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Austrian diplomatic circles say the talks being pretty harsh in Brussels. Obviously Biden came personally to exert maximal pressure on the Europeans for the extension of his economic war against Russia and potentially even an expansion of the actual warfare in general. The main groups being Biden, Poland and the Baltic states vs. the rest of Europe. Poland is extremely short-sighted, because its very own energy safety can't guaranteed by the Americans, they just don't care because of their anti-Russian position.
I just hope that the Europeans don't get pushed into the American war course with Russia. Its clear by now that France and Germany, plus a majority of Europeans, don't want that. Its an American war.
There is the imminent threat of a false flag operation orchestrated by the US or Ukrainian services, like a chemical attack, to instigate a war escalation and push the "allies and partners" to accept the American aggression:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8lY9B5FNcg
The American media being completely skewed and biased:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QglxaBzjUj4
Give it a rest.
Stick to genetic matters where you have something worthwhile to say to us.
Your Putin lapdog act is wearing thin.
Unfortunately there is no rest, the American nonsense war propaganda goes and the pressure on us Europeans is mounting to escalate the conflict with Russia. Its dangerous and completely detrimental to our interests. Its just the USA and some Eastern states which push this.
This another good channel, they speculate about possible Polish interventions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxe-C5b8sAQ
Imo your 'solidarity' with Putin's Russia is based on the conviction that Putin is systematically 'cancel cultured'. I will not discuss if this is the case or that starting a war (and already actions before that) opens a box of pandora which contains counter reactions.
Imo you at least underestimate the 'rage' that is caused by an offensive, 'revengist' agenda of Putin (caused by the fall of SU and attempts to restore) towards the 'outside' and the autocratic/ repressive internal agenda (see the smother/ poisoning policy towards opposition). You may be consider this propaganda from the West. Imo this a certainly a reality and so we keep on differing on this matter...
I don't give any side higher moral ground. But if a side fights to defend its ethnic and political allies against an attack, they are better than those which just want to reconquer territories which don't even want to belong to their state. That's coming even before the political content and direction the Selenski regime is going. If the Russians would occupy, after a reasonable peace offer from the Ukraine, non-Russian Ukrainian territories, especially of the Central-West Ukraine, then they would be indeed regional oppressors much more than they are by now.
a. Do you consider the constitutional/ institutional side of the US and the EU countries like wise Putin's Russia, then I tal about free election, rights to demonstrate, free prees, trias politica? In other words you don't see the difference between a democratic an autocratic system? Or do ypu consider them likewise.
b. Isn't it clear that Putin follows the scorched earth tactic in places like Mariupol....if our (yours and mine) major concern is the people then we must agree that this is clearly anti-moral ground, doesn't it? I would say: how low can you go?
Clearly:I think that different peoples should be free to develop their own political institutions, and in any case the Russian system is more collegial and bureaucratic than it is autocratic. What exactly do you even mean when they toss around such terms as "autocratic"? Do you actually intend it as a descriptive term?
Moreover, governments in the West have made a mockery of their own constitutional orders over the past several years, and this has happened after decades of systematically undermining the integrity of the peoples they purport to represent.
I think Russia has sought to limit civilian casualties to the extent possible.
But for perspective, you should compare Russia's actions in Mariupol with those of the US army in Fallujah. Have the Russians denied water & electricity to Mariupol or any other encircled cities?
a. Do you consider the constitutional/ institutional side of the US and the EU countries like wise Putin's Russia, then I tal about free election, rights to demonstrate, free prees, trias politica? In other words you don't see the difference between a democratic an autocratic system? Or do ypu consider them likewise.
b. Isn't it clear that Putin follows the scorched earth tactic in places like Mariupol
....if our (yours and mine) major concern is the people then we must agree that this is clearly anti-moral ground, doesn't it? I would say: how low can you go?
Clearly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocracy
Putin is going back to Stalin and Czaristisc Russia.
I consider everyone who lives in the US or Europe totally spoiled who thinks that what is going in Russia can be compared to what is going on in the West.
Anyone who thinks that he can make as big a mouth in Russia as in the Netherlands or the US is wrong. And I'm not going to explain what the US constitution is and what the value is that the founding fathers have laid down. You know that better than me. But I think you should be ashamed of yourself if you think this comes close to what's going on in Russia constitutional and practically in terms of repression. Sorry I don't mince words.....
Sorry, and I'm not going to make a comparison in suffering. That's abject imo. Putin's army starves, freezes, partially deports (to gods know were) the people in Mariupol and bombs the shit out of them (the whole city is practically to ashes). That tells me enough.
PS and yes people in Mariupol are out of electricity in starving cold and drink restwater from radiators....
The democratic system is better as long as it works, a corrupted democracy which pushes its people in the wrong direciton is another issue. Besides, that's not my point, because a democratic state can conquer and suppress a people and an autocratic state can help and protect a people.
