Yes, please criticize the form of my post, rather than its function or context. Additionally please respond to my argument as a whole. Trying to poke holes in my premises only works if you can demonstrate they fail my conclusions. Whether or not you specifically mentioned ISIS does not fail my conclusion that you are misrepresenting the relationships between the many actors in Syria, their tactics, or their interests.
This might be better for the Middle East thread, but from basically-neutral (not "Russian spy") comments there, it seems clear that Salafist forces are most powerful in the insurgency, Al-Qaeda is one of the most powerful forces of all and often enjoys good ties with other Salafists, and that if Assad were to be toppled the most likely outcomes would be either a Salafist/Qaeda state, and that has been the case for several years, even while the right-wing in the US (McCain, Graham, Clinton) has pressed forward toward "regime change" anyway and Obama has gone along with their demands half the time.
Dude. Al Qaeda is not even in Syria; not for a long while. The factions there split off, rebranded, and are their own thing now. The fact you keep bringing them up means you're not at all current on the situation there. That you also seem thoroughly unaware of the secular and/or Kurdish factions that Russia bombs is another; and they're the ones closing in on ISIS.
The SDF is encircling Raqqa. Not Russia, not the SAA, and not the myriad non-ISIS salafists.
How can you attempt to decide what is "clear" about the power dynamics there when you don't even appear to know what factions are in play?
Jabhat al-Nusra, now operating under a different name, officially "split" from Al-Qaeda in July 2016 but the US government does not accept that alleged change in affiliation as real or valid.
Kerry warned Monday that those who are party to the cease-fire will have to separate themselves. “Al-Nusra is al-Qaeda,” he said. “Al-Nusra is the sworn enemy of the United States . . .the Western world . . . others in the region. They have an external plotting agency plotting as we speak against some of our allies, friends and ourselves.”
Kerry made that statement several months after the fake "split."
Also:
Although the group's leader announced that it was not affiliated with al-Qaeda, the United States Central Command consider it to be a branch of al-Qaeda and "an organization to be concerned about".[89] Al-Jazeera journalist Sharif Nashashibi noted that immediately after the split with al-Qaeda, both the US and Russia called it "cosmetic" and promised that air strikes would continue" against al-Nusra.[90] Journalist Robin Wright has described the split and rebranding as an "jihadi shell game" and "expedient fiction"—a tactic known as "marbling" by jihadi groups—and that as of December 2016 Al-Qaeda had embedded "two dozen senior personnel" in the group.[91] Nashashibi of al-Jazeera agreed that the split was "cosmetic".[90]
In December 2015, al-Nusra's emir Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who still leads the renamed group, refused to dissociate from al-Qaeda's ideology and stated that even if the group leaves al-Qaeda, they would continue to enforce Sharia and wage jihad against their enemies. During the renaming announcement in July 2016, al-Julani thanked al-Qaeda leaders Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Khayr al-Masri. Ahmad Salama Mabruk, an associate of al-Zawahiri, sat alongside al-Julani during the announcement.[92]
Writing shortly after the separation, Nashashibi argued that it might help generate more "regional support", which the group needed in the face of Syrian government and Russian military success.[90] Wright believes the move has been effective with many conservative Sunnis in the region, and that hundreds of them have joined its ranks, (since the split) believing the group to be "less extreme" than the rival Islamic State.[91]
Basically everyone believes they are still Al-Qaeda. I am not sure what your motivations are in so crudely running PR cover for terrorists, but it is very disturbing, to say the least.
I said nothing at all about Kurds vs ISIS; I was discussing scenarios in the event of regime change against Assad and who would control Syria. Essentially all powerful groups seeking regime change (Kurdish militants are seeking independence/autonomy, not to conquer Damascus) are Salafists.
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SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
Thinking on stuff, I guess I'm not entirely clear on what is being argued.
It sounds like the base claim is that war between the US and Russia would be bad and should be avoided. I strongly suspect that there is agreement on this point.
Better relations between the US and Russia make war less likely, and are therefore desirable. I suspect this is also agreeable.
Currently, relations between the US and Russia are on a downswing. Now we start arguing about who is worse, moral greyness, etc. and thus, disagreement.
But who is worse doesn't necessarily address why relations are souring, unless it's specifically about how one's worseness impacts the other.
And here's the problem: the US has done and is doing things that negatively impact Russia, yes. But we have just experienced a fairly substantial and covert attack on us by Russia. I think this is different in nature from the negative consequences of competing interests or the exertion of pressure via sanctions or what have you. How is the US to pursue better relations if this sort of action remains a risk? I would think the only way to engage in that pursuit would be with the recognition that Russia is a threat to the US. Recognizing that fact doesn't mean that we must now have war; it just means we have to be realistic in our dealings.
I am not sure what your motivations are in so crudely running PR cover for terrorists, but it is very disturbing, to say the least.
Yeah. That's what I'm doing.
I said nothing at all about Kurds vs ISIS; I was discussing scenarios in the event of regime change against Assad and who would control Syria.
You can't talk about who would control the region and choose to exclude ISIS and the Kurds. That you think you they aren't relevant is precisely the problem.
Man, this feels like college all over again. Every time Russia's atrocities and misdeeds are a subject this and that American policy are brought up. I should to defend the US, I suppose, before I can criticize Russia? Well, fuck the US. But since the talk about Russia, a very special fuck you to Russia. I don't see why I need to play within the implied premise that to criticize Russia I need to carry American water. There are plenty eager to do the job, and they don't need one more.
