Ehhh.

As much as the traditition of yearly votes on some version of Chat Control sucks, it’s just two mentions (The Register missed the reference to COM (2022) 209 under “Fighting serious crimes/child sexual abuse”, because of course it’d be there) in a document with way juicier tidbits. Like

• actual enforcement of the DSA (finally some consequences for social media giants gleefully profiting from manipulation, or an affront to freedom of speech, depending on your opinion)
• overhauling Europol’s mandate to make it “a truly operational police agency”, whereas the current mandate doesn’t cover such things as “sabotage, hybrid threats or information manipulation” (cool or creepy)
• “strengthening border security”, “countering weaponised migration”, “security considerations in EU visa policy”, and “revision of the Visa Suspension Mechanism” are all probably necessary steps, but taken together paint a picture of something that shouldn’t be allowed to go too far

The DSA enforcement is something strongly opposed by social media giants, so I’d expect more denigration of the document as a whole in the future.

Hate is such a strong word. Some bad, some good.

Bad:

• Copyright infringement and other unethical practices in acquiring training data
• Unimaginative AI art flooding the graphics market and the Internet
• Taking work from actual artists that might generate something new
• So much energy used on pointless, quickly forgotten “single-use art” in the middle of a climate crisis

Good:

• Okay starting point for logos for eg. small associations or clubs, preferably treated as version 0.1 and later worked on, but still an affordable option, and more personalised than clipart
• Creative visual outlet for people with no interest in developing their graphical skills, but who have an urge to get a small number of specific images out of their system
• Probably a good media for some commentary on the relationship between real a unreal, familiar and alien cognition, and such, but that itself is such a cliche
• Simply a fun toy

surely you can show me a shittone of examples of such a massive campaign of kidnappings happening to people forbidden from leaving the country […] that happened in […]let’s say last two centuries?

I’ll just give you a partial list of European countries that 1) had wartime conscription, and 2) executed deserters, in WW1 or 2, which would indicate an equally/more drastic “kill or be killed” choice, and is way easier to find. Or do you know better how conscription worked in the WWs off the top of your head?

• Britain and the Commonwealth
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Soviet Union (estimated around 150 000 executed in WW2, including returned POWs executed for “desertion”)

Conscription is done in preparation for “mass kidnappings of cannon fodder”, as you put it.

No?..

…yes? Or do you think the countries with peacetime conscription do it for shits and giggles, and the massive economic benefit of half the population losing about a year of working life?

Russia has conscription but not kidnapping part and forbidding to leave the country part. So do many other countries.

Russia has a larger population than Ukraine, and thus the luxury to not need everyone, and still they have called in reservists in “partial mobilization”, exact number unknown. As Russia has conscription, every adult man who has performed their service is in reserve. As of 2023, reservists called into service are not allowed to leave and are subject to restrictions until they report to duty, which seems like high-tech enforcement/“kidnapping” to me. The conscriptions have also hit poorer regions, often with large ethnic minorities, more harshly, but I’m sure that’s just coincidence.

There are reports of some military districts closing borders, of mobilized men being ill-equipped and used as cannon fodder, being killed in large numbers, you name it. As with all war reporting, hard to get well-verified factsfacts, especially from a country hostile to neutral reporters. We do know that protests are broken (and male protestors sometimes drafted).

But yeah, probably not needing troop replacements to the same extent as Ukraine. Who, I’m saying again, are fighting for the survival of their country and culture.

I said “countries that are considered “good” and “democratic”” by the west. Does Cuba fit that definition now?

I honestly don’t know that much about Cuba, seems like country much like any other that has trouble because of a difficult neighbor and making the best of it? But if we’re talking about whether mandatory military service is sometimes justified, not whether mass media is biased (duhhhhh), perceptions held by the majority are inconsequential.

“Conscription” - that’s not what am I talking about though. Conscription (which is also absolutely wrong of course) is indeed present in a lot of countries. Mass kidnappings of cannon fodder that is not allowed to leave is quite unique to Zelensky’s regime.

Conscription is done in preparation for “mass kidnappings of cannon fodder”, as you put it.

Edit: Also kudos for not trying to defend ethnic Russians’ history of ethnic cleansing.

A brief scroll of Wikipedia (the sources seemed legit) shows that, for example, Cuba (which I’m assuming you admire?) has mandatory military service, no known policy of alternatives for conscientious objectors, and harsh punishments for evading it even in peacetime, to the point that people have attempted to injure themselves to get out of it. They haven’t been tried in modern war, but can’t see them suddenly relaxing the rules when actually tested. Border countries tend to take defence very seriously.

