Should Europeans do what Russians tell them? — neomac

Europeans should, of course, do what Europeans say.

However, it depends on what kind of Europeans we're talking about, and under the influence of which non-European power they operate. From what I see, America has far more influence on Europe than Russia.

So, @Streetlight does seem to have a point.

With arguments rather, which you failed to address

One important point to keep in mind here, as I've mentioned to @ssu also, is that avoiding war is a good in its own right. Resisting the drive of arms dealers and bankers to make money out of misery is also a good in its own right. And, for those of us on the left, fighting against corporate hegemony in general is a good in its own right. That means that arguments in favour of such strategies only need to be plausible for it to be justified to hold them. We only need show they're worth a try.

Contrariwise, arguments in favour of war, or that favour corporate profiteering do not have moral ends in their own right. To argue in favour of such ends one must argue that we (unfortunately) must adopt such strategies to avoid worse outcomes.

That means counterarguments to each position are different.

To argue against the former one must show it is not even possible to hold such a view. That one is (regrettably) compelled by the evidence to reject it.

To argue against the latter, however, one only need show that a plausible alternative exists, that we are not compelled by the evidence to reluctantly accept war, we have another route to try.

With reason and arguments rather, which you failed to address — Olivier5

Bollocks.

You said...

the EU will most probably be extremely generous with Ukraine — Olivier5

That's just bald assertion with neither evidence nor argument provided.

And...

the Russians could be persuaded to call it a day sooner than you think. — Olivier5

Again, absolutely devoid of either argument or evidence.

And...

Point 4 is to wooly for discussion. — Olivier5

Vague handwaving.

Since you cannot counter them, my arguments do not exist. Ok.

I cannot demonstrate the future — Olivier5

Well, as far as I'm aware you can't even demonstrate your claims relating to the present! :smile:

It is entirely possible that some Ukrainians are "angry" and "fearful", but why bring the "Uighurs" into it, when, per your own admission, you can't demonstrate that there is any prospect for the Ukrainians to "go the way of the Uighurs"?

Since you cannot counter them — Olivier5

I shall counter them in kind...

Points 1 and 2 are not debatable; the EU will most probably not be extremely generous with Ukraine, and the Russians could not be persuaded to call it a day sooner than you think. Their forces too are not fast eroding. They could not collapse too. Point 4 is suitable for discussion.

There are all the murders already committed against civilians. That is evidence.

1. "Murder" is a very serious crime that needs to be established by the courts, not by social media activists.

2. An act of murder committed now is NOT evidence of murders committed in the future.

3. A far more likely scenario seems to be that once the military hostilities have ceased, so will the violence against civilians.

Incidentally, here is some interesting news for you:

It is now three months since the west launched its economic war against Russia, and it is not going according to plan. On the contrary, things are going very badly indeed ….

Russia is winning the economic war - and Putin is no closer to withdrawing troops – The Guardian

A far more likely scenario seems to be that once the military hostilities have ceased, so will the violence against civilians. — Apollodorus

No one is willing to bet on that, though.

It's very cute that your imagination is so brutally stunted that your question is - which non-European entity should tell Europe what to do? — Streetlight

Mmmkey, and what if Europeans tell themselves to do what the US tells them to do?

See, this is why you are an idiot not worth paying attention to. The Nazis who pushed Zelensky to war did so because they were Ukrainian nationalists who did not want any compromise with Russia - including ratifying Minsk, or say, not bombing the ever-living daylights out of Russian-speaking Ukraine. — Streetlight

Oh I see, in your personal idiom, "Nazi" are all Ukrainians who support Zelensky's choice to resist Russian interference/invasion b/c they want to defend Ukrainian sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. Out of curiosity, are the Russians Nazi too for bombing, killing, raping their Ukrainian "brothers" and "sisters", and their land-grabbing in the name of the ethnic Russians and the glory of Holy Russia? Do you also support the racial/racist theory of the rightful owners by any chance?

