Well the US is an infinitely worse country than Russia on the world stage so I reckon there's more leeway in getting it to fuck right off forever.

Who gives a shit about power prices increasing when people are getting killed in Ukraine? — Christoffer

Yeah gee, who gives a damn about continental crisis, how passe right? And who knows what the 'solution' is? Maybe part of the problem is wild bloodlusty agitators happy to crank up tensions with a nuclear power because they need to feel like they are 'doing something'. I know that it may come as a shock that the world is more complex than 'bad guy bad' and 'is good when good guy hurt bad guy' but that's kinda how things are.

You're an inspiration to the world. — Christoffer

One hopes there is a world left when tunnel-visioned hysterics like you are quite done with it.

He invaded a country, killing civilians right now as we speak, and threatens others with nuclear weapons. Case closed. — Christoffer

Oh yes, case closed, Putin invaded a country so no critical thinking so what if power prices surge through the roof and fascism is given an accelerant and ordinary people everywhere are hurt; your bloodlust must be satisfied now.

Generally I imagine one deals with nuclear weapon threats by not poking a fucking nuclear weapon bear in the eye. That's just me though, real god damn radical I know.

It's also a huge economical consequence to the entire world. — Christoffer

Which apparently you are totally OK with exacerbating because Putin bad and fascism we can deal with later and China will be on the West's side and everything is peachy so long as we punish Russia. If there was even a modicum of 'equality of conflicts' that would in fact be nice.

I didn't say it will implode on their own — Christoffer

Oh? Tell me how to interpret this:

Depends, many of the fascist parties have also been taken into the normality of parliament, which means many of them are now showing how incompetent they actually are with normal day-to-day politics. In Sweden, we have former neo-nazi fascists as the third-largest party in parliament playing innocent politicians and since they've grown so large, people demand them to solve normal problems, which they can't because they are fundamentally incompetent. — Christoffer

I really don't understand when arguments boil down to "yeah, but what about everything else that's going on?" — Christoffer

Because the opposite response - "let's just talk about Putin and nothing else" - is far, far stupider. Especially when that is, in fact, the dominant response. Doubly especially when your response to the threat of a rising fascism is "oh don't worry they'll implode on their own account". Which is of course, literal insanity. Much like fantasizing about Putin in the Hague.

That may or may not turn out OK, but it is dangerous, I agree. — Baden

Earlier this month the UK - land of populist Brexit - was already looking to provide government loans to cover energy bills in an out of control energy market. That was before any of this started, proper. Can European governments afford to drive up those prices further? Not even asking rhetorically, but as a genuine open question.

It takes years to build new factories and the one in Taiwan is one, if not the most advanced in the world. Russia has nothing even remotely close to that level of importance globally. — Christoffer

China has years. Look, I'm just saying, this isn't some internet RPG where people get to takes sides in some kind of black and white manner. The assumption that making Russia (more) of a pariah state will automatically translate into more support for the West is very wrong. And it is good that it is wrong.

At the moment, the crisis is in Ukraine and with Russia's, — Christoffer

At the moment, the crisis is also in Yemen and Israel. It just so happens that Ukraine aligns with Western interests to make this the cause du jour. And the idea that when or if this crisis 'ends', the West will give a shit about Yemen or Israel is laughable.

--

Anyway, back to the original point - one interesting thing about cutting off Russian oil and gas - whoever does it first, if it happens at all - is that it is likely to stir up further reactionary movements in Europe, which is already having a nice little fascist/populist revival. Living conditions falling as they are - thanks to the Euro - a price hike will hit the working class first and foremost as the price of living will shoot up considerably (more). As it stands the people who stand to benefit from this are nationalist identitarians everywhere, and it's not clear that the neoliberal elites of Europe will be willing to pay that price. And this to say nothing about the new wave of refugees that is about to hit Europe, already having a 'migrant crisis'. Or ordinary Russians who will also pay the price of Western sanctions. Again, it's more complicated than 'punish Russia because Putin is bad-man'.