Russia and Putin's war crimes in Chechnya and Syria and elsewhere are their own. The dead civilians are no less dead because Americans happened to kill and starve some others elsewhere, and the crime is no less criminal.
Fundamentally there are no "good guys" and "bad guys" in geopolitics because every power tends to seek maximisation of its own influence against others. The concept of a stable balance of power is crucial but for starters relies on a type of humility and empathy that jingoism or national-exceptionalism is antithetical toward.
This is a deflection and has nothing to do with the specific point that the US and Russia have each committed crimes which should be criticized
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
The Syrian civil war is an extremely complicated clusterfuck.
We have been complaining about it a long time here.
It's a fight with a dozen major factions backed by several large coalitions with a lot of different international support (and changing, most dramatically seen in Turkeys involvement)
It is true that over time, for a million reasons (geographical, but also tactical by Assad), the more secular rebels have folded quicker and the extremes have survived longer and somewhat aligned.
Do note for instance that the Kurds (who are not "The Good Guys" in this by any stretch, but they look better than any other major faction right now) are not invited to the next round of peace-talks, because Russia and Turkey do not want them there.
That doesn't mean you can just say:
1) Russia or Assad are allowed to commit warcrimes because others have done it in the past, in the Middle-East or elsewhere.
If you rewrite but...but.... USA! and but...but...WW2 arguments like that it should be apparent why it's a really bad argument.
Something is a warcrime or not.
You cannot say warcrime is not a warcrime because it's not the first time it's happened, or even because nations that committed warcrimes in the past (Hint, that's all of them) are now calling out current warcrimes.
2) Because Russia is helping the current regime, they are helping stability.
The Assad regime was not stable. It collapsed without any outside interference. The start of the Syrian civil war is government troops firing on protestors, who were protesting because the previous protesters were tortured. (The previous protestors were angry about a lot of things). It fell apart remarkably quickly. In a large part because the economy was already broken when the war broke out. You can write a dozen tomes about the creation of IS, but for the first two years (Remember this started over 5 years ago!) it was mostly regional with covert support, and then became more and more ugly as it became more dire, and as IS started to become an international terrorist organisation.
3) Because the Assad regime is the government, they should be kept in power. (Sovereignty!)
All countries have interfered in some way with the sovereignty of others, and if Russia believes this to be case, then way don't they give Ukraine their sovereignty back? They surely committed the most grievous breach of sovereignty in the 21st century, by doing an explicit landgrab. (Probably the first outside of Africa post Iraq-Kuwait?) My African 20th century history isn't all that.
And throughout this thread, because Putin is a monster in so many ways, we have almost not talked about Grozny.
Putins response there was also monstrous, and disastrous. And he didn't care much for sovereignty then.
Why are you covering for al-Nusra and claiming their shallow rebranding was something substantive when no one serious believes it to be? What was your point?
You can't talk about who would control the region and choose to exclude ISIS and the Kurds. That you think you they aren't relevant is precisely the problem.
ISIS is on the way out, but they count as a Salafist faction. Kurds are not trying to control Syria or take Damascus, Alep, etc but rather trying for autonomy in their own region. If Assad falls, he will not be replaced by a Kurdish government,
The European media was generally covering the Salafist orientation of the insurgency years before the US media (similarly European media covered Nazis in Ukraine while the issue was mostly unmentioned in US).
I am not even sure what I am being accused of and people continue bringing up entirely unrelated points or telling me to read Wikipedia articles instead of analyses by serious professors. I kind of feel like I'm arguing with people who choose not to read beyond Wikipedia.
I believe charges of Russian interference in the US are overstated, but even if true would say more about the US citizenry than anything else. It seems incoherent to simultaneously argue the contents of hacked emails contained nothing damning but that they also determined the outcome of of the election.
But here is is a question: does anyone believe the US does not interfere in internal Russian politics, or in the internal politics of many countries? Or that US efforts in these terms are far more vast globally?
A way to see it would be tit-for-tat. Why would the US be outraged about its own methodologies (or something much more mild) turned against it?
I believe charges of Russian interference in the US are overstated, but even if true would say more about the US citizenry than anything else. It seems incoherent to simultaneously argue the contents of hacked emails contained nothing damning but that they also determined the outcome of of the election.
But here is is a question: does anyone believe the US does not interfere in internal Russian politics, or in the internal politics of many countries? Or that US efforts in these terms are far more vast globally?
A way to see it would be tit-for-tat. Why would the US be outraged about its own methodologies (or something much more mild) turned against it?
do you have example other than rhetorical questions of the US interfering in Russian politics in a similar manner
I believe charges of Russian interference in the US are overstated, but even if true would say more about the US citizenry than anything else. It seems incoherent to simultaneously argue the contents of hacked emails contained nothing damning but that they also determined the outcome of of the election.
But here is is a question: does anyone believe the US does not interfere in internal Russian politics, or in the internal politics of many countries? Or that US efforts in these terms are far more vast globally?
A way to see it would be tit-for-tat. Why would the US be outraged about its own methodologies (or something much more mild) turned against it?
do you have example other than rhetorical questions of the US interfering in Russian politics in a similar manner
The Russian Civil War is the most recent direct intervention I can think of in Russia itself
I believe charges of Russian interference in the US are overstated, but even if true would say more about the US citizenry than anything else. It seems incoherent to simultaneously argue the contents of hacked emails contained nothing damning but that they also determined the outcome of of the election.
