Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.

[Lynn]

Its escalating to that point. I don't see this invasion or the military tactics as coming from a guy who really thought this out. Russia has a history of going into 'Fuck it - Level the City' when it doesn't get what it wants.

There are cities which have some strategic importance and they are either being captured or pummeled into dust with an emphasis on cowing the population. My direct contacts in Kherson (which was overrun and now controlled by Russian forces) have told me that while there was some initial damage, it is being used more as a clear path to reach other key cities.

[oggsmash]

Great. Even Duckduckgo is getting into the censorship game. Any good browsers left?

https://uk.pcmag.com/software-services/139164/duckduckgo-to-down-rank-sites-associated-with-russian-disinformation

https://search.brave.com/

They went to the effort of building their own search engine system rather than piggyback off Google's results like DuckDuckGo did.

Try a search there vs. Google/DDG and you'll see a notable difference in results on "controversial" topics.

The owner of Brave is also the guy who invented JavaScript and helped found Mozilla as an alternative to Explorer. He's been a long time advocate for internet privacy and his Brave browser even includes all sorts of built-in features for anonymity.

He's already been "canceled" by the Left (and his reaction to that was to build his own uncancellable system) so there's far less chance of him drinking the kool-aid to stay in their good graces.

  was he the guy who donated to the "wrong side of history" on that marriage referendum years ago?  Where the "wrong" side won?

[Ghostmaker]

Great. Even Duckduckgo is getting into the censorship game. Any good browsers left?

https://uk.pcmag.com/software-services/139164/duckduckgo-to-down-rank-sites-associated-with-russian-disinformation

https://search.brave.com/

They went to the effort of building their own search engine system rather than piggyback off Google's results like DuckDuckGo did.

Try a search there vs. Google/DDG and you'll see a notable difference in results on "controversial" topics.

The owner of Brave is also the guy who invented JavaScript and helped found Mozilla as an alternative to Explorer. He's been a long time advocate for internet privacy and his Brave browser even includes all sorts of built-in features for anonymity.

He's already been "canceled" by the Left (and his reaction to that was to build his own uncancellable system) so there's far less chance of him drinking the kool-aid to stay in their good graces.

  was he the guy who donated to the "wrong side of history" on that marriage referendum years ago?  Where the "wrong" side won?

Yup. Brandon Eich. Wound up getting ejected from his own company for the high crime of... well... having a wrong opinion.

And yeah. That proposition passed, only to be overturned by a judge.

[soundchaser]

The facts indeed on communism and killing. My own post on these very issues at the place known as TBP got me permabanned.

...
Russia is a significantly worse wrongdoer in this situation and you're finding excuses to not call them out on it by hyper focusing on any ammo you can locate to emphasize Ukraine as not good or the US as not good while not applying that same standard to Russia. Because if you did, the score would be 100 to 1 in showing Russia is much worse than Ukraine or the US in all this. You're treating it like "Well hey, as long as a few bad acts can be accounted to one side, I can safely just dismiss all parties as bad and wash my hands of it."

It's a cowardly and lazy position.

LOL... Can you make it any more obvious that you didn't watch the video!  The guy speaking is far from a fan of Putin.

And ROTFL at a few bad acts by all sides...

More disingenuous words of a warmongering shill that still thinks 'Team America World Police' is a good idea.

I'm applying the same standards to everyone involved.


You're the one spouting puerile nonsense like this:

My family was slaughtered by Nazis at a time where other nations knew about it, had the power to stop it, and decided to not stop it due to isolationism. You can F yourself on my being "unfair" to people with "different beliefs." It's OK to judge some beliefs as bad based on the impact they have on other people. Isolationism is unethical. Inherently so. It says no matter how bad something gets, no matter how easily you can stop it from happening, you're not to intervene based on that principal and that principal alone. That's unethical no matter how you spin it or no matter how you feel about it.
...

That is nothing less than a horrific emotionally driven appeal for perpetual war.

George Washington spoke with Great Wisdom:
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

...
   Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
   The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
   Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality, we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
   Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice? ...

Why should we avoid foreign entanglements?

