Tuuktuuk

I don’t think that they [lemmy.ml admins] argue against human rights. The problem comes from them arguing that things like the Holodomor were justified.

They removed a comment of mine because I said that putting Uyghurs in concentration camps is not okay. That is arguing against human rights. A very crude kind of arguing, as outright deleting a comment is not a very constructive argumentational device, but arguing all the same.

Human rights are not as fundamental as they are presented.

Here you are wrong. And also, I think after this comment of yours, I can save myself the work of having this conversation with you.

To oppose human rights, there is Guantanamo and the share of the the black prison population.

How does that oppose the concept of human rights?

And still, the US remain the champion of human rights.

Now really. It is not. Just look at goddamn Trump and what he’s doing. I will not be able to see whatever you reply, because after going through all this “US has done horrible things” you still fail to see that USA is not a champion of human rights. Was a nice conversation until this post of yours. Bye.

To white people, if the political influencing in the world and things like the drug pandemic in the US, and Russia, don’t count. The cleansing in Indonesia of Communists was caused by the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965–66 . A bit more than 50 years, like Bangladesh, but isn’t that enough to make Russia the lesser evil?

If we are taking this from 1960’s in this weird comparison of ours that has nothing sensible to do with Ukraine (as USA is not a part of neither Ukraine or the Russia), the we’ll also need to take into account those who died in the Soviet prison camps. The death toll was absolutely maddening until the GULAG system was closes in the late 1950’s, but even after that deaths were extremely common. The death toll of the Soviet prison camp system after 1950’s is a seven-digit number.

Though, all of this doesn’t matter: Even if the death toll of Soviet camps had been only, say 1000 people per year, it would still not mean that those were not okay. It’s impossible to find US numbers without a Soviet counterpart that is even higher. That doesn’t mean that the USA is somehow a fantastically awesome country or anything like that. It only means that they were very murderous instead of very extremely murderous back in those days.

And indeed: Even is USSR had been only very murderous instead of very extremely murderous – or even if it has been merely murderous, genocides are still not an okay thing to do. It doesn’t matter if you make a very big genocide or a genocide that is very small when compared to some other genocides. A genocide is never acceptable. Never ever.

The intervention of Nuland is documented.

That happened in year 2014. Putin having the Russian grammar altered so that the “в Украине”, as it was officially correct since year 1991, was replaced with “на Украине” happened in year 2008, six years before this phone call you are referring to.
And in case that you are not aware of that rule in the Russian grammar:
When you are talking about independent countries, in Russian languages you always say “in Germany”, “in Ukraine”, “in Russia”, “in Spain”. The Russian word for “in” is “в” (or the same translit to Latin alphabet: “v”).

And about regions, you often say “on”. In Russian you say “on Crimea”, “on the Krasnodar land”, etc. The Russian word for “on” is “на”. Or, the same in Latin alphabet: “na”.

In year 1991 they said that now it’s officially “in Ukraine”, although during Soviet times they had said “on Ukraine”, because back then Ukraine was not an independent country.

But then there was the orange revolution, and after that, Putin decided Ukraine should no longer be allowed to exist, and began a campaign for taking over Ukraine. One part of that campaign was this change of grammar, basically forbidding all official outlets from using a grammatical form suggesting that Ukraine is a full-fledged independent country.

What you are saying here is that Nuland went 6 years back in time with her phone call.

And also, in that phone call she says who she would prefer to see in the leading position in Ukraine. You bet in the previous elections, the embassy of Finland in Washington D.C. had a similar phone call, where the some important worker in the embassy of Finland told someone in Finland who they would prefer to see as the next president of USA and why. Does that mean that Finland was making an intervention in US politics? Well, I know. It does. And apparently the intervention was a failure. But hey, at least we tried!
You bet there were similar phone calls being made also from the Swiss embassy in Kyiv. And from the Polish embassy and from the Portuguese embassy – because why the heck would there not be? It’s the job of embassy workers to keep their home country’s officials on track with what they think is in best interest of their own country and talk about it. Please listen to that phone call with this in mind. You will also notice that it was very unlikely to have travelled 6 years backwards through time. It was not a call important enough for that purpose.

(My friends were at Maidan in Kyiv back then. I know what they were doing there and I know why they were there. This whole “Ukrainians have no agency” you are spouting is a horrible story that you should not allow to rot your brain. They were there to protect their country from an autocratic coup that was being done by their president. They were doing pretty much what people in USA should be doing right now. But people in USA are not Ukrainians. They will not surround the centre of Washington DC. They will not build shields to protect from ICE. They will be okay with landing in fascism.)

pointed to “targeted attacks”

not

pointed to the targeted attacks

Would you mind correcting the header to not cause misunderstandings, please?