But here is is a question: does anyone believe the US does not interfere in internal Russian politics, or in the internal politics of many countries? Or that US efforts in these terms are far more vast globally?
A way to see it would be tit-for-tat. Why would the US be outraged about its own methodologies (or something much more mild) turned against it?
do you have example other than rhetorical questions of the US interfering in Russian politics in a similar manner
Russia is not named, but through LulzSec/Antisec they hacked a lot of other countries. Hammond got the maximum sentence, Sabu (also faced with more serious guns/drugs charges along with hacking) was praised by the judge for "cooperating" and given a slap on the wrist.
US cyber-espionage probably goes way beyond that.
Most people think The Jester works for US government also.
I believe charges of Russian interference in the US are overstated, but even if true would say more about the US citizenry than anything else. It seems incoherent to simultaneously argue the contents of hacked emails contained nothing damning but that they also determined the outcome of of the election.
But here is is a question: does anyone believe the US does not interfere in internal Russian politics, or in the internal politics of many countries? Or that US efforts in these terms are far more vast globally?
A way to see it would be tit-for-tat. Why would the US be outraged about its own methodologies (or something much more mild) turned against it?
I keep seeing this brought up. For some reason it's only bad if the US does it, or if the US does it we're not supposed to be upset about it happening to us.
But that's not how the world works. If someone blinds you, you don't get to blind them. Russia invaded a nominal US ally in the Ukraine, do we get to invade them back?
The idea that someone else "deserves" what's coming to them is what leads to the kind of poor foreign policy of the Bush years (Both Bushs' years in office).
The second thing is that everyone supports this kind of foreign policy. We don't. Even at the time there are always people who oppose the US getting involved in other countries elections or propping up regimes. Hell, there's quite a few who openly oppose it because we've seen how badly that turns out for us in the long run.
Americans are not a monolith, but you keep arguing as if everyone in the US deserves what happens whether we supported past US policy or not. We aren't even in a country where the majority can make a difference, so acting as if some policy is "American" or representative of the will of the people in the US just doesn't jive with how politics work in the US.
Russia is destabilizing the West by attacking the foundational premises of democracy and the legitimacy of Western governmental structure as a whole. By doing so he is undermining the singular enduring cause of extended peace between true democracies, that the accrual of wealth and dependencies of economics related to democratic governments keeps these nations from going to war with one another. It is 'hyperbolic' perhaps to describe the logical end result of delegitimizing democracy as a viable form of government when it is in all likelihood a long way off, but when actors in bad faith deliberately poison the norms and procedures that maintain that order, it is essential to consider, once again, the upper bound of destruction that would result.
I disagree to the extent that even if the DNC hack was committed by Russia (I do not believe appropriate technical proof has been given and have reasons to doubt; not bringing it up for re-debate), exposing undemocratic aspects of the US system seems different than what you are describing. Exposing the US as undemocratic in real terms is not really the same as "attacking the foundational premises of democracy". If the Democratic Party hierarchy structured their process to the detriment of Bernie Sanders, making that known seems in the interest of improving democracy.
The Democratic Party did not structure the process to the detriment of Bernie Sanders. They did not do this in no small part because they have no legal authority to actually structure the process to the detriment of anyone, even if they want to. State primaries are run by the States themselves under State law. The DNC can protest what State law is, and can threaten to invalidate the results, but they have no authority to change State law, only Legislatures(and Courts) do. The only area that the Democratic Party has influence would be in results determined by Caucuses given how those rules are setup. Sanders overperformed at caucuses.
That these facts are evidently news to you in itself demonstrates the successfulness of the propaganda campaign waged with Russia's selective leaks of hacked DNC material.
Russia is destabilizing the West by attacking the foundational premises of democracy and the legitimacy of Western governmental structure as a whole. By doing so he is undermining the singular enduring cause of extended peace between true democracies, that the accrual of wealth and dependencies of economics related to democratic governments keeps these nations from going to war with one another. It is 'hyperbolic' perhaps to describe the logical end result of delegitimizing democracy as a viable form of government when it is in all likelihood a long way off, but when actors in bad faith deliberately poison the norms and procedures that maintain that order, it is essential to consider, once again, the upper bound of destruction that would result.
I disagree to the extent that even if the DNC hack was committed by Russia (I do not believe appropriate technical proof has been given and have reasons to doubt; not bringing it up for re-debate), exposing undemocratic aspects of the US system seems different than what you are describing. Exposing the US as undemocratic in real terms is not really the same as "attacking the foundational premises of democracy". If the Democratic Party hierarchy structured their process to the detriment of Bernie Sanders, making that known seems in the interest of improving democracy.
The Democratic Party did not structure the process to the detriment of Bernie Sanders. They did not do this in no small part because they have no legal authority to actually structure the process to the detriment of anyone, even if they want to. State primaries are run by the States themselves under State law. The DNC can protest what State law is, and can threaten to invalidate the results, but they have no authority to change State law, only Legislatures(and Courts) do. The only area that the Democratic Party has influence would be in results determined by Caucuses given how those rules are setup. Sanders overperformed at caucuses.
That these facts are evidently news to you in itself demonstrates the successfulness of the propaganda campaign waged with Russia's selective leaks of hacked DNC material.