Because this is what following the ideal of "X could have been prevented sooner." really means:

Herr Hitler killed a lot of people in the Holocaust:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims
The Holocaust was "the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jewish men, women and children by the Nazi regime and its collaborators".

But any objective look at history shows that Hitler was a firm third place compared to the real masters of the game: Stalin and Mao...

There was the Holodomor of 1932 to 1933
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
Where the Russian Commies committed mass genocide and killed around 3.5 million Ukrainians by starving them to death.

Then Stalin was all like: "Yes, not a bad start comrades, but I know that I can do better..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin#:~:text=In%202011%2C%20after%20assessing%20twenty,policies%20are%20taken%20into%20account.

Soviet Gulags: 1.6 million deaths during the whole period from 1929 to 1953.
The Soviet famine of 1932–1933: Add another 2-6 million dead on top of the Holodomor.
Judicial executions for political charges from 1929–53: According to official figures there were 777,975.
The Soviet famine of 1946–1947: An estimated 1 to 1.5 million lives lost.
Population transfer by the Soviet Union: The reported number of kulaks and their relatives who had died in labour colonies from 1932 to 1940 was 389,521.
According to Soviet archives, the heaviest mortality rate was documented in people from the Northern Caucasus (the Chechens, Ingush) with 144,704 deaths, or 24.7% of the entire deported population, as well as 44,125 deaths from Crimea, or a 19.3% mortality rate.
Katyn massacre: The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000.
Number of deaths of people by Stalinism, 1924–1953: Total estimated at somewhere around 7,231,000–9,551,000

Then Mao Zedong was all like: "Not bad for a bunch of round-eyed barbarians; here, hold my tea..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
From 1958 to 1962. Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruct the country from an agrarian economy into a communist society through the formation of people's communes. Mao decreed that efforts to multiply grain yields and bring industry to the countryside should be increased. Local officials were fearful of Anti-Rightist Campaigns and they competed to fulfill or over-fulfill quotas which were based on Mao's exaggerated claims, collecting non-existent "surpluses" and leaving farmers to starve.
Millions of people died in China during the Great Leap, with estimates ranging from 15 to 55 million.

The Greatest Mass Murder in History
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/08/03/giving-historys-greatest-mass-murderer-his-due/

Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge in Cambodia didn't want to be left behind, and they did the best that they could:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide
By January 1979, 1.5 to 2 million people had died due to the Khmer Rouge's policies.

Then the Rwandan's had their day in the Sun:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide
The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi deaths.

And the list goes on...

Just go HERE: Genocides in history (after World War II)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history_(after_World_War_II)

Funnily enough they don't list that one time starting in 2003 that the American Military killed 100 to 200,000 Iraqi civilians for no reason whatsoever.

Because: "WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION IN IRAQ!"


And you would have had the US intervene in all of that because it would have been the "Ethical" thing to do...

Making ourselves the World Police because: "Isolationism is unethical." Is the height of moral arrogance, and would dooms us to endless perpetual warfare.

The cost in American lives and resources would be even more orders of magnitude staggering than it has already been...

Neocon Interventionism = Bloodthirsty Lunacy.


And Millions of innocent Ukrainian civilians are being fucked over because foreign nations on a power trip against each other can't keep it in their pants.

[Shasarak]

My family was slaughtered by Nazis at a time where other nations knew about it, had the power to stop it, and decided to not stop it due to isolationism. You can F yourself on my being "unfair" to people with "different beliefs." It's OK to judge some beliefs as bad based on the impact they have on other people. Isolationism is unethical. Inherently so. It says no matter how bad something gets, no matter how easily you can stop it from happening, you're not to intervene based on that principal and that principal alone. That's unethical no matter how you spin it or no matter how you feel about it.

This is certainly an argument for Russia to go in and clean out the Nazi problem in the Ukraine.

It would be unethical for Putin not to.

[Pat]

My family was slaughtered by Nazis at a time where other nations knew about it, had the power to stop it, and decided to not stop it due to isolationism. You can F yourself on my being "unfair" to people with "different beliefs." It's OK to judge some beliefs as bad based on the impact they have on other people. Isolationism is unethical. Inherently so. It says no matter how bad something gets, no matter how easily you can stop it from happening, you're not to intervene based on that principal and that principal alone. That's unethical no matter how you spin it or no matter how you feel about it.

