JFC even a murderous war criminal like Kissinger had better foresight than some of the very silly people in here. from 2014:

Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them. Russia must accept that to try to force Ukraine into a satellite status, and thereby move Russia’s borders again, would doom Moscow to repeat its history of self-fulfilling cycles of reciprocal pressures with Europe and the United States.

The European Union must recognize that its bureaucratic dilatoriness and subordination of the strategic element to domestic politics in negotiating Ukraine’s relationship to Europe contributed to turning a negotiation into a crisis. Foreign policy is the art of establishing priorities.

Russia and the West, and least of all the various factions in Ukraine, have not acted on this principle. Each has made the situation worse. Russia would not be able to impose a military solution without isolating itself at a time when many of its borders are already precarious. For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.

Putin should come to realize that, whatever his grievances, a policy of military impositions would produce another Cold War. For its part, the United States needs to avoid treating Russia as an aberrant to be patiently taught rules of conduct established by Washington.

https://www.henryakissinger.com/articles/how-the-ukraine-crisis-ends/

Meanwhile, markets expecting Russia to default on its debts any day now:

Russia will default on its debt for the first time since 1998 if it tries to make interest payments on its dollar bonds in roubles on Wednesday, rating agency Fitch has said.

Investors are awaiting $117mn in coupon payments on two Russian bonds, the first such payments since western countries responded to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine with unprecedented financial sanctions. The deadline marks a crucial test of Moscow’s willingness and ability to continue servicing its external debt.

On March 5, Putin said creditors in “unfriendly” countries that have imposed sanctions should be paid in roubles rather than foreign currency. But such a “forced redenomination” of coupon payments would indicate “that a default or a default-like process has begun”, Fitch said. The company would further downgrade Russia’s credit rating to “restricted default” if the payment is not made in dollars within the 30-day grace period that follows Wednesday’s deadline.

https://www.ft.com/content/2c0d7a8b-a48b-4287-ac3a-376603347ba3

The West: "We really care about Ukraine :hearts: :heart: :flower: "

Also the West: "Give us all your money forever lol. Hope yall stay alive so you can pay it":

"Ukraine’s total external government debt amounts to $54 billion. The country is set to pay $7.3 billion in debt repayments this year alone. More than half is due to private lenders like banks and hedge funds, while most of the rest is owed to multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the European Investment Bank. The current fall in the value of Ukrainian hryvnia against the US dollar will only exacerbate the debt burden, as foreign debts are owed in dollars, heaping extra pressure on the government to find the funds to repay its loans at a time of foreign invasion and extreme economic disruption.

Since the invasion, Ukrainian dollar-denominated bonds, which were issued as part of its 2015 debt restructuring, have been trading at around 25 cents on the dollar. This reflects the high risk of default, but also means that if Ukraine continues to make its debt payments, Western banks and hedge funds could make profits of 300 percent.

The response of multilateral institutions has been to give even more loans to Ukraine. Since the war started, the IMF has given a £1.4 billion emergency loan, while the World Bank has provided a $723 million financial package that includes $589 million in loans. These new loans are being piled on top of Ukraine’s already unsustainable debts."

https://jacobinmag.com/2022/03/ukraine-foreign-debt-cancellation-imf-global-finance

That's nice for you :)

Maybe get a better hobby? Have you tried Elden Ring?

Yeah, the world is really in danger of not talking about Putin's crimes. Just a hair's breadth away from that untenable situation.

Reminds me of a passage from Marx about how the "liberal" party of UK, whatever it was called at the time, just represents the aristocrats and their fellow rich friends that benefit from economic liberalisation and getting rid of the rest of aristocratic privileges, and they'll never deliver on their "ideals" of freedom and equality and the rest of it; that it's all talk and you'll never see actions no matter their majority in parliament ... it will always be close but "shucks, can't do it". — boethius

He was right. He remains right.

On a related note, it's been fun to see the world's largest room of war criminals condemn Putin, the war criminal, of daring to be their equal: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-unanimously-condemns-putin-war-criminal-2022-03-15/

No doubt many of them will whine about Navalny while they wait with baited breath for Assange to be dropped on their doorstep by the British, all while crying about free speech and Putin's tyranny.

