Little things like that, yes, should be pointed out. — ssu

Why?

Basically the situation in Kyiv and in Mariupol are quite different. One is under siege, one isn't. — ssu

I don't care what you call it, and I never predicted Kiev to come under "complete encirclement" and "100% siege".

However, it's relevant anyways to point out it can be argued a siege mainly because lot's of media reported it that way, which affects perception and decision making.

Furthermore, if the purpose of laying siege is mainly political, then the objective end goal is likely to be more what the media reports than some physical situation on the ground: i.e. the mission is to encircle Kiev enough for media to start reporting it as a siege which achieves sufficiently the political objective, not only of serious pressure on Kiev (who, even if they don't feel it's a "true siege" would still want to break the false-siege enough for media to say they broke the siege according to the media) but also changing moods in European capitals and at home.

Sometimes media focuses on specific points on the map and builds it up as a big important battle ... whether it was true or not, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, as the fact that the media is focused on that battle and those positions makes taking or defending those positions suddenly of immense propaganda value.

Western narrative built up the Western highway as "the big battle to siege Kiev" and more or less framed things as Russia taking that highway would mean it has effectively has or inevitably can siege Kiev, and Ukrainians defending it would mean they were able to militarily defend and prevent encirclement.

The highway went back and forth several times but then ended fairly securely in Russian hands and media changed their reporting from "Russians advancing" to mostly "Kiev under siege".

Again, whether it's militarily true or not, or whether journalists even had any military basis for their claim or it's just more dramatic in a micro drama of the whole war, doesn't matter. Once a battle takes on symbolic value (Stalingrad being the most famous) then everyone knows each side has high motivations to win and the battle becomes a sort of litmus test of who has the better army. At the same time, there can be literally hundreds of back-and-forth, successes and losses, elsewhere that aren't reported and have zero symbolic value, just tactical retreats or then various wins-and-losses that tend to happen for both sides in a war.

Karkiev was also reported as under siege a lot.

In military terms, given long range and standoff weapons and also intelligence, the argument can be made that a modern siege must take into account these tactics as well.

Do I need to physically setup a roadblock on every single road if I can blow up weapons shipments on the road leading into Kiev ... or even on bases hundreds of kilometres away?

In terms of denying supply, it's no longer ancient times and even in ancient times "some supply" didn't mean breaking a siege.

However, if you rather, for the strict military analysis, say "partial siege" with "larger supply line attacks and disruption elsewhere in the 'battlspace' " ... doesn't matter to me what terminology you use here.

However, it's still relevant to the analysis anyways what terminology the media uses. So, bring your dictionary definition to the media.

And yes, definitely Mariupol was under a far more intense siege than Kiev ... that something can be more intense doesn't mean less intense things can't also share the same characteristic. "Less intense red" is still red.

The big question is : do the people of that country have a say in how that country is being run? Peace, stability, prosperity, these things are important, but how do you get there? — FreeEmotion

Through the citizens of that country pushing for those things. Apathy and low education give birth to despots and tyrants. So education is extremely important, if there's anything that people from outside a country can do as a way to influence a nation to develop these good traits by themselves, it is to push education into that nation.

A good and easy example is poor nations where people don't have any education at all and there's no real government push for state-run education that is good. While everyone in western nations run around giving money to charity to feed these nations it does very little to change their status quo. However, some charities develop schools and if people could be a little patient in observation, they will see that this education has an exponential effect on the nation. Status quo changes since you get more people able to actively think about how to improve their own nation.

If people don't know why a corruption-free democracy is better than the status quo, they only have the status quo to live for.

It's the old saying; Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

It's the same with politics: give a man a government and you will govern him, give a man the knowledge of government, and he will govern himself.

Let's take Sweden as an example. While there are factors that most likely are important to the state the nation is in today, like being "neutral" through two world wars and having a history of pushing for education and knowledge, like the Nobel prize. A major key element is how socialism formed and became a core feature of support for the people and how people get educated. The state funds education, even higher education, and it doesn't cost the citizen a dime to get that higher education. We even get paid for it and can take a small very low-interest loan for higher education to help us with rent and stuff if we need to live close to the university. All this makes it possible for any person of any class or economic situation to get top education if they strive for it. This in turn generates a high number of people able to participate in shaping society based on actual knowledge of the topics that need to be changed.

In recent years there's been, just like most nations in the west, an increase in right-wing extreme politics, with politicians from that part of the political spectrum getting into parliament. What is the most common thing among these politicians and the people voting for them? Low education. And that low education is purely based on the people having all that education free of charge and open to them, but their apathy led them down that path.

So education is the key here and whether people have a good relation, opportunity or apathy towards that education.