So if China buddies too much with Russia, it could create a fallout against China where nations get scared to have too much exposure towards a superpower that could very well do exactly the same with Taiwan as Russia did with Ukraine. — Christoffer

I don't particularly think Sri Lanka or Ethiopia particularly gives a shit about Taiwan. In any case apart from nutjobs like Apollo I don't think there are very many people who argue that 'the West' shouldn't be 'unified' against Russia, whatever that means. But there are plenty who rightly note that the West is up to its eyeballs in it's own, totally malign, interests while also noting its extreme hypocrisy. Frankly, anyone hyperventilating about Ukraine but not having a word to say about Israeli apartheid or Yemeni genocide - i.e. most people here and in the West - simply does not deserve to speak, ever.

They have trade with everyone, but they won't like being shut off from a big portion of the world if they cuddle too much with Russia. — Christoffer

Again, and vice versa. The world relies on China just as much as China relies on the world. And in a much bigger way than Russia. It would take either extreme stupidity or extreme courage to try and 'cut China off from trade' - which amounts to cutting the West itself off from its own manufacturing base. And the West is nothing if not filled with cowards. The West does not hold all the agency in the world, contrary to what people would like to believe.

Even if China acts like they don't care about the west, the truth is that their entire economy hangs on an extremely built-out trading network. — Christoffer

And vice versa. China has been very good at specifically making friends with those the West doesn't like. I'd much more sceptical than you about China's need to hang with the popular kids. Belt and Road was designed precisely to cater to those whom the West makes 'unpopular'.

You play what you got.

Tooze on the significance of the financial sanctions so far. A nice picture of where things stand:

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-87-are-we-on-the-brink?utm_source=url

Interesting speculation that Putin may cut off gas and oil unilaterally, long before the West even tries. Not something I thought of.

The number of people cheering on escalation and fantasizing about Putin - a leader of a nuclear nation - going to the Hague is both depressing and horrifying.

Tolstoy, Special Operation and Peace. — jamalrob

Fantastic.

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-86-about-those-sanctions?utm_source=url

President Biden announced a sanctions package against Russia that is specifically designed to allow energy payments to continue! ... So long as your energy-related transactions are channelled through non-sanctioned non-US financial institutions, for instance a European bank, you are in the clear. Biden meant what he said. These are a sanctions designed not to sanction. America has introduced sweeping sanctions against all the major banks of Russia that do everything but block the most important transactions that might actually impose severe costs both on Russia and America’s major European allies. Nor are the carve-outs limited to energy, they apply to Russia’s agricultural commodity exports too. So long as the transactions run through non-US non-sanctioned banks, the US Treasury raises no objections.

If Putin is "mad", his calculations sure do seem to be paying off.

It's also a clear sign of his "madness" that he's been warning the world for years that if NATO keeps expanding, he will respond aggressively - as he in fact already did in Georgia - and then when he does exactly what he warned he will do - and has done in the past - people are like OMG he's mad so impulsive creature of pure id and narcissism!

One way to guarantee you don't understand what's going on is to dismiss the protagonist as "mad". Good way to sell newspapers; bad way to analyse events. — Baden

:up:

This is what it means to be a 'friend' of the West:

IMF handouts continue. The latest is an agreement to extend loans into 2022 worth $700m of a total $5bn IMF ‘stand-by arrangement’. For this money, Ukraine “must keep its debt ‘sustainable’, safeguard the central bank’s independence, bring inflation back into its target range and tackling corruption.” So austerity measures must be applied to public spending; the central bank must act in the interests of foreign debtors and not allow the currency to devalue too much and keep interest rates up without the interference of the government; and the rampant corruption in government with the Ukrainian oligarchs must be controlled. (see IMF Stand-by arrangement November 2021 report. )

Austerity measures have been applied by various governments over the last ten years. The current IMF package requires a tax increase equivalent to 0.5% of annual GDP, increased pension contributions and rises in energy tariffs. All these measures will lead to a further fall in welfare spending, from 20% of GDP at the time of the 2014 crisis to just 13% this year.

