Obviously this means diplomacy. IF that works, then we can argue about history and who is or is not a maniac or who is evil or whatever. — Manuel

The appropriate political response is diplomacy, to be sure. But we are not politicians. In the context of the world stage, what we say on here is of little consequence. And, I would argue, our understanding, even that of the most politically and historically savvy of us, of the factors in play is peanuts. Probably only Putin, if anyone, knows what really motivates Putin.

What I meant to say is that Putin's actions and threats deserve universal condemnation and economic sanctions right now (which is pretty much what he has been getting) but, to be sure, if universal condemnation and economic sanctions seem likely to push him over the edge to deploy nuclear weapons, then another strategy, if one can be worked out, should be implemented. Escalation into nuclear war is too horrific to contemplate. It could mean the end of human civilization as we know it. Better for it to end with a whimper than with a bang!

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.

Putin may cut off gas and oil unilaterally, long before the West even tries. — StreetlightX

He is always playing the same strategic card!

You play what you got.

The time to fireproof your house, my man, is either before or after, not during, a house fire. Your position obtusely misses the 'collective security' forest for the 'hegemonic hypocrisy' trees. I suppose you would've applauded Neville Chamberlain at Munich in 1938. :eyes:

I just wanted to say, the push-button knee jerk reaction on nuclear weapons is a fiction.

If governments usually lie, there sometimes can be the rare occasion when the truth serves them and they will say the truth. In that case one should note that accepting this truth doesn't make you a supporter of their usual lies...sometimes it's obvious that the other (here Russia) is doing something that is totally wrong. That even many Russians are against. That it is stupid and likely extremely counterproductive and a tragedy. — ssu

Yep. I agree with both those sentiments.

But I just can't fathom your aim. — Isaac


How about that sovereign independent states should be left alone. Military force shouldn't be used. That countries ought not to first underwrite that they accept the borders and the territories of others and then brake on that promise. That there should be peace. — ssu

No your aim. In writing here the way you are. In so strongly rebutting anything I say which lays any blame at the US and Europe, so strongly denying any far-right issues in Ukraine.

All the above does is lay out why you think what Russia has done is bad, were all agreed on that. I'm asking why you're so opposed to laying any of the blame at the feet of the US and Europe.

Take the most contentious issue between us, the role of the far-right in Ukraine and America's part in supporting them. What is it you're aiming for in spending so much time insisting that the evidence for US involvement is sketchy, that the far-right have little influence now, that the Neo-Nazis are only a few in a large armed force...

Why underplay it? Why is it important to you everyone here is clear - there's only a few Neo-Nazis in the armed forces, they were only in government for a short time, and America's involvement is not proven?

I haven't denied any of those facts, I just haven't tempered my attack by highlighting them. I haven't done so because it means the attack loses some of its force. Its rhetoric.

But you, and others, have. Why? Why would you actively want an attack on US complicity to lose its force?

Mine's simple. I want to hold my government and its allies to account for their role in this, I want to make sure they don't get to play the white knight, saviours of the innocent. — Isaac

Go do it, then.

Giving hell to other participants in discussion forums, I somehow think, won't accomplish your aim and goal.

What Chechnya looked after the first war (which the Russians lost, basically). That's what a city looks like after the war having gone for 1 year, 8 months and two weeks.


It should be also noted that Putin actually rebuilt the city after the war.

If the fighting goes into slow house to house clearing, then Kharkiv or Kyiv might look like Grozny above. And Kharkiv has historically seen a lot of fighting in WW2, being a Hero City of the Great Patriotic War.

I do not think Putin is stupid enough to start a nuclear war, however making threats is the rational thing to do. After all, the United States has publicly stated it will not get involved, and Western threats are exclusively economic.

What's going on here? Why wasn't this prevented by admitting Ukraine into NATO? Could it have been worse than this? Are we witnessing a game of political football with Ukraine as the football? My biggest fear is that this is not the last time.

War is a result of the failure of nations to settle disputes amicably.

The United States will not put US pilots in the air to create a no-fly zone in Ukraine, Thomas-Greenfield said Sunday.

The Biden administration's posture of keeping US forces out of Ukraine means "we're not going to put American troops in the air as well, but we will work with the Ukrainians to give them the ability to defend themselves," she said. — CNN

Here we go again.

We hope so... It would the total destruction then

What motivates this drive for such passionate defense of the already powerful? — Isaac

I'd venture, independent of any aspect of this war between Russian and Ukraine, that the motivation for the drive is to "give dues where dues are due." Or something to that effect.

