Ukraine Part 5: war...it never changes

[sologdin]

It is what it is.

unfortunately.  collective responsibility is a fascist doctrine. even if the local decision that is unlawful under jus ad bellum principles has been taken by unimpeachable democratic referendum, collective responsibility remains irrational because the secret ballot does not allow us to sift the total citizenry for those deplorables subject to discipline for violation of jus cogens peremptory norms.

for the iraq war, citizen responsibility is even more attenuated, as the decision was taken by an occult security apparatus acting allegedly in abstract representative capacity, only somewhat ratified by a portion of citizens approving the decision, whereas the others considered it an ultra vires act that vitiated that representative capacity. 

even something as targeted as the suicide bombing of the pentagon, certainly a military target, will sweep up too many janitors and clerks, whom ward churchill included within the deplorable category, perhaps, as 'little eichmanns,' and whom the US dismisses as 'collateral damage,' and thus should be considered an instance of inadmissible collective responsibility, at least ethically if not necessarily legally, as i'm certain the law would countenance the destruction of the pentagon by a belligerent.

 

wasn't going to read "Anna Karenina" any time soon, but the mere idea how it may be interpreted is sickening.

fuck that.  am reading that one right now, and am gonna read gogol next. this sort of boycott is asinine. as if the russian empire cares whether anyone reads english translations of 19th century texts in the public domain.

[DMC]

"What makes protests successful?" is a vibrant field of study in the social sciences.  Here's a good piece detailing many of the general lines of argument (Atlantic article, limited clicks):

Quote

Does that mean high-risk or difficult-to-pull-off protests can always work to scare authorities into implementing change? We can’t just say yes, because the authorities have another option to meet such actions: Make them even higher-risk through repression until the protesters give up.

Sadly, repression works. No matter how brave the protesters may be, a state often has a lot more capacity to inflict costs than ordinary protesters have to withstand them. During the Arab Spring, about one-third of the citizens of Bahrain marched for months on end—a staggering number, comparable to more than 70 million people marching in the United States. Instead of buckling, their government responded with widespread arrests, torture, and executions, even of teenagers, finally silencing the weary population. [...]

In the long term, protests work because they can undermine the most important pillar of power: legitimacy. Commentators often note that a state can be defined by its monopoly on violence, a concept going back to the philosopher Thomas Hobbes and codified by the sociologist Max Weber. But the full Weber quote is less well known. Weber defined the state by its “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force.” The word legitimate is as important as the words physical force, if not more. Especially in the modern world, that monopoly on violence isn’t something that self-perpetuates. Violence doesn’t just happen; it has to be enacted and enabled by people.

 

[Ran]

Apparently a Russian major general, Andrei Sukhovetskiy, a Spetsnaz commander and deputy chief of the 41 Army of Novosibirsk, was killed by Ukrainian forces. No details on the engagement.

There appears to be an active counteroffensive going on in Ukraine, particularly around Kyiv, with the general staff of the armed forces announcing they were shifting from a defensive to a counteroffensive posture. They seem to have pushed the Russians out of at least one suburb.

[baxus]

14 minutes ago, 3CityApache said:

I know, I'm just not sure why "major power" is different from any other country in this regard. They won't start to nuke their own citizens, will they? I do believe every dictator can be thrown out of power if the critical mass of protests is huge enough. They won't arrest majority of the population after all.

Sure, every dictator can be thrown out of power if the critical mass of protests is huge enough. No denying that.

I'd dare say it's much more difficult to get to that point in a country that has practically unlimited resources when it comes to police and military. Nukes are not the only factor, you know.

[3CityApache]

3 minutes ago, baxus said:

I'd dare say it's much more difficult to get to that point in a country that has practically unlimited resources when it comes to police and military.

And I agree of course it's pretty fucking difficult in Russia. But if the protests were not in hundreds or thousands, but in hundreds of thousands or millions, the story would be quite substantially different.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

51 minutes ago, Mladen said:

I think the problem is that most Westerners don't actually understand how these things work in Russia, or Serbia or any country where people are blatantly unaware of some things. That said, US has been bombing countries and yet Americans were clueless. I will never forget James Spader's line in "Boston Legal": "Two thousand American soldiers have fallen and all American public wants to concern itself with is whether Brad and Angelina really are a couple". Communism in many of these countries evolved into modernized version of dictatorship. These leaders are great in creating foreign threats, enemies and people buy that stuff. Especially those that have limited access to information via TV, newspapers, Internet. 

Indeed the American obsession with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s divorce while this is going on is rather embarrassing.

[Week]

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Indeed the American obsession with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s divorce while this is going on is rather embarrassing.

I'd agree but also say that docile and absorbed in reality TV is a lesser evil than the fragility on display that is ground zero at the 9/11 Memorial. Not to take away from the tragedy of that day -- it was a tragedy. I thought my dad was dead for most of the day. However, we've never moved past it or contextualized it at all. Hell, the Boston Marathon bombing brought out the blood thirsty, fragility again -- miss me with the "Boston Strong" bullshit. 

"Never Forget" should be replaced with "Never Learned". Put more simply, as a country, we've fucked around *a lot* and the one time we "found out" our reaction was to destabilize the world. We expect a lot out of everyone else other than ourselves.

[Spockydog]

 

[Spockydog]

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

54 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

We literally do this to damn near every country. For my entire adult life I've heard the majority of people outside of the U.S. shit on all of us because of actions I've strongly opposed. It is what it is.

And?  Does that make it okay to generalize about other nations?  To engage in the actions you yourself are decrying?  We (humans in the West) are seeking an “other”.  We should resist this tendency.  Even if those attacking Ukraine seek to make us the “Other” for the people they purport to lead.

We should be better.

[IFR]

I thought this article by someone living in St Petersburg gave a good insight on how Russians are viewing current events.

Quote

I’m writing this on February 27. The Russian military has been shelling Ukrainian towns since the early morning of the 24th, but I’m nowhere near Ukraine. I’m in St. Petersburg, Russia, where, over the past several days, I have noticed a startling fact: Most people without personal international contacts don’t know what their army is doing. It’s not that they support the war—they don’t even know about it.

Officially, Russia is not at war. It is engaged in a “special military operation” intended to compel peace and “cleanse Ukraine of Nazis.” The Ministry of Defense insists that “the military is not striking residential buildings in Ukrainian cities.” And most people who get their news from Russian sources, as well as those who don’t care very much about the news at all, tend to believe this is true. They know that something’s going on in Ukraine, but they don’t think it’s that big of a deal. They’ve heard about sanctions, but don’t have a good sense of why they’ve been implemented—something about the West trying to crash our economy again, doubtlessly in cahoots with our oligarchs.

One reason people think this way is that Russian media is forbidden to report on the war except by repeating the official state line; they are forbidden to call it a war, an attack, or an invasion. Another reason is that, after years of fake-news scares and internet trolling, people tend not to believe the social media channels and Western media sources that could have served as an alternate news source. A third reason is that state control over dissidence has become increasingly draconian recently, so people who do speak against the war must be careful about how they do so. Today, the General Procurator’s Office has decreed that providing “financial, logistical, consulting or other assistance” to a foreign state will be regarded as treason. Does an op-ed count as “other” assistance? I don’t know, but treason is punishable by 20 years of incarceration—which is why I’m writing anonymously.

Over the past several days, I’ve asked many people from many different walks of life whether they think that we’re shelling Kyiv. Educated urbanites in St. Petersburg tend to say yes. Other people often say no.

On Friday, I took my car down to my neighborhood auto-shop. I’m on good terms with the people there; we help each other in neighborly ways like getting discounted cat-food or finding warehouse space. We joke and drink coffee together. The woman working the counter is about 65. I told her, we’re shelling Kyiv, I’m devastated. She didn’t believe me. I showed her videos posted online; she didn’t believe them. That doesn’t look like Kyiv. Where are the domed churches? I pulled up CNN, BBC, but she didn’t believe in those either. If that’s all true, she reasoned, then why aren’t “our” media saying anything? I’ll believe it when I hear it from Moscow.

Today, I had a few errands to run just outside city limits, and so I took the chance to ask people there, people working the counter in diners and gas-stations, acquaintances of mine and people I’d never met. And almost all of them had no idea. A woman in her 20s with dyed purple hair, smoking outside the diner where she works, told me that yes, she thinks that it’s entirely possible Russia is shelling Ukrainian cities. Her two colleagues inside, about the same age, said no, of course not.

An acquaintance of mine, a children’s music teacher who’s 55, had a good answer. I asked her whether we’re shelling Kyiv, and she said no… because what’s the point of just shelling one city? Ok, I said to her, what if I told you that we’re also shelling several others: Kharkiv, Kherson, Odessa? No, she said—that’s completely irrational. They’ll just send in a special-ops force. They’ll send the Chechens.

Her husband, who’s ex-military and about the same age, told us he didn’t want to talk about politics.

