[OrlandoHakim]

Whatever your thoughts are about the Ukraine invasion - and I suspect most, including me are against wars of aggression - the idea that we should take this situation as an excuse to re-write history deeply saddens me.

Maybe we should re-define the term first person in space to mean, the first person in space who isn't from a country we don't like? I believe we still recognized Yuri Gagarin as the first person in space during the cold war. What changed now?

[8note]

It's just a fundraiser.

There's no history being rewritten

[OrlandoHakim]

Not sure I would support a fundraiser by an organization so willing to play fast and loose with the truth - especially when their motive is to support fashionable politics of the day.

It doesn't lend much credibility to the organization when they conveniently omit historical facts in order to match their desired narrative.

[geoah]

Futurism’s article has a much better phrasing of the events.

> The nonprofit Space Foundation announced in a now-deleted note that “in light of current world events” it would be changing the name of a fundraiser from “Yuri’s Night” to “A Celebration of Space: Discover What’s Next” at its Space Symposium conference.

Doesn’t look like any historical facts were omitted. They just changed the name of the event. The new name to be fair is also much more descriptive.

[OrlandoHakim]

I will admit that this action is less ugly than much of the anti-Russian hate I’ve seen lately. It still makes my stomach churn that they chose to ‘cancel’ the first human in space post-humously because the leader of a country that didn’t even exist when Gagarin was alive, chose to invade another country.

I believe wars of aggression are always wrong and are always war crimes per the Geneva Conventions, whether it is by the US (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya etc.) or Russia (Ukraine) or the Soviet Union (Afghanistan also).

I don’t believe it is right to foment or tolerate hate against an entire people or culture simply because their totalitarian leader decided to invade.

For the record, I absolutely support the right of Ukrainians to defend themselves against a foreign invader and believe other countries should help, but I stop at supporting hate towards civilians of any nations.

If anything, we who live in western democracies have more to atone for than our neighbors living in totalitarian regimes.

I am still waiting for anyone to strip George Bush Jr. and Tony Blair among others of their awards and recognition since we all now know that WMDs and spreading democracy were lies used to justify the killing of 1 million Iraqi civilians.