I think number 1 is the essential point for anyone supporting democracy. Ukrainians, not Russians, decided who they elect as their leaders (1) and which organizations they want to join. It is depressing to hear people in democracies arguing otherwise.
As for point two: Yes it is also massively in the interest of democracies, that Ukraine wins and Europe is strengthened.
I think Stoltenberg summed up it up nicely in (2)
>So supporting Ukraine is not only the morally right thing to do.
It is also in our own security interest.
(1) Queue Russian non-sense about Maidan being a western coup.
Isn’t it just a reasonable application of the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”?
And I say this as someone really hoping that this is true, since I assume this would be great news for renewable energy (and we really need great news on that front)
Absolutely. I just looked back at netscape wikipedia page, and it was already out in 1995 and distributed freely. Internet explorer was out in 1995 as well. Barely underground stuff.
And that's just for the www. People were using BBS, FTP, email and newsgroup before that.
I think you are more right than you realize. The US Federal government still to this day subsidizes and promotes home ownership. The mortgage tax deduction, the Home Sales Tax exclusion, and even the fixed rate 30 year mortgage itself - without which most of us could never buy a home in the first place - subsidizes home ownership.
But the actual building of homes is left to the private sector, which is frequently banned from building new homes by local governments.
It’s a strange situation: the Feds promote home ownership, while local governments make home ownership difficult by limiting the number of homes that can be built. It’s little wonder the housing market is so dysfunctional.
I’m curious: You don’t think that being continuously exposed to government propaganda and threatened with jail/fines for dissenting opinions will increase the frequency of “shitty people”?
I don't see how the number of people 'denying responsibility and lying' depends on the exposure to government propaganda saying that Russia is doing good and justified thing right now.
If you believe you are right and what is contrary to this belief is only a fake, you don't need to lie and there is no responsibility for something you didn't do.
Then we fundamentally disagree in how human psychology works: I believe that if authorities (be they government officials, parents or others) habitually lie and cheat, then that behavior becomes socially sanctioned as a way to get ahead. Thus you end up with more “shitty people” (and a worse society)
And by the way, when you hear Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen say 'The United States will impose harsh consequences on countries that break the international economic order' and then ironically blaming Russia instead of her own country [0], do you feel how society becomes a little bit worse?
Hmm, I fail to see how this is even remotely comparable to Russian propaganda/related to the topic at hand, but I’ll give you that the “West” has also behaved atrociously in the past. Though please be aware, that arguments like the one you are trying to make, has a distinct feeling of whataboutism.
"I fail to see how this is even remotely comparable to Russian propaganda/related to the topic at hand"
Ehh, perfectly/directly?
I gave you a fine example of "denying responsibility and lying" which should have corrupting influence on the recipients. I wonder if you notice this influence.
"whataboutism"
Any mention of this word has a distinct feeling of double standards.
Again, I don’t think we are going to end up agreeing as I believe that a significant portion of the Russian people are aware, that they are being lied to, but are to scared to do anything about this.
Please also note, that I don’t believe this applied to all Russians. The few I’ve interacted with more closely have been nice (the opposite of “shitty”)
"a significant portion of the Russian people are aware, that they are being lied to, but are to scared to do anything about this"
Well, some of them must be trying to rationalize and normalize what's happening to reduce psychological suffering, but calling them bad on these grounds has a distinct feeling of blaming the victim.
One upside of this crisis, is that the holy German liberal process of economic-politics will self-regulate: After the next winter's gas prices and lack thereof, there will not be any money left going into lobbying.
It is a shame that it will come at such price, though. Who could have predicted that? Literally everyone.
IMHO there is a lot of value in learning the rules and then breaking the ones, that in your judgement does not apply to a given situation. A variation on Chesterton’s fence [1], or, if more literary inclined, the parable of the camel, the lion and the child [2].
The things is: they are not even rules, while some people think they are, but merely potential tradeoffs, interesting in some situations but that's it.
And it is highly conterproductive when people start to cargo cult them, and oh my god do they do. I sometimes wonder if the world would not have been a better place without e.g. GOF design patterns book, clean code, or SOLID, etc.
One party is currently torturing and murdering civilians, which tends to skew the conversation in a particular direction. Once Russia has withdrawn all troops from Ukraine we can discus behavior of other nations.
Most parties are currently torturing and killing civilians, but some have better PR departments. Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Aafghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Venezuela, and the list goes on and on. Nobody cares until white people die though.
Guantanamo is a stain on the US and will be for the foreseeable future, just like internment camps for Japanese people during WWII. But comparing either with Grozny, Aleppo (seriously, why mention Syria at all?), or Mariupol is either completely disingenuous, or entirely uninformed. It is also a complete false equivalence to compare them to the neo-gulags, just ask Navalny.
Which city did the US flatten since Dresden? How many hospitals did they voluntarily bomb? Hell, how many hospitals did the US bomb at all (and no, I don’t assume that number is zero)? Now, compare that to what happened in Karkhiv alone.
Playing chicken when Assad used chemical weapons on Syrian civilians and Putin razed Grozny were stupid mistakes. This is not a reason to let the same thing happen again in Ukraine.
I’ve been sort of amazed by the line of reasoning as well: Russia can invade a democracy aligning with “the west”, but if “the west” were to, say, bomb the military in a country that is aligning with Russia (after ignoring election results and suppressing the opposition with violence), then we would be inviting nuclear war. Very asymmetric, but I guess that is the advantage of being an autocrat with a propensity for throwing threats around :/
Speed in a crash isn't a particularly big problem. The dangerous bit is how quickly you decelerate. Going from 100kmh to 0 over a few hundred meters and a few seconds by bouncing around the road and the barriers won't be much fun but you'll walk away. Going from 100kmh to 0 by driving in to something stationary will kill you pretty much instantly unless your car's safety tech saves you by giving you a cushion of air to decelerate in to.
You are of course correct, but speed does give an upper bound on how quickly you decelerate. Anyways, I got curious and looked up accident statistics in Denmark [1], and only ~10% of accidents that result in fatalities happen on freeways (where speed is highest), ~56% happens on country roads (second highest speed and more objects that will decelerate you quickly) and the remaining happen in the city. The authorities estimated that excessive speed played a major factor in 43% of the accidents.
Coincidentally, while fines for speeding are relatively lax in Germany, the penalties for underrunning minimum distances (which are calculated from speed) will wreck you. (Your driver's license will be decked pretty fast, and you can end up in prison too.)
As for point two: Yes it is also massively in the interest of democracies, that Ukraine wins and Europe is strengthened.
I think Stoltenberg summed up it up nicely in (2)
>So supporting Ukraine is not only the morally right thing to do. It is also in our own security interest.
(1) Queue Russian non-sense about Maidan being a western coup.
(2) https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_212041.htm