For me as an old fart this all sounds like such a stupid thing… who cares if someone who volunteer to work for an software project is a Russian, German, Iranian or - God forbid - an Frenchman. My personal - and of course completely insignificant - opinion is that politics should stay out.
Linus is an absolute cunt for not only following this gleefully but then attributing pushback to “russian trolls” and “state propaganda” fuck you man.
These people weren’t the MIT pricks who inserted vulnerabilities into the kernel, they were contributors who did hard work and helped advance FREE software. Linus is now turning his back on the GPL and manning it clear that Linux can be controlled by the US state on a whim.
Couldn’t think of a more lemmy thread topic than one involving both Russian geopolitics and linux.
There has to be a way to fit Star Trek in too…
This one is scratching a ton of itch.
Couldn’t think of a more lemmy thread topic than one involving both Russian geopolitics and linux.
part of me is sad that there aren’t many .worlders defending blocking those evil tankies. lol
Yes there are, I think you guys should block .ML and enjoy your botted shithole website. Better your feed be an obvious echo chamber full of hate.
you’re preaching to the choir here; my fault for not including the sarcasm/snark tag.
Lmao sarcasm is indistinguishable from the full on brigading from the “help tankies are brigading us” instances going on in here to me 😅
friendly fire is common on the lemmyverse and i think it’s because of the reddit liberals; they’ve managed to get almost every single reddit refugee to self sort into a few instances to protect their delicate sensibilities so they’re incredibly well organized and funded, or they’re EXTREMELY dedicated individuals to the point of doing it full time for free.
Linus Torvalds Confirms Decision to Remove Maintainers from Russia
You couldn’t come up with a more powerful spit in the direction of FOSS. And from Linus, who is now kind of showing f*ck to the entire community. Here you have freedom, openness and all that. Today they just wiped their ass with it, and by one of the founders.
This is the moment when the split politics, dirty ones from all sides, have penetrated into the very heart of OpenSource - into the Linux kernel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_YozYt8l-g
Now what the actual fuck
Linus gives it a full green light and refers to negative reactions as Russian bot attacks
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linus-Torvalds-Russian-Devs
Actually insane lol. But you can’t expect much from anybody who willingly takes money from IBM.
He’s Finnish by heart even though he lives in the US. I think it is probably a pretty big worry for him that Russia might invade Finland.
I doubt this is something that he would initiate but if there was any pressure from other parties (I’m sure there was) I don’t think he is going to fight it.
he’s just an American nationalist at heart. his dad was a member of the Russian communist party and his biography seemed to make clear that rebelled from that.
socially he’s not terrible but when the war drums come beating he’s stepping in line for the stars and stripes
socially he’s not terrible but when the war drums come beating he’s stepping in line for the stars and stripes
Like pretty much every Finn would these days, really.
I know you are saying this is a bad thing but as an American I have no issues with it.
That’s racist.
American national can take many forms. The kind the person is probably the kind based in American idealism (think superman, Captain America, “liberty and justice for all”) and less the kind based in racism.
I understand that.
But he also sits at the heart of the open-source community, and his actions might ripple through the entire sector. With this much influence, allowing your personal fears to chime in is unacceptable.
Once we start fragmenting open-source the way we fragment everything else, we lose the very spirit of it and open doors to so much potential power abuse.
Besides, I really don’t see how restricting Russian maintainers would prevent Russian military aggression. If something important there is powered by Linux, it can be forked and modified to serve a specific need. Not to mention Finland is now part of NATO.
Hello Internet commenters. Please remember that there’s no rule that says you need to tell us all your gut reaction to this if you know absolutely nothing about the situation.
knowing nothing about the situation is indeed the problem. if only this process was more transparent…
Being Russian => banned from doing business with the rest of the world
That’s pretty straight forward to me.
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and what do random developers have to do with a war between oligarchies? are we banning the dirty us imperialists next, because they do more damage than russia ever will?
or are we finding a negative thing about every nationality and ban international opensource collaboration entirely?
WaR bEtWeEn oLiGaRcHiEs
Here grandpa you forgot your pills
Take it up with the concept of sanctions.
i do, (contemporary, us) sanctions are a way to punish entire countries for daring not to adopt neoliberalism.
i wonder how cuba would be doing right now if not for it.
Western chauvinism:
the imperial core == the rest of the world
You may not have noticed that most of the world is ignoring the international rules-based order’s sanctions. And not only almost all of the Global South, which represents ~85% of the world’s people and the bulk of the world’s production* and natural resources. Even many Global North countries are skirting their own sanctions to trade with Russia.
The Global North is largely sanctioning itself, and Europe is paying a very high price for it. In particular high energy prices, which is eroding their industrial base even more.
*Since the Global North in its infinite wisdom de-industrialized itself.
The almost the entire world is against Russia. And I don’t see China coming to Russia’s aid any time soon.
@possiblylinux127 @davel Since 2022, China has amplified its purchase of cheaper Russian oil after the West hit Moscow with unprecedented sanctions.
Of course, money
Money and violence, the twin forces that make the world go 'round.
When you think the entire world is just western countries. 🤡
There’s definitely a lot of opposition to Russia’s actions in the world but your comment sounds especially funny today when leaders of most of the world(including the UN Secretary General and even a certain NATO country President) are currently in Kazan, Russia on a global cooperation summit.
You’re just making it worse 😂 You really have no idea what’s going on in the real world outside of the imperial core, and you’re really sure you do.
