Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

[Diamond]

Anyway, this all went fantastically off-topic...

Back on Ukraine, one of our developers is based in Lviv. He is super chilled about the situation and always has been - we've offered to try and evacuate him, get him some cash to draw upon etc - he's really not at all bothered. Strange disconnect between different areas of the world on this one..

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

No, it is not. FWIW false imprisonment is not automatically a question of violence.

The restraining (if sufficiently forceful), attacking (provided it is focused on physical harm) and obviously death all are examples of violence.

Being handcuffed, imprisoned, forced to act against your will are all actions carried out either with direct violence or the threat of violence. Once we are imprisoned or restrained, violence, albeit low level, is enacted against us full time. You may have a pedantic definition which is at variance with this. Fair enough. But your pedantic definition in this context gives succour to dictators and oppressors. So it's not much use in the real world.

 

[Diamond]

Oh I think you'd change your mind sharpish if I put a gun to your head and pulled the trigger only for you to hear a click. Especially if I didn't let you change your trousers after

This is technically assault, I think. An interesting area involving imminent threats and contact that is just short of proper violence, which would be battery - thus illustrating the conceptual distinctions. Notably, violence in battery can be satisfied with simple contact, however it absolutely does require that contact.

 

[Diamond]

Being handcuffed, imprisoned, forced to act against your will are all actions carried out either with direct violence or the threat of violence. Once we are imprisoned or restrained, violence, albeit low level, is enacted against us full time. You may have a pedantic definition which is at variance with this. Fair enough. But your pedantic definition in this context gives succour to dictators and oppressors. So it's not much use in the real world.

The reason it is so critical that we maintain a sensible, commonly understood definition delimited to the area of physical harm (usually serious and with intent to harm) is precisely because it becomes very hard to practise any kind of sensible politics against your dictators and oppressors if people think being ignored by a group of people who don't like you (which would be violence under the CoE definition that teqniq shared earlier) is of a piece with getting your head kicked in by people who genuinely hate you for, say, your ethnicity or nationality.

That approach makes school bullying comparable to getting shot. Which, I would argue, hinders solving either problem.

 

[teqniq]

Got it. Yes, this is exactly the kind of thing that I argue strongly is completely wrong and ill-founded. Notably it is a super progressive, international think-tanky, NGO source - not impressive people in my book.

"Purposeful ignorance"

You're not very good at this are you? Just because the definition comes from in your words 'a super progressive, international think-tanky, NGO source' and they're 'not impressive people in my book' doesn't make it intrinsically wrong. By your own admission you are already biased and have written off the definition and, because of it's source consider it to lack credence. It most definitely does not make it wrong though.

 

[Diamond]

A curious quirk of your definition of violence is that it renders women just as violent as men. Probably more so in fact.

And that simply does not describe reality.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

I don't know if anyone else has posted about this on this thread, but here goes. The Russian state in Tsarist times was expansionist wherever and whenever it could be. Cruel and ruthless too, of course. Under the Bolsheviks they were no longer expansionist, but they consolidated Russian rule more effectively by a continued programme of Russification and by settlement of Russians in non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union. After the state-initiated famines amongst Ukrainians, Volga Germans, Tatars and Kazakhs in the early 1920's, and again amongst Ukrainians, Kazakhs and Buryat Mongols in the 1930's, Russian settlers were imported in large numbers to replace the dead native inhabitants. This happened again when ethnic minorities were deported from border areas in the 1930's and 40's. So too when land was grabbed from Finland, Poland, Japan and Germany, with whole scale ethnic cleansing and the immigration of ethnic Russians to the border areas. This was all quite deliberate, looking to make the borders secure. Nobody at this stage foresaw the breakup of the Soviet Union, along the fictitious boundaries of soviet republics.

In the Far East and Siberia there has been a major retreat of Russian settlers back to European Russia, but there remain substantial numbers in the Baltic states, Byelorussia, Kaliningrad, Kazakhstan and eastern Ukraine. Whilst there is a Russian nationalist in the Kremlin we can expect more of this kind of thing in the future

 

[teqniq]

Diamond Psychological violence can and does result in long-term trauma which is just as damaging, if not more so than physical violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator. It impacts on an individuals mental health, often needs counselling as a tool to enable someone to come to terms with what has happened to them and can take years to heal.

 

[RainbowTown]

OK Diamond we get it now. You think that violence itself can only be defined through the perpetration of a physical act. Likewise, my opinion is that violence is far more nuanced and multi-faceted than that. People's minds can be violated and damaged just as much as their body can by an act that do not include any physicality at all. And that is a form of violence to me. Psychological violence. Neither are mutually exclusive to one another in my opinion. However, it would be unfair to derail this thread about this issue, especially given the seriousness of the situation at hand. So I'll leave it at that.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

I think you'll finding incarcerating millions of people, forcing them to work, forcibly sterilising many of them and beating and sexually assaulting many thousands of others is in fact violence

The reason it is so critical that we maintain a sensible, commonly understood definition delimited to the area of physical harm (usually serious and with intent to harm) is precisely because it becomes very hard to practise any kind of sensible politics against your dictators and oppressors if people think being ignored by a group of people who don't like you (which would be violence under the CoE definition that teqniq shared earlier) is of a piece with getting your head kicked in by people who genuinely hate you for, say, your ethnicity or nationality.

That approach makes school bullying comparable to getting shot. Which, I would argue, hinders solving either problem.

I didn't realise that the Chinese repression of the Uyghurs is equivalent to the actions of a school bully.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I imagine waterboarding can feel pretty traumatic but leaves no physical scars.

 

[Diamond]

Diamond Psychological violence can and does result in long-term trauma which is just as damaging, if not more so than physical violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator. It impacts on an individuals mental health, often needs counselling as a tool to enable someone to come to terms with what has happened to them and can take years to heal.

So, for you, having an overbearing mother is a question of violence?

Very sceptical of trauma claims - IME, sending people through hard times makes them stronger. If trauma really were a thing then natural disasters and other calamities would long ago have nipped the progress of humanity in the bud.

 

[Diamond]

I didn't realise that the Chinese repression of the Uyghurs is equivalent to the actions of a school bully.

That's the clever bit that I was getting at earlier re: the development of new Empires that will not require large scale violent death.

i.e. the Chinese approach being clever

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

That's the clever bit that I was getting at earlier re: the development of new Empires that will not require large scale violent death.

i.e. the Chinese approach being clever

Violence only ever results in death?

 

[teqniq]

So, for you, having an overbearing mother is a question of violence?

Very sceptical of trauma claims - IME, sending people through hard times makes them stronger. If trauma really were a thing then natural disasters and other calamities would long ago have nipped the progress of humanity in the bud.

Just

I am a support worker. i support people who are often victims of physical and psychological violence. I can assure you that trauma with regard to both is very real. As has been pointed out this is somewhat of a massive derail so let's just leave it at that eh?

 

[krink]

People continuing to engage with Diamonds bullshit is violence. Can you not, please?

 

[splonkydoo]

Can we keep it on Ukraine/Russia/Eastern Europe pls? ta.

 

[steveo87]

Anyway, Putin has got thebl world across a barrel, one way or another.
Whatever happens, he now knows (for sure) the West/Nato will do nothing in return- save a few strongly worded letters, and a bewildered Liz Truss (et. al).

That said, there are numerous reports about how the people of Ukraine aren't as worried about Russia as tge West/Nato are. I'm not sure what that means, but I'm just pushing the actual topic.

 

[Ax^]

The reason it is so critical that we maintain a sensible, commonly understood definition delimited to the area of physical harm (usually serious and with intent to harm) is precisely because it becomes very hard to practise any kind of sensible politics against your dictators and oppressors if people think being ignored by a group of people who don't like you (which would be violence under the CoE definition that teqniq shared earlier) is of a piece with getting your head kicked in by people who genuinely hate you for, say, your ethnicity or nationality.

