cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/1338851
Archived version: https://archive.ph/yDjTx
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20230811193345/https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-fire-all-regional-military-recruitment-chiefs-zelenskiy-2023-08-11/
I knew from reading the headline that Hexbear’s horde of mouthbreathers would show up to brigade and spread their propaganda. Sure enough, here we are
Edit: You guys really are just proving my point lmao
Hexbear users rushing to bombard this comment with image reactions to say they’re not brigading
You’re exactly correct! Lmao
I play “count the fallacies” with the comments. So far I’ve seen: ad homonim; what-about-ism; strawman ; appeal to popularity ; appeal to authority ; hasty generalization / ecological fallacy
I get bored well before I stop counting
Lol I don’t even bother with reading anything they say at all. I just block anyone who’s on Hexbear, I must have half the instance blocked. And my experience browsing Lemmy has been so much better for it!
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Who’s Hexbear?
It’s not a who, it’s an instance: hexbear.net. It’s also full of pro-Russia tankies.
Russian troll farms have hit lemmy = lemmy has made it to the social media big leagues now!
Uh… Is there a reason why I’ve never heard of this?
They were not federated before. They did around 9 days ago.
They only were recently federated, and got defederated from some large instances like lemmy.world for their explicit intent to brigade other instances and communities to spread their “anti-liberal” nonsense.
Crying about “tankies” is just calling everything “woke” with extra steps. Not everyone there automatically supports NATO/Ukraine but it’s far from what you describe.
There are still significant numbers of people denying the genocide currently happening and actively rooting for the invaders, which is why I pointed it out. There’s a reason they have been defederated by so many large instances. This has nothing to do at all with anything “woke” and I don’t see why you’d even bring it up.
Edit: I just had a look at their frontpage and the first post there is about how the “western MSM” lied about the counteroffensive and how “Stalin shouldn’t have stopped at Berlin”. Yeah, alright. lmao
Republican: “Everything to the left of me is woke.”
Republican pretending to be liberal online: “Everything to the left of me is tankie.”
At the end of the day it’s a word that can mean anything you want, and is only useful as a tactic to divide resistance against right wingers.
I’ve been interacting with them recently to see what they are all about and lmao I don’t think I’ve ever had a dumber discussion in my life. Truly they are uniquely stupid.
My cats have learned the wirr motor sound of the feeder means food. So they’ll run from whereever in the house at an motor sound. Suddenly like “it’s food time right? Right? But the noise means food…” Regardless of any further context.
Same same but different with hexbear.
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imagine being a grown ass adult and taking the time to write this comment
This is the best summary I could come up with:
KYIV, Aug 11 (Reuters) - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy broadened his battle against graft on Friday, firing all the heads of Ukraine’s regional army recruitment centres as the war with Russia enters a critical stage.
Zelenskiy said a state investigation into centres across Ukraine had exposed abuses by officials ranging from illegal enrichment to transporting draft-eligible men across the border despite a wartime ban on them leaving the country.
Ukraine has made cracking down on graft a priority as it fends off Russia’s full-scale invasion and seeks membership of the European Union and has fired or prosecuted a string of high-ranking officials implicated in sleaze.
Zelenskiy said that any sacked army recruitment officers who are not being investigated should head to the front to fight for Ukraine “if they want to keep their epaulettes and prove their dignity”.
Videos purporting to depict army recruiters aggressively pursuing or becoming violent with would-be draftees have gone viral on social media in the country, which has been under martial law since the invasion.
Zelenskiy said top general Valery Zaluzhny would be responsible for implementing Friday’s decision and that new candidates for the posts would first be vetted by Ukraine’s domestic security service, the SBU.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Misses important bit;
“This system should be run by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery during war is treason,” he said, adding that those fired would be replaced by recent veterans and soldiers wounded at the front.
those fired would be replaced by recent veterans and soldiers wounded at the front
Somehow I’m not sure that they would be the most effective recruiters.
They’re not trying to sell a bright future like military recruiters in the US. People are forced to do their military service by law and the recruiters are responsible to match the drafted people with the role that fits best.
Hey it worked for Starship Troopers.
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Trust me bro, you’ll love the battlefield and definitely not end up injured like me
“Mobile Infantry made me the man I am today.”
I beg to differ. The applicants talking to recent vets or wounded soldiers know that these people could be their future. It is important to know all the possible outcomes, including possible PSTD, death, or dismemberment. Having recruiters that are too disconnected from the human war cost is a disservice, in my opinion.
I think I missed my point in there. They would be more effective when those new soldiers are on the frontline fighting, instead of selling a false image of how easy joining would be. That false sell would result in wasted resources training soldiers that wouldn’t be as effective. Sometimes it’s better to have less people in your unit, when the extra bodies (that were lied to) would cause more wasted time and energy. Time and energy that should be focused on war.
I doesn’t matter if the guy serving draft notices was wounded.
