Ken, did people of the countries mentioned here https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/WarDeathTol... do something to personally deserve their deaths most of which were the direct result of the US interventions there? Why don't you country-filter your own compatriots, many of whom work for the war machine that implemented this reality, and will continue to implement it across the world. Why didn't you suggest yourself to the better opportunities outside of the US, to the more peaceful countries? But it seems that you are either a hypocrite, or an unapologetic believer in the Greater Good™, i.e. a war apologist, who incidentally also doesn't shy away from anti-individualist group discrimination.

>better opportunities outside Russia.

Once you trasfer $2 mil for the investor visa (I'm a college dropout) or a cure for my ailing mother I'll move right away.

I'm not looking for a big political debate, but I'll point out that I'm not a US citizen.

That doesn't change much. You pay taxes in the US, you don't country filter the US.(And never did, I think) Your position is indefensible, unless you outright say that American wars are just wars, and the casualties are justified. But ok.

America's recent wars in the Middle East may not be great but they're clearly significantly more just than Russia's.

Stay neutral. Please don't get political. Your technical article are great but things like this will only cause divisiveness.

Serious question: why can't he choose who accesses his blog and use it for a small political message? Tech doesn't exist in an apolitical vacuum.

I come here to read about tech, not indulge in virtue-signaling identity politics. There's far too much of that on the Internet as it is.

Being anti-Russian is "identity politics" and "virtue signaling" now? When did geopolitics get roped in with "woke"?

"woke" is only one of the recent and prominent examples of it. I'm opposed to the war too, but there's no need to antagonise the helpless visitors of a technical blog for the actions of a government they didn't choose.

Ah yes, the helpless "good German"

anti-Russian like anti-Putin and his band of murderers or anti-Russian as nationality? If it is the latest then it is disgusting.

> I come here to read about tech, not indulge in virtue-signaling identity politics.

If you're complaining about finding politics "here" (i.e. on Hacker News), you should complain to the person posting the article, not to Ken Shirriff. Ken Shirriff can't control what you're presented here.

Nothing wrong with political messages. But I for one was surprised to see someone presumably highly intelligent who believes in collective responsibility and that it’s okay to discriminate against 130+ million people based on their country of birth.

I wasn't asked about country of birth when I viewed the web page. Certainly many people remain in the country of birth, but not all.

The overwhelming majority of the affected users aren’t immigrants I imagine and they’re punished for being born in the wrong country or for not leaving it, regardless of their political views or ability to leave the country.

>"...a suggestion that you might find better opportunities outside Russia"

This is so fucked up in multiple ways I do not know what to say. Even if person is trying to flee Putin's regime - the West is actively denying entry to those people. I would understand if you were Ukrainian but it appears you are not.

Do you also block American visitors because of the US invasions in the Middle East?

US invasions into the Middle East weren’t literal conquests and annexations of sovereign land. They’re in no way comparable, and if this war has done anything, it’s helped wash the blood from US hands and make those wars look acceptable.

For someone like me, who was staunchly against the War in Iraq and Afghanistan on a fundamental level, it’s sad that I’ve seen an invasion and conquest egregious enough to surpass those in such a short span of time.

So you’re saying the US invasions are somehow morally superior because they are resource grabs, not land grabs even though the scale of civilian casualties is similar or worse?

Back to the point though. It would never occur to me to impose my own micro-sanctions on Americans just because the US government is a serial invader and mass-murderer. Even though in popular opinion the US is a democracy, which makes its people responsible for the government actions, and Russia isn’t, which in principle should remove the collective guilt if someone subscribes to that idea.

The scale of civilian casualties from the first 6 months in Ukraine (17000 killed or injured, 1000 of whom were children; millions more in forced relocation and displacement) make the first six months of the Iraqi campaign look downright humane (~9000 total, with zero Iraqi woman and children dragged to the US to be raped/forcibly integrated into society and the vast majority of the population still in their nation throughout the campaign). That should tell you how badly Russia is seen internationally (and why random people feel the need to block you from their websites), considering the Iraqi campaign is downright villified in the West and full of inhumane tactics and scandals; so much so most Americans only speak badly of it in retrospect.

The fact that you feel they are comparable means you're either naive or politically blinded. Considering comparing Ukraine to Iraq is a common tactic in Russian national media and propaganda to justify the war, I'll assume it's the latter; but give you the benefit of the doubt.