Overall there are hardly any natives in the east of the US even though that’s the fertile land where they must have lived.

Yeah, I noticed already yesterday that it looks similar to the ethnic map of the Russia. But the difference is that USA has toned down its behaviour, the Russia a has not. Shooting the buffalos to starve a nation to death is pretty much Holodomor.

1990’s What are the Russian ones?

First Chechen war killed 35 000 to 50 000 civilians, the second one something like 25 000 to 35 000. And civilians and soldiers altogether, they were about 150 000 to 300 000 dead in the two Chechen wars. Plus a lot of wounded, and Groznyi got completely levelled in the way Bakhmut was.
And then there are of course the victims of Mariupol, who number in 15 000 to 25 000.

USA’s war in Iraq cost lives of about 25 000 human lives, most of which were civilians. If we add all excess mortality caused by the war, then we get very much higher numbers for both Iraq and Ukraine.

Then, the Russian ones beside these actual big-scale slaughters in Russian-type warfare, there’s the ongoing genocides where people are not murdered, but cultures are eradicated. They were ongoing already in 1990’s, not only now.

But also: There is no good reason in caring about whether USA’s numbers are bigger than those of the Russia. Your neighbour rob and kill five people does not mean you are allowed to rob and kill one person.

USA has done a much smaller amount of evil deeds in the last century or half a century, but even if it had done more, that’s irrelevant. A big bad thing done to bystanders does not mean a smaller bad thing done to bystanders is suddenly okay.

I am not a fan of discrediting comments for coming from .ml.

I don’t mean all comments coming from .ml. A lot of people start there and then change for instances where human rights have a meaning. A person is not automatically bad just for being on .ml. If they were, they would be bad even after moving elsewhere, would they not?
But you don’t need to write many times in a community on .ml to notice that their admins’ and moderators’ values are strongly opposed to human rights. I obviously do not appreciate people who support opposers of human rights. I believe in that our thoughts align.

That was kinda cool! Thanks :)

That’s a good reply!

Yeah,

An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet,

So: True, a meme does not need to be a recaptioned image that alters it meaning.
In any case that up there a nice text snippet, yeah :)

Is any microblog post automatically a meme?

Thanks. I don’t have anything meaningful to say about this. I know the arguments that Russia is financing all, even the Ukrainian Nazis, but there is also German media pushing the AfD and other shady stuff. I can’t yet settle to believe that it is all Russian

Hm, there were articles in the Finnish newspapers around year 2005 or 2004 when Putin started financing the neo-nazi organizations in the Russia and countries closely coöperating with the Russia, to do his dirty work. I tried going to the library of Pasila in Helsinki, where they have every newspaper published in Finland since 1880’s on microfilm, but their microfilm reader was broken at that point. And the next time I tried again. I’ve also tried sending email to the newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, that wrote those articles back then, asking them to send them to me because they are extremely relevant now, but I never got a reply from them.

I’m far too overwhelmed with stuff in my children’s life at the moment to really have the energy to go dig through those 20-year-old newspapers on the microfilms (even though I’ve always enjoyed going through the rolls at that library!), as I’ve had burnout episodes already as it is, but maybe I still should. (Meh.)
I guess there must have been articles about in other countries as well, but just like it’s difficult to find a Finn who understood the gravity of the articles back than and therefore has any recall of them having ever been written, I haven’t found any central Europeans who would remember what kind of articles were written about it, and by what papers.

Hm, I once wrote a long text about the word “höhlä” in Finnish. Its existence and etymology alone tell a lot about the centuries of trying to get rid of Ukrainians.
But, there are 39 Finno-Ugric languages. You might know of Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian. And then there are 10-ish Sámi languages. But who are the rest? Why do you never hear of them? And only a part of the nations colonized by the Russia are Finno-Ugric. There are the Aleutian, there are the Altaic, there are the Turkic and there are the various Caucasian cultural groups I understand much worse than the four other groups I’ve mentioned. (Except that I’m currently learning Ingushetian and have learned it’s very close to Ichkerian, a.k.a. “Chechnyan”)

