There is a lot of racism in that part of the world though, not just Ukraine but Russia also. I think if you were to look even closer to home you’d probably find as much here as well.
Geopolitics
- Thread starter Mciahel Goodman
- Start date
I think the word "shithole" is used way too liberally for any countries that are fecked up by the "media preferred" countries. It is just a way to legitimize what is being done.
Right, I understand relating to it more. Some statements just come across the wrong way, to me anyway. Like it being unbelievable that innocent civilians would die. I hate mentioning it because I don't want to downplay whatever is happening here but I know my posts on an internet forum wont downplay that so might as well get my frustration with the hypocrisy down.
EDIT: Basically, I'm not talking about "oh so where was your concern when X happened" but more about the "Well X never happens and this is the first time it has happened!!"
And yes, one can hope.
Yeah of course, which I totally understand, but my issue wasn't with that per se, but the fact that the official Twitter account of the Ukrainian military was posting legitimately racist material. That's something else entirely as far as I'm concerned.
Yes that is pretty callous. Ignores years of "collateral damage" whitewashing.
You would think they would have more sense than to do the like of that I agree there.
What did they post?
I thought the Novosti article allegedly published in error which was posted in the thread was interesting for how it reflected to a considerable degree some of the core assumptions underlying Huntington’s famous Clash of Civilizations. My instinct has always been to pick holes in the thesis with the consequence that enough hole-picking naturally undermines it entirely. And god knows it’s full of holes. But stuff like this makes me wonder if I’ve missed the point a bit, and that it’s the belief in the Clash that makes it real, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, although not one created by Huntington himself.
Didn't Pogba and Amad do just that? There was no banning of Utd for it.
That wasn't the club, just 2 players taking a flag from a fan...
But Celtic was fined by Uefa for fans having Palestine flags.
https://www.espn.com/soccer/celtic/...-fine-for-flying-palestine-flags-in-ucl-match
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True - although the club also hasn't waved Ukraine flags right?
I guess the Palestine issue is sort of unique given its specific history/situation/various connotations the flag may have. Although I doubt a club would receive similar responses for waving Israeli flags.
The problem is they can't be seen to take sides, where there are 2 valid sides. Not condoning Israel at all, but some of the stuff Hamas pulls is equally unacceptable and FIFA can't be seen to be endorsing that either.
In Russia-Ukraine there is only 1 actual rational side to take.
I don't know how to quote individual posts via my phone but the post in question was edited pretty sharpish after I pushed back and I think he's put me on ignore as well
Again, the Ukrainian military Twitter account only yesterday posted a video of one member of their literal neo Nazi battalion dipping their bullets in lard ahead of a firefight with Chechen Muslims, who it termed as 'Orcs', a pejorative term in that part of the country. And that's before the numerous breaches of the Geneva Convention that they've been posting constantly since the beginning of the conflict.
If you think there's only one rational side in this conflict, you'd be sorely mistaken.
There are two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but they are not equal or equals. It is overwhelmingly recognized by all serious inquirers as asymmetric warfare and de facto apartheid. Of course, Israel has been hit and have objective grievances but the ratio is overwhelmingly worse in every metric for the Palestinians.
Is it a legitimate "error"? Not sure to take these things as objectively true when the overwhelming individual images and stories coming out of Ukraine (and the invasion more broadly) have been fabricated.
On the other hand, it does read quite like something you would expect Russian planners to write.
That video is vile and a cruel example of using hate/islamaphobic intimidation during a time of war.
But does that video really justify/mean there was a rational decision for Russia to invade Ukraine? It's hardly like Russia has had a spotless history of treating Muslims in it's provinces with respect.
Oh I don't disagree. Israel are the dominant player and go far beyond justifiable force to the point it's war crimes.
That doesn't make what Hamas do OK, just as it would be disgusting if Ukranian's waged an organised suicide bombing campaign against Russian civilians. At which point I hope they would be condemned and I'd see why Fifa would want to stop any support.