For countries and cultures bordering Russia, this really is an existential question. The forced population transfer/ethnic cleansing of Tatars, Ingrians, Chechens and Ingush, Balkars, etc. show what tends to happen. And before you say “well that was Stalin”, I’ll point to the Russification efforts of Alexander III and Nicholas II, and to… well, just about all speakers of Uralic languages still existing in Russia, facing steadily or rapidly declining numbers. Also the number of people identifying as ethnic Russians in the Baltics and Crimea, directly attributable to said forced population transfers; Transnistria, where the change happened more organically but was nonetheless used as an excuse for invasion; and to some degree in eastern Ukraine, that saw significant russification attempts and Russians moving in to man the industrial centers during SU, inflating the numbers of ethnic Russians and prevalence of the Russian language at cost of the native population.

True. I’m still shocked. This should be taken more as low estimate of corporations than admiration of their accomplishments. You know those goals were set as low as they could be, with as many tricks as there could be, and still I expected something like maybe 20% to stick to them at best.

Wait, over 60% met them or faced consequences?

Edit: “Almost 61% achieved their targets” holy fuck. Corporations did something good they said they would, over half the time.

Completely opposite for me. Full bush keeps everything more “airy”, whereas shaven is underwear directly against the parts that bleach them, plus it all gets all sweaty.

Not disagreeing, we should strive for good or at least civil relationships with our neighbors, even if we don’t exactly like each other, but the problem is that

• any agreement or peace deal with Russia isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, they’ll just ignore it when they want to
• make peace with one country in Middle-East, you’ll anger another

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This, and if they’re a friend, not pausing to think before a shared activity that would make you consider finances. A weekend/weeklong trip, concert tickets to a costly performer/seats, trying a new more expensive restaurant for lunch, etc. Even if they aren’t interested that time, the explanations say that openly or they address the cost in time, not money.

Just because this needs to be said.

Open borders: Closed for Ukrainian men of military age during wartime. You, I, journalists, etc. can still come and go.

Competitive political space: Banned parties supporting the country they are currently at war with. No matter how you feel about who’s at fault, that must be an understandable action to you. Also, most members of the largest banned party (Opposition Platform - For Life) are still in the parliament and just formed other parliamentary groups.

Competitive information space: Again, wartime with a country engaging in propaganda eagerly and with talent.

Elections: Would be against Ukrainian constitution to have elections under martial law, not to mention impossible to arrange or supervise. Or you think it would be possible to organise an election where everyone had easy and reliable access to vote right now? The decision was just confirmed unanimously yesterday, with all 17 previous members of the banned …For Life -party who were present also voting for it.

Why do anything? Every goal is a value choice. Pleasure? Money? Leaving a legacy in children or added knowledge or whatever? Learning? Improving your community? Improving the world in general? Raging against the absurd?

If self-centered hedonism is the way you want to spend your brief meaningless time in this meaningless world, go for it! Just go for it with the same full knowledge of its pointlessness and your mortality as you would anything else.

In a defensive war against an equal or more powerful enemy, everyone is needed to do the part the military organisation needs them to. For many it’s their civilian job, for the rest it’s whatever’s needed, including the front lines (after training, well-equipped and well-led). War’s ugly.

I’d be highly sceptical of any beatings occurring. Common sense suggests that an unwilling soldier you got to the front that way would likely bring more harm to the morale of their fellow troopmates, than benefit through their own efforts.

When Real Men fuck, women just get in the way.

It’s not exactly the same physical brain though? Neurons die and are sometimes, if rarely in adulthood, generated. They are constantly repaired, the exact molecules that make them up change. Glial cells die and form and they have supporting functions. Diseases change brain structure more slowly than immediate trauma. And so on.

I certainly wouldn’t say I’m the same person I was as a toddler.

Eating a banana. First you bite both heads off, then sink your front teeth into one end to nibble away one third, then separate the other two thirds and eat them separately. You can think of them as the corpora cavernosa and the corpus spongiosum to maintain the penis-analogue in a slightly more disturbing form.

I got this far writing a response, haven’t read the last few articles or watched the Chomsky but since it hasn’t progressed in over a week and I will continue to be happily occupied for the foreseeable future, I’ll post it now.

Okay, so we’re putting to rest the “expansionist NATO” argument, now we’re at “offensive NATO” and “the US manipulation of Ukraine”? This discussion is becoming way too unfocused, and I’d appreciate it if you could keep it tighter and, you know, not sprawling linkspam that takes this long with the time I can priorise for it. Answering the main points I thought I read in the articles.