And yeah, people don’t often understand the history of place names such as the name of the “Novorossijsk”. That translates literally to “Newrussia-town”. They named it that way because it was founded when those lands were taken from the nation that lived there previously and assimilated under the Russian culture. Those were the “New lands”, or in Russian: “Novorossija”. Go to Youtube and find about the Kubanskaya Balachka. Its speakers vehemently say it’s not Ukrainian, but a form of Russian, but being able to speak both Ukrainian and Russian, I find the case absolutely unambiguous. But indeed: Those families who were able to say with straight face “no, we are absolutely Russians and nothing else!” were the only ones who weren’t disappeared to Siberia. And that’s what they say to this day. But Russians cannot understand that “dialect”, while Ukrainians don’t even recognize it as not being Ukrainian, unless explicitly told they are not listening to Ukrainian but Kubanskaya Balachka.
In the 1920’s and 1930’s USSR formed Ukrainian-language youth choirs in the area of Novorossija in the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, RSFSR. Soon after, all children that had enrolled to those choirs, plus their siblings and parents, were sent to work camps in Siberia. But Ukrainians were not really special in that regard. The Russian Empire, and later USSR, was constantly doing the same stuff to all nations within the territory controlled by it.

But, to answer this:

What is happening besides Ukraine?

Just take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia . Look at the sheer number of names of nations listed there. Each of those was a full-fledged nation of its own just a bit over 100 years ago. Only the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway truly expanded the Kremlin influence further than some 500 km from Moscow. Until that, those lands were parts of the Russian empire basically only on paper. Without a connection neither by railway or by sea, there was no sensible way of ruling those lands. The only way to move about was along “roads”, that were rather paths than anything we would contemporarily call “roads”. There was no infrastructure like the Swedish network of gästgiveri establishments, so the only way to get anywhere more than a day’s riding trip from home was to pack your own tent and have some seriously good survival skills. And that’s not something the Czars were doing. Going to some place in eastern Siberia to give orders to the locals would have been an endeavour akin to what Marco Polo did. Until the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway most of those nations were just living their life. Some maybe paid tax to Moscow, most didn’t. And now they are a list of nation names feeling endlessly long, and you have almost never heard of any of them. What did your mother tell you about the Mordvins? Or the Soyot? Or the Sakha? Those tens and tens of nations have fallen into nothingness in our minds, even though in the end of 1800’s they were thriving. Their disappearance is what is happening besides Ukraine. And it’s an ongoing process. In Finland we keep reading news about what is happening to the rights of the Finno-Ugric nations because they are cultures similar to ours, speaking language more or (much) less similar to ours, and following traditions of our old pre-christian religion, but for central Europeans those news are of as much interest as news on some tribes in Nigeria or Ethiopia. For us it means loss of our own roots, because for us those nations are similarly close as the Spanish and Greek, French and Czech are for each other. When you more people in your own family, you understand your own nuclear family much better than you otherwise would. Of course, the Soyot and Sakha not being Finno-Ugric, we don’t really read much anything about them in Finland, either. But it’s easy to check that their plight is very analogous to that of the Finno-Ugric nations, so we also have an understanding of their situation.

Russia is an empire. The problem for Russia is that they can’t dissolve and regroup like the EU or with the EU because the US would grab everything and treat it like South America.

Here, BTW, I want to ask you:
Why do you think the situations of the nations colonized by the Russia would be any worse under US rule? I mean, if they are ever liberated from the Russian rule, I would strongly oppose anything else happening to them than them getting full sovereignty, like for example Algeria did. But even if you are right and they do end up under US, rule, why would that be any worse for the locals than the current Russian rule? I believe it would still be very bad, but much less bad than now. USA was behaving the same towards its colonized native populations some century or 1½ centuries ago as the Russia is behaving to its native populations now, and the native Americans’ situation in contemporary USA is definitely not something to celebrate, but the contemporary USA is nevertheless definitely treating the locals better (or maybe you’d prefer the phrasing: less badly) than the Russia is treating the native populations of territories ruled by it. And I really do think that the US would treat the colonized Siberians much nicer than it treats native Americans

If the Russian colonies somehow end up from Russian rule under US rule, then that’s very sad, but it’s still an improvement for their rights. Why, precisely, are you actually arguing against that?

In which of those countries is the native population now under 5% of the country’s population because of US actions committed at least somewhat recently? For example in the Hanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug 1,5 % of the population is Khanty, 0,9% of the population is Mansi.

Or, you can just look at the contemporary map of Finno-Ugric languages:

You can see the big gap east of Finland. Think about why that area is not coloured as having speakers of Finno-Ugric languages anymore.

Or just look at the population of Finland, which is about 5,6 million. Or that of Estonia, some 1,2 million. And compare it to the number of Karelians in the Republic of Karelia, right across the border: 25,901 people. 86% of the population there are Russians, only 5.5% are locals. That is what it would now look like in Finland if we had not stopped the Russia in 1939-1940. US has done a lot of evil (Hawa’ii…), but nowhere have they done within the last century what the Russia is contemporarily doing in its colonies. And yes, USA has been doing some bad shit, but it absolutely pales in comparison the Russian colonialism. The only difference is that nobody seems to care of the Siberians like they care of Africans.