Above all, the IMF is insisting, with the support of the latest post-Maidan government, to carry out substantial privatisation of the banks and state enterprises in the interests of ‘efficiency’ and to control ‘corruption’. ... The government is resisting allowing foreigners to buy land. But in 2024, Ukrainian legal entities will qualify for transactions involving up to 10,000 hectares and will apply to an agricultural area of 42.7 million hectares (103 million acres). That is equivalent to the entire surface area of the state of California, or all of Italy! The World Bank is positively drooling at this opening up of Ukraine’s key industry to capitalist enterprise: “This is without exaggeration a historic event, made possible by the leadership of the President of Ukraine, the will of the parliament and the hard work of the government.” So Ukraine plans to open up its economy even more to capital, particularly foreign capital, in the hope that this will deliver faster growth and prosperity.

Imperialism by financial means; as distinct from imperialism by military ones.

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2022/02/14/ukraine-trapped-in-a-war-zone/

No no it's the FSB script I'm following.

It is exactly the quality that treating Putin like a cartoon villain deserves. A cartoon response.

Your having an overactive imagination doesn't seem like very good grounds for international politics.

I spoke of a lunatic named Putin who wants to reclaim Soviet power on the world stage... What if he needs to fulfill the Soviet dream even further? — Christoffer

I wonder what it's like walking through the world thinking that it functions like an off-brand Marvel movie. Is he planning to wield the infinity glove after that?

Plus I really don't have enough of an idea what is going on or what Putin's strategy is — jamalrob

I quite like the below thread by Sam Greene over at King's, which makes alot of sense to me, and certainly more than the cartoon character caricature painted by some here:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1491837537949736975.html

This point in particular:

"The expansion of EU influence puts insurmountable pressure on the Russian political economy to move from a rent-based, patronal model of wealth creation and power relations, to a system of institutionalized competition. ...Even within its current borders, the EU puts immense pressure on Russia to do things like adapt the natural gas sector -- the country's biggest source of rents -- to fit the Third Energy Package. Moscow's worst nightmare isn't hypersonic missiles in Ukraine -- it's the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Now imagine that mechanism -- and others like it -- extended to Ukraine, and maybe you begin to get my point."

---

The idea that Russia represents this apocalyptic threat to European peace and stability when the ECB and EMU exists is perhaps, the funniest part of the hysteria.

*Pre-WWIII conditions occur under president Biden*

Liberals: How could Trump do this???

Eric Mielants - The Origins of Capitalism and the "Rise of the West"
Colin Moores - The Making of Bourgeois Europe: Absolutism, Revolution, and the Rise of Capitalism in England, France and Germany

Shh, not talking to you please don't waste your time.

They still have column-inches, they still have Twitter accounts, the still have the streets open to them. — Isaac

I'm not sure about the column-inches when the entire media is corporate owned and sponsored, Twitter means nothing, and the streets - the streets are where you have to preregister your protest through approved routes and at the slightest hint of violence the entire conversation will become ooohh won't someone think of the private property? Look, I'm not (just) making excuses, but the entire environment - and let's be clear I'm talking about money and funding - doesn't go toward anti-capitalist causes. Minor first world neuroses get airtime because they are the closest thing to being acceptable to a mass audience - or rather, to those who make decisions about what mass audiences get access to. It's money. It's just fucking money. That's it, and there's no money in not talking about gender pay disparity and kneeling superstars. There's not even money in wishing grievous bodily harm upon actual Nazis :(

And if you don't have money and power, you get a pass from me - mostly. Wherever power and money isn't - that's where to be, that's who to forgive. And you know as well as I that neither of these things are with the left.

From yesterday:



See, I don't think these people should feel safe when they leave their houses. I want them to fear for their safety. It would be a net plus if they all dropped dead, and if someone made that happen, I think we should celebrate that. I am OK with being polarized from these people. I positively encourage it.

So like, the political choice to, say, reform the police, has already been rejected and formalist complaints about 'incivility' are really just strategic laying of a long-game justification for later being able to say the BLM protests are inappropriate. — Isaac

Ha. I tend to think this varies - as usual - by power. I'm quite inclined to believe this post-hoc rationalization for those who in fact have a stake in keeping up a police state, say, but by and large by the time it - why not? - trickles down to the Cuthberts of the world, they really do just think that violence and incivility is a bad in itself, "fascist or not". Again, these people take pride in being utterly insensitive to context. Lacking, or not seeing the need for any strategic or tactical understanding of the world, they fall back on - let's call it - lowest common denominator politics. Never mind that this feeds right into the hands of those who who do in fact weaponize civility as a conscious tool of silencing.

Their very involvement in the 'debate' is a farce by the same standards I judged the involvement of their detractors to be. Let them all have at each other, perhaps, in their air castles such that I could unmoor the whole edifice and hopefully watch it float away. — Isaac

Yes. It's why the whole 'cancel culture' is so ridiculous. Every time it comes up, just ask: who is being cancelled, and by what agency? Some of us are still waiting for NYT to mention the fact that Amnesty correctly called Israel the apartheid state it is. Others are probably worryingly looking on at the slate of recent book bannings going on in various US States. But lo and behold, the cry is over some stupid shit someone said on Twitter. Cancel culture is a problem and it is real - but it's taking place everywhere power is, and people aren't.

Is it just a coincidence that the causes people are prepared to rally around are all causes that don't really impact the plight of the working class at all, or at best do so tangentially? How did BLM turn from a genuine threat to the status quo in America's slums to a Twitter spat about which fucking sports personalities are kneeling down before their fucking corporate-sponsored shit-show of an event? — Isaac

I think this thread has all the answers you need. Twitter spats belong in the realm of 'civil discourse'. Genuine threats to the status quo do not. By definition. I get the feeling of left-failure, but I'm not inclined to blame the left for it. The avenues of action have been deliberately dried up one by one, until all that is left are the Twitter spats, and not much else. Everything else - as is apparent - 'risks fascism'. Never mind the real development of actual fascism in the real world. No risks allowed. At lest not for you. Only power is allowed that privilege, after which will we write a strongly worded Op Ed, assuming you are not cancelled by people who actually gatekeep the discourse.

'Fascist' or not, it makes no difference. — Cuthbert

Mm, I didn't think so. We'll see how that goes when the next totally legal holocaust happens, which of course, it was.

When the fascist comes he comes by way of law and parliamentary order. One day liberals will understand this, hopefully before they get stuffed into the train.

By 'shaming, hounding and making lives permanently miserable' I imagine not unfair and discourteous comments on the internet but stalking, death threats and similar. — Cuthbert

In other words, as soon as politics becomes anything other than a game without stakes, as soon as it actually bears on the lives of people in any way, then it's all 'horrific reality' and its threat. As soon as politics beaches the bourgeois boundries of spirited dinner-time conversation, it must be put to a stop on pain of being a fascist 'threat'.

Does this not make you even a little queasy about the integrity with which incivility is being used these days? Or am I falsely seeing two groups as one, too out of touch to understand the movements? — Isaac

Maybe there's an issue with incivility's 'integrity' (hah), maybe there isn't. But I'm not sure that we're even ('we' being contemporary society) at the level where we can pose this question in good faith yet. I still think there's plenty of formalist objection to incivility and even polarization on the (tautological) ground that 'incivility is uncivil' and that 'polarization is polarizing'. They are effectively apolitical responses, which each yank both out of any possible context, or, what is the same, absolutize all contexts so that they are always a priori 'bad things', regardless of reasons for their use or occurrence. Maybe I'm wrong, but responses to the effect of 'smells like fascism to me' and 'we don't need to do anything until the fascists have already taken power' suggest otherwise.

