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The LGBTQ situation in Russia was so dire even back in 2010-2012 when I lived there that one Russian classmate of mine accidentally outed himself to me when we were drinking a lot in a bar and the look of sheer terror in his eyes was shocking. He all but made me promise to keep it a secret because of the consequences should it get out. I can't imagine how much more dangerous it would be NOW to have such a slip-up because he was very legitimately concerned about being murdered should it get to the wrong person, and the wrong person in Russia is...a depressingly high percentage of the population. And this was in St Petersburg, not some frontier pesthole ville. We had watched a play earlier by the ballet at the Marinskyy Theatre and the level of bigotry was still high enough that he said he probably wouldn't have made it home that night if he'd been just a little louder.
HonorableTB fucked around with this message at 03:37 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 03:34
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Murgos posted:You may be right about Apollo 11, it’s not something I’d heard before. Some of the Apollo commanders did go to space again on shuttle (John Young) or Skylab (Conrad) so, I’m not entirely sure that parts true or at least not the whole story. Apollo 16 was Young's first flight as a commander and Skylab wasn't Apollo. I should have been clearer: Once you commanded an Apollo mission, you were done with Apollo.
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May 7, 2023 03:43
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McNally posted:Ehh. It was understood by the astronauts that once you commanded an Apollo mission, that was it. That's why Jim McDivitt, Frank Borman, and Tom Stafford never landed on the moon. Also all the Apollo 11 astronauts agreed not to fly again after their mission. Murgos posted:You may be right about Apollo 11, it’s not something I’d heard before. Some of the Apollo commanders did go to space again on shuttle (John Young) or Skylab (Conrad) so, I’m not entirely sure that parts true or at least not the whole story. According to after-the-fact rumor, Deke Slayton made a promise to Neil Armstrong that if he didn't make the landing, he and his same crew would be put right back onto the very next mission to try again in a few months, and they'd push the entire rest of the crew rotation back accordingly. (Slayton did NOT want Armstrong to feel like he had only the one chance, push a marginal situation too far, and die. This way, a landing abort became just a temporary setback.) He made the same promise to Pete Conrad for Apollo 12. After that, things seemed "routine" enough that he stopped making that promise, and that's why Jim Lovell and Fred Haise of Apollo 13 never walked on the Moon.
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May 7, 2023 03:51
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https://splash247.com/tanker-with-history-of-moving-iranian-oil-catches-fire-off-malaysia/quote:The growing use of the dark fleet, whose numbers are thought to top 600 ships, is resulting in accidents around the world. I was expecting this to happen sooner rather than later.
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May 7, 2023 05:28
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HonorableTB posted:The LGBTQ situation in Russia was so dire even back in 2010-2012 when I lived there that one Russian classmate of mine accidentally outed himself to me when we were drinking a lot in a bar and the look of sheer terror in his eyes was shocking. He all but made me promise to keep it a secret because of the consequences should it get out. I can't imagine how much more dangerous it would be NOW to have such a slip-up because he was very legitimately concerned about being murdered should it get to the wrong person, and the wrong person in Russia is...a depressingly high percentage of the population. And this was in St Petersburg, not some frontier pesthole ville. We had watched a play earlier by the ballet at the Marinskyy Theatre and the level of bigotry was still high enough that he said he probably wouldn't have made it home that night if he'd been just a little louder. This is one of the main reasons why I can't really get behind the idea of "good Russians." "Good Russians" seem to be the sort who'd be on the side of "beat/punish them into silent submission, but don't kill them...unless they keep being 'noisy' about it." Even Nemtsov was on the "we should have a *straight* pride parade" bandwagon and he was "left" enough of Putin to rate a public assassination in Red Square.
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May 7, 2023 07:02
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:You're pretty much right. It depends on the specific model of ERA and what's being used against them. Most Russian/Ukrainian ERA isn't very useful against modern ATGMs. It can still potentially block less-complicated rounds from hand-held launchers like you said, so the only reasons not to put it on are if you want to save on weight or for crew/support safety. Javelins and the like are not stupid enough that throwing a picnic table and some Kontakt on top of a T-72B is going to make a huge difference. Javelin has a tandem warhead so could be able to pass these. NLAW is single, so this could be effective against it.
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May 7, 2023 07:51
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But what if the turret has ERA as well!? Checkmate NATOeists! 
