291–300 of 500 posts
Could anyone recommend a Noam Chomsky talk about language? I'm curious about his work but have never read or listened to anything from the man.
If you skip to the very last question at 26:50, it is a little bit poignant, considering this news.
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There is unfortunately a staggering amount of evidence of genocide in Ukraine committed by russia. To suggest otherwise, or to suggest that russia is "acting with restraint and moderation" as Chomsky said, is tantamount to Holocaust denial. https://www.newstatesman.com/the-weekend-interview/2023/04/n...
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Oh, right, they were targeting shopping malls and residential buildings... Or, you know, nuclear power plants.
> When people are confronted with this fact they typically turn to the argument that our team are pure-of-heart so their killing doesn't count.
Yes, your side is the only one that has rational individuals.
> I don't remember where or if he talked about the claim of genocide in Ukraine but there is not a "staggering amount of evidence" unless your definition of genocide is so broad as to include a large proportion of armed conflicts
So, Mariupol, Bucha... Bucha was just a massacre, there's no justification there, but let's say you want to compare Mariupol with... Fallujah? Do you have a worse US massacre in recent history? Well, yeah, the US killed people, and they should be blamed for it, but the scale doesn't even compare. Even if you take the Russian number of casualties, it's way higher in Mariupol.
>Like I said these criticisms fall apart almost immediately when you start discussing the facts.
What facts?
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The problem is that's a false narrative. There were never any promises, and Putin barely even cared that it resulted in Finland and Sweden joining NATO. Because Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine was never Putin's actual reason, which is basically an emotional desire for historical greatness by reclaiming Russia's lost empire, combined with war always being an excellent mechanism for staying in power and…
But how do you know so clearly that the one thing is a lie and the other is the truth? Even if you reject the "encroaching NATO" narrative, what makes "Putin just woke up one day and decided that remaking the Soviet Union and/or the zarist Russian Empire would be a great thing to do in the 21th century" the more plausible hypothesis? What information do you have that Mearsheimer doesn't?
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There is unfortunately a staggering amount of evidence of genocide in Ukraine committed by russia. To suggest otherwise, or to suggest that russia is "acting with restraint and moderation" as Chomsky said, is tantamount to Holocaust denial. https://www.newstatesman.com/the-weekend-interview/2023/04/n...
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Initially, Russia was planning a decapitation strike and to take Ukraine relatively whole afterwards, either by annexation or installation of a puppet regime or a mix of the two.
They started heavily hitting civilian concentration with no military value as a terror tactic pretty quickly when the swift decapitation strike bogged down, and then started hitting civilian infrastructure where the combination of attacks on military targets and terror civilian attacks didn't produce a collapse that left them in control.
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What makes you believe anything would work? Things take people wanting them.
Grand ideas about structuring a society based on a premise or an ideology or ideal end up being disasters when attempts are made to put them into practice. It should be pretty simple to understand why: no one person or group of people can predict all eventualities or contingencies and it is not possible to design a system based on rigid ideals that can fail gracefully.
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The problem is that's a false narrative. There were never any promises, and Putin barely even cared that it resulted in Finland and Sweden joining NATO. Because Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine was never Putin's actual reason, which is basically an emotional desire for historical greatness by reclaiming Russia's lost empire, combined with war always being an excellent mechanism for staying in power and…
But how do you know so clearly that the one thing is a lie and the other is the truth? Even if you reject the "encroaching NATO" narrative, what makes "Putin just woke up one day and decided that remaking the Soviet Union and/or the zarist Russian Empire would be a great thing to do in the 21th century" the more plausible hypothesis? What information do you have that Mearsheimer doesn't?
The IR community does not share Mearsheimer's take. He is very much known to be the exception. Which is why he's the only one we're referring to by name here, because his analysis is so contrary to the overwhelming consensus of experts.
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He is still annoyed communism failed so epically. In his mind the Soviet satellites were to blame for wanting independence. It can been seen again with Ukraine, it's not that the Ukrainians are standing up for their independence, it is somehow NATOs fault. He has made some good points about western politics from time to time. Even a stopped clock is correct twice a day.
> it is somehow NATOs fault. NATO continued to expand right up to Russia's doorstep despite repeated promises not to, and refused to rule out expanding to Ukraine. Russia clearly called this out as a problem for years. Whether or not this is "NATOs fault", it's clear that the Ukraine invasion was motivated, in part, by NATO expansion.
Unless you mean, the only way to have prevented the Russian invasion of Ukraine would have been to accept Ukraine into NATO, I strongly disagree with you here.
Russia invaded Ukraine not because Russia is fearful of NATO but because Russia wished to recreate the Soviet empire. It's just plain old imperialism.
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The DDR
It was so good that to this day there is an economic rift between former west and east Germany.
1. The West of Germany, particularly the Rhine, had large amounts of natural resources and much industrial capacity. This was true long before Germany was split. Take the steel production of Germany in 1944, for example. 59% of Steel production was in the West, 18% was in the East, and 16% was in the areas outside of Germany. This is not only more production, but more production per capita.
2. Like most of the former Easter bloc, the privatization of state companies resulted in economic downturn in that region. Especially since many of these state industries were simply closed and cashed out on. Jörg Steinbach, economy minister of Brandenburg, is quoted as saying "Some 70 per cent of East German industry disappeared".
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1. An immensely powerful career politician who had engineered several coups across Asia that led to the needless destruction of untold lives 2. A libleft college professor who was not taken seriously by anyone with any modicum of power. Who's number 3? A coughing baby?
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Is there a good example of socialism?
I'm not sure it falls under socialism, but I always enjoy reading about the "Miracle of Wörgl" and Wörgl's mayor Unterguggenberger. There is even a movie about it! https://unterguggenberger.org/the-free-economy-experiment-of...