Generally speaking, when poster X goes through the trouble of rephrasing what another poster Y has already phrased, there is a risk for a straw man. If poster X does so very often, and his victims very often do not agree to the rephrasing, and berate him publicly for it, that is an indication that X might be addicted to straw men. Aka willful misunderstanding.

Anything else? — neomac

God, the biggest caca.

A good willed poster does not misrepresent systematically what he is responding to.

Most of the intelligent posters here have linked sources, provided arguments and offered definitions. It doesn't seem to have been sufficient. — Isaac

It is sufficient for people posting in good will. But nothing is easier to fake than misunderstanding.

Okay, but I'm saying NATO biiiiig caca.

Russia caca too???

NATO caca.

That's exactly what I'm saying, you're reducing the discussion to conjecture, speculation, exaggeration, and empty rhetoric. — Apollodorus

What else do YOU have, when talking of future events? You got some crypto-marxist crystal ball?

No, no. As usual, I am just saying what I am saying. Not what you say I am saying. There's always a huge difference there.

Can we stop accusing people we disagree with with being Nazi's or Nazi symphatisers? Thanks. — Benkei

I was joking.

Basically, it seems that you're trying to sell us your conjectures and speculations as "fact". — Apollodorus

Nope. What I am saying is that we cannot assume that the killings will stop or that the population will be well treated in areas under Russian control, after the signature of a putative peace treaty recognizing such control. Therefore the Ukrainian leadership ought to think twice before abandoning their claim on any territory, because that would quite possibly mean committing to hell the people living there -- in such uncertainty, can they bet on the Russians playing nice?

You're a nazi.

Congratulation to @Streetlight for his demonstration of Godwin's law.

you're reducing the discussion to "betting", "guessing", extrapolating, speculating, .... — Apollodorus

We are talking of what might happen in the future, if Russia grabs a large swath of new Ukrainian territories. The question is: How will the civilian population in those territories be treated by the occupying troops?

My answer is: the actual, documented behavior of said occupying troops in Bucha and hundreds other places is indicative of what will happen in such a scenario. The Russians will be faced by sporadic acts of resistance and will torture and kill random civilians by the thousands to try and get back at the resistance. That has been the pattern they followed so far.

It will far worse than Palestine.

You argued that their behavior will certainly change after a peace deal is signed... So you can predict the future with absolute certainty? No, you can't. In fact you know damn that I am right and that the atrocities will most probably continue, barely abated. But you don't let these atrocities bother you. You set them aside as 'unproven'. Just like the Holocaust is 'unproven' to some.

A far more likely scenario seems to be that once the military hostilities have ceased, so will the violence against civilians. — Apollodorus

No one is willing to bet on that, though.

There are all the murders already committed against civilians. That is evidence.

Since you cannot counter them, my arguments do not exist. Ok.

With arguments rather, which you failed to address

you haven't demonstrated that there was any prospect of Ukrainians "going the way of the Uighurs". — Apollodorus

I cannot demonstrate the future. But certainly, the Ukrainians are angry by the massive war crimes committed against them and they fear more is to come if ever Russia takes over any part of Ukraine. That's the legacy of Bucha. They are not going to let themselves be slaughtered like the Tchechens were.

:shade: :starstruck: :grimace: :point: :wink: :razz: :brow: :fear: :gasp: :scream:

Some of these other points are stuff that I have drawn attention to, ie point 5 on the risk of Ukraine becoming as fascist as Russia in the long term. I agree it's a risk. Points 1 and 2 are debatable; the EU will most probably be extremely generous with Ukraine, and the Russians could be persuaded to call it a day sooner than you think. Their forces too are fast eroding. They could collapse too. Point 4 is to wooly for discussion.

How do you describe your own politics? You're one of those crackpots who's so fucking afraid of them world-dominating leftists?
— Olivier5

Well, I appreciate your sense of humor, but I don't see how being against world government and advocating a multipolar world order is "crackpot".

As for being "afraid", it sounds very much like you're afraid of some imaginary "extreme right". — Apollodorus

The extreme right is not a fancy of mine. It does exist and it pollutes the minds of many, including yours.

I contend point 3. Ukrainians have shown a certain resolve and interest is staying independent. I guess they don't want to go the way of the Uighurs.

Ah, yeah, I should have known that you can't possibly put forth any positive argument. You're too much of a coward for that.

You made an argument???
:party: :clap: :party:

That's why we're trying to put an end to the Russian invasion as quickly as possible. — Isaac

I agree. The sooner the Russians go back to Russia, the better, including for them Russians. I think that's obvious.

Have you taken into consideration the behavior of Russian troops in occupied Ukraine?

Interesting (anonymous) article from one of the last independent Russian news outlets, on the movie "Occupant" edited by a Ukrainian journalist from videos of a Russian soldier's phone.

https://holod.media/2022/05/24/okkupant_movie/

... Lieutenant Shalaev is just one of the results of this work to deprive Russian citizens of their subjectivity. Working at the headquarters and watching his colleagues leave the army on the eve of the war, he could not even think about quitting himself and did not go into the possible reasons for the quitting of others.

... During an hour-long interview with Zolkin, we can observe how Lieutenant Shalaev begins to awaken his natural curiosity. Like most of the prisoners in these videos, at first he is depressed and passive, but towards the end of the conversation, he asks the journalist twice, almost passionately: “How did you [Ukrainians] understand that you want to be in Europe?”

In this question, there is the genuine amazement of a Russian at a meeting with the subjectivity of a neighboring people, who not only managed to formulate their desired identity for themselves, but also to agree within themselves on ways to move towards it. This very subjectivity is so hated by the control-obsessed Russian authorities that it is subject to destruction from the ground and the air. This very subjectivity, without which a person turns into a material object, and never becomes a subject, an author of his own life.