Mmmkey, and what if Europeans tell themselves to do what the US tells them to do? — neomac

Stupid question.

Oh I see, in your personal idiom, "Nazi" are all Ukrainians who support Zelensky's choice to resist Russian interference/invasion b/c they want to defend Ukrainian sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. — neomac

No, Nazis are literally Nazis, I don't need to redefine terms so as get away with defending Nazis.

Mmmkey, and what if Europeans tell themselves to do what the US tells them to do? — neomac
Stupid question. — Streetlight

The reason why the US is hegemonic and can persuade or impose their will on others is exactly because the US has the economic/military means, positive or negative incentives, to get what they want. And Russians and Chinese regional powers aspiring to challenge the dominant American power want simply to replace it in part or totally to exercise their hegemonic power. The problem is that they are authoritarian regimes and don't like soft-power as much as hard-power. If you prefer to live under their hegemony, I don't.
And as long as Europe is not strong enough to assert itself as a geopolitical power at the level of the other contenders, they have to pick their side according to their interests. And listen carefully what American likes or dislikes to not run in greater troubles for their own interest.
But I'm sure you have a solution to fix the World right?

No Nazis are literally Nazis, I don't need to redefine terms so as get away with defending Nazis. — Streetlight

Are the Russians Nazi too for bombing, killing, raping their Ukrainian "brothers" and "sisters", and their land-grabbing in the name of the ethnic Russians and the glory of Holy Russia? Is the Russification of the Donbas and Crimea Nazi enough to you?

1. "Murder" is a very serious crime that needs to be established by the courts, not by social media activists. — Apollodorus

Yes, and only a Russian court. I bet the civilians in Bucha quite possibly resisted to some degree against their liberators and, well, what do you expect a group of soldiers to do? This is a war against fascism. How dare the West profane the reputation of such a professional and well-trained military without due process. We can't just assume guilt here. Maybe the civilians tied up, bound, and killed themselves. I wish stupid westerners would stop jumping to conclusions.

So as long as Europe is not strong enough to assert itself as a geopolitical power at the level of the other contenders, they have to pick their side according to their interests. — neomac

Ah yes, the ol' "this genocidal state of affairs is immutable and my genocidal team is better than their genocidal team so there". And only someone who is living under a rock or has had their head bashed in by that self-same rock can imagine that American power is in any way 'softer' than the 'authoritarian regimes' it is otherwise indistinguishable from. No other country on Earth has as much blood on its hands as the US; no other country on Earth even belongs to the same order of death-dealing magnitude.

Are the Russians Nazi too for bombing, killing, raping their Ukrainian "brothers" and "sisters", and their land-grabbing in the name of the ethnic Russians and the glory of Holy Russia? Is the Russification of the Donbas and Crimea Nazi enough to you? — neomac

Russians are clearly not Nazis, they are simply capitalists doing what capitalist nations always do - rape, plunder, and kill.

I never said that "no crimes were committed". And I never said "only a Russian court" can establish a war crime.

War crimes do happen, on both sides. It still doesn't amount to proof that Ukrainians are in danger of "going the way of the Uighurs".

The way I see it, the Russians haven't got the manpower to keep the whole of Ukraine permanently occupied, especially when the West keeps arming the Ukrainians. They may be able to hold areas that are Russian-speaking or ethnic-Russian. But (a) that's a different matter and (b) it's got nothing to do with "Uighurs".

No one is willing to bet on that, though. — Olivier5

Right. So, you're reducing the discussion to "betting", "guessing", extrapolating, speculating, and name-calling.

All you need to do now is post some pics to "prove" that your guesses are "true", and you'll be indistinguishable from @ssu .... :smile:

you're reducing the discussion to "betting", "guessing", extrapolating, speculating, .... — Apollodorus

We are talking of what might happen in the future, if Russia grabs a large swath of new Ukrainian territories. The question is: How will the civilian population in those territories be treated by the occupying troops?

