Ukraine

[Phoenixmgs]

 

[Terminal Blue]

Your view of Russia since 2000 is not consistent with what I've read from its critics-- with the article I linked in the previous post; your allegations are oddly exaggerated. And your view of the state of Western politics and media is conspicuously rosy. Oh, it's just a prevailing political orthodoxy. Incredible stuff, Silvanus.

Move to Russia.

You can literally do so any time you want. There is a scheme in place that allows people from countries that "impose destructive neoliberal ideological attitudes that contradict traditional Russian spiritual and moral values" to fast-track the process of applying for a visa. All you have to do is provide a bunch of information about things like your criminal record and HIV status.

You don't have to rely on speculation or Western propaganda to find out what life is like in Russia. You can go and live there and experience it for yourself. For some reason they really want you to do that. Plus, think about it. They have a real communist party in Russia. How based is that. Maybe one day you could vote for it and really make a difference..

The belief that an "unorthodox" position is more credible because it is unorthodox is spectacularly naive and, ironically, extremely vulnerable to state propaganda. Russia is a real place. You can get on a plane and go there, it's incredibly easy. Even if you don't want to do that, you can talk to the many, many people who live or have lived under the Russian political system. The barrier to knowledge here is non-existent. If you are choosing to ignore it, you should probably ask yourself why you are doing that.

 

[Agema]

Ukraine and U.S. agree to draft deal on critical rare minerals

Ukraine and the United States have prepared a draft deal over access to Kyiv's deposits of rare earth minerals, officials said Wednesday.

www.cnbc.com

A deal on security guarantees is supposedly to follow, insofar those still mean anything.

We might suspect that from Trump's previous record, this "deal" could in fact be a big, fat, heap of nothing.

For instance, in Trump 1 his accords with NK went nowhere, his renegotiations with Canada and Mexico were ultimately trivial, his trade war with China strangely low-key. Even in Trump 2, he seems to be dropping a lot of threatened tariffs very quickly and easily.

This too might be a huge amount of noise and very little substance: it allows Trump to claim he's got hundreds of billions of dollars from Ukraine when in fact it will never be delivered. By the time anyone realises this Trump will be gone and potentially dead, that's if anyone realises at all given how far the news cycle will have moved on that many years in the future. Thus Ukraine can easily sign on the dotted line, knowing it's not really signing anything away, and thus not caring whether the US refuses any security commitments in the deal.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Though that line about it being a requirement for all able-bodied inmates is rather out of date; about 6 or 7 states have updated their constitutions in the past 5 years.

Federal law is federal law. State constitutions are state constitutions. Enforcement of federal law can be relaxed at federal discretion, but federal law supersedes state law and state constitutions according to Article 6 of the Constitution of the United States. Also, and more importantly, the federal government is the one with more guns.

Awful convenient, wasn't it? That the President's main political opponent dropped dead in a state-run camp, after lawyers were denied access.

You keep saying 'main political opponent' as if that's a real thing, not something Navalny supporters and western propagandists made up about him.

K. Of course, even public figures are able to make many of the same criticisms, of the military complex, inequality, poverty, Israel etc. In Russia that sort of challenge to the state narrative gets you pretty certainly murdered.

Challenges to the state narrative like this?

The restoration of capitalism inevitably generated exploitation of man by man and caused a deep rift in society. On one pole was the so-called class of “strategic proprietors” whose core was initially made up of bank speculators and exporters of raw materials. It is closely linked with the West economically and has a pronounced comprador character. National capital, in spite of seeking to develop the domestic economy, has not lost his class character. The number of dollar millionaires and billionaires in the country is growing. On the other pole is the huge mass of impoverished people of wage-earners crushed by the threat of unemployment and a sense of insecurity. The antagonistic contradiction between hired labour and capital is back in Russia.

The state machine which underpins this order of things fully expresses the interests and the will of the bourgeoisie and its elite as represented by the oligarchs.

The country is in the grip of a systemic crisis. The restoration of capital entailed a shrinking of industrial and agricultural production, the degradation of science, education and culture. In spite of the flood of petrodollars, not a single sector of the economy has made any substantial progress. The population is shrinking. The citizens are debarred from participating in running the affairs of society. Even the norms of bourgeois democracy are flouted. Elections to government bodies are increasingly turning into a farce.

The gulf between the rich and the poor, between the new tightwads and the majority of the people is widening. Working people have been deprived of most of their social, economic and civil rights. Proletarization of the majority of our fellow countrymen is accompanied by social stratification. The absolute impoverishment of much of the population, veterans and pensioners continues. Millions of children are tramps who do not attend school. Contradictions between regions, between town and countryside are becoming sharper.

The idea that the purpose of NATO died with the Soviets is hard to justify when decades after the fact Russia still wants to invade, own and enslave their European neighbors.

NATO exists to manage the problems caused by the existence of NATO.

he belief that an "unorthodox" position is more credible because it is unorthodox is spectacularly naive

Is this some kind of robotic response to my repetition of Silvanus's phrase 'prevailing political orthodoxy'? What's going on here? Honestly, what the fuck are you talking about? And why do you think I should want to go to Russia when I say, about the matters we're comparing it on, that it is much like the United States?

 

[Hades]

NATO exists to manage the problems caused by the existence of NATO.

As already said NATO cannot be the cause of Russia's behavior when Russian behavior predates it by centuries.

 

[Seanchaidh]

As already said NATO cannot be the cause of Russia's behavior when Russian behavior predates it by centuries.

ludicrous way of thinking about things. just completely nuts.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

ludicrous way of thinking about things. just completely nuts.

Russia must be allowed to invade, subjugate and murder its neighbors to protect itself from its neighbors protecting themselves.

 

[Silvanus]

Federal law is federal law. State constitutions are state constitutions. Enforcement of federal law can be relaxed at federal discretion, but federal law supersedes state law and state constitutions according to Article 6 of the Constitution of the United States. Also, and more importantly, the federal government is the one with more guns.

Yes, I'm aware. But federal law doesn't mandate that all able-bodied prisoners be forced to work. It is a fact that in a half dozen states, they aren't.

In California, as I said, 65% of prisoners are made to work, including at the relevant prison. So I agreed it can fairly be called a slave labour camp! I hope you'll now acknowledge Navalny died in one too.

Challenges to the state narrative like this?

That's the platform of the Communist Party, is it not? The prime example of 'controlled opposition', in that while nominally opposing the government, they end up supporting most major government platforms. A little like considering the Democrats to be a major departure from the Republicans, because their stated platform says some guff about social justice and equity, while in the legislature they slavishly provide support for the same rank right-wing shite.

 

[Hades]

ludicrous way of thinking about things. just completely nuts.

Why? Russia is hardly a situation like Germany where they deeply regret all their crimes. In fact Putin glorifies them and uses said crimes as reasoning why he should still own his neighbors.

If Russia destroyed Poland twice just because it could, and if Putin shows pride in this, as well as dissatisfaction about Russian tyranny having ended, then what reason does Poland have to assume Russia won't destroy them a third time?