First this doesn't prove my point wrong. — neomac

You're obsessed with proving. It's you who raised the objection to my position, not the other way around. I'm quite happy with your position. I don't agree with it, but I've neither the interest, nor have any clue how I would go about 'disproving' it.

you are comparing a political struggle within a hegemonic democratic regime to a war between Russia and Ukraine critical for the World Order. — neomac

No I'm not. I'm comparing the two options for humanitarian relief...

1) Continued war to retain Ukrainian control over the region and improve the population's human rights by political pressure from their membership of the EU/NATO.

2) End the war by ceding Donbas/Crimea to Russia and improve the population's human rights by supporting protest and political change in Russia.

In 2 fewer die.

You seem to have disassociated the costs of your proposal from the imagined benefits — boethius

Exactly. It's like war is treated as some comic book version where we all get to waive flags at the brave soldiers with nothing more than a bloodied bandage to show for their fight.

no progress toward “human rights” can get there in a certain, straight, compassionate and peaceful way as one would hope (the recent Iranian protests are another good example of this point). — neomac

Chicago Riots killed 43 people, part of a series of about 50 such riots which, together with many peaceful demonstrations, brought about the changes in American civil rights.

The Ukraine war is currently killing 600 people a day.

Google it up. Russia is the largest weapon provider to Ukraine right now. — Olivier5

So no sources then.

The UN charter condemn aggression, posits that any member state has the right to defend itself, and to seek alliances in doing so. — Olivier5

Yep. Still waiting for the part where it says that another country's sovereignty over an area is a legitimate foreign policy goal. Does it condemn, for example, a change in sovereignty resulting from peace negotiations?

The. US public has very little influence on FP. This is just a fact. It's not me saying it, nor do I condone it. You cannot influence US foreign policy simply by expressing views on TPF. You would need a whole lobbying apparatus to achieve anything like this, like the one developed by Israel. — Olivier5

I love the way that when it comes to those making the exact same argument about the uselessness of condemning Russia you become the solidarity-proclaiming keyboard warrior, when exactly the same is expressed against the US you become the hard-nosed pragmatist. You must get dizzy sometimes?

The only public action with an impact on USFP is to vote to change the president. — Olivier5

Explain how that works then. Does the new president completely swap out all the lobbying groups and replace them with a new set?

Your source for that? — Isaac


News. — Olivier5

Go on... Which news article?

You mean the UN charter got it all wring? — Olivier5

No, since the UN charter does not specify that one country's sovereignty should be a foreign policy objective.

US foreign policy is set by the president, who is elected every four years. — Olivier5

So? Is he kept in an isolation chamber from the day of the election lest he makes any decision under influence from what he sees and reads about the mood of the general public?

That is precisely what your quote implied, though. Go back and read it more carefully, because it seems you failed to understand it. — Olivier5

It showed nothing of the sort. If you don't understand why not I suggest you go back and read it more carefully.

Or, you know, we could actually discuss the arguments rather than hand-waive them away as a misunderstanding on the part of our interlocutors.

Russia is the largest purveyor of weapons to Ukraine. — Olivier5

Really, that's an interesting development. Your source for that?

The US is not pushing for war but helping Ukraine defend herself, which is perfectly legitimate. — Olivier5

No it isn't. One country's sovereignty over an area is not a legitimate foreign policy objective. If their efforts to negotiate failed, then defence might be legitimate (proper defence), but that isn't the case here. Negotiations haven't even been tried (by the US) and the defence is deliberately drip-fed to prolong the war, not end it. Not to mention the recklessness of flooding of an illegal arms hub with modern highly destructive weapons and the destabilisation of a region with a history of serious nationalist and far-right violence. I don't see anything 'legitimate' about those aims.

I am afraid that there isn't much you can do about it, other than vote for Trump at the next general elections. — Olivier5

Another with such a dysfunctional imagination that they think politics only happens one day in every four years.

But there are no neat solutions at the moment. :/ And so, comments keep going in circles. — jorndoe

Comments keep going in circles because no-one will address the issues directly (not that they might not go in circles still, even then, but we could at least see). We might have a more profitable discussion if people were to actually address the arguments raised rather than treat the thread as a pro-Ukrainian news aggregator.