My answer is: the actual, documented behavior of said occupying troops in Bucha and hundreds other places is indicative of what will happen in such a scenario. The Russians will be faced by sporadic acts of resistance and will torture and kill random civilians by the thousands to try and get back at the resistance. That has been the pattern they followed so far.

It will far worse than Palestine.

You argued that their behavior will certainly change after a peace deal is signed... So you can predict the future with absolute certainty? No, you can't. In fact you know damn that I am right and that the atrocities will most probably continue, barely abated. But you don't let these atrocities bother you. You set them aside as 'unproven'. Just like the Holocaust is 'unproven' to some.

There are all the murders already committed against civilians. That is evidence. — Olivier5

As there were by Ukrainian forces in Donbas before the invasion. So shall we let neither side have it?

My answer is: the actual, documented behavior of said occupying troops in Bucha and hundreds other places is indicative of what will happen in such a scenario. — Olivier5

Good. So list the atrocities in occupied Crimea which give you cause to believe a Russian occupied territory will be worse than a Ukraine occupied one. Compare those to the ones reported in Ukraine occupied Donbas and explain how you arrive at the conclusion that Russian occupied Donbas will be so much worse that it is worth thousands of lives to avoid it.

We already have an example of a Russian occupied territory of Ukraine. Why are you avoiding using it to make your judgements?

It is both fascinating and horrifying to really come to grips with both how the West was treating Ukraine and how Ukraine was treating it's own citizens before the war. I mean the whole place was a complete mess, and one being exacerbated and heightened by Western imperiousness. I mean, this is from Sept 2014:

In April 2014, fresh from riots in Maidan Square and the February 22 coup, and less than a month before the May 2 massacre in Odessa, the IMF approved a $17 billion loan program to Ukraine’s junta. Normal IMF practice is to lend only up to twice a country’s quote in one year. This was eight times as high.

Four months later, on August 29, just as Kiev began losing its attempt at ethnic cleansing against the eastern Donbas region, the IMF signed off on the first loan ever to a side engaged in a civil war, not to mention rife with insider capital flight and a collapsing balance of payments. Based on fictitiously trouble-free projections of the ability to pay, the loan supported Ukraine’s hernia currency long enough to enable the oligarchs’ banks to move their money quickly into Western hard-currency accounts before the hernia plunged further and was worth even fewer euros and dollars.

This loan demonstrates the degree to which the IMF is an arm of U.S. Cold War politics. Kiev used the loan for military expenses to attack the Eastern provinces, and the loan terms imposed the usual budget austerity, as if this would stabilize the country’s finances. Almost nothing will be received from the war-torn East, where basic infrastructure has been destroyed for power generation, water, hospitals and the civilian housing areas that bore the brunt of the attack. Nearly a million civilians are reported to have fled to Russia. Yet the IMF release announced: “The IMF praised the government’s commitment to economic reforms despite the ongoing conflict.” A quarter of Ukraine’s exports normally are from eastern provinces, and are sold mainly to Russia. But Kiev has been bombing Donbas industry and left its coal mines without electricity.

And:

U.S. and IMF backing seems intended to help reduce European dependence on Russian gas so as to squeeze its balance of payments. The idea is that lower gas revenues will squeeze Russia’s ability to maneuver in today’s New Cold War. But this strategy involves a potentially embarrassing U.S. alliance with Kolomoyskyy, reportedly the major owner of Burisma via his Privat Bank. He “was appointed by the coup regime to be governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a south-central province of Ukraine. Kolomoysky also has been associated with the financing of brutal paramilitary forces killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.” The term “ethnic Russian” is a kakaism for local protest against fracking by kleptocrats privatizing the economy’s natural resource wealth.

It will be expensive to restore power and water facilities that have been destroyed by the Kiev forces in Donetsk, which faces a cold dark winter. Kiev has stopped paying pensions and other revenue to the Eastern Ukraine, all but guaranteeing its separatism. Even before the Maidan events the local population sought to prevent gas fracking, just as Germany and other European countries have opposed it.

Also opposed is the appropriation of land and other properties by Ukrainian kleptocrats and especially foreigners such as Monsanto, which has invested in genetically engineered grain projects in Ukraine, seeing the country as Europe’s Achilles Heel when it comes to resisting GMOs. A recent report by the Oakland Institute, Walking on the West Side: the World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict, describes IMF-World Bank pressure to deregulate Ukrainian agricultural land use and promote its sale to U.S. and other foreign investors. The World Bank’s Investment Finance Corporation (IFC) has “advised the country to ‘delete provisions regarding mandatory certification of food in the listed laws of Ukraine and Government Decree,’” and “to avoid ‘unnecessary cost for businesses’” by regulations on pesticides, additives and so forth.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/09/the-imfs-new-cold-war-loan-to-ukraine/

Anyone who think the US will treat Ukraine with 'a light touch' is completely out of their god damned mind. They will use this war to utterly fuck Ukraine in no different a way than the current Russian rape of the country, itself sponsored by American manouvering.

American power is in any way 'softer' than the 'authoritarian regimes' it is otherwise indistinguishable from. No other country on Earth has as much blood on its hands as the US; no other country on Earth even belongs to the same order of death-dealing magnitude. — Streetlight

American power didn't bomb, kill, rape, loot, land-grab Europeans to have them support Ukraine.
Tell me your solution to fix the World, messiah.

Are the Russians Nazi too for bombing, killing, raping their Ukrainian "brothers" and "sisters", and their land-grabbing in the name of the ethnic Russians and the glory of Holy Russia? Is the Russification of the Donbas and Crimea Nazi enough to you? — neomac
Russians are clearly not Nazis, they are simply capitalists doing what capitalist nations always do - rape, plunder, and kill. — Streetlight

OK, bombing, killing, raping, looting, land-grabbing, oppressing minorities (like the Crimean Tatars) for nationalistic reasons is not Nazi to you. What else is required to be Nazi then?

American power didn't bomb, kill, rape, loot, land-grab Europeans to have them support Ukraine. — neomac

No, they just enabled and continue to prolong a devastating war which is killing masses of Ukrainians day by day all the better than they can decimate Ukraine on their own terms at the end of it.

OK, bombing, killing, raping, looting, land-grabbing, oppressing minorities (like the Crimean Tatars) for nationalistic reasons is not Nazi to you. What else is required to be Nazi then? — neomac

Are you a stupid person? Because this is a stupid person question. Or is this just another deflection from the fact that you literally argued in defense of Nazis?

No, they just enabled and continue to prolong a devastating war which is killing masses of Ukrainians day by day. — Streetlight

I'm still waiting for your recipe to fix the World, holy messiah.

OK, bombing, killing, raping, looting, land-grabbing, oppressing minorities (like the Crimean Tatars) for nationalistic reasons is not Nazi to you. What else is required to be Nazi then? — neomac
Are you a stupid person? Because this is a stupid person question. — Streetlight

Show me how phenomenally smart you are by giving me your definition of "Nazi": bombing, killing, raping, looting, land-grabbing, oppressing minorities (like the Crimean Tatars) for nationalistic reasons is not Nazi. What else then?

OK. I'll try to take you seriously. How do any of the 'methods' you list apply to the debate here? How do they lead to a decision on one theory over another? — Isaac

Mine was a general consideration to clarify how I would distinguish rational and irrational persuasion. There is no method that aggregates all the methods.

Yes, but other - perfectly intelligent - people disagree. Your epistemic peers disagree. So either you are the sole possessor of some magic ability to discern what is rational and what is not, or there is a legitimate difference of opinion about the two conflicting theories which cannot be resolved by appealing to rational support (since that forms part of the disagreement to be resolved). Hence the question why choose side A over side B? — Isaac

Whenever peers and experts disagree with me, I should examine how rational their arguments are to rationally persuade myself that they have equal or more plausible reasons to claim e.g. that Russia is not a threat to the West. Without knowing where exactly we disagree and for what reasons, giving up on my beliefs as I rationally processed them would be a fallacious submission to peer and expert pressure, unless I have reasons to trust other people’s opinions more than mine in the given circumstances for specific claims because “they know better”. And this trust can be again more or less rational.

You can list a dozen reasons why your choice of side A is reasonable, rational, and I'd probably agree with the vast majority of them, but we're not talking about why side A is one of the available options, we're talking about why you chose it over side B, which is also one of the available options (reasonable rational people have also reached that conclusion). — Isaac

If there are two claims that I find both defensible after rational examination, I would find more rational to suspend my judgement.

Either you're arguing that you're just much smarter than all of them, or you have to concede that their position too is reasonable and rational - ie, in Quinean terms, the facts underdetermine the theory. — Isaac

That would be a false dichotomy: I’m neither arguing nor conceding. All options are open: either they are smarter than I am, or I’m smarter than they are, or we are equally smart but we fail to understand each other for non-pertinent reasons or we are all stupid but everyone in their own way .
Besides if I were to consider how popular is the option I disagree with, I would consider also how popular is the option I agree with.

Show me how phenomenally smart you are by giving me your definition of "Nazi": bombing, killing, raping, looting, land-grabbing, oppressing minorities (like the Crimean Tatars) for nationalistic reasons is not Nazi. What else then? — neomac

So the answer is yes then. OK, good to know.

So the answer is yes then — Streetlight

I don't know, you didn't answer my question. Are you smart enough to remember what it is? I'm still waiting for your answer, holy messiah.

Congratulation to @Streetlight for his demonstration of Godwin's law.

Just like the Holocaust is 'unproven' to some. — Olivier5

So, because the Holocaust is "unproven" to some, this somehow "proves" that Russia is going to exterminate the Ukrainians??? :rofl:

As far as I'm aware, you admitted to be unable to predict or demonstrate the future:

I cannot demonstrate the future. — Olivier5

Basically, it seems that you're trying to sell us your conjectures and speculations as "fact".

My point was that I'm against world government and that many leading personalities see the UN as a form of world government:

A number of prominent persons, such as Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Bertrand Russell and Mahatma Gandhi, called on governments to proceed further by taking gradual steps towards forming an effectual federal world government ...

World government - Wikipedia

Indeed, the UN does make policies that affect all its members, much as a government does.

It’s got a General Assembly, Security Council, World Court, World Bank, World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, etc.

And it closely cooperates with NATO, the world's largest military organization and growing!

The complexity of today’s security challenges has required a broader dialogue between NATO and the UN. This has led to reinforced cooperation and liaison arrangements between the staff of the two organisations, as well as UN specialised agencies.

Relations with the United Nations - NATO

Natoism is definitely a form of Nazism as well as being a manifestation of US imperialism.

American imperialism consists of policies aimed at extending the political, economic and cultural influence of the United States over areas beyond its boundaries. Depending on the commentator, it may include military conquest, gunboat diplomacy, unequal treaties, subsidization of preferred factions, economic penetration through private companies followed by a diplomatic or forceful intervention when those interests are threatened, or regime change – Wikipedia

American imperialism - Wikipedia

That’s why I think smaller powers like Europe, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Africa, should be supported in their struggle against US hegemony, neocolonialism, and imperialism.

And you still haven't demonstrated that Crimea should be given to Ukraine or America ....

Congratulation to Streetlight for his demonstration of Godwin's law. — Olivier5

Oh honey, you don't seem to know the meanings of words. I'm not comparing or making an analogy to Nazis. I'm talking about actual Nazis in Ukraine. Y'know. The ones being showered in American weapons.

Nice try through, A+ for trying to sound minimally intelligent.

Hey look it's Goodwin's L... wait no, it's just a giant incomplete list of Western publications all very clear about the Nazis in Ukraine right before the Americans told them to pipe down a bit because it would make them look bad.



https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/04/azovreplist.html

Wonder which of our resident Nazi sympathizers will chime in to leap to their defense.