If the West was in any way sincere about it's faux-concern about Ukraine - and it doesn't give a shit, let's be clear - the one lesson you'd think it would learn is not to put it's energy eggs in a tyranny-basket. But of course, the West, as usual, being built on nothing but a growing pile of broken, bloody bodies, simply swaps one murderous shitstain for another set of murderous shitstains:

Boris Johnson is hoping to line up major Saudi investment in British renewable energy on a visit to Riyadh on Wednesday, during which he will urge the desert kingdom to increase oil production to tackle market volatility. But ahead of the trip the UK prime minister was accused by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer of going “cap in hand from dictator to dictator” to beg for help, arguing that Johnson should have put in place a more balanced energy strategy years ago.

Johnson will fly to the Middle East overnight on Tuesday for talks in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in an attempt to convince the two countries to help boost energy supplies and stabilise markets disrupted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The UK announced last week that it would phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year.

https://www.ft.com/content/b60387ea-d3f4-4819-aa53-77e86e4d5094

Trotsky, the native Ukrainian, knew what's up, long before any of this went down:

Only hopeless pacifist blockheads are capable of thinking that the emancipation and unification of the Ukraine can be achieved by peaceful diplomatic means, by referendums, by decisions of the League of Nations, etc. In no way superior to them of course are those “nationalists” who propose to solve the Ukrainian question by entering the service of one imperialism against another. Hitler gave an invaluable lesson to those adventurers by tossing (for how long?) Carpatho-Ukraine to the Hungarians who immediately slaughtered not a few trusting Ukrainians. Insofar as the issue depends upon the military strength of the imperialist states, the victory of one grouping or another can signify only a new dismemberment and a still more brutal subjugation of the Ukrainian people, The program of independence for the Ukraine in the epoch of imperialism is directly and indissolubly bound up with the program of the proletarian revolution. It would be criminal to entertain any illusions on this score.

...The impending war will create a favorable atmosphere for all sorts of adventurers, miracle-hunters and seekers of the golden fleece. These gentlemen, who especially love to warm their hands in the vicinity of the national question, must not be allowed within artillery range of the labor movement. Not the slightest compromise with imperialism, either fascist or democratic!

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/ukraine.html

A horrifying thread about what is happening in HK atm.

Oh boy how fun.

Manics not big in Australia? — Isaac

Ooooh. Manics is big with me! But I didn't recognize him haha. I just listen to the music.

---

It's like - the Very Media Literate people here will tell you about being Very Careful about Propaganda, and then will also tell you that they will literally cry if something happens to this person who they did not know existed until a month ago.

I just don't even.

idk, I'm just saying someone should maybe, maybe maybe look into war-time heroes and how that tends to play out in like, all of history since the beginning of time. Anyone wanna look into the report card on that? Just like, out of curiosity?

The deification of Zelensky is kind of horrifying to watch. He seems like a chill dude, doing well, under tremendous pressure. But the immense libidinal enjoyment that people seem to get out of treating him like a celebrity speaks to how utterly broken our ability to engage with the world is. Liberals get off on having a Zelensky-like figure available for intellectual reification - it plays right into their Harry Potter fantasies of individual heroes moving the world. He fills a void already cut out in their imaginations. This is, needless to say, not a critique of Zelensky, but of the really fuck-up way he continues to be portrayed.

Oh I agree! I wasn't being sarcastic.

Ah, Biden is not a complete moron.

:smile:

Russia also has the capacity to build the Death Star and also maybe sharks with lazers so be careful.

Your narrative is based on "leaked intel": aka. trusting the government in questions intel is accurate to begin with and leaked for the purpose of "just being open" ... aka. trusting the government is telling the truth when they say they are just being open and honest with everyone. — boethius

:up:

Lmao the government in question is the American one but yes keep talking about media literacy when you can't even gets basics right lol

Self-Appointed Smart Person: "media literacy is important".

Also Self-Appointed Smart Person: "lmao I don't need to watch that I can make stuff up without looking and misattribute total basics I am very enlightened".

it's this vacillation between war being the crisis to end all crises on the one hand and then immediately pivoting to war being so trivial as to be considered a useful tool for the ritual humiliation — Isaac

Ritual humiliation of singular individuals having always been a mover and shaker of world history of course. Whole libraries devoted to bad feelings and positive international strategic outcomes.