Here’s a map that shows France and England, and also the size of their colonial empires:

And here’s a map that shows the Russia (marked with bright yellow), and also the size of its colonial empire:

And yes, people did say “but come on, all of that is France, you can’t say that France is just that small part there!”, and people have also been saying “but comeone, all of that is the Russia, you can’t say that the Russia is just that small part there!”, but it still holds that the colonized territories are colonized territories that need to be free.

But really, none of the those countries you listed have a situation a tenth as bad as that of the plethora of nations colonized by the Russia. Horrors have happened, absolutely, but not at the level of the current colonial Russia.

I think Europe was still spending more than Russia before. We should have been able to repell Russia already. To me, the increased spending means that we are preparing to escalate and beat Russia.

At least here it says that in 2021 the Russia’s military spending was 4% of its GDP. The only country that was somewhat prepared for repelling the Russia before 2022 was Finland. In school I was taught this about our military strategy: “Finland’s defence doctrine is based on the concept of Credible Defence. It means that the Russia would be able to overrun this country, but we are able to cause them such a high level of material losses that they would lose more than they would gain, because of which they will never attack.”
This is what all Finns considered true, until around end of March 2022. By then it was clear to Finns that the Russia should by all logic withdraw from its attack and find a way out of the war without losing its face, but also that it will not do that. Which meant that the core principle of our defence doctrine was moot. If the Russia ignores economical sensibility of waging a war, then our strategy of “yeah, they could take conquer us, but it would be economically idiotic” won’t be of any use to us. Therefore, we had to look for another solution, and Finns’ opinions moved from 65 % anti-NATO to 80 % pro-NATO during March and April 2022. Putin’s closest friends, such as Rotenberg, spend a lot of time in Finland and speak Finnish, so he was aware of this. But yeah: Our new military strategy is that it’s not enough to stop the Russia if it attacks. We must be able to decisively beat them. Otherwise they will attack.

the EU and the US are preparing to take them apart.

The US is. Now in 2025, I wish EU was, as well. But it is not. Which is idiotic. As long as the Russia is in one piece, it will attack again.

I was comparing newer times. Otherwise you have to look at native Americans. My impression is that they had it worse.

About the same as native Siberians have it now. The behaviour of USA towards indigenous Americans some centuries ago absolutely does fulfil the criteria of genocide. The only difference is that the Russia really got going on that stuff once the railway was built in the native’s lands, in the early 20th century, so it’s an ongoing disaster, not something where the worst parts were done in the past.

in comparison the US looks worse.

This is surprising. Could you care to explain how?

People believe in American freedom

Who are these “people”? I don’t think those are half as many as you think.

People ignore recent American atrocities while they remember all the Russian ones.

Please show recent-ish American atrocities that are at least on the same level as the Russian ones. (Hirošima and Nagasaki do count, but they are not things that people ignore). For the purposes of this conversation it would be good if they were from this century, or at the very latest from 1990’s. When looking at what the Russia is doing now, whatever took place more than half a century ago is not very descriptive by itself, even if it does explain contemporary reactions of people in countries bordering the Russia.

Of course that doesn’t justify any genociding.

Happy to hear that. You are not an .ml-ie ❤️

What countries did US make spend 4% of their GDP for military readiness? Many countries have had to increase their defence spending either because they are directly threatened by the Russia or because they are in EU and countries in EU that are crucial to their wellbeing are threatened by the Russia. So, those had to increase their defence spending anyway and naturally will be excluded from your list. So, what are the countries you are talking about?

If the US wanted to stop China from gaining the Russian resources, it would make sure the war in Ukraine stops ASAP, even if that means their ally will lose the war. Because each month the war is prolonged means China getting a stronger foothold on the resources in the Russia. Now they are not doing that, but are putting all the pressure on Ukraine instead.

Here you are again talking about USA wanting the Russia and then somehow skipping from that to Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (and maybe Sweden). Any such attack would happen with their involvement.

The original peace plan in 2022 included Ukraine sending its army home and the Ukrainian leadership resignating.

But yeah: You are linking to a Wikipedia page that tells what we know: USA has always wanted the Russia to fall. But you do that in a context where you say that Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and/or Poland “wants to conquer Russia” without telling anything about why we in these five countries would want to conquer the Russia. Your link gives no answers to that and without answering that question your argument is missing a crucial core part, without which it cannot function.

You say it’s the Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland that want the Russia and that USA is willing to help. You really need to tell why the hell we five would want to conquer the Russia? With or without help from USA.