So...

lots have been posted already. — jorndoe

Well, not that I've noticed (you might cite them if they're easy to find. I know some have pointed to Chechnya and even further back in history as evidence of Russian treatment (the same people, oddly, who then said that the Amnesty document was out of date!), but I've asked them why they thought Crimea wasn't a good indicator and that's where the discussion ended. Where it always does - any time there isn't an answer which can be plucked directly from western media talking points.

The UN Secretary General doesn't give that as the main problem, though. — frank

You seriously think he's going to list that as the main problem?

Or even get out of the way of negotiations. — Xtrix

Yes, indeed. I think my position could probably be summed up by "either do it properly or stay out of it".

I should add though that the reason I think the US might need to play a part in the talks is a) Russia is of the view that this is a US problem (NATO weapons in Ukraine, US involvement in Maidan, etc) so their involvement will probably be necessary for a deal to stick, and b) Putin has this 'big boy's table' idea that he's being left out of, US involvement there might make him more likely to accept a deal.

negotiations require a cease fire. Putin will have to ask for one. That's just how it works. — frank

No they don't, and no it isn't. There aren't laws of physics about peace talks.

The US is not the appropriate broker because they have an interest in the conflict. — frank

What's the US's interest?

When Putin signals that he wants to talk, a broker will emerge. — frank

Why wait?

They're getting supplies from other countries — frank

Hardly. But either way, if the US says jump...

Russia is presently losing on the battlefield — frank

According to whom?

What's your suggestion? — frank

The US (or someone of similar standing) offer to broker peace talks. No more weapons drip-fed to Ukraine. Either UN/NATO on the ground or we don't take part at all. Solutions on the table should be a non-NATO Ukraine, independent Donbas, Russian Crimea as these barely change the current status quo bug might be enough to end the war.

If America pulled the plug on the ammo supply Ukraine would surrender tomorrow. So to suggest they don't have any power is this is obviously bollocks.

At least until someone proves me wrong, of course. So try harder. — neomac

There's no 'proving' you wrong. You think the "chance" of Ukraine improving its human rights record is worth thousands of deaths and can't be achieved any other way. I can't argue against a callous disregard for human life nor a dysfunctional imagination.

Yep. We're talking about how to get (1) to happen. Your idea is we just wait? Shall we cross our fingers too? Meanwhile a few more hundred Ukrainians die.

You got news the rest of the planet doesn't know about? — frank

https://mate.substack.com/p/russia-says-us-wrecked-ukraine-talks


The point is that there's been no such request. Putin's not going to just offer is he? The guy's a fucking psychopath why would he just up and offer a peace deal? That's seriously unlikely to happen. He's going to have to be pressured into one.

That would require Putin's buy-in. No sign of that. — frank

According to whom?

It's what exists. — Olivier5

So? Try to stop just saying random stuff and follow an argument.

We're currently talking about the moral rights and wrongs of including Ukrainian sovereignty in Donbas as a goal of foreign military aid.

We're not discussing whether Russia are bad for invading.

We're not discussing whether nations exist.

We're not discussing whether Ukraine as a whole might join the EU.

We're discussing whether Ukrainian sovereignty over Donbas is a legitimate humanitarian goal.

If you want to discuss something else then stop replying to comments not on that topic.

So to repel the Russian occupation is likely conducive to improved human rights in Ukraine... — Olivier5

Likely?

Firstly, no. Showing that Russia is also bad doesn't prove that everything not-Russia must be good, does it?

Secondly, you have to show that Russian control over Donbas will be worse than Ukrainian control. I'll try underlining too, I know you guys have trouble reading emphasis. Worse than. It's not sufficient to simply show that Russia are also bad because 'also' is not 'worse'.

the party that wants to take over being the worse of the two — jorndoe

You get that from a summary?

You, @neomac and @Olivier5 alike are all seeing this like we're choosing wallpaper. If you're choosing between A and B but to get B requires years of brutally destructive land war, then B had better be bloody fantastic. It had better have every citizen decked out with their own fucking floating island in the Mediterranean. A slightly better human rights report (but still bad) is not worth the death of thousands of innocent people. I can't believe I've just had to write that.

I’m surprised by how often this is getting equated with Russian apologetics. I haven’t heard one person cheering Putin on. — Xtrix

Yes. It's something I find chillingly fascinating. It ought to be fairly straightforward to discuss the best course of action our governments could take to bring about our humanitarian objectives. I'm baffled as to why that's so hard, why it has to be replaced instead by a fawning acceptance of whatever they say is right.

