, does that mean the Armenian government is also complicit in genocide of Artsakh Armenian, or how does this work? Or did I get this wrong?
Ukraine wants to invade NK/Artsakh? Come on now…
You have a completely wrapped perception of the Ukrainian government’s and public’s view on NK/Artsakh.
I just hope you just aren’t aware of reality and are not wasting my time with this…