I guess some of the lucky conscripts will try to run away and then it might matter.
A draft is slavery.
Sort of. But so is letting your country be taken over by orcs. Choose your poison.
Depends on the grayness of the orcish regime. My point being, if even America couldn’t nuke a country and get away with taking no responsibility (they took very little, but my point still stands regardless) then what makes you think Ukraine is going to enslave or kill the “orcs”? Warning, wall of text below.
Tl;dr: The orcs aren’t meant to be a metaphor for a race, they’re a metaphor for Victorian-era aristechnocratic factory and railway owners (Sauron) and their Pinkerton-style union-busting goons (tree-hating orcs).
Also tl;dr: The elves, on the other hand, are just because Tolkien made them to speak his con-lang pet project of a “High Elvish” language, go figure. Admittedly, my online persona is the main character in all three of my writing projects, so I definitely have no right to complain about putting in the work to make a world for a favored creation to interact with.
Rant begins now, feel free to ignore! If the foe who is about to conquer your country just blew up two cities and they’re offering near-equality, then you have “fantasy subversion” orcs or America just before the end of WWII, and I would certainly be relieved (at least with the advantage of hindsight) in that case about allying rather than everyone I care about dying by gun or by A-bomb. If they’re hellbent on overthrowing a democracy to ensure their own prosperity, you get orcs ruled as raiding parties who only care about freedom applying to themselves, or America’s various nasty CIA operations for the sake of protecting corporations and the power of the wealthiest people in the world, in which case Gondor better call for aid. If the orcs are being led by a charismatic yet clearly evil ruler with an ego the size of a skyscraper tower and a [redacted] small enough for a ring, and the orcs are dumb enough to believe in this monster…
Of course, apply this to any situation or nation as needed, no country is perfect but few modern sovereign states are as close to fubar as North Korea or Somalia, and probably not even them, that the people would - even upon being injured and backed into a corner - disrespect an offer of some level of mercy from a would-be victim who turned the tables.
It would be going too far to do more than help determine a new government to replace the Russian oligarchy, and the fact that Ukraine’s military are getting called out by it’s government, it’s own people and by the global press for drafting people by threat of violence is hopefully a sign that no, the orcs outside AND inside the gates of our communities are just trying to live and no longer believe it when told by the tribal leaders to risk their lives just to destroy someone else’s lives.
Refuse? Maybe. Insult? Nobody is going to insult an honest truce put in writing, because the average person - if nothing else - does not approve of a complete stranger with a fancy office looking a gift horse in the mouth while the other hand of the horseman is holding a loaded pistol is in the mouth of the general public. Not that many leaders still have the public in unbroken chains by the point that becomes a “choice” that needs to be made.
I’m not saying war is ever not horrible, only that if black-white or even monochrome morality wasn’t relative, the world wouldn’t have survived long enough to have democratic ideals to strive toward and never quite reach, socialist interstate highways that fund capitalist organizations (truck stops, auto mechanics, tire manufacturing plants, tow truck companies, etc.), and capitalist organizations that would collapse like everything else if they didn’t at least try to help keep humanity from blowing ourselves up or otherwise destroy modern civilization… not that climate crisis is looking avoidable anymore…
The world is a mixed bag and taking over the world is like trying to herd cats because nobody likes being bullied and there’s always someone who doesn’t enjoy seeing people suffer to disagree with the orcs, or tell the elves to stop being holier than thou
and actually get involved in the Atlantic blockades before more people die, Roosevelt…or (thanks to the internet, may it continue to exist) otherwise call out who the real bad guys are (especially if it’s both sides, in which case someone will try to keep track of who committed which war crimes) to the world’s third parties. It’s not perfect, but war is worse than hell already and being able to restrict it at all, let alone be even remotely potent in doing so, is as much a miracle to, say, 135 years ago (1893, as it’s 2023 as of this writing) as blowing up a major city instantly, putting robots on Mars before any human would ever go there, or sending a short message to someone in South Africa, Japan or Colombia with augmented reality iGlasses (“Apple Vision Pro” is just… un-toyetic) from the $150 seat of a commuter jet to the nearest metropolis.Sorry for the rant, it’s more than aggravating as a writer to hear people starting on the orc argument. It’s like one person saying “this fictional concept is racist because I need a scapegoat!” and the other saying “But because it’s only loosely based on reality, none of the things these characters do actually matter irl even if they’re 100% applicable to real life situations!” followed by a bunch of “Nuh-uh!” and “Uh-huh!” noises over what actually amounts to “No, there’s no realism to the elf-orc always alignment stupid monochrome morality, but people need a reference for what they might want to strive for and what they should avoid resorting to in pursuit of their goals” because that’s what writers aimed for before every single show had to be artificially diverse. If you have to shove it down people’s throats, you shouldn’t be writing a story because you promised entertainment along with enlightenment.
