Ukraine Crisis

[phyllo]

I don't know. Would it be better for the world to just let Russia have Ukraine?

What do the Ukrainians want? And is it unreasonable?

How would the people/countries who think that it's okay to "let Russia have Ukraine" feel if they were "given" to an invader?

[Gary Childress]

I don't know. Would it be better for the world to just let Russia have Ukraine?

What do the Ukrainians want? And is it unreasonable?

How would the people/countries who think that it's okay to "let Russia have Ukraine" feel if they were "given" to an invader?

I would also be curious to hear the answer to that question among those who think the US should stop sending armament to Ukraine. I think if the US helps Ukraine, people condemn the US government. If the US doesn't help Ukraine the same people might think we were doing the wrong thing in that case too. I'm not sure what they want the US to do.

[phyllo]

Be honorable.
If you see people being wronged, then you help them.
If you make a promise to help, then you follow through with it.
If you have no intention of doing either, then say so from the beginning.

[promethean75]

That'll work phyllo long as things don't get too complicated.

Things will get too complicated. Therefore, that won't work.

Nothing in morality is as simple as a formula, gentlemen. Golden rules, moral intuitions and confucian wisdom are obsolete in the modern metropolis.

[Belinda]

That'll work phyllo long as things don't get too complicated.

Things will get too complicated. Therefore, that won't work.

Nothing in morality is as simple as a formula, gentlemen. Golden rules, moral intuitions and confucian wisdom are obsolete in the modern metropolis.

Fomulas are simple but interpreting them is complicated.

[iambiguous]

From the NYT

'A car bomb in a Moscow suburb killed the adult daughter of a Russian ultranationalist who helped lay the ideological foundation for President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a brazen attack that injected new uncertainty into the nearly six-month-long war.

The Russian authorities said on Sunday that they had opened a murder investigation into the death a night earlier of Daria Dugina, 29, after the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving exploded on a highway 20 miles west of Moscow and burst into flames, scattering pieces across the road.

Ms. Dugina was the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin — a self-educated philosopher and long a leading proponent of an aggressive, imperialist Russia who has been urging the Kremlin to escalate its assault on Ukraine.'

It has been quite a while since I last contributed to this thread. And that is because it has been quite a while since an article in the media brought me back around to wondering if Putin was prepared to take the world all the way to the brink of...nuclear war?

How many months will the war continue to just drag on before Putin either declares victory in accepting "the status quo" or until he feels the need to raise the stakes much higher...with much more ominous weapon systems.

And now this taking the war to Russia itself?

What then?

[Gary Childress]

From the NYT

'A car bomb in a Moscow suburb killed the adult daughter of a Russian ultranationalist who helped lay the ideological foundation for President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a brazen attack that injected new uncertainty into the nearly six-month-long war.

The Russian authorities said on Sunday that they had opened a murder investigation into the death a night earlier of Daria Dugina, 29, after the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving exploded on a highway 20 miles west of Moscow and burst into flames, scattering pieces across the road.

Ms. Dugina was the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin — a self-educated philosopher and long a leading proponent of an aggressive, imperialist Russia who has been urging the Kremlin to escalate its assault on Ukraine.'

It has been quite a while since I last contributed to this thread. And that is because it has been quite a while since an article in the media brought me back around to wondering if Putin was prepared to take the world all the way to the brink of...nuclear war?

How many months will the war continue to just drag on before Putin either declares victory in accepting "the status quo" or until he feels the need to raise the stakes much higher...with much more ominous weapon systems.

And now this taking the war to Russia itself?

What then?

I hope Ukraine doesn't push into Russia. Just let Putin be. It's not worth more bloodshed. Give Putin a chance to man up like Biden did in Afghanistan and put an end to another immoral war in the world. Putin still has a chance to do the next honorable thing after starting a war...putting a stop to one.

[Gary Childress]

I see some Ukrainians are taking on Chomsky. https://www.e-flux.com/notes/470005/ope ... kraine-war

[iambiguous]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/23/worl ... plant.html

'KYIV, Ukraine — In the winter darkness, tracer rounds from Russian armored vehicles streaked past nuclear reactors and high-tension electrical lines. A fire broke out. Shrapnel sprayed a reactor containment vessel.

In the control room of Reactor No. 3, operators were horrified.

“Stop firing at the nuclear facility,” one begged over the station’s loudspeakers. “You are endangering the safety of the entire world.”

The danger at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant — a sprawl of cooling towers, nuclear reactors, machine rooms and radioactive waste storage sites — was actually graver than even those who worked there knew, in early March, just days after Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

A large caliber bullet had pierced an outer wall of Reactor No. 4 but, most worrying and not disclosed at the time, an artillery shell had struck an electrical transformer at Reactor No. 6, which was filled with flammable cooling oil, plant employees subsequently learned and told The New York Times. Both reactors were active.

“By happy coincidence, it didn’t burn,” said an engineer, Oleksiy, who insisted that his last name not be publicly disclosed out of security concerns.

Five months later, with artillery fire once again striking the plant, the specter of a possible nuclear catastrophe has gripped the world’s attention. Urgent negotiations are taking place to try to arrange a visit by experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency.'



What to make of this?!

Are we talking another possible Three Mile Island? another Fukushima? another Chernobyl?

And how does it factor into the war in Ukraine itself?


How can this conflict not make us all weep for the future?

Or what's left of it?


Or, sure, it's just another media "scare story", aimed mostly at bolstering readers or viewers.

[promethean75]

Who killed dugin's daughter?

if Ukrainians weren't behind it and pro-ukrainian russians that hate putin weren't behind it, that leaves those gangster oligarchs i wuz talking about one week into the invasion. what did i tell ya. putin's Ukraine campaign has got banks and sanctions fuckin with all the biggest Russian's money. Putin's makin shit hard for em, they're having their yachts seized and enough is enough. so they take a hit out on one of Putin's closest advisor's daughters. that's some straight martin Scorsese right there.

[iambiguous]

Who killed dugin's daughter?

if Ukrainians weren't behind it and pro-ukrainian russians that hate putin weren't behind it, that leaves those gangster oligarchs i wuz talking about one week into the invasion. what did i tell ya. putin's Ukraine campaign has got banks and sanctions fuckin with all the biggest Russian's money. Putin's makin shit hard for em, they're having their yachts seized and enough is enough. so they take a hit out on one of Putin's closest advisor's daughters. that's some straight martin Scorsese right there.

No doubt about it, the more flexible crony capitalism in America and the more autocratic state capitalism in Russia [and China] will always be a factor. They don't call it political economy for nothing.

On the one hand, there's the military industrial complex that revels in war; and there's the rest of the economy that may well be mangled in it.

"Show me the money" for one sector may result in utter devastation for other sectors.

And nuclear fucking war?!!!

How can that not [eventually] be catastrophic for everyone?

Mutually assured destruction has saved us so far. But, again, the element that revolves around dasein. Putin and Biden as individuals able perhaps to go in directions not easily predicted.

Will this single death lead to a nuclear holocaust?

And you and I here speculating on it all as though we are even close to grasping all the variables involved in grappling with our increasingly problematic future.

[MagsJ]

I hope Ukraine doesn't push into Russia. Just let Putin be. It's not worth more bloodshed. Give Putin a chance to man up like Biden did in Afghanistan and put an end to another immoral war in the world. Putin still has a chance to do the next honorable thing after starting a war...putting a stop to one.

This war could easily be resolved.. there must be too much at stake, for that to not be an option.

[Gary Childress]

I hope Ukraine doesn't push into Russia. Just let Putin be. It's not worth more bloodshed. Give Putin a chance to man up like Biden did in Afghanistan and put an end to another immoral war in the world. Putin still has a chance to do the next honorable thing after starting a war...putting a stop to one.

This war could easily be resolved.. there must be too much at stake, for that to not be an option.

Probably so. Putin is such a manly man, defeat wouldn't look manly enough to him so he's probably staying with it just for that reason. fucking dickhead Putzin. His own people need to take him out and shoot him for the good of mankind.

[MagsJ]

I hope Ukraine doesn't push into Russia. Just let Putin be. It's not worth more bloodshed. Give Putin a chance to man up like Biden did in Afghanistan and put an end to another immoral war in the world. Putin still has a chance to do the next honorable thing after starting a war...putting a stop to one.

This war could easily be resolved.. there must be too much at stake, for that to not be an option.

Probably so. Putin is such a manly man, defeat wouldn't look manly enough to him so he's probably staying with it just for that reason. fucking dickhead Putzin. His own people need to take him out and shoot him for the good of mankind.

I meant on both sides of the border Gary.. not just on Putin’s shoulders.

Who is to say which country is innocent in all of this.. so a resolution, needed.

I’ve read of horrors.. on both sides, so both sides need to rectify their problems, imo.

[Gary Childress]

This war could easily be resolved.. there must be too much at stake, for that to not be an option.

Probably so. Putin is such a manly man, defeat wouldn't look manly enough to him so he's probably staying with it just for that reason. fucking dickhead Putzin. His own people need to take him out and shoot him for the good of mankind.

I meant on both sides of the border Gary.. not just on Putin’s shoulders.

Who is to say which country is innocent in all of this.. so a resolution, needed.

I’ve read of horrors.. on both sides, so both sides need to rectify their problems, imo.

Oh. Sorry, I guess I got that wrong. Go Putin! Let's hope his "denazification" works--razing cities in the name of peace and goodness.