Later, as I was leaving, the woman asked me what I thought, are we were shelling Kyiv? Yes, I told her, we are. She presented some counter-arguments: a colleague of hers has relatives there; if there was a war, she would have heard. And anyway, what’s the Ukrainian military doing hiding in cities? Are they using human shields, or what? But she wrote down the name of the telegram channel l I told her about, and there’s a good chance that she’ll think it over.

Some people are willing to think over new facts, when these are brought to their attention. A friend called from the Urals today. A retired police officer, he had also been convinced that the operation in Ukraine was no big deal. Then he spent a day reading the telegram channel, and now he no longer believes that.

But most people, even those who have a sense that something’s not right, do not understand the severity of the situation. Another friend called yesterday, an artist and preschool teacher. She’s a very nice person in her mid-60s. She thinks that the war is terrible, of course, just awful. But really? Are they bombing Kyiv already? That’s awful. But anyway, she said, she was calling to ask me whether I wanted to go to the ceramics workshop like I’d promised.

There are many of us here in this country who are horrified by this war. You may have seen photos of the protests. But they are completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things. To stop a war you need half the city to come out on the streets at once. You need hundreds of thousands of people. A thousand people—even two, three, five thousand—does not change anything. And half the city will not come out: They don’t even realize that we’re shelling Ukrainian cities.

Putin, meanwhile, has placed the country’s nuclear forces on high alert.

Link.

I live in the United States, and after observing the powerful effect of misinformation and how vulnerable all of us are to it, this article paints a recognizable picture.

[Fez]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

I know we talked about casualties, but regarding other forms of depletion saw this yesterday:

 

Hopefully Western resupplies are able to counter this disparity. But I suppose it depends on what exactly is being lost/used and how quickly new equipment can arrive. There's been lots of stories about what aid is been promised, but much less on what is being delivered. Though obviously operational security is a concern with getting too detailed about the later.

[3CityApache]

The list of international companies that suspended export to Russia or any operations in Russia (or at least announced plans to do so) is getting longer and consists of such brands as: Audi, AMD, BP, Chevrolet, Cadillac, Dell, DHL, Ericsson, Exxon-Mobil, Fedex, Ford, GM, Harley Davidson, H&M, IKEA, Intel, Jaguar, Lenovo, Maersk, Mercedes, Nokia, Porsche, Renault, Scania, Shell, Toyota, UPS, Volvo.

[lacuna]

The media control in Russia is perhaps the main reason why I'd be in favor of letting Russian athletes compete in as many sports as possible. It's easy for the authoritarian bastards to spin a blanket ban as "just more anti-Russian stuff", but a lot harder to censor TV images from around the world showing full support for Ukraine.

[DMC]

14 minutes ago, Fez said:

But I suppose it depends on what exactly is being lost/used and how quickly new equipment can arrive.

Yeah.  On that account, Pelosi said yesterday the Ukraine aid would be added to the omnibus.  It's true that's probably the quickest way to do it, but that means it won't even get passed until late next week at the earliest.  

[Larry of the Lawn]

Wrong thread

 

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Maybe DeWine vetoes it? 

I'd be very surprised if DeWine vetoes it, especially in an (re)election year.  Also, wrong thread!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Week said:

I am somewhat sympathetic to this (bc, it me), but truly we are more culpable if we're being honest. Especially white folks in the US (pointing the finger at myself) where our freedom of speech, movement, and association - virtually anywhere in the world - has never been threatened or curtailed even really.

We've lacked the backbone to collectively work to stop a lot of evil shit within and outside of our country. 

Are people who vehemently oppose their government and the war it starts responsible for it? I think it's more complicated than you're describing, and I wouldn't divide it along racial lines. I have friends from basically every ethnic group who've said they've experienced pretty strong anti-American sentiments when traveling abroad despite them being kids when the Iraq War started and who never supported it. 

54 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

And?  Does that make it okay to generalize about other nations?  To engage in the actions you yourself are decrying?  We (humans in the West) are seeking an “other”.  We should resist this tendency.  Even if those attacking Ukraine seek to make us the “Other” for the people they purport to lead.

We should be better.

Sure, we should be better. I was just pointing out generalized xenophobia exists exactly everywhere on the planet. Should we oppose it? Of course. Should we be shocked that this is a reality? Not at all. 

[Gorn]

2 hours ago, baxus said:

Also, please elaborate which government of a major power has been overthrown this way?

Russia's, February Revolution.

Edit: Also Germany's and Austria-Hungary's, a little over a year later. France's, a whole bunch of times.

[Toth]

https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aeg4jxW_700bwp.webp