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Notes on Tajikistan

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Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#401

Post by rdlw »

RecycledEle wrote: post #400
rdlw wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't see beauty in a country that isn't perfect? I know plenty of people who have some flaw they would probably be better off without, but I don't say "I don't see imperfect people as beautiful, and if you do it means you like to see them suffer." Why do you jump to calling the author sadistic for finding the positive in a complicated situation?

> You can't see beauty in a country that isn't perfect? A country is beautiful if it serves its people. Seeing beauty in dysfunction is sadism.

Neither I nor the author are saying that the dysfunction is beautiful, just that a country can be both dysfunctional and beautiful. I think it's a pretty extreme viewpoint to say that any dysfunction negates everything else beautiful about a country.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#402

Post by pasabagi »

blackhawkC17 wrote: post #398
pasabagi wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only country you've mentioned that's a) not a city state and b) run by the colonized people, not the colonizers, is Ireland. If you look around the world, there's a pretty strong correlation between length of colonial subjugation, and the misfortunes of the people who were colonized today. I mean, in the USA, it was a colony for a long time, and there are hardly any Native Americans left, and those that s…

Okay, we can keep making excuses. If we follow your logic, these countries (including mine) are destined to be mediocre and nothing can change it in the short term. We should never push for change...it's the colonizer's fault always.

I guess it's a question of what change you push for. Imagine you go to post-revolution Haiti, and you just try to push for economic growth. You recognize that the country has an internationally competitive sugar industry. So you work out ways to convince everybody to go back and work on the sugar plantations, producing sugar for export. Except, you're in competition with the slave plantations, so you can't really pay people good wages or have good conditions. People don't like that, so they revolt, and you repress them with force. Before long, you have produced something like pre-revolution Haiti.

Sometimes it's important to recognize the history in order to push in the right direction. I don't know what the right direction is, but I think saying that Africans just suck because they've been dealt an awful hand seems unfair. I figure it's just really hard to get out from under the feet of an international system that was built for and by colonizers, and there are very few clearly good choices about how to do it.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#403

Post by practicemaths »

cpursley wrote: post #329
slt2021 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Consider yourself lucky for being from a country that never bombed anyone. Mine killed about 4 million (mostly women and children) in the ME over the last 30 years, and are still at it by helping their friends pound Palestine into smithereens :( https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians

Yes, you're a vanguard for moral authority while actively also making what-about-x excuses for Russia.

Which has openly broken any established rules of war along with raping & genital mutilation being an actively encouraged tactic.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#404

Post by sergeykish »

LtVodka wrote: post #327
reducesuffering wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soviet/Russian invasion of Poland, Finland, and Georgia, respectively. (gee, wonder why they all want to be in NATO) There's also '56, Hungary, and '68, Czechoslovakia.

>bunch of nonsense Ok lets see .. Finland invasion. >Finland was a co-belligerent with Nazi Germany during the early years of World War II ... >The Siege of Leningrad was a prolonged military siege undertaken by the Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) on the Eastern Front of World War II. Germany's Army Group North advanced from the south, while t…

In 1939 Moscow invaded Finland, killed 25,000 its citizens, annexed 10% of territory. Do you claim Finland should have been Moscow ally afterwards?

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#405

Post by protomolecule »

0xdde wrote: post #101
protomolecule wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are. "174,000 Tajiks became citizens of Russia in 2022, up from 104,000 the year before." [0] That's 1.5% of Tajikistan's population in a single year. We are not building walls, you know. [0] https://eurasianet.org/number-of-tajiks-seeking-to-get-russi...

Your link suggests this is largely to remove red tape while working in Russia. It does not answer how many are settling long-term. There is of course also this little complication: > Anecdotal evidence suggests that recent recipients of that status have been prioritized for military mobilization as the Kremlin forges ahead with its offensives against Ukraine.