But if we are going to talk about the integrity or incivility - I guess my usual rule to is follow the power: the more powerful and monied the other person is, the more I'm happy to let them eat shit. This includes Rowling no less than Bezos.

Who's not up for punching a Nazi! — Isaac

You're more optimistic than I. But I'm still not sold about the overplaying of incivility. One aspect of its normalizing is also, in a way, to deprive it of a certain power. I think of, say, liberal reactions to Trump - much of it which always struck me as simply class resentment as the crassness of a nouveau riche who dared to grace the halls of power while being so uncouth. I don't think the majority of liberals would have given a shit about Trump has he displayed all the right class markers of civility while still acting as an accelerant for fascism. I don't think the majority of liberals give a damn about the latter. Hence why Biden can get away with continuing 90% of Trump's policies with 1% of the pushback. Or else the Jan 6 riots, the reaction to which stuck me as horror that some unwashed rednecks dared set their muddy boots into the marbled halls of power more than anything else. Like, if we gave a shit about different, more important, things, we would simply be much more productive. And undoubtedly this will be put down to 'polarization' = 'not only do they have different opinions than me, they dress differently too!'.

And similarly, the cudgel of civility is still used to silence left opposition, time and time again. Bernie was 'too loud', and the left are always 'too angry' - nevermind that we have every reason to be. I still think civility is the refuge of the weak - those without any principles except not ruffling too many feathers. It's bourgeois dinner-time etiquette transplanted into the political sphere and substituting for it in the absence of actually caring about what happens to anyone. It's why I have no time with Cuthbert's pseudo-nicety for which everything which is not civil is automatically and unthinkingly fascism. It's utterly puerile. "Fascism" in such a conception is simply anti-hedonia - "things that don't make me feel warm and fuzzy". Nevermind who, or what, or why incivility is being employed. It's all just blanket 'kinda sounds fascisty to me'. So if incivility 'backfires' it's because we let it. We use fake, unnecessary standards of civility to which everything ought to measure up - no question of why - and then condemn everything else - again no question of why - that doesn't meet it.

I think people want to avoid discussion about where this line-in-the-sand is simply because they don't want to be ideologically tied to it if they sense a change in the wind of popular zeitgeist. — Isaac

I think there is something to be said for simply making a positive out of incivility - which doesn't necessarily mean violence, contrary to those with limited imaginations. I mean the idea that there are those whose views do not deserve respect; that there are those whose exclusion and shunning from the public sphere is a good thing; that there are those for whom ridicule and shame is not only appropriate, but a virtuous reaction against. That there are people who should be talked-over, and down-to. And yes, punch Nazis when you get the chance, and make them feel unsafe and scared for their health and safety in public. There are cases in which all of these are good things, and should be celebrated. They should be occasions of mirth and community.

And this long before one speaks of lines in the sand.

I think it's forgotten that civility is a weapon of the powerful. It's usually only the powerful and the well-to-do that can afford to be civil: either because they hold the power anyway, or because it serves as a useful cultural cudgel to shut up the agitating hoi polloi. Just the other day, a public figure who has spoken out here about the horror of rape and her subjection to it, was spoken down to by noneother than the Prime Minister's wife for being 'rude'. Civility is more often than not, a mechanism of political silencing wielded by those who have the luxury of being comfortable. It's the same kind of comfort that leads even questioning the value of civility with fear-mongering about fascism as an immediate reaction.

Australia isn't on the verge of collapse. — ssu

You don't know the Australians I do. And as it turns out, I don't actually think the world revolves around my immediate environment.

But the usual option then is for people to go the guns. And remember who have the guns. — ssu

And yes, I realize that people like you wait for the concentration camps to be in full swing before deciding that maybe the good 'ol stern chat may not be quite enough.

