How is that any different than making gas prices higher?

As I’ve said one is about inter-government foreign relations other is matter of individual people. I don’t see how there could be a coherent worldview that lumps the two together. It kind of erodes the idea of a difference between military and civilian targets, and also makes all terrorism completely justified. It could only be viable in a world where every single country is a fascist enthnostate, where if your state is at war with another, then every national of that country is your personal enemy.

I kinda vaguely get your idea that without Trump and Putin none of this would’ve ever happened, but what you’re suggesting as a right course of action, which I assume is to attempt to forcefully depose a leader whenever they do dumb shit, this means not only civil wars throughout the world, but given your implication that foreigners are allowed to join in the action, a full on WW3 that’d never end. I’d rather live in current state of affairs where only a few countries fight each other with at most a million soldiers and the remaining billions of people living mostly peacefully and chill with each other, over a world where everyone always takes direct action against anyone involved in any group that ever wronged them, even if indirectly.

This is getting too complex, so let me simplify it: If me, you, an Iranian and Ukrainian meet somewhere, none of us should punch each other, nor vandalize each other’s property, steal from, nor try to mislead or scam each other, even if we disagree with each other or with each other’s government’s actions. Neither we should cheer or stay inactive if either one of us does any of those things. If someone agrees with their government actions they are free to join their respective countries military. If not we could pressure our respective governments directly through votes, legal actions, representatives and whatnot, and through positions and stakes at our companies, to stop the offending and provide aid to the victims. We could all go volunteer and donate to charities in any of the countries, and we could even organize ones in our respective ones. We could boycott offending countries, and support victim countries economies together. We could even realistically all join victim’s state’s foreign legions, but this is a bit iffy by my books. And we definitely shouldn’t go Al-Quaeda flying planes into buildings, for any reason, ever, no matter the amount of victims or the potential economic impact, I hope at least that we can agree is peak shittery.

One thing I would like to add, I’ve talked about this years before, but I guess with NATO troops in Ukraine now being completely out of the picture, the equation of the outcome of this war boils down to Ukraine’s budget and Ukraine’s headcount versus Russia’s budget and Russia’s headcount. And despite that, it’s largely independent of Ukraine. Let me clarify: The only way balance the headcount given the Ukraine’s smaller population, is to reduce the Russia’s headcount, which it still is balanced out by majority of Russia’s population unwillingness to participate in this unjust war, not by disproportionate KIA as propagandists on both sides might say, really it’s been floating in 1-1.2 range. So better keep it that way and not piss them off needlessly, as every time a bunch of NAFO fucks joke about meatcubes or something, somewhere in Russia someone joins the army. Yes, Z fucks do that as well but for the same exact reason it’s to their own detriment. On the budget part, Ukraine’s economy is completely fucked, 50% of revenue coming from foreign aid, which is still not enough tbh, but to at least keep it coming they better not commit any atrocities, you’ve said you’d find them justifiable given the situation, but someone else might not, and given how every penny counts, they wisely do not. But do buy Ukrainian products if you can, it really does go a long way. On the other hand, Russian budget is roughly 28% fuel exports, 45% VAT and other business taxes, 20% personal taxes and 7% rest, which all goes 32% to war and 8% to cops. It was already squeezed hard by sanctions and companies relocating voluntarily, which has lead to the current stalemate as Russia can’t really afford any more guns or people, and it can be squeezed even further by even more sanctions, diplomacy with third countries that are still buying and/or engaging in re-barelling, developing alternate fuel sources/routes, and, counterintuitively, by helping Russians get out of Russia so that they don’t pay VAT and income taxes to Putin. It hits very hard and is effective, and none of it involves direct sabotage or pissing them off. On the contrary, countries like Georgia and Armenia have boosted their GDP quite significantly since 2022 with minimal inflation in no small part due to influx of Russians and Russian companies. Imagine if Ukraine allowed them in, two birds one stone as they say, empty Putin’s coffers and put in Zelensky’s, but, very much understandably, not going to happen. Don’t take it as me begging to let Russians in either, me and my friends already landed places to stay :P Just dreaming of one day where this does happen and some wannabe warmonger finds themselves with no people, no money, no manufacturing, and all their yesterday’s income going to their now enemy, that’d be hilarious.

God did I went on a tangent, and yet haven’t mentioned NGO’s, why RDK/LSR failed, astroturfing and troll factories, CIA and state hackers, etc, but I think that’s enough rambling for today as is.

