Geopolitics in the 2020s.

[vikingTON]

14 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Likewise Ukraine with 4 million dead followed by a campaign of Russification, Holodomor as they call it.

Lol wut

Why am I not surprised that you bought into that fascist snake oil as well. 

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, welshbairn said:

I don't really see why Russia feels it has a divine right or need to a buffer zone of tribute countries to protect itself, who wants to or is capable of conquering Russia? 

The United States has openly declared its divine right to a buffer zone consisting of the entire western hemisphere of the planet. For nearly 200 years and counting:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine

That's what great powers do. International politics is not a morality play in which every state gets its fair say in what should happen. As Mexico and just about every other Latin American state can testify to. 

The West's failure to account for Russia's legitimate security perimeter (based on its power alone) is based on utter hypocrisy, as well as either stupidity or brazen warmongering. 

[Binos]

39 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Likewise Ukraine with 4 million dead followed by a campaign of Russification, Holodomor as they call it.

7 million wasn't it

[invergowrie arab]

2 hours ago, welshbairn said:

P.S. You have to wonder if Russia stopped threatening its neighbours whether they might not feel the need to seek NATO protection.

Being a member of NATO doesn't stop parts of Spain being occupied by the UK 

[welshbairn]

10 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

Being a member of NATO doesn't stop parts of Spain being occupied by the UK 

Well, if we're going back 300 years to redraw the maps, things could get tricky. Gibraltarians have had two referendums to ask if they wanted to change their status, both times the Yes vote would lose a deposit over here.

[DiegoDiego]

Being a member of NATO doesn't stop parts of Spain being occupied by the UK 

Gibraltar isn't Spain and Ceuta isn't Morocco.

[invergowrie arab]

1 hour ago, welshbairn said:

Well, if we're going back 300 years to redraw the maps, things could get tricky. Gibraltarians have had two referendums to ask if they wanted to change their status, both times the Yes vote would lose a deposit over here.

Thanks I know how Gibraltar works.

I'm just pointing out that concern trolling about a country carrying out military operations within its own borders doesn't carry much weight when the countries doing it literally occupy their near neighbours.

Also you wouldn't have to redraw the borders given the Kingdom of Spain was extant at the time the UK occupied Gibraltar.

[welshbairn]

2 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

Thanks I know how Gibraltar works.

I'm just pointing out that concern trolling about a country carrying out military operations within its own borders doesn't carry much weight when the countries doing it literally occupy their near neighbours.

Also you wouldn't have to redraw the borders given the Kingdom of Spain was extant at the time the UK occupied Gibraltar.

You think not relishing the prospect of Russia attacking Ukraine is concern trolling?  

[vikingTON]

2 hours ago, welshbairn said:

You think not relishing the prospect of Russia attacking Ukraine is concern trolling?  

Is that your excuse for peddling literal fascist propaganda aye?

[welshbairn]

7 minutes ago, virginton said:

Is that your excuse for peddling literal fascist propaganda aye?

You think the Ukrainian famine didn't happen, or it was entirely down to crop failure and the Soviet Government had nothing to do with how many people died, or that it's unfair to mention Ukraine because Russians starved too? Germany didn't make this up, it was already written.

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, welshbairn said:

You think the Ukrainian famine didn't happen, or it was entirely down to crop failure and the Soviet Government had nothing to do with how many people died, or that it's unfair to mention Ukraine because Russians starved too? Germany didn't make this up, it was already written.

1) It wasn't a 'Ukrainian famine', it was a 'Soviet Union famine'. 

2) There is no evidence that Soviet government policy sought to deliberately kill any national population in the famine.

3) And yes, the famine was largely the product of natural causes: namely, persistent drought and agricultural pests. The collectivisation struggle largely changed the nature of which groups were affected worst by it. The regime prioritised city populations; the peasants would have prioritised themselves and let Moscow, Leningrad (and Kiev/Donetsk) starve. 

As a result of the above facts, the Ukrainian nationalist myth of the 'Holodomor' must be rejected as pernicious, fascist nonsense. The key is in the first part of the term: its purpose is to falsely equate the Ukrainian nation's so-called travails under Stalin as being equivalent to the Holocaust experienced by European Jewry under the Nazis.