Not only that but political parties are not government institutions and are not held to the same standards of objectivity. The democratic party might have an idea who is most likely to win the general and may favor publically and privately that candidate, same for the GOP. This is not only allowed, but to be expected, just as you would expect, say, the athletic director at UNC to have an opinion on who to hire as head basketball coach and express that opinion to the board of governors of the university, even if he does not make the final decision on the hiring.
Given that being a hegemonic power is always going to result in abhorrent behavior (arguably, and I believe, to prevent more catastrophic behavior), it's worth considering who you would rather hold that position if not the US. Because for the foreseeable future such an actor is going to be an inevitability.
There are very few powers capable of exerting that kind of presence, and I don't think anybody can honestly argue that a dominant Russia or China would improve the state of the world. Considering the state of the EU, that increasingly far-fetched reality doesn't seem supportable as an ideological or organizational improvement either.
Edit: Criticism of the world's dominant power is an outright necessity at all times. But we live in a world of limited options, and it's worth keeping in mind as we choose when and where to give our support.
Man, this feels like college all over again. Every time Russia's atrocities and misdeeds are a subject this and that American policy are brought up. I should to defend the US, I suppose, before I can criticize Russia? Well, fuck the US. But since the talk about Russia, a very special fuck you to Russia. I don't see why I need to play within the implied premise that to criticize Russia I need to carry American water. There are plenty eager to do the job, and they don't need one more.
Russia and Putin's war crimes in Chechnya and Syria and elsewhere are their own. The dead civilians are no less dead because Americans happened to kill and starve some others elsewhere, and the crime is no less criminal.
That's fine, but different than what others are arguing, and actions do not happen in a vacuum. Russia is not just killing people in Syria "for fun", they are trying to the prevent a regime change attempt sponsored by US and its allies which includes some very nasty types of people with identical ideologies and abuses the US will cite to justify longterm warfare against when they operate elsewhere, such as Afghanistan. The US is constantly trying to expand its own sphere of influence by pushing against others in a way that destabilises areas in the world, and many of the actions by Putin we can criticise for their tactical brutality occurred in response to US aggression.
Fundamentally there are no "good guys" and "bad guys" in geopolitics because every power tends to seek maximisation of its own influence against others. The concept of a stable balance of power is crucial but for starters relies on a type of humility and empathy that jingoism or national-exceptionalism is antithetical toward.
Am I supposed to take the good guys bad guys shiny bait and run with it? That's basically the BS I was talking about. America. Afghanistan. US aggression! But the victims of American power are not mere props to excuse Russian violence. I don't give one fuck why the Russians are committing war crimes, I don't care about the balance of power, and their geopolitical justification for indiscriminate slaughter. I care that they have committed the crimes, and continue to do so. I recognize the lack of options for stopping their bloodletting, but I don't need to accept such apologia either.
Anti-Climactis you mentioned the Yeltsin years as a way to show how much Putin has improved things for Russia. Putin propped up Yeltsin in the waning years of his power, and at that time had already begun to develop the kleptocracy that would grow into the current regime behind the scenes. Putin did not save Russia from Yeltsin, he simply streamlined and perfected the corruption.
Not only that, this ignores that when some of the oligarchs tried to promote reform and moving the economy to a more western and transparent system (in order to avoid vulnerability to sanctions and the collapse of the Russian economy due to plundering, which is exactly what has happened), Putin fucking destroyed them, had them jailed, their business divided up amongst his inner circle, etc
You might know a lot about what the US has done but you are ignoring the reality of the Russian state. Putin isn't a disruptive force because we have bad relations with him, we have bad relations with him because he is a disruptive force. And that disruption isn't abherant behaviour, it is intrinsic to the kleptocratic system he has established. Putin himself knows full well that when you plunder a state eventually the eocnomy will crash, this is why he has ramped up his propaganda and control effort s in recent years. Before he was re-elected you could see protests on the streets, that is no longer the reality in Russia today. Russia is getting worse under Putin, not better. And it's ridiculous to compare it to the Yeltsin years to make any reasonable argument about the validity of his governance and how much it benifits the Russian people
The idea that Putin would leave well enough alone and the Russian economy would be fine if we didn't pressure, sanction or interfere is not backed up by the evidence. The Russian economy has been in dire trouble ever since Putin set upon his path in the early 2000s, crushing any efforts at reform or transparency and reinforcing the kleptocratic system of bribes and favours that existed under Yeltsin and was perfected under Putin. Putin has used foreign engagements and blamed foreign powers since the beginning, starting with the chechen wars and the FSB apartment block bombings
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SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
Russia is not named, but through LulzSec/Antisec they hacked a lot of other countries. Hammond got the maximum sentence, Sabu (also faced with more serious guns/drugs charges along with hacking) was praised by the judge for "cooperating" and given a slap on the wrist.
US cyber-espionage probably goes way beyond that.
Most people think The Jester works for US government also.
Just to touch on this, the big issue with the Russian hacks is not just that they happened. I'm not sure, but I almost think any major country would be remiss if they were not engaged in obtaining whatever they can. Maybe limited to government targets. Anyway, ideally none of that would be necessary, but I don't think we're there yet.
But this was an attack with the intent to weaken the target.
I am sensing some difficulty in reading comprehension from this user in this thread and the last, or else willful misreading of my comments.