Stalin, a Georgian,

did it as a leader of a country aiming for converting all of multitude of nations into Russian culture and language. He was not opposed to that. Regardless of his roots, he was loyal to the project of russification.

Breschnew, with Ukrainian roots,

ordered the tanks into Czechoslovakia as a leader of a country aiming for converting all of multitude of nations into Russian culture and language. He was not opposed to that. Regardless of his roots, he was loyal to the project of russification.

My guess is that the Russians who were settled weren’t asked too much either.

Now you are turning it from the junta in Kremlin to the nation of Russians. Those are waters one should not tread. Yeah, USSR was a country that did not really care about the wellbeing of individual citizens. That’s what we’re talking about here.

The historic joke is that the cultural loss from TikTok reels, pop culture and globalized working conditions will be far bigger.

What cultures have seized to exist because of TikTok reels, pop culture and globalized working conditions? You are comparing things that are indeed bad to actual genocides.

Excluding the USA is cheating if you want to compare what countries have been doing in the past. But you were talking about the contemporary situation. You were talking about NATO countries being a threat to the Russia now, in the 21st century. That means primarily Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, because those are the countries that would attack the Russia if there was to be an “attack by NATO”. When you are saying that NATO countries are a danger to the Russia, you are saying these five countries are the danger. Maybe add Sweden as a sixth one if you consider them to be bordering Kaliningrad because of Gotland. I already stretched a bit towards supporting your argument by adding central European countries to the list. USA is so far away from the Russia that it cannot attack it. It absolutely would want to, but it cannot.

When talking about threat to the Russia, USA is irrelevant (unless allied in an attack with some countries actually physically able to invade the Russia!). When we are talking about danger of NATO to the Russia, we are not talking about USA, because USA is on another continent. And the Russia is militarily a very different thing than Iraq or Afghanistan are. And keep in mind that in the end USA didn’t really gain anything sensible in either of those, regardless of their weakness.

When you are talking about NATO’s threat to the Russia, bringing Canada or USA into the conversation is cheating, because those are not potential aggressors, at least not main aggressors. Do not do that. Talk about the countries that would actually commit the attack and tell why those countries are a threat to the Russia. Tell why Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland would want to attack the Russia. How would it benefit them?

Again, if the US is included, the numbers pale.

If the US is included in what? The only logical comparison here would be US-caused casualties in the Soviet-Afghan war vs Soviet-caused casualties in that war. But I don’t think that’s what you really meant, so a bit of clarification would be good to have!

Yeah, Finn’s behaviour with the Sámi has not ben very nice at all. I am happy that we’ve largely changed directions, even though we still do weird shit, such as the authorities in Helsinki deciding who is allowed to count as Sámi and who not, ignoring the opinion of the actual Sámi people… But our behaviour is from a different planet compared to what the Russian Empire, USSR and the Russian Federation have been doing and is doing. There is no genocide of the Sámi people going on. Regarding Canadian mining companies I do not know enough to understand what you are referring to.

Iraqi war caused only half a million to one million casualties. How is that worse than what the Russian Empire and USSR have done to their colonies? And what the Russia has been continuing since? Even if the Russia has toned that behaviour down from the Soviet times, it is still being a horrible colonialist. And it’s the only European colonial power that has not given freedom to most of its colonies. France, England and Portugal still have some colonies here and there, but even they have let the most go. The Russia/USSR let less than one quarter of its colonized territories free in 1991. And even in those areas it continued the same behaviour France is known for in its old colonies.

So… Libya’s population is now fully Italian-speaking? I mean, if Italy was doing the same magnitude of shit with Libyans that the Russia has done to the Mansi, then there are almost no speakers of languages other than Italian left in Libya. And if Italy has been doing something even worse, then that means that all non-Italian culture in Libya has been completely eradicated and the situation of Libyans is more like that of the Bering Aleuts – who no longer exist, ot like that of Mansi.

Good, I’d like to know more of what acts of genocide were committed by Italy in Libya in the 2000’s, please! You seem to be knowledged, so please do enlighten me!

Then there’s Belgium, whose part Rwanda was until July 1962. Yeah, that was evil shit! Not sure if it’s fitting to say “NATO countries” if you mean colonial stuff in early 1960’s and before. But good, here we have an example that is on par with what the Russian Empire, USSR and the Russian Federation have been doing around the 1950’s and 1960’s. I am thankful that Belgium has stopped that, although it will of course not bring the million dead back!

How does the Ukraine war make the Russia the winner in this comparison? Its death toll and the suffering caused by it is of course noteworthy, but it’s a small fraction of what the Russia has been doing. What was being done to Ukrainians until 1991 is much worse than what is going on now.