That approach makes school bullying comparable to getting shot. Which, I would argue, hinders solving either problem.

you are talking ballocks btw if that helps

i post enough of it, if it is putin has tricked us all you veered off course

 

[Pickman's model]

I don't know if anyone else has posted about this on this thread, but here goes. The Russian state in Tsarist times was expansionist wherever and whenever it could be. Cruel and ruthless too, of course. Under the Bolsheviks they were no longer expansionist, but they consolidated Russian rule more effectively by a continued programme of Russification and by settlement of Russians in non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union. After the state-initiated famines amongst Ukrainians, Volga Germans, Tatars and Kazakhs in the early 1920's, and again amongst Ukrainians, Kazakhs and Buryat Mongols in the 1930's, Russian settlers were imported in large numbers to replace the dead native inhabitants. This happened again when ethnic minorities were deported from border areas in the 1930's and 40's. So too when land was grabbed from Finland, Poland, Japan and Germany, with whole scale ethnic cleansing and the immigration of ethnic Russians to the border areas. This was all quite deliberate, looking to make the borders secure. Nobody at this stage foresaw the breakup of the Soviet Union, along the fictitious boundaries of soviet republics.

In the Far East and Siberia there has been a major retreat of Russian settlers back to European Russia, but there remain substantial numbers in the Baltic states, Byelorussia, Kaliningrad, Kazakhstan and eastern Ukraine. Whilst there is a Russian nationalist in the Kremlin we can expect more of this kind of thing in the future

You say the Bolsheviks weren't expansionist but they bumped Poland over to the west a bit after ww2 and grabbed back part of Finland and of course all of the Baltic states

 

[not-bono-ever]

The inhabitants of Bosnia might argue on the semantics of psychological violence

 

[not-bono-ever]

Fucking hell

/ thread

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

You say the Bolsheviks weren't expansionist but they bumped Poland over to the west a bit after ww2 and grabbed back part of Finland and of course all of the Baltic states

Yeah, but that's the weird thing. The bits they grabbed back had nearly all been a part of Tsarist Russia. They could easily have grabbed other bits after WW2, but didn't. They could have, for example, had all of the former East Prussia, but gave half of it to Poland. They could have tried for the full pan-Slavic thing, but didn't. They could have tried absorbing parts of Eastern Europe into the Soviet Union, which theoretically was a union of sovereign working class socialist nations, but didn't. They even gave up their control of eastern Austria, never completely controlled Yugoslavia or Albania. 'Socialism' in one country.

 

[not-bono-ever]

Anyway, this all went fantastically off-topic...

Back on Ukraine, one of our developers is based in Lviv. He is super chilled about the situation and always has been - we've offered to try and evacuate him, get him some cash to draw upon etc - he's really not at all bothered. Strange disconnect between different areas of the world on this one..

Lvov is about 20 minutes to Poland - it’s old owner

 

[not-bono-ever]

You say the Bolsheviks weren't expansionist but they bumped Poland over to the west a bit after ww2 and grabbed back part of Finland and of course all of the Baltic states

They made that Poland land grab with the full and explicit agreement of chancellor hitler iirc

 

[ohmyliver]

CBS is reporting that the US can see Russian units moving out of assembly areas toward the Ukraine border

 

[cupid_stunt]

So, it's back to cyberattacks for now.

The websites of the Ukrainian military and at least two of the nation's biggest banks were knocked offline in a cyberattack today.

Ukraine's Ministry of Defense website is still unavailable at time of publication. On social media, it reported "technical works on restoration of regular functioning" are underway after it was "probably attacked by DDoS: an excessive number of requests per second was recorded." Other military sites are also apparently suffering outages.

In what appears to have been a coordinated internet attack, Ukraine's biggest commercial banking operation PrivatBank and big-three financial institution Oschadbank were also hit around the same time, knocking out some online transactions and ATMs across the country.

Cyberattack takes Ukraine military, bank websites offline

What geopolitical standoff could this possibly be linked to?

www.theregister.com

 

[Supine]

So a Russian numbers station has been Rick rolled and now plays ‘that’ hit song by Rick Astley. I’d like to think that is a gentle nudge by the US.

 

[Spymaster]

Of course, there's a question about whether western airlines should be flying to China - this, to me, seems like worrying that Vichy France will suspend commercial flights so that it's difficult to get to Nazi Germany.

If anyone can name somewhere that isn't a horrific, genocidal,authoritarian shithole that I won't be able to get to by not flying over Russia, I'm all ears...

In the grand scheme of potential tit-for-tat sanctions, the prospect of longer flights to China is about as bothersome as a Russian export ban on caviar.

 

[gosub]

In the grand scheme of potential tit-for-tat sanctions, the prospect of longer flights to China is about as bothersome as a Russian export ban on caviar.

would depend on how long it lasts....Getting into China at mo is pretty difficult at the mo anyway