I wish I could credit the person who made it, because it's not your common-or-garden meme. Whoever did that has completely mastered Photoshop layers, and that's just for starters.
“But one can't then say that they're traits that women have that no men have.” Not the claim. The claim is that a pattern of traits (= set of traits) that no men have. If a single one of the 15 traits is outside the female range, then that is the case.
Sep 26, 2023·edited Sep 26, 2023Liked by Helen Dale
All parts of the Anglophone West are steadily becoming more and more of an embarrassment to themselves. Continental Europe - whilst being properly critical of Russia's behaviour in Ukraine - at least manage to grasp some of the complexities and nuances. The awful truth is that, for the Anglosphere MSM (and much of the political establishment), almost everything - including wars that their populations don't have to experience other than on tv - has become a ghoulish form of mass media entertainment. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
Canada's accidental honoring of a former Nazi reminds me of my local school district finding out that Muslim parents don't like LGBTQ instruction in schools. In the world of social justice, the enemy of my enemy is another enemy.
Awareness of Ukrainian history in the twentieth century (or in any other period) is not widespread in Canada; at least, not in Ontario or Quebec. For example, I'd never heard of the Holodomor until I was in my late 20s. It's simply not talked about. The average Canadian's perspective on WWII is limited to Canada's role on the Western front, and doesn't extend far beyond the moralized "Hitler was evil" comic book caricature of the conflict. There's barely any awareness of the Pacific theatre (aside from vague guilt about the Japanese internment camps ... somehow never called concentration camps), and the Eastern front is a giant blank space.
I suspect part of this may be that the Ukrainian population is heavily concentrated in the prairies, and therefore on the irrelevant periphery of Canadian culture, which tends to navel-gaze around the Toronto-Montreal corridor. Then, too, there's a certain reluctance amongst the great and the good to discuss the Holodomor, since that a) indicts communism, while b) taking the spotlight from the Holocaust, which is the only atrocity that is allowed to matter.
"Thou shalt not compare" was clearly behind a lot of the animus from the wider Jewish lobby directed at my first novel, yes. Ukrainians who read it were generally willing to own shitty things (some of them) had done in WWII, but they were also keen for people to see the Holodomor as equivalent to the Holocaust.
I suspect - but cannot prove - that the "duelling terrible genocides only a decade apart" + "thou shalt not compare" issue is the source of Israel's lack of support for Ukraine in the current conflict.
Back in the oughts, Israel was directly pressuring the Ukrainian government not to refer to the Holodomor as a genocide, specifically because it "minimized the Holocaust". Not their best moment.
I find it generally interesting how most peoples are simultaneously capable of admitting they did bad things, while noticing that bad things happened to them, whereas many in the Jewish community seem incapable of chewing gum and walking at the same time. I suspect this drives quite a bit of anti-semitism. There's nothing quite as off-putting as someone who insists they're a perfect angel when you know perfectly well they aren't, who simultaneously insists they're the only one who's ever been victimized when you know quite well that isn't true. It's much easier to sympathize with those who own their sins, than those who deny them.
I am thy Lord the sacred genocide, I am a jealous genocide, thou shall have no other genocides before me.
=====
Thou shalt not compare, for thou shall not eat of the tree of knowledge, for thou cannot notice victims similarity to prior perpetrators.... like most murder victims. This thy shall not notice.
No, Israel can't take a strong stance against Russia in Ukraine because Russia control's Syrian airspace. Israel needs freedom of action to run sorties over Syria to destroy Iran/Hezbollah arms and positions. They can't risk conflict with Russia nor losing access to Syrian airspace. Straightforward geopolitics.
They have accepted huge numbers of Ukrainian refugees, mostly Ukrainian Jews.
Part of the reason conflict exists in the Donbas relates to the migration, resettlement by Russian citizens in the region post Holodomor. Amazingly Americans arrived as well building factories. Typical farmer vs industrial worker conflicts were minimal with most people tolerant of each other. A fraction disliked the cultural changes of the resettled Russians and joined with the German invaders to fight Russians in WW2. They were not Nazis but adopted the symbols as they attacked Russians. So the Ukrainian "Nazi" was born.
The region has a complicated history even dating to the effort of the White Army vs the Red Army and the betrayal of the West abandoning the White Army as the Reds created the Soviet Union. The repression of the Cossacks ( Turkic kazak, free man) by the Bolsheviks laid the groundwork for conflict. Some of the Holodomor relates to that repression. Russian propaganda suggests the existence of Ukrainian Nazis. Labels, you see. Reality is more complex.
This was also a (much larger) issue in Crimea, when basically the entire Tartar population was deported for collaboration towards the end of WWII.
In that case, they genuinely did go over to the Nazis - there were relatively few Crimean Tartars on the Soviet side - but they also probably weren't actual Nazis. Mind you, every now and again in my first novel research I came across a photo of an oriental looking bloke in a German uniform and would always have a giant WTF moment.
I suspect most people had no clue who this man was or what Ukraines role in WWII is.
I don't think it really matters either, the side that putatively promised to not starve these Ukrainians like Stalin did happened to lose and become the embodiment of complete evil.
However, this is indicative of their having no clue who the Ukrainians are or what is going on in the current war. Ditto their knowledge of Russia. It doesn't provide much confidence that they are making rational policy with reasonable goals.
What is your current perspective on what the USA/West should be doing vis a vis the war? Should we be supplying Ukraine with weapons/money? What, if any, changes to policy should the west make? Have any of your views changed since March 2022?
Was the invasion of Ukraine inevitable? Did the US play any role it in? Is Putin a modern Hitler and will he just invade Poland next? Is Donbas the Sudetenland of 2023?
As an Australian, the West should be helping Ukraine. Australia, South Korea and Japan all are, for the same reason. The worse things turn out for Russia, the more the CCP is deterred from trying to militarily “resolve” the Taiwan issue.
My country, right or wrong? All that has been accomplished is to bring it front and centre in Delhi; Moscow; and Peking that they need to decouple ASAP. They aren't "The West" and shouldn't be dependent on it. Washington's interests aren't their national interest. Hell, Washington's interests aren't even in the USA's national interest.
The commies that unpersoned you; where were they based out of again?
The main decoupling going on is from China, Xi having alienated or alarmed almost all his neighbours and zero-covided China’s standing as a reliable supplier. India is actually moving closer to the West.
Russia attacked Ukraine because Putin denies the existence of a separate Ukrainian nation and wants to preserve-by-spreading his kleptocratic system. The Ukrainians wish to expel the invader. This is not a hard moral or strategic calculus.
Ukraine is a shithole. East and West both got their turns at being kleptocratic multiple times, including Zelensky.
Russia attacked Ukraine because America sponsored an anti-russian alliance 30 years after Russian voluntarily dissolved its empire. It supported Yeltsin as he shelled his own parliament and western bankers and oligarchs raped its country. It supported two color revolutions in Ukraine that ended in failure. It's invaded and overthrew most of the Middle East with zero plan for what to do afterwards.
John McCain marched in Maiden Square and told the people that America was with them. A previous generation of leftists understood that this was another neocon war, but you're not smart enough. But Putin doesn't like fags and its OK to hate him because he's white, so lets start WWIII and fucking end it all over some shithole country.
That states, in particular Great Powers, behave badly is hardly news. That wars are polarising is also hardly news.
Russia under Putin has regularly invaded its neighbours, which is why all the European neighbours that can (i.e. don’t have an active border dispute with Russia) have now joined NATO. Putin is simply acting like every Russian autocrat since the C15th. A pattern of behaviour to which NATO is the solution, not the cause.
The colour revolutions in Ukraine were various levels of success. One of the reasons Ukraine has resisted so successfully is precisely because the growth in its civil society, particularly during and after the Maidan. Given how poorly the Ukrainian state has performed, such a development was an appropriate response to the limitations of said state. The society has been trying to get the state to behave better: it is an uphill battle, but they are working at it.
Russia is orders of magnitude more kleptocratic than anything we suffer in the West. I recommend Mark Galeotti’s In Moscow’s Shadows podcast, if you want informed insight into how Putin’s Russia actually works.
You seem to be projecting on events attitudes to domestic Western politics, rather than looking at the complexities as they are.
Ukraine had a GDP per capita of $3,700 in right before the war (Russia was $12,000). That is a failed state, period.
The people who took over after Maiden were crooks and incompetents. Just like the people who took over after the Orange revolution were crooks and incompetents.
"Russia is orders of magnitude more kleptocratic than anything we suffer in the West."
I don't have any conflict with Russia nor do I compare it to the west. Compared to Ukraine they are pretty similar (one people?) and Ukraine is worse.
What happens in these places is NOT MY BUSINESS.
The US should have stayed out of Maiden. It should have stayed out of Ukraine. It should have stayed out of Russia in the 1990s. What happens in these countries is not our business.
The "protestors" should have just waited to the next election if they didn't like Yanacovich or the trade deal, elect a different president, and pass a different trade deal. That's how democracy works. You don't enact a more violent version of January 6th with the active backing of a foreign power.
Now these people who burned down Maiden hoping it would get them a passport to get the fuck out of Ukraine can't leave because they are little more than future conscription cannon fodder to the government. Oops. Dumb move.
And no, I don't think Russians are violent orcs inherently prone to violence because its deep in their tainted souls.
When people say that this or that thing will cause the CCP to do X I never see much concrete evidence that they know what they are talking about. It all just sounds like "GET TOUGH".
Maybe they look at what happened in Ukraine and see that the US will constantly be trying to sponsor color revolutions to destabilize regimes it doesn't like.
Maybe they will look at Ukraine and determine that there is no way to reconcile with the west, that their goal is always to drag China down into another century of humiliation and not allow any rivals. To dismantle it the way they dismantled Russia after the Cold War.
Maybe they look at our trade embargoes on CHIPS (etc) and assume that they just want to keep China down at a fundamental level.
Maybe they will look at Ukraine and determine that all of the US bonds they accumulated through trade are fundamentally worthless when it counts because they can just turn of SWIFT, so why bother trading with the US.
Maybe they look at the Ukraine war and determine that the west has a blood feud with whole peoples. It's been said over and over that a goal of this war is to kill as many Russians as possible. Anyone with Russian blood or a Russian name within the wests power is punished.
I would look at the US history for many decades and see a power hungry destabilizing force that demands total obedience and respects no other nations sovereignty. That has been involved in so many invasions, coups, color revolutions, and bombing campaigns that the idea that they are a cause for global order is laughable.
You seem to think TOUGHNESS causes people to acquiesce. But maybe TOUGHNESS just looks like BELLIGERENCE. And if you are dealing with someone so belligerent that a fight is inevitable, then you fight.
You people got tough on Vietnam, it failed. You got tough on the Middle East, It failed. Maybe constant escalation isn't the right move in every single situation.
Deterrence = make a course of action less likely. I am in favour of making an invasion of Taiwan less likely. As, fairly clearly, are the South Koreans and the Japanese.
US naval hegemony has been a hugely stabilising factor. The notion that the international order is naturally stable is belied by millennia of history.
Supporting with arms and funds folk who are willing to defend themselves in a conventional war is very different from Vietnam or Afghanistan. (Iraq is still deciding who governs by elections, which is a win.)
You have absolutely no clue if your course of action will make an invasion of Taiwan less likely. If China concludes that your belligerence makes war inevitable, then invasion will be the result. You have a child's version of international theory where "escalate" is always and everywhere the correct play.
The Ukrainians are not willing to defend themselves. They are draconingly conscripted against their will. Even Ukrainian's who have fled to Poland are now being asked to be repatriated against their will.
And even if they were willing to defend themselves of their own free will, would that matter? The Japanese were more willing to defend themselves in WWII than almost any other people that have ever existed. It was completely retarded. What they "willed" was wrong and nobody should have supported it.
Ukraine is a shithole. It has 1/3 the per capita GDP of Russia. It is the corruption capital of the world. It had two color revolutions to put in western leaders both of which ended in complete failure. After the Orange revolution they elected Yanacovich six years later. After Maiden they elected Poroshenko who would be in jail without the war. Then they elected Zelensky who a couple of months before the war was considered a total failure.
Is this what we are risking nuclear war over? Is this what we are having hundreds of thousands die in battle of the somme remakes? An offensive that the people who ordered it knew would fail. For what? Depopulated farming villages in the Donbas. So that a failure Ukranian and failure government can fail like it's always failed? What exactly do you think if going to be different in Ukraine if they win?
It's not enough to say the other side has problems. You have to prove to me that that side you support is so immeasurably better that its worth the devestation of war to ensure their victory.
So, apparently, there is no point in investing in armed forces for national defence because we have no idea how leaders of states act and why.
Supporting a country that has been invaded by its neighbour is apparently “belligerence”. In the immortal words of Andre the Giant in ‘The Princess Bride’: that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
The attitude of the US political class to China for decades was “engagement”: the notion that encouraging China to economically grow would lead to a more democratic China. The shift away from engagement has come as a result of Xi’s policies. If you want to see belligerence on the world stage, I recommend looking up the CCP’s “wolf warrior diplomacy”.
The way Xi and the CCP responded to Australia suggesting a full enquiry into the origins of Covid would be a good idea, just epitomises why so many of China’s neighbours are combining against it. That CCP’s temper tantrum ended up economically costing China more than Australia says so much about the limited competence of Xi’s rule.
As for the risks of nuclear war: if Putin can invade his neighbours and wave the nuclear rhetoric and everyone backs off, then that just encourages him to do that again, and other nuclear-armed Powers to do the same.
I don't see how you look at this and say China is the belligerent.
"The shift away from engagement has come as a result of Xi’s policies."
It came because we always need an enemy for domestic political reasons and to make arms manufacturers rich and give the intelligence community and its very well paid contractors something to do. Bush was going to make China the new enemy at first but then he stuck gold with 9/11 and made every brown person in the Middle East the enemy for two decades. That ships is exhausted so we need a new enemy.
Covid probably came from a lab leak via gain of function research the US decided to offload in China. You seem to blame China for this, but I see the US engaging in dangerous and unnecessary biological experiments and then locating them in a foreign country.
"if Putin can invade his neighbors and wave the nuclear rhetoric and everyone backs off"
If there had been no Maiden coup, if the US was not arming Ukraine for the purpose of bringing them into an anti-Russian alliance, if the Ukrainians didn't persecute their own people, and then Russia randomly invaded for absolutely no reason, then I would have more sympathy.
As it stands I see it as another US attempt to interfere abroad and poke Russia with a stick hoping we would get a war (there is a lot of money to be made in war and much political gain).
P.S. Ukraine giving up its nukes was retarded. Nukes are the thing that is supposed to make conventional war obsolete.
In truth I’ve been saying for a year on FbF that half the USA goal is indirect- to break up Chimerica and prepare for US vs China contest.
As far as 🇺🇸supporting Ukraine;
🇺🇸We’ve exceeded our usual game of leaving the Bride at the Altar by stealing her Dowry * and leaving her gang raped corpse in the alley behind the Church.
That’s us 🇺🇸 supporting Ukraine.
Ukraine is ceasing to exist.
We 🇺🇸got our industries back from China, forced Europe into ending it with Russia (and China) and have consolidated the Empire around the CONUS core and Atlantic, Pacific rims. AU 🇦🇺 got a nice reminder the French are America’s friend, not Australia’s ally. (Sorry). Germany is crushed again on the cheap, power is asserted nakedly.
Analysis is not Advocacy.
This is evil. It’s also competent from an Imperial perspective.
There was general belief in Jan 2022 in places not unconnected with various national intelligence agencies that once Russia successfully invaded Ukraine in the spring this would pave the way for the PRC to invade Taiwan in the autumn (after typhoon season).
The fact the Ukraine failed to collapse and the way the the invasion clearly showed the depths of the endemic corruption of the Russian military contributed to the PRC having second thoughts. Now they may think they've got a handle on their own corruption (or enough of a handle that its OK to proceed) but they also now have to factor in the way that Ukrainians resisted and consider the likelihood that the Taiwanese will do the same. If the Taiwanese do resist and are (as I would expect) supported in their resistance by Japan that alone is likely to completely trash the invasion - Japan is key because it is the closest supply route and has a robust ~~navy~~ er Marine Self Defense force. Presuming that the US, S Korea, Australia, Vietnam, the Philippines, India etc. would also support Taiwan (which seems likely) just makes the concept of a swift successful invasion even less plausible.
To add to your comments, Russia exports food and energy. China imports food, energy and inputs for its domestic food production. If China was sanctioned the way Russia has been sanctioned, the economic stress would be far worse.
The fundamental problem for the CCP is that it wishes to undo American pre-dominance but it is the large economy most dependent on the US naval hegemony imposing a Pax Americana on the high seas. The first globalisation of 1820s-1914 rested on the Royal Navy’s naval hegemony. The second globalisation of 1945-present rests on the USN’s naval hegemony. Which, if you add in allied Western navies, represents almost ludicrous levels of naval dominance.
Mind you the age of drones is going to remake naval power in the same way that aircraft carriers did a century ago. I'm not sure which current naval power gets that, but they all will eventually. Or fail.
My guess is that as with Ukraine it will be countries on a budget who have a critical need that do this first so I'd expect Taiwan to be right up there in the drone navy development
The Azerbaijani use of drones against Armenia was the first sign that the world had changed. But, of course, a minor conflict between minor states, so easy to ignore. What Ukraine has been doing to the Black Sea fleet is harder to ignore.
Good post. However, I would say that associating Galicia with Ukrainian nationalism is a bit simplistic (although completely understandable in the context of the post). Still, I would point out that there used to be a rather influential 19th-century group movement in Galicia known as the Moscophiles (the name is self-explanatory) who have been pretty much memory-holed both in both Ukraine and Russia. There are also accounts of pro-Russian sentiment in Galicia, for example, the diary of Russian writer Mikhail Prishvin who visited the region as a military correspondent in 1914.
Just in case: I am not trying to peddle the whole “brotherly people” narrative or say that there was no strong Ukrainian nationalist movement in Galicia. I am just pointing out how things sometimes get airbrushed out of history, not necessarily on purpose but because one side prevailed over the years and it became hard to view things outside of certain frameworks. Now Galicia will forever be remembered solely as a bastion of anti-Russian sentiment, Vladimir Putin saw to it.
Just to add to the confusion, the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (1772-1918) in the Austrian lands needs to be distinguished from the medieval Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia and the Kingdom of Galicia (910-1833), in Spain.
Of course Ukraine wasn't the only country caught between a rock and a hard place WRT Hitler and Stalin. Finland made much the same choice in accepting Nazi aid and generally regretting it (particularly when the Nazis retreated and burned chunks of Lapland during their retreat).
"Lauri Allan Törni (28 May 1919 – 18 October 1965), later known as Larry Alan Thorne, was a Finnish-born soldier who fought under three flags: as a Finnish Army officer in the Winter War and the Continuation War ultimately gaining a rank of captain; as a Waffen-SS captain (under the alias Larry Laine) of the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS when he fought the Red Army on the Eastern Front in World War II;[3] and as a United States Army Major (under the alias "Larry Thorne") when he served in the U.S. Army Special Forces in the Vietnam War.
Törni died in a helicopter crash during the Vietnam War and he was promoted to the rank of major posthumously. His remains were located three decades later and then buried in Arlington National Cemetery; he is the only former member of the Waffen-SS known to be interred there. ..."
Talking of "great men of history", there's a very strong argument that Mannerheim was the reason why Finland remained an independent country after both wars. There were so many potential chances for the Soviet Union to get the whole country instead of just Karelia.
Trudeau's lot are far closer to Nazi's than anything I'd recognise as the parliamentary government of a royal republic. What is Canada anyway but Little America long leched after by Washington? Who could never understand it as an independent nation instead of 10 States and 3 Territories of the Union.
UPDATE Wed 27th Sept 10 am BST: Anthony Rota has stayed under the bus long enough for it to kill him off. He’s resigned: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66930482
All I can say is that Justin Trudeau must know where all the bodies are buried.
UPDATE Fri 29 Sept 9 am BST: Jewish-Ukrainian shitfight continues in Canada, this time over the literal plot to The Hand that Signed the Paper. See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66914756
Adjacent to some religious "school" for First Nations usually.
I wish I could credit the person who made it, because it's not your common-or-garden meme. Whoever did that has completely mastered Photoshop layers, and that's just for starters.
Has a set of traits that no man has.
“But one can't then say that they're traits that women have that no men have.” Not the claim. The claim is that a pattern of traits (= set of traits) that no men have. If a single one of the 15 traits is outside the female range, then that is the case.
It's an older meme, but it checks out
I think I saw it during the Trucker protests if not earlier
All parts of the Anglophone West are steadily becoming more and more of an embarrassment to themselves. Continental Europe - whilst being properly critical of Russia's behaviour in Ukraine - at least manage to grasp some of the complexities and nuances. The awful truth is that, for the Anglosphere MSM (and much of the political establishment), almost everything - including wars that their populations don't have to experience other than on tv - has become a ghoulish form of mass media entertainment. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
The main complexity was that decades of deluded _Ostpolitik_ had them snookered.
Oh cheer up, its coming
Canada's accidental honoring of a former Nazi reminds me of my local school district finding out that Muslim parents don't like LGBTQ instruction in schools. In the world of social justice, the enemy of my enemy is another enemy.
Oh, SNAP.
🤣
Awareness of Ukrainian history in the twentieth century (or in any other period) is not widespread in Canada; at least, not in Ontario or Quebec. For example, I'd never heard of the Holodomor until I was in my late 20s. It's simply not talked about. The average Canadian's perspective on WWII is limited to Canada's role on the Western front, and doesn't extend far beyond the moralized "Hitler was evil" comic book caricature of the conflict. There's barely any awareness of the Pacific theatre (aside from vague guilt about the Japanese internment camps ... somehow never called concentration camps), and the Eastern front is a giant blank space.
I suspect part of this may be that the Ukrainian population is heavily concentrated in the prairies, and therefore on the irrelevant periphery of Canadian culture, which tends to navel-gaze around the Toronto-Montreal corridor. Then, too, there's a certain reluctance amongst the great and the good to discuss the Holodomor, since that a) indicts communism, while b) taking the spotlight from the Holocaust, which is the only atrocity that is allowed to matter.
"Thou shalt not compare" was clearly behind a lot of the animus from the wider Jewish lobby directed at my first novel, yes. Ukrainians who read it were generally willing to own shitty things (some of them) had done in WWII, but they were also keen for people to see the Holodomor as equivalent to the Holocaust.
I suspect - but cannot prove - that the "duelling terrible genocides only a decade apart" + "thou shalt not compare" issue is the source of Israel's lack of support for Ukraine in the current conflict.
Back in the oughts, Israel was directly pressuring the Ukrainian government not to refer to the Holodomor as a genocide, specifically because it "minimized the Holocaust". Not their best moment.
I find it generally interesting how most peoples are simultaneously capable of admitting they did bad things, while noticing that bad things happened to them, whereas many in the Jewish community seem incapable of chewing gum and walking at the same time. I suspect this drives quite a bit of anti-semitism. There's nothing quite as off-putting as someone who insists they're a perfect angel when you know perfectly well they aren't, who simultaneously insists they're the only one who's ever been victimized when you know quite well that isn't true. It's much easier to sympathize with those who own their sins, than those who deny them.
You don't do nuance or reading for comprehension. Got it.
I am thy Lord the sacred genocide, I am a jealous genocide, thou shall have no other genocides before me.
=====
Thou shalt not compare, for thou shall not eat of the tree of knowledge, for thou cannot notice victims similarity to prior perpetrators.... like most murder victims. This thy shall not notice.
No, Israel can't take a strong stance against Russia in Ukraine because Russia control's Syrian airspace. Israel needs freedom of action to run sorties over Syria to destroy Iran/Hezbollah arms and positions. They can't risk conflict with Russia nor losing access to Syrian airspace. Straightforward geopolitics.
They have accepted huge numbers of Ukrainian refugees, mostly Ukrainian Jews.
Part of the reason conflict exists in the Donbas relates to the migration, resettlement by Russian citizens in the region post Holodomor. Amazingly Americans arrived as well building factories. Typical farmer vs industrial worker conflicts were minimal with most people tolerant of each other. A fraction disliked the cultural changes of the resettled Russians and joined with the German invaders to fight Russians in WW2. They were not Nazis but adopted the symbols as they attacked Russians. So the Ukrainian "Nazi" was born.
The region has a complicated history even dating to the effort of the White Army vs the Red Army and the betrayal of the West abandoning the White Army as the Reds created the Soviet Union. The repression of the Cossacks ( Turkic kazak, free man) by the Bolsheviks laid the groundwork for conflict. Some of the Holodomor relates to that repression. Russian propaganda suggests the existence of Ukrainian Nazis. Labels, you see. Reality is more complex.
This was also a (much larger) issue in Crimea, when basically the entire Tartar population was deported for collaboration towards the end of WWII.
In that case, they genuinely did go over to the Nazis - there were relatively few Crimean Tartars on the Soviet side - but they also probably weren't actual Nazis. Mind you, every now and again in my first novel research I came across a photo of an oriental looking bloke in a German uniform and would always have a giant WTF moment.
I suspect most people had no clue who this man was or what Ukraines role in WWII is.
I don't think it really matters either, the side that putatively promised to not starve these Ukrainians like Stalin did happened to lose and become the embodiment of complete evil.
However, this is indicative of their having no clue who the Ukrainians are or what is going on in the current war. Ditto their knowledge of Russia. It doesn't provide much confidence that they are making rational policy with reasonable goals.
What is your current perspective on what the USA/West should be doing vis a vis the war? Should we be supplying Ukraine with weapons/money? What, if any, changes to policy should the west make? Have any of your views changed since March 2022?
Was the invasion of Ukraine inevitable? Did the US play any role it in? Is Putin a modern Hitler and will he just invade Poland next? Is Donbas the Sudetenland of 2023?
As an Australian, the West should be helping Ukraine. Australia, South Korea and Japan all are, for the same reason. The worse things turn out for Russia, the more the CCP is deterred from trying to militarily “resolve” the Taiwan issue.
This is also an aspect of my view.
My country, right or wrong? All that has been accomplished is to bring it front and centre in Delhi; Moscow; and Peking that they need to decouple ASAP. They aren't "The West" and shouldn't be dependent on it. Washington's interests aren't their national interest. Hell, Washington's interests aren't even in the USA's national interest.
The commies that unpersoned you; where were they based out of again?
The main decoupling going on is from China, Xi having alienated or alarmed almost all his neighbours and zero-covided China’s standing as a reliable supplier. India is actually moving closer to the West.
Russia attacked Ukraine because Putin denies the existence of a separate Ukrainian nation and wants to preserve-by-spreading his kleptocratic system. The Ukrainians wish to expel the invader. This is not a hard moral or strategic calculus.
Ukraine is a shithole. East and West both got their turns at being kleptocratic multiple times, including Zelensky.
Russia attacked Ukraine because America sponsored an anti-russian alliance 30 years after Russian voluntarily dissolved its empire. It supported Yeltsin as he shelled his own parliament and western bankers and oligarchs raped its country. It supported two color revolutions in Ukraine that ended in failure. It's invaded and overthrew most of the Middle East with zero plan for what to do afterwards.
John McCain marched in Maiden Square and told the people that America was with them. A previous generation of leftists understood that this was another neocon war, but you're not smart enough. But Putin doesn't like fags and its OK to hate him because he's white, so lets start WWIII and fucking end it all over some shithole country.
Putin attacked Ukraine because he denies its existence as a separate nation. He told us this.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
That states, in particular Great Powers, behave badly is hardly news. That wars are polarising is also hardly news.
Russia under Putin has regularly invaded its neighbours, which is why all the European neighbours that can (i.e. don’t have an active border dispute with Russia) have now joined NATO. Putin is simply acting like every Russian autocrat since the C15th. A pattern of behaviour to which NATO is the solution, not the cause.
I discuss this both on this Substack and my own.
https://www.notonyourteam.co.uk/p/russian-traumas
https://www.lorenzofromoz.net/p/the-latest-iteration-of-continuing
The colour revolutions in Ukraine were various levels of success. One of the reasons Ukraine has resisted so successfully is precisely because the growth in its civil society, particularly during and after the Maidan. Given how poorly the Ukrainian state has performed, such a development was an appropriate response to the limitations of said state. The society has been trying to get the state to behave better: it is an uphill battle, but they are working at it.
Russia is orders of magnitude more kleptocratic than anything we suffer in the West. I recommend Mark Galeotti’s In Moscow’s Shadows podcast, if you want informed insight into how Putin’s Russia actually works.
You seem to be projecting on events attitudes to domestic Western politics, rather than looking at the complexities as they are.
Ukraine had a GDP per capita of $3,700 in right before the war (Russia was $12,000). That is a failed state, period.
The people who took over after Maiden were crooks and incompetents. Just like the people who took over after the Orange revolution were crooks and incompetents.
"Russia is orders of magnitude more kleptocratic than anything we suffer in the West."
I don't have any conflict with Russia nor do I compare it to the west. Compared to Ukraine they are pretty similar (one people?) and Ukraine is worse.
What happens in these places is NOT MY BUSINESS.
The US should have stayed out of Maiden. It should have stayed out of Ukraine. It should have stayed out of Russia in the 1990s. What happens in these countries is not our business.
The "protestors" should have just waited to the next election if they didn't like Yanacovich or the trade deal, elect a different president, and pass a different trade deal. That's how democracy works. You don't enact a more violent version of January 6th with the active backing of a foreign power.
Now these people who burned down Maiden hoping it would get them a passport to get the fuck out of Ukraine can't leave because they are little more than future conscription cannon fodder to the government. Oops. Dumb move.
And no, I don't think Russians are violent orcs inherently prone to violence because its deep in their tainted souls.
When people say that this or that thing will cause the CCP to do X I never see much concrete evidence that they know what they are talking about. It all just sounds like "GET TOUGH".
Maybe they look at what happened in Ukraine and see that the US will constantly be trying to sponsor color revolutions to destabilize regimes it doesn't like.
Maybe they will look at Ukraine and determine that there is no way to reconcile with the west, that their goal is always to drag China down into another century of humiliation and not allow any rivals. To dismantle it the way they dismantled Russia after the Cold War.
Maybe they look at our trade embargoes on CHIPS (etc) and assume that they just want to keep China down at a fundamental level.
Maybe they will look at Ukraine and determine that all of the US bonds they accumulated through trade are fundamentally worthless when it counts because they can just turn of SWIFT, so why bother trading with the US.
Maybe they look at the Ukraine war and determine that the west has a blood feud with whole peoples. It's been said over and over that a goal of this war is to kill as many Russians as possible. Anyone with Russian blood or a Russian name within the wests power is punished.
I would look at the US history for many decades and see a power hungry destabilizing force that demands total obedience and respects no other nations sovereignty. That has been involved in so many invasions, coups, color revolutions, and bombing campaigns that the idea that they are a cause for global order is laughable.
You seem to think TOUGHNESS causes people to acquiesce. But maybe TOUGHNESS just looks like BELLIGERENCE. And if you are dealing with someone so belligerent that a fight is inevitable, then you fight.
You people got tough on Vietnam, it failed. You got tough on the Middle East, It failed. Maybe constant escalation isn't the right move in every single situation.
Deterrence = make a course of action less likely. I am in favour of making an invasion of Taiwan less likely. As, fairly clearly, are the South Koreans and the Japanese.
US naval hegemony has been a hugely stabilising factor. The notion that the international order is naturally stable is belied by millennia of history.
Supporting with arms and funds folk who are willing to defend themselves in a conventional war is very different from Vietnam or Afghanistan. (Iraq is still deciding who governs by elections, which is a win.)
You have absolutely no clue if your course of action will make an invasion of Taiwan less likely. If China concludes that your belligerence makes war inevitable, then invasion will be the result. You have a child's version of international theory where "escalate" is always and everywhere the correct play.
The Ukrainians are not willing to defend themselves. They are draconingly conscripted against their will. Even Ukrainian's who have fled to Poland are now being asked to be repatriated against their will.
And even if they were willing to defend themselves of their own free will, would that matter? The Japanese were more willing to defend themselves in WWII than almost any other people that have ever existed. It was completely retarded. What they "willed" was wrong and nobody should have supported it.
Ukraine is a shithole. It has 1/3 the per capita GDP of Russia. It is the corruption capital of the world. It had two color revolutions to put in western leaders both of which ended in complete failure. After the Orange revolution they elected Yanacovich six years later. After Maiden they elected Poroshenko who would be in jail without the war. Then they elected Zelensky who a couple of months before the war was considered a total failure.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2022/02/16/against-all-odds-has-zelensky-failed-ukraine/?sh=2d65ecbf7d68
Is this what we are risking nuclear war over? Is this what we are having hundreds of thousands die in battle of the somme remakes? An offensive that the people who ordered it knew would fail. For what? Depopulated farming villages in the Donbas. So that a failure Ukranian and failure government can fail like it's always failed? What exactly do you think if going to be different in Ukraine if they win?
It's not enough to say the other side has problems. You have to prove to me that that side you support is so immeasurably better that its worth the devestation of war to ensure their victory.
So, apparently, there is no point in investing in armed forces for national defence because we have no idea how leaders of states act and why.
Supporting a country that has been invaded by its neighbour is apparently “belligerence”. In the immortal words of Andre the Giant in ‘The Princess Bride’: that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
The attitude of the US political class to China for decades was “engagement”: the notion that encouraging China to economically grow would lead to a more democratic China. The shift away from engagement has come as a result of Xi’s policies. If you want to see belligerence on the world stage, I recommend looking up the CCP’s “wolf warrior diplomacy”.
The way Xi and the CCP responded to Australia suggesting a full enquiry into the origins of Covid would be a good idea, just epitomises why so many of China’s neighbours are combining against it. That CCP’s temper tantrum ended up economically costing China more than Australia says so much about the limited competence of Xi’s rule.
As for the risks of nuclear war: if Putin can invade his neighbours and wave the nuclear rhetoric and everyone backs off, then that just encourages him to do that again, and other nuclear-armed Powers to do the same.
China has invaded zero countries since I was born.
Here is a small list of all the things the US had done abroad:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States
I don't see how you look at this and say China is the belligerent.
"The shift away from engagement has come as a result of Xi’s policies."
It came because we always need an enemy for domestic political reasons and to make arms manufacturers rich and give the intelligence community and its very well paid contractors something to do. Bush was going to make China the new enemy at first but then he stuck gold with 9/11 and made every brown person in the Middle East the enemy for two decades. That ships is exhausted so we need a new enemy.
Covid probably came from a lab leak via gain of function research the US decided to offload in China. You seem to blame China for this, but I see the US engaging in dangerous and unnecessary biological experiments and then locating them in a foreign country.
"if Putin can invade his neighbors and wave the nuclear rhetoric and everyone backs off"
If there had been no Maiden coup, if the US was not arming Ukraine for the purpose of bringing them into an anti-Russian alliance, if the Ukrainians didn't persecute their own people, and then Russia randomly invaded for absolutely no reason, then I would have more sympathy.
As it stands I see it as another US attempt to interfere abroad and poke Russia with a stick hoping we would get a war (there is a lot of money to be made in war and much political gain).
P.S. Ukraine giving up its nukes was retarded. Nukes are the thing that is supposed to make conventional war obsolete.
At last sensible reasons.
In truth I’ve been saying for a year on FbF that half the USA goal is indirect- to break up Chimerica and prepare for US vs China contest.
As far as 🇺🇸supporting Ukraine;
🇺🇸We’ve exceeded our usual game of leaving the Bride at the Altar by stealing her Dowry * and leaving her gang raped corpse in the alley behind the Church.
That’s us 🇺🇸 supporting Ukraine.
Ukraine is ceasing to exist.
We 🇺🇸got our industries back from China, forced Europe into ending it with Russia (and China) and have consolidated the Empire around the CONUS core and Atlantic, Pacific rims. AU 🇦🇺 got a nice reminder the French are America’s friend, not Australia’s ally. (Sorry). Germany is crushed again on the cheap, power is asserted nakedly.
Analysis is not Advocacy.
This is evil. It’s also competent from an Imperial perspective.
*Nukes
There was general belief in Jan 2022 in places not unconnected with various national intelligence agencies that once Russia successfully invaded Ukraine in the spring this would pave the way for the PRC to invade Taiwan in the autumn (after typhoon season).
The fact the Ukraine failed to collapse and the way the the invasion clearly showed the depths of the endemic corruption of the Russian military contributed to the PRC having second thoughts. Now they may think they've got a handle on their own corruption (or enough of a handle that its OK to proceed) but they also now have to factor in the way that Ukrainians resisted and consider the likelihood that the Taiwanese will do the same. If the Taiwanese do resist and are (as I would expect) supported in their resistance by Japan that alone is likely to completely trash the invasion - Japan is key because it is the closest supply route and has a robust ~~navy~~ er Marine Self Defense force. Presuming that the US, S Korea, Australia, Vietnam, the Philippines, India etc. would also support Taiwan (which seems likely) just makes the concept of a swift successful invasion even less plausible.