Crimea was a part of Russia until after World War II. Krushchev transferred it to Ukraine despite that there was never a majority Ukrainian population there, That is the only reason it was ever part of Ukraine: a dictator's bureaucratic decision made arbitrarily and without historical logic.
I just wanted to circle back to this bullshit because the regional history isn't generally covered much in the West.
"never" in this case is being defined as "since after the times when the Russian Empire seized it, and then deported the native population. and then the Soviet Union mass deported the native population again a few decades later"
I am sensing some difficulty in reading comprehension from this user in this thread and the last, or else willful misreading of my comments.
Crimea was a part of Russia until after World War II. Krushchev transferred it to Ukraine despite that there was never a majority Ukrainian population there, That is the only reason it was ever part of Ukraine: a dictator's bureaucratic decision made arbitrarily and without historical logic.
I just wanted to circle back to this bullshit because the regional history isn't generally covered much in the West.
"never" in this case is being defined as "since after the times when the Russian Empire seized it, and then deported the native population. and then the Soviet Union mass deported the native population again a few decades later"
I am sensing some difficulty in reading comprehension from this user in this thread and the last, or else willful misreading of my comments.
Crimea was a part of Russia until after World War II. Krushchev transferred it to Ukraine despite that there was never a majority Ukrainian population there, That is the only reason it was ever part of Ukraine: a dictator's bureaucratic decision made arbitrarily and without historical logic.
I just wanted to circle back to this bullshit because the regional history isn't generally covered much in the West.
"never" in this case is being defined as "since after the times when the Russian Empire seized it, and then deported the native population. and then the Soviet Union mass deported the native population again a few decades later"
Also; it wouldn't matter if the population of crimea was made up entirely of Nesting dolls the fact of the matter is that countries are determined primarily by territory, and Russia had ceded control of the peninsula (minus a port in Sevastopol) decades before.
And again: for someone who has repeatedly claimed that you are a neutral third party commentator I have yet to see you say anything critical about Putins behavior despite having dedicated the majority of your posting in the last 3 days to discussing Russia.
I believe charges of Russian interference in the US are overstated, but even if true would say more about the US citizenry than anything else. It seems incoherent to simultaneously argue the contents of hacked emails contained nothing damning but that they also determined the outcome of of the election.
It's not incoherent; the release of the hacked emails was specifically designed so that innocuous content would appear damning. That propaganda works is a problem with the audience, sure, or maybe with the fundamental psychological make-up of the human mind; but that doesn't make the propagandist blameless for taking advantage of those vulnerabilities, any more than a con man is blameless for choosing marks foolish enough to believe him, or a robber for stealing from someone too weak to defend themselves. You're just victim blaming.
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Giggles_FunsworthBlight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered Userregular
I believe charges of Russian interference in the US are overstated, but even if true would say more about the US citizenry than anything else. It seems incoherent to simultaneously argue the contents of hacked emails contained nothing damning but that they also determined the outcome of of the election.
It's not incoherent; the release of the hacked emails was specifically designed so that innocuous content would appear damning. That propaganda works is a problem with the audience, sure, or maybe with the fundamental psychological make-up of the human mind; but that doesn't make the propagandist blameless for taking advantage of those vulnerabilities, any more than a con man is blameless for choosing marks foolish enough to believe him, or a robber for stealing from someone too weak to defend themselves. You're just victim blaming.
BUT AS A RUGGED INDIVIDUALIST I BELIEVE THAT SHOULD JUST THINK FOR THEMSELVES.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Hahahaha....I need to breathe here, hold on....ohhhhohohohohohohoh.....thisisfine.gifv
I wouldn't be surprised if it was someone (American) making a statement, and not nefarious foreign agents.
It is no doubt Russian agents. After all the more you do something out and obvious the easier it is to deny it ever happened in the first place.
For some reason.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
By that standard Texas being part of the US is a bureaucratic mistake
so if Mexico decided to annex it we should just accept it right?
If Mexico wanted to annex Mexican-majority areas of Texas that were stolen from them in the 1800s and the people there wanted to leave US because they felt oppressed by Trump, I would say they had a very strong moral case, yes.
what
Why is this seen as a "wrong" view? There are Chicano Power movements on the left in the US, many active on campuses, that advocate for Aztlan (former northern Mexico) to secede from the US.
Man, this feels like college all over again. Every time Russia's atrocities and misdeeds are a subject this and that American policy are brought up. I should to defend the US, I suppose, before I can criticize Russia? Well, fuck the US. But since the talk about Russia, a very special fuck you to Russia. I don't see why I need to play within the implied premise that to criticize Russia I need to carry American water. There are plenty eager to do the job, and they don't need one more.
Russia and Putin's war crimes in Chechnya and Syria and elsewhere are their own. The dead civilians are no less dead because Americans happened to kill and starve some others elsewhere, and the crime is no less criminal.
That's fine, but different than what others are arguing, and actions do not happen in a vacuum. Russia is not just killing people in Syria "for fun", they are trying to the prevent a regime change attempt sponsored by US and its allies which includes some very nasty types of people with identical ideologies and abuses the US will cite to justify longterm warfare against when they operate elsewhere, such as Afghanistan. The US is constantly trying to expand its own sphere of influence by pushing against others in a way that destabilises areas in the world, and many of the actions by Putin we can criticise for their tactical brutality occurred in response to US aggression.