The internal structure of a democratic state is better, generally speaking, and opens up more possibilities for peaceful change and development, usually. But that doesn't make it better if it does what the Ukraine does and it doesn't make it worse for the Russians. You understand? One is the internal political structure, the other is a concrete struggle or conflict. That are two different things.
In this concrete case:
- The Ukraine is a manipulated and corrupt state, the Selenski regime acts autocratic and purged its society brutally as well. No big difference to Russia, just different people being the victims.
- Going by democratic values, the most important is the freedom of a people to decide to which state they want to belong, under which rule they want to live. If the Donbas Russians and Crimeans being asked, they might prefer Russia. At least that's what I think they would do.
No, he does not. If the Ukrainian forces in the city move block by block, of course block by block will be destroyed the Russian forces. What else? They hide in a building and fire from this building on the Russians, the Russians will destroy it.
Russia has, by no means, applied a general scorched earth tactic. Even on the contrary, they were more reluctant and more careful than e.g. the Americans were in some given situations. Fact is however, that the fighting is so hard, so costly and difficult, that in this urban warfare the destruction of the city landscape which being used by the defenders is practically inevitable.
If there is low level resistance, or if the Ukrainian forces don't use a district for their urban warfare tactics, they being all spared. I watched videos of Russians moving many kilometers into Ukraine, and along the road they use, almost no single building being destroyed or even damaged. Its all in areas in which the Ukrainians use the civilian structures like a trenches.
E.g., the Ukrainians used schools and other civilian buildings as ammunition depots, for artillery positions and snipers. Then, when the Russians have to bombard those targets, the biased Western media cries about "Russians hitting a school". Its horrible if they hit a building in which civilians sought refuge, like it happened too often already, but many times its either a military target or it was an accident.
This is no war crime, its no scorge earth tactic, its just a rough and dirty urban warfare. That's the strategy the Ukrainians have chosen, and we can't blame them for that either, because if they would have tried to defend Ukraine in the open, the fights would be over in two weeks indeed, but its immoral to blame the Russians for using the tactics and means any reasonable military leader would apply, even if caring for the civilians, to break the resistance in these fortified urban pockets. That's an absurd hypocrisy.
Its war itself which is that awful, not a particularly mean tactic of the Russians.
It is simple: The Ukrainians didn't negotiate, they provoked the Russians and they wanted to start a limited war to conquer people which don't want to be part of their state in Donbas and Crimea. Russia realised that they can't hold them back or end this conflict by just helping from one side in Donbas, so they started a pincer movement to break the main Ukrainian forces, especially those in Donbas, which are the main effective UAF units.
The military target is to break the resistance of the Ukrainian Armed forces, in the areas to the North and South. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian forces retreated to cities and used these as fortified urban bases, for a dirty urban warfare. To inflict maximal damage on the Russians, for having the maximal amount of "incidences" in the course of actions. The Russian task is to break the resistance of this urban fortified positions and for doing that, they need to level the ground around the fighters. This is the logic of this kind of warfare, its the logical reaction to the Ukrainian tactics.
This has zero to do with moral, its military necessity. The only way to prevent it is to stop the war. And the only way to stop the war is coming to a peaceful solution, dipomatically. This brings us back to the absurd Ukrainian and Amerian position, which refused to even accept Crimea, which refused to accept Minks II or the autonomy of Donbas, which attacked the Donbas and still refuse to negotiate seriously.
Scorched earth tactic being applied to destroy the infrastructure and resources of a region, usually by the side which couldn't hold it and wanted to reduce its value for the - at that time - stronger opponent. The Russians wanted to conquer cities and districts with an intact infrastructure. They had no interest and they do not apply scorched earth tactics at all. They just use blunt force to break the resistance of the Ukrainian fighters which use urban, including civilian structures, to protect themselves, inflict maximal damage to the Russians and provoke as much incidents as possible.
That's like a guy which steals your money, you follow him, and he finally makes a stand, but does so in the midst of women and children. You have the choice of letting him go, with your money, or to fight in front of women and children, and take from the perpetrator back what you want. Who is responsible if bystanders get hurt? The one running into such a space, and refusing to fight elsewhere, or the one attacking him, in this environment? The battleground was chosen by the Ukrainians, not the Russians.
Again, I don't blame them for doing so, because they would be utterly destroyed in the open, much quicker, with much less losses for the Russians. But I also don't blame the Russians, because the Ukrainians gave them no other choice.
The only other choice is to end this war altogether, and that needs a diplomatic solution... Its always the same.
