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Notes on Tajikistan

mattlakeman.org

371–380 of 412 posts

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#371
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"self-evidently full of excrement their droppings" seemed both scornful and snarky to me. > a lot of postings here (or excerpts from them) are plainly BS In principle I agree because that's what human beings do, but I don't agree with your word "plainly". That implies that there exists an objective perspective that nearly everyone can easily agree on, as long as they're in good faith. But there's no such perspective—…

I appreciate the detailed response, and will give it careful consideration. I was hoping you could also respond to the question at the very top ("Can you point to even a single instance ...", up to the "If not, then why ..." part). I'm not trying to split hairs here -- I'm really genuinely mystified by the apparent insinuation that I was responding to. That is, I don't see why would you bother to inject the phrase "W…

Just in case this is helpful (I saw this thread because I'm operantly conditioned to read Dan's comments to catch these essays he writes) --- you and I chatted a bunch up until about a month ago, when I sort of deliberately gave up on talking about Palestine on HN. In the intervening time until now, it looks like essentially all of your comments have been political.

I think there's, like, 2 things about that? First: the overwhelming majority of what the site talks about isn't politics, and you're basically not engaging with it. That's fine for some topics; like, if all you engaged with was woodworking or Russian literature, you'd be great. But the 2nd thing is that political threads tend inexorably to become toxic and alienating, in ways that mess up conversations about woodworking and Russian literature and LLMs and APL. People literally hold grudges from the political threads!

I think if you're going to exclusively comment on political threads, the bar is higher to stay assiduously within the guidelines, which basically means avoiding any kind of pejorative writing, even if it's oblique, about the commenters who disagree with you; write as if to a beloved but intractably wrong and somewhat thin-skinned uncle on an email thread just before Thanksgiving.

(Or just mix it up and back away from the political debates. I know that's hard; they're fun.)

This is just a guess, for what it's worth.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not citizens (Israel considers them stateless) but they are subject to Israeli law and rule at every turn. Nothing can go into or out of Gaza, not even food, not even collected rainwater, without Israeli permission. The point is, it's as closed a political system as it gets. No matter what the polity does, their situation cannot change because they have no rights in the government that controls their lives (…

[flagged]

That's not true at all, Israel doesn't operate any courts in Gaza.

Right - the people there are under martial law, which is even worse.

Gaza has a border with Egypt

Which Israel has seized control of.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#373
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find life to also be bad if you are the only rich person isolated in a bubble when 99% of the people are in extreme poverty. You just can't feel good, unless you don't care.

You'r definitely not be the only rich person there. There's thousands of rich corrupt people in their own bubble.

Being in Venezuela in the first years of Chavez was bizarre.

National university professor's family (so, upper middle class) living behind 3m concrete walls topped with broken glass and shuttling between there and similarly armored swim clubs.

It made me reflect on the difference between token security and actual security.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the detailed response, and will give it careful consideration. I was hoping you could also respond to the question at the very top ("Can you point to even a single instance ...", up to the "If not, then why ..." part). I'm not trying to split hairs here -- I'm really genuinely mystified by the apparent insinuation that I was responding to. That is, I don't see why would you bother to inject the phrase "W…

Just in case this is helpful (I saw this thread because I'm operantly conditioned to read Dan's comments to catch these essays he writes) --- you and I chatted a bunch up until about a month ago, when I sort of deliberately gave up on talking about Palestine on HN. In the intervening time until now, it looks like essentially all of your comments have been political. I think there's, like, 2 things about that? First:…

I think if you're going to exclusively comment on political threads, the bar is higher to stay assiduously within the guidelines, which basically means avoiding any kind of pejorative writing, even if it's oblique, about the commenters who disagree with you; write as if to a beloved but intractably wrong and somewhat thin-skinned uncle on an email thread just before Thanksgiving.

This is most excellent advice. Thanks for chiming in.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#375
post #241
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure what you are hinting at. Probably the various ethnic cleansings that happened in the *stans at the fall of the USSR, where most more western ethnicities (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Armenians, ...) were at best swiftly & firmly reconducted to the nearest airport, and at worst killed on the spot.

It's best understood against the backdrop of a very long series of colonial endeavours. The circassian genocide is well documented.

Colonialism does not justify genocide

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#376
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever wondered why Switzerland is the world's second largest exporter of processed coffee, despite never growing a single bean? [1]. Germany is 3rd, Netherlands is 4th. Hmmmm. Have you ever wondered why all those poor countries around the world sell unprocessed coffee to Switzerland for pennies rather than telling Switzerland to take a hike, processing it themselves and making way more money? Have you ever wo…

> Have you ever wondered why all those poor countries around the world sell unprocessed coffee to Switzerland for pennies rather than telling Switzerland to take a hike, processing it themselves and making way more money? Setting up a factory costs a lot of money, and almost no one is willing to make long-term investments in a corrupt and unstable country. > The multi-billion dollar loans from the IMF and World Bank…

Processing coffee yourself takes skill that gangsters who take over a government don't have. The most successful countries after decolonization are meritocracies

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, are you agreeing that Russians aren't humans?

Hitler and Pol Pot were also humans, yet they did very bad things to other fellow humans. Nobody is denying that ru are humans, we are simply acknowledging that someone did very bad things against principles of humanity, did it deliberately, at scale, and over a very long time period.

> we are simply acknowledging

We?

Please, for your racist views speak for yourself, without 'royal we'.

Also people like you always conveniently omit anything what would show your people not as those saints as you try to portrait it.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you replying to the wrong comment? I asked for one example where an open political system led to radical Islamists cementing power

Afghanistan was relatively open during US and USSR occupations, still radical islamists prevailed. Iran during Shah times was relatively open politically, although it was monarchy. Egypt before the brotherhood took over. Turkey was relatively sectarian, but with Erdogan it became more and more islamist. Iraq after occupation was relatively open, yet ISIS ideology took off

> Afghanistan was relatively open during US and USSR occupations

Coincidentally in both cases the administrations propped up by US/USSR were thoroughly corrupted, incompetent and abusive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi) so that even the Taliban became relatively appealing to most people.

> Iraq after occupation was relatively open, yet ISIS ideology took off

That was to a large degree just the extension of the whole Shia vs Sunni conflict/civil war which began immediately after the invasion.

Also I'm not sure what do you mean by "open" in all of the cases (besides post 2001 Afghanistan) the countries we ran by semi-secular authoritarian dictatorships which kept the Islamists in check. Most of the population would have (and eventually did) supported them if they were given a choice (like in Egypt).

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afghanistan was relatively open during US and USSR occupations, still radical islamists prevailed. Iran during Shah times was relatively open politically, although it was monarchy. Egypt before the brotherhood took over. Turkey was relatively sectarian, but with Erdogan it became more and more islamist. Iraq after occupation was relatively open, yet ISIS ideology took off

The USSR was brutal autocracy. Us military occupation was also brutal and not free. Iran was a brutal autocracy. Egypt was a brutal military dictatorship. Turkey is a great example, tbh. The level of radicals and terrorism there is far less than anything else we've described because it has open democracy. If anything, the big terrorists in Turkey are separatists which every nation, even European ones, has to fight. I…

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