Fundamentally there are no "good guys" and "bad guys" in geopolitics because every power tends to seek maximisation of its own influence against others. The concept of a stable balance of power is crucial but for starters relies on a type of humility and empathy that jingoism or national-exceptionalism is antithetical toward.
Am I supposed to take the good guys bad guys shiny bait and run with it? That's basically the BS I was talking about. America. Afghanistan. US aggression! But the victims of American power are not mere props to excuse Russian violence. I don't give one fuck why the Russians are committing war crimes, I don't care about the balance of power, and their geopolitical justification for indiscriminate slaughter. I care that they have committed the crimes, and continue to do so. I recognize the lack of options for stopping their bloodletting, but I don't need to accept such apologia either.
But we don't have a thread here called "America: the Musical" in which 99% of posts are dedicated to how evil the US government is, presented without any context, each post getting 20,000 agrees. As it is, this is not really really a thread for discussing Russia but for attacking Russia -- and even discussing context, that there is history behind events, things don't occur in in a vacuum, world history is not "good vs evil", causes people to go all Joe McCarthy accusing you of being a Soviet agent. And every comment denouncing Putin gets 20,000 agrees. This is like "March of the Murka Mooks."
Can you understand why for anyone outside the US this looks absurdly nationalistic and unbalanced, to say the least? This seems not to be critical discussion at all -- and we have excellent critical discussion here at a places like the Middle East thread -- but a series of polemics. And anytime someone says, "well, wait, it's more nuanced than that," they are shouted down by angry nationalists. Americans have have a way of proving stereotypes true, often, I find.
For what it's worth, coverage of Putin in the French media is much more nuanced than in the english-language media (US and UK). This is the cover of the current issue of a major French news magazine (Le Point, roughly the French equivalent to The Economist) on stands now. (If you don't know French, the translation to that banner headline on the cover would be roughly: "Game over. U mad bro?") The cover story's interior headline is "Poutine Superstar." But I suppose French media must all be orchestrated by the Russian intelligence services...
Posts
Jabhat al-Nusra, now operating under a different name, officially "split" from Al-Qaeda in July 2016 but the US government does not accept that alleged change in affiliation as real or valid.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ceasefire-in-syria-set-to-take-hold-as-scores-die-in-air-strikes/2016/09/12/c93bbf4e-7850-11e6-8064-c1ddc8a724bb_story.html?utm_term=.94b2a10c1465
Kerry made that statement several months after the fake "split."
Also:
Basically everyone believes they are still Al-Qaeda. I am not sure what your motivations are in so crudely running PR cover for terrorists, but it is very disturbing, to say the least.
I said nothing at all about Kurds vs ISIS; I was discussing scenarios in the event of regime change against Assad and who would control Syria. Essentially all powerful groups seeking regime change (Kurdish militants are seeking independence/autonomy, not to conquer Damascus) are Salafists.
It sounds like the base claim is that war between the US and Russia would be bad and should be avoided. I strongly suspect that there is agreement on this point.
Better relations between the US and Russia make war less likely, and are therefore desirable. I suspect this is also agreeable.
Currently, relations between the US and Russia are on a downswing. Now we start arguing about who is worse, moral greyness, etc. and thus, disagreement.
But who is worse doesn't necessarily address why relations are souring, unless it's specifically about how one's worseness impacts the other.
And here's the problem: the US has done and is doing things that negatively impact Russia, yes. But we have just experienced a fairly substantial and covert attack on us by Russia. I think this is different in nature from the negative consequences of competing interests or the exertion of pressure via sanctions or what have you. How is the US to pursue better relations if this sort of action remains a risk? I would think the only way to engage in that pursuit would be with the recognition that Russia is a threat to the US. Recognizing that fact doesn't mean that we must now have war; it just means we have to be realistic in our dealings.
Yeah. That's what I'm doing.
You can't talk about who would control the region and choose to exclude ISIS and the Kurds. That you think you they aren't relevant is precisely the problem.
This is a deflection and has nothing to do with the specific point that the US and Russia have each committed crimes which should be criticized
We have been complaining about it a long time here.
It's a fight with a dozen major factions backed by several large coalitions with a lot of different international support (and changing, most dramatically seen in Turkeys involvement)
It is true that over time, for a million reasons (geographical, but also tactical by Assad), the more secular rebels have folded quicker and the extremes have survived longer and somewhat aligned.
Do note for instance that the Kurds (who are not "The Good Guys" in this by any stretch, but they look better than any other major faction right now) are not invited to the next round of peace-talks, because Russia and Turkey do not want them there.
That doesn't mean you can just say:
1) Russia or Assad are allowed to commit warcrimes because others have done it in the past, in the Middle-East or elsewhere.
If you rewrite but...but.... USA! and but...but...WW2 arguments like that it should be apparent why it's a really bad argument.
Something is a warcrime or not.
You cannot say warcrime is not a warcrime because it's not the first time it's happened, or even because nations that committed warcrimes in the past (Hint, that's all of them) are now calling out current warcrimes.
2) Because Russia is helping the current regime, they are helping stability.
The Assad regime was not stable. It collapsed without any outside interference. The start of the Syrian civil war is government troops firing on protestors, who were protesting because the previous protesters were tortured. (The previous protestors were angry about a lot of things). It fell apart remarkably quickly. In a large part because the economy was already broken when the war broke out. You can write a dozen tomes about the creation of IS, but for the first two years (Remember this started over 5 years ago!) it was mostly regional with covert support, and then became more and more ugly as it became more dire, and as IS started to become an international terrorist organisation.