We used to be able to proudly hold our governments to account. Now were treated with suspicion if we even question them.

My requirement is minimal: for me pro-West simply means to be in favor of being part of the Western sphere of influence like by joining NATO and EU. — neomac

Well then I don't see much evidence that your (4) follows. Countries with a long history of democracy and free press tend to have better internal human rights. It's not a magic pill. You don't just get human rights with membership.

No you are talking about the situation in Donbas. I'm talking about Ukraine as opposed to Russia. — neomac

Why? There's no question of ceding the whole of Ukraine to Russia so what possible relevance would that have to this discussion?

it's like saying Ukraine chose Western values over submission to a dictatorship. The Russians have yet to do this. — Olivier5

Ah well, in that case, Russia are pretty forward thinking in terms of sovereignty and human rights. They're part of the UN and the UN are petty hot on that stuff.

Or, we could grow up and stop pretending that arbitrary lines around bits of the world have any meaning whatsoever about the unity of the people in them. It's your kind of nationalist bullshit that causes these problems.

Even your quotes testify that Russia's occupation is detrimental to human rights ... — Olivier5

So?

citing AI's Ukraine report here makes a comparison with their Russia-report pertinent — jorndoe

No it doesn't. No one is contesting the claim that Russia have a terrible human rights record, so confirming it seems entirely superfluous.

I simply asked you if Ukraine is more pro-West than Russia? The answer is unequivocally yes. — neomac

No it isn't. Pro-west is not a single measure but is made up of military, economic and cultural forces.

Plus...

a tiny minority of Ukrainian ultranationalists — neomac

... We're talking about the situation in Donbas. The region (as I demonstrated above) is split between nationalists and pro-russian separatists. As I said above...

It's like citing a revolution in Scotland as evidence of England's pro-scottish tendency. — Isaac

But they did not succeed in toppling the regime. In contrast, the euromaidan and revolution of dignity did succeed. — Olivier5

So? We're talking about the humanitarian situation in Donbas. It's like citing a revolution in Scotland as evidence of England's pro-scottish tendency.

That was before the war, before Zelensky even — Olivier5

Nope. 2014-2021 are the dates.

But Russia is going down into absolute autocracy, all the while Ukraine's evolution is positive. — Olivier5

Here's the summary from Amnesty's 2021 report...

Impunity for torture remained endemic. Gender-based violence remained widespread, although a new law removed legal obstacles to prosecuting military personnel and police for domestic violence. Homophobic attacks by groups advocating discrimination and violence continued. The investigation of attacks against journalists and human rights defenders was slow and often ineffective. A draft law on the security services envisaged additional powers of surveillance without legal safeguards. The crackdown on dissent and human rights defenders in occupied Crimea continued. Violations of international humanitarian law by both sides in eastern Ukraine remained uninvestigated.

... For the sake of clarity, just point out the bits you think are worth fighting a devastating land war over.

So Russia should never had started this war, because by the same logic, it isn't a worthwhile sacrifice for keeping the disputed territory in the control of Russia either. — Olivier5

Yep. Well done, you've reached the conclusion that anyone with a reading age over five reached.

Vexler explaining... — apokrisis

I thought you were avoiding...

anonymous keyboard warriors — apokrisis

...?

This is the third time you've cited Vexler. A...

... philosopher [and] musicologist. ... living in London — Vexler's Bio

I like the way you reason. :up: — apokrisis

It's not my reasoning, it's yours. I'm asking about your threshold for 'incompetence'.

Asking to join NATO and EU, and be ready to suffer a war against Russia to defend their choice wrt anti-Western rhetoric and hostility from Russia are unquestionable evidences for that. — neomac

I don't see how your third step is in any way 'unquestionable'.

NATO is a military defensive organisation and the EU an economic one. Neither decision 'unquestionably' shows anything about a commitment to the sorts of human rights gains that the countries within those institutions enjoy. NATO particularly has absolutely no human rights element whatsoever.

Nor are Ukraine 'ready to suffer a war against Russia' for that move. There's no link at all. The fiercest fighting against Russia has come from the ultranationalists, the very same groups opposed to westernisation.

