Know Thine Enemy

A corollary: “good intentions” only count in Church, just as “close” only counts in horseshoes.

Your real enemies may well say, “we are only here to help”. Such fictions do not make them your friends. Believing such fictions makes you a fool or a method actor.

Practical means and institutional mechanisms are the currency of effective policy to make a better society. Sympathy for those visibly suffering may be commendable sentiment but is not enough. Being stupid is not a state of higher consciousness.

If your income had increased at the same rate as productivity, you’d have about twice as much income. Think about that.

A quibble–I’m not sure that’s a valid calculation, because:

a) our capitalist class has gutted and cannibalized our real wealth (the ability to make stuff) to produce inflated paper ‘wealth’;

b) so much of the productivity numbers are pretense–like at my company, about 25 or more people were doing work that now only 9 are doing, and we’re pretending that those 9 can have the same breadth and depth of expertise as those 25 had.

So yeah, we commoners be richer if we had done things right, but maybe not twice as rich.

Everything is what people do regardless of what they say. It should be something we learn by kindergarten. Yet even I still give people the benefit of the doubt after they’ve proven themselves, too long after they’ve entrenched themselves in positions of power and my gut had been telling me something wasn’t right about them.

It’s all about stealth. And spotting and manipulating fragile emotions. And preemptively ruining the reps of potential whistleblowers. All for what? One’s own selfish ambition?

(BTW, I looked for synonyms for “whistleblower”. I thought it meant “informer of unethicality coming from power.” Nope. According to the synonyms, it’s nothing positive. Snitch. Betrayer. Tattletale. Rat. Not sure what’s up with that. Maybe there’s a better word, not yet tainted.)

Willy:

“Putin is my enemy, since he’s the only one who’s threatened nuclear war.”

Do you have a link to that threat?

Thanks.

I read somewhere recently that much of the aid going to Ukraine is actually on a buy now pay later basis’ Similar to the lend lease deals of the past. The people of Ukraine will be on the hook for the bill if they ”win.” Therefore if they don’t “win” the western arms suppliers and their government accomplices will find it much harder to realize payment. It appears Russia is being goaded into nuclear conflict and mostly for the benefit of weapons makers. I want to be wrong.

Sorry, make that “EricF” and only one duckduckgo search. Long day.

Any deals brokered in this conflict will be negotiated by the surviving lords, not the dead peasants.
The dependent and voiceless are at the mercy of their psychopathic rulers.
Animals, children and the aged are natural victims.
May all categories of beings under threat, stress and trauma find respite and shelter from the storm.
(Thanks Mr Dylan/Zimmerman.)

On reflection, it probably has to do with the fact that I still remember so vividly being bullied myself as a — slow to mature — child.

Ian, can you actually back up your statement about Russia being enemies of Ukrainians? A huge majority of the voting population supported peace with Russia by voting in Zelensky. Eastern and southern Ukraine clearly prefers to be inside Russia.

So other than Galician Nazis who hate Russians as subhumans and those paid by the West to force Ukrainian nationals (including ethnic Hungarians who are overrepresented in combat casualties) to fight Russians, how is Russia the enemy of Ukraine? Would you say in that in 1978, the Vietnamese are enemies of Cambodians? If my own government is pushing for a course of continued war and destruction, I think they’re the my enemy, not the people they provoked into war and destruction.

W/r/t to this post I suspect some could use a refresher on the empathy/sympathy conundrum Ian.
https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-problem-with-empathy-and-the-advantage-of-sympathy/

