Wait, over 60% met them or faced consequences?

Edit: “Almost 61% achieved their targets” holy fuck. Corporations did something good they said they would, over half the time.

Completely opposite for me. Full bush keeps everything more “airy”, whereas shaven is underwear directly against the parts that bleach them, plus it all gets all sweaty.

Not disagreeing, we should strive for good or at least civil relationships with our neighbors, even if we don’t exactly like each other, but the problem is that

• any agreement or peace deal with Russia isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, they’ll just ignore it when they want to
• make peace with one country in Middle-East, you’ll anger another

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This, and if they’re a friend, not pausing to think before a shared activity that would make you consider finances. A weekend/weeklong trip, concert tickets to a costly performer/seats, trying a new more expensive restaurant for lunch, etc. Even if they aren’t interested that time, the explanations say that openly or they address the cost in time, not money.

Just because this needs to be said.

Open borders: Closed for Ukrainian men of military age during wartime. You, I, journalists, etc. can still come and go.

Competitive political space: Banned parties supporting the country they are currently at war with. No matter how you feel about who’s at fault, that must be an understandable action to you. Also, most members of the largest banned party (Opposition Platform - For Life) are still in the parliament and just formed other parliamentary groups.

Competitive information space: Again, wartime with a country engaging in propaganda eagerly and with talent.

Elections: Would be against Ukrainian constitution to have elections under martial law, not to mention impossible to arrange or supervise. Or you think it would be possible to organise an election where everyone had easy and reliable access to vote right now? The decision was just confirmed unanimously yesterday, with all 17 previous members of the banned …For Life -party who were present also voting for it.

Why do anything? Every goal is a value choice. Pleasure? Money? Leaving a legacy in children or added knowledge or whatever? Learning? Improving your community? Improving the world in general? Raging against the absurd?

If self-centered hedonism is the way you want to spend your brief meaningless time in this meaningless world, go for it! Just go for it with the same full knowledge of its pointlessness and your mortality as you would anything else.

In a defensive war against an equal or more powerful enemy, everyone is needed to do the part the military organisation needs them to. For many it’s their civilian job, for the rest it’s whatever’s needed, including the front lines (after training, well-equipped and well-led). War’s ugly.

I’d be highly sceptical of any beatings occurring. Common sense suggests that an unwilling soldier you got to the front that way would likely bring more harm to the morale of their fellow troopmates, than benefit through their own efforts.

When Real Men fuck, women just get in the way.

It’s not exactly the same physical brain though? Neurons die and are sometimes, if rarely in adulthood, generated. They are constantly repaired, the exact molecules that make them up change. Glial cells die and form and they have supporting functions. Diseases change brain structure more slowly than immediate trauma. And so on.

I certainly wouldn’t say I’m the same person I was as a toddler.

Eating a banana. First you bite both heads off, then sink your front teeth into one end to nibble away one third, then separate the other two thirds and eat them separately. You can think of them as the corpora cavernosa and the corpus spongiosum to maintain the penis-analogue in a slightly more disturbing form.

I got this far writing a response, haven’t read the last few articles or watched the Chomsky but since it hasn’t progressed in over a week and I will continue to be happily occupied for the foreseeable future, I’ll post it now.

Okay, so we’re putting to rest the “expansionist NATO” argument, now we’re at “offensive NATO” and “the US manipulation of Ukraine”? This discussion is becoming way too unfocused, and I’d appreciate it if you could keep it tighter and, you know, not sprawling linkspam that takes this long with the time I can priorise for it. Answering the main points I thought I read in the articles.

----- NATO -----

1. NATO was established to not allow the SU and communist ideology to gain a stronger foothold in Europe.

No duh? So was the Nordic socdem model. Doesn’t make it a bad idea.

2. NATO was an US-led offensive alliance agaist SU.

NATO did not start nor was it involved in any armed conflict against the SU, or in any armed conflict with the “eastern bloc” in Europe during the cold war (unlike the SU). As an offensive alliance, it would have kind of sucked. Espionage is related to three letter agencies and embassies, with or without military alliances.

Also this claim somewhat contradicts point 1; point 1 assumes the European members to be sympathetic to the SU, point 2 hostile.

3. NATO is a violent, aggressive alliance. There is no evidence that NATO is providing “security” to Europe.

Are you confused about European history? Because if there’s one thing worthy of note, it’s that we’ve been at each others’ throats all the damn time. This “Pax Americana” has been a wonderful anomaly compared to any similar timespan in history since basically the Roman empire, all the more exceptional since it included tense hostilities and the turmoil of the end of the SU. Sure, correlation is not causation, but something has certainly worked here, and NATO doesn’t at least seem to have harmed the process.

4. NATO did not cease to be at the fall of the SU, which is evidence of it being an offensive tool of the US.

The newly formed Federation of Russia was very unstable until at least 1993, nobody knew which way it’d go, and already in 1994 it started the first Chechnyan war. Also, since when are international organizations terminated within a span of a couple of months or even a few years, without pressing need?

5. NATO has military outposts near the borders of NATO countries, which is provocative.

Borders are where military outposts tend to be. Wouldn’t really make sense in the middle? Russia has military outposts near all their neighbors, before and after they joined NATO.

6. 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia

It certainly wasn’t the ideal solution (which would have been for the violence to stop at the first diplomatic “hey, cut it out”) , but can’t say it was worse than what continuing the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians would have been. What would have been your next step at stopping it, or would you have let it continue, or do you believe it didn’t happen?