I think it's undoubtedly true that Ukraine's attempt to join the EU is a move which would require an accompanying move in the direction of human rights (regardless of the motivating factors), but it remains to be seen if that progress can be imposed in the East. The evidence so far is uncompromisingly that it cannot.

A reminder of the 'one people' that is Ukraine...



Notice anything about the contested regions?

Boyko is considered to be one of the primary proponents of closer relations with Russia in Ukrainian politics

Recall, this is no minor 'preponderance of evidence' issue. You're advocating the continuation of a brutal war on the back of your assessment here.

Plans that work because you’ve correctly prepared. — apokrisis

So an organisation is 'incompetent' if even a single plan fails? That's an astonishingly high bar.

I wondered who would claim such nonsense and why. — apokrisis

But the answer's already been given. If we underestimate the Russian military and promote further war erroneously, thousands die. If we overestimate the Russian military and cede unnecessarily, the humanitarian situation barely changes.

It's obvious that the most important humanitarian goal in this specific matter, is to ensure we're not underestimating the Russian military, it is to push against narratives such as yours, that they're useless and so not a force to reckon with.

I just can't see any moral imperative to the opposite ends. What benefit is it to anyone that we broadcast how useless the Russian military are (assuming you're right). Why err on that side?

Incompetence is a pretty high threshold and you can of course be competent and still fail, especially in a negative sum game such as war. — boethius

This is a crucial point that is being overlooked.

@apokrisis, @ssu - what is the background against which you're measuring 'competence'?

How many failures do you think is normal during a modern land invasion. What's the normal turnover of generals during a Russian war. What's the normal number of losses, retreats, strategy changes that you'd expect in this situation?

Because without any of this background data, I don't see how anyone can judge competence.

Even more crucial to the decisions ahead. What's the greater risk, that we underestimate Russian military power, or that we overestimate it? The former, thousands more die. The latter...?

Uh huh. Similar protests take place in Russia. I'm enquiring about the evidence that their requests have been acted upon. I've provided three reports from the world's leading human rights groups detailing the situation in Eastern Ukraine and their assessment is that the abuses by both sides are not noticeably different. So I'd need some fairly compelling evidence to the contrary if we're to justify 600 deaths a day as being a worthwhile sacrifice for keeping the disputed territory in the control of this 'West-leaning' government. So far no one's provided anything but wishful thinking.

Maidan. — Olivier5

We were talking about human rights, not politics.

Terrible idea. Not all land is equal. Nor is human capability. I'd prefer a capabale individual tending to valuable land over the state issued bum, in all cases. — Merkwurdichliebe

It was rhetorical. The point is that the wealthy who might complain about the loss of their exploit-ready labour force are in that position because of a past theft of common land depriving those workers of their ability to make their own living.

But let's address the issue on its face. Firstly, if you take all the viable farmland in the world and divide it by the population the average family of four gets about 2 and a half hectares, so we don't even need to think about poorer quality land. Secondly, if the unequal-ness of human capacity is your concern then you need a welfare system. You need that either way, so I don't see how this fact has any bearing on the choice of system. Thirdly, I don't see any reason at all why increased efficiency should be a target at all. Do you?

The difference however is that Ukraine is more pro-Western than Russia. — neomac

Your evidence for that?

The reason employees do not have a say in where the profits go is because they are not owners. — creativesoul

But ought they be? The system by which owners own what they own isn't some law of physics, we made it up, it's written on paper under our respective countries' property laws. We're asking here if we ought change those laws.

Let's suppose there is a way of using the earth's resources that is largely sustainable — perhaps only up to a certain total population, whatever constraints we end up with — something more than using no resources but less than what we've been doing so recklessly. Can there be some similar happy medium with labor? Is employment inherently exploitation, or can we imagine an arrangement with safe working conditions, reasonable work/life balance, compensation above some level we'd see as fair? — Srap Tasmaner

I think so. For me it would be around autonomy and egalitarianism. For a labour arrangement to be fair, the labourer has to have a genuine other choice. I too am a fan of UBI, but in a sense see it as only a replacement for the 'theft' of property held in common to private ownership. This is the comeback to another common conservative talking point - the 'sweat of your own brow' rugged individualism. I'd be equally happy with each person having their acre (or return to common land) and then if you don't want a job, you can grow your own food, build your own house etc. It's the theft of that opportunity that I see UBI as appropriate compensation for.