I recall something about revanchism being the almost direct cause of WWII, but maybe that's just fake news history.

Is our schadenfreude at seeing Putin humiliated worth hundreds of Ukrainian lives? — Isaac

:up:

"Putin must be punished" is indeed just about the most stupid, sociopath approach to international politics I can imagine. But this is to be expected from those who treat the latter as a video game.

Imagine observing the current events and thinking: "we need to aggressively address ...Putin's feelings. This is very important - the most important - and totally not bad fiction writing for edgy teen novels". The brain-rot it must take.

This view, via Chomsky, is somewhat romantic - the idea that the Europeans would have ever tried to cultivate pan-European diplomacy at the expense of American stewardship, or that Putin would have tried harder for diplomacy - but worth making for what could have been:

Putin demonstrated the same reflexive resort to violence although peaceful options were available. It’s true that the U.S. continued to dismiss what even high U.S. officials and top-ranking diplomats have long understood to be legitimate Russian security concerns, but options other than criminal violence remained open. Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe observers had been reporting sharply increased violence in the Donbas region, which many — not just Russia — charge was largely at Ukrainian initiative. Putin could have sought to establish that charge, if it is correct, and to bring it to international attention. That would have strengthened his position.

More significantly, Putin could have pursued the opportunities, which were real, to appeal to Germany and France to carry forward the prospects for a “common European home” along the lines proposed by De Gaulle and Gorbachev, a European system with no military alliances from the Atlantic to the Urals, even beyond, replacing the Atlanticist NATO-based system of subordination to Washington. That has been the core background issue for a long time, heightened during the current crisis. A “common European home” offers many advantages to Europe. Intelligent diplomacy might have advanced the prospects.

Instead of pursuing diplomatic options, Putin reached for the revolver, an all-too-common reflex of power. The result is devastating for Ukraine, with the worst probably still to come. The outcome is also a very welcome gift to Washington, as Putin has succeeded in establishing the Atlanticist system even more solidly than before. The gift is so welcome that some sober and well-informed analysts have speculated that it was Washington’s goal all along.

But that the war has been a gift, a total and absolute present to the Western powers, is totally true. Again, Europe and the States ought to be thanking Putin with every fibre of their being. Oh yes, and a no-fly zone would be fucking madness and anyone advocating for it ought to be thrown straight into the loony house for life with no way out, ever.

https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-a-no-fly-zone-over-ukraine-could-unleash-untold-violence/

Speaking of media literacy:

Lmao its like an entire page of dummy spitting and self-adulation.

Probably when there's something to say other than cliche at this point.

Indeed. Luckily, unlike magpies who get distracted by the latest shiny thing, most normal people can discuss context, wider significance, and long term implications and trajectories.

This is not a thread about the West, — Olivier5

Indeed. It is a thread about Ukraine, in which the West has been involved in for decades.

Yeah, because only Russia are interested in hydrocarbon resources. — Isaac

Yeah, haven't you heard? The West has never started genocidal wars for resources and are totally disinterested goodies fighting the Russian baddies.

Lol.

Via Mike Davis:

On the other shore, Biden conducts a nonstop seance with Dean Acheson and all the ghosts of Cold Wars past. The White House is visionless in the wilderness it helped to create. All the think tanks and genius minds that supposedly guide the Clinton-Obama wing of the Democratic Party are in their own way as lizard-brained as the soothsayers in the Kremlin. They can’t imagine any other intellectual framework for declining American power than nuclear-tipped competition with Russia and China. (One could almost hear the sigh of relief as Putin lifted the mental burden of having to think global strategy in the Anthropocene). In the end, Biden has turned out to be the same warmonger in power that we feared Hilary Clinton would be. Although Eastern Europe now distracts, who can doubt Biden’s determination to seek confrontation in the South China Sea – waters far more dangerous than the Black Sea?