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May 7, 2023 07:56
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BIG HEADLINE posted:This is one of the main reasons why I can't really get behind the idea of "good Russians." "Good Russians" seem to be the sort who'd be on the side of "beat/punish them into silent submission, but don't kill them...unless they keep being 'noisy' about it." Its a brutalist, maculine society in the worst way. Good, bad, mediocre Russians are trapped in the system/culture and can't really compare to western ideals if thats what you're looking for as there wouldn't be much to differentiate, relatively. If you compared them across Russian society you would be able to see it.
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May 7, 2023 09:21
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Ukraine is the hopeful counter-example. LGBT acceptance still isn't great there, but it turns out that when people rank 'I want to be a bit bigoted' below 'I want a European identity' in their list of priorities then you see a really rapid change in attitudes.
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May 7, 2023 09:30
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BIG HEADLINE posted:This is one of the main reasons why I can't really get behind the idea of "good Russians." "Good Russians" seem to be the sort who'd be on the side of "beat/punish them into silent submission, but don't kill them...unless they keep being 'noisy' about it." LGBTQ Russians are still Russians. Edit: By which I mean saying there are no "good Russians" ignores the suffering of oppressed Russian groups
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May 7, 2023 13:54
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EasilyConfused posted:LGBTQ Russians are still Russians. See: that one "why don't we nuke the South" cartoon you couldn't escape for years
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May 7, 2023 15:35
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yes but those are ACCEPTABLE losses, killing innocents is acceptable if i get to hurt the people i don't like
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May 7, 2023 16:29
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Kith posted:yes but those are ACCEPTABLE losses, killing innocents is acceptable if i get to hurt the people i don't like Not empty quoting, because that is the math done everytime by every side.
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May 7, 2023 16:32
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Saukkis posted:Javelin has a tandem warhead so could be able to pass these. NLAW is single, so this could be effective against it. NLAW is an OTB missile, which means that the missile has a downward-facing (as opposed to forward-facing) warhead and doesn't strike at a high angle. Javelin goes through cope cages and ERA with ease, so yeah it'll go right through. Something like the cope cage+ERA is probably most useful against stuff like drones dropping simple bombs. I'm not saying it's not possible that a cope cage with fifty year-old ERA couldn't score a lucky one-in-a-million defense against top-attack, but "effective" wouldn't be the word I'd use.
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May 7, 2023 17:49
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May 7, 2023 17:55
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Even Nemtsov was on the "we should have a *straight* pride parade" bandwagon and he was "left" enough of Putin to rate a public assassination in Red Square. Do you have a link for this? I googled him on this topic and couldn't find anything. Most russian liberals (by which I don't count "system liberals" which is controlled opposition) have pretty standard western liberal views on gay rights Edit: in any case this is completely unsubstantial, Poroshenko was "no angel" either and Ukraine wasn't that much different in the level of homophobia before Russia went hard far-right authoritarian, but getting elections, free press and working with western countries made the situation of LGBT Ukrainians much better. Russia can be changed with the same model Somaen fucked around with this message at 18:29 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 18:11
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Somaen posted:Do you have a link for this? I googled him on this topic and couldn't find anything. Most russian liberals (by which I don't count "system liberals" which is controlled opposition) have pretty standard western liberal views on gay rights https://www.e-ir.info/2020/05/11/russian-democrats-stance-on-the-lgbt-community-an-attitudinal-shift/ quote:Before Putin’s third term, the LGBT community was largely neglected or denounced by Russian democrats. As the founder of Moscow pride Nikolai Alexeev said in 2010: The effective leader of the dissident movement today in Russia, Alexei Navalny, basically promises Russian nationalism without the mafia corruption. As noted in the linked article, since Nemtsov's day there has been a softening in attitude towards LGBT rights among dissidents; my take is it's because anti-LGBT propaganda and associated church/state blending together has been harped on so harshly in the media. Lum_ fucked around with this message at 19:03 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 19:01
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Many (I'd guess most) Top Attack munitions are also designed to defeat ERA. This is like adding a few sandbags to a soft skin truck- it's armor for morale.
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May 7, 2023 19:01
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Lum_ posted:https://www.e-ir.info/2020/05/11/russian-democrats-stance-on-the-lgbt-community-an-attitudinal-shift/ Alright, and in 2013 he came out saying that the anti-lgbt propaganda law was a crime against LGBT youth and their parents. Like I said, Poroshenko was kind of an rear end in a top hat too, but in the end unless people are political extremists, they just want a decent life and gladly implement liberal social policies if the western countries are pressing them in exchange for more trade The growth in LGBT rights among liberals is not contrarianism, it's because the world is interconnected and liberals see what other liberals in other countries are doing, talking to them and learning good ideas on the internet and other platforms where the narrative is not controlled by far-right states Navalny absolutely does not promote russian nationalism, I'm tired of arguing this, he promotes a centrist liberal "let's adopt good policies like they have in the west so we have a functional society". Source: russian, follow navalny and what his team is doing
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May 7, 2023 19:16
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BIG HEADLINE posted:This is one of the main reasons why I can't really get behind the idea of "good Russians." This is a profoundly hosed up and stupid thing to say.
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May 7, 2023 19:17
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psydude posted:I'm bummed I never got to see either. I also didn't get to see Hong Kong before it was subsumed into the PRC, despite having flown through the airport a bunch. i went in 2018ish and it was very odd seeing the visiting (mainland) band i had come to see play the PRC anthem as an encore i mean hell, that kinda feels odd in general (at least as an american who lives in a liberal hellhole devoid of patriotism), but in context it was a bit more  Stultus Maximus posted:I got to go [to Russia] in the late 90s and I can't imagine how different it must have been for you, and how different it is now. despite not having been there then, everything ive ever heard/read/seen says the 90s were a uniquely chaotic period in the modern era. to get comparable levels of complete insanity you'd need to be around in 1916-1923 or whenever the hell Peter I told everyone to cut off their beards and move to a swamp moscow in particular feels like it changes very rapidly. 2009 there wasn't even a train to Sheremetyevo, 90s-style kiosks were still everywhere, and AFAIK home internet access was still a luxury (insofar as my professor needed to factor it in as part of my homestay request--IIRC half my classmates didn't have it). 2012 i mostly remember thinking "wow, there is an airport train now" and, though not exactly a feature of the city itself, the wash of old Bolotnaya posters still up everywhere. there were probably fewer kiosks. soviet fashion aesthetics, with every "classy" man wearing a suit and making no fashion statements beyond choosing whether to wear square- or round-toed dress shoes, were gone 2017 there were NO kiosks (just endless miles of the famous Sobyanin green/white diagonal construction barrier meme fencing), metro announcements IN ENGLISH (thanks world cup preparations), a single contactless card for all modes of transit (farewell to those goddamn magstripe cards and needing separate metro/bus tickets), and complete bewilderment upon blundering into an MTsK station and realizing they'd built a second ring line BIG HEADLINE posted:This is one of the main reasons why I can't really get behind the idea of "good Russians." "Good Russians" seem to be the sort who'd be on the side of "beat/punish them into silent submission, but don't kill them...unless they keep being 'noisy' about it." russians with liberal views have a long and storied history of not voicing them in any remotely public setting, because doing so gets you thrown in prison. public opposition figures (Nemtsov and co) are less leaders of that bloc of society than they are people the regime (usually) allows to continue doing opposition commentary to demonstrate that russia does, in fact, have meaningful political opposition. it's generally hard to gauge the more liberal section of society based on their views, especially because the captive opposition tends to be older and have more outdated social views, same as everywhere else in the world from my own anecdotal observation, liberal russia does lag behind trends in liberal viewpoints in the US, canada, and europe, but that's not opposition to them, it's just slower adoption. russia generally isn't setting trends in progressive thought--not particularly surprising given government suppression of it--but does catch up to it. it's not like we weren't using "gay" and "human being" as generic pejoratives like a decade ago, or don't regularly have public figures complain that you just can't make (racist, homophobic, sexist, what have you) jokes anymore and that's a drat shame. we do, generally, have less endorsement of regressive views at the government level (which can sway large segments of the population) insofar as we do have political competition, whereas russia does not, and has a government that espouses regressive views. if the american government two solid decades of Trump and GOP supermajorities with Fox News as the only media outlet, i can all but guarantee you that "good" americans would be far fewer in number, less vocal about their views, and less progressive overall
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May 7, 2023 19:31
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Bear in mind that Navalny has walked right on the the line of 'as progressive wing as you can be in Russia without getting murdered' and then the line moved and they tried to murder him.