You went a bit short in your analogy. US and Iran are both governments duking it out, and it’s completely normal to blame Trump for failing to duke it out in his favor. But what if on top of that and the resulting gas price increases, Iranian activists and supporters decided to, IDK, hack and DDoS EV charger maps or something. You’d be completely reasonable in being more suspicious of your Iranian-American neighbors, remote coworkers, or taxi drivers, be more receptive to anti-immigration policies, as who knows what else they might pull off, and, if you’re in position of power, like customs officer, policeman, or just corporate HR, to question them more than others, and as a site admin to just block the entire IP range of the country. This results in life for said Iranians being just a tad more difficult, but they themselves probably fled Ayatollah regime a long time ago and just want to live in piece for once. If that happened I’d condemn it as well and call them shitters too. I myself dislike Israel and could in theory make calls to Israeli businesses and make bomb threats, but then I’d be a shitter myself as this would only make life of my Russian Jew friends more difficult for little economic impact.

As I’ve said in the other thread, realistically it only diverts from hate towards their own government for failing to protect critical infrastructure, and onto Ukrainian people who went out of their way to ruin someone’s day. Realistically, the economic damage is like wasting 10 minutes of a few people who will drive to an empty station, find none, then go to another station. And maybe like an hour of site admins time to ban and clear those trolls out, which I’m pretty sure they already did. And then those annoyed few will open the news and see a written confession from those trolls that they will do absolutely anything to ruin any random russian’s day, just because, and cheers from clueless folk in the comments below. Do you think seeing this would rile those russians against Putin, or make them support him even more?

do whatever they have to do to end the threat

Here we go, you’ve finally you’ve said it, it’s not really anything, was it? Of course there is an asterisk.

Now thats cleared up, lets go back to the original comment. Does posting misinformation on community gas maps do anything to end the threat? How? I’ll remind you that it does not affect military in any capacity as they dont use public gas stations.

You seriously just doubled down that “anything” includes torture and violation of international law. Even when it does not benefit the war effort whatsoever? What is wrong with you?

Is a website that collects crowdsorced gas prices critical infrastructure?

Do I instill fear, panic, or physical disruption of your critical infrastructure?

you can’t cherry pick a few words from a definition and call it a day

Are review bombs on steam or google maps cyber terrorism?

It can be. I won’t post anymore AI slop screenshots, but I’m sure you are grown up enough to be able to type “review bomb legal” into your search engine of choice and find for yourself.

Same as you can’t try to deviate from your original comparison that posting fake gas prices is like torture

you can’t cherry pick a few words from

…my fucking messages

dumb

dumb

not smart enough

dumb

God you’re dumb

R3?

The september 2022 one? It was yet another of Putin’s half measures. By law he can’t call for mobilization without declaring war, which, you know, he didn’t. It was a legally undefined “special military operation” . Therefore, the mobilization was as well only a “partial mobilization” to test waters, which nonetheless caused massive uproar throughout the country. The regional administrations just barely managed to scrape by and fulfill the required 300k soldier quota and quell down the protests, after which they abandoned the idea. Since then most new soldiers are lured into contract service through:

• Deception - bro pls sign this contract pls bro I promise u wont storm trenches bro just pilot the drone bro, far back beyond frontlines bro… - except for smalltext clearly saying that if you’re shit at it or fail training you’ll get reassigned to other units that just happen to storm trenches and with no way out of it. Except for a lucky few that now have to travel between colleges and universities, face students laughing in their faces, and try to convince them to sign up as well. And if they fail to, they themselves go back storming enemy trenches.

• Absurdly high (by Russian standards) signing bonuses, salaries and death/injury compensations. Something in the likes of $50k signing, $3k/mo and with various bonuses you can rack up something like $100k a year, up to $200k if you get killed, while average Ivan just barely survives on $500-1000/mo (if he got any job at all). This put a huge strain on Russia’s economy, but it somehow, just barely, is still holding on, though the prices are ridiculous at this point.

• Recruiting criminals, which makes it a lot more dangerous to live there when there are killers on the loose, some who did a couple rounds of murdering and trading their decade long sentences into year-long warzone trips

• North Korea (and other poor countries)

Otherwise, no, Russia still has a lot of manpower. Not me, nor my friends, nor my relatives, nor friends relatives or relatives friends got called in or served voluntarily. Except for one guy I only saw once who was a gambling addict, got into severe debt, did a trip, drove a supply truck back and forth for a year, returned, repaid all the debts, and, addicted to easy money, went back for a second round and immediately got blown up. RIP bozo.

God you’re dumb

No you.

You’re almost cyber terrorizing Lemmy!

Do I instill fear, panic, or physical disruption of your critical infrastructure?

Yes they are. Read the full snippet, not just the highlighted bit. The “Its primary intent is […] To further a terrorist group organization’s objectives”

What’s your point? How does that absolve the action out of this definition. Speak it out.

There will be some who have this reaction, but it takes one hell of a PR spin to make them think that the Ukranians, after 4 years of siege and bombings throughout their territory, aren’t justified in whatever payback they might be able to give.

Why so? I think it’s the intent that matters more than the magnitude. As Russian, I cheer whenever Ukraine bombs military targets on Russia’s territory (or anything that’s boosting Russia’s GDP for that matter) and I find US’s ban on doing that to be outright criminal. A drone blew up an apartment building in my home city with no military targets in sight, and I truly believe it was a result of miscalculation, jamming or some other fault, same with Russian drones on Kiyv and cluster munitions dropped on Donbas. But don’t you dare spit in my coffee while we’re both sit in the same boat as refuges of war in Tbilisi, and I’m not going to shit through anyone’s car sunroof regardless if the plate says RU or UA either. Planting national tensions is exactly what Putin wants, just so that he could one day say “Look, they’re all assholes, let’s go fuck em up” and call for full on proper mobilization instead of tiptoeing with partial ones.

and terrorized Russian citizens and nationals" are in slightly different categories.

Are they?

Only the magnitude is (and yes, a lot) different, but category is very much the same.

If I understood correctly, many Russians are or were in favour of the war, which is hardly surprising while they’re not the ones suffering the cost. Even when they do, a populace under the impression that the cost is some sacrifice for a good or necessary war can be quite resilient. And even if they lose faith in the war, there is a certain amount of patience and tolerance.

Not quite. Russians for the most part just want to be left the fuck alone. The ones that do support it only do because TV is their only source of information and their support is limited to calling foreign leaders names in their kitchens and shitposting on facebook and whatsapp to their information deprived peers. When the push comes to shove they would only ever accept the duty if they were too lazy to find a way out. So most people on the front line are either criminals or gamblers who don’t really have a choice.

For people with a little spare time that might not be able to contribute directly, it’s a low-barrier way to be at least a bit of a nuisance, amplifying the perceived impact of the shortage in ways propaganda can’t so easily handwave away.

I feel like it does the opposite by diluting a definitive victory:

Oil refinery got blown up which led to fuel shortages - “fucking Putin and his cronies can’t keep their shit together, couldn’t spare an AA from one of their villas to protect critical infrastructure, fuck them”.

I’m late to work because I had to spend 10 more minutes going to a different station because someone posted misinformation - “fucking Ukrainians trying to ruin my day again, fuck them, maybe Putin was onto something…”.

The difference is: one action is directed by the government at a government, the other - at the people by the people.

By encouraging them to keep trying to be a pain in the ass of imperial aggressors, you might recruit even the reluctant, the lazy, the cowardly to become a sort of “digital guerilla”.

What I think really happens is that people who were assholes just gotten an excuse to be assholes. I’d like to be proven wrong, but I’m yet to see anything actually good come out of NAFO and the likes. So far they’ve only managed to turn quite a few anti-war Russians against directly supporting Ukraine, by means of afforementioned scam calls, harrassment of opposition leaders and of people in neutral countries. It’s especially appalling to see coming from able-bodied young men who clearly fled conscription, and I’d like to counter the argument by saying that we shouldn’t encourage nor cheer laziness and pure national hatred. After all, they don’t have to go to the meat grinder, there are quite a lot of opportunities far behind the frontlines, I honestly would’ve probably gone myself if I were allowed and not for the severe consequences of it.

This is indeed terrible, but do you imply that everything Ukraine does now is fair game because of it? Would you also cheer them on if they openly used chemical weapons, tortured POW’s, and terrorized Russian citizens and nationals?

Anything that disrupts the aggressor’s will or ability to continue their aggression is fair game.

Does it, though? Lived in Russia most of my life and not once I saw army vehicles at a gas station. Pretty sure they have their own fuel distribution network.

Eh, I find it petty. The fact that there are gas shortages is already enough of a blow. But this to me sounds to be as much “warfare” as scam calling Russian grandmas to convince them to sell their apartments and donate to AFU. Just gives Russian people even more reasons to blame Ukraine, less reasons to trust Ukrainians, and making the life of (surprisingly unclear amount) of them living in Russia even harder. I’m rather dumbfounded at why people are seemingly in support of such actions, as I don’t see how it could in any way be beneficial for Ukraine. Best case scenario is couple of Petrovichs are late to work at their drone factories. Worst case are mass arrests of Ukrainians and pro-Ukraine Russians who blew their cover for nothing.

Does anyone here see it as “warfare”? More like just being shitters.

Stupid question, never wondered how dams are constructed (and location chosen): Isn’t there a risk of them being flooded, like in an emergency dump scenario?