6. Afghanistan and Libya… NATO’s involvement in the Middle East

American projects with nominal NATO presence from other countries would have happened with or without NATO. Also they’re mostly not in Europe. If your point is that US foreign actions are often questionable, and that they’re probably an unreliable ally, yes to all of that.

7. Operation Gladio

That was interesting, didn’t know about it before, thank you! Again I’m doubtful of how important NATO was for it; if the US wanted to have “insurgency assistants” or even faux-terrorists (though as I read those links are questionable?) in European countries, it wouldn’t have been that difficult even without.

8. NATO expansion into Asia

Has not happened and would hopefully be veto’d by its European members. The US should form a similar military alliance under a new name there if they want to, the security interests of Europe and the Far East have little in common and it makes no sense to attempt stuff too many different things in the same organisation.

----- UKRAINE ------

I’d also like to point out that the speed at which some people go from “realistically Russia had no choice but to attack this smaller neighboring country” to “Ukraine nazis bad” truly is astounding.

1. The Nuland & Pyatt phone call

Unlike a lot of people, I don’t really see anything that queationable in the transcript. Shop talk between workmates foregoing the empty niceties and using “want” as for “would like to, our aim is”, just like I do at work.

2. Svoboda

In the 2019 parliament election they got 2.15% of the vote. It hardly represents the view of the common Ukrainian.

3. Maidan wasn’t about EU vs. Russia-led alliance trade agreements, but about the US wanting the actually popular(?) Yanukovich out.

Funny timing, and Yanukovich fleeing to Russia (not even the eastern territories, actual Russia!), and being unanimously being voted out by the parliament.

4. Maidan snipers

As many opinions as there are people. Here’s a scientific article looking at the info available in 2023 (including plausible confessions), and coming to the conclusion it was a Russian false flag (of which they have a long history).

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2023.2269685

5. U.S. funding of the “democratic opposition” to the tune of $5 billion over the past 10 years

Over the past 35 years. I’d love to know the full story of this, and how it compares to other former SU countries. Some of it must be the support for former SU countries, some NED, but there’s a lot more to cover. Without the information, the number, while interesting, is useless.

6. Neo-nazism, fascism, and ultra-nationalism in Ukraine (what your sources actually say):

BBC 2014: “the Kremlin has characterised the new leaders in Kiev as a “fascist junta” made up of neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, set on persecuting, if not eradicating, the Russian-speaking population. This is demonstrably false.”

Hill 2017: “The odious Russian media tried to paint Ukraine as a land of Nazis, though that is patently wrong. Ukraine has a thriving Jewish community, and its far-right is still on the fringe. It’s the same in America.”

I don’t see that as different from any other country?

…or maybe “hot phase of war” or “a comprehensive, just and sustainable peace is ensured in Ukraine” is not so easily timed when it happens? That one day the war is on, the next everything is fine?

From what I hear, in the US having to wait for hours in line or having to produce a government ID(?) are often seen as voter suppression. But having to vote in a recently quieted warzone with bombed roads, also possibly queue for hours due to recovering infrastructure, possibly with expired or lost forms of ANY ID, a large amount of people just settling back into civilian life and 2-4 million probably still abroad (of current 5-6M), sounds perfect timing for voters and oh so quick to organise.

But I guess we’ll see within about a year of whenever things hopefully settle down.

(Also obviously Russia, with Putin or his protege in power for the last 25 years, with a totes believable 88% support in the latest election, is a model of political freedom now?)

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I don’t see how the countries that haven’t gotten into NATO are relevant.

It is relevant to claims of NATOs “expansionist” nature. But we can drop that topic.

“unprovoked” invasion.

I’d just like to point out that the “Russia was provoked” arguments are based on the realism school of foreign affairs, which boils down to “might makes right”. Seeing fellow lefties more radical than me espouse it with such glee is always such a sad thing.

Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia.

Now I don’t quite know what you want me to do with that list. Yes, they were (probably, haven’t checked but will take you at your word) members of NATO at the time. Do you want me to find sources for them aspiring to become members of NATO well before the invite? But that would be going back to the “NATOs expansionist nature” debate. Do you want to discuss the relevance of the “not one inch eastward” comments? But there are plenty of sources articulating that better than we could.

Those countries, in practice, applied to join, and many are still stuck in the application process. Just because it’s called an “invitation” doesn’t make it so.

Don’t think I can make it any more concise than that.

Err, as a Finn, we didn’t want to join for decades and neither did Sweden, and neither of us received any invites. When we did want to join, invitation was part of the process, probably the last step but I really don’t remember. Several other countries wanting to join, some for a long time, have not been invited. How is it a bullshit argument?

You do realise it’s an invitation in name only, not extended unless the aspirant country wants it?

True, refusing to accept is always possible. But NATO is not pushing itself, countries want to or don’t want to join of their own agenda. Which doesn’t really make it “expansionist”, just “accepting”.

Yes, this massive Nato expansion, almost as bad as the EU expansion, forcing one country after another to join then.

Also the verbal agreement to not situate military stuff in former DDR, in a time when the Soviet Union was alive and the situation was “slightly” different, clearly applies today. Do you want to bring the Warsaw pact back too, I’m sure there are agreements somewhere?

So, Russia gains all their prime objectives through offensive warfare, and Ukraine is forced to keep kowtowing to Russia in some semblance of neutrality (finlandization was not fun, you know).

Tell me again how this is a compromise. Also how this is not a full return to “might makes right”, the final nail in the coffin of the fragile East-European stability agreed to in the Helsinki accords.