Alright, not anecdotal now -- 10 thousand has been mobilized.[0]

[0] https://ria.ru/20240627/bastrykin-1955779159.html

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#406

Post by LtVodka »

sergeykish wrote: post #404
LtVodka wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>bunch of nonsense Ok lets see .. Finland invasion. >Finland was a co-belligerent with Nazi Germany during the early years of World War II ... >The Siege of Leningrad was a prolonged military siege undertaken by the Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) on the Eastern Front of World War II. Germany's Army Group North advanced from the south, while t…

In 1939 Moscow invaded Finland, killed 25,000 its citizens, annexed 10% of territory. Do you claim Finland should have been Moscow ally afterwards?

No I claim Finland should not have been a NAZI ally. There is no excuse and nothing will wash this part of history clean..

Oh and since we are counting dead:

The siege of Leningrad of which Finland was a part of:

>The siege became one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, and it was possibly the costliest siege in history due to the number of casualties which were suffered throughout its duration. An estimated 1.5 million people died as a result of the siege.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#407

Post by LtVodka »

racional wrote: post #390
LtVodka wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>bunch of nonsense Ok lets see .. Finland invasion. >Finland was a co-belligerent with Nazi Germany during the early years of World War II ... >The Siege of Leningrad was a prolonged military siege undertaken by the Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) on the Eastern Front of World War II. Germany's Army Group North advanced from the south, while t…

The 2009 EU report has been widely criticized as flawed, both at the time in years since. You can drill down on the details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_for_the_Russo-G... >Finland was a co-belligerent with Nazi Germany during the early years of World War II Which happened after (and never would have happened without) the Winter War.

>and never would have happened without

We don't know that now do we?

Reading EU Report: sure its criticized, it does not make it wrong.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#408

Post by specproc »

danpalmer wrote: post #249
specproc wrote: post #240

I did some work in Tajikistan a while back. Really good fun with some great people. It was also the most vertically integrated place I've ever encountered. I've worked in a lot of places outside of EU/US and it's the only one where I've felt you could stick most people on the country on an organigram.

Can you give some examples of the vertical integration? Perhaps some of the good and bad aspects of it?

Sorry for the slow response, don't check my threads as much as I could.

This was back when I was in the aid business, so the gig involved a lot of going around and talking to all sorts of people: local community organisations, farmers, processing plants, schools, local government reps.

A lot of it's the sort of vibes you pick up doing this sort of thing for a while, and having other contexts to base a comparison on. I felt a clear chain running down from the top to bottom. I live in another post-Soviet place, it's a lot more chaotic: still one big man at the top, but the vibe is more of a graph than a tree.

Good things and bad things, well that's almost philosophical. It's one of the poorest countries in the region, one couldn't help but think it might be doing better if there was more space for independent action.

On the plus side, the architecture in Dushanbe (a comparatively new city) was gorgeous. If you've just got one company doing the architecture and build for everything, you get a nice harmony to the place.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#409

Post by sergeykish »

LtVodka wrote: post #406
sergeykish wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1939 Moscow invaded Finland, killed 25,000 its citizens, annexed 10% of territory. Do you claim Finland should have been Moscow ally afterwards?

No I claim Finland should not have been a NAZI ally. There is no excuse and nothing will wash this part of history clean.. Oh and since we are counting dead: The siege of Leningrad of which Finland was a part of: >The siege became one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, and it was possibly the costliest siege in history due to the number of casualties which were suffered throughout its duration. An…

Molotov-Ribbentrop pact — Moscow invaded Finland (1939), occupied Baltic states (1939), divided Poland with Germany (1939). Moscow was Germany ally for two years of WW2. Holodomor (1932-1933): Moscow killed millions without active war. "Great Britain, USA should not have been Moscow ally"?

Moscow invaded Finland in 1939.

Siege of Leningrad was in 1941.

"Poland provoked occupation by Germany" (1939)?

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#410

Post by _Tev »

dang wrote: post #344
racional wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people start talking about other people's countries scornfully or aggressively or snarkily, that's when it becomes flamebait and a moderation issue. Can you point to even a single instance where I have done this, please? Meaning -- in reference to the country or its people per se (as opposed to the actions or ideology of the people who happen to be running it; or perhaps entirely reasonable references to what a…

"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—…

Thanks for writing this. Simple upvote is not enough, this was really great reminder how to navigate these messy topics.
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