What annoys me is the tactic of posting videos or other media without at least summarising what the point that is made in the videos or papers that the poster wants his or her audience to take from them.
Indeed.
Watching a few bits of that video reveals it to be standard random BS. The Guardian link is also basically BS; you can dig out that stuff anywhere and make it fit. I mean, “hostile-authoritarian-uk”… what kind of BS is that? If arresting climate protesters who lie down on the M25 is “hostile-authoritarian” then most would agree we should have more of it 
If Russia had not invaded Ukraine (2014 and later) then a solution may have been found, over the years. None will be found now, other than military.
The front lines are relatively static now (or a slow advance by Russia, losing thousands of men every 100m) because Ukraine is saving up resources for an offensive once the ground becomes suitable for heavy armour, and they get more hardware from the West.
Paradoxically, the Russian invasion is an opportunity for Ukraine to sort out the substantial USSR-style corruption. AFAIK, corruption has never been successfully attacked in peacetime, anywhere. Look at a bunch of EU member countries… little has changed, except around the edges. Bribery and corruption (financial and “moral”) endemic in society at every level, and huge bribery payments in international trade.
declaring the supposed allegiance of Eastern Ukrainians to Russia as fully legitimate and universal.
It’s a standard tactic, used to justify every “adjacent country” invasion.
Ukraine has/had UN recognised borders and that’s the end of it. Russia has to get out. The problem is that the “end solution” will prob99 involve Russia keeping “something” (which smells really bad no matter how you look at it) and Ukraine getting a whole lot from the West.
Peter, I have read guidelines. That is not really helpful.
A personal attack is clear. If you can’t recognise it, maybe that’s a cultural thing, and then I recommend some other forum. This stuff is all over the internet. And a lot of forums are happy to have it because it boosts advert clicks. I recall one forum on a particular sport and it had about 200k posts over 20 years, plus 200k posts on brexit…
Also, keep stuff on the topic. Posting a 2hr video which is 2hrs of random rambling about politics is of no use here. We have another thread for politics, but posting there is not encouraged unless the poster participates in GA topics (we had a lot of abuse in that area, especially by one extremely clever poster with a complex agenda to destroy EuroGA, hence the last para under Guidelines).
Emir wrote:
That simply isn’t true and that approach costed my home country (Bosnia) some 100.000 casualties; the majority were civilians. The war ended when the balance of arms was achieved and when the aggressor started to lose the battles.
Maybe I remember incorrectly, but I though the war ended when the USA started to be serious about bombing Serbs.
At the end, the details matter: if you have the power to stop the fighting, you do it (IF you have the will). If you don’t really have that power, you do all you can to prevent the fight. Supplying one side of the conflict with arms makes sense in limited situations (where the other side is not able to escalate, i.e. the difference in power is not that great, and the other side has no external backer), more often than not it has history of making things worse (by other side escalating or getting external support). As for the Ukraine case – the dust has not settled yet, what we have seen so far is that every time Ukraine had a success, Russia escalated.
On another note, I read some months ago a paper about renewed ethnic/political tensions in Bosnia, and that the Dayton accords did not really solve the problems, just sort-of covered them in a thick blanket and that things are still festering below that. What is the actual truth there?
Airborne_Again wrote:
I agree with your analysis except for one – crucial – point. The BBUG won’t stop with your friend. If your friend is beaten up, then the BBUG will go for other friends of yours and possibly after yourself. For many reasons – some maybe not so noble – it is seen as better to help your friend to deal with the BBUG rather than going for the BBUG yourself.Russia has for a long time made its imperial desires clear but most parties have not taken it seriously. With the attack on Ukraine all of that changed, Or to put it another way, we finally have learned something from history – the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in particular.
Can you elaborate a bit more on this? Because it gets repeatedly thrown away as obvious fact, but very rarely (if ever) do I see a credible reasoning why this is so.
The often cited Putin’s ‘The fall of the Soviet Union was a great disaster’ is convenient citation taken out of context – in his full speech, he followed that by ‘because millions of Russians got stranded abroad in hostile environment’, which does have quite a different wibe to it.
The ‘He will repeat this in 10 years if we don’t stop him now’ is also not that credible: He has problems crossing Ukraine’s fortifications in Donbas, what makes you believe he will have no problem with whatever the next countries prepare themselves for during those 10 years? The war has already been quite costly and painful for Russia, do you really believe they want to repeat all of that again for some dubious territorial gain? What for? They already have enough land and resources. That does not pass the smell test at all.
It’s only been costly and painful because it was contested. If Zelensky had accepted a flight out and they had simply walked into Kiev, why wouldn’t they have aimed to repeat the process elsewhere?
Peter wrote:
Ukraine has/had UN recognised borders and that’s the end of it.
Serbia has/had UN recognised borders and that’s the end of it.
Palestine has/had UN recognised borders and that’s the end of it.
Things are never that simple and the West conveniently cherry-picks what it wants and ignores what it doesn’t.
The ‘rule based order’ that gets conveniently parroted in all mainstream media nowadays is not really the UN rules that almost all agree on (see Iraq war), but the
‘rules made by USA and conveniently changed when they do not suit them anymore’.
The West is collectively blind to how much the rest of the world despise its hypocrisy. We (majority) still (want to) believe that we are the force of good, spreading the freedom, democracy and prosperity around the world. The rest of the world sees selfish hypocrites using their economic, military and media power to bully around and wreak havoc. The point of Indian’s lady video was exactly that: “This is exactly what London is used to lecture us about. Let’s see how they respond to this.” Your repeated response really proves my point.
kwlf wrote:
I used to know some Slovaks who would have preferred their regions of Slovakia to have become Hungarian. To an outsider I don’t really see that their justifications were much less than those of ethnic Russians living in the Ukraine who might have wished for their towns to become Russian. And yet there is no war between Hungary and Slovakia. Despite all Europe’s travails, many (most?) countries have regions where the majority of people are ethnically closer to populations living in other countries, and the default in recent decades is that we don’t go to war over it.
Those ‘Slovaks’ you mentioned were most likely ethnic Hungarians, just to be clear for the audience that is not familiar with the realities here.
There were some tensions, mostly fueled by local politician trying to score cheap points by playing on the nationalistic note (both on Hungarian and Slovak side), but they fortunately never got really heated. Perhaps we are lucky that there is no history of violence between different ethnicities, perhaps we are too Schwejk-like to really seriously fight :-), or maybe we just got lucky to not have politicians overly skilled in inflaming those tensions. The Balkan’s lesson is scary and one should never be overconfident such a thing would never happen here.
Anyway, it is quite obvious to me that the Russian’s war is not about conquering territory (the cost-benefit is simply not there), neither it is for ethnic reasons (that is a convenient excuse to rally the nation), but a challenge to West’s hegemony (the West can do what it wants, ignoring Russia’s security concerns, “just deal with it, know your place”). And Russia deeply resents that.
This approach by the West is also quite concerning regarding China. For decades, USA has played the strategic ambiguity card with Taiwan, consciously
avoiding aggravating the relations with China. That appears to be out of window now. Why? What is the benefit? Total madness. Russia has been saying from the very beginning ‘Ukraine in NATO’ is a red line for us. What did we do? Declared that Ukraine will eventually join NATO. And started training and arms supplies. The result? War. Surprise, surprise. China declared from the very beginning: Taiwan declaring independence is a red line for us. What do we do? What would be the result? Big F* Suprise. Not.
kwlf wrote:
It’s only been costly and painful because it was contested. If Zelensky had accepted a flight out and they had simply walked into Kiev, why wouldn’t they have aimed to repeat the process elsewhere?
Is this projection of USA’s approach to things?
You know, one can equally ask ’Why would they repeat the process elsewhere?".
There are well-published reasons why Russia was unhappy with what was going in Ukraine.
Are there such reasons for Poland/Slovakia?
Is there anything else than the faith-based belief ‘The Russkies are evil, of course they want to conquer us all!’?
but a challenge to West’s hegemony (the West can do what it wants, ignoring Russia’s security concerns, “just deal with it, know your place”). And Russia deeply resents that.
That’s another facade which Western liberals buy into. The real reason is that Russia, ex-communism, has always defined itself in terms of expansion, war, rape, pillage, etc. Simplistic? Well, it is really that simple. That’s why anybody with a brain and enough enterprise to sell sausages on the A23 has either left, or is trying to. The key factor is that the fate of all Russian leaders, since ~1920, has always been driven by success in military adventures.
That appears to be out of window now. Why?
China senses danger from inside, and reducing stability, and doing a Galtieri is a standard response. The symbiotic China-West trade relationship is also less strong now than say 30 years ago, due to crooked Chinese business practices and their blatent shafting of their customers as if the world was ending tomorrow. I know; I do business with them. China has been destroying itself from inside, resulting in ever reducing competitiveness. I have a great solid trustworthy trading contact in Hong Kong who has been trading with China for decades, and he’s got out of there totally (moved mostly to Taiwan). This is just a little mini microcosm example of “modern day China”. BTW I did recover that tool eventually but only by threatening the firm with going via their local police, which prob99 scared them to death. Things moved fast after that, but still needed more extortion payments to be made.
Everything else is a handy excuse which Western liberals buy into readily.
Had China run itself with proper business regulation, law, order, less of the “make a fast buck and screw everybody else”, there would be happy trade all around, everybody getting nicely richer and richer, and no trouble with Taiwan.
Now China has Putin over a barrel and begging for anything he can get. Watch here at 6:50 and watch the body language (allowing for the chink having a permanent sleezy smirk anyway )
That channel is quite a good daily summary. This one has more daily detail.
Russia has few options other than continuous military expansion, because they don’t make anything that anybody wants to buy. Just a load of stuff they dig out of the ground, and do some basic processing on. Anything which has value added gets stolen. The only things there which don’t get stolen are ones that are physically not possible to steal because they are too big or too heavy. It’s a dead-end country, and all dead-end countries are dangerous – except those which are totally poor.
kwlf wrote:
I have watched a few of Lex Fridman’s interviews with computer scientists and agree that they can be interesting, though they often lack efficiency. What annoys me is the tactic of posting videos or other media without at least summarising what the point that is made in the videos or papers that the poster wants his or her audience to take from them.
I actually do not find his technical interviews as interesting as his sociological/political ones – precisely because the technical stuff is not so deeply contentious as the social stuff – and that is where his empathy shines, as the social/political questions are precisely the ones where people easily slip into defensive mode and stop actually thinking but reflectively defend their point of view. What I find fascinating is how he still manages to navigate such troubled waters and still connect with the other side – that is a skill that is severely lacking in today’s word, and can’t be really tl;dr. That is also why I did not do a short summary: The main takeaway is the process and it has to be witnessed to be appreciated.
Regarding the Tim Urban’s interview: Yes it starts slow, imho the really relevant part starts at 49:45, but there are many interesting observations – on conspiracy theories, on internet discussions, social justice, … the idea was not to prove a point (there are too many, which of them?, and different people find different observations poignant)
but to show one source that is imho contributing in the opposite direction to the divisiveness found everywhere nowadays.
Wrong forum though. Try some of these
https://www.google.com/search?q=social+justice+forum
especially if not participating in GA discussions.