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May 7, 2023 19:36
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I'm curious if the different timelines of some of yalls first hand experience of this is leading to some pretty different views. Afaict, many Russian's views on lgbt stuff have changed significantly even over just the last few years. People who on one end were, verbatim, 'oh you just haven't found the right person yet' (which seemed to be on the more tolerant end of things a decade ago and you'd hear that even from people who had no apparent issue with queer people) now seem to be much more 'who cares let people live their lives, whatever' or 'I got to know some queer people and realized it just doesn't matter.' (these are all direct quotes) More liberal Russians (and hell, Ukrainians too, for that matter) that I've talked to about this often seem to mention a fairly recent shift in their attitudes, like in the last 3-5 years. Conversely on the other end of things, the homophobia and transphobia seems to be intensifying and it seems like revulsion at that is pushing people in the opposite direction, too. That's more or less the summary of my conversations with Russians about lgbtq stuff, though it's purely anecdotal and I really couldn't hazard a guess at how actually representative that is. It does seem like as the Russian state and political system slides further right Russian liberals have gone pretty far in the opposite direction, though they ofc have very little bearing on the direction of Russian politics and, to a large extent, society, hence so much of the flight from Russia. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 19:44 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 19:41
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Alchenar posted:Bear in mind that Navalny has walked right on the the line of 'as progressive wing as you can be in Russia without getting murdered' and then the line moved and they tried to murder him. No, he evolved in his politics by getting influenced by the political and historical events affecting him and the country. People bring up quotes from 2010, but since then a few things happened that drove him from a guy wanting to get into power to a guy with a personal vendetta against Putin: Moscow election stolen, Bolotnaya protests, Putin's return to the presidency, Magnitsky act, his brother jailed on trumped up charges, getting put under house arrest for months, war in Ukraine, Trump and the rise of the far right, several russian oppositioners killed or poisoned, many people beaten and jailed for protests, etc You can't define the guy on a nationalist-progressive axis He got poisoned for being a legitimate political threat, Putin didn't care what policies he was promoting except getting rid of Putin Somaen fucked around with this message at 19:52 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 19:45
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Lovely Joe Stalin posted:This is a profoundly hosed up and stupid thing to say. Yeah, the essentialist arguments that are being made right now about all Russians being evil remind me of the Goldhagen debate about German culpability for the Holocaust, in the sense that the argument being promoted then was that there was something extra-special about German antisemitism that made it so murderous. Now it's Russian culture that makes the people subservient to dictatorship and compliant with war crimes. It's all feel-good othering that's supposed to reassure us that our own societies are immune from the risk of descending into similar atrocities. I'm mostly aware of the research that's been done about the social dynamics behind Nazi atrocities and German civilian compliance with the regime, rather than more general takes from genocide studies. Here's a couple of important books on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-Welfare/dp/0805087265 https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0141000422 There's patterns of human behavior that repeat themselves, no matter where atrocities are taking place, from Bosnia to Rwanda, and it's completely disingenious to blame some inherent characteristic of "Russianness" for what's going on in Ukraine. Bombing Germans into rising up against the Nazi regime didn't work in WW2 and actually created more social cohesion inside Germany, and the same dynamics are at play in Russian society's reaction to sanctions. Sanctions serve to make it harder for Russia to produce war materiel, but they won't lead to a revolution; at best, they prepare the ground for mass compliance when different leaderhip comes to power and erode Putin's support in a way that only becomes apparent retroactively.
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May 7, 2023 19:48
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what are you talking about. a single person made a statement about 'no good russians' and then promptly got correctly called an idiot and zero people have agreed with it
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May 7, 2023 19:50
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Somaen posted:Navalny absolutely does not promote russian nationalism, I'm tired of arguing this, he promotes a centrist liberal "let's adopt good policies like they have in the west so we have a functional society". Source: russian, follow navalny and what his team is doing He did have that "you can't just give Crimea back!"-statement that people try to apologize away as misunderstanding or mistranslation but which really to me just reads as "no, Ukraine ain't getting Crimea back, its ours now lmao."
