Comment by AnarchismIsCool

Ok so the US DEA detonates explosives on cartel members.

Your daughter is enjoying a cappuccino at a bistro when a cartel member walks by, the device detonates burning and scarring her face. You’re good with it.

Your oldest son has ordered a deli sandwich and is waiting for his order. He kneels down to tie his shoes. Next to him is a cartel member. The device detonates, destroying his ear drum. You’re good with it.

Your sister is shopping for produce at the market, as she walks past a cartel member to choose an avocado, the device detonates, maiming her left hand. She loses her fingers and is let go from her job as a software engineer. You’re good with it.

Your mom sits down in an empty seat on public transportation. The man next to her is cartel. The device detonates and shrapnel pierces an artery in her leg. She dies. You’re good with it.

Your brother, nephew, and youngest son are walking down the street. You were supposed to pick the kids up at 3pm but had to work late. You asked your brother to walk them home instead. A cartel member is driving a vehicle down the same road. Suddenly the device detonates and they lose control, the vehicle swerves up on the sidewalk striking all three. Your brothers leg is maimed and mangled, before he passes out from pain he watches his son die, trapped beneath the vehicle. Your son is flung into a wall and suffers a severe brain injury, he survives but never walks or talks again. You change his diapers for the next 40 years. You’re good with it.

Your dad is an ER doctor, a man comes in complaining of trouble breathing. As your dad is listening to his lungs, the device detonates, ejecting shrapnel into your father’s face. The man was part of the cartel, if he doesn’t work for them, they will kill his sister. Your father is blinded and can no longer practice medicine. You’re good with it.

You've been victim of what's called manufactured consent.

Why hasn't Israel allowed any investigations in Gaza, not showing evidence they're using to obliterate practically all of Palestine now, not allowing foreign journalists in either to document things?

> Western media has full control over information and if Ukrainians would do something like this, no one would even know

I'm not inclined to believe that, but even so Russia would scream it off the rooftops if there were the slightest chance that it would affect anything. Unfortunately it'd be lost in the flood of lies that they spout daily. At least western media seems to be mostly silent on things they can't be at least marginally truthful on (presumably because they have no need to be, I guess media in Ukraine is a bit more biased).

Why would that specific video be up-voted into the skies? It's just another piece of misery porn and we had at least 2 years of that on almost daily basis at that point.

The point is that every single time something like this happens, it gets silenced.

Except it doesn't. Stuff like this gets reported all the time (for exactly what it is), also when Ukrainians do it. Like the EW-intercepted drone that hit that apartment outside Moscow, killing (according to local reports) someone inside. Even RFE/RL reported it.

Not every single incident of course -- but they do get reported, very frequently.

People tend not to dwell on it, of course -- because they know these things are bound to happen to some degree (and anyone with more than a completely casual understanding of WW II knows that inadvertent civilian casualties, even in allied countries, were extremely high). And that there are far too many perfectly deliberate atrocities happening, and at far greater scale (and except for a few isolated cases, all coming not so coincidentally from one side). And because they understand the far bigger point, which is that at the end of the day, the war (and all the suffering that will be required to end it) is Putin's fault anyway.

But that's very different from the simple matter of these events being "silenced". Because plainly they're not. The reason they don't get more column inches or newsroom chatter is because, by any level-headed analysis -- they just don't deserve any.

And attempting to describe the state of affairs that way, when clearly it isn't, is well -- manipulative.

I think the one thing that I think completely turns me off this logic is that it’s only proponents seem to be the ones that feel like it’s fine for Russia to keep what it’s unlawfully taken.

Sure, there’s a bunch of drone footage of Ukraine dropping shit on barely moving Russian soldiers, but I’m not sure if that’s an indictment of Russia or Ukraine.

which has now escalated into 1 million dead in Ukraine

So mere hours after appearing in the WSJ, "1M are now dead or injured (but actually about 80k Ukrainian, 200k Russian dead)"[0] is being misquoted as simply "1M dead", and not so coincidentally in tandem with another misconception (that gets repeated on HN almost daily it seems):

when it could have been resolved w Minsk Accords or anything negotiated in Normandy or Turkey since then.

"Could have been resolved", that is, by granting to Putin permanent sovereignty over whatever territories he happened to be sitting on at the time, if not then some, and other non-viable concessions (with no guarantees that they would even work to stop him from simply grabbing more land and/or just keep bombing Ukrainian cities whenever it might suit his fancy):

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41568861

I never thought I’d say this, but there is a distinction between neo-nazis and criminals/murderers.

The first have the potential to do bad, the second have proven beyond a doubt that they’re evil.