First, as to Ian’s post, as usual, succinct and clear, very difficult to find category errors or broad brush mistakes. Now, as to a couple of comments. To the “reading comprehension” new guy, a couple of things I learned early on in my political education from Malcolm X– (some may be paraphrased & not exact quotes)– “If you’re not very careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” Also, much as you might hate all oppressors, your first duty if you want to be a free human being is to fight the s.o.b. that has his (usually, not always) foot on your throat. Lastly, a warning specifically to the black community, “If you can’t tell the truth, you don’t even deserve freedom.” Now, I am not black and I grew up quite privileged, good health and good education, BUT I had to support myself starting at age 19 because I grew up in a deeply authoritarian family. My dad found out that I had smoked a joint at this age, which he thought only the underclass (non-whites) did, & threatened to have me institutionalized– (which in reality, even as a rich, powerful person he probably did not have the power to do, but as a 19 year old I had to flee and support myself for several years for my own safety.) So I threw away my Class Privilege card, worked in a shipping warehouse, then in central Louisiana in an oil inspection pipeyard, then on boats in the Gulf of Mexico servicing oil drilling platforms. My coworkers in the Merchant Marine were uneducated and violent, also extremely racist, so I joined the “group” like one would join a gang. I was called a “Yankee” (though Chicago where I grew up is not New England) & an “N—- lover,” because I did not join in in my coworkers’ virulent racism. Then I was attacked and punched in the face, etc. Once I won the 3rd fight I was in, I was still not respected but I was accepted and left alone . . . later I went to live in Nicaragua for 4 months in 1983-84 and picked coffee with the CST, Sandinista Workers Union locals, plus other “Internacionalistas” who went there to see the US’s “totalitarian communist enemy” face to face. These people were NOT any threat to the US, Reagan’s scare stories that they would hop in their decades old jalopies & drive 7-800 miles thru Mexico to attack the US and install “Soviet terror” were fever-dreams . . . anyway, living among non-bourgeois and non-white people, I had a lot of tribalist bullshit get pushed out of my psyche. (Actually even as a youngster I was one of those odd kids who was not a “respecter of persons”– not meaning that I disrespected people generally, but not being super confident or “type A” myself I always took people as they were & did not discount automatically people with darker skin-tone or less education than me . . . So, here’s my point– growing up in an authoritarian household I have a reflexive hatred of powerful people who wield that over others . . . now Mr. Putin certainly belongs in that class, however, I would note the following– 1. Being anti-war, I know that MY taxes paid for the Bush-Cheney carnage in the middle east and across the world, so if I bear any war guilt it is for the roughly 1,000,000 mostly innocent people the NeoCons murdered in Iraq and elsewhere, & Mr. Bush continues to run around hooting & gibbering cheerfully without any accountability. Perhaps IF you (presumably US supporting from your post) were calling for Bush, Rice, Wolfowitz et al to go to the Hague you MIGHT have a shred of credibility to call for Putin to do so afterwards– but I don’t see you doing so. 2. Those of you, including the Shit-Libs, who are “Respecter of Persons” (who speak English, don’t eat weird foods you don’t, etc.) and well-propagandized by corporate media seem to create 2 levels of victims, “worthy victims” & “unworthy victims.” So dozens of Palestinians are routinely killed and jailed non-stop by the Israeli Apartheid state (including children as young as 8) & you feel not the least discomfort. “They asked for it”, right? Same for the Russian speaking folks in Ukraine post the 2014 coup, somewhere around 35% + of the populace, especially up in the Donbass area, who didn’t want to be forced not to speak Russian or relegated to 2nd class citizenship. And who were shelled by “their” government in the Donbass region, all directed indiscriminately mainly at civilians, really few military targets there. The respected estimates of the dead are 14,000 minimum, plus there are the maimed, people’s houses destroyed, etc. But like the Palestinians, they asked for it I guess. (If I were ever in a room with Bill Maher, though not a violent person, I would walk up to him and punch his racist, Zionist face for saying that when the IDF bombs civilian homes and kills children, “The blame for the children’s deaths is on their parents, for opposing Israel.” How sick! This is akin to reports in the 90s that when the Chinese government executed dissidents they billed the families for the cost of the bullets used.) 3. Your hero Zelensky (a TV creation like the wonderful leaders Berlusconi & Trump, incidentally a native Russian speaker who had to learn Ukranian in later childhood) at the behest of Victoria Nuland threatened to put nuclear weapons on Russia’s borders one month before the Russian SMO. Now, ANY competent leader would react to an existential threat like that, & Putin did (after earlier ignoring the Donbass breakaway republics when they requested to formally join Russia for security under bombardment) did what the populace demanded and defended his nation by addressing the existential threat. Had he NOT done so he would have been quickly replaced by someone who did, & I’m sure he has as good (or better) self-preservation instincts than most. To quote someone in Compton I saw on TV during the Rodney King riots, “If you get a little, tiny kitten trapped in a corner and are about to kill it, even the kitten will fight back.” Now I am not saying that Russia is a kitten (Napoleon and Hitler learned otherwise), nor that I would like to move there or expect I’d be comfortable with much of their culture. However, unlike yourself (evidently) I know that I’ve funded far more murders in the last 40 years than Putin has committed and it’s my responsibility to face that. Also, the only “tribe” I belong to is the human race. I do not and never will accept the proposition which you evidently carry, that some people are lesser, if they are invaded, tortured, murdered etc. to benefit the powerful, oh well, that’s just business as usual. Anyway, if you are rich or well-invested in Raytheon, Pfizer or the other wonderful institutions that have their foot on my (& my family and friends’) necks, you are certainly entitled to your opinion, having earned it. It must be nice to have no guilt as weaker and more vulnerable people are oppressed or killed, as long as you’ve got yours. Jung’s Shadow is real, & people who are unaware that they have one and incapable of addressing and trying to overcome it are among the most dangerous sociopaths out there. And I personally respect the sociopaths who kill and maim directly more than those who do so from a distance, like Madelaine Albright responding to Leslie Stahl’s noting that US sanctions had killed half a million Iraqi children (& would soon up the number to an even million) without harming “Saddam” in the least– “we think the price is worth it.”

Hi Willy:
The reason everyone believes Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons is that his statements about same are always paraphrased the way the west wants to spin it. If you read his actual statements (released by the Russian government) or official copies of the speeches in question, or even translations of the many question/answer sessions at events or press appearances you will find the reality is quite different. The same goes for other Russian high officials ( lavrov, peskov).
To sum up Russian statements:
-Russian nuclear posture is well-documented, public and transparent; this is the only way for it to be an effective deterrent.
-Russia maintains a no-first-use policy, except in the situation where the survival of the Russian state is threatened.
-Russia believes there are NO winners in a nuclear war, but maintains a strong and modern nuclear force as deterrent, is confident about that, and will use it if necessary.
…while there is some ambiguity there, Russian statements are consistant in stating that their nuclear weapons are deterrent in nature. American ambiguity however is, and has been for years, in the opposite direction with “all options are on the table” a commonly quoted phrase at the highest levels: Official American nuclear posture (I quote) “would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.” That ambiguity certainly seems a bit more available (and ominous) than Russia’s.

I did follow those DuckDuckGo searches, clicked on many of the links, but it took a long time before I could actually find Putin (or Russian official statements) directly quoted, and even then the quote did not support the headline. This is not at all unusual, and if my comment does prompt you to look a little further you’ll find this is only the first step into a remarkable rabbit hole of history and politics.

“USA regards Russia as the rightful property of the USA.”

Agree. In accepting the globalist’s stated intention to eliminate “nations” in exchange for global domination (and to me, this is what Russia and China are fighting against, so they are not my enemy*), I have this fantasy.

Let’s pretend they’ve nuked Russia and cowed China into submission, and they now own the entire globe. Who gets to run the world then? Who will be in charge, and make sure the right people get the right money from the right place? Will they vote to select a supreme leader? (Oh, the irony.) I’ll bet that supreme leader will have an official taster to prevent poisons leading to yet another regime change.

I imagine that the US oligarchs believe it will be they who will be in charge, but I also imagine there will be a lot of infighting, jockeying for position, and the usual payments wired to numbered accounts, convenient suicides, and unexpected assassinations. This could go on for years, decades, centuries, exactly as it has in the past.

I mean seriously, just thinking this forward into the future, any doubt about their insanity should be dispelled by now. The truth is, they are a joke, a cliche, stereotypical, predictable by anyone with a knowledge of history, AND they lack any kind of originality.

* Russia and China aren’t trying to kill me. My rulers, however, are quite seriously trying to kill me as quickly as possible. They want me homeless, paying rent for my own home, sick and unhealthy living on junk food, indebted for my entire lifespan, and addicted to prescription drugs, violence, and mayhem. More importantly, they are deliberately interfering with my ability to enjoy being alive.

Ukraine gave up its nukes on the condition that Russia wouldn’t attack.

That isn’t what the Budapest memorandum says, it says that the signatories will guarantee and respect the sovereignty of Ukraine.

That was violated immediately by the US and the UK whose program of sponsoring Galician Nazis started all the way back in 1945 but was after the collapse of the USSR free to escalate without restraints.

And it escalated really sharply twice, first with the Orange revolution in 2004-05, then with the coup in 2014.

After the latter Ukraine ceased to exist as a sovereign country.

From then on the Budapest memorandum was null and void.

Also, I take very serious issue with the view that Putin is the enemy of Ukrainians.

If he was that, he would have indeed finished this war in a few weeks. By doing what had to be done — sending a million-men army, evaporating the military barracks and all other relevant infrastructure in the first hours and days, and causing hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties as collateral damage.

He didn’t do any of that, quite the opposite, it was kid gloves for a very long time, and it still is very far from a full-scale war.

Because it is essentially a hostage operation, in which the real enemies of most Ukrainians, which is the Galician Nazis and the West are using most of the Ukrainian population as cannon fodder and human shields in their war against Russia.

Recall that they were shooting anti-personnel M30A1 HIMARS rockets at civilians in Kherson city. They have of course been doing that in the Donbass too, but let’s for the sake of the argument accept the view that in Donbass it is only Russians (that they are civilians we ignore too). Which is not the official view of Ukraine’s government, BTW –according to them those people are Ukrainians under Russian occupation. Yet they still bomb civilians there (just yesterday they blew up a hospital in Novoaidar, again with HIMARS). But Kherson did not spend 8 years under such “occupation”, and it was the most pro-Ukrainian city between Odessa and Kharkov prior to the war. Regardless, once it passed into Russian hands, the moment Ukrainians acquired the capability to do so, they started terror bombing.

Including with anti-personnel rounds.

Against what had been just a few months earlier their own citizens and “Ukrainians”.

Because the reality is that for the Galician Nazi scum everyone east of Galicia is a potential Moscal and ideally should all be exterminated and the land repopulated with people from pure stock from Galicia. They are tolerated as long as they play Ukrainian, but that game ends the moment an area passes under Russian control.

While for the West the ideal outcome is that everyone, including the Galicians get out of the way and release that extremely valuable territory.

Which is quite relevant to the question of who the real enemy is.

GM, I highly doubt you’ll get many USAian voters on board with that reasoning. Now, maybe if Saint Basil’s Cathedral had been destroyed along with 3000 Russians by Galician Nazis, these voters might’ve been more amenable to Putin’s views on invading Ukraine. Optics, BM, optics.

But then I forgot the part where the USA lost in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and the USAian voter’s attitudes towards invasions may have changed a bit.