I am making the argument that the Russians have no particular reason to stop killing Ukrainians, even after they sign a potential peace deal, and that in actual fact, they do kill, torture, rape and rob a lot of civilians wherever they occupy Ukraine. The only way to stop these killings is to push the Russians back into Russia.

In terms of people's well-being, it matters little if they're governed by Russia or Ukraine. — Isaac

This is the big mistake that the "peace lovers" here are making, in my view: they assume it's all for nothing, that there is no difference between living in a free country and being a subject of a brutal dictatorship. But if the Russian army wins, it will not stop killing Ukrainians. Why should they? Did they stop in Bucha?

If the Russians win, chances are they will kill more Ukrainians, not less. Check the 'Holodomor', when Stalin set out to kill millions of Ukrainians by way of hunger so as to replace them by other ethnicities.

A number of prominent persons, such as Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Bertrand Russell and Mahatma Gandhi, called on governments to proceed further by taking gradual steps towards forming an effectual federal world government

Maybe it was a good idea but it is not a current one, outside of the extreme right's paranoid fear of the Jews, George Soros, and the alien lizards controlling the whole world.

How do you describe your own politics? You're one of those crackpots who's so fucking afraid of them world-dominating leftists?

The use of 'world government' to speak of the UN is an extreme right trope.

"World government" is an extreme right trope. The UN is very very very far from any such pretension.

Je ne peux plus dire je t'aime
Ne me demande pas pourquoi
Je ne ressens ni joie ni peine
Quand tes yeux se posent sur moi
Si la solitude te pèse
Quand tu viens à passer par là
Et qu'un ami t'a oubliée
Tu peux toujours compter sur moi

Je ne peux plus dire je t'aime
Sans donner ma langue à couper
Trop de serpents sous les caresses
Trop d'amours à couteaux tirés
Si dure que soit la solitude
Elle te ramène à ton destin
La loi du grand amour est rude
Pour qui s'est trompé de chemin

Je ne peux plus dire je t'aime
Ne me demande pas pourquoi
Toi et moi ne sommes plus les mêmes
Pourquoi l'amour vient et s'en va?
Si la solitude te pèse
Quand le destin te mène ici
Et qu'un ami t'a oubliée
Tu peux toujours compter sur moi
Et qu'une amie vienne à manquer
Tu peux toujours compter sur moi

Sounds like what you're advocating world government there. — Apollodorus

You have a problem with diplomacy?

I don't recall anything that would qualify as "refutation". — Apollodorus

You wouldn't.

Q

How do you know something isn't worthy of consideration when you haven't considered it??? — Apollodorus

Oh I have considered them and refuted them, for the most part. I or someone else here. I'm just not ready to dignify what I see as little more than war crime apologies à la "NATO caca" with an endless debate during hundreds of pages, sorry.

What I said, originally, is that it is neither naïve nor immoral nor unphilosophical to support a democracy that is being attacked by a dictatorship. On the contrary, it is the natural, logical, and moral thing to do. — Olivier5

And then your sole support for that assertion was the people you've met in some African nations prefer democracy. — Isaac

So far, the idea has not really been challenged much so I haven't provided additional arguments. But I can try to add a few arguments, if the topic is of interest.

Prior to any consideration of political regime, and the varied levels of freedom and security they afford to their citizens, to me the first and most important point here is that of aggression vs defence. There is no moral symmetry between an aggressor and his victim. Since 1945 and probably before, the principle of self-defense as a right, and the prohibition of wanton aggression extend beyond the individual, and also apply to those nations who signed the UN charter, including of course Russia and Ukraine.

These principles (that a UN charter signatory should not wage war on another; and that an aggressed signatory nation has a right to defending herself) are the cornerstone of our present world order. The prohibition of aggression suffers one exception: a war or a military operation can be approved by the UN security council (another cornerstone of the present world order).

These principles were of course disrespected by many nations since 1945, but only gravely undermined by a permanent member of the UN Security Council twice (to my math): by the US in Iraq war 2, and by Russia in Crimea and now in Ukraine mainland.

So yes, the US started it. Rest assured that I was just as opposed to the wanton aggression of Iraq by the US and UK as I am opposed to the wanton agression of Ukraine by Russia. For the exact same reason: it gravely undermined international law and the credibility of the present UN system, which maintains some level of peace building capacity.

(and yet Iraq was a dictatorship and the UK/US are sorts of democracies, because to me the prohibition of aggression trumps other principles -- I don't believe in exporting democracy at gunpoint)

Now this UN system may be highly imperfect, but it is a system at least trying to contribute to world peace. Without it, untill someone proposes something else, in the post UN world now concocted by Xi and Putin and whose recipe Bush wrote, what will deter a new wave of wars of plunder?

Nothing. There will be no rules whatsoever in international relations. Not even a pretense of one. Not even a hope of one.

So as someone attached to diplomacy and peace, I say I oppose wanton aggression. This is a moral stance based on the search for the common good. For world peace. For my kids' sake too.

Now you can laugh.

Penetrating article. Tx.

Yes, and that's comforting.

Biden did say "For God's sake, this man [Putin] cannot remain in power". — Apollodorus

Ain't that the truth?

you have expressly stated that considering Russia's case would be "unprincipled". — Apollodorus

Their lies and excuses are not worthy of consideration, unless you want to participate in their propaganda and help them kill more folks. If they care to be taken seriously, they could try and not insult other people's intelligence, and stop actively slaughtering innocent folks. Otherwise, they can go to hell as far as I am concerned, and so can any and all war crime apologist.