As to measure of labour 'extracted'. I think this is where choice is paramount. All things being equal, we have two limits.

Firstly, you can't survive on no labour at all, if you choose 0 labour, you become a drag on others, or you die - so we have a lower limit of global labour. This isn't a problem in a dog-eat-dog, hyper-individualist world, but the moment we introduce welfare (as we ought) those choosing to supply 0 labour are 'stealing' labour from others.

Secondly, it's probably the case, on average, that more labour yields more stuff, so there's another potential 'theft' if someone chooses a labour rate which yields little beyond survival, but expects to benefit from the 'stuff' generated by those who worked harder.

These are both typical conservative responses to UBI, of course, but need to be addressed.

The answer to the first, I think could simply be "well give us the land back then". UBI is an imperfect sticking plaster over the injustice of private property, so it's no-one's fault but the land-owning classes if it's got flaws. But in a less confrontational bent, I don't see any reason why UBI shouldn't be linked to a choice of community work, so long as the work yielded no private benefit and had a wide enough range to suit most people.

The answer to the second is more complicated, I think there's a strong egalitarian argument that if one is putting in work to yield some technological advance solely to benefit oneself, then it is you, not the eponymous sponger who have lost your way morally. I'd challenge the notion that it's normal, or morally neutral to expect a reward commensurate with the effort one puts in. It's all too individualistic, If you're not working for the betterment of your community, then you don't deserve the reward.

As I think we may have discussed before, I raised both my children with complete autonomy - no rules, no chores, no school etc. We had to (difficult at times) face the choice when confronted with what seemed like lazy 'sponging' - either we put up with and hope they'll better themselves by example, or we impose our will on them. The latter hardly seemed an improvement, morally, on the behaviour we would be trying to prevent, so we opt for the former. Generally it worked. I believe we're in the same boat with communities and welfare (UBI would come into this category). We either accept that it's possible to thus 'sponge' off others and simply hope that people don't, or we force them to not by imposing our will on them. I can't see how the latter morally improves on the former.

I believe Robert Thaler's choice architecture stuff would be one way of attempting to address this sort of thing. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, definitely (I assume you meant Richard Thaler, yes?). Returning to the autonomy argument, I think it's ideas like the choice architecture which are crucial to the success of autonomous collectives too. We turn the 'emergent properties' problem on its head by deliberately creating a system where autonomous individuals would naturally, on average, choose paths which promote community well-being. After all, not to go all evolutionary-psychology on us, but that is what we're designed for. Humans don't have a random set of objectives and desires.

We throw the baby out with the bath water - so to speak - when we diminish these truly astonishing achievements. — yebiga

Why?

OK let’s do a step forward and ask: where do you think human rights are better supported: in Western countries (e.g. the US, the UK, Germany, France) or in the countries hostile to the West (Russia, China, North Corea, Iran)?
I think Western countries have institutions that support human rights within their territory — neomac

Yep. What's that got to do with the humanitarian problems in Ukraine. Neither Ukraine nor Russia are 'Western'.

If you set challenges to others — neomac

I haven't.

It’s irrelevant what you think States ought to be — neomac

No it isn't. I'm a member of the electorate in one of them, I hold them to account. It matters tremendously what I think they out to be concerned with.

depending on the context there are political elites one can trust more or less for being up to the task. — neomac

Exactly. And the argument is thst there's little to chose between Ukraine and Russia on that score. As such there's no humanitarian goal in ensuring the territory remain in Ukrainian control. The humanitarian goal is to stop the fighting as quickly as possible.

Learn what prior to means. And then correct your own biases. — ssu

I've no idea what you're talking about. All my sources are prior to the war.

If by 'the war' you mean the whole unrest from 2014, then...

a) some of the reports go back to 2012, so that's wrong just on its face
b) even the people whose job it is to work out these things are unsure whether to call pre-2022 conditions a 'war' so to claim that your meaning was so obvious is ridiculous.
c) Why go back then. If your claim is that Ukraine would treat the inhabitants better because they did so over a decade ago then I think we can all see you're clutching at straws.

You had a biased view of Ukraine because of your immersion in Western propaganda, I pointed that out. That's all that's happened here.