You can look up the UN vote. 141 counties voted for the movement to have Russia withdraw from Ukraine. 5 were against it and 35 abstained.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_ES-11/1
Sure, but that vote hasn’t actually done anything, and countries continue to trade with Russia. And the Global South countries haven’t curtailed their relations with Russia one whit. In fact some are building even deeper ties with Russia. They’re building an alternative system to SWIFT, they’re trading in each others’ currencies to avoid the dollar, and they’re making plans for some kind of BANCOR-like currency. The BRICS summit is happening right now, hosted by Russia.
The UN is a toothless joke, always has been.
But then there would be no Internet! /s
I have seen pictures of Linus Torvads so I feel that I am uniquely qualified to explain whats going on. Let me break it down for you.
The Linux Kernel is meeting compliance requirements by removing Russian maintainers.
The problem is they aren’t even saying what those requirements are even after numerous inquiries about it.
Don’t you think its wrong to ban someone only because of their nationality? I mean for real man. Every country in the world has done some fucked up shit but open source software is supposed to go beyond politics and ideologies.
They weren’t doing anything malicious it was wrong to remove them.
Allegiance is another thing. Russian citizens unfortunately are subject to Russian law and the influence of the agencies.
Maintainer is more than a contributer in that it is a position of trust, which is called into question when they and their computer systems are subject to a belligerent governments jurisdiction.
International economic sanctions? He said that.
They were getting paid to develop the Linux kernel? No? Then what’s actually the requirement?
Dude, WHAT. This is totally against what Linux and Open source in general stand for.
I don’t support the thing that I’m sure was their reason for this but I definitely don’t support banning someone from contributing to an open system solely off nationality.
So what eventually only the “good guys” can contribute to and use open source software? Who exactly decides who the “good guys” are in this scenario? USA? China?
The implications of what this can cause in the future for potentially all of the open source community is absolutely sad. We should welcome all our fellow human beings to contributing to open source.
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Yeah, being from Russia is a lot different from being associated with the Russian government.
Lies! You’re a communist! Russian troll!
/s for the obtuse
You need that reddit.world or shitty.twerks URL to really sell the bit and make the tone indicator necessary IMHO
…and we don’t know whether they’re the former or the latter, no? So maybe a little early to get outraged?
Considering the US foreign policy and the impact it has on the world, regardless of whether the white house is R or D, i propose to ban all american devs… preemptively, ya know?
Inexplicably based
I don’t see what this has to do with my comment. I see no indication that all Russians are blanket-banned.
You are casually declaring all Russians should be assumed to be state agents until proven otherwise, and therefore the negative reaction to this obvious betrayal of principles, not even for convenience but for hatred, is unjustified.
I am literally saying the opposite: I am saying that it’s not clear that this applies to all Russians, or just ones that are sanctioned.
Benefit of the Doubt…
Honestly I wish that was a principle that the internet embraced more. We’re so trigger-happy to be outraged.
No the contributors should not be considered guilty until proven innocent just to give Linus et al the benefit of the doubt fuckface!
Oh geez, this the third reply by the same account… Again, I’m just saying that we don’t know whether the contributors were assumed guilty, or if they have actual ties to sanctioned companies.
I’m pretty talkative on certain subjects when I see people mangling the discussion and engaging in bad faith.
This is just softpedaling it and telling people to suspect foul play just because they are Russian honestly. There are some significant sanctions going up against Israeli companies but nobody seems concerned with that.
Would you say that Linux contributors with ties to MIT and other US universities that get funding from the same organizations of the MIC and intelligence racket are suspect? No? Yeah just Russians. Cold War propaganda chugging little twerp
No, I’m saying that if the banned people are only banned because they’re associated with the Russian government (/employed by sanctioned companies), then I’m not going to get outraged over the kernel maintainers. I do not expect them to break the law just to die on this hill.
This is all hypothetical, they are calling everyone dismayed by this Russian bots, and it’s clear this is happening in sync with US aggression against Chinese professors and tech workers in the west. Most of my comments here have been pretty independent of what you’re saying anyways. The wider context which could even justify speculating about this where open source is beholden to western laws and corporate practices should be a wake up call to people.
This is all hypothetical
Yes, that is exactly my point: let’s not get all worked up about something where we have almost zero facts. Although:
open source is beholden to western laws and corporate practices
is definitely the case for the Linux Foundation: it’s beholden to US laws. And wake-up call or not, a foundation would always be incorporated somewhere, and beholden to the laws of that somewhere.
I think getting all worked up about it is probably the first step to getting more information out of them. ┻━┻︵ (°□°)/ ︵ ┻━┻
Reminds me of a comment the other day on a post about Ventoy. Whatever the situation there is, which definitely needs clarification still, the person was saying that you shouldn’t trust it at all because the maintainer is Chinese, even though he has emigrated away. Because the CCP will be able to leverage his family still there to force him to create a backdoor.
That’s just thinly veiled racism in my opinion.
That’s plain racism honestly.
I knew a (asian) guy who was working for a government contractor serving the US military. The racism is very serious to say the least. He got framed when something went down and was almost tried with treason. (that carries the death penalty) The authorities hit him with questions about his loyalty to the US for 5 hours even though he grew up in the US and so did his parents.
As far as I can read from that, they’re still maintainers, just have had their credit removed from the contributors page, no?
Still a strange thing to do and I look forwards to an explanation.
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it’s straight up illegal for the Linux foundation to deal with Russians.
[Citation needed]
As I wrote: sanctions. That’s what compliance means.
I gotta say, that seems likely. Not sanctions in a direct way, but indirectly through funding or other assistance.
Exactly. But mods here are too butthurt to accept that and rather delete my comments, so they can live in their delusions - which was my point
@BobGnarley @kixik Yep this is definitely not a step forward.
“Compliance requirements”? The kernel’s american now?! WTF?