Your response to the idea that there are politics beyond civil discourse was to immediately reach for the alarm bell of fascism, and transplant your inability to make distinctions into a feature of the world itself. I just don't think arrogating personal thoughtlessness into a general principle makes for good politics.

The distinction I am making is between people who beat down your door to make you disappear and people who prefer dealing in civil discourse. — Cuthbert

Certaintly. Because you have made it a point of pride to gauge your eyes out over other distinctions that escape this poorly drawn turnstile. It's a liberal Bushism: either you civil discourse, or you're a fascist. Self-incapacity passing for principle.

--

As to the larger point of the OP: it's as if, trapped in a burning building, walls crushing down on people, pundits cry out: Why is everyone so PoLaRiZed? These people may as well side with the walls and fire.

My point is that these things are very tempting — Cuthbert

Sure, but politics requires risk. There's this liberal impulse to insulate oneself and others from risk entirely, as if following abstract, content-indifferent rules - substituting a bureaucracy for a politics - might create a nice bubble wraped chamber in which everyone can live happily ever after. It becomes a point of pride that one cannot make distinctions - that one effectively gives up on thinking - because making distinctions and actually thinking beyond formalisms and tautologies carries with it even the slightest hint of risk. At best it is thinking for toddlers: fascists do X, and you flirt with X, so therefore you are fascist. This is like playing word-assocation and pretending this is some profound, holier-than-thou point.

But making a virtue out of spinelessness and thoughtlessness and then equivocating between fascists and their opposition is to make oneself an enabler and paver on the road to hell.

I do believe that shaming and hounding are favoured strategies of fascism (examples - passim). I do believe that using these strategies can degrade a person and make them indistinguishable from their opponents (more examples - you can think of them). — Cuthbert

This is one of those sweet little liberal talking points that can only get trotted out by someone who has never given a moment's thought to the issue. If you lack the cognitive capacity to recognize the difference between when a fascist is trying to murder your whole family and someone acting decisively - and in some cases violently against that, then consider that the problem is you. That if you seriously cannot 'distinguish' between that, then you lose all rights to make any political judgements - in fact any judgements at all. Your inability to 'distinguish' is a commentary on you, and a complete and utter lack of political principle, not others. Your inability to make distinctions - the fact that your judgement can be so utterly, barbarously compromised - is not something to be proud of. It is shameful.

Seriously, people think politics is like a video game where you pick the right multiple-choice option and the fascist goes away. That's not how the world works. We didn't nicely-nicely the Nazi's away. We burned their cities to the fucking ground and killed them all - they were blown to a thousand blood-soaked meat pieces, in the tens of thousands. This was a universal, unalloyed good. Well, right up until the US put them all into leadership positions after the fact. This being after the West did their best to 'appease' the Germans, for years.

Radio evangelist Harold Camping famously predicted that the Apocalypse would occur on September 6, 1994, then again on September 29 of the same year, and then again on October 2. In 2005 he revised his claim and said the real Rapture was coming on May 21, 2011, and then when that failed to pan out he said it was happening on October 21 of that year. Whenever he got a prediction wrong he'd just do some more magic Bible math and move the date into the future.

Camping was one of many exploitative Christian cult leaders who've falsely predicted the Second Coming over the years amassing thousands of followers with an early form of tabloid clickbait. The difference between the Harold Campings of history and the Ukraine invasion prognosticators of today is that Harold Camping died disgraced and disdained instead of being elevated to lucrative positions in the most influential news media outlets on the planet.

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/russian-invasion-prognosticators?utm_source=url

Perhaps civil discourse does have value in itself. Its value is to restrain us from joining in the shaming, the hounding and the leaving permanently miserable. — Cuthbert

It isn't. Because one literally has to live in fantasy land and ignore the entirity of human history to believe this. That what you wrote is patently false is one of the best established facts that we've known since as far back as the Milean dialogue, literally the beginning of history.

Except it isn't, so there's that.