SierpinskiDreieck

That's precisely my point. You can't fight injustice with injustice.

Fuck the USSR. But not on the back of and with the blood of Afghani people.

But it is possible to negotiate with Russia. Just do it in two stages: Make a show of force first, and only then have dialogue. The negotiations between President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that helped to end the Cold War could not have taken place had Reagan not first exploited the weaknesses of the U.S.S.R. by exerting heavy military and economic pressure, including by supporting groups and countries that were challenging the Soviets all over the world, like the Polish Solidarity movement and the Afghan ​​​mujahedeen. This two-stage approach did the trick: When the Kremlin elite realized that they were too weak to break Reagan’s determination they began to negotiate.

I can't believe anyone here read and understood this paragraph and then celebrates this. You guys do know what the mujahedeen went on to do, right? Right? Not even talking about instrumentalising tens of thousands of young humans to organise terror in a foreign country. Just the blowback should be enough to deter anyone from repeating that shit. That fucker just said: "yeah fuck the women in Afghanistan, at least in the 70s we showed the commies who's boss"

And don't come at me with the "Just do the game-theory zero sum game without the externalities then."

e: typo

Aid and development are (mostly) not what one would expect under the name. Some of it is great - catastrophe relieve for example.

More than 90% of it is loans and the conditions and business structures under which these are distributed is at best "soft power" and at worst just straight imperialism. Keep some of the good parts, but yeah - slash the rest.

Yeah, I am there with you. There is a book ont the topic thatI like (altough I disagree on many things with the author) called "the way is shut" by benjamin studebaker. It is way too expensive, but I heard of some pdfs somewhere...

The far-right governments are not being voted in based on material shortcomings produced through immigration or refugees.

There are material shortcomings based largely on wealth inequality and the immigrants/refugees are a scapegoat.

If we start throwing others under the bus to appease the far right we lose by default. We must demand and provide a life of dignity for everyone, this is a distribtuion issue.

My point is that there are sanctions that would hit them and we must pass those. The moment we try to justify the preventable mass deportation and mass starvation of others we lose to gametheory.

So starved and (militarily) uneducated people should revolt against a dictatorship with fighter jets and drones? Or are you starving them enough so that they won't pay the military or mercenaries? What kind of revolutionary nostalgia is this, we aren't living in the 1800s any more.

The government that uses these humans as pawns in their power game will not care for them.

You cannot win a power game by racing to the bottom with the opponent. The sanctions will hit the devasted people living in a brutal dictatorship and the only way to directly hit the perpetrators is by establishing rules on the movement of capital and that will be prevented by a multitude of moneyed interests.

"Just send them back" is the naive approach.

It seems they take privacy serious, that is a good thing.

Also not a fan of their whole Trump thing, but if our whole plan is to pressure consumers to only buy from "good cooperations" we might as well just give up. That is a "US-liberal" form of protest, and utterly ineffective. Use what is easy, cheap and offers the protection you need and spend your energy on building something worthwhile.

They never intended to follow through, or do it so anyone can easily defect the agreement.

The US has real power. Economically and military power. There is a reason they published their plans to invade the Hague should any American be convicted at the ICC. Some similar arrangement would be found with this.

You have to think as cynically as possible, the people in power will too. Then think of something that all sides avoid that thing or you will be thrown under the bus by however holds power.

From a game-theory standpoint (which markets are an instance of such a game) he is not even incorrect. If we tax someone at 15%, while the US doesn't they will take their business there (if possible). This is not a normative statement, this sucks and will lead to the world's destruction (literally wiht global warming, and the same for arms races and war). But is is correct.

Here is my (semi) hot take: To really change anything in the world you cannot be game-theoretically naive. We cannot just by cynnical like the market-liberals, because they are willing to sacrifice the planet and humans for their goals.

We need to be post-cynical. Recognising that just claiming the morally right thing will never get us the power to change anything and just striving for the power to change will make us just as evil as them. If we want to change things for the better we have to hold them both in mind.

To add: The way the current "aid" for Ukraine is structured the ugly truth is: no matter which side wins the war - they will break apart and sell Ukraine in chunks.

Russia is obvious to most, but the western aid is not free of charge either (as is projected so often). They will take their aid agencies and carve up the most important industries Ukraine has: Agriculture, some mining and High-purity neon gas for chip producion. The golden straight jacket. Is it better than getting conquered by Russia: YES. We are not the saintly helpers our leaders would want us to think we are.

The US and the EU WILL be recuperating their costs from the ukrainian people. There will be an economic plundering akin to Greece - even if they win.