There is no "morally superior" war. War is war and it's bad. Russia's war is one of the worst types of war. And even if the US' were equivalent, that doesn't justify Russia's.

>"make the first six months of the Iraqi campaign look downright humane "

Why first six month? To hide the real cost in human lives?

from - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War "Population-based studies produce estimates of the number of Iraq War casualties ranging from 151,000 violent deaths as of June 2006 (per the Iraq Family Health Survey) to 1,033,000 excess deaths (per the 2007 Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey). Other survey-based studies covering different time-spans find 461,000 total deaths (over 60% of them violent) as of June 2011 (per PLOS Medicine 2013), and 655,000 total deaths (over 90% of them violent) as of June 2006 (per the 2006 Lancet study). "

This sure qualifies for Nobel Peace award.

>"There is no "morally superior" war.

Totally agree (except when fighting against aggression force)

>"And even if the US' were equivalent, that doesn't justify Russia's."

Agree again.

> Why first six month?

Because that's about as long as the Russian war has been going on. It's called comparing like to like.

Well then it is too early to compare, wars do not have to follow the same course. We know approximately what happened in Iraq. We know zilch about when and how this one will end.

Besides Iraq war was total disaster in terms of human suffering. You can't whitewash it using situation in Ukraine.

As FpUser pointed out, why cherry-pick stats for the first six months? Why only Iraq? Was the Iraqi campaign vilified domestically in the first six months too or was it a rah-rah ‘Mission accomplished’/‘We got him’ type of situation in the beginning?

I can understand the selective blindness. After all everyone wants to believe they’re on the good guys side. We invade for the good reasons, they invade because they’re imperialist. We cause collateral damage that we’re very sorry about, they just downright target civilians. And on and on the justification goes.

When you don’t have a dog in this race and treat both sides’ media as propaganda outlets, it becomes really easy to compare and see who’s worse on what time scale and why. And it’s easy to see that discriminating regular Joes (or Ivans) isn’t an act of solidarity with the victim, but a bigoted way to release misplaced anger. A little bit of self awareness goes a long way.

> Why first six month?

Because the Russian offensive hasn't been going on for 10 years.

> I can understand the selective blindness. After all everyone wants to believe they’re on the good guys side.

I don't live in the US nor represent American interests, so your strawman is useless and futile. Especially when I went to pains to paint the Iraq War as a bad thing, not a good one. Russia is simply worse.

One doesn’t have to be American to consider themselves to be in the US camp. I live in a NATO country and the pro-US propaganda here is even worse than in American outlets and much more consolidated because of the de facto media monopoly. Here, ’us’ means the US with the rest of NATO and ‘them’—Russia, China, Iran, etc.

Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion when it comes to moral judgement. My opinion is that on the global bully scale the US is much higher than any other country. Which of course doesn’t excuse the lesser bullies, but it’s puzzling to see the extent of mental gymnastics one has to go through to argue that Russia is worse than the US in the invasions department.

The country that has a history of being a serial invader with the overall (by far) higher civilian death toll is still better because the first six months of Iraq invasion were reportedly less brutal than the first six months of Ukraine invasion?

I don’t buy the idea that there can be only one Bully we should all focus on and the moment you get a worse one the previous bully can walk away scot-free. If one starts punishing people for their government’s actions (as Ken does), at least they should be consistent in their folly and treat the ally bullies the same way as the enemy ones.

>"make those wars look acceptable."

They fucking murdered directly or indirectly millions of people after WWII. I do not think any sane person can call it acceptable. I can't wrap my head how current invasion surpasses it. Either is a crime against humanity and must be punished. And I do not think victims give a flying fuck whether their country was being annexed. They care about being murdered.

This brings such an interesting moral dilemma.

Are our inherited sins worse than our committed ones? In other words, is it more disgusting to be born Russian, or to choose to work at Google?

I was going to ask some questions about the article, now I'm not so sure you're worth my time.

You, I, and everyone else here in the comments have nothing to do with the war in Ukraine.

Be better than this.

This has to be a joke, right?

Are you really claiming the moral right to tell somebody to leave their own country, and if they don't you will do what you can to punish them? That doesn't seem right. What if they have elders to take care of? One can imagine a million circumstances. It seems to me that holding someone's national origin against them is just the sort of thing that leads to wars in the first place. I love your articles and I'm sure you're a good person and just want to do something to support the victims of the war, but collective punishment is not the way. It's one of the worst things you could do to reinforce pain, resentment, and division.