Meanwhile the White House seems to have almost casually chucked its weak commitment to progressivism into the trash. A week after the most frightening report in history, one that implied the coming decimation of poor humanity, climate change rated nary a mention in the State of the Union. (How could it compare to the transcendental urgency of rebuilding NATO?) And Trayvon Martin and George Floyd are now just roadkill rapidly vanishing from sight in the rear-view mirror of the presidential limousine as Biden rushes around reassuring the cops that he’s their best friend.

...We are living through the nightmare edition of ‘Great Men Make History’. Unlike the high Cold War when politburos, parliaments, presidential cabinets and general staffs to some extent countervailed megalomania at the top, there are few safety switches between today’s maximum leaders and Armageddon. Never has so much fused economic, mediatic and military power been put into so few hands. It should make us pay homage at the hero graves of Aleksandr Ilyich Ulyanov, Alexander Berkman and the incomparable Sholem Schwarzbard.

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/thanatos-triumphant

A fun exploration to look up the names he mentions.

Regarding the bolded bit, that's a thought I had myself - Biden should be thanking Putin for finally providing him - and the rest of the West - a good old fashioned war to take everyone's minds off the failing systematic capacities of the West.

sounds good lemme know your thoughts — Maw

Finished both! So, the Mielants was not bad. Its big draw is that it's comparative across very different societies - Europe, China, India, and North Africa. Enormous undertaking, especially when packed into <180 pages. Essentially, it looks their various developmental paths in order to try and figure out why it was only in Europe that capitalism developed. His basic line is that it was only in Europe that merchants were able to gain access to state power, whereas in the other regions, the state managed to retain an autonomy from capital which prevented its proliferation. So he's (rightly) critical of the idea that the spread of markets naturally correlated with the rise of capitalism (like Wood), and he notes that it was a specifically political transformation. On the other hand, he's much more generous in locating the proliferation of capitalism in the late middle ages (~1500 or so), which is alot earlier than most commentators. The best parts of the book were his examinations of the non-European regions, especially North Africa, which I honestly have never given too much thought to. But his thesis about merchants and state-power is a bit broad-brush to me, and doesn't seem to pay enough attention to differentation of developmental paths within Europe itself.

Which, incidentally, is why I loved the Mooers book. If you've read both Davidson's How Revolutionary? and Wood's Origin, Mooers is like the perfect in-between and follow-up. Like Meilants, it's also comparative history, but intra-European: France, Germany, and England. And Mooers does this incredible juggling act where he tracks the interests of all sorts of actors within these states - peasants, bourgeoise, nobility, crown, wage-labour, bureaucracies, the state itself as an autonomous actor - and shows how they converge and diverge at various points, and give rise to different historical outcomes. Like Davidson, the subject of the book are the 'bourgeois revolutions' and their role in bringing capitalism about. Unlike Mielants, who basically pays zero attention to revolution, Mooers shows just how necessary the revolutions were in advancing the causes of capitalism, and equally as interestingly, shows how such revolutions can take place in different forms. I wish I had read this before I'd read Davidson, because it's just alot more compact and tight, and easier to track the stakes of the debates being discussed. Davidson was a bit sprawling, and because he juggles so many balls, there were times I didn't follow the significance of certain debates. After having read this I feel like I need to go back to Davidson at some point because I think I have a much firmer grasp on alot of the issues, especially the European ones. Helps that Mooers is also a Marxist, and again unlike Meilants, also engages (critically) with alot of the literature in that tradition. My biggest gripe is that I wish it had a chapter on Holland.

If you can, let me know how you find the Traverso book.

---

Anyway! Next up, and continuing the theme:

Henry Heller - The Birth of Capitalism: A 21st Century Perspective
Henry Heller - The Bourgeois Revolution in France, 1789-1815
Henry Heller - The French Revolution and Historical Materialism: Selected Essays
Jean-Pierre Vernant - The Origins of Greek Thought

!! I just picked up his new book on revolutions the other day.

You can't get angry at Ukraine — schopenhauer1

Again, please learn to read past a 2nd grade level thanks.

So your odd defense of Putin here doesn't make any sense. — schopenhauer1

If you construed that as a defense of Putin then please know that I don't reply substantively to illiterates.

Incredible how quickly cultural chauvinism immediately gets translated from geopolitical action: as if the actions of the American or European states have anything to do with any any sense of cultural identification. I guess this is how fascism takes root: when people look at state actions and think: that's 'us'. How sad.