----- NATO -----

1. NATO was established to not allow the SU and communist ideology to gain a stronger foothold in Europe.

No duh? So was the Nordic socdem model. Doesn’t make it a bad idea.

2. NATO was an US-led offensive alliance agaist SU.

NATO did not start nor was it involved in any armed conflict against the SU, or in any armed conflict with the “eastern bloc” in Europe during the cold war (unlike the SU). As an offensive alliance, it would have kind of sucked. Espionage is related to three letter agencies and embassies, with or without military alliances.

Also this claim somewhat contradicts point 1; point 1 assumes the European members to be sympathetic to the SU, point 2 hostile.

3. NATO is a violent, aggressive alliance. There is no evidence that NATO is providing “security” to Europe.

Are you confused about European history? Because if there’s one thing worthy of note, it’s that we’ve been at each others’ throats all the damn time. This “Pax Americana” has been a wonderful anomaly compared to any similar timespan in history since basically the Roman empire, all the more exceptional since it included tense hostilities and the turmoil of the end of the SU. Sure, correlation is not causation, but something has certainly worked here, and NATO doesn’t at least seem to have harmed the process.

4. NATO did not cease to be at the fall of the SU, which is evidence of it being an offensive tool of the US.

The newly formed Federation of Russia was very unstable until at least 1993, nobody knew which way it’d go, and already in 1994 it started the first Chechnyan war. Also, since when are international organizations terminated within a span of a couple of months or even a few years, without pressing need?

5. NATO has military outposts near the borders of NATO countries, which is provocative.

Borders are where military outposts tend to be. Wouldn’t really make sense in the middle? Russia has military outposts near all their neighbors, before and after they joined NATO.

6. 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia

It certainly wasn’t the ideal solution (which would have been for the violence to stop at the first diplomatic “hey, cut it out”) , but can’t say it was worse than what continuing the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians would have been. What would have been your next step at stopping it, or would you have let it continue, or do you believe it didn’t happen?

6. Afghanistan and Libya… NATO’s involvement in the Middle East

American projects with nominal NATO presence from other countries would have happened with or without NATO. Also they’re mostly not in Europe. If your point is that US foreign actions are often questionable, and that they’re probably an unreliable ally, yes to all of that.

7. Operation Gladio

That was interesting, didn’t know about it before, thank you! Again I’m doubtful of how important NATO was for it; if the US wanted to have “insurgency assistants” or even faux-terrorists (though as I read those links are questionable?) in European countries, it wouldn’t have been that difficult even without.

8. NATO expansion into Asia

Has not happened and would hopefully be veto’d by its European members. The US should form a similar military alliance under a new name there if they want to, the security interests of Europe and the Far East have little in common and it makes no sense to attempt stuff too many different things in the same organisation.

----- UKRAINE ------

I’d also like to point out that the speed at which some people go from “realistically Russia had no choice but to attack this smaller neighboring country” to “Ukraine nazis bad” truly is astounding.

1. The Nuland & Pyatt phone call

Unlike a lot of people, I don’t really see anything that queationable in the transcript. Shop talk between workmates foregoing the empty niceties and using “want” as for “would like to, our aim is”, just like I do at work.

2. Svoboda

In the 2019 parliament election they got 2.15% of the vote. It hardly represents the view of the common Ukrainian.

3. Maidan wasn’t about EU vs. Russia-led alliance trade agreements, but about the US wanting the actually popular(?) Yanukovich out.

Funny timing, and Yanukovich fleeing to Russia (not even the eastern territories, actual Russia!), and being unanimously being voted out by the parliament.

4. Maidan snipers

As many opinions as there are people. Here’s a scientific article looking at the info available in 2023 (including plausible confessions), and coming to the conclusion it was a Russian false flag (of which they have a long history).

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2023.2269685

5. U.S. funding of the “democratic opposition” to the tune of $5 billion over the past 10 years

Over the past 35 years. I’d love to know the full story of this, and how it compares to other former SU countries. Some of it must be the support for former SU countries, some NED, but there’s a lot more to cover. Without the information, the number, while interesting, is useless.

6. Neo-nazism, fascism, and ultra-nationalism in Ukraine (what your sources actually say):

BBC 2014: “the Kremlin has characterised the new leaders in Kiev as a “fascist junta” made up of neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, set on persecuting, if not eradicating, the Russian-speaking population. This is demonstrably false.”

Hill 2017: “The odious Russian media tried to paint Ukraine as a land of Nazis, though that is patently wrong. Ukraine has a thriving Jewish community, and its far-right is still on the fringe. It’s the same in America.”

I don’t see that as different from any other country?