The commonality of all these maintainers being dropped? They appear to all be Russian or associated with Russia. Most of them with .ru email addresses.
Not short-sighted in the least…
Similarly, the driver code remains within the kernel – including for Russian hardware such as around the Baikal CPUs from Russia’s Baikal Electronics.
Not a hypocrite move at all…
Are israeli developers blocked as well? How about all american developers considering how the US foreign policy keeps fucking everyone up all over the place in the name of liberty and freedom… of oil?
You do realize that the Linux foundation is an American based entity right? It isn’t a shock that it is bound by US law.
They employ Torvalds, Torvalds owns Linux™. Who owns the code?
“Compliance requirements”? The kernel’s american now?! WTF?
Nope, but it is not above the law.
Which law under which jurisdiction?
I suppose any law in any jurisdiction you want to use it, don’t you think ?
Guys, are you all really that young to not remember alla the fuss with crypto software ? Same thing here: you want to distrubute something in a country, you need to follow the country’s law, even if they are stupid.
The kernel’s american now?! WTF?
Now we see the intended outcome of the “Inclusively” movement of the past few years.
I can’t wait to see this “Inclusively” extended to China, India, Brazil and others.
We’ll truly be the most Inclusive ever!!! What a great thing!!!
The open source / FOSS movement in China is pretty rad. I use a sweet all platform text editor maintained by Chinese devs only.
People should be more wary of the control universities, NGOs, finance through those, law enforcement infiltration etc from US, Euros, Japan, South Korea, Aus has over open source projects due to technology being such a high national security priority.
Guess we’re just going to be racist and run with the misdirection of criticism of US laws on to foreign enemies. Just go with the flow, I guess.
If they really want reverse brain drain it isn’t my problem, it’s their long term problem. CERN is also making a dumb mistake, all universities are in on this, it’s imperial chauvinism.
Fantastic to hear! wonderful news. Racists and Xenophobes will try to stop global collaboration, but the real conflict that matters will always be the smart vs the lowiq. FOSS is about humanity first and not any particular sub-category. Everyone who gets in the way is trying to divide and stop FOSS from saving the planet.
I think at the moment FOSS movement has a core of libertarian idealism which historically cleaves to the west when anything is on the line. This is because of academic institutions being dependent on/greedy for financial and political backing, and the control of the time economy of workers by tech corps trying to turn open source into “mow my lawn for free, build character” or by the media platforms which popularizers/online tutors of open source tech and software and operating systems are dependent on
However it is also a worker’s movement in some ways not just a device user’s movement, and I think it will play an important part in the battle over Wall St’s tech cash cow globally.
Racists and Xenophobes will try to stop global collaboration,
Yes! Go on…
real conflict that matters will always be the smart vs the lowiq.
Uff… That’s some serious brainworms right there. How do you call your worldview? IQ Supremacy?
I wanna skirt by all the political stuff and ask what that text editor is?
Nope I’m keeping it
Gaslight gatekeep girlboss
Well this is the last thread where I want to open up possibilities of text editor drama, but it is Siyuan
I wouldn’t be surprised if they did something similar for China at some point. (If tensions worsen)
I don’t see them doing anything outside of that
I think the Russians that would want to backdoor stuff would just use a name like John.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/linux-fellow-bans-university-contributing-kernel Or just suggest they back door the kernel to an American university
Error 500 can’t upload the image but check these names for ideas on your next Russian puppet account:
https://imgur.com/gallery/even-more-american-names-from-that-japanese-baseball-game-6HAtN
Mine?
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No I’m getting error 500 when trying to upload a photo. So I linked an imgur of what I was trying to to reference. It’s from a Japanese baseball game they marketed in America.
This is such an odd thing to do… I really cannot see the benefits for the project doing this. Maybe those maintainers were payed for their work and sanctions prohibit paying them or something?
Or maybe some Russian State backed programmers have tried to slip in backdoors in various key systems, numerous times. Including one that almost went live on millions of machines.
it isn’t like Americans would do that, right?
But where do you have information that it was russian state? There are many state actors capable of doing this. Just saying
Even Wikipedia, which is a shockingly bloodthirsty pro-NATO outlet, admits there is zero proof that a “Russian state actor” did this, there are just “western security experts” claiming it (as usual), and opinion is divided.
Did you even read this or do you just vaguely remember a Wired article? I have been able to see through these obvious ploys since I was a teenager reading about cold war propaganda (okay that was like 5 years ago but still SMDH)
Great sign for discussion that hacking is still being treated by Redditors as Russian, Chinese, and North Korean until proven otherwise. 🤕
Kernel development is for
only.This is poetry
This is dumb. Corporate divestment, sure, of course, fuck their money and their power structures. But open-source developers are not generally gung-ho about the war effort… let alone propping up their local military-industrial complex.
This is the only plan the west has to win the war. Keep fucking over random Russians in the hopes Putin somehow becomes politically vulnerable over this, despite opposition getting weaker than ever throughoit the war and with the onset of sanctions. Now we are asking random Linux contributors, please come back when you’ve overthrown your government for us.
Russia is of course the only country that has ever invaded another country so it’s only fair.
No matter how many vulnerabilities are introduced into software by western allied intelligence agencies, we should never be held accountable for dealing with them ourselves. After all Russians are uniquely responsible for their tyrannical government because of their Asiatic brainpans.
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Fact is you know I am right, you just don’t have any principles. You seem baffled some people uphold principles.
it’s a pity that politics is penetrating more and more into open source and FOSS.
recently support for Russian cloud providers was cut out of opentofu. https://github.com/opentofu/registry/pull/824
now this. this is, of course, natural the core and many components of modern distributions have not been free in terms of decision-making for a long time and are under the influence of large companies, which in turn are under the influence of the USA.