What makes this utter drivel even more insulting to anyone's intelligence is of course the fact that the same groups of Ukrainian nationalists who peddled this myth to an eager Cold War audience were the ones who eagerly collaborated with the Nazis in the only state-sanctioned genocide of a people in their region. 

Edited February 16, 2022 by vikingTON

[welshbairn]

I don't know how many Muscovites died from from starvation in 1933, but I understand the mortality rates in Russia as a whole were a third of what they were in Ukraine. Of course Russians suffered as well, but as the region most dependent on agriculture Ukraine suffered the most. And it was about much more than drought, I don't think the most dedicated Stalinist would pretend that the initial years of forced collectivisation were anything other than a disaster. If you're starving to death it doesn't matter very much if it's because you're Ukrainian or because you're a peasant or Kulak. 

 

[vikingTON]

Erm the whole fucking point of the 'Holodomor' myth is that it did matter who starved in the Soviet famine.

The fascists' claim is that Ukrainians were singled out by the Soviet state and targeted for deliberate genocide - in comparable terms to European Jewry. Which is complete and utter nonsense, which you are gormlessly peddling as if it were fact. 

[vikingTON]

Allow me to provide hard evidence from noted, dedicated Stalinist, err Stephen Kotkin - American historian of the Soviet Union. From his exhaustive political biography Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 (2017), p. 100:

Quote

"...an exception must be made [to grain procurement quotas] for the districts in Ukraine that have suffered especially. This is necessary not solely from the point of view of justness, but also in the view of the special condition of Ukraine and its common frontier with Poland." - Directive of Stalin to Kaganovich and Molotov, July 24 1932

So not only was the Ukrainian republic not singled out for famine, it was in fact selected to receive what famine relief there was available, due to its geopolitical importance as a frontier republic. The Kazakh as well as internal Russian republics received far less state relief. 

Edited February 17, 2022 by vikingTON

[vikingTON]

Kotkin, p. 129, on the Soviet's limited but repeated delivery of aid and reduced quotas, primarily to Ukraine and the North Caucasus:

Quote

these actions do not indicate that [Stalin] was trying to exterminate peasants or ethnic Ukrainians... there was no "Ukrainian" famine; the famine was Soviet.

So not the most badly affected group (that was the Kazakhs); not targeted for destruction by the state; and in fact given preferential treatment in famine relief measures compared to other parts of the republic throughout the Soviet-wide famine that was triggered by seasonal abnormalities. 

You can just draw the straight lines here between the utterly pernicious 'Holodomor' myth and the actual fucking Holocaust, clearly. 

[welshbairn]

Also from Kotkin.

Quote

The problem for the Bolsheviks—and this is where Stalin’s will and personality come in—is that the peasants don’t want to be collectivized. Only 1 percent of all the arable land in the Soviet Union as of 1928 was worked collectively, which is to say, collectivized. 99 percent of the arable land was worked by households and individuals who then sold their produce on the market, in the style of capitalism. Stalin decided that this couldn’t go on any longer, and to the shock of everybody, including the other Bolsheviks, who supported the idea of collectivization but just didn’t think it was feasible, he imposed forced total wholesale collectivization across all of Eurasia. The result is what the critics called dislocation, but on a bigger scale than they anticipated, because there was a horrific famine. This second Bolshevik famine, from 1931 to 1933, was a result of the social engineering of this collectivization that Stalin embarked on.

I don't get your point that Ukrainians shouldn't complain about millions dying from a largely man made and preventable famine because others died too, and it's somehow fascist for them to do so.

Edited February 17, 2022 by welshbairn

[vikingTON]

Literal Ukrainian fascists presenting the death of Soviet peasants in a famine as an act of state-engineered genocide against the Ukrainian nation - on a par with the actual fucking Holocaust that Ukrainian fascists gleefully participated in - is absolutely outrageous nonsense. 

That you continue to try and defend the indefensible here is just fucking wild. 

Edited February 17, 2022 by vikingTON

[LongTimeLurker]

On 16/02/2022 at 16:52, Binos said:

7 million wasn't it

I'd be wary when eastern Europeans from an area with a history of launching pogroms start peddling that particular number. Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands is worth a read for a history of the famine that unfolded in Ukraine (and neighbouring parts of southern Russia) and the Holocaust because it avoids following any particular nