There is no doubt that that derogatory terms are often used with reference to Slavic people. Take English "Polack" — Apollodorus

There is no doubt that that derogatory terms are often used with reference to Hispanic people. Take English "Spick".

None of this has anything to do with the topic of the thread. Stay on topic.

Why don't you tell? It's your theory. — jorndoe

It isn't "my" theory any more than it is yours.

It's a political term that refers to world governance, as often used by Western (and sometimes other) politicians:

New world order (politics) - Wikipedia

But I'm not a politician, so you better ask Biden (or Baden) ....

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_Order_(conspiracy_theory) Shhh....)

a New World Order is that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian one-world government—which will replace sovereign nation-states. — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_Order_(conspiracy_theory)

Fixed it. Not a conspiracy theory anymore.

Cool. Can you do this bit next?

"shapeshifting aliens called Reptilians control the Earth."

Cool. Can you do this bit next? — Baden

Ha! Yes.

"shapeshifting aliens called Reptilians control the Earth."

I may run out of strike though before the end of the article!

Wow. I think his hat may be beginning to fall off now ... :wink:

"shapeshifting aliens called Reptilians Republicans control the Earth." — Baden

:chin:

Or are we out of date on that?

If you look slightly to your right, my point will be on the shelf just above you.

Indeed, and not even a great deal of shape shifting required. Same old shite with a different bow around it seems to do the job.

It’s hard to believe because humans are largely incapable of running such a scheme. The current state of affairs is largely due to their incompetence rather than design.

I see. Well, never mind, it's all a theory (or an old hat), anyways ... :smile:

Sure. The question remains though as to what Biden meant:

Now is a time when things are shifting. We're going to — there's going to be a New World Order out there, and we've got to lead it

Joe Biden talks about 'new world order' in Business Roundtable address - YouTube

It seems to be something of a mystery. And if even philosophers of the greatest learning and judgment like those here don't know, what chance do mere mortals have? Biden must have an intelligence far superior to all of us ....

Biden must have an intelligence far superior to all of us Apollodorus.... — Apollodorus

There ya go.

Nah, the issue isn't that he's more intelligent than me, but that he's more intelligent than philosophers of great learning and judgement, especially two-headed ones. He also appears to have some knowledge of "shifting things". Perhaps he did mean shape-shifting reptilians, as you suggested.

:ok:

Trolls to the left of them, idiots to the right of them,
Volleyed and thundered.
But all joined in the hymn of the new world order: and you can too ...

The Russians are on the offensive. The West is interested in beating them down — Olivier5

That's interesting. So the battle is between Russia and the 'West'? Why is the West involved anyway, and doesn't it prove the point they were involved before the invasion and that was a provocation of sorts?

I think it is more precise to call this as a battle between the current regime in the United States and their Oligarchs rather than blaming the American People for anything. They are been successfully manipulated after all.

I don't think the US govt sees Putin as an evil madman. I think they see him as the dictator of a regional power. — frank

Isn't it funny how all the evil madmen live in the east? Never heard George W Bush or Tony Blair described as such, though they have initiated a lot of carnage through their good intentions. "At least he is sincere"

Protests accomplished nothing?

Oh no, protests are very useful for demonstrating that that Regime allows dissent and democracy. The power structures are safe from any influences from below, and things carry on as usual. They don't jail people for protests, worse, they ignore them.

These people are captives: they are being used to pacify, ironically, those who were against the war: see, we are protesting, we are fighting back, but in the end there is no effect.

Some statistics:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/248521/us-arms-exports/

Somebody benefited. Oligarchs maybe?

@Baden, @StreetlightX

Recent posts from you both (you'll forgive me for not quoting) have made undeniably powerful points about power and how those we might identify as "powerless" -- that's a bit of a can of worms, though, right? -- inevitably suffer, and particularly suffer when they're caught in the middle of a fight between one power and another. I appreciate how clearly and forcefully you have reminded us -- well, me, at any rate -- of how the world is made to turn.

With that as a given, I think I can also understand @Isaac's disgust for one great power encouraging some relatively powerless nation or people to take on some other great power, and offering them support to do so, in essence convincing them to be complicit in their own inevitable or continued pummeling. It is conceivable that the misguided powerful might do so out of ignorance, but if we have reason to believe they know exactly the sort of outcome they're pointing someone else toward, and if they offer their "support" in the name of "solidarity" or some such idealism while actually pursuing their own ends, not only getting it wrong, but getting it wrong on purpose, deceitfully, and exploiting the admirable courage or patriotism of others -- unforgivable, and it's understandable that one might find such underhandedness even more distasteful than forthright if appalling aggression.

So much for the status quo. It is abysmal. The dinosaurs died (again tonight on RadioLab) to clear the way for us to do this.

I want above all to ask you impractical questions. What is our relationship to violence? What is the place of force in human society? Can it change? How could such change be brought about?

Is violence inherently illegitimate? I genuinely don't know, but it's a question even the luckiest of us are compelled to think about almost every day now, possibly the most important question there is. (If it's not obvious, I have not only war but policing on my mind.) No one in this thread, I think, has suggested that Ukraine, or Ukrainians, ought simply to turn the other cheek. We tend to believe in the legitimacy of self-defense, and, even if we didn't, it's unseemly to suggest that someone else submit to force, just as it's unseemly to suggest that they fight back at risk to themselves. It is a situation in which we will tend to find either choice understandable, perhaps even laudable in the circumstances, but somehow we are barred -- by our conscience, I mean -- from giving advice (much less encouragement or inducement). In the same way that it's at once appalling to deny aid to the aggressee, as if we had hearts of stone, or to offer aid to the aggressee, thus prolonging their suffering. Violence, once set in motion, transmutes all choices and all outcomes to bad ones. You would think we would have learned by now how to avoid it. Is it conceivable that we will ever do so?

Cautiously, I do not have any a priori, blanket objection to the use of violence. Which is to answer your question directly: I do not think violence is inherently illegitimate. That said I'm not sure that legitimacy is an adequate rubric by which to assess violence - violence by nature is excessive, boundary-breaking. Most of the time what it challenges are the very frameworks by which we assess legitimacy in the first place. Violence should be uncomfortable, inherently: if there is a 'legitimate use of violence', this maybe tells us something more about the concept of legitimacy - and how limited it is as such - than it does violence. Which is not to say that we should give up on legitimacy, but that we should recognize that human action doesn't fall neatly, ever, into any normative framework which would give us a guarantee of comfort about our actions. Legitimacy should not be a crutch. Everything about what we do is contestable, always, no matter how secure the foundations of something like legitimacy are. That's why both politics and ethics are an ineradicable part of how we move in the world.

A second point, a kind of mantra really, is that almost all violence on the part of the repressed is, first and foremost, counter-violence. This is something that came through very clearly for me among the context of BLM and the whole discourse around that (speaking of policing...). Again this doesn't make it legitimate (or illegitimate), but it does head off immediate objections that non-violent approaches are the only answer to grievances. When one's entire ecology is one of violence that is perpetuated day by day (by state forces, say), a violent act against that ecology cannot be categorically attacked on account of merely 'being violent'.

As for Ukraine, things are more complex than I can know. On some accounts I've read by local socialist Ukrainians, the Ukranian left is entirely welcoming of weapons, and there is a certain resentment of those who would want those imports to stop. On the other hand, it is not at all contradictory to note that the pouring of Western arms into warzones have almost never, ever, ever lead to good outcomes, nor are have they ever been done with good outcomes (i.e. human flourishing) in mind. It's a simple fact that it is always correct - frankly transcendentally correct - to harbor enormous, relentless skepticism over weapons transfers done by powers who themselves do not put themselves at risk. It would be incredible news to hear that Ukraine beats back the Russian invasion with credit due to those weapons, but even that would still not settle the issue, as far as I'm concerned. The question really should be what happens after. By all rational predictions, nothing good. To quote from another Ukrainian whose interview I posted earlier:

"After Maidan, radical political action has been constrained to either participation in one of the army-adjacent militias or struggles for rights. Without abandoning the most basic radical positions of helping refugees as well as Ukrainian and Russian dissidents, radicals today must work to break the image of a “patriotic war” that the state has constructed. With this war and its aftermath, we will see great repression on both sides of the border, and it is ultimately the refugees burning through their savings and collecting ever greater debts who will bear the brunt of it. The attempt to cling to the remnants of law and capital even as the tanks are rolling in only further exposes the fact that human reproduction remains a byproduct of the reproduction of capital".

So I don't think it's inconsistent to say that those weapons are - literally and figuratively - double-edged swords. Whatever good they will do - if they do any 'good' - will only ever mean so much in a world where Ukraine remains a puppet of imperialism of either a military or capitalist stripe. Both are soul-destroying, and it would be wrong to be blinded by the (rightly horrible) spectacle of Russian missiles such that the 'other side' is uncritically celebrated or even welcomed. Like seriously, fuck the US - it has never not taken mass suffering as an opportunity for itself and its friends, to the determent of the entire planet.

--

Also Madeleine Albright is dead and I would have preferred if she died violently and painfully but we can't always get what we want apparently.

Also Madeleine Albright is dead and I would have preferred if she died violently and painfully but we can't always get what we want apparently. — StreetlightX

I prefer it to be true that all people get to review their lives after they die.

“A life review, seeing and re-experiencing major and trivial events of one’s life, sometimes from the perspective of the other people involved, and coming to some conclusion about the adequacy of that life and what changes are needed.” (IANDS FAQ)

Her 'life review' may be difficult. They say you get to feel the pain of everyone you hurt by your actions, in your 'after - death ' life review. Maybe she will change her mind about if it was 'worth it'.

Also Madeleine Albright is dead and I would have preferred if she died violently and painfully but we can't always get what we want apparently. — StreetlightX

No, alas, and besides, you are too kind.

I want above all to ask of you impractical questions. What is our relationship to violence? What is the place of force in human society? Can it change? How could such change be brought about? — Srap Tasmaner

I have tried to make the case that the people of the world have to ask their governments to promise to never engage in violence, that is, wars of aggression, defense being justifiable. This request will never be made: it appears people, and the governments they represent, want to keep the violent option open. Nuclear arms, along with a 'first strike' option, are the most powerful expression of this idea. So be it.

Quotes from Goodreads/Violence

“A weapon does not decide whether or not to kill. A weapon is a manifestation of a decision that has already been made.”
― Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
― Voltaire

For a nation to avoid violent invasion, it seems it has to have either the capacity to defend itself, through alliances or weapons, or the diplomacy to prevent invasion.

As Orwell pointed out:

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
― George Orwell

An peace agreement when defeat seems inevitable is an option that seems the wisest, however that is for the people of that nation (only) to decide without outside pressure, but that is the world.

Many great minds have addressed the question of violence. (from Goodreads/violence)


“I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.”
― Albert Einstein

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas

I think all socially directed violence is illegitimate. Only personal self-defence is legitimate. Whenever someone decides for others to go forth elsewhere and fight to the death, whatever the reason, it is ethically wrong whether we label that war a just war or not.

We're not made for this, and I mean that in a very real biological and mental sense, to serve large abstracted entities called states with weapons that can flatten cities. We're supposed to throw a stone or two and maybe accidentally kill someone with a an unlucky strike. Everything more than that is just the horror of civilisation combined the failure of imagination to feel empathy for nations and its people because it's too far removed from ourselves and a system that enables sociopaths to rise to the top.

This one is for the dear departed former Secretary of Defence - Madeleine Albright

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
― Howard Zinn

Jesus fuck, just read about sex traffickers targeting fleeing women and children. :vomit:

I don't know if you wanted an answer from me or if my name was invoked rather as a hyperbolic (I even agree with Isaac!), but notwithstanding...

I'm broadly in agreement with @StreetlightX's analysis, so I won't repeat it. I will add that part of the reason I think this analysis works is because there reaches a point in societal responses (war, protest, revolution) where an ethical analysis simply ceases to be useful. It's not that the players don't have any ethical choices (they do, clearly) but that those choices are so constrained by material circumstances that analysing events using them is like adding the light of a single candle to the 1000W spotlight that a systemic analysis can provide.

That a few saints might come up with some genius method of passive resistance, or that a few devils will relish the chance to play Star Wars but with real guns, is irrelevant compared to the mass who didn't think they really had much of a choice (whether they actually did or not, being again, besides the point).

Something like invasion, or some of the stronger forms of oppression (apartheid springs to mind) are such gross infractions against our humanity that it would be perverse to expect any reasoned ethical choice to be made as to how to respond from those suffering from it, hence the legitimacy of any response seeming something of a pointless post hoc exercise.

With that as a given, I think I can also understand Isaac's disgust for one great power encouraging some relatively powerless nation or people to take on some other great power, and offering them support to do so, in essence convincing them to be complicit in their own inevitable or continued pummeling. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, I mean, those primitive people over there have no agency of their own, do they? They are nothing but pawns of the powerful. They couldn't have risen up against a corrupt and oppressive regime without Nulland engineering the whole thing. They wouldn't even dream of resisting an invasion by a force that threatens their existence as a people without great powers "convincing" them to fight.

It's not about agency, it's about power. Ukrainians could have all the agency in the world. They can't will a thousand Javelins, no less a billion dollars, into existence. Unless you're really subsumed by some kind of David and Goliath fairy tale version of warfare, Ukraine lacked the power to resist Russia, not the agency. The US (or anyone else) cannot lend power, it wields it, and so it is their agency in wielding that power that dominates the narrative.