Don’t be like Ayn Rand, Chris-Chan or Adolf Hitler, write a world and write people into it, don’t be like this reply and write a goddamn manifesto because unlike on Lemmy, if someone is choosing to read your book then they probably paid you money for it. I say this because I had to learn to try to avoid making anyone in my fictional stories, even and especially my author surrogate character, subject to the same world as everyone else in the story and for that world to be fun or interesting before it is a morality tale or political drama.
If you didn’t like reading all this, please do better than the bare minimum when you sell a luxury good you produced. “Made by an independent artist”, myself and my work included, does not automatically equal “Made by an experienced artist”.
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Making education so expensive that the only way for some to pursue education is to die for their country is a crime. If majority of your citizen view being part of army is only for poor people, your country does not deserve to be protected because obviously not enough people willing to fight for it. Turning your citizens into slaves and sending them into the meat grinder makes you a monster.
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I have the opposite view. A country at war should have the draft, and there should be no exceptions, so that the politicians who send other people’s children off to fight also have to send their own.
Most soldiers in a “professional” army are there because their families are poor and they have few other options to make a living.
There will always be exceptions, for example for disabilities or medical conditions. Most of those exceptions will be more accessible to wealthy or influential families that can afford to pay off doctors than poorer families.
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Politicians didn’t send their own children when there was a draft in the US. Trump AND Biden are evidence of this
Trump and Biden both avoided the draft with “1-Y” (medical) exemption. Keep in mind that more than half the 27 million eligible males were exempted or disqualified for some reason, so it’s not as if this was something only politicians did.
I would wager there was a higher percentage of the wealthy that somehow got an exemption
Make declaration of war a mandatory vote for every citizen. Anyone who votes “yes” (or illegally abstains) gets registered for the draft. Anyone who votes “no” is unregistered.
I know it’s not really feasible because governments need to be able to react swiftly in times of war. But these days with computers and cell phones, there’s very little reason that the government couldn’t push a “go download our secure voting app/visit this link to cast your vote” notification via the emergency alert broadcasting system.
Ukraine didn’t decide to go to war.
They were invaded.
After the US set the stage and created the environment to start a war.
How do you reckon it would work when it comes to age? Is the vote limited just to people of military age? Does this mean that whether or not to declare war effectively falls in the hands of ~18 - 30 year olds?
Or is it open to everyone and even some old warhawk could be drafted? Are handicapped people not allowed to vote? Women that don’t meet combat standards?
There is always the option to draft them into some sort of non-combat role. But if you knew you were only going for a non-combat role, it could be a lot easier to vote “yes”.
Lack of a draft is almost directly and solely responsible for the current quagmire of the US military - when we had a draft, normal people were pulled and had to serve with other normal people. They had real lives to go back to. They had family and friends who would listen to them and write their representatives to complain if the use of those human resources was inappropriate. Seeing body bags flying home and a televised razing of a foreign jungle turned a lot of people off from war. And they made their voices heard.
Now, the only people being asked to pay attention are career military professionals. They often do not have a job or life outside of the military to tie them to normal life. They’ve also gotten smarter about where they fly corpses in, so the news can’t provide a solid day-by-day count of the wasted lives. These folks aren’t pushing back against the worst excesses of the military, because their college benefit or their pension require them to shut up and just do what they’re told.
There’s a great documentary called Sir! No, Sir! about the vibrant protest movement from within the military, driven mostly by draftees during Vietnam.
I don’t disagree with your initial reasoning, but there’s a different take that says that what we have allowed is for the worst of us to control the policy for all of us, with nearly no external oversight.
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This is a difficult problem to solve for a society though. The army is needed, because it’s what allows your country to exist. In time of peace, draft is really not optimal, because people are taken a year of their life for absolutely nothing. But the army need to keep its structure alive and functioning, or there’ll be nothing when it’s needed.
The army of professionals is a good solution, and they do a hard job to keep an important piece of the state alive when no one cares about it.
Ultimately I think it’s better if poor people make the core of the army because it means ultimately the safety of the nation is in their hands. Still, culture of the military men should be better taken care of, and elitism of the command structure should be fought.
Being in a country with a very high population means you have the privilege of enough volunteers to protect your borders.
I would be more likely to go the other way starship troopers style only those with the character to defend their country should have the right to vote in that country. Those leeching off the system and letting others doing the difficult things shouldn’t be rewarded
So essentially install a military dictatorship, because only the military gets any votes?
Mate, the Starship Troopers movie was a satire, not a fucking checklist.
I was on about the book.
The film is great but philosophically it’s a shadow of the book.
So only able bodied men and women. Big yikes. Also people who aren’t soldiers are leeches. Even bigger yikes.
Obviously not read starship troopers thet make it very clear that anyone can serve and will be accommodated. And they make it very clear that being in the military isn’t the only way to serve.
It’s just above providing for your country and earning the right to vote.
Oh well if starship fucking troopers says it. You do realize that’s satire right. Jesus fuck you fascists are so fucking oblivious it isn’t funny.
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