FOSS has always been political. And usually fairly reactionary.
Agree with the former, not the latter.
See: the FOSS higs that all flipped out when contributor agreements with codes of conduct like “don’t be homophobic or racist” started popping up.
It was quite a struggle and there is still a large old guard that simply refuses to move on it.
You’re greatly overestimating how many people that is; additionally, it was largely people that aren’t very committed to FOSS that got mad. The project maintainers and most users are fine with it. People who are committed to FOSS ideals are overwhelmingly progressive to leftist. That’s why those codes of conduct were added in the first place, and were largely uncontroversial amongst most actual contributors of those projects.
The projects that have those codes of conduct are the ones where any reactionary maintainers could be overruled. You have to look to the projects that have never had codes of conduct, the old guard and Incelie techbro spaces. Brave’s CEO is a homophobe, for example. This has been known for years, he still makes homophobic comments. Brave does not have a code of conduct or community guidelines. And basically anyone that notices and tries to address an issue like racism or transphobia with a repo suddenly finds a mass of reactionaries coming out of the woodwork.
It’s unfortunately the case that politics permeates everything, nothing is in isolation of the political climate it exists within.
The state of the world today is a function of the politics that got us here, a big change in world politics can have dramatic and far reaching effects.
A healthy global FOSS culture requires collaborative politics to be the flavour of the day—which is unfortunately not the case in a lot of countries currently.
A healthy global FOSS culture requires collaborative politics to be the flavour of the day
Bullshit. There’s no reason people with political differences can’t collaborate on the same project, unless those differences are really huge.
Politics is not just the relationship between two people, it’s the relationship between a person and everyone/everything else in the world.
Reducto ad absurdum: would you suggest a world where every country is at war with everyone else would foster a better environment for global FOSS collaboration than one where the world was at complete peace?
I honestly thought the statement you quoted was entirely uncontroversial. “Healthy” and “global” being the key words, I’m not saying it’s a requirement for FOSS to exist in general or anything.
Well for what its worth there are other counties outside of Russia
Open-source is politics.
MKTux
We had a time of peace everyone was dependent on each other. Now the world is fragmenting and we we’ll probably have war or at least high tension between the parties.
What was this alleged time of peace you speak of?
40,000 years ago
@possiblylinux127 @TheOubliette Four years ago was certainly more peaceful than today.
I might frame it as less embroiled in open war and extermination.
@TheOubliette i don’t think there is any way you can measure and/or frame it that my statement is not true.
To split hairs, saying “more peaceful” implies it was peaceful in the first place and even is now, just less so. I don’t think it was peaceful at either point. Which why I am framing it as a status quo of violence that was lesser 4 years ago and greater now.
It depends on how you measure it. That was the start of covid so people were dying
@possiblylinux127 Whether you measure it by the sheer number of conflicts, their average size, or the number of people dying as a result.
To be honest, the only reason why any of that appeared to be true, or the west appeared to uphold free speech, just like free trade policies and laissez faire approach to international finance, that was all just because Wall St did not feel threatened, that was all just because the propaganda was received unthinkingly for the past 30 years or so. Especially between 2001 and the first part of the financial crash.
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Oh… USA is untrustworthy country and taints even regular good people by them having to live there. What can they do if CIA/DEA/CIS/DHS/SS/FBI or something calls and tells them to put in some code they want? Refuse and watch their loved ones rot in prison/get deported/disappear/die? Comply but risk telling the community they just did that?
Finland is an untrustworthy country. America is an untrustworthy country. You want special ttreatment for citizens of the NATO bloc despite constantly running intel operations and huge invasions since WWII and especially the 90s, thag got worse after they successfully desposed the former USSR and turned it into the capitalist shithole of the Russian Federation - which tried damn hard to ally with NATO before we pushed them away. No, it’s not “harshly put”, you have antique, vicious neoconservative politics and racist bullshit to back it up.
@reksas @fireshell There is no such thing as a trust worthy country because they’re all run by politicians and there is no such thing as a trust worthy politician. There is an old saying, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I am quite disappointed at the lack of transparency regarding this.
This is a shame, I always thought Linux was supposed to be an International collaboration, hate to see it caught up in this bullshit political agenda.
No it was code started by Linus that got huge.
I agree to this. I was literally just in the shower thinking how Linux, the space station, and the Olympics are the only times we as humans come together to collaborate
You know that Russia wasn’t able to compete in the Olympics or Paralympics this year, right? The individual athletes weren’t banned however, but they had to compete under a neutral banner and weren’t in the parade of nations.
Edit: I should have added, was disgusted because Israel were allowed to compete. Huge double standard there.
@princessnorah @secret300 A shame people can’t be more civilized. Really I don’t think we’ve evolved all that much in spite of our technology.
If I recall correctly Russia is not allowed to participate because of their state doping program not because of their politics. So unless there was an Israel state doping program discovered that’s not double standard.
That’s a valid point to make, but it’s actually both. Russian athletes would have been able to compete under the IOC flag if it was just the doping scandal, from what I understand.
@secret300 The project to discover elements 119 and 120 which previously were a US/Russia collaboration also put on hold. All of humanity moves backwards when we fight, nothing is gained.
Banning CFCs went pretty well too
@JWBananas @secret300 Yea you know the funny thing about that, CFC’s are heavy and tend to sink to the ground if not propelled into the stratosphere by rockets, say like the old Space Shuttle with it’s solid chlorine oxidizer boosters, or the various military missiles which mostly have been converted to liquid hydrogen and oxygen engines. But nah we got to spend $3k to replace our A/C because it contains CFC’s that never would have made it up into the atmosphere anyway because of you know, physics, little things like gravity, so the military can avoid blame.
