Expect the war to end soon. This is Russia's way of getting Europe, particularly Germany, to put pressure on Zelensky to capitulate and I expect it will work.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/14/russian-gas-oil-boycott-mass-poverty-warns-germany
Energy minister... Robert Habeck... predicted “mass unemployment, poverty, people who can’t heat their homes, people who run out of petrol” if his country stopped using Russian oil and gas.
----
Putin: Thanks for the heads up, bro'.

In the end, power is about the capacity to wield brute force. — Olivier5

So Jeff Bezos? No power at all (bit of a wimp by all accounts). Rupert Murdoch? Completely powerless (I mean, I could definitely have him). Larry Fink? Couldn't influence a child, after all, he's a bit skinny isn't he? Koch brothers? Too old to use brute force, so completely powerless...

What kind of bullshit argument is that?

What is the logic link between being Russian or talk to Russians and having reasons to believe that the Russian aggression of Ukraine is immoral? — neomac

None at all. The link is to having reasons to post about it, not reasons to believe it. I know it's hard for the Twitter generation to understand but I don't feel compelled to post everything I think online.

you have moral reasons to not voice your moral condemnation of Putin’s actions even if they are immoral because this would hypocritically deflect attention from Western’s moral responsibilities in the genesis of this war, and would be taken to promote the immoral indirect interventionism of the West. — neomac

No. I just haven't any cause to. I don't see why you're having such trouble with this, I don't have to provide a reason why I haven't posted something I think. It's quite normal to not post things one thinks.

Any demand that a ruthless tyrant of a nation can make against another nation (e.g. as Hitler made against Poland or Kim Jong-un makes against South Korea) that goes unsatisfied can be seen by him as a provocation, so should we meet his demands whatever they are to avoid a war and so endangering millions of people's life and wellbeing? — neomac

No. We should assess each on its merits.

Is it immoral to fight for one’s own nation’s independence and/or for the freedom that one enjoys in such independent nation? — neomac

Yes. Fighting a war over a flag is without doubt immoral.

Isn’t there any civic duty to fight for one’s own nation against the oppression of other nations’ tyrants? Don’t you really see any moral imperative in trying to contain the geopolitical ambitions of a ruthless tyrant even if at risk of total defeat? — neomac

Yes. I'm arguing against certain strategies, not the objective.

BTW do you consider the West immoral only when provoking a Russian ruthless tyrant or also when supporting his ruthless regime and ambitious geopolitical goals through economic ties? — neomac

Both.

an immoral turd doesn’t need any specific strategic provocation by the West — neomac

No one argued he needed it. A vase doesn't need me to knock it over in order to smash, any number of things might cause that. This doesn't excuse me if I did, in fact, knock it over.

If you are against advancing Western strategic interests and any logic of containment of its competitors that would risk a war, then you are indirectly supporting its competitors’ strategic interests, indeed of those competitors who are more aggressive in military terms, and therefore you may be rightly judged complicit in advancing them at the expenses of the West. — neomac

Only if you're weak-minded enough to see only two options.

Then Putin’s aggression will result in a total failure if he will not at least put a pro-Russian regime, because the West is already military equipping Ukraine — neomac

America is taking great pains not to equp Ukraine with any weapons which have a range long enough to present a credible threat to Russia. For this exact reason.

Then you can not be sure of Western moral responsibility in knowingly provoking Putin either. Can you? — neomac

Why not?

talked about attacking Russia, not about land invasion on Russia. — neomac

Well then what forms of attack are you claiming Russia should have no fear of?

Yet those demands do not seem enough to guarantee the national security of Russia from a now more likely hostile country. — neomac

So? That doesn't influence their likelihood of being met.

This gets more interesting with the SWIFT sanction. So the oil and gas business is not a spot market, most of it is locked in with forwards. So you have to pay in rubles, based on a price that looks ok today but which could absolutely suck in 3 or 6 months time due to changes in the exchange rate. So you want to hedge that exchange rate risk with a forward, in which you agree to pay X EUR on the forward date for Y rubles. Who holds rubles? Russian banks. How are you going to pay for it when they're no longer on SWIFT? Unless they exempted derivative contracts from the sanctions, this is going to be a problem too. And if it's then exempted as well (as it will have to be), we have a nice financial loophole for Russian banks to exploit.

So Jeff Bezos? No power at all (bit of a wimp by all accounts). Rupert Murdoch? Completely powerless (I mean, I could definitely have him). Larry Fink? Couldn't influence a child, after all, he's a bit skinny isn't he? Koch brothers? Too old to use brute force, so completely powerless...

What kind of bullshit argument is that? — Isaac

The argument is that they developed their influence not by killing people, but by creating new media. And people can do what they did, develop new media, and nobody will kill them or jail them for it.

That post wants me to go off on a tangent how the capitalist system commits violence against workers every day that Jeff and the Kochs can definitely be held accountable for. Paying a living wage? Hell no, we'll make you suffer with anxiety about debt, not reaching your target if you take a toilet break or drop you in poverty if you ever need healthcare. Worst thing to happen to the environment? Let's just throw away all these things that didn't sell or were returned at over a million items per year.

If we weren't all sold so much on the capitalist ideal (as idealised by Rupert "Goebbels" Murdoch) we'd be hanging Jeff, rupert and the Kochs from the trees for crimes against humanity.

Energy minister... Robert Habeck... predicted “mass unemployment, poverty, people who can’t heat their homes, people who run out of petrol” if his country stopped using Russian oil and gas. — Baden

Habeck says Germany will aim for being weaned off Russian oil and gas by year's end

the capitalist system commits violence against workers every day — Benkei

That is true but it's another topic.

God, just read Perry Anderson's 2015 NLR essay on Russia and it is the best 'take' of all the millions of post-invasion word spew out there. Some highlights:

On Western hypocrisy:

[A] Russian-supplied missile in the hands of the irregulars had shot down a civilian airliner flying over the conflict zone. Denouncing this ‘unspeakable outrage’, Obama called the West to joint action against Russia. Economic sanctions targeting its financial and defence sectors were intensified. That the United States had itself shot down a civilian airliner, with a virtually identical toll of deaths, without ever so much as apologizing for a virtually identical blunder, was naturally in a different sense unspeakable—the airline was Iranian, the captain of the Vincennes acted in good faith, so why should anyone in the ‘international community’ remember, let alone mention it? So too was the annexation of the Crimea unheard of: why should anyone have heard of the seizures of East Jerusalem, North Cyprus, Western Sahara, or East Timor, conducted without reproof by friendly governments fêted in Washington? What matter if in all these cases, annexation crushed the self-determination of the inhabitants in blood, rather than reflecting it without loss of life? Such considerations are beside the point, as if the power that administers international law could be subject to it.

—

On Russian-Western cooperation in the 2000s, something everyone seems to have forgotten:

A glance at Security Council resolutions of the period is enough to see that Russia fell in with the wishes of the West virtually across the board, with the solitary exception of the Annan Plan to dismantle the Republic of Cyprus for a deal with Turkey, which it vetoed on an appeal for help from the government in Nicosia. All told, Russia was more than a reliable and collegial force within the international community. It was the bearer of ‘a civilizing mission on the Eurasian continent’. Under Medvedev, Russian foreign policy bent even further to the West. In compliance with Washington, Moscow cancelled delivery of S-300 missile systems to Tehran that would have complicated Israeli or us air-strikes against the country; voted time and again in the un for sanctions against Iran required by the us; gave a green light to Western bombardment of Libya; and even supplied a transport hub on Russian soil at Ulyanovsk for nato operations in Afghanistan.

—

On the contraditions of the Putin's regime in general:

Putin’s belief that he could build a Russian capitalism structurally interconnected with that of the West, but operationally independent of it—a predator among predators, yet a predator capable of defying them—was always an ingenuous delusion. By throwing Russia open to Western capital markets, as his neo-liberal economic team wished, in the hope of benefiting from and ultimately competing with them, he could not escape making it a prisoner of a system vastly more powerful than his own, at whose mercy it would be if it ever came to a conflict. In 2008–09 the Wall Street crash had already shown Russian vulnerability to fluctuations of Western credit, and the political implications. Once deprived of its current account surplus, a local banker commented with satisfaction, ‘foreign investors will get a vote on how Russia is run. That is an encouraging sign’—putting pressure on Putin for privatization. Such was the objective logic of economic imbrication even before the Maidan.

...Putin’s regime has attempted to straddle the difference between the old order and the new: seeking at once to refurbish assets and orientations that have depreciated but not lost all currency and, heedless of the hegemon, to embrace the markets that have downgraded them—running with the hare of a military cameralism and hunting with the hounds of a financial capitalism. The pursuit is a contradiction. But it is also a reflection of the strange, incommensurate position of Russia in the present international order, in which the regime is trapped with no exit in sight.

—

On American arrogance:

Yeltsin’s Foreign Minister Kozyrev dumbfounded a visiting Nixon by telling him that Moscow had no interests that were not those of the West. With interlocutors like these, representing a government dependent for its continuation in power on economic and ideological support from the West, America could treat Russia with little more ceremony than if it were, after all, an occupied country. When even Kozyrev baulked on being told that it was Moscow’s duty to join Washington in threatening to attack Serbia, Victoria Nuland—currently Assistant Secretary of State for Europe—remarked: ‘That’s what happens when you try to get the Russians to eat their spinach. The more you tell them it’s good for them, the more they gag.’ Her superior at the time, Clinton’s friend and familiar Strobe Talbott, proudly records that ‘administering the spinach treatment’ to Russia was one of the principal activities of his time in office. In due course Obama would say, in public, that Putin reminded him of a ‘sulky teenager in the back of the classroom’. In the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, Nuland could be heard conferring with the us Ambassador in Kiev on the composition of the country’s government in a style compared by an American observer to a British resident issuing instructions to one of the princely states of colonial India. In condescension or contempt, the underlying American attitude speaks for itself: vae victis.

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii94/articles/perry-anderson-incommensurate-russia

Europe won't be able to get enough supplies for its energy demands this year if Russia stops the flow. Next year, perhaps, very hard to imagine that happening beforehand.

If Russia continues to bomb Ukraine, it's somewhat safe to assume they still have more demands they want met, which aren't being given. Otherwise, it's pointless to continue this war.

The argument is that they developed their influence not by killing people, but by creating new media. — Olivier5

the capitalist system commits violence against workers every day that Jeff and the Kochs can definitely be held accountable for. — Benkei

That is true but it's another topic. — Olivier5

Eh? Seems directly relevant to me.

Regardless, your claim was that power was only the ability to wield brute force. Are you now admitting you were wrong?

You'd need to show, either that Jeff Bezos was not powerful, or that he wields brute force.

your claim was that power was only the ability to wield brute force. — Isaac

That's not what I said.

Yes, Ukraine will have to give up claims of sovereignty over Crimea too. — Baden

That would be required for your claim that Russia has fulfilled all its goals. As of yet, I see no indication that Ukraine is ready to give up Crimea, and reclaiming it would be one of Ukraine's goals. So I think your claim that Russia is "winning" is a bit premature.

your claim was that power was only the ability to wield brute force. — Isaac


That's not what I said. — Olivier5

power is about the capacity to wield brute force. — Olivier5

Lol.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel, I know I shouldn't really...

You cut a piece out of my sentence, a classic disinformation trick.

If Russia continues to bomb Ukraine, it's somewhat safe to assume they still have more demands they want met, which aren't being given. Otherwise, it's pointless to continue this war. — Manuel

Putin said something before the invasion about using it to gain skills. IOW, he's using it to have his military learn how to do more of this.

This is in line with the goal of setting Russia as an equal to the US and China on the world stage.

Russia is probably going to end up dependant on China, though. Not its equal.

I know and if they could do that significantly sooner, it might help, but they can't. I think this will be resolved far before year's end, thankfully.

You cut a piece out of my sentence, a classic disinformation trick. — Olivier5

You bleated 'disinformation' rather than actually point out anything of substance, a classic establishment apologist trick.

Why don't you explain how "In the end, ..." makes any material difference to the argument that Western media lack 'power'.

Well it's gone pretty badly if he had this in mind - having so many soldiers killed must be embarrasing.

At this point, I don't know what he may have in mind, with lowering population levels, a mismanaged economy, Russia does not look good. Having nukes is what sets them apart now.

But I do agree that they will be much closer to China than ever before, not only in the economic domain, but also further military partnerships of one kind or another (down the line).

I haven't heard this mentioned too much, but I suspect that part of the reason why China is hesitant to call out Russia internationally, has to do with the issue of Taiwan.

If any issue sparked in that region of the world, Russia would back China as a thanks for this situation.

know and if they could do that significantly sooner, it might help, but they can't. I think this will be resolved far before year's end, thankfully — Baden

I don't think Russia will hold back oil from Germany because they need money. I think they'll make a deal.

Your problem is that you don't want to understand. The difference between living under Putin and under Biden in terms of freedom of access to accurate information is immense.

What power does Bezos have over you and me? None. But in Russia, the power of the government to enforce a certain narrative is very strong, in a real, physical sense.

Well it's gone pretty badly if he had this in mind - having so many soldiers killed must be embarrasing.

At this point, I don't know what he may have in mind, with lowering population levels, a mismanaged economy, Russia does not look good. Having nukes is what sets them apart now. — Manuel

I don't know. I'm clueless about what Putin really thinks. I mean, we could guess that he didn't mean to lose 5 generals, but remember Stalin executed all of his most experienced generals before WW2. Russians are weird.

I haven't heard this mentioned too much, but I suspect that part of the reason why China is hesitant to call out Russia internationally, has to do with the issue of Taiwan.

If any issue sparked in that region of the world, Russia would back China as a thanks for this situation. — Manuel

Right. They're definitely best buds right now.

The difference between living under Putin and under Biden in terms of freedom of access to accurate information is immense. — Olivier5

Did I say it wasn't?

Did you not?

Did you not? — Olivier5

I presume, unless you just accidentally tagged me into some unconnected comment you wanted to spew out to the world in general, that you were responding to something I said. In other words, asking now whether I did or didn't say the thing you're apparently responding to seems a little post factum.

You were talking of dominance, remember? You were saying that there was no way to assert or measure that the propaganda in Russia was more dominant than in the West. I said there was: the Reporters Sans Frontières index for press freedom, which is based on the degree to which journalists are free to do their job without being physically intimidated, beaten up, incarcerated or killed.

Then you started to argue against that as well. Were you disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing or what?

Per chance, do you now agree that one system of propaganda in Russia is immensely more dominant and forceful than the other in, say, America?

The wonderful thing about Western propagandists is that it's propagandists really believe the shit they say. And it's all the more pernicious - along a certain axis - precisely because of that sincerity.

I wish more than anything that our propaganda looked like this:

http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/zgyw/202112/t20211204_10462468.htm

It would be, at least, clear to everyone what is going on.

I think it was Chomsky that had an anecdote somewhere where some bewildered newsroom monkey asked him if Chomsky really believed that he, the newscaster, was just peddling lines fed to him by a higher authority. And Chomsky responded, no of course not - it's much worse. You actually believe the things you're saying. But you wouldn't be in your position otherwise. That's how Western propaganda works. You don't get thrown into jail because you never even remotely get close to the position where any such measures would ever be necessary. The institutional power needed to be able to filter out such viewpoints so early on is more mind-boggling than any torture apparatus, which, frankly, signifies a weakness of the state power.

You were saying that there was no way to assert or measure that the propaganda in Russia was more dominant than in the West. — Olivier5

No. I said that @SophistiCat had failed to provide such a measure (as such we couldn't critique it), I didn't claim that there was no such measure.

I said there was: the Reporters Sans Frontières index for press freedom, which is based on the degree to which journalists are free to do their job without being physically intimidated, beaten up, incarcerated or killed.

Then you started to argue against that as well. Were you disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing or what? — Olivier5

No. I was disagreeing because measures of press freedom are not measures of press dominance.

Per chance, do you now agree that one system of propaganda in Russia is immensely more dominant and forceful than the other in, say, America? — Olivier5

No.