To take the thread back to a higher level a bit (at least for the (long) length of my post): this observation on moral vs. amoral perspectives is an interesting one that I had not consciously thought of - even if I think I did grasp it intuitively.
My own background is in ancient history, and as a researcher, I learned to adopt a very 'functional' approach to understand geopolitical developments (war, expansion - that sort of thing). That means: look past the bravado and narratives of stories and inscriptions, into the practical considerations that may have underlain actions, and you almost invariably end up with motives that are very practical and rational, and pretty far removed from the facade thrown up.
It's generally some sort of combination of that 'might is right' principle, the need to justify one's position as a supreme leader (show a weakness and you start losing legitimacy), and simple practical needs. That's generally a lot less 'poetic' than what the texts give you (and also harder to unearth: 'reading' the historical documentation the right way is quite the skill), but it results in a much more consistent and logical flow of historical circumstances and events.
That gives you the same principle you lined out: events resulting from amoral considerations plastered over by a moral facade. This is quite successful in terms of its explanatory power, and has therefore been my go-to logic for historical developments, in any period of time. But I have been thinking the past year(s) that I have probably gone over too far to that side in my thinking.
A problem with a completely amoral reading of history (including contemporary history and current events) is that it almost removes the personal from the picture. And that can't be right, for at least two reasons. The obvious one is that people aren't all 'programmed' the same way, and will interpret situations differently - sometimes simply completely wrong. That might have various reasons, including having to rely on poor information, but whatever the cause, the result is that the action will seem irrational to us, amoral as it may have been for the individual (or his/her circle) in question.
The other is that individuals are not completely amoral. Although I would argue that they are rare, there have definitely been rulers that were in important ways driven by strong religious, ideological, or other 'moral' opinions. (Being driven by those in minor ways has probably been more common, but then of course also much less influential on actions taken.) This may come later in someone's reign, and I think it's generally not when the person's doing best - but I think it's necessary to be able to understand some things.
Case in point (no, this is not just an entirely abstract book of boring rambling - well of most that, just not entirely abstract): Putin. Cause I think you cannot exclusively explain what he is doing in Ukraine through amoral considerations. (I think that applies less in the past, and that Putin may thus have changed over time in this regard. But I'm no expert in all that and won't speculate too much. Or not even more, anyway.)
Yes, Ukraine has enormous potential in natural resources, is a bridge to parts of Europea, further unlocks the Black Sea for Russia, and is simply pretty big with a fairly large population; and yes, I suppose Russia could consider NATO encroachment as a risk in the long term - but there appear to be some serious flaws in the tactic used based on how the invasion is working out. An excuse here is probably poor information on the thinking of Ukrainians, if there was indeed an assumption that they would welcome Russia's intervention in its political leadership; but such an assumption would only seem believable to someone with strong preconceived notions of Russian-Ukrainian bonds - which would have to be even strong if that information wasn't there.
I'm cutting this short a bit and probably overlooking some aspects here. But as much as you can clearly see Russia put a moral facade on the situation ('we're saving the Ukraine!' - and everything else in their months-long propaganda campaign), I don't think you can explain why this situation came to be purely through amoral, geopolitical considerations. I think you do need a mix of both here.
OK, yes, that was far too long. And I suppose part of your point was rather to show how public discussion (also in the media) quickly goes the moral way and underestimates the amoral side, leading to a profound disconnect and misunderstanding - none of which I t touched upon at all. But then I do agree with that, and anyway, I enjoyed riding my hobby horse (well, one of many) for a bit here.
That is all true. The conflict is expressed in different binary oppositions (dyads in fact): profile/abstract; qualitative/quantitative; agency/structure. The individual story which typifies propaganda made for mass consumption is almost always rendered in profile and emphasizes agency (or loss thereof) over and above structure. The difficult part is that these two frames are not mutually exclusive, though focus upon one does temporarily decenter or exclude the other. It's a famous linguistic proposition made by Ferdinand de Saussure but which has influenced all varieties of theory ever since (in fact, Saussure just best codified the already extant tension as many others had written on the topic before him).
So, when you take the very complex network of class relationships which comprise an economy into account, you have an equally complex distribution of labour whereby state planners and so forth are trained to view the world within a certain frame (quantitative for the most part, and abstract) whereas politicians are trained (or learn as autodidacts) to translate this technical jargon into another frame of reference (profile, or qualitative). The one is technocratic and emphasizes rationality, the other is populist and seeks to explain a disaggregation of interconnected facts in the simplest, typically emotional, form possible. This doesn't, however, preclude the technocrat from being emotional or the populist (journalist/politician/layperson) from being rational. It's just that certain classes (practice) incubate certain behavioral modes which in turn manifests as habit (both individual and institutional).
The modern industrial state utilizes a wide variety of means (perspectives) to achieve a common goal (state interest). It isn't an infallible machine which always goes according to plan, but nor is it the disordered chaos of "free choice" that it is usually presented to us as being. The point regarding war and (a)morality then resolves around two or three key facts: firstly, every state is typically perceived to be following their own interests and playing the same game; secondly, the game is class-based; thirdly, as class reflects habit (mode of perspective and means of thinking), the habitual means by which we learn of stories via the media (profile or abstract?) always conceals something of the framer's intent which cannot be easily distinguished from their own class interest.
The point of "manufacturing consent" is that people do it without being told or forced into it. They surmise that it is best for their personal career to go with a given line and they promote that line as vociferously as they can. Also, they may not even surmise this fact. It can be entirely subconscious or justified as what they actually believe (they may in fact actually believe it). And here is where it gets murky because you cannot know the motive entirely without constructing a false position within which a neutral observer sits (there are no such people). What I have grasped, however, and it seems pretty factual, is that the media do not want you to have the geopolitical frame of reference unless it coincides with the particular moral frame within a given instance. I.e., you see arbitrary framing mechanisms and people deciding when to begin a story (where does the history of the conflict start?).
But, tl;dr, the primary tension is between structure and agency (between profile, which is personal, and abstract which is typically sociological). Neither is more valid than another, rather each represents one side of the same coin divided by temporal considerations and notions of micro/macro. A dialectic, to put it even more simply, (as historian, you will be aware of this stemming form Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche, Comte, or from whomever). So long story short, I wouldn't diminish the personality behind the state actor (Putin's personal reasons, or the benign dictator, in your other example of the aging ruler), I would simply look to the frame of reference which informs macro strategical moves before trusting or taking any individual narrative as key.
Well the article is being taken seriously by serious people (e.g. Thomas de Waal is one of my go-to people for Caucasus stuff). Can’t say more than that personally.
Sorry, just to be explicit on this.
Your conclusion is that because there members of the far-right, racists, in Ukraine who are also fighting the Russia invasion, that Ukraine is no longer on the “rational side in this conflict”?
This is exactly why whataboutism is a tool of disinformation to sow discord between people. It allows the dictators of cruel, destructive regimes to get away with things because rather than engage in critical thought and weigh-up the total merits of both sides, you just write everybody off.
It happened when Russia was committing atrocities in Syria, and is happening now in Ukraine… and it will happen again in every conflict.
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I suspect outside of the US and Europe no one stops and thinks about what's happening in Ukraine.
Anyway to the next invasion!
A few things that annoy me:
- People need to realize Hamas do not control all of Palestine, they are only in control of Gaza, from where they fire rockets. A majority of Palestine is the West Bank, which is controled by Fatah. The West Bank continues to be occupied and Palestinains are systematically being removed from their homes there for illegal settlers, they have road blocks throughout the city that limit their travel and are generally humiliated by Israeli soliders on their land. It's funny that absolutely no one in the Western media talks about this side whenever the subject of Israel/Palestine comes about, it's always about Hamas firing rockets but not about how Israel continues to occupy and humiliate millions of people, kicking them off their homes.
- What 'specific' history is there to Israel Palestine that somehow validates what Israel is doing in the West Bank versus Russia Ukraine? Aren't Russia spouting nonsense that Ukraine used to be part of Russia for centuries as part justification, why is that somehow less ridiculous that Israel saying this used to be our land 2000 years ago so we get to invade it?
This is the exact bias that is being criticized in this thread. For Israel Palestine, people will find the smallest bit of information to justify the war crimes going on there but for Russia Ukraine, Ukraine is all innocent no matter what they do in this and Russia has no justification.
And let me clarify myself, Ukrainians are mostly innocent and there is NO justification for what Russia is doing, but at the same time there is NO justification for what Israel have been doing in the West Bank and Gaza for half a century now. But you won't hear the later in majority of the Western media.
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Nope. That's not what I'm saying
It's that the official Twitter account of the Ukrainian military are legitimising these people. I couldn't give a diddly squat about them being there. There are bad people everywhere after all, but you'd hope a country that's rational wouldn't amplify those bad eggs.
After all, I'm sure there were British and American communists who went and fought in WW2, do you reckon Churchill and Roosevelt felt the need to say they were doing a bang up job and feck the bourgeoisie?
Didn't know that Ukraine army's official twitter account posted it, that's quite bad.
Had to do a double take on who wrote this but it’s commendable.
Again mentioning Yemen in that tweet while ignoring that the 8-year Donbass war also barely got covered in Western media in the last years. A 'fresh' conflict will always get lots of coverage and then fizzle out.
With that being said, the commentary from several pundits obviously was shocking, for example saying "blond hair blue eyed people getting hurt, this is all so shocking" or the "cilivized people dying". There's plenty of comments to call out and criticize.
The other one is along the lines of “scenes not seen in Europe for 80 years”, as if the breakup of Yugoslavia never happened.
Indeed. In fact, we literally saw a genocide going on in that conflict.
I'm really not interested in opening the can of worms that is Israel-Palestine. I've already said Israel is carrying out war crimes. The only way out of it in my eyes is a two-state solution. Why Israel continue to proceed with the resettlement is beyond me.
My comments were in relation to flags at football games. I don't think either the Palestine or Israel flags would be appropriate at a football game right now. I don't think that makes me biased, just based on FIFAs rules it would be inappropriate.
I think the point that if Ukraine flags is (or will be) fair game in football matches to show supports, then Palestine flags should be too
Ukraine as of yet has not carried out a campaign against Russian civilians that I am aware of. If the Palestinian flag just represented Fatah from recent years then I hardly think it's objectionable, but we all know that it represents more to some just as the Israeli flag does.
Fair points. I guess it's a combination of the narrative (what you're alluding to in your second paragraph) with the general apathy seen in the west for atrocities that occur in Africa, and the Middle East that has left a sour taste in the mouth of a few people (myself included).
The second thing is just the level of hypocrisy by the West. Imposing strict economic sanctions on Russia with one hand and selling literal billions in arms to the Saudis so they can demolish the people of Yemen with the other.
The Palestinian flag is the Palestinian flag.
Here it is -
Hamas have their own flag. Here it is:
So, going by your logic, you really shouldn't have a problem with a Palestinian flag.
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The Palestinian flag is the Palestinian flag.
Here it is -
Hamas have their own flag. Here it is:
So, going by your logic, you really shouldn't have a problem with a Palestinian flag.
Have either of you ever actually been to an anti-Israel demo and seen some of the tripe that gets said by people waving the Palestinian flag? Often times seemingly having no direct links to Palestine? I have, and it's not a majority in fairness, but it's certainly a significant minority. (And yes, yes... There are exactly the same scum on the other side)
This is common sense when FIFA takes the stance of being apolitical. You're welcome to your views.
Google the Fatah flag - it would be fecking hilarious if this was flown as a symbol of peace at football matches
Google the Fatah flag - it would be fecking hilarious if this was flown as a symbol of peace at football matches
This beauty you mean?