If that was how it worked then we would have all suffocated long ago under all the argon that sank to the bottom of the troposphere. The atmosphere is turbulent and extremely good at mixing gases of varying densities, and CFCs last decades before being decomposed or removed from the air.
Political agenda is a funny euphemism for imperialist invasion and genocide.
Gee i’m glad israeli maintainers are being blocked as well.
I’m all for sanctioning them too. Economic sanctions are the bare minimum we should be doing to genocidal authoritarians.
this is the genocide you must be referring to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHWHqj8g7Bk
I totally think them invading Ukraine is fucked up too but I also think the Israel situation is messed up too and would you be against someone maintaining code just because they are from Israel?
That would be wrong. Linux is supposed to be about more than political alignments its supposed to be a collaborative effort its always been about that.
This is wrong and its super wrong they don’t tell anyone what compliance they are following or who issued it to them which is also supposed to be against what open source is about.
@Midnight If Russia were the only one involved, and if weren’t provoked by outside powers like say, oh, the United States, yea I could agree with you but my knowledge of history precludes my accepting that explanation.
🥱
- NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
- The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace
- The Ukraine Mess That Nuland Made Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s regime change without weighing the likely consequences.
- Leaked audio reveals embarrassing U.S. exchange on Ukraine, EU
- US Imperialism and the Ukraine Coup
- Former German Chancellor Merkel Admits that Minsk Peace Agreements Were Part of Scheme for Ukraine to Buy Time to Prepare for War With Russia
- Zelensky admits he never intended to implement Minsk agreements
- The West’s Sabotage of Peace in Ukraine In May of [2022] Ukrainian media reported that then-British prime minister Boris Johnson had flown to Kiev the previous month to pass on the message on behalf of the western empire that “Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with,” and that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.”
- The Intercept, 2021: Meet NATO, the Dangerous “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World
- CounterPunch, 2022: NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance
- Noam Chomsky, 2023: NATO “most violent, aggressive alliance in the world”
- Thomas Fazi, 2024: NATO: 75 years of war, unprovoked aggressions and state-sponsored terrorism
The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace
The shooting war in Ukraine began with Yanukovych’s overthrow nine years ago, not in February 2022 as the U.S. government, NATO, and the G7 leaders would have us believe.
So many people forget that the Ukrainian Russian conflict never really ended, the idea that it was an unprovoked invasion is absurd, (and no, before someone decides to make a braindead comment, provoked does not mean justified.) There have been many leaked videos pre-invasion of violence towards both sides, and neither side made a proper effort to actually quell it, only surface level bullshit inorder to take the "moral ground:
Westerners usually don’t know any of that, because Western governments, NGOs, and corporate media erase all inconvenient context and history. I try to point folks toward developing real media literacy…
@davel @drwankingstein All of which have their biases and really a very limited subsample of viewpoints and history.
Holy shit I didn’t know admins in this place were full blown Russian lickers. I don’t know about you but I would gladly have my country join nato if that means not ending up like Georgia or now Ukraine twice.
Also congrats on getting Finland to finally join nato btw.
always hilarious to see nafoids show up here
Cool, maybe the US will blow up its new ally’s pipelines too someday. We are not a trustworthy ally.
You are on the Russian instance my friend. I would strongly recommend finding a new home.
By Russian instance you mean one where people engage with reality that’s uncomfortable for the utterly brainwashed people like yourself?
What instance do you suggest?
What rational discussion is to be had when one country is clearly annexing another since 2014 lmao?
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Or that’s what this would be on Lemmy.ml. They are all tankies and they get mad when you point out terrible things like facts.
Right??? They act like they are concerned about what events could have taken place to ensure that the invasion never happened. Guess what could have occurred that would have been the biggest guarantee that the invasion could never happen? Ukraine joining NATO prior to the invasion…
All NATO wanted to do was to use Ukraine as a tool to weaken Russia, and now NATO will discard Ukraine like a used condom. That’s the fate of all the vassals of the empire.
@theunknownmuncher @Samueru Like Russia placing nukes in Cuba guaranteed we wouldn’t invade it?
The thing about not being willing to learn from history is that you are then destined to repeat the same mistakes.
NATO will continue expanding as more and more border countries don’t want to deal with limp dick Putin. Russia will be broken up to small territories and anything that remains of the federation will be scrapped and sold for salvage to finance rebuilding what has been lost.
Ta-ta!
That is what the US has wanted for the last 25 years, but it’s unlikely to happen. The Global North has very significantly de-industrialized itself, and its attempts at sanctions not only haven’t worked, but are having the effect of it isolating itself from the global majority. Russia has aligned with the Global South. Hence BRICS+ and the larger developing multipolar bloc that’s going its own way, ignoring the US’ “rules-based international order” sanctions, developing its own international balance of payments outside of US dollar hegemony, and working to get out from under the boot of the IMF’s & World Bank’s debt traps.
the federation will be scrapped and sold for salvage
The neocolonial plunderers already tried that, and they even got away with under Yeltsin, but then Putin kicked them out, which is why they’re especially butthurt about him.
Not always, but often 😂
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: blatant russian nazi acctYou see the Russians are the real Nazis, not the Banderites who attacked Eastern Ukrainians for the decade before this war started.
@davel If the world were so simple then those with single digit IQ’s and no real knowledge of historical fact would be able to understand it, unfortunately it is not.
They’re not dumb; usually it’s that they live in the bubble of Western propaganda, while simultaneously believing that they haven’t been propagandized their whole lives.