The organicist vision of society[edit]
The totalitarian system, unified and organized, presents itself like a body, the "social body": "dictatorship, bureaucracy and apparatus need a new system of bodies".[17] Lefort returns to the theories of Ernst Kantorowicz on the "two bodies of the king", in which the person of the totalitarian leader, besides his physical and mortal body, is a political body representing the one-people. In order to ensure its proper functioning and to maintain its unity, the totalitarian system requires an Other, "the evil other",[18] a representation of the exterior, the enemy, against which the party combats, "the representative of the forces of the old society (kulaks, bourgeois), [...] the emissary of the stranger, of the imperialistic world".[19]
The division between the interior and the exterior, between the One-people and the Other, is the only division that totalitarianism tolerates, since it is founded upon this division. Lefort insists on the fact that "the constitution of the One-people necessitates the incessant production of enemies"[19] and also speaks of their "invention". For example, Stalin prepared to attack the Jews of USSR when he died, i.e., designing a new enemy, and in the same way, Mussolini had declared that bourgeois would be eliminated in Italy after World War II.
The relation between the one-people and the Other is a prophylactic command: the enemy is a "parasite to eliminate", a "waste". This exceeds the simple rhetorical effect that was commonly used in the contemporary political discourse, yet in an underlying way it is part of the metaphorical vision of the totalitarian society as a body. This vision explained how the existence both of enemies of the state and their presence in the bosom of the population, were seen as an illness. The violence roused against them was, in this organicist metaphor, a fever, a symptom of the fight of the social body against the illness, in the sense that "the campaign against the enemy is feverish: the fever is good, it's the sign, in the society, of the evil to counteract".[20]
The situation of the totalitarian leader within this system is paradoxical and uncertain, for he is at the same time a part of the system – its head, who commands the rest – and the representation of the system – everything. He is therefore the incarnation of the "one-power", i.e., the power executed in all parts of the "one-people".
The fragility of the system[edit]
Lefort didn't consider totalitarianism as a situation almost as an ideal type, which could potentially be realized through terror and extermination. He rather sees in it a set of processes which have endings that cannot be known, thus their success cannot be determined. If the will of the totalitarian party to realize the perfect unity of the social body controls the magnitude of its action, it also implies that the goal is impossible to achieve because its development necessarily leads to contradictions and oppositions. "Totalitarianism is a regime with a prevailing sense of being gnawed away by the absurdity of its own ambition (total control by the party) and the active or passive resistance of those subjected to it" summarised the political scientist Dominique Colas.[21]
Conception of democracy[edit]
Claude Lefort formulates his conception of democracy by mirroring his conception of totalitarism, developing it in the same way by analyzing regimes of Eastern Europe and USSR. For Lefort democracy is the system characterized by the institutionalization of conflict within society, the division of social body; it recognizes and even considers legitimate the existence of divergent interests, conflicting opinions, visions of the world that are opposed and even incompatible. Lefort's vision makes the disappearance of the leader as a political body – the putting to death of the king, as Kantorowicz calls it – the founding moment of democracy because it makes the seat of power, hitherto occupied by an eternal substance transcending the mere physical existence of monarchs, into an "empty space" where groups with shared interests and opinions can succeed each other, but only for a time and at the will of elections. Power is no longer tied to any specific programme, goal, or proposal; it is nothing but a collection of instruments put temporarily at the disposal of those who win a majority. "In Lefort's invented and inventive democracy," writes Dominique Colas, "power comes from the people and belongs to no one."[22]
Democracy is thus a regime marked by its vagueness, its incompleteness, against which totalitarianism establishes itself. This leads Lefort to regard as "democratic" every form of opposition and protest against totalitarianism. The opposition and protest creates, in a way, a democratic space within the totalitarian system. Democracy is innovation, the start of new movements, the designation of new issues in the struggle against oppression, it is a "creative power capable of weakening, even slaying the totalitarian Leviathan".[23] A Leviathan whose paradoxical frailty Lefort emphasises.
The separation of civil society from the state, which characterizes modern democracy, is made possible by the disembodiment of society. A democratic country can also experience this inventive character when any group of citizens with a legitimate struggle may seek to establish new rights or defend its interests.
Lefort does not reject representative democracy, but does not limit democracy to it. For instance, he includes the social movements in the sphere of legitimate political debate.
In the fog of war, it is hard to tell what exactly is going on. My understanding is that Russia has set up corridors for people to leave the city. Some say the Ukraine fighters prevent civilians from leaving Mariupol in order to use them as human shields. But commentators who say this (I refer to the two Alex's on The Duran) also call the nationalist fighters "nazis," and I distrust such talk for reasons similar to my objections to your use of "autocrat" to describe Putin.
A democratic system is inherent better than an autocratic one.
Putin fails to conquer Mariupol. It has a demotivated army. And what are they going to do, blow it to rubble. And starve them out. No mercy. Who suffers: the ordinary people.
Diplomatic solution? Putin will not negotiate sincerely until it has big parts of the Ukraine under control. Why should he negotiate?
Not of his interest until he controls now plan B parts of the east. And Zelenski can't do anything else that countervail the attack as good as possible so he is not totally blown away when the negotiations will start seriously.
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