It's like you're immune to data. I've posted three reports from the world's leading authorities on Human Rights detailing the way in which the Ukrainian authorities committed exactly the same sorts of abuses and you're still posting this crap as if the problem were one-sided.

what has value depends on what you can do with it. Rare metals don't have inherent value; they have value once you invent electronics that need rare metals for components. (There is a cobalt mine re-opening in the US because cobalt is needed for the batteries of electric vehicles and wind turbines. Cobalt is precious again.) — Srap Tasmaner

Interesting how this links to power though? What you can do with it is not only a question of technical know-how, but of power. Even here the country which can secure the more resources (see I used the word 'secure' there, I think I've grown), gets the bonus win of now being able to extract 'value' from a whole tone of resources it didn't even have a use for before. The poor country that cannot afford batteries might be lousy with cobalt but find it of no use whatsoever. There's trade, of course, but like sustainability and labour respect, trade (to be fair) would need also to be legally protected from exploitation.

Leaving that aside, what is the fair way of handling finite resources across all future generations? They will run out, unless we go extinct or leave the planet. Do we calculate how much fossil fuel we can burn per year working backwards from the sun going supernova? Every lump of coal we burn is a lump of coal countless future generations have a claim on. I don't think there's any plausible solution to that sort of double-bind without the invention of new possibilities. And I think we can do that. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, a conundrum. Impossible to resolve in terms of resource use perhaps. I mean, I've got no clever answer. Using no no-renewables at all seems a bit silly ("if we can't all have them no one can!"), yet it's undeniable that any use means some generation in the future will run out. But I think the sort-of-solution lies with rates again. We're going to run out of fossil fuels in 50 years. Are we going to be mining asteroids by then under any realistic prediction at all?

It sounds complicated (all about growth predictions etc) but it's not the accuracy of the prediction at stake - we're talking here about moral justification. There's no moral justification for using a shit ton of fossil fuels without giving a fuck about the future generations. There is a moral justification fo using some fossil fuels (to improve the lives of peoepl now) if one has a reasonable, and well-informed, view that technology is moving at a sufficient pace as to give an equitable replacement by the time our current fuels source has run out. One is theft, the other diligence.

But on top of that, there's lots of other aspects of the non-renewability of Western growth that don't suffer from that problem - exploitation of labourers, pollution, habitat loss... These are all direct 'thefts' which don't have the problem of simple finite resources. We could just leave all the potential value from labour exploitation, pollution, and habitat loss untapped. We could just say it's not worth it.

Humans being kinda dumb, and greedy, even that doesn't always work. I think of the example of Norman Borlog and the green revolution. It's a tragic story, because he only intended his work to provide a stopgap, a way to relieve starvation and buy humanity 20 or 30 years to get its shit together. Instead, it was rolled out everywhere at terrible cost, and integrated into the new world system to enable even more population growth and the ever faster consumption of resources. In some ways, he's more to blame than anyone else for our current climate catastrophe, but it's not what he wanted at all. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, I feel the same way about Borlog. It's one of those emergent properties. I think this is one of the fascinating insights of some of the early social psychologists (and probably economists too, but I wouldn't know) that when you but a bunch of people together and set them all to try an achieve one thing, they end up achieving something else, something none of them intended, nor would have rationally wanted - like the murmuration of starlings. Much of the negatives we see from society aren't because humans are dumb, or greedy. I think humans can be quite nice really (once you get to know them). It's just that they systems we set up have emergent properties which none of us would rationally want individually.

It's, in my opinion, the biggest problem we face.

so this move?

so, your proposed "solution" to your question is to cease the foreign aid to Ukraine and see what happens — jorndoe

You already know it isn't. I am and always have been in favour of negotiations mediated by a third party with some meaningful power (the US, Europe, or UN). I think that such negotiations should consider the ceding of territory to Russia (on the grounds that I've previously explained - who has sovereignty over what is not a humanitarian consideration and so should be irrelevant to that third party, only the swiftest cessation of violence is a priority)

The fact that the West are financing this war in its entirety means that they can pull the plug any time. As such they can force Ukraine to the negotiating table. They have no such power over Russia, which is why it is so recklessly callous to turn down the rare offers Russia has made in that direction.

We are now in a worse situation than we were before when Russia first offered its four demands. Thousands more a dead, and instead of an independent Donbas, Russia are now annexing it, making it even harder to win back because Russia can leverage a set of weapons they couldn't before under the guise of a 'Special Operation'.