FWIW I wrote a post a year ago on the challenges of invading Taiwan - https://freethepeople.org/taiwan-the-map-is-not-the-territory/
Nice piece.
To add to your comments, Russia exports food and energy. China imports food, energy and inputs for its domestic food production. If China was sanctioned the way Russia has been sanctioned, the economic stress would be far worse.
The fundamental problem for the CCP is that it wishes to undo American pre-dominance but it is the large economy most dependent on the US naval hegemony imposing a Pax Americana on the high seas. The first globalisation of 1820s-1914 rested on the Royal Navy’s naval hegemony. The second globalisation of 1945-present rests on the USN’s naval hegemony. Which, if you add in allied Western navies, represents almost ludicrous levels of naval dominance.
Mind you the age of drones is going to remake naval power in the same way that aircraft carriers did a century ago. I'm not sure which current naval power gets that, but they all will eventually. Or fail.
My guess is that as with Ukraine it will be countries on a budget who have a critical need that do this first so I'd expect Taiwan to be right up there in the drone navy development
The Azerbaijani use of drones against Armenia was the first sign that the world had changed. But, of course, a minor conflict between minor states, so easy to ignore. What Ukraine has been doing to the Black Sea fleet is harder to ignore.
Yes..... as mentioned in this thing I wrote a year ago
https://freethepeople.org/tsar-wars-attack-of-the-drones/
The scary thing about that is that (almost) every prediction I made it it has come true. The only thing missing is mass drone waves in the thousands
See https://archive.md/DX8kw (WSJ article) about the current state of play
Good post. However, I would say that associating Galicia with Ukrainian nationalism is a bit simplistic (although completely understandable in the context of the post). Still, I would point out that there used to be a rather influential 19th-century group movement in Galicia known as the Moscophiles (the name is self-explanatory) who have been pretty much memory-holed both in both Ukraine and Russia. There are also accounts of pro-Russian sentiment in Galicia, for example, the diary of Russian writer Mikhail Prishvin who visited the region as a military correspondent in 1914.
Just in case: I am not trying to peddle the whole “brotherly people” narrative or say that there was no strong Ukrainian nationalist movement in Galicia. I am just pointing out how things sometimes get airbrushed out of history, not necessarily on purpose but because one side prevailed over the years and it became hard to view things outside of certain frameworks. Now Galicia will forever be remembered solely as a bastion of anti-Russian sentiment, Vladimir Putin saw to it.
Just to add to the confusion, the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (1772-1918) in the Austrian lands needs to be distinguished from the medieval Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia and the Kingdom of Galicia (910-1833), in Spain.
1. No Good War: Correct.
I recommend discarding moral judgments in war along with any further legal farces all the way back to Nuremberg. Yes.
That was a dreadful mistake.
Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter refused to sit on the Nuremberg Tribunal.
2. If you take your laws to war you lose the war and your laws, America has proven out.
Both are lost.
3. An Jury of peers will often let “war crimes” go, yes. It’s nonsense, and often the Jury did same.
There are necessary wars but there are no unalloyed good wars. Most people can't walk and chew gum. Far too many can't do either well.
Yes, the meme is exceptionally well done.
Having a standing ovation for an SS member is probably the only based thing Canada's government has done in years, if not decades.
Err, I reported this post unintentionally. Apologies to CernelJoson.
Oh that's what that notification I got yesterday was about. All is explained!
No worries friend.
Of course Ukraine wasn't the only country caught between a rock and a hard place WRT Hitler and Stalin. Finland made much the same choice in accepting Nazi aid and generally regretting it (particularly when the Nazis retreated and burned chunks of Lapland during their retreat).
There's a Finnish "Nazi collaborator" buried in Arlington cemetery near DC in fact - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_T%C3%B6rni
"Lauri Allan Törni (28 May 1919 – 18 October 1965), later known as Larry Alan Thorne, was a Finnish-born soldier who fought under three flags: as a Finnish Army officer in the Winter War and the Continuation War ultimately gaining a rank of captain; as a Waffen-SS captain (under the alias Larry Laine) of the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS when he fought the Red Army on the Eastern Front in World War II;[3] and as a United States Army Major (under the alias "Larry Thorne") when he served in the U.S. Army Special Forces in the Vietnam War.
Törni died in a helicopter crash during the Vietnam War and he was promoted to the rank of major posthumously. His remains were located three decades later and then buried in Arlington National Cemetery; he is the only former member of the Waffen-SS known to be interred there. ..."
Just to add to the complications, Finland was also how the Nazi aesthetic seeped into Western gay culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_of_Finland
Marshal Mannerheim: the only person to be a general officer in both world wars and to be honoured by both sides in both world wars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustaf_Emil_Mannerheim
Talking of "great men of history", there's a very strong argument that Mannerheim was the reason why Finland remained an independent country after both wars. There were so many potential chances for the Soviet Union to get the whole country instead of just Karelia.
Agreed.
Fascinating thread/sub-thread.
Trudeau's lot are far closer to Nazi's than anything I'd recognise as the parliamentary government of a royal republic. What is Canada anyway but Little America long leched after by Washington? Who could never understand it as an independent nation instead of 10 States and 3 Territories of the Union.
The distinction between Good and Right reminds me of Into the Woods. "You're not Good, you're just Nice. I'm not Good. I'm not Nice. I'm just Right".