3) Because the Assad regime is the government, they should be kept in power. (Sovereignty!)
All countries have interfered in some way with the sovereignty of others, and if Russia believes this to be case, then way don't they give Ukraine their sovereignty back? They surely committed the most grievous breach of sovereignty in the 21st century, by doing an explicit landgrab. (Probably the first outside of Africa post Iraq-Kuwait?) My African 20th century history isn't all that.
And throughout this thread, because Putin is a monster in so many ways, we have almost not talked about Grozny.
Putins response there was also monstrous, and disastrous. And he didn't care much for sovereignty then.
Why are you covering for al-Nusra and claiming their shallow rebranding was something substantive when no one serious believes it to be? What was your point?
ISIS is on the way out, but they count as a Salafist faction. Kurds are not trying to control Syria or take Damascus, Alep, etc but rather trying for autonomy in their own region. If Assad falls, he will not be replaced by a Kurdish government,
The European media was generally covering the Salafist orientation of the insurgency years before the US media (similarly European media covered Nazis in Ukraine while the issue was mostly unmentioned in US).
I am not even sure what I am being accused of and people continue bringing up entirely unrelated points or telling me to read Wikipedia articles instead of analyses by serious professors. I kind of feel like I'm arguing with people who choose not to read beyond Wikipedia.
Murka, fuck yeah.
But here is is a question: does anyone believe the US does not interfere in internal Russian politics, or in the internal politics of many countries? Or that US efforts in these terms are far more vast globally?
A way to see it would be tit-for-tat. Why would the US be outraged about its own methodologies (or something much more mild) turned against it?
do you have example other than rhetorical questions of the US interfering in Russian politics in a similar manner
The Russian Civil War is the most recent direct intervention I can think of in Russia itself
Leftist columbians/brazilians/venezuelans/chileans would disagree with that.
I know a bunch of very leftist latin americans cause they came up here to my school which has the best latin american studies program
they have, um, strong opinions on things to say the least
Russia says US directly funds opposition protests: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-11/russian-investigators-see-u-s-funding-behind-anti-putin-protest
More demonstrably, the US government openly broadcasts anti-regime propaganda in Russian language into Russia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Liberty -- I thought that was well-known to Americans.
I really don't care about RT, but the hacking is a different matter
http://www.dailydot.com/news/jeremy-hammond-fbi-foreign-governments-list/
Russia is not named, but through LulzSec/Antisec they hacked a lot of other countries. Hammond got the maximum sentence, Sabu (also faced with more serious guns/drugs charges along with hacking) was praised by the judge for "cooperating" and given a slap on the wrist.
US cyber-espionage probably goes way beyond that.
Most people think The Jester works for US government also.
I keep seeing this brought up. For some reason it's only bad if the US does it, or if the US does it we're not supposed to be upset about it happening to us.
But that's not how the world works. If someone blinds you, you don't get to blind them. Russia invaded a nominal US ally in the Ukraine, do we get to invade them back?
The idea that someone else "deserves" what's coming to them is what leads to the kind of poor foreign policy of the Bush years (Both Bushs' years in office).
The second thing is that everyone supports this kind of foreign policy. We don't. Even at the time there are always people who oppose the US getting involved in other countries elections or propping up regimes. Hell, there's quite a few who openly oppose it because we've seen how badly that turns out for us in the long run.
Americans are not a monolith, but you keep arguing as if everyone in the US deserves what happens whether we supported past US policy or not. We aren't even in a country where the majority can make a difference, so acting as if some policy is "American" or representative of the will of the people in the US just doesn't jive with how politics work in the US.
The Democratic Party did not structure the process to the detriment of Bernie Sanders. They did not do this in no small part because they have no legal authority to actually structure the process to the detriment of anyone, even if they want to. State primaries are run by the States themselves under State law. The DNC can protest what State law is, and can threaten to invalidate the results, but they have no authority to change State law, only Legislatures(and Courts) do. The only area that the Democratic Party has influence would be in results determined by Caucuses given how those rules are setup. Sanders overperformed at caucuses.
That these facts are evidently news to you in itself demonstrates the successfulness of the propaganda campaign waged with Russia's selective leaks of hacked DNC material.
Not only that but political parties are not government institutions and are not held to the same standards of objectivity. The democratic party might have an idea who is most likely to win the general and may favor publically and privately that candidate, same for the GOP. This is not only allowed, but to be expected, just as you would expect, say, the athletic director at UNC to have an opinion on who to hire as head basketball coach and express that opinion to the board of governors of the university, even if he does not make the final decision on the hiring.
There are very few powers capable of exerting that kind of presence, and I don't think anybody can honestly argue that a dominant Russia or China would improve the state of the world. Considering the state of the EU, that increasingly far-fetched reality doesn't seem supportable as an ideological or organizational improvement either.
Edit: Criticism of the world's dominant power is an outright necessity at all times. But we live in a world of limited options, and it's worth keeping in mind as we choose when and where to give our support.
What I despise about this is it takes agency away from anyone who voted hillary in the primary.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Am I supposed to take the good guys bad guys shiny bait and run with it? That's basically the BS I was talking about. America. Afghanistan. US aggression! But the victims of American power are not mere props to excuse Russian violence. I don't give one fuck why the Russians are committing war crimes, I don't care about the balance of power, and their geopolitical justification for indiscriminate slaughter. I care that they have committed the crimes, and continue to do so. I recognize the lack of options for stopping their bloodletting, but I don't need to accept such apologia either.