Russia has a lot of educated people and those are almost statistically everyone who opposes the war and Putin. The problem right now is that they risk everything if they speak up. But a huge population in Russia has little to no education, just like how the right-wing extremists of the west have been winning through the part of the population who has little to no education, so does Putin and his propaganda machine win on their support. Right now there are too few in Russia, even though there are millions of them, who are opposed to the war and educated enough to see what Putin is actually doing, to see things for what they are. But imagine if education could creep into a larger portion of the population? Then it's just a matter of time before there are enough people to oppose the status quo and when the state can no longer control the population, that's when coups and revolutions happen to radically change things.

If a nation is a security risk to the world or risk of doing atrocities towards its own people, we have enough examples of how interventions in terms of invasion and forcibly applying "democracy" do not work at all. Yes, some leaders are sometimes so bad that the removal of them might heal the nation or remove the direct threat, like how Hitler's death broke the camels back on the Nazi empire, but most often than not, it's an uneducated and poor mass that gives way for such authoritarian power.

In general, if you give the people free education and enough people apply for it, it will change the nation at its very core. The best way to change Russia from the outside, in a way that doesn't prevent themselves from changing on their own, is to try and "smuggle" in education that bypasses the state propaganda education. Schools or online education that is possible for anyone in Russia regardless of their geographical location. Get some Stalink dishes into the countryside so people can bypass state-controlled internet.

Give the people an open door to all that knowledge outside of their state control and over time it will change things. Putin and his authoritarian power can only survive on the people not knowing or understanding what he is doing or how the world outside actually is.

Like, reports are coming in that many of the Russian soldiers in Ukraine... don't even know what Ukraine is. And the soldiers who went to Chernobyl and dug trenches in the red forest, have no idea where they are and they didn't even know about the Chernobyl accident. This is how Putin controls them, by their low education and total obliviousness to the outside world. Imagine what would have happened if these soldiers knew about Chernobyl, knew about Ukraine, and that Ukraine doesn't want to be part of Russia or that there are no Nazis like Putin describes the government in Ukraine to be. The fact that so many Russian soldiers have deserted or even turned on their leaders, even killed them, shows that some of them might have realized the truth and reality of everything and turned against the lies they've been fed.

Russia is filled with uneducated people who really have no way of knowing what is true or not because they were never given any tools to figure that out. And just 30 years after Soviet collapsed, that's a very short span to go from that level of state-controlled information to a very short period of openness, back into similar state-controlled information.

Smuggle education into Russia, educate the people, that's the key to changing Russia without force and with stability at its core.

The 'solution' such as it is, is to bring down capitalism so that it is not one of the competitors. That way alternative systems can compete on the grounds of their impact on human well-being rather than on the grounds of their ability to withstand the onslaught capitalism directs toward them.

That solution is not brought about by making countries more capitalist. — Isaac

I'm asking for a real-world solution to an active problem that is existing right now. You are talking about anti-capitalist philosophy that I am agreeing with, but as I've said before, being an idealist in a time you need a direct solution is not possible, you need to be pragmatic. If you have a nation that is conducting war crimes in other nations after invading them as well as silencing its own people, then trying to form a new standard of global politics that bypasses capitalism is really not a solution at all.

What are the real-world actual solutions to the problems in Russia and Ukraine? I think the problem with this thread is that too many sit in their comfort and invent utopias in their heads and are unable to accept that the lesser bad is the better solution at this time. Russia becoming a westernized nation, primarily in terms of protected rights for its people and low corruption in government, might require all those bad other things with capitalism, free markets, and consumerism since much of the western standards have all of that built-in and might be inseparable in the short term.

The point I've made is that if you take all forms of societies and pit them against each other, on a large scale, the form that has the most ability to change over time is the western version, the one focusing on free speech, broad education, protected rights of the people, authorities that can review politicians and scrutinize policies etc. etc. Other forms of societies that focus more on tradition, religion, authoritarianism (dictators), and so on, generally have little ability to change since it's not built in to question the status quo.

So we can have a whole other thread of discussing the bad parts of western society, how consumerism and capitalism is ruining the world and I'm just as critical as anyone else educated on the matter. But I'm not blind to having a bias toward that critical view to the extent that I cannot see that solutions in the now and real-world today in terms of this conflict need a pragmatic perspective that enables actual solutions based on what is actually existing, not what utopian form of world past capitalism that we can think of, because that doesn't help anyone right now. Russia could go full westernized, remove Putin and corruption, have free elections, free and independent media, good education for all and be just as consumerism and capitalist as the west (which they really are anyway), and that will still be a better point of origin for future change past capitalism than how things are right now. That is my point.

@Isaac @Christoffer

I asked you nicely many pages ago to be civil or else ignore each other. It’s hard enough to maintain quality in this thread. When you don’t comply I’ll delete the offending posts.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/675963

If you have a problem with this, start a thread in the Feedback category. Don’t complain about it or attempt to justify yourself here. I’ll delete such posts.