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May 7, 2023 20:01
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Hannibal Rex posted:Yeah, the essentialist arguments that are being made right now about all Russians being evil remind me of the Goldhagen debate about German culpability for the Holocaust, in the sense that the argument being promoted then was that there was something extra-special about German antisemitism that made it so murderous. Despite the well-known brutal legacies of the Gestapo and the Stasi, Germans still love calling the cops on their neighbors for minor poo poo. No culture or people is uniquely bad or good, but demagogues and scoundrels will absolutely exploit certain cultural characteristics to achieve their ends (see: J6 and the US fetishism of violent revolution). Most Russians I know point to the endemic apathy toward civil society that is a latent result of the Soviet era as a key enabler of Putin's rise. psydude fucked around with this message at 20:11 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 20:03
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Herstory Begins Now posted:I'm curious if the different timelines of some of yalls first hand experience of this is leading to some pretty different views. Yeah, my last visit to Russia was in '97 so I freely admit to being WAY out of the loop personally. And online I feel we get a somewhat distorted view of the place.
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May 7, 2023 20:32
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Qtotonibudinibudet posted:we do, generally, have less endorsement of regressive views at the government level You might want to take another look at what all of the red states have been up to
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May 7, 2023 20:49
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poverty goat posted:You might want to take another look at what all of the red states have been up to Republican legislatures suck, but there's several orders of magnitude of difference. Alabama is not Russia. The GOP has even largely given up on anti-gay legislation. It's why they doubled down so hard on trans issues in their culture war.
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May 7, 2023 21:10
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GD_American posted:Alabama is not Russia. The number of Americans currently living in states that are now unsafe for trans people to exist total more than half of Russia's population. So, several orders of magnitude, maybe not. e: This is based on the highest risk states from Erin Reed's map ee: Not trying to derail or have this discussion here, just felt that the original quote was not currently representative of reality in the US poverty goat fucked around with this message at 22:07 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 21:51
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psydude posted:Despite the well-known brutal legacies of the Gestapo and the Stasi, Germans still love calling the cops on their neighbors for minor poo poo. No culture or people is uniquely bad or good, but demagogues and scoundrels will absolutely exploit certain cultural characteristics to achieve their ends (see: J6 and the US fetishism of violent revolution). Most Russians I know point to the endemic apathy toward civil society that is a latent result of the Soviet era as a key enabler of Putin's rise. I do remember hearing of the German police getting involved over incorrectly hung washing
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May 7, 2023 22:05
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poverty goat posted:The number of Americans currently living in states that are now unsafe for trans people to exist total more than half of Russia's population. So, several orders of magnitude, maybe not. When I was in trinidad and Tobago last, my mini bus pulled up to a stoplight and the conductor looked out and saw a very obviously gay kid on the left hand side of the road. He opened the right hand side window and shouted to his neighbors across the street: hey, that [gay slur] why you not kill he yet? I know Alabama isnt ideal for lbgt people but it's a lot better than a lot of places. Russia and T&T incuded.
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May 7, 2023 22:56
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Herstory Begins Now posted:what are you talking about. a single person made a statement about 'no good russians' and then promptly got correctly called an idiot and zero people have agreed with it Sorry, I wasn't referring to this thread, but to the wider political commentariat. It's a talking point of some Russia hawks, and it's a worrying development, because if it's widely adopted it will only reinforce the 'rally round the flag' effect in Russia. Hannibal Rex fucked around with this message at 00:10 on May 8, 2023 |
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May 8, 2023 00:07
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Somaen posted:Do you have a link for this? I googled him on this topic and couldn't find anything. Most russian liberals (by which I don't count "system liberals" which is controlled opposition) have pretty standard western liberal views on gay rights https://www.e-ir.info/2020/05/11/russian-democrats-stance-on-the-lgbt-community-an-attitudinal-shift/ And yes, I'm aware that this article references most of the "system liberals" you mentioned. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 00:30 on May 8, 2023 |
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May 8, 2023 00:22
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Hannibal Rex posted:Sorry, I wasn't referring to this thread, but to the wider political commentariat. It's a talking point of some Russia hawks, and it's a worrying development, because if it's widely adopted it will only reinforce the 'rally round the flag' effect in Russia. ah gotcha, apologies for jumping on that then
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May 8, 2023 00:28
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poverty goat posted:living in states that are now unsafe for trans people to exist Again, if you believe the threat to LGBT existence (legal identity) in the reddest states in America is equivalent to the threat to their existence (actual continued loving breathing) in Russia, you are massively uninformed.
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May 8, 2023 03:58
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We’ve veered off the topic of this thread. Please use the GIP Monthly Current Events thread to continue to discuss events that aren’t related to the war in Ukraine.
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May 8, 2023 04:05
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https://twitter.com/TarmoFella/status/1655210198452011010?s=20
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