I wasn't talking about outright lies, I'm talking about framing.

Baden had some good examples of propaganda by Western media outlets. Brushing that off as bias is in my view problematic because it suggests all journalists collectively suck. Or it suggests the capitalist drive for profit is such that only certain narratives are profitable so that's what's written just to get unique visitors.

Comrade, as they say where we are from, the goat with the longest beard is wisest.

Ashes.

Is that sort of thing off the table already? — jorndoe

Absolutely not! But I thought that was implied with my post history in this thread. :wink:

But yes, a negotiated settlement is best for everyone involved even if I'm sure certain US hawks will see their hopes dashed.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Caw2XsbJjaR/?utm_medium=copy_link

Geopolitics in a nutshell.

I think he's referring to Appolodorus.

Talk of an overreaction. Weren't you born during the Cold War? Seems you have been blissfully ignorant about nuclear deterrence or how it works. — ssu

I see you have no argument against my argument other than "this is how we've been doing it for decades!" Pretty cool of you to assume ignorance instead ofengaging my argument that clearly disagrees with nuclear deterrence as an acceptable policy.

Mutual Assured Destruction, or the idea that after innocents are killed due to the use of a WMD that is totally indiscriminate it then is a great strategic step to kill more innocents, is fundamentally flawed.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/466473

Some more just war theory background.

It's the only rational position in any conjoint analysis of this issue.

variables:
1. Putin doesn't use nukes, no escalation
2. Putin uses nukes, no escalation
3. Putin uses nukes, escalation

costs:
1. Ukrainians and Russians die, I pay extra tax funding Ukrainians
2. Ukrainians and Russians die, I pay extra tax funding Ukrainians
3. everybody dies

If Putin uses nukes, we shouldn't do anything. So yes, Putin trusting in me making the only reasonable choice seems about right. I can only hope the jingoist leaders in the West aren't as hubristic they think there's anything to win here.

It's only a risky move because apparently there are some idiots who like to entertain dying in a fiery ball of fire or radiation poisoning because they think it's heroic to stand up to a bully. Let's take the kindergarten morality out of hese equations please for fuck's sake I'm begging everyone before you cause the death of my children.

Don't underestimate yourself. Just in comparison, would you have thought Western people would fold so quickly in line with covid lock downs? Also, now it might look that West Europe is bound to have the energy ties to Russia. In one year it can be different. — ssu

I will welcome Russian tanks in my street if it avoids a nuclear war. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is worth a strategic nuclear escalation. Freedom be damned. I prefer to live and find the relative freedom possible even in the most autocratic regimes.

Empires come and go. I'm not willing to die for one. I'm not willing to risk the lives of others for one.

What's exactly the point about being able to categorise them as Europeans other than to highlight someone's racism?

Let me add to that: https://www.counterpunch.org/2008/02/18/nato-s-kosovo-colony/

I don't share your optimism. I think he would use it, particularly tactical nukes.

Your view is shared by quite a few politicians but for less savoury reasons.

Putin has surely his limitations on what he can do. Don't think otherwise. — ssu

I can't do anything with this. What limitations? Why? What would stop Putin from shooting a 1 MT tactical nuke into Kiev or Mariupol if he can't do it by conventional means? You think NATO or the US will all of sudden get involved?

That has exactly nothing to do with what I said but thanks for posting.

:roll: it's not a fucking Mike Tyson fight you're betting on. There's actual people dying. The likelihood of the Ukrainians winning is inversely correlated to what type of weapons Putin is willing to deploy. Unless you can convincingly argue that Putin will not escalate until he's assured of victory, it's exactly this fantasy that will lead to unnecessary deaths of civilians.

LOL. Never tried that.

And don't forget the are many steps of escalation steps available to Russia between this conventional war and nukes. He'll probably drop a tactical nuke before surrendering his states goals in Ukraine. So a long war actually increases the risk of escalation as well.

Don’t be silly. You can figure that out for yourself. Minimal force is fine, be this grabbing arms or pushing away - both of which can result in some injury being incurred. — I like sushi

The point is that in almost all circumstances of someone hitting you, you can walk away. If there are weapons involved you run away. Only an idiot overestimating his martial abilities will try to fight. Thanks to 10 years of Aikido (and some other martial arts) I know 12 ways of disarming someone with a knife, depending on whether they are in front or behind me, but I will fucking run if I have a chance.

Sadly social media is filled with the fantasy fighting an armed person bare handed is realistic or even smart.

under which circumstances can't you walk away?

My wife hit me once, I told her if she did it again I'd get a divorce. Never happened again. Our dustbin has a dent though.

I'm pretty confident the REUTERS picture happened. Not so much about the dumpster. It's possible and even likely, I'm just saying that there's plenty of proof out there of fake pictures and videos. We're being flooded with fake news in normal times, it's even worse now. I'm just saying, be careful with what you believe and source your pictures so we have a chance of vetting it.

After Putin's stadium performance, flags dumped into garbage. Sometimes a picture tells a lot, actually. — ssu

In this day and age? Like people cheering the destruction of twin towers which never happened. I don't trust images especially if they're unsourced and don't quite understand why you would.

Ukrainian-American Yuliy Dubovyk writes the following:

Like any other US puppet regime, Ukraine doesn’t have any real independence. Kiev has been actively pushed to confront Russia by every US administration, against the will of the majority of Ukrainian people.

...

The support for Ukraine that fills the Western media now is not out of real solidarity with the people of Ukraine. If that were the case, the US wouldn’t have overthrown our government twice in a decade; it wouldn’t have supported the policies that made us the poorest country in Europe; it wouldn’t have fueled a brutal civil war for the past eight years.

The reason US media outlets and politicians are all backing Ukraine now is because they want to use the Ukrainian military and civilian population as cannon fodder in a proxy war with a political adversary.

This is a philosophy forum, not the watercooler. There should be more to one's moral arguments than "gut feeling". — baker

So you don't know what ius ad bellum is. You do realise this reply just makes you sound like an idiot, right?

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

it also incorrectly identifies "being hit" as "being in a fight". It's only a fight once the person being hit, starts hitting back.

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

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

They're not prophecies. You can analyse the situation and have an understanding of war and history and current geopolitical decisions to get to a decent conclusion.

What I think is at play for your reticence here is you're worried that in fact Boethius might be right all along, that cheerleading the continuation of the war and sending armaments (to "bleed the Russians" as Niall Ferguson quoted a US official), could be an immoral position.

A ruin can be rebuilt, that is very easy, but a fascist regime cannot improve. It cannot be reformed into a less fascist one. Russia is now a fascist militarist petrostate, and will remain so for quite a while. This can't be good for them Russian, although of course it's good for the leaders.

If Ukraine manages to remain a democracy, it will rebound. Of course this reamains to be seen. — Olivier5

The war isn't contributing to Russian socio-economic organisation. It was a fascist military oligarchy before the war started.

Ukraine was a democracy in name only. Riven with corruption.

What I'm missing from your analysis is number of deaths and deplacement of people. I'm somewhat less concerned with economic damage; the ruins seem to suggest a lot civilian death. I suppose that wasn't very clear. Russia doesn't have to rebuild much, except military equipment so far. So again, under which realistic circumstances will Russia come out worse than Ukraine?

I'm happy it illicits disgust because that's precisely the emotion you should be having when people are dying in war. My vulgarities are intended as functional. And I suggested you and frank find a log cabin. @ssu already has one for his savusauna.

Still curious what circumstances you think can realistically arise where Ukraine isn't the party that is worst off. Just going by the destruction in various cities seems difficult to reproduce elsewhere.

Any insights on how the Italian and French diplomatic corps are looking at things? They're usually well informed and more independent thinkers than the British or Dutch.

Why don't you expound a bit on under which circumstances you see another party suffer more?

I can imagine nukes but I'd rather not. What other developments and circumstances do you think will viably lead to Ukraine having been shafted royally but where it will actually be another country who's bleeding out of its anus? Figuratively speaking of course.

You are of course right that no one can possibly win this war. The question now is more about who will lose the most, who will be crippled the longest. — Olivier5

By any measure that will always be the Ukrainians.

:cry:

I hope Ukraine and Russia can work out a peace deal soon and avoid this insane bloodshed.

same article :

His comments caused a stir, and the Ukrainian government quickly sought to clarify the matter. The spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, Oleh Nikolenko, tweeted that Mr. Prystaiko’s comments had been reported out of context. “Ukraine’s position remains unchanged,” he said. “The goal of NATO membership is enshrined in the constitution.”

And he didn't state no hope of joining but he would consider letting the plan go if it would avoid war.

In any case, Zelensky's statement can't set aside the constitution or change established NATO policy.

before getting into the substance of that, why don't you share a source?

following the Russian military invasion in Ukraine and parliamentary elections in October 2014, the new government made joining NATO a priority.On 21 February 2019, the Constitution of Ukraine was amended, the norms on the strategic course of Ukraine for membership in the European Union and NATO are enshrined in the preamble of the Basic Law, three articles and transitional provisions. — Wiki

At the June 2021 Brussels Summit, NATO leaders reiterated the decision taken at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine would become a member of the Alliance with the Membership Action Plan (MAP) as an integral part of the process and Ukraine's right to determine its future and foreign policy, of course without outside interference. — Wiki

Scholz was in damage control mode on 22 Feb, because on 14 Feb he said all countries have the right to choose their alliances freely, and the principle is not negotiable. That pissed off the Finnish.

Bombing cities lead -- I think -- to more deaths than cheerleading, so by your own yardstick it is morally far more disgusting to bomb civilians than to cheerlead anyone. And I agree with you! — Olivier5

I don't think this was the issue to begin with. But even so when people are manufacturing consent that we should support the Ukrainians no matter what, it makes people unreceptive to a more quantitative analysis in this regard. Just look how many pages it took to find some semblance of agreement when in fact the differences of opinion between posters here are minimal.

Ok, but the rules say an armed breach of sovereignty is a crime of aggression. So sometimes not helping the victim is morally right because the victim doesn't deserve our support (because he's a homicidal dictator). But there's still a crime. So what the point is, is that the qualification that something is a crime is not sufficient to decide whether the victim ought to be helped or not.

One measure is the moral quality of the victim for you. Fine. I can go along with that on case-by-case basis as sometimes this might not be all that clear (it was with Saddam).

It's been suggested here that another measure could be: what course of action leads to the least number of death. Now, this requires you to step in my shoes for a moment. I believe Crimea and this Ukraine war are highpoints in a proxy war the US and Russia have been fighting about Ukraine at least since 2004 (ssu put it even earlier). So what the US and Russia have been doing to each other using Ukraine to establish influence in the country in favour of one or the other has culminated in territory loss in 2014 and a war now.

You don't have to agree, just understand that that's my understanding of the context. Given that then the Ukrainians are victims of a larger power struggle and I would like to see the quickest, least deadly resolution to the conflict ensuring both the US and Russia will leave it alone. Does sending armaments make this more likely? Under some assumptions it does but it will drag out the war and will lead to more Ukrainian (and Russian) casualties but maybe those casualties are worth a better negotiation position against Russia. Under other assumptions it's worse, it just leads to more death and no better result in the long run. If the latter is the case then sending armaments is the wrong thing to do. That's not to say it's clear at this point what the right decision is but it's entirely possible sending armaments will result in a lot more death (especially since the Russians have no problems bombing civilians) without any meaningful gain in any area.

It's under such circumstances supporting Ukraine by sending weapons would be morally wrong because it only leads to more innocent people dying (and I would actually argue that even soldiers are innocent in this, because they just get send by the guys making the decisions. Well, it's a bit more nuanced when we're talking about war crimes but soldiers dying is as lamentable as civilians - they're human beings too).

I don't see how moral questions can be considered trivial or stupid questions on a philosophy forum. They are important, perhaps not politically but humanely. You don't want to ruin your soul for Putin. — Olivier5

But there is no moral question. We agree Putin is morally wrong and his war is illegal. We disagree about the role of the US. What is stupid is asking me to qualify Putin or the US as being better than the other. Criciticism of the US and NATO is in no way, shape or form excuse Putin's moral responsibility in this. A murderer can't excuse himself by saying another person is a murderer too.

I think your "popularity" questions are stupid. You as a person not so much, I've seen you post in other threads.