People not only don’t know what’s happening to them, they don’t even know that they don’t know. — Noam Chomsky
And really, who even has the time and energy to know? It’s actually a lot of work, and we live under neoliberalism, where most of us are just trying to keep our heads above water. Plus, there’s no social or financial upside to bucking the hegemonic viewpoint.
@davel Everyone has their own perspective but I think most people here are trying to greatly over simply a complex situation with and Noam Chomsky offers only yet another perspective and I disagree with him on the issue of world government or extinction. I don’t think world government on a large scale, particularly the way it is now with no real citizenship representation, is particularly desirable.
You think the US provoked Russia to invade Ukraine? bruh
@GammaGames They had other provocations such as what was happening to the Russian speaking people in Donbass, but the United States definitely sealed the deal.
Putin is a despot trying to make his mark on history. No amount of appeasement from the global West would have stopped him from ordering the invasion.
@YaBoyMax Sorry I’ve watched enough of his speeches that I can’t come away with the same. I know there are a lot of deep state types trying to paint him as such so that we can get on with their ww III depopulation agenda.
“propaganda”? Oh. You mean like Russia started a full blown unprovoked war with a peaceful nation? That “propaganda”?
Sucks others got caught in the crosshairs, but that’s just what happens when your authoritarian government launches unprovoked wars and gets sanctioned.
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NATO Expansion: The argument that NATO’s eastward expansion “provoked” Russia is often linked to Gorbachev’s 1990 talks with Western leaders. However, this promise was tied to Germany’s unification, not a blanket prohibition on expansion. And importantly eastern european countries sought NATO membership because of their historical (and justified) fears of Russian imperialism (a dynamic Marxists should understand as nations seeking sovereignty free from external dominance.)
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Western Involvement in Ukraine: The U.S. supporting a regime change in Ukraine in 2014 is thought to be imperialism. But ignores the agency of Ukrainians, who led the Maidan protests because of already existing deep dissatisfaction with Yanukovych’s corrupt, oligarchic regime and his pivot to Russia. Supporting popular uprisings against oligarchs should align with Marxist values even if “the West” has its own interests
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The Role of Fascism in Ukraine: Yes, Ukraine has issues with far-right groups like so many countries but exaggerating their influence as a justification for invasion serves to divert attention from Russia’s own reactionary politics. Far-right elements in Ukraine do not define the country’s political landscape, nor do they justify imperial aggression from another state. Russia has its own history of fostering right-wing authoritarianism.
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Minsk Agreements: While the West" and Ukraine could be criticized for their handling of the Minsk agreements, Russia also violated these accords by continuing support for the separatists. Both sides share blame for the failure of Minsk, but it doesn’t make Russia’s invasion justified. Ukrainians didn’t provoke a full-scale invasion; they were defending their sovereignty.
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NATO as a “Defensive” Alliance: Criticism of NATO’s imperialistic behavior is fair its actions in places like Libya show it isn’t 100% defensive. But in this case, NATO’s expansion was driven by countries seeking security from a historically imperialist power. Ukraine wasn’t “provoking” Russia by wanting self-determination; it was trying to secure its future.
You’re trying to push this “Actuall, but Ukraine DID provoke” narrative by mixing in unverified, ideologically biased material with references that are legitimate, but isolated incidents. Like linking far-right activity to justify the war conveniently ignores Russia’s (I should probably say everyone’s) own far-right issues. Marxists should reject imperialism in all its forms, including Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
“Actually, but Ukraine DID provoke”
Mostly NATO, and by that I mean mostly the US. The Ukrainian state is in bed with and dependent on the US, so yes it was and is a participant.
mixing in unverified, ideologically biased material with references that are legitimate
The implication here is, the more biased, the less trustworthy/factual. This is false, and anyway, I don’t think you fully see the bias baked into the supposedly unbiased sources. And “unverified” I suspect means not blessed by Western states (which are run by the capitalist class[1][2]) or Western NGOs (which are funded by Western states and the capitalist class) or Western corporate media (which are owned by the capitalist class).
isolated incidents
Liberals often view history that way, but historical materialists don’t.
Yes, Ukraine has ties with the U.S., but sovereign nations have the right to choose their alliances. Ukraine’s Western integration stems from its desire for self-determination, not just U.S. influence. Russia’s aggression isn’t justified merely because Ukraine sought NATO’s support.
Bias exists everywhere, but dismissing “Western” sources wholesale, while elevating openly ideological ones, doesn’t strengthen the argument. Marxist critique should apply equally to all capitalist states, including Russia, which operates under an oligarchic system that exploits its own people. 1 2
While far-right elements in Ukraine are real, they’re a small part of the picture. Reducing Ukraine to these groups oversimplifies the conflict. Most Ukrainians are fighting for sovereignty, not fascism.
Russia’s actions are imperialist too, and as a Marxist, you should critique imperialism wherever it emerges, not just from the West.
I hardly dismissed Western sources wholesale. Plenty of my links are to Western corporate & NGO sources.
Ukraine’s Western integration stems from its desire for self-determination, not just U.S. influence.
I mean, you say that like the people of Ukraine chose that path, but they didn’t. The Ukrainian oligarchs did, specifically the oligarchs that aligned with the US for the 2014 coup. They decided to bet on that horse. But I think it’s a stretch to call that self-determination.
Yes, Russia is shitty as well, and no less an oligarchy than the US. And Ukraine has been shitty & famously corrupt for decades; that didn’t start with Poroshenko. Russia, if given its druthers, would be imperialist, but since it presently doesn’t, it presently isn’t.
“The people of Ukraine didn’t choose that path, the oligarchs did.”
It’s true Ukraine has a history of oligarchic influence, but the 2014 Maidan protests were a massive, popular uprising. Ukrainians were fed up with Yanukovych’s corruption and his decision to abandon the EU agreement for closer ties with Russia. This wasn’t just oligarchs pulling strings; millions of Ukrainians demonstrated for a future that aligned with Europe, seeking more autonomy from Russia.
“Russia would be imperialist, but isn’t right now.”
I would argue that Russia is acting imperialistically. The annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas, and now the invasion of Ukraine are clear examples of Russia asserting control over its neighbors. Even if it’s not globally imperialist like the U.S., these actions align with a regional imperialism that Marxists should still oppose.
Ultimately, this isn’t about picking sides between oligarchies, but supporting the principle of self-determination for Ukraine, including resisting imperialist aggression from any direction.
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Question: do you believe in the self-determination of Ukrainians?
Absolutely, but that was intolerable to the US, which is why they coup’ed its government in 2014 and installed a puppet one.
Yes and the 33 million people whose lives have been uprooted by the invasion, are undoubtedly very happy Russia is ‘fixing’ this with violence.
Yes, the self-determination of the Ukrainian people, the western Ukrainians and the eastern Ukrainians both.
And I believe in the right of the Eastern Ukrainians to not be attacked by fascist western Ukrainian paramilitaries[1] with tacit & overt support from the Ukrainian government and the US.
And I believe in the Ukrainian state not suppressing regional languages.
And I believe in the Ukrainian state not banning political parties.
Right, so how does the full scale, violent invasion by a foreign state help the self determination of both Ukrainian peoples?
It certainly is violent, as all invasions are, though it’s not a full scale invasion. Russia has not fully activated its military, and it has no intent on taking all of Ukraine. That would be a terrible idea, if for no other reason than the fact that eastern Ukraine is very anti-Russian and has a lot of fascists who are virulently anti-Russian. It would be a terrible idea to try to permanently occupy it. In contrast, the annexation of Crimea was practically a cake walk, because most of the people of Crimea wanted to be annexed. And it seems it was for the best for them, because they didn’t suffer years of attacks by western Ukrainians like their neighbors to their north.
Still, by international law the invasion was & is illegal, and it certainly is violent. After the 2014 coup, an anti-Russian government—blessed by Victoria Nuland (who had been on the ground handing out cookies for the coup)—was installed, eastern Ukraine declared its independence. This independence was not recognized the Ukrainian government of course. It was a very messy situation. Ukraine was in a state of civil war from the coup until the invasion. I don’t know what percentage of the people of eastern Ukraine welcomed the Russian invasion/liberation. 30%, 50%, 70%? I have no idea.
Unfortunately, as complicated as that all is, realpolitik can’t be ignored. For an analogy, consider the Cuban missile crisis (BTW we now know that the reason Russia & Cuba did that was because the US had secretly installed nuclear weapons in Turkey).
Imagine if Russia (or say China) were expanding its “defensive alliance” into south & central America, and making plans to expand it further, right up to the California–Texas border, which would likely lead to “defensive” nuclear weapons right on our back porch. Maybe they’re in talks with Canada as well, in an effort to “contain” the US. Realistically—regardless of what is internationally legal (which the US usually ignores anyway)—what would the US do?
The US has has been working a plan to break up Russia for the last thirty years. Ukraine is just a pawn to the US. This is the confrontation the US wanted, with the hopes of starting that Balkanization. It doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Ukrainians’ lives, never mind their self-determination. The US does this kind of thing all the time.
My question was: how does the violence of the invasion help the self determination of Ukrainian people?
I’ll be more explicit: why not simply acknowledge that the invasion is not only unlawful, but deeply immoral – and completely contradictory to the self determination of a people?
And never ask why the US has over 800 external military bases, while all other countries combined have less than 20.
Never ask a dronie how gullible they are, they’ll tell you.
Does invading your neighbor count as international collaboration? Not that all Russian people can be held directly responsible for the actions of their government.
@theunknownmuncher The US has been involved in probably 300 regime changes throughout the world, has invaded many countries, including those that we were not affiliated with. Russia invades a neighboring country when we install a leader that is going to allow us to put missiles on their border. I really hate to see political hegemony get in the way of a good collaborative effort, we all suffer for it if we allow this.
The US has been involved in probably 300 regime changes throughout the world, has invaded many countries, including those that we were not affiliated with.
Absolutely fair point. I agree with you on this portion of your comment.
@theunknownmuncher And I could give countless other examples of other countries. I don’t agree with the war, but I also know if we hadn’t installed Zelenskyy and if the United States had honored our promise to Russia not to extend NATO past East Germany, then it would not have happened. So I understand that it is hardly one sided on Russias part. If we didn’t fund Ukraine, if we didn’t offer them membership in NATO, none of this would have happened. And I’ll add if the Ukraine and Russia did not have large oil reserves and some other precious minerals, the United States would be a lot less interested in them. But that’s all in the past. Now, you and I can disagree with each other and we can disagree with what our governments do, but if we want to build a better world it has to happen through the cooperative efforts of citizens NOT governments because the latter just historically a lot less likely to happen. So I can’t see this move as at all productive towards ending this particular war or world peace in general, I see it as quite the opposite.
Wait, what?? Zelenskyy took office after being democratically elected in 2019. Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014. Your timeline does not check out there.
Zelensky took office on the promise of normalizing relations with Donbas and Russia, and then proceeded to do the opposite. Also, wonder what happened in 2014 that might’ve provoked a response from Russia there.
Also, wonder what happened in 2014 that might’ve provoked a response from Russia there.
Ukraine using its right to free association, to sign an agreement with the EU strengthening relations? Specifically including a further formalising of cooperation around Chernobyl (Euratom is independently a signatory), an issue entirely caused by Russia in the first place, who didn’t ever offer a similar level of cooperation? Is that what you’re referring too?
Its almost as if it is coming right out of the Russian media
@possiblylinux127 @theunknownmuncher I know it might hurt your brain but it is helpful to fully understand an issue to understand the other sides perspectives.
@theunknownmuncher Your timeline doesn’t go back far enough and I notice you completely ignored the bit about Eastern expansion of NATO and what the United States promised Russia.
Your justification of genocide is both ludicrous and gross.
So why did Russiactaje Crimera? Saying this wouldn’t have happened is BS. Russia I expected a quick and decisive victory.
there is simply no meaningful response to this
no matter whether you think russia is justified in invading ukraine or not, if russians get banned from the kernel bc russia invaded ukraine, yankees have to get the boot as well
if russians get banned from the kernel bc russia invaded ukraine
You should read the article because this is not a thing that has occurred, at least not yet.
my understanding was that the kernel didn’t publicly state any specific reason, but “complying to sanctions” semms like a safe bet to me
in any case, whatever the reason, this removal is unfortunate and uncalled for
@bunitor I’d agree, but on this same basis with all the conflicts in the world you’d have to expand this to about 99% of the globe.
YUP
so… maybe nobody should be banned and it sucks that this happened?
@bunitor That would be my take. My take is that as individuals we are were international cooperation needs to begin, it isn’t going to happen with our governments, at least it never has historically.
We had international cooperation but the world is splintering now. Might be some security concerns but also think some of it is America protecting its companies from China companies.
You do realize that the US has invaded far more countries than Russia has, do burgerlanders have no self awareness at all?
@yogthos @theunknownmuncher I am in the US and I realize this. There was a funny meme a while back about look how aggressive Russia is, they put their country all around our military bases. Unfortunately there is a lot of truth in that. What other country has military bases throughout the world?
Russia literally invaded everyone around them. Look at all the former USSR counties.
The US has been involved in a lot of places but that’s not a justification for Russia attacking there neighborhood.
How to say you’re historically illiterate without saying so. Go read up on how USSR was formed clown.
Does Russia invading Ukraine justify the US invading Iraq?
Though we are discussing individuals here, should we ban Americans in projects to maintain moral integrity?
BTW are you referring to historical (pre 1990) expansion as well? Because an American really shouldn’t want to go there.
27 million Soviets died liberating these people from the Nazis, and this is the thanks they get.
I hope this is sarcasm but the way this post is going I don’t know.
I assure you it is not sarcasm.
found the nazi
So it’s ok if you’re invading non-neighbors… got it,
Aside from the fact that it’s pretty insane to suggest to kick someone off a project for no reason other than their nationality (the article doesn’t say any of these maintainers supported the invasion or had any ties with the government), even if these people actively supported the government, as far as kernel development is concerned… I don’t really care? If their contributions are good then I want their patches to be merged. Tor was made by the US government, which I in no way condone, but I still use Tor.
I’m sure removing these maintainers would be of great help to the Ukrainian war effort…
More seriously: We need to help Ukraine more. But this doesn’t do that. It just hurts a bunch of people (both the maintainers, and the people using their code) for no benefit whatsoever, only virtue-signaling.
The biggest help the west could’ve done for Ukraine was to fuck off when the Istanbul negotiations were happening two months into the war.
100% agree with you! Like I said, I don’t think we can hold all Russian people directly responsible for the actions of their government.
I wish for an ideal world where politics could stay out of Linux, but this is extremely tricky and cannot be treated black and white. Labeling things as “political” and then crying to keep “politics” out of things is often used as a weapon for exclusion, for example by sexuality or race, and I think exclusion should be anathema for Linux and open source projects.
I think the general idea is to create as much drain on Russia as possible. Limit there ability to import and export good while creating brain drain and terrible moral.
How’s that working you for y’all there?
oh and spoiler, welcome to the real world https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/russia-relocation-emigration-return-reasons/
@lily33 @theunknownmuncher The best way we can help Ukraine is by removing outside influences from both sides. What is being portrayed as a war in Ukraine is really a proxy war between Russia and the US that was egged on by the US. This is most unwise given that both nations are armed to the teeth with nukes. We really should be looking at ways to de-escalate not escalate this war.
De-escalation is easy: Russia can get the fuck out of Ukraine. All of it.
I love how libs are utterly incapable of engaging with reality thinking that if they just repeat this mantra enough times it’ll happen.
@remotelove Yea sure, let the US place missiles on their border. Not a rational option.
Well considering the US said they would defend Ukraine from Russia when Ukraine got rid of there nukes. Yah kind of hand tied with Russia invading.
Only problem being that Ukraine never had nukes. USSR had nukes that were stationed on the territory of Ukraine. When USSR dissolved, Russia became the successor state and inherited the nukes. This has never been in dispute.
Ehh they keep saying we are not involved we are not whatever. You can only say that so long. I mean the soldiers are coming from somewhere these are not people grown in vats.
It’s a little unclear what you mean, like because more than half a million Russian soldiers have already been killed so far and yet the war keeps going, that the people must be responsible for supporting?
Russia is conscripting, so most are not there by choice but required by law. If you draft dodge and get caught, you go to prison, and still just end up on the frontline anyway, since they are emptying their prisons to use as soldiers, too. And these people will be shot and killed by their own side if they attempt a retreat, while fed propaganda and misinformation about their treatment if they surrender. There has been significant human trafficking to support their war effort. They’ve also depended heavily on mercenary forces outside of their military in order to have skilled soldiers.
Besides that, there are so many factors that go into why a person would decide to join the military and in reality, they are usually economic ones or from extensive propaganda.