This is certainly an argument for Russia to go in and clean out the Nazi problem in the Ukraine.

It would be unethical for Putin not to.

Well, the fact checkers just said there is no flying Nazi with laser beam eyes problem in the Ukraine, so that exact statement you just said that I just copied with no alterations is wrong, making Putin objectively bad.

[Shasarak]

My family was slaughtered by Nazis at a time where other nations knew about it, had the power to stop it, and decided to not stop it due to isolationism. You can F yourself on my being "unfair" to people with "different beliefs." It's OK to judge some beliefs as bad based on the impact they have on other people. Isolationism is unethical. Inherently so. It says no matter how bad something gets, no matter how easily you can stop it from happening, you're not to intervene based on that principal and that principal alone. That's unethical no matter how you spin it or no matter how you feel about it.

This is certainly an argument for Russia to go in and clean out the Nazi problem in the Ukraine.

It would be unethical for Putin not to.

Well, the fact checkers just said there is no flying Nazi with laser beam eyes problem in the Ukraine, so that exact statement you just said that I just copied with no alterations is wrong, making Putin objectively bad.

Can Putin wait until the Ukrainian Bioweapon labs successfully mutate their Nazis?

[Pat]

My family was slaughtered by Nazis at a time where other nations knew about it, had the power to stop it, and decided to not stop it due to isolationism. You can F yourself on my being "unfair" to people with "different beliefs." It's OK to judge some beliefs as bad based on the impact they have on other people. Isolationism is unethical. Inherently so. It says no matter how bad something gets, no matter how easily you can stop it from happening, you're not to intervene based on that principal and that principal alone. That's unethical no matter how you spin it or no matter how you feel about it.

This is certainly an argument for Russia to go in and clean out the Nazi problem in the Ukraine.

It would be unethical for Putin not to.

Well, the fact checkers just said there is no flying Nazi with laser beam eyes problem in the Ukraine, so that exact statement you just said that I just copied with no alterations is wrong, making Putin objectively bad.

Can Putin wait until the Ukrainian Bioweapon labs successfully mutate their Nazis?

The lab leak is a conspiracy theory!

[Jaeger]

The facts indeed on communism and killing. My own post on these very issues at the place known as TBP got me permabanned.
...

But of course it did. It went against the narrative that there cannot be anything worse than a Nazi.

This is especially important when the ideological roots of your own worldview come from the same source as those that made Literally Hitler look like an enthusiastic amateur...

[Jaeger]

...
Can Putin wait until the Ukrainian Bioweapon labs successfully mutate their Nazis?

Total Russian disinformation propaganda...

[Ratman_tf]

Their nazis are propoganda. Our nazis are real...

[Jaeger]

Opposing a military invasion that someone else started is not the same thing as starting war after war. Defensive war means that if someone else starts a war by invading another country, then other countries ally to stop it and restore the status quo. If invasions are allowed to continue without opposition, then every would-be conqueror is encouraged and we end up with more war, not less.

All things being equal, you are correct.

But, in my opinion, the current mess in Ukraine is exactly that: One big mess.

The US has interfered grossly in the so-called Ukrainian democracy. Myself and others have posted links detailing US actions in the region. You don't have to take them at face value – by all means have your filters up. But at a minimum they show that the US has done its share of dirt in the Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government and oligarchs themselves are outrageously corrupt. And they have not been good actors in the Donbass region – their artillery shelling of civilians there on and off over the past eight years is a matter of video record.

Of course Russia has certainly had a hand in things as well. They helped to fund the Donbass militias. And it was their own pro-Russian puppet regime that the US helped overthrow and replace with our series of pro-west puppets.

And who knows what the fallout from their invasion will be years from now? If we get that far...

All these decades worth of shenanigans in the Ukraine from every player in this debacle begs the question: What does "restore the status quo" in Ukraine really mean?

The propaganda is flying so fast and furious from everyone, that I'm not sure anyone really knows.

And millions of innocent Ukrainian people are getting screwed while major world powers try to impose their will on the region in the most dangerous war in my lifetime.

