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Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by tim333 on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @09:40AM (#44499865)
I agree human nature hasn't really changed since Plato's time and technology is the main thing that has. But the tech provides much more information and communication which leads to things like slavery going. Also I think most people are shocked that trench warfare is still going on but the Russian leadership seems a bit behind the times. Apparently Putin spent time during the lockdown reading previous centuries history and here we are.
Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by ANewFormation on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @12:54PM (#44501797)
Russia is neither forcibly conscripting nor are they preventing anyone from leaving the country should they wish.

Ukraine is doing both at an increasingly absurd scale, all the while people wave their flag-of-the-week in their social media profile, either aloof of what they support or seeing no problem with it.

The same was probably, more or less the same, during slavery. People adopting views based on tribe rather than any real thought or even knowledge of what they support. The overwhelming majority of everybody obviously never owned a slave and likely had an idealized view of the institution.

Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by burnt-resistor on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @06:03PM (#44504465)
Totally wrong. Are you a Russian bot or simply ill-informed, unserious human talking out of your posterior?

Russia doesn't give out passports to men until they've fulfilled military requirements. Please inform yourself.

https://youtube.com/channel/UC9HHZMXng9reLBQmNc1Y8iA

Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by somenameforme on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @12:26AM (#44506348)
You're conflating two things. There is indeed conscription in Russia, Scandinavia, and many countries in the world where people are expected to do some period of time of military training within a country. These people are generally not used in active conflicts, though it does entail enrollment in the equivalent of Selective Service in the US meaning they can be called up later (2 years in Russia) for "real" service in the case of a draft/mobilization. Russia carried out a limited mobilization once early on in the war in 2022, and it was horrifically unpopular, leading to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Russians from the country. People don't want to risk being called up to possibly die for a war they may not even agree with. Since then they have relied exclusively on volunteer forces.

Ukraine, by contrast, immediately after the war began they made it illegal for men of "fighting age", which they define as between the ages of 18 and 60, to leave the country. And they have been relying on forced conscription for an ever larger percent of their entire armed forces since then. This is why you can find countless highly disturbing videos of Ukrainian TCC (conscription) officers brutalizing and even killing civilians in efforts to conscript them and throw them on the front lines. Wiki has some sampling of incidents here [1] which I will not quote. In many cases they are, again, quite disturbing.

People really have no clue what they are supporting over there.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_Center_of_Recruitm...

Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by mopsi on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @06:40AM (#44508338)
You forgot to mention the widespread coercion of Russian conscripts into "voluntarily" enlisting for the war in Ukraine. Stories like this are extremely common:

  Semyon* (name changed) was conscripted in Chelyabinsk, in the Urals, having served in the Pskov region of northwestern Russia for the first five months, where he was asked to sign a contract several times but refused. On 20 April, he was transferred to the Chebarkul garrison and signed up for professional service after just two and a half hours.

  His mother says that on the way to the unit he complained of being actively pressured into signing a contract, after which Semyon was taken to a separate office, where a sergeant fired a gun next to him and showed him a video of dead and wounded people, threatening that the same thing would happen to him if he didn’t sign. Semyon broke under the pressure, his family says. On the same day, he applied to have the contract annulled, saying he had signed under duress, asking for it to be declared invalid as the commander had not yet signed it, but to no avail.
https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/05/14/unwilling-signat...

Not to mention authorities raiding places like gyms to get the conscripts in the first place:

  Russian police are targeting migrants and draft-age men in a wave of raids on gyms and martial arts clubs across major cities, with activists describing them as part of a broader crackdown that intensified ahead of the country’s spring military draft. Lawyers in multiple regions told Sever Realii that gym raids now happen at least twice a month in major cities. Russian citizens are typically sent to enlistment offices, while foreign nationals are taken to temporary detention centers. Many are ultimately deported.

  In one raid, a military officer reportedly accompanied police to hand out conscription notices directly. Activists say authorities are also targeting naturalized citizens who have obtained Russian passports but avoided military service, pressuring them to sign military contracts under threat of deportation or loss of citizenship.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/05/01/russian-police-rai...
Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by tim333 on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @07:05AM (#44508517)
There's a difference that Ukraine had not much choice after being invaded but a larger enemy, aside from maybe surrendering and letting Putin take over. Russia's invasion however was almost entirely their choice and could be stopped tomorrow if Putin just told them to stop.
Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by somenameforme on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @08:23AM (#44509171)
That's a bit of a false dichotomy as the early terms were relatively modest but, in general terms, I would agree with the point you're making. However the issue you run into is that the exact same arguments were made in favor of slavery. For instance even Aristotle some 2400 years ago predicted the end of slavery, if slaves only were not necessary:

"For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, 'Of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods.' If, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves." [1]

Of course society could have gotten by without slavery, but it wouldn't have been as convenient, particularly for the wealthy and political classes who were the exact sort that could afford to own slaves. And the exact same is true of conscription. If people are not willing to die for the political class of a country, who are the political class to insist they die for them? And the greatest irony is that the most 'brave' of the political class are often made up of cowards and draft dodgers themselves. But it's an entirely different game when it's not their life on the line anymore.

People, who live in a time when humans in warfare are obsoleted, will look back upon this as even more vile and barbaric than slavery. And they'll damn us all for it. Yet it's an issue that "we", the people without power, mostly do not even really think about one way or the other - because it's just how it is. We might speak out against it, those in affected regions might even start their own 'Underground Railroads' to escape tyranny, but everybody knows it won't end.

[1] - https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.mb.txt

Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by burnt-resistor on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @05:58PM (#44504438)
It cannot happen in even 1000 years because it would need evolutionary pressures to select for saner and more intelligent people. The idiocracy ain't going to let the happen.
Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by somenameforme on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @01:14AM (#44506517)
I think there's a more fundamental issue at play. Two people, both rather intelligent and completely sane, can come to complete different conclusions on things. For instance, I think fertility is one of the most critical issues facing civilization in modern times. I can offer reasons why, though you've already done so yourself in part, but that's outside the scope of this post for now.

By contrast, others may see the fertility crisis as not even an issue, let alone a crisis. After all humanity's not going to go extinct anytime in the foreseeable future, and billions of people is a lot of people. There are even some who think it may be a good thing - fewer people could reduce the impact of human emissions for instance.

So this difference in worldview would lead to radically different perspectives on seemingly completely unrelated things, like LGB representation in childhood education. Add in a bit of a radicalism and these otherwise reasonable disagreements gradually breed extreme hostility.

And I don't think there's any real solution here. No side can ever win, because neither view is really wrong. The best solution is probably general decentralization. But most people don't realize their opinions are opinions, and think they are factually and objectively correct - and want to impose their views on everybody, which trends towards attempts at centralization, inevitable collapse, and repeat.