If you're going to require that NATO and the EU be Grandmaster chess players in this environment and expect them to respond precisely to the strategic environment, then let's impose that same standard on Putin. — Hanover

I wouldn't exactly call it Grandmaster chess insofar as people were shouting that this would happen from all corners, but I don't think Putin is under any illusions that he's being the noble one here, unless one actually takes seriously the propaganda he puts out - something I hope no one is actually doing. On the other hand, the idea that the West is acting out of any high-mindedness is laughable too - I'm not convinced Putin is stupid enough to believe that. The high-mindedness I was referring to is @Christoffer's, not the West, which is clearly acting with its own interests in mind. Any genuine imputation of high-mindedness to the West is at least as stupid as any propaganda that Putin secretes.

But sure, it absolutely is the case that Putin should take into account any response to his action; but no one is arguing - at least I hope no one is arguing - that he hasn't. That he innocently waltzed into war like a woopsie. By most accounts the speed and depth of the response have been a surprise, but I'd be happy to wager he didn't think he'd get a slap on the wrist either. Additionally, I'm not convinced that he's been backed into a corner, at least militarily. The accounts of the action of the ground that I'm following don't paint good prospects for Ukraine, but I'm willing to be happily surprised.

If you want a performing monkey, you should try e-bay.

I think you just let the US off the hook for every atrocious thing it's ever done. — frank

Did I? Because those who can follow a basic train of implication might note that none of this lets Putin off the hook. No judgement about those who can't, just saying. I understand that not everyone has an IQ above 12.

And notice how those ex-Soviet countries in the EU (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) have performed against their former Soviet counterparts: — ssu

Well yes, the ex-Soviet counterparts get the pleasure of being fucked over by the rentier capitalism of the Putin state, which is definitely a far shittier situation to be in. And to take just one of your named countries:

Post-Soviet economies were free of public debt, business debt, real estate and personal debt or other bank loans when they obtained their political independence in 1991. Their residential and commercial real estate, transportation facilities and highly educated population could have provided the foundation for a competitive low-cost modern economy. Every family could have been given its home at a nominal price. Prime real estate and infrastructure monopolies were turned over to insiders on such terms. But by the time most families started to buy home ownership, prices were soaring. The debt-free situation with low housing costs and a broad array of public services did not last long.

Latvia imposed Europe’s heaviest taxes on labor and industry, and the lightest on real estate and finance. Its miniscule property taxes left almost the entire rental income available to be capitalized into bank loans, and property prices spiked to among the highest levels in Europe. Accepting U.S. and Swedish advice to impose the world’s most lopsided set of neoliberal tax and financial policies, Latvia levied the world’s heaviest taxes on labor. Employers must pay a flat 25 percent flat tax on wages plus a 24 percent social-service tax, while wage earners pay another 11 percent tax. These three taxes add up to nearly a 60 percent flat tax before personal deductions. In addition to making labor high-cost and hence less competitive, consumers must pay a high value-added sales tax of 21 percent (raised sharply from 7 percent after the 2008 crisis). No Western economy taxes wages and consumption so steeply.

.. Latvia’s alternative to Soviet-style bureaucracy was a far cry from classical democracy utilizing its endowments to achieve an American- or Europeanstyle success. It fell subject to a smash-and-grab privatization of the Soviet-era assets created prior to 1991. Instead of undertaking the social spending and infrastructure investment found in successful Western economies, the “Baltic miracle” featured a privatized oligarchy, dependence on foreign
banks, and wage austerity.

...Some 10 percent of Latvia’s population has left since 2000, and roughly 14 percent of the working-age population, with emigration accelerating after the 2008 crash. In 2013 a full 10 percent of “Latvian” live births were reported to have occurred in Britain! As in other countries subjected to austerity, Latvian emigration is concentrated in the most highly educated and employable population: 25 to 35 years old. Latvians joke about collapse by 2030, by which time the last person to leave the airport is asked to please turn off the lights.

Via Michael Hudson's Killing The Host. Estonia and Lithuania have similar stories of course, once you go past skin-deep comparisons of GDP. But you're welcome to do your own research.