In my opinion people are brainwashed, and the brain-washing has got to such a point, that it is now on automatic, it feeds itself, its internal energy keeps it alive and keeps it getting larger. The Powerful need not worry about the anger of the people that the Powerful have harnessed; it won't decrease; because the anger feeds the logic/rationalization that feeds the anger that feeds the rationalization/logic, and so on. It's like the reaction of igniting people's anger and giving them a thought to mutually feed the anger has reached a critical point, where the system is self-sustaining, and needs no input or feeding from outside the system to keep the system not only in equilibrium, but to make it encroach others, and to make it larger and larger.

↪god must be atheist god must be a conspiracy theorist?

We're probably privvy to about 2% of the truth of what is actually happening and the reasons behind it — Changeling

thanks, @Changeling.

The idea I voiced was not even mine.

But it is curious to see that certain opinions are labelled "conspiracy theories" and are deleted when posted. After all, with two percent knowledge, any theory IS and truly is, a conspiracy theory. In the sense, that one theory that sounds plausible is just as likely to be true, as another plausible theory which states the opposite.

I used to belong to another philosophy website where I mentioned that a lot of meteorological data was not available to the common man.

They jumped on me. They all jumped on me, and cussed me and condemned me for not believing the climate change.

I had said NOTHING of the climate change. All I said, was stating an indisputable fact. I drew no consequences; while at the same time I asked, what could have possessed the powers that be to block the data from the common man.

The moderators kicked me out of the site due to this mentioning of a fact and for challenging the decision of the authorities. They did not kick me out due to any resistence by me to the theory of the climate change, for I voiced NO SUCH RESISTENCE. They simply hated me, for saying inconveniencing things, and they accused me of something I never did.

@Baden, do you think the moderators on that site did the right thing, the fair thing, the just thing?

Here, I mentioned an opinion -- not even mine, it was not MY conspiracy theory -- and I was asked not to say that. AND never again air the opinions of this friend of mine.

I promised compliance, and I am sticking to my promise. I will never again mention an opinion by this friend of mine.

But it makes me wonder: if nobody has any amount of reliable data to support any solid argument or opinion, then what is the rationale to ban certain content? If the theories are equally not worth a farthing then why is a worthless theory allowed, while another worthless theory is not?


So: I am voluntarily not posting for a while, to protest the fact that I had been silenced in a way and by the means for a cause that I feel is unfair.

Again: I won't go against my word. I will never again post opinions from this friend of mine. That I promise. I am protesting the fact, however, that some unworthy theories are allowed, and some equally unworthy theories are not allowed to be posted.

The time to fireproof your house, my man, is either before or after, rather than during, a house fire. — 180 Proof

As our governments consider what to do to help the people of Ukraine is exactly the time to remind them that we're watching and won't stand for the sort of shit they pulled last time they "helped" Ukraine against Russia.

As I said to @ssu. @frank and the other detractors, I just can't understand this notion that because there's a war on we have to forget all about the wrongdoing of governments and the powerful, forget all about racism and anti-Semitism within the country being attacked and instead render the entire event in comic book form, with a single evil villain and a superhero to save the world.

The US and Europe are in the process of choosing how to help. I can't think of a better time to loudly shout about what has happened all the previous times they've "helped" and what we'd rather they did differently this time.

The worst thing I think we could do is further escalate the already powerful narrative that Putin is so evil he must be stopped at all costs because we know from bitter experience what some of the 'costs' the US and Europe are considering in that list.

Take the most contentious issue between us, the role of the far-right in Ukraine and America's part in supporting them. What is it you're aiming for in spending so much time insisting that the evidence for US involvement is sketchy, that the far-right have little influence now, that the Neo-Nazis are only a few in a large armed force...

Why underplay it? Why is it important to you everyone here is clear - there's only a few Neo-Nazis in the armed forces, they were only in government for a short time, and America's involvement is not proven? — Isaac

I haven't said the involvement isn't proven.

I've consistently said that yes, the US meddled in revolution, but that the revolution basically happened because of internal developments in Ukraine. Did the US support the Maidan-revolution? Yes. Were there many different groups and political parties in the opposition? Yes. How much did the US focus on the extreme-right, how much the extreme-right had then influence, you be the judge. I guess in a riot, neonazis, just like anarchists on the left, might be useful. But serious question: how much does this have to do with the events now?

To explain what I mean, let's take another case where the US openly and proudly admitted that it really had assisted and helped an opposition to overthrow a government, assisted the opposition on how to organize the political movement and gave support even in the form of spray cans to write anti-government slogans. And that's the case of the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic in ex-Yugoslavia / Serbia. Then the actor was basically the State Department, not actually the CIA.

(Washington Post, 200) In the 12 months following the strategy session, U.S.-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-Milosevic drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of opposition activists and helping to organize a vitally important parallel vote count. U.S. taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milosevic graffiti on walls across Serbia, and 2.5 million stickers with the slogan "He's Finished," which became the revolution's catchphrase.

Regarded by many as Eastern Europe's last great democratic upheaval, Milosevic's overthrow may also go down in history as the first poll-driven, focus group-tested revolution.

Yet is now Serbia part of NATO? No, on the contrary, it has close ties with Russia. You see, the opposition gladly took the assistance, but I think the fact that the US and NATO had bombed earlier Serbia made it so that they didn't welcome the Americans with open arms.

Hence you cannot say that the US installed a new Pro-US government because it didn't. You can say that they did have a major role, however it should be noticed that the Serbians themselves had a say what happened next and no puppet-regime or even pro-US administration was installed. And once Milosevic was out, the US lost interest in Serbia. Russia didn't. So in a way, it wasn't similar to let's say "Operation Ajax" in Iran, where an democratically elected government was overthrown in the interest of Western oil companies.

And from the examples where the US did invade, did install a puppet-regime, the huge trouble these regimes have had with the US and with their people has been obvious. Just look at Afghanistan or how cool or lukewarm the relations are between the US and the Iraqi governments.

And on the role of neo-nazis in Ukraine, well, we could surely have that debate in the same way about neo-nazis and Trump and Charlottesville and Jan 6th, but I think the majority of the people don't think that neo-nazi ideology isn't the most important factor in US politics, even if extreme-right domestic terrorism is an issue. Not all Trump supporters are neo-nazis, even if some are.

So I think you should make the case just why the neo-nazis are so important in the case of present Ukraine. I'm open to listen and learn new stuff, really.

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

I'd say, rip the band-aid already. The world needs to move towards sustainable energy and this could be a good way to speed that up. Even if it would create enormous economic problems in the short term, it can be done. And when it stabilizes, we've essentially cut Russia off from any gains from it, even if Putin wants to turn everything back on he wouldn't get anyone to want it anymore. I mean, it's still mostly Putin and his oligarch friends who benefit from that industry.

Sure, he could trade with China, but I see a lot of skepticism from them since they risk a lot of trade diplomacy problems with the rest of the world the further this drags out. The more unpopular Russia becomes on the world stage, the less China will want to be its friends. 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. It's their entire circulatory system and they don't want to mess with that.

I just wanted to say, the push-button knee jerk reaction on nuclear weapons is a fiction. — L'éléphant

It does seem unlikely. Likely only to be a coercive threat. But there is no guarantee of that, obviously.

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'.

I'd say, rip the band-aid already. — Christoffer

I have fireplaces at my home, and wood. So fine with me too!

But there is no guarantee of that, obviously. — Janus

That's true. We do not have a guarantee that nuclear weapons will not be used. But, really, I do not see a worthy world which has been destroyed due to a nuke world.
If Putin wants to "re-establish" Soviet republics, they have to literally exist in the first place

China has been very good at specifically making friends with those the West doesn't like. — StreetlightX

I would say they're covering all bets. 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. But the main positive thing I think is that they now see how extremely bad the invasion is going and how extremely powerful the strike down is from the rest of the world is that it might lead them to rethink any invasion of Taiwan. China has a lot more trade with the world than Russia had. If they get struck with similar sanctions, now that the world has shown it is possible to do this, then it's gonna be far more dire for them than it is for Russia.

I've consistently said that yes, the US meddled in revolution, but that the revolution basically happened because of internal developments in Ukraine. — ssu

Yes, I know. I'm asking you about the 'but...'. Why's it there?

I'll try to make it clear. There are some facts about which it seems we agree...

1. Legitimate grievances lead to a number of Ukrainians overthrowing the government
2. Some of these were Neo-Nazis and far-right activists unhappy with the governments recent favouring of Russian over US aid.
3. Most of the work was done by Ukrainians and would probably have happened anyway.
4. The US supported the far right factions. There's a suspicion, grounded on some evidence, that they lent more than just 'support'.
5. The Neo-Nazis and far right elements didn't last long in the Ukrainian government and now remain only in a few mayoral roles and one battalion of the armed forces.

Every time I mention (hype up, even) facts 2 and 4, you counter by pointing out facts 1, 3 and 5. This has been the pattern of discussion for the last few pages.

I'm emphasising facts 2 and 4, giving them as much rhetorical force as I can muster, because they relate to the role of my government (or its allies in this case), and they relate directly to the sort of 'aid' they might right now be considering giving Ukraine.

You keep pouring cold water on that rhetoric by emphasising facts 1, 3 and 5 because...?

Let's hope he is rational enough to see it as you say.

Why would you actively want an attack on US complicity to lose its force? — Isaac

I suspect he doesn't want to be complicit with Putin, which he would be if he spread irrelevant disculpatory blah in the midst of a war.

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.

No leader, regardless of how evil, purposely destroyed his own country. It follows then, there there must be something that president Putin thinks he can achieve for Russia. Maybe it is survival.

Look at history: it was a cold 'war': The U.S. in direct conflict with Russian made equipment and maybe personnel in the Korean war and the Vietnam War, against 'communist ideology'. The cold war was won and lost, which implies hostile action, no matter how peaceful, which resulted in the break up of the Soviet Union and incidentally sending North Korea into a spiral. Why celebrate victory in a cold war if you had nothing to do with the result? NATO expanding eastward (why?) making sure they have an unbelievable strategic advantage of making Russia's armed forces straitjacketed when it comes to any military actions, Russia can attack very few nations now.

Syria - Russia's only naval base in that region, perhaps the world, under threat. They almost lost it - and you can see why they are opposing NATO forces in Syria, which has foreign funded rebels just like the Ukraine.

What would you do if your country was broken into pieces and those pieces become allied with the enemy one by one, and with continued provocation, and demonization in the media ?

Russia has been attacked, coldly, calculatingly, and the best we can hope for is a Gandhi -style non - violent resistance from President Putin, though this does stagger the imagination.

I'd say, rip the band-aid already. The world needs to move towards sustainable energy and this could be a good way to speed that up. Even if it would create enormous economic problems in the short term, it can be done. — Christoffer

I don't think it can be done. Energy-transition is a process that would take decades even if there was a consensus on the way to go... you can only speed it up so much, before you run into physical, engineering or even economical limits.

Without fossil fuels you basically have renewables and nuclear energy. Renewables will not get it done any time soon, and probably never, because they just are not that efficient, reliable, easy to use, and not even that green to begin with. Nuclear could've done it if they committed to it decades ago, but as it stands they are still in the process of phasing out nuclear in a lot of the EU-countries because of anti-nuclear ideological sentiments of the past.

Energy prices were already shy-high in Europe before the war, it just came out a pandemic that caused massive debt for governments that tried to prop up the economy, inflation was already higher than in a very long time... chances are you completely tank the economy by raising energy-prices even further in a precarious moment. And completely tanking the economy seems like the worst thing one could do to speed up energy-transition, because of the enormous amounts of investments and resources needed for such transition.

Anyway, I'm not saying Europe shouldn't consider it, just that we need to realize what is a stake here.... energy is life.

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. — StreetlightX

Absolutely, but at the same time, people didn't think "the west" would be so unified against Russia as is the case right now. What I meant was that China is very volatile when it comes to trade, far more than Russia and China has a lot of investments in foreign companies. When Sweden excluded Huwaiwei from building out 5G it was a major hit against the Chinese government. Even if most trade routes stay the same, the will to let Chinese companies invest outside of China, as well as place production in China, will be lower and China isn't just relying on trade now, they need to expand and influence through investment abroad. After 2014, the exposure towards Russian trade has been lowered between European nations and Russia, which means the blowback of the current sanctions isn't that extreme, except for those with high reliance on gas. 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.

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.

Without fossil fuels you basically have renewables and nuclear energy. Renewables will not get it done any time soon, and probably never, because they just are not that efficient, reliable, easy to use, and not even that green to begin with. — ChatteringMonkey

I think you should check that again. There are a number of renewable options that have reached improvements over the past few years which have increased their viability compared to how it was before. And it doesn't matter, it has to be done anyway, whatever people think about it or however hard it hits the economy, it has to be done in order to decrease the rate of climate change. On top of that, since the investment in improvements of renewables has skyrocketed in a very short period of time, all while we just recently had a major step forward for fusion energy, which changed the projected timeframe for when we might solve that problem. If nothing else we also have Thorium nuclear power with power plant designs that can utilize nuclear waste almost until they're half-lifed to irrelevant levels before storage.

My point is that we NEED to have a push towards other solutions than gas and oil and we just got this with moving away from Russia's export of it. So while people can take the pain that creates as a sign of support towards Ukraine, that kind of pain could never be endured just on the basis of "we need to do this for the environment". People don't care about the environment, they care about people suffering. We can argue this is because they're stupid and don't connect the dots of how the environment create suffering, but the fact is that we hit a lot of flies in one hit at the moment. We can weaken Russia's hold on the west, remove their trading diplomacy cards so we don't have to be puppets of the oligarchs and Putin's ego, all while pushing the necessary push towards better solutions than oil and gas. Even if we don't go renewable soon, just build Thorium power plants. I feel like people don't know how safe these designs really are, it's way better than any other solution at the moment until renewable match up with it.