Not only that, this ignores that when some of the oligarchs tried to promote reform and moving the economy to a more western and transparent system (in order to avoid vulnerability to sanctions and the collapse of the Russian economy due to plundering, which is exactly what has happened), Putin fucking destroyed them, had them jailed, their business divided up amongst his inner circle, etc
You might know a lot about what the US has done but you are ignoring the reality of the Russian state. Putin isn't a disruptive force because we have bad relations with him, we have bad relations with him because he is a disruptive force. And that disruption isn't abherant behaviour, it is intrinsic to the kleptocratic system he has established. Putin himself knows full well that when you plunder a state eventually the eocnomy will crash, this is why he has ramped up his propaganda and control effort s in recent years. Before he was re-elected you could see protests on the streets, that is no longer the reality in Russia today. Russia is getting worse under Putin, not better. And it's ridiculous to compare it to the Yeltsin years to make any reasonable argument about the validity of his governance and how much it benifits the Russian people
The idea that Putin would leave well enough alone and the Russian economy would be fine if we didn't pressure, sanction or interfere is not backed up by the evidence. The Russian economy has been in dire trouble ever since Putin set upon his path in the early 2000s, crushing any efforts at reform or transparency and reinforcing the kleptocratic system of bribes and favours that existed under Yeltsin and was perfected under Putin. Putin has used foreign engagements and blamed foreign powers since the beginning, starting with the chechen wars and the FSB apartment block bombings
But this was an attack with the intent to weaken the target.
That's a significant difference.
I just wanted to circle back to this bullshit because the regional history isn't generally covered much in the West.
"never" in this case is being defined as "since after the times when the Russian Empire seized it, and then deported the native population. and then the Soviet Union mass deported the native population again a few decades later"
http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/VUyCFEh2pxHc9BK_-MpBbhTLrQqecwip9SRC5ePJ1woUUHTI_2v8hXMzUKeP41v1aTjt-iv9komoJMRRfjEgn9VwhOv6pf2puurPMrGZ-1akUtp_iR95piN_uZMGSgbcWCmGwFpy
Has a nice chart of it, but I can't embbed.
Technically he is right, the native population the Russians genocided was not Ukrainian.
Also; it wouldn't matter if the population of crimea was made up entirely of Nesting dolls the fact of the matter is that countries are determined primarily by territory, and Russia had ceded control of the peninsula (minus a port in Sevastopol) decades before.
And again: for someone who has repeatedly claimed that you are a neutral third party commentator I have yet to see you say anything critical about Putins behavior despite having dedicated the majority of your posting in the last 3 days to discussing Russia.
http://gizmodo.com/russian-propaganda-mysteriously-cut-into-c-spans-web-fe-1791133632
Hahahaha....I need to breathe here, hold on....ohhhhohohohohohohoh.....thisisfine.gifv
I wouldn't be surprised if it was someone (American) making a statement, and not nefarious foreign agents.
It's not incoherent; the release of the hacked emails was specifically designed so that innocuous content would appear damning. That propaganda works is a problem with the audience, sure, or maybe with the fundamental psychological make-up of the human mind; but that doesn't make the propagandist blameless for taking advantage of those vulnerabilities, any more than a con man is blameless for choosing marks foolish enough to believe him, or a robber for stealing from someone too weak to defend themselves. You're just victim blaming.
BUT AS A RUGGED INDIVIDUALIST I BELIEVE THAT SHOULD JUST THINK FOR THEMSELVES.
According to CSPAN, someone just fucked up the routing. So it was a channel they were watching, and someone flipped a lever and switched to it.
It is no doubt Russian agents. After all the more you do something out and obvious the easier it is to deny it ever happened in the first place.
For some reason.
Why is this seen as a "wrong" view? There are Chicano Power movements on the left in the US, many active on campuses, that advocate for Aztlan (former northern Mexico) to secede from the US.
But we don't have a thread here called "America: the Musical" in which 99% of posts are dedicated to how evil the US government is, presented without any context, each post getting 20,000 agrees. As it is, this is not really really a thread for discussing Russia but for attacking Russia -- and even discussing context, that there is history behind events, things don't occur in in a vacuum, world history is not "good vs evil", causes people to go all Joe McCarthy accusing you of being a Soviet agent. And every comment denouncing Putin gets 20,000 agrees. This is like "March of the Murka Mooks."
Can you understand why for anyone outside the US this looks absurdly nationalistic and unbalanced, to say the least? This seems not to be critical discussion at all -- and we have excellent critical discussion here at a places like the Middle East thread -- but a series of polemics. And anytime someone says, "well, wait, it's more nuanced than that," they are shouted down by angry nationalists. Americans have have a way of proving stereotypes true, often, I find.
For what it's worth, coverage of Putin in the French media is much more nuanced than in the english-language media (US and UK). This is the cover of the current issue of a major French news magazine (Le Point, roughly the French equivalent to The Economist) on stands now. (If you don't know French, the translation to that banner headline on the cover would be roughly: "Game over. U mad bro?") The cover story's interior headline is "Poutine Superstar." But I suppose French media must all be orchestrated by the Russian intelligence services...
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades