____twoism

J.J. McCullough wrote:Being who I am, a cause that has always been very important to me is the idea that culturally-similar countries should be models of peaceful cooperation and codependence. We live in a complex, diverse world of nations, which puts a unique onus on countries like Canada and America, Australia and New Zealand, Britain and Ireland, Germany and Austria, etc., to be models of kindness and understanding towards each other, because if WE can’t get along, what hope is there for anyone else?

This is what makes Russia’s cruel war of conquest against Ukraine so particularly repulsive. It will do nothing but foster hatred and fear between two peoples who, even amid the current conflict, are quick to emphasize their deep cultural similarities and intimate human bonds. Putin is encouraging people around the globe to hate and fear their neighbors, to believe that their worst conspiracy theories about “the other” are true.

Western Canada has a large population of people of Ukrainian heritage, and in the past I always found it a bit much how paranoid some Ukrainian people were about Russians, or how ostentatiously they would tell you that their grandfather “never spoke Russian” as a point of principle, and so on. Today, of course, it is people who think that way who seem justified, and kumbaya, let’s-all-get-along people like me who seem naive and ignorant.

How terrible it is to live in such a world.

"Throughout this crisis, the Western position has been to take a caricaturishly hard line against negotiation. All the way back in December Putin put together his initial, maximalist opening bid calling for, most prominently, a legal, written pledge that neighboring Ukraine and Georgia wouldn’t join NATO, for Washington reenter the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty Trump had recklessly pulled out of, and a host of less realistic demands about NATO activities in former Soviet republics. But it was the first item on the list that was what Putin was really after. Limits to NATO’s eastward drift, after all, had long been a sore point for not just Putin, but even pro-Western Russian elites for years, something various US officials and thinkers had once openly recognized as understandable.

So, knowing that Moscow was now threatening military action against Ukraine if its objections to NATO enlargement continued to be ignored, what did Western officials do? They refused to budge on the matter again and again as the months wore on, even as, absurdly, they acknowledged Ukraine wasn’t joining the alliance anytime soon, and they made clear they wouldn’t fight to defend it. It’s the geopolitical equivalent of a gunman waving a pistol at your friend, demanding that you rule out any future plans to climb Mount Everest, only for you to cross your arms and refuse."

One Very Important Thought wrote:If you can be told what you can see or read
Then it follows that you can be told what to say or think
Defend your constitutionally protected rights
No one else will do it for you
Thank you

2020k wrote:Do we have anyone from Twoism who lives in Ukraine or Russia? It doesn't look like we had any regulars from either country, but I'd like to know that everyone in our community is safe.

Orbited insanitarium wrote:

2020k wrote:Do we have anyone from Twoism who lives in Ukraine or Russia? It doesn't look like we had any regulars from either country, but I'd like to know that everyone in our community is safe.

As far as I know, our long standing member Arvy is Lithuanian and his country is relatively near to Russia.
Apart from him, i can't think of any other twoismers.

jcnporter wrote:This is a really informative piece about how the current situation came about and quite grim about where it is heading.

https://jacobinmag.com/2022/03/ukraine-socialist-interview-russian-invasion-war-putin-nato-imperialism/

SonicDimension wrote:By the way, some recent polls indicate that the majority of Russians support Putin’s ‘special military operation.’ Consider this next time you are feeling sorry for all the poor Russians languishing under sanctions. Russia is now a totalitarian fascist nation by any reasonable definition of those terms, Should we go out of our way to express pity for Hitler’s cheerleaders in the 1930’s who suffered economic hardship during and after WW II?

I for one am reserving my goodwill for people who take a stand against this murderous tyrant. If Russians will stand up to Putin, I salute them. But for the most part, Ukrainians are standing alone in fighting Putin’s orc army.

Among young people, support for the war is significantly lower, according to the study. In the 18-to-24 age group, 29 percent indicated they back the war, while 39 percent were opposed. Peak support for the war, at 75 percent, was among respondents age 66 and older.

rodox_head wrote:
I would hardly believe polls coming out of Russia right now to be entirely accurate anyway.

SonicDimension wrote:That’s a good point. And I do believe that younger people (especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg) are less inclined to support the war. But they need to show some courage and let their voices be heard. Why are Ukrainians the only ones making Molotov cocktails?

SamuraiDrifter wrote:The American government was doing something every bit as horrific as Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Why weren't the American people showing backbone?

Sanctions are a tool of the oligarchs and politicians to hurt each other through the working class. It's the very definition of using the poor as pawns in their geopolitical battles. I absolutely do not support the sanctions of my government against working-class people like me who happen to live in the borders of Russia. I support the Russians and Ukrainians (and Americans for that matter) rising up against their masters and not dying in bosses' wars ever again.

SonicDimension wrote:Americans were not trying to overthrow a democratically-elected government. Americans were not intentionally using a siege strategy, in which the objective is to terrorize and kill civilians to force capitulation. Americans were not spreading horrendous propaganda about how the Iraqi nation and Iraqi people have no right to exist. I agree that the Iraq war was a shameful mistake in US foreign policy, but I don’t think that it’s fair to compare that war to the Russia-Ukraine war. And I also don’t think that it is fair to compare the current US government to the Russian government.

Okay, so what do you suggest? What is the alternative?

SamuraiDrifter wrote:Do you really think it's "not fair" to compare the invasion of a country motivated by imperialism that killed over 70,000 civilians in the name of oil to what's happening right now?

Direct aid to the working people of Ukraine and Russia, to help them fight off, in the first case, their invaders, and in the second case, their horrible authoritarian government.

Sympathetic working class people across the world helping their Russian counterparts is now impossible thanks to the sanctions.