About 'poor' nations which I have some familiarity with, it is the external shocks that prevent them taking the path of peaceful development. One option that has been taken is an authoritarian leadership that is able to suppress the natural pendulum power swings between opposing groups - that takes too long and cause too much violence. We agree that education is important, so is the right for sovereign nations to work out their problems internally, without foreign interference, which, ironically is the what is being denied Ukraine at the moment. I do not see how to avoid this unless people see the need to spread non-violence instead of 'democracy'

You made an interesting comment about Russia:

Russia could go full westernized, remove Putin and corruption, have free elections, free and independent media, good education for all and be just as consumerism and capitalist as the west (which they really are anyway), and that will still be a better point of origin for future change past capitalism than how things are right now. That is my point. — Christoffer

Could they? How could the Russian people achieve this? There is no magic spell for changing a nation, other nations can help or hinder the process, and in this case I think that there is case to be made that Russia was not helped.

Maybe you could answer the question as to who benefits from the current power structures in international politics and how can that be changed so that all nations prosper?

Instead of protesting specific military actions, people should protest militarism: but does the common man out there have the intellect or courage or insight to do this? Why aren't we all anti-war?

Here is one faith that addressees the issue at hand, I believe all religions center around this idea in one form or another. (This was the first result from a search engine, not Google, for "can all nations prosper?")

In other words, a purely material civilization bases itself on the zero-sum game called survival of the fittest, where one wins and another loses. But from a Baha’i perspective, a divine civilization, based on the spiritual virtues of love, kindness, justice and equity, operates with a completely different framework and philosophy—that we live in a world of abundance and bounty, where prosperity for all can become a reality:

https://bahaiteachings.org/zero-sum-one-nation-prosper-others-dont/

My apologies. I'll try again.

This...

Russia is filled with uneducated people who really have no way of knowing what is true or not because they were never given any tools to figure that out. — Christoffer

...is a racist trope.

As is...

However, some charities develop schools and if people could be a little patient in observation, they will see that this education has an exponential effect on the nation. Status quo changes since you get more people able to actively think about how to improve their own nation. — Christoffer

I'm not saying @Christoffer is racist, but those two positions are both common racist tropes that need to be called out as such.

Societies which are less well developed (whether governmentally or economically) suffer from a range of constraining conditions - the majority of which are created and actively maintained by the more developed nations, and it is those conditions, not a lack of intellect, which keeps them where they are.

Were the proposition that a lack of education in advanced engineering held back a country's engineering capabilities, it would be perfectly arguable - but that an education in essentially, 'how to think' is necessary implies that these country's natively lack such an ability.

To be clear - the relation to this thread - it is Russia's material conditions, not the intellectual capabilities of its inhabitants, which prevents change.

If people don't know why a corruption-free democracy is better than the status quo, they only have the status quo to live for. — Christoffer

I'm pretty sure nearly everyone in this thread, if not everyone, shares this same opinion.

The only differences are that of how to go about achieving it, which I think both and already brought up some key point about.

We'd all like to see Russia and Ukraine and everywhere less corrupt and more democratic ... so, how? Is the key question as has been mentioned to you. Feel free to explain to us how we actually do anything about it, other than just complaining about it and assuming anyone "fighting it" has righteous cause (regardless of the outcome or how many people suffer and die).

However, it seems to me you are confusing support for what you want (which we also want) with opposition to Putin and the Western narrative of how that opposition can be carried out.

The reason us "geopolitical realist" camp is not on this bandwagon is simply because "where does that lead"?

For example, you say Yeltsin was better than Putin because some total chaotic shitshow in Russia is somehow going more towards freedom and self determination (than exactly towards authoritarianism to clean up the shitshow once people simply can't deal with it anymore and prefer some sort of order, even unjust, to chaos).

However, the realist view of Yeltsin was instability and chaos (including tanks firing on parliament buildings) in a country that has thousands of nuclear weapons.

That is really the key thing for the realists: "improving Russia" by taking down Putin ... first how? Nuclear weapons? Covert coup that results in total chaos and nuclear weapons?

The policy choices are very much limited and conditions by this fundamental and pretty big fact.

For example, Hitler didn't have thousands of nuclear weapons ... and if he did, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have just shown up unannounced on D-day and I'm pretty sure Stalingrad would not have "held out" against a nuclear strike.

This is the key problem, nuclear weapons do change the situation, you can effectively blackmail the world with enough nuclear weapons.

The only reason this has not happened since WWII is because people think other people aren't crazy and immoral enough to use nuclear weapons and immense diplomatic effort put into creating a dialogue and "status quo" as you put it where nuclear weapons are simply off the table for tactical use.

Just like chemical warfare was simply tacitly agreed off the table in WWII, even though no one expected that to be the case given the massive use of chemical weapons in WWI there was no reason to believe no one would resort to them in the next war (indeed, Luftwaffa even designed their bombers as small and agile to deliver chemical weapons ... why drop tons and tons of bombs when a ton of nerve agents gets the job done).

The geo-political realists of today fear nuclear weapons and are willing to make concessions to limit their use, and certainly feel it foolish to actively provoke their use.

No one really knows what will happen once someone "breaks the ice" in terms of using nuclear weapons to make a point or win a battle.

Kremlin's negotiation position is basically: I don't want to go there, but I will.

There is nothing we can really do about that except return to good faith dialogue and deescalate demonising both Putin and the Russians.

We cannot "win" with sticks and stones, and therefore can only "win" with words.

Which words exactly is the question.

They're depressingly subservient. It seems they have totally bought into the fact that Putin is an absolute ruler. — Wayfarer

Well, you have to assume that there is a negative selection at work here: how else could these people climb up the power hierarchy and stay there? There are no heroes among them, to be sure. (Although a few at least jumped ship, but that's not an option for everyone.)

I don't think all roads save one were cut off. And I think the trains have been moving also. — ssu

Evacuation trains have been leaving Kiev every day since at least early March. But never mind facts, let's listen to some bullshitter obsessed with proving a point :roll:

Totally agreed. "Harming" the oligarchs actually removed their influence ... not motivated them to do anything about Putin.

The influence of the oligarchs is that they had wealth abroad and therefore could "arrange" certain deals within Russia based on wealth outside the control of the Kremlin. Placing all their wealth within the control of the Kremlin simply removes their influence basically entirely.

It also reduces, by definition, corruption if powerful people can't launder money around in foreign countries to get favours. So we have made Russia less corrupt.

From the NY Times;

"While Russian troops have battered Ukraine, officials in China have been meeting behind closed doors to study a Communist Party-produced documentary that extols President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a hero."

"The humiliating collapse of the Soviet Union, the video says, was the result of efforts by the United States to destroy its legitimacy. With swelling music and sunny scenes of present-day Moscow, the documentary praises Mr. Putin for restoring Stalin’s standing as a great wartime leader and for renewing patriotic pride in Russia’s past."

Disgusting

Evacuation trains have been leaving Kiev every day since at least early March. But never mind facts, let's listen to some bullshitter obsessed with proving a point :roll: — SophistiCat

It's just part of actually analysing what is actually happening.

Russian military advances on Kiev, applies large amount of pressure (call a siege or a half siege if you want), media start reporting it as a siege, Ukraine publicly abandons (under pressure that includes a half siege) political objectives like joining NATO or "the right to join NATO even if you can't actually join NATO".

I'm not denying that one road was left in the South ... I even point that out. "Dictionary definitions" (if you ask the people that write dictionaries) do not define language and how terms are used in a given context, but try to record how language changes overtime ... so maybe the word siege is taking on new meaning to refer to Russian tactics in this war, as that's what the media keep explaining.

However, even so, if Russia has intelligence on what are resupply and what are evacuations (leaving the city ... so not supplying it), and just blows those supplies up (like intelligence there's a bunch of soldiers and weapons on a base and just blows that base up), seems to me is part of the evolution of siege tactics.

Likewise, maybe the modern definition of a siege to compel concessions (such as surrender) makes sense to now include other more modern day civilian pressures (... like, I don't know, living in a subway for a month), and not just literally starving to death in a castle.

And it's not me saying these things, media repurposed the word siege for this modern situation.

However, I don't care if you call it a siege (why I changed by language to "pressure" and "surround" to be more general of whatever was actually happening), but the media used the word siege all the time and that has a political effect.

Which are pretty obvious points to make, and if you don't care about them ... maybe you just don't care about the topic.

And, if the definition of the word siege interests you so much:

According to Wikipedia (after mostly talking about sieges in ancient times, medieval times, Mongol and Chinese times, renaissance "age of gunpowder" times, WWI and WWII times):

Post-Second World War

Several times during the Cold War the western powers had to use their airbridge expertise.

- The Berlin Blockade from June 1948 to September 1949, the Western Powers flew over 200,000 flights, providing to West Berlin up to 8,893 tons of necessities each day.
- Airbridge was used extensively during the siege of Dien Bien Phu during the First Indochina War, but failed to prevent its fall to the Việt Minh in 1954.
- In the next Vietnam War, airbridge proved crucial during the siege of the American base at Khe Sanh in 1968. The resupply it provided kept the North Vietnamese Army from capturing the base. — Siege, Wikipedia

... how are these sieges if there all supply wasn't cut, which obviously includes air as another "root" out.

and also

The siege of Khe Sanh displays typical features of modern sieges, as the defender has greater capacity to withstand the siege, the attacker's main aim is to bottle operational forces or create a strategic distraction, rather than take the siege to a conclusion. — Siege, Wikipedia

... Why isn't wikipedia sticking to a single dictionary definition of a siege but adapting it to modern context and purposes? Someone should inform them.

They applied pressure on all those dead civilians in Busha alright.

What seems much more like obsessing over a point is going over analysis literally 4 weeks ago, which difficult to deny now, was far more accurate than what the Western media narrative was at the time (what my analysis was about: proposing other possibilities) ... and finding only the criticism that I predicted a "siege" and "encirclement".

Criticism that is simply wrong, as I was just explaining another purpose for the Russian operation there en lieux of entering Kiev and taking it with urban combat.

The prediction was simply that whatever is achieve militarily Russia can simply announce anytime they achieved their objectives (as they only ever stated fairly minimal explicit goals and demands), a prediction that has come true.

Had they achieved more (which would have included encircling all of Kiev or taking all of Ukraine if there was zero resistance) then they would have declared that mission accomplished.

As for whether the operation around Kiev was or is successful, and or whom, that will depend on what happens next.

And if posters here want to say Ukrainians "won the battle for Kiev" but may lose the war ... sure, I don't have a problem with that terminology either, but my military analysis is more focused on "winning the war" part.

They applied pressure on all those dead civilians in Busha alright. — Olivier5

Why weren't they evacuated by those trains just mentioned as evacuating people because Kiev wasn't under a siege in any sense of the word?

Finland evacuated the entire Karelian region before fighting the Russians on it, by force: you didn't have a "choice" to stay and be brave.

Even grandma's were forced to leave. There's a famous story of soldiers coming up to one grandma's house to force her to leave before burning it down.

She says "no, I'll do it myself," and then takes the fuel and torches her own place.

Point is, she wasn't just left in the path of intensely destructive warfare.

So if Finland (who lost the war with the Soviets) is the model, why not evacuate civilians from war zones like Finland did?

What are the real-world actual solutions to the problems in Russia and Ukraine? I think the problem with this thread is that too many sit in their comfort and invent utopias in their heads and are unable to accept that the lesser bad is the better solution at this time. — Christoffer

You do know there's a global socialist movement don't you? I can't think of any way to interpret this question other than a rhetorical one implying you find those approaches inadequate. I can't believe you're genuinely unaware of them.

The point I've made is that if you take all forms of societies and pit them against each other, on a large scale, the form that has the most ability to change over time is the western version — Christoffer

Yes. And the counterargument takes issue with your use of 'all'. If you compare current societies, the Western ones probably experience more freedom overall than ones like Russia or China. But this is an irrelevant fact without some argument as to why we are obliged to pick from the current ones.

solutions in the now and real-world today in terms of this conflict need a pragmatic perspective that enables actual solutions based on what is actually existing, not what utopian form of world past capitalism that we can think of, because that doesn't help anyone right now. — Christoffer

As has been pointed out before, your lack of imagination, or unwillingness to read up about alternative politics, is not an argument. It's just a poor reflection of the depth of your engagement with the issues.

This...

Russia is filled with uneducated people who really have no way of knowing what is true or not because they were never given any tools to figure that out.
— Christoffer

...is a racist trope. — Isaac

So, you mean that the fact that a large portion of Russians is educated, especially outside of the denser cities, is racist?

Is Russian soldiers not even knowing what Ukraine is or what Chernobyl is because they didn't get any education about any of it... racist?

Or is it that you just twist this thing into calling it such a trope in order to have an easier time making an argument?

As is...

However, some charities develop schools and if people could be a little patient in observation, they will see that this education has an exponential effect on the nation. Status quo changes since you get more people able to actively think about how to improve their own nation.
— Christoffer — Isaac

So, for example, a nation under a government that is corrupt or has little means to handle poverty on their own and almost no people educated enough to be able to work to better the nation's situation, does not need to change that status quo? And helping those nations with getting children free education so that this structural problem can be bypassed in order to have a new generation that can build something better on their own... is racist?

I'm not saying Christoffer is racist, but those two positions are both common racist tropes that need to be called out as such. — Isaac

Or, you reshape them into racist tropes without caring to understand or read what I actually propose, what I actually argue for. You ignore everything else and just focus on a cherry-picked part of my entire text so that it can fit your trope narrative and be easier to argue against. This is an extremely low-quality way of engaging in the discussion and a disgusting way of labeling others with some guilt of association. It's appalling really.

Societies which are less well developed (whether governmentally or economically) suffer from a range of constraining conditions - the majority of which are created and actively maintained by the more developed nations, and it is those conditions, not a lack of intellect, which keeps them where they are. — Isaac

I never talked about lack of intellect, I talked about education. Are you unable to understand the difference between the two? Russian soldiers don't dig trenches in the Red Forest and irradiate themselves with that soil because they lack intellect, they do it because they lack education about where they are and what consequences such actions have on them and others.

It's you who reshape what I write into being some pro-imperialistic talk of lower intellects among poor people. This type of reshaping my argument just renders what you write now as total nonsense. Because you can't see the difference between education and intellect or willingly mix them together to say I write racist things.

That's disgusting rhetorical behavior that I wished the mods took notice of.

but that an education in essentially, 'how to think' is necessary implies that these country's natively lack such an ability. — Isaac

Are you unaware that you are writing on a philosophy forum? Like, you don't understand what I mean with education enabling active thinking about ongoing problems in their nations? Like, you don't get that I'm implying that education gives tools to channel the intellect because if you have knowledge about the world, you can organize thinking philosophically to arrive at solutions to problems you need to solve.

Like, when I write:

Status quo changes since you get more people able to actively think about how to improve their own nation. — Christoffer

I, of course, mean that they have gotten an education that gives them the tools, the knowledge to deconstruct the problems in their nation. If people get educated, they learn about different perspectives, different facts, and historical events, they are much more able to examine the problems in their own nation and have the ability to channel their intellect towards practical solutions, both as a competent workforce for building their nation and as intellectuals forming laws and other ethical solutions. Without any western intervention meddling with their progress. What I'm talking about is that knowledge is a pool of perspectives where you can test out your ideas and faster reach working conclusions. Without knowledge, without education, you will be fumbling in the dark and it doesn't matter if you have the intellect of Einstein, he wouldn't have channeled that intellect if he didn't get the education necessary to think about physics in the first place. If you get poor nations free education, you give the people the ability to more effectively think about their own life and their country and how to fix things that are broken with it.

But you interpret that as "how to think", as in "imperialistic pushing an agenda". Because you seem unable to view anything other than through that lens and it's getting tiresome.

You actively misinterpret to fit your own narrative of this discussion. When I talk about education giving people the tools for changing their own destiny, you interpret that as imperialistic intervention to make the "poor stupid people" think like capitalists. That kind of stretch and the implied racism is way over the line of acceptable.

To be clear - the relation to this thread - it is Russia's material conditions, not the intellectual capabilities of its inhabitants, which prevents change. — Isaac

But it is a fact that the Russians who want to get rid of Putin, the corruption, the war and everything are the educated, more wealthy citizens of the major cities. Most others outside in the rest of the nation does not have the same level of access to good education or they're fully under the state propaganda and has basically lived in a Plato cave of Putin's narrative.

The fact that some Russian soldiers don't even know what Ukraine is, have never heard of the Chernobyl incident or seem to have any knowledge outside of what the state told them, shows just what low education does to people. As I've said, they could have had someone with Einstein's intellect within those troops, but without education, he's drafted to be cannon fodder.

The thing that prevents change in Russia is a despot dictator who shuts down any form of public discourse, any form of will to change from any of its citizens. He shuts down every attempt at change. It has nothing to do with material conditions.

What I said was that if the uneducated, poorer citizens that are mostly outside of the major cities, who are often drafted into the military as these young soldiers in Ukraine are, would have had an education that teaches them about Ukraine, Chernobyl, that gives them the space to think critically, nurture their creativity and captured their imagination with facts about the world, they wouldn't have so easily been able to be lured into the hellhole of war for someone's ideal they don't even understand.

Bottom line is that education and intellect are two different things but you seem to be confused as to which is which or what I actually wrote about because you confused the two of those concepts together in order to call someone's writing "racist". I didn't even write "intellect" anywhere, I talked about education, about learning facts, about learning philosophy, math, politics, nature, writing, and reading, tools for thought, tools to use intellect for change. Without those tools you have intellect and no facts or concepts to use your intellect through and therefore changing your country becomes much harder. Nowhere did I even remotely imply that poor nations have lesser intellects, that's your words, your writing, your concept in mind, not mine. So stop making that part of my argument, I talked nothing of the sort.

"While Russian troops have battered Ukraine, officials in China have been meeting behind closed doors to study a Communist Party-produced documentary that extols President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a hero." — frank

It's a comment on our different ways of looking at things that I do no find this disgusting at all. The Chinese population knows that Facebook is banned in China, that YouTube is banned, that there are restrictions from news outside.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/11/media/bbc-news-banned-china/index.html

BBC is also banned, although there were getting their eyefull of Western Propaganda until 2021.

This is classical party line politics. Anyone who lives in a country where Western news is banned, having the natural skepticism that is part of being human, will conclude that the government wants to hide something, and is engaged in news-shaping.

Don't you think the Chinese, being human beings, will judge for themselves if unleashing death and destruction on Ukraine makes President Putin a hero? It really beggars belief to even imagine that the propaganda item mentioned will be more regarded as more than a curiosity by the Chinese, except those who want to believe it.

"The humiliating collapse of the Soviet Union, the video says, was the result of efforts by the United States to destroy its legitimacy. With swelling music and sunny scenes of present-day Moscow, the documentary praises Mr. Putin for restoring Stalin’s standing as a great wartime leader and for renewing patriotic pride in Russia’s past." — frank

I think that most of the time propaganda of this type helps to support, not to create, views that are already held. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a goal of the West, if not planned, was one of the biggest coincidences of modern history. So I it comforting to see other people agreeing with me.

Vladimir Putin a hero? Well, there are tragic heroes, so no offence, but he might turn out to be one.

We don't need another hero.

All the children say
We don't need another hero
We don't need to know the way home
All we want is life beyond
The thunderdome

So what do we do with our lives
We leave only a mark
Will our story shine like a light
Or end in the dark — Tina Turner - We Don't Need Another Hero

Don't you think the Chinese, being human beings, will judge for themselves if unleashing death and destruction on Ukraine makes President Putin a hero — FreeEmotion

A few will. There was a time when Russians and Chinese tried to face the truth about what communim did to their countries in the 20th Century.

It's incredibly hard to face that kind of thing. There's a strong impetus to turn away from it and say it didn't happen.

I'm afraid that lauding Stalin as a great man is is line with denial.

So if Finland is the model, why not evacuate civilians like Finland did? — boethius

I would think only a fool will send most of his protective armor, a large part of his defense, the human shields, out on trains. It is Illegal, inhuman, but I hope you see the insanity in advertising to the Russians "The civillians are gone, all gone, the only ones left here are those who want to kill every last one of you so do your worst". That is patently insane, and in the terror of battle I am not sure how I would react.

Maybe I would prevent the civilians from leaving and try to make believe that the Russians will not attack so much because they don't want to look bad.

I'm afraid that lauding Stalin as a great man is is line with denial. — frank

One of the sacred traditions of this earth is to laud mass-killers as great men.

I deplore it, but that it is.

I refuse to use the title "Alexander the Great" for example.

Isaac Asimov despised Alexander.

You do know there's a global socialist movement don't you? I can't think of any way to interpret this question other than a rhetorical one implying you find those approaches inadequate. I can't believe you're genuinely unaware of them. — Isaac

Why would I? I live in one of the most stable socialist nations in the world while everyone else tries to copy it. And we still have a free market as well, we also have problems with capitalism as everyone else, and making us more socialist, more Marxist won't improve our nation at all, it would probably just introduce much more problems than our functioning socialism right now. The socialist utopian dreams of people in nations like the US usually are more fantasy than practical reality. Just "make a Sweden" of the nation and start building on that in that case. It looks like you keep making the argument that my "western standard" concept is something like the US? The US is rotten in terms of western culture, it's the worst version of it, a neoliberal nightmare. I'm glad I live in Sweden, and it's light years ahead of many others when it comes to a socialist western society. Use us or Norway or Finland as the measuring stick instead.

But then there's the socialist extreme left who think inventing utopias in their heads solves real problems people face right now. So far I'm all for structuring away from neoliberal market societies, but the radical socialists have dreams just as problematic. And how is that a solution to what I'm writing about?
How is that a solution to freeing the people of Russia from Putin's authoritarian boot? This is the problem I'm talking about, you have no actual real-world solution, you have a utopia in your head, a conceptual dream that won't help anyone until their basic needs are met.

You either accept a lesser bad that is able to be changed by the people, or choose a worse bad that blocks the people from being able to change. That's my point. Russia right now can't change, a westernized Russia could change. If you want a socialist change, you can only change towards that if people are free to want that.

Yes. And the counterargument takes issue with your use of 'all'. If you compare current societies, the Western ones probably experience more freedom overall than ones like Russia or China. But this is an irrelevant fact without some argument as to why we are obliged to pick from the current ones. — Isaac

Because if you want to change for the better when every one of them is bad... you pick the lesser evil. Western society is the lesser evil, we have a lot of problems, but we are free to change it, the people are free to try and change it. The other forms do not allow for such change because they silence the people when they try or they limit the knowledge that can be learned in schools in order to keep people under their control.

So when I ask you to pick a functioning real-world existing alternative to a westernized Russia as a counterpoint to me saying that a westernized Russia is the best starting point for enabling change through the people going forward. Then I want you to pick a type of society that can actually be implemented in Russia that will enable a better outcome than my example. If you can't do that, but still argue against my point, then your only outcome is to either have an alternative form that is better or argue for the status quo of Russia right now to be better. Or that you don't have a solution and just point out that a westernized Russia is bad as well, sure, that is true, but that is also pretty irrelevant when trying to find solutions to problems in the world. What other alternative can you present? That is a probable solution for Russia?

As has been pointed out before, your lack of imagination, or unwillingness to read up about alternative politics, is not an argument. It's just a poor reflection of the depth of your engagement with the issues. — Isaac

I'm asking for real-world solutions that can actually be done right now. If you want to live in fantasy land go right ahead. As I've said numerous times, there's a time and place to discuss new forms of societies, but when it comes to applied philosophy and finding actual solutions RIGHT NOW for the current situation, you cannot invent some vague socialist utopia in your head and shoot down all other solutions. That is NOT a solution. My argument was to start with a westernized Russia, that gets them to a point where they can do as we can do, where they can actually discuss things like this, where they, you know, can actually utilize that imagination to build something new.

But you are arguing like all others who dream of utopias, that we should just skip progress to that utopia. That is what destructive revolution leads to, overthrow the old and then have no fucking clue how to actually implement the utopian dream into practical reality.

I do not lack imagination, I just have a greater understanding of the concept of time and change. Political landscapes are just like geography, mountains stand strong because they change slowly. Changes that are stable and fundamental for a nation might take many generations to reach its final stable goal and when reaching them they have merely become a synthesis of more concepts than originally thought up.

But such change needs a foundation so it can change. If free speech, free and independent media, free communication, free education, free knowledge, and a great protection of the people and their voice against power is there at the foundation, it is the soil that new types of societies can grow out of. If you take that away, like in Russia, like in many nations with authoritarian regimes, you take away the soil and the growth dies, becomes dirt and static death.

Utopias mean nothing if there's no soil for them to grow out of. Dreaming of such utopias means nothing if the goal is to change the world. You start with the soil and go from there and if the fact of the world today is that this "soil" is most common in westernized nations, then so be it, that's a fact of reality right now, start there and build from there instead of trying to grow where there is no soil.

But a huge population in Russia has little to no education — Christoffer

Are you serious?

I think what you're missing is that dictatorship works better during a crisis. That's why ancient democracies evolved into monarchies over and over.

If you have a functioning democracy, that's because you're lucky, not because you had good soil. Your country hasn't faced any major crises or wars in a while.

Are you serious? — jamalrob

Let me rephrase; a huge population in Russia has little to no quality education.

"in Russia students of 15 years of age demonstrate a level of knowledge “below average”

"Unfortunately, the destructive practice of depriving villages of school institutions continues to this day. Optimization was carried out in accordance with the plan“Changes in the sectors of the social sphere aimed at improving the efficiency of education and science until 2018”, adopted by order of the government back in 2014. In accordance with the document, it is planned to liquidate kindergartens and schools that regional authorities recognize as ineffective. In total, until 2018, 3,639 rural kindergartens and schools were closed, and some institutions of secondary vocational education, additional education, and boarding schools for orphans were also closed.

The amount offunding in the United States is ten times greater higher thanRussia.

(And the US doesn't even have a great educational system)

At present, in this indicator, our country is ten times behind China

And of course how the state controls the information teached, so that everything gets in line with Putin's propaganda narrative and does not enable free thought and speech around topics that could harm Putin's regime.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-schoolchildren-media-ukraine-invasion-b2027652.html

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2017/05/08/how-russian-kids-are-taught-world-war-ii-a57930


And of course there's the reports of Russian soldiers who didn't even know what Ukraine is, who didn't know about Chernobyl, who didn't know much of anything outside Putin's worldview.

So, maybe not "little to no education", but I wouldn't call any of this quality. And with some Russians not even knowing what's across the border from their own nation, or that there was something called the Chernobyl incident, how do you expect them to be able to have the "thought tools" of knowledge necessary to be critical about their own nation's regime and politics? Or dream of anything other than what they've been served?

I think what you're missing is that dictatorship works better during a crisis. That's why ancient democracies evolved into monarchies over and over.

If you have a functioning democracy, that's because you're lucky, not because you had good soil. Your country hasn't faced any major crises or wars in a while. — frank

Can be luck or can be the result of that soil, that shapes the democracy into being functional. Nothing happens overnight, a functional democracy doesn't just appear, it probably starts rough, but if the foundation (the soil) is good, it will grow into something better.

So yes, it is true that a crisis creates authoritarian autocracies, which is why it's important to get good soil and nurture time after the collapse of such an authoritarian autocracy. It requires an effort of the rebuilders to make sure that this happens, otherwise, they'll be the new crisis for which another despot emerges... just like what happened with Russia and Putin.

You have the arrogance of the lucky. :grin:

You have the arrogance of the lucky. — frank

Could be, I have a problem of arrogance, I know that much at least :sweat: