I don't give a fuck about human life.
— Merkwurdichliebe

Some people here do, and they might found your cynicism offensive. Just so you know. — Olivier5

Says the guy who thinks NATO handing Ukraine a few Nukes under the table to nuke Moscow and St. Petersburg is A. a good idea and B. Russia would be like "oh my, you got us! the ol' nukes under the table ploy, plausible deniability, we can't retaliate, untouchable".

I'm not sure about that how much panic there is. It's just usually that when you don't have anything to say, any actual objections on the topic, anything to counter the arguments, some people then resort to ad hominems. — ssu

Oh, you mean ad hominems like:

↪boethius That you are a professional propagandist. — Olivier5

It's just a form of escapism from the resident FSB influencer here, i.e. boethius. Nothing more. — Olivier5

↪boethius I'm just pointing at what I perceive as an important difference between other "Ukraine antagonists" here and you: they are amateurs, while you're a professional, IMO. — Olivier5

As pathetic desperation of people that "don't have anything to say, any actual objections on the topic, anything to counter the arguments"?

Or ... not these ad hominems?

The truth of the matter is that there is very little genetic difference between Mongols and Turkic people like the Tatars. — Apollodorus

In other words, Mongols were from Mongolia proper, and Turkic people were Mongols from adjacent areas. — Apollodorus

You didn't provide any evidence to support these claims. I have evidences that question them. Indeed Turkic people may be genetically very different from Mongols:

Only two out of five Siberian Tatar groups studied show partial genetic similarity to other populations calling themselves Tatars: Isker–Tobol Siberian Tatars are slightly similar to Kazan Tatars, and Yalutorovsky Siberian Tatars, to Crimean Tatars. The approach based on the full sequencing of the Y chromosome reveals only a weak (2%) Central Asian genetic trace in the Siberian Tatar gene pool, dated to 900 years ago. Hence, the Mongolian hypothesis of the origin of Siberian Tatars is not supported in genetic perspective.
Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S0026893316060029

In particular another study shows: The Turks and Germans were equally distant to all three Mongolian populations [...] These results confirmed the lack of strong genetic relationship between the Mongols and the Turks despite the close relationship of their languages (Altaic group) and shared historical neighborhood. .
source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12753667/

So again the genetic link between Crimean Tatars and Mongols is highly questionable also through the reference to generic "Tatars" or "turkic people" group (assuming this was sufficient, which is not even the case!). This is even less surprising if one understands that the ethnonym "Tatar" may be highly equivocal: Frequently different peoples, at times ethnically not connected with each other, were called Tatars. Many historians and ethnologists in the 19th-20th centuries, following the Kazan missionaries, designate with the ethnonym Tatar (without definitions) the peoples who in the past were called Tatars by someone, for example, the ancient Tatars, and the Mongolo-Tatars, and the Kipchak Khanate Tatars and the modern Bulgaro-Tatars, all of them are just simply called Tatars. As a result these ethnically not connected or only partially connected Tatars were group identified. We find this identification in the monographs on the history of Tatars, and in the "Tatar" sections of the school and high school textbooks written by some Russian, and sometimes by foreign authors. It resulted in rude distortions in the study of the ethnogenesis for the specific Tatars
Source: https://www.podgorski.com/main/tatar-origins.html

The original inhabitants of Crimea were the Tauri who lived mainly in the southern highlands while the lowlands were invaded by a succession of various tribes. But by the time of the Mongol invasions, Crimea was controlled by Russia who later took it back from the Mongols and Turks. — Apollodorus

To indigenous Russians and Ukrainians there was no difference between Mongols, Turkic people, and Tatars. The term “Tatar” referred to the non-Slavic, Mongol and Turkic tribes that invaded the region in the Middle Ages. Crimean Tatars are a subgroup of the Tatars and are, by definition, Turkic, i.e, closely related to the Mongols. — Apollodorus

Dude you are desperately trying to support your claim that Crimean Tatars are "the Mongols of Crimea" (now you revised your claim "closely related to Mongols"! How closely?!) and suggested their strong link to Middle Age invaders of Russian lands (including Crimea, right?).
Unfortunately you didn't provide anything that supports those claims and contradicts what I said. Besides the fact that Tatar and Mongols can not be confused from a genetic and historical point of view [1], that Tatars were originally a confederation of Turkic nomadic tribes covering a huge territory which is consistent with their great genetic variability (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartary#/media/File:1806_Cary_Map_of_Tartary_or_Central_Asia_-_Geographicus_-_Tartary-cary-1806.jpg), and that relying on blood purity is not only foolish but also gives a Nazi flavor to your theory matching ethnic groups with territorial claims (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_and_soil), the main problem is that you didn't provide any evidence specific to the Crimean Tatars in support of the idea that Crimea belongs to Russia more than to Crimean Tatars!

Concerning specifically the Crimean Tatars here are the claims you should address with pertinent evidences from the available literature:

- Crimean Tatars are the indigenous people of Crimea (not the Russians!) and it doesn't matter how pure their blood is for being considered indigenous (even actual Russians may have Tatar and Mongol genetic traces, Italians and Spaniards may have people with Arab ancestors yet they are not Arabs!). This is enough to say that, according to your theory, Crimean Tatars are the rightful owners of Crimea and not the Russians. Period.

- Crimean Tatars stemmed from merging different groups including pre-Mongol ethnic groups (like the Tauri, and others: Scythians, Goths, Byzantines, Genovese, later merging with Turkic groups such as Khazars, Kipchaks, Tatars and Ottoman Turks https://www.iccrimea.org/reports/genographic-results.html). The fact that Crimean Tatars' ethnogenesis took place in Crimea and consisted of several stages lasting over 2500 years is proved by genetic research showing that in the gene pool of the Crimean Tatars preserved both the initial component for more than 2.5 thousand years, and later in the northern steppe regions of the Crimea. (Source: https://us.edu.vn/en/Crimean_Tatar_people-0262024006)

- Crimea Tatars are not Mongols from a genetic point of view. This is a corollary of what I said before but here some recent genetic studies to confirm that once more:
1. 62% of the Crimean Tatars' genetic pool is not even of Asian origins! Source: https://www.iccrimea.org/reports/genographic-results.html
2. “The Westasian and Mediterranean genetic components (population of Asia Minor and Balkans) predominate in the gene pool of Crimea Tatars, the Eurasian steppe component is much fewer.” Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311805917_The_Tatars_of_Eurasia_peculiarity_of_Crimean_Volga_and_Siberian_Tatar_gene_pools
3. The Eurasian genetic influence concerns particularly a subgroup of Crimean Tatars:
“It is the most likely that discovered features of Steppe Crimean Tatars gene pool reflect the genetic contribution of medieval Eurasian Steppe nomads. The component predominant in Mountain and Coastal Crimean Tatars gene pools and in Crimean Greeks suggests that genetic contribution of East Mediterranean populations continued in Crimea for many centuries.”
Source: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/the-gene-pool-of-indigenous-crimean-populations-mediterranean-meets-eurasian-steppe/pdf


Conclusion: Wikipedia historical trivia (yours included) do not question but confirm that the ethnic stratification of Crimean Tatars relate to the period prior to, during and after the Mongol empire (which per se was already a multi-ethnic empire as many ancient empires were! And that is also why genetic evidence about “generic” Tatars wrt Mongols is neither very useful nor conclusive!), that is why they are not Mongols in a historical sense either!
So any assimilation of Crimean Tatars with Mongols or middle-age Mongolian-Tatar hordes is, to be kind, an oversimplification, partly based on historical misconceptions (arguably still supported by Russian propaganda [2]). And I would question also its relevance even if it was true! So if you are against any form of imperialism (at least the one that violates what belongs to the rightful owners), then you should oppose Russian imperialism in Crimea, instead of promoting it by spreading their lies about Crimean Tatars!

And they’re currently a small MINORITY (about 10%) in Crimea while the majority are ethnic Russian. — Apollodorus

Oh really?! Did you conveniently forget that they are a minority due to the Russification of the peninsula by Russian imperialism (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Ethnic_Population_of_Crimea_18th%E2%80%9321st_century.png, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Tatarization_of_Crimea), the kind of imperialism you claim to be opposing?! If you haven't, then you should oppose Russian imperialism in Crimea as much as you oppose NATO imperialism. Even more so with Russian imperialism, since Crimean Tatars have more problems with Russians than with NATO or Ukraine! (https://newlinesmag.com/essays/the-suffering-of-crimeas-tatars/ , https://theconversation.com/why-crimean-tatars-are-fearful-as-russia-invades-ukraine-178396)

[1]
The Tatars (/ˈtɑːtərz/; Tatar: татарлар, tatarlar, تاتارلر, Crimean Tatar: tatarlar; Old Turkic: , romanized: Tatar) is an umbrella term for different Turkic ethnic groups bearing the name "Tatar".[34] Initially, the ethnonym Tatar possibly referred to the Tatar confederation. That confederation was eventually incorporated into the Mongol Empire when Genghis Khan unified the various steppe tribes.[35] Historically, the term Tatars (or Tartars) was applied to anyone originating from the vast Northern and Central Asian landmass then known as Tartary, a term which was also conflated with the Mongol Empire itself. More recently, however, the term has come to refer more narrowly to related ethnic groups who refer to themselves as Tatars or who speak languages that are commonly referred to as Tatar, namely Tatar by Volga Tatars (Tatars proper), Crimean Tatar by Crimean Tatars and Siberian Tatar by Siberian Tatars. The largest group amongst the Tatars by far are the Volga Tatars, native to the Volga-Ural region (Tatarstan and Bashkortostan), who for this reason are often also known as "Tatars" in Russian. They compose 53% of the population in Tatarstan. Their language is known as the Tatar language. As of 2010, there were an estimated 5.3 million ethnic Tatars in Russia.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatars

[2]
The firm belief that the Crimean Tatars were descendants of the Golden Horde, who settled on the peninsula in the first half of the 13th century, was firmly ingrained in the minds of many scholars. This myth appeared immediately after the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 1783, and has since become firmly entrenched in official Russian and then Soviet historiography and continues to be replicated in the scientific literature. The falsifiers took the events related to the Horde period as the starting point of origin of the Crimean Tatars, which, in fact, is only a stage of a centuries-old, complex historical process.
Source: https://culture.voicecrimea.com.ua/en/ethnogenesis-of-the-crimean-tatars/

Says the guy who thinks NATO handing Ukraine a few Nukes under the table to nuke Moscow and St. Petersburg is A. a good idea — boethius

Stop lying. I never said it was a good idea. Only that if Russia nukes Ukraine, as you fantacized about, then Ukraine might be able to retaliate.

I genuinely believe you are on Putin's payroll. That's not an insult. In fact it's a compliment: at least you're getting paid for your lies, and your lies are much better crafted than others', more professional. You're the master of them all.

Ah here we go, from Feburary:

"Somalia's leadership has made a swift reversal on an oil exploration deal signed with a US company. On Saturday, the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Abdirashid Mohamed Ahmed announced that production sharing agreements had been signed with US-based firm, Coastline Exploration Ltd. Ahmed said in a statement that the deal was "a huge moment" for the people of Somalia. But with the ink barely dry, both Somalia's president and prime minister announced the deal was off. In a statement, the office of President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed said the deal was nullified. The presidential palace Villa Somalia tweeted that "it contravenes Presidential Decree 7/8/2021 which bans the inking of deals during elections so as to protect public resources from exploitation during elections."

Protecting public resources from exploitation? Time to be concerned about terrorists again!

https://m.dw.com/en/somalias-president-cans-us-oil-deal-hours-after-it-was-signed/a-60846562

---

It's not unlike that time last month when India, having refused to join in on Russian sanctions, all of a sudden, out of the blue, from completely nowhere, found themselves at the centre of US concern for "human rights abuses". Which of course it is up to it's neck in, but only used as a cugdel when American interests are not satisfied.

--

America is obviously very concerned with the poor people in Ukraine :sad:

Oh, you mean ad hominems like — boethius

@Boethius, I'm responsible of what I write. And yes, others might get offended at the insults hurled at them and respond accordingly. The last time I got really pissed off was a guy that said that the Saur-revolution was a blessing for Afghanistan and it was the best thing that happened to the country. If someone says exactly the same things as Putin and never actually criticizes Russia, but acts like an apologist, I think it's fair to say that the person is a troll. Hence for example Streetlight has criticized what Russians have done in Ukraine, so he's not a Russian troll.

(In the military coup about 2 000 died and then repression was introduced to Afghanistan, which it had never before seen with something like 27 000 political prisoners being executed by the communists. And the well known response to this was the countryside going up in arms and the mujahideen emerging and over 40 years of war then continuing in the country.)

Says the guy who thinks NATO handing Ukraine a few Nukes under the table to nuke Moscow and St. Petersburg is A. a good idea — boethius

Stop lying. I never said it was a good idea. Only that if Russia nukes Ukraine, as you fantacized about, then Ukraine might be able to retaliate. — Olivier5

Let's remember that nobody was giving them nukes. They already had them as Ukraine had been part of the Soviet Union. And this is the one point people forget: as if the sole successor of the Soviet Union was Russia and none of the other republics had any claim to what had been an union of Soviet Republics.

Ah here we go, from Feburary: — Streetlight

Well, if the new elected Somali government goes further with that US deal, you just have made your case then.

"Elected"

They already had them — ssu

And they still have the know-how. Technically speaking, the Ukrainians could build nuclear missiles tomorrow. The problem would be access to military grade uranium or plutonium.

America is obviously very concerned with the poor people in Ukraine — Streetlight

I don't get this refrain. You and I caring about all people is nice, but countries aren't you and I.

Why on Earth would any country be concerned with non-productive people who are an expensive drag to every nation? Being poor is an entirely different issue than countries not giving a shit. Poverty is a consequence of not contributing sufficient monetarily valued services or goods to the local economy.

Uh, poor as in woe-is-me poor not poor as in poverty-poor.

But considering Ukraine is an economic basket-case and will be even more so now maybe the difference is not all that great tbf.

Why on Earth would any country be concerned with non-productive people who are an expensive drag to every nation? Being poor is an entirely different issue than countries not giving a shit. Poverty is a consequence of not contributing sufficient monetarily valued services or goods to the local economy. — magritte

Yet, nations like mine (Sweden) contribute to donations with little to no actual return in any kind of neoliberal capitalist sense, whatever so-called experts on Swedish foreign affairs in here say. Sweden has for a very long time been one of the largest contributors of donations to poor nations or nations in need of help. That goes against any idea that a nation must have some ulterior motive, it might just be that people vote for a better world and understand that helping others can be just about helping others. If people stare long enough into the void of the geopolitics of nations not giving a shit, it's easy to do a fallacy of believing every nation in the world follows that example. Just like many in here believe that every nation in the west follows the same neoliberal extremism as the US. I'm not saying Sweden is perfectly innocent in every international deal, but compared to the worst offenders of national egocentric politics, we're not at all what you describe above. The "why" in that question can be answered with "because we can" out of our economy.

I generally fail at being consistently low-quality. — Christoffer

Classic. You don't disappoint. Tell me again how your posts are just sooo well formulated that anyone disagreeing with them simply must be trolling...

And harsh language, swears etc. are not ad hominems. — Christoffer

No accusing everyone who disagrees with you of being "mentally retarded" is. Your particular weapon of choice when it comes to the ad-hom is that your interlocutor's arguments need not be addressed because of either their lack of intellectual rigour, or their nefarious motive. Less flamboyant than @Olivier5's paranoid delusions about us all working for the FSB, but far more interesting. Counter-arguments need not be addressed as they're from the under-informed. How do we know they're under-informed? Their conclusions are faulty. How do we know their conclusions are faulty without countering them? There's no need to counter them, they're under-informed... Brilliant.

your first post in this thread is a sarcastic mock out of everyone seriously contemplating the risk of Russia invading Ukraine. — Christoffer

Not at all. It's mocking anyone suggesting that a war might 'just happen' and that the most powerful nation on the planet wouldn't have a position on that and be pulling strings as hard as it possibly can in a direction that suits it's agenda best.

The tone you set here is perhaps what sparks the quality to go down in a thread like this. I didn't start it, and neither did SSU or many others. — Christoffer

The tone of this thread has been that anyone talking about how America might share some blame is either uninformed, heartless, trolling, or actually working for the FSB. I really don't see how that could possibly be a coherent response to the perception of an overuse of sarcasm.

This is why I tried to call out to moderators to clean this shit up — Christoffer

No, what you called on the moderators to clean up was what you called poor arguments. But the moderators, having at the very least a post-adolescent grasp of epistemology recognised that the producers of said arguments would likely contest such a judgement and, lacking any means of disinterested arbitration, there the matter would rest in perpetuity.

Both or either. The US as a country cares about Ukraine as a country. People in either sense are at a different level of discourse and are a secondary consideration as needed to accomplish primary aims. We, as individuals are not the primary concern but are a fallout of greater circumstances.

I don't think you work for the FSB, other than pro bono. I believe @boethius does. He's far better at it than you will ever be.

The US as a country cares about Ukraine as a country. — magritte

Lol.

Yet, nations like mine (Sweden) contribute to donations with little to no actual return in any kind of neoliberal capitalist sense, whatever so-called experts on Swedish foreign affairs in here say. Sweden has for a very long time been one of the largest contributors of donations to poor nations or nations in need of help. — Christoffer

You are blessed to be living in Sweden. A country needs excess resources to be able to give charity to its needy. When our grand orange offered to buy Greenland, its inhabitants retorted that Danish welfare topped our offering.

They already had them as Ukraine had been part of the Soviet Union — ssu

Yet, "Ukraine never had the ability to launch those missiles or to use those warheads. The security measures against unauthorized use were under Moscow’s control. The Ukrainians might have found ways around those security measures, or they might not have. Removing the warheads and physically taking them apart to repurpose them would be dangerous, and Ukraine did not have the facilities for doing that. Nor did Ukraine have the facilities to maintain those warheads Source: https://nucleardiner.wordpress.com/2022/02/06/could-ukraine-have-retained-soviet-nuclear-weapons/

"Elected" — Streetlight

Well, a country that has basically collapsed, that has parts of it declared independent (Somaliland) and a major internal conflict, it's not surprising that there aren't general elections.

(BBC)The ballot was limited to Somalia's 328 MPs due to security concerns over holding a wider election, and one of them did not cast a vote.

Mr Mohamud received 214 votes, defeating Mr Farmajo who won 110 votes.

Three MPs are reported to have spoiled their ballots.

The unusual circumstances highlight Somalia's security issues as well as the lack of democratic accountability.

The real problem for Somalia will be the possibility of famine.

The alert from the World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) followed the latest food security assessments which showed that six million people in Somalia will face acute food insecurity in the coming months, unless the rains come.

That is almost double the number at the start of the year, said Lara Fossi, WFP Deputy Country Director in Somalia, who noted that Somalia last endured famine in 2011 and only narrowly avoided it in 2016-2017, thanks to prompt humanitarian intervention.

Add to this that the missing supplies from Ukraine and the global inflation will raise food prices, the victims of the war in Ukraine might be found also in Somalia and in the Sahel.

Yet, "Ukraine never had the ability to launch those missiles or to use those warheads. — neomac

Obviously they would have had to make a major program, but it wouldn't have been the situation of starting from nothing. The main obstacle wouldn't have been the technical aspects of the program.

The main obstacle would have been the West and the US. US had come to the conclusion that the best option was for Russia to solely have the Soviet Nuclear Arsenal, which obviously Russia totally agreed with. Let's not forget the environment of the Clinton-Yeltsin era: Russia wasn't a threat. The idea that Ukraine needed guarantees from Russian aggression wouldn't have flown. Russia had trouble fighting the Chechens inside Russia, so many simply wrote off Russia. Hence there would have been a coordinated effort against an Ukrainian nuclear program.

The disarmament of Ukraine actually didn't end with nuclear weapons. As the perception was that Soviet arms would end up in the wrong hands, the US persisted in Ukraine giving up large quantities of shoulder launched SAMs, which it now would have desperately needed. Shoulder launched missiles are too easy and effective.

Hence in 2005 NATO was doing things like this with Ukraine:

NATO Project to Destroy Excess Ukrainian Weapons Stocks
The United States is pleased to announce the launch of a NATO Partnership for Peace Trust Fund project to help Ukraine destroy stockpiles of excess munitions, small arms and light weapons, and Man-Portable Air Defense Systems. This represents the largest partnership trust fund project ever undertaken by NATO, and responds to Ukraine’s request for help in eliminating 1.5 million small arms and light weapons, and 133,000 tons of munitions. These stockpiles, some of which date from the Soviet era, are a threat to public safety and the environment and a potential proliferation risk. The four-phase project will span twelve years and cost approximately $27 million in donor contributions.

The United States will lead phase one of the NATO Trust Fund project, which will cost donors over $8.5 million. Ukraine will provide most of the operational and in-kind demilitarization costs. The project is due to start as soon as the spring of 2005. As the lead nation for phase one, the U.S. will make an initial contribution of $1,642,000.

The U.S. welcomes broader international support for the project, and will be working with potential donor countries and organizations, including outside the Partnership for Peace framework. We welcome early pledges of £400,000 from the United Kingdom and €240,000 from Norway.

Didn't read any of that.

How do we know they're under-informed? Their conclusions are faulty. — Isaac

Just as I pointed to, your arrogant first argument where you mocked others through sarcastic rhetoric ended up being downright wrong the moment Russia invaded Ukraine. No one could hand you scientific peer-reviewed evidence of this going to happen, but we all knew it based on reading the signs of the information coming out, understanding how to sift through the bias of media, and understanding Russia's information war. You've jumped between taking Putin at his words and saying he's lying, whatever fits the argument you're making at the time. Without any context to when and how things are said. So every time someone makes an inductive argument based on the current information you demand proof in big letters, but not when you yourself argue something, then the information quality can shift however you like. The case point was the discussion about education and stuff where my final argument had highly detailed papers in favor of my argument and you dismissed it when we ended up at that point. You play with arguments, you fracture them into pieces and pick and choose to make things easier for you, it's a dishonest way of discussion that makes it impossible to have it honest and in a good tone. And then you strawman or change someone else's argument or conclusion to mock it as a way of taking some higher ground, when in fact it's so obvious I can't take you seriously. If you had any intention of meeting me at some place of actual philosophical discussion you would have done so, but your constant low way of discussing makes it impossible to have a real discussion with you. You've set that bar early on, don't blame others for the result.

Not at all. It's mocking anyone suggesting that a war might 'just happen' and that the most powerful nation on the planet wouldn't have a position on that and be pulling strings as hard as it possibly can in a direction that suits it's agenda best. — Isaac

That wasn't what you wrote, you mocked the idea that the US provided honest intel of a coming invasion because it didn't fit your anti-US narrative. When it turned out it was perfectly honest information and that helped battle the false flag strategies of Russia at the start of the invasion, you changed the narrative again.

The tone of this thread has been that anyone talking about how America might share some blame is either uninformed, heartless, trolling, or actually working for the FSB. — Isaac

It has not, it's you guys who come in here with that argument and argue with such arrogant bully mentality of everyone who has a more grey-ish perspective on these matters. All it takes is a look at what you all are writing, how you write arguments against those who disagree, and see how the tone shifted. Like how @ssu gets constantly bashed for being some "pro"- Nato-loving US puppet when he's owning everyone's ass with his extremely well-researched arguments. If only I had his calm temper to handle all of that, but I don't, I can't stand bullshit. The reason why FSB payroll arguments are made is because of the blatant Russian-apologetic nature of some arguments. When someone writes purely about a Ukraine-Russian dynamic in this conflict, someone whataboutist it into some anti-US argument. It's sickening how any kind of critique against Putin and Russia has been turned to focus entirely on the US or Nato as a culprit. That's why it becomes apologetic because it shifts the focus from the atrocities and crimes of Russia to just talking about the US's role in it.

And this is what happens when people who might spend years criticizing neoliberalism and the US, go into a discussion where Russia is in fact the culprit, however you try to turn it around. Because I can turn what you say around and position that when I argued for possible reasons for Putin's actions and talked about how he aims to expand Russia into the style of the old empire with its larger borders and how Nato would block such attempts just by being in an alliance with independent nations and not from a place of malice, you call me uninformed, puppet, US-loving indoctrinated stupid.

And this is what's actually my point. The "tone" started when you people began to have that attitude, arrogantly talking down on anyone who isn't anti-American and anti-Nato. Even when I've positioned plenty of times that I'm no fan of Nato, but see how it is necessary security for my own nation, the grey nature of such a thing is lost and in you people's eyes I become an indoctrinated puppet of the US for having that conclusion. It's downright stupid.

If you go back and look, I started out with attempts at good arguments, but the disagreement with the conclusions triggered some of you to start mocking my arguments. I and the ones close to my conclusions just ended up using the same rhetoric against you, if we began with you guys calling us Nato and US puppets, it ended up being you all acting as apologetic Russian trolls. You reap what you sow.

Didn't read any of that. — Streetlight

Of course. Why would you participate in a discussion?

Tells everything about your contribution to this thread.

If I wanted badly written wikipedia summeries and two minute Google searches I would go to the source.

You are blessed to be living in Sweden. A country needs excess resources to be able to give charity to its needy. When our grand orange offered to buy Greenland, its inhabitants retorted that Danish welfare topped our offering. — magritte

We have excess resources because we understand how to handle the economy with care for the people. The irony of this is that we're still a free-market capitalist nation. Like, it seems possible to actually have socialism and capitalism in synthesis and the result is a high living standard, quality of life, and excess to help the poor with little to no demand of anything in return. Imagine if other nations started copying the same formula. This makes it strange to view news in Sweden because the bad things happening here get turned up to such extreme proportions that when compared to bad things in other nations it becomes a parody. Like, we have a real problem with gang violence and shootings right now in Sweden, but compare that to the US and it's like comparing to an outright war zone.

If I wanted badly written wikipedia summeries and two minute Google searches I would go to the source. — Streetlight

The only source you seem to refer to is the Jacobin magazine.

See - you can't even get a simple, easily verifible fact like that right. Let alone paragraphs of it.

I started out with attempts at good arguments — Christoffer

Just try, try really hard, to see that this is a subjective judgement of yours, not a fact about the world. If seeing that is too hard, then just imagine it is...

Now re-read your take on how things have panned out from the point of view of someone who disagrees with you about that subjective judgement. Someone who sees your arguments as carelessly lazy echoing of mainstream narrative, someone who sees your arguments as deliberate attempts to draw attention away from the one cause we can purposefully rebuke, towards the cause for whom rebuke is pointless virtue signalling.

Try to see your arguments from the perspective of someone seeing Ukraine slipping into an endless war, and becoming another horrific tally on America's million plus death toll for its foreign interventions.

Try to see your arguments from the perspective of someone for whom the faux hand-wringing over 4000 tragic deaths when 300,000 face starvation (and are afforded not so much as a passing sentence in the same press from which your position derives) is sickening.

Your moralizing may well seem genuine and heartfelt to you, its opposition seeming thus beastly by contrast, but there are those who genuinely believe your position does more harm than good, and by several fold. These are not trivial questions of philosophy. Thousands of actual people's lives are being destroyed by the forces and strategies we're debating the merits of.

badly written wikipedia summeries — Streetlight

:sweat:

Not much in the habit of writing post that aren't responses to anything (doubting anyone will read them), but this shining example of narrative altering really fits on this thread despite not being a direct reply to anything.

From FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting).

In 2018 the Atlantic Council wrote on the subject of the threat of the far right in Ukraine:

To be clear, far-right parties like Svoboda perform poorly in Ukraine’s polls and elections, and Ukrainians evince no desire to be ruled by them. But this argument is a bit of “red herring.” It’s not extremists’ electoral prospects that should concern Ukraine’s friends, but rather the state’s unwillingness or inability to confront violent groups and end their impunity.

By 2021 the same Atlantic Council in a piece entitled “The Dangers of Echoing Russian Disinformation on Ukraine,” give the argument as to why talk of far right problems in Ukraine was 'disinformation'...

In reality, Ukraine’s nationalist parties enjoy less support than similar political parties in a host of EU member states. Notably, in the two Ukrainian parliamentary elections held since the outbreak of hostilities with Russia in 2014, nationalist parties have failed miserably and fallen short of the 5% threshold to enter Ukrainian parliament.

The exact red herring they themselves alerted us to three years previous. Same data, different spin. When no American foreign policy is at stake, we're free to see lack of election support as a side issue to the rise in threatening violence. As soon as Nazism needs downplaying to ensure America's actions are whiter than white, those exact same election stats are wheeled out to perform the opposite function.

Just try, try really hard, to see that this is a subjective judgement of yours, not a fact about the world. If seeing that is too hard, then just imagine it is... — Isaac

You can look for yourself. My first arguments were in good faith of honest discussions, bringing up my perspective. And then look at your own first post. I'm not sure it's subjective to say that your post reeked of sarcastic mocking of others' arguments. So who started that behavior?

Now re-read your take on how things have panned out from the point of view of someone who disagrees with you about that subjective judgement. Someone who sees your arguments as carelessly lazy echoing of mainstream narrative — Isaac

Because mainstream is always bad? Mainstream can also be the voice of those actually working on researching the subject. It can also be different things in different nations. US "mainstream" is downright biased while mainstream in Sweden focuses much harder on facts from people who worked with analyzing all of this for many many years. The anti-mainstream argument is a blanket argument to use when the points to counter aren't easily countered. So the counterargument gets reduced to "mainstream bullshit". That's low quality.

I didn't echo anything like that, I looked at the information that exists and I have access to and made my argument based on somewhat of a consensus in the matter. You, however, especially with your radical nonsense conclusions about formal education and other stuff, just pull whatever cherry-picking necessary to fit your narrative. Then concludes other opinions to be "mainstream echo" and therefore meaningless.

Try to see your arguments from the perspective of someone seeing Ukraine slipping into an endless war, and becoming another horrific tally on America's million plus death toll for its foreign interventions. — Isaac

Yet, Ukraine seems to kind of win this war and they fought for themselves asking for material help. The problem with you people is that you totally ignore the Ukrainian's perspective, their wants, needs, ambitions, and will to exist. You criticize the US to play around with Ukrainian lives, while totally ignoring their opinions, independence, and needs. This is why your arguments come off as so blind and ignorant, because you blatantly ignore the Ukrainian perspective, just as you ignore the Swedish perspective of why we want to join Nato. You are so limited in your perspective that all you see is a chess game with US and Nato on one side and Russia on the other, ignoring anyone else on that field who has their own voice, opinions, and reasons to act.

Your argument becomes a shallow surface level hateful game of focusing all criticism on the US, whatever the cost of intellectual depth.

Your moralizing may well seem genuine and heartfelt to you, its opposition seeming thus beastly by contrast, but there are those who genuinely believe your position does more harm than good, and by several fold. — Isaac

Yet you ignore the Ukrainians and you argue that I argue for something that does more harm? Like, if it ends up as things seem to end up now, with the Ukrainians winning, pushing Russia out, and returning Ukraine to themselves to live as they see fit and not under the boot of a despot, all of this fighting was not in vain, was not a waste, but a defense for the right to exist as they want to exist, without being under the boot of Russia.

So who's actually arguing for more harm? The one who is open to the idea of Ukraine being under the boot of Russia just to end the war, or the one hoping for them to win back their freedom against Russia, even if it comes at the cost of lives? My vote is for fighting to survive, to live free from Russia and you are pretty alone if you feel otherwise.

These are not trivial questions of philosophy. Thousands of actual people's lives are being destroyed by the forces and strategies we're debating the merits of. — Isaac

And how would Ukraine be if no one helped Ukraine? If the US didn't help Ukraine with material and intel? Looking at the war crimes of Russia, the horror and hell that could have happened if they had to succumb to that outcome.

My first arguments were in good faith of honest discussions — Christoffer

So 'no' to the trying then?

Because mainstream is always bad? — Christoffer

No, because reciting the mainstream is lazy, and careless when mainstream narratives work to immiserate people. Again, I'm just trying to get you to look at this from the other perspective. From the perspective of someone who disagrees with...

mainstream in Sweden focuses much harder on facts from people who worked with analyzing all of this for many many years. — Christoffer

...or disagrees with...

made my argument based on somewhat of a consensus in the matter. — Christoffer

These are, again, not just facts of the world, they are opinions of yours and other people disagree with them. That changes how they see your arguments. If you think your arguments are soundly based on unbiased consensus, then of course you're going to find opposition to them incoherent (or at least not understand the vitriol), but for those who disagree with that assessment, we might be offended your lack of effort, your lazy preference for the easiest narrative.

Your arguments have you and your country come out completely blameless and leave absolutely no obligation on you to do anything. They look just too convenient to someone unconvinced as to the unbiased authority of your sources.