The same thing has happened here as happened with other cause célèbre in the recent past. Powerful interest groups have done what they always do - lobby as hard as they can to get their interests satisfied by policy. What none of them are equipped for is the power that social media gives them to achieve their goals. It's like pushing really hard on a door you expect to be jammed only to find it wide open. You tend to go barrelling through at a pace you didn't anticipate.

The arms industry lobby as hard has they can for a drip feed of weapons to a 'forever war' somewhere offshore, that's their ideal. They expect to have to fight hard for that against a media and a populace who are naturally resistant to such a horrific notion so they push their message through those channels as hard as they can - only nowadays, that message gets amplified by social media algorithms rather than suppressed, so a hard push becomes a tidal wave and here we are - they've got their 'forever war' to a truly horrific degree that I suspect even they didn't expect.

first, it's not the total at a given moment that matters, but what's available, what's controllable, and that changes — Srap Tasmaner

This first I think we can dispense with because even if the total changes, the rate at which is changes if still fixed. If I triple my share of a pot which I have only doubled the size of then I've still taken more than my fair share. If we extract at a rate faster than we increase, then we're exploiting.

second, we have credit, and the future is a long time, even at a discount. — Srap Tasmaner

This I find harder to avoid. Measuring wealth in terms of how much it could buy us in the future when than amount of stuff happens to become our fair share (when the pot has grown big enough) - well, that seems fair and reasonable.

If a billionaire had £10 billion in the banks, but we had sufficient laws against exploitation (either of people or the environment) then he might not be able to actually spend that (there wouldn't be enough stuff or labour in the world at the time for him to purchase), but he could spend it if technological innovation ever got to a point where that amount of stuff could be extracted without exploitation.

Would that rescue capitalism?

We both have the capacity to doom scroll on your phone, but only you have the right to, and I'm obliged to respect that right. You're saying further that there is some entity (perhaps yourself and some of your friends who work out, perhaps cops and courts, perhaps just the vocal disapproval of surrounding citizens) with the capacity to force me to respect your right, so rights come down to power in that sense, and thus property as well. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that's the sense in which I meant it. MY power to use my phone how I like (and not you) comes from the government, their police force, etc. The community who backs my use not yours. Might-makes-right in a sense, although in this case I've had to persuade them to agree to my use, not yours. If we live in a community of rational actors we can assume I didn't manage to do that by any ferocious display of strength! But we don't. And more likely they were strong-armed into accepting my claim not yours. Of course, now we're all civilised an' that, we've stopped all the shenanigans, but only by cementing the injustices of the past into money and saying "from now on, no more strong-arming".

So yes, power as in ability to make others act some way, is what I was meaning.

how does it help us? — Srap Tasmaner

I suppose the aim was to eliminate the seemingly 'supernatural' elements of ownership and pin them down to something real. I mean nothing real can just get bigger without cost, it defies several laws of physics, surely? So to help with that I want to find a proper 'conversion' for ownership into something physical. It's not just labelling (like putting a name tag on) because, we seem to be able to merely reify categories of ownership out of thin air (like we do when we claim to "own" aboriginal land but they don't even think land is the sort of thing anyone can own). Power seemed like a good candidate.

now power — the guarantor of property — is itself a possession that can be stolen. What would underwrite possession of power, since it can't be power? Is it going to be right after all?

(I hope it doesn't seem like I'm nitpicking here — Srap Tasmaner

Not at all. Yes, it looks circular. Let's say instead that stealing is the removal of power to act over some material object (whether that's a phone or a country), then one cannot steal power, but one can steal a country, and, most importantly for our aboriginal example, you can steal a country by removing a freedom the others used to have, even if those others never would have placed such a restriction on you.

We can (should we want to) have our noble savage not care two hoots about who walks about in the forest he lives in, but along come the British and take away his power to walk here and there (by force of arms), then they have stolen something from him, even though he didn't consider himself to own it in the first place.

No anthropologist here, but we tend to name isolated societies for the word in their language that just means "people" right? But from my studies in college (wonderful lefty anthropologist who taught us from a book called Europe and the People Without History) and my son sharing what he's learned from Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything, population contact goes back as far as you want to go. The isolated tribe in a state of nature is mostly myth. — Srap Tasmaner

I think that's right (limited expertise here too though), but that doesn't tell us much about the status of the 'other' in that tribe's language and culture. From what I understand (various pop-sci anthropology books) it varies depending on terrain - mountainous, hard to traverse terrain like Papua New Guinea tend to lead to very negative views of the out-group, lots of wars etc. Flatter more easy to traverse terrain tends to lead to more positive views, fewer wars.

I ought to disclose my biases - I only donate to a single charity and that charity is Survival International. I'm not an impartial contributor to the discussion about Tribal rights.

With such a social technology available, a group within a group could deny the rest of the group use of something, claiming ownership the other members of the group are bound at spear-point to respect.

Now if that's the story, then the Europeans are just another out-group, and rather than being denied use of land and resources, they have the capacity to deny those already here such use. Seems like more of the same, not a break with history. — Srap Tasmaner

I think that's right, but for the first part you hint at "With such a social technology available" - the point made by people like Peter Gray, or Jared Diamond is that the 'social technology' you need for that kind of action is a combination of sedentary lifestyles and systematic excess of resources (ie in most cases - agriculture). As such It may not be a break from the history of say, the Incas or the African pastoralists, but it may well be a significant break from the history of say the Amazonian tribes or the Australian aborigines.

I think there are genuine changes between the deep past and the present, and those changes include new forms of political economy that don't just amount to gang warfare. Economics may be the science of decision-making under scarcity, but that scarcity is relative, defined by opportunity, and not necessarily some definite depletable amount, but a pool we can grow and shrink by our actions. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree in theory with the notion that opportunity is expandable by our actions. I just think that it's merely a theory. We have not expanded the wealth of the world by expanding opportunity, we've done so by stealing opportunity from future generations via over-exploitation of non-renewable resources. We've not expanded opportunities for services by creating new services we didn't even know we wanted, we've done so by constraining others' freedoms sufficiently to force them to do jobs they wouldn't otherwise do if they were free.

So 'yes', in theory, 'no' in practice. Maybe there's a rosy future out there, and I'm probably ignoring many exceptions to the rule I've just outlined, but if we're talking about justification (as we were) then I don't see much in what we currently have, maybe though in what we could have?

And for the removal of doubt about the scale. This one from the OHCHR report...

The torture, ill-treatment and other violations described by detainees involved in the simultaneous release [an exchange of prisoners between both sides] are of a systematic nature and may amount to war crimes.

Oh, and here's the most interesting part from the joint Amnesty, Human Rights Watch report...

Ukraine’s security services repeatedly denied the violations the two organizations documented. They have also sought to deflect criticism by repeatedly claiming, falsely, that reports of enforced disappearances were disinformation spread by Russian propaganda

.

Blaming the reporting of their abuses on Russian disinformation... Well...

I have no idea what you are talking about here. You really think people were disappearing prior to the Russian invasion? Why don't just refer to that. — ssu

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur50/4455/2016/en/

Both the Ukrainian government authorities and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine have held civilians in prolonged, arbitrary detention, without any contact with the outside world, including with their lawyers or families. In some cases, the detentions constituted enforced disappearances

The fact that you don't know this speak volumes about your biases.

I see compassion as a supportive feeling we have for other people’s suffering — neomac

Sure but we're talking about objectives, not suffering. It's the Ukrainian objective you're expressing support for, not merely empathising with their suffering. If I see a person with a sharp object in their leg I might be moved to tears at the thought of their pain, it has no bearing at all on my response if they say "I'm going to take it out", I'd still be strongly opposed to the idea for their own welfare (my understanding of first aid being that one is supposed to leave embedded objects where they are until the experts get to it). My sympathy with their plight has no bearing on my opinion of what course of action is most likely to get them out of it.

You are not proving to be “solely” concerned of the well being of the people there, by engaging in anonymous armchair chattering about “people there” on a website. — neomac

The intention is not to 'prove' it.

states according to a realist view that you seem to share with Mearsheimer don’t care about people’s feelings or moral, they are self-preserving geopolitical agents in competition for power. — neomac

I don't agree with Mearsheimer on that (assuming that's what he thinks). States ought to be concerned with the welfare of all humans the interact with, as should anyone. I think nationalism is a cancer on human societies.

I was talking about pre-condition for the implementation of state institutions that support human rights. State institutions, as I understand them, presuppose authoritative and coercive ruling over a territory. — neomac

Yes. But it doesn't matter which. No-one is contemplating leaving Donbas as no-man's land.