So the neocons were liberals who jumped from the Democrats to Republicans in order to stay hawkish. But traditional conservatives like Nixon and Reagan have been just as hawkish as neocons. So I'd describe this as "American interventionism" - rather than associating it specifically with neocons.

That's a really good take. You're right: "American interventionism" is a much more accurate and correct way to phrase things than what I used.

[Jaeger]

You know how easy it is to show you're unethical? Because you cut the second part of what I said, intentionally, which talked about how it depends on the circumstances.

You certainly try to frame things your way, but this is another swing and a miss...


To Review:

It depends on the circumstances, for any ethical being it depends on the circumstances. If it doesn't depend on the circumstances for you because you think there are no circumstances in which you'd help your neighbor in need when you have the means to do so, then you're unethical.

You Said: "It depends on the circumstances."


I didn't feel the need to quote it as you gave an example of an acceptable circumstance for intervention in the first paragraph of your post when you said:

My family was slaughtered by Nazis at a time where other nations knew about it, had the power to stop it, and decided to not stop it due to isolationism. You can F yourself on my being "unfair" to people with "different beliefs." It's OK to judge some beliefs as bad based on the impact they have on other people. Isolationism is unethical. Inherently so. It says no matter how bad something gets, no matter how easily you can stop it from happening, you're not to intervene based on that principal and that principal alone. That's unethical no matter how you spin it or no matter how you feel about it.

You had clearly established one circumstance where earlier Foreign Intervention would have been "ethical". And where isolationism was clearly "unethical".

The "ethical" circumstance for intervention given was: Bad person, i.e. Literally Hitler, commits genocide on innocent civilians.

I am not the only poster here to make that perfectly reasonable deduction from what you wrote.

I didn't spin anything. You gave a clear example of a situation where Military Interventionism would have been "ethical".

I then highlighted several instances in history where that specific criterion directly applied.

And noted that using that specific criterion to "ethically" intervene would have doomed any nation doing so to perpetual war.

i.e.  It would have been "ethical" for us to have intervened against Stalin and Mao who killed far more people than Literally Hitler.

The only reason to do that is because you wanted to spin what I was saying as me being pro-war and pro-intervention all the time. As opposed to what I actually said which was a blanket isolationism which doesn't ever ask if this is the exceptional circumstance where we should make the very rare decision to intervene is what I consider unethical.

You're a fraud Jaeger. A liar, and a fraud. This is your M.O. though. You take a position, and then if someone dares refute it, you take what they said back out of context and lie about it to make yourself feel better about your position. It's not genuine. You're not some internet badass. You're just a cowardly fraud.

Sorry, but I've seen the "accuse others of that which you are guilty of" tactic before. *Yawn*...

So I'm just gonna take this as a solid confirmation that you didn't watch the video I posted at all.


Playing the victim doesn't work too well when you start off like this:

...
They also can't understand that you can be sympathetic to the plight of Ukie civilians without wanting to get into another 20-year war.  It doesn't help that Westerners don't understand the Slavic mindset - regardless of benign-ness of NATO membership, to Putin and Lukashenko, they see themselves surrounded by NATO.

This is big.

The situation sucks for the Ukrainian people.

But it's just not our business.

Oh here comes that old isolationism mantra. Just as unethical as it was in 1939.
....

You didn't ask for any underlying reasoning for my position in this situation. You just jumped straight to saying that I was spouting an unethical isolationist mantra.

And then you go on to act shocked! Shocked I say! And try to play the "misquoted" victim when people dish it back just as hard as you dished it out, using perfectly reasonable quotations from posts that you wrote.

You've been straight up busted, and called out on your routine on here so many times, that I am far from the only one in this thread to have used the words Mistwell, Disingenuous, and Liar/Lie/Lies, in the same sentence.

Other posters here have busted you doing the same routine as well in more than one thread.

Your shrill protestations of victimhood are falling on deaf ears.

Nobody believes you.

[Shasarak]

...
Can Putin wait until the Ukrainian Bioweapon labs successfully mutate their Nazis?

Total Russian disinformation propaganda...

You cant trust Fox news Youtube channel about the secret Ukraine mutant Nazi  research labs.

[Shasarak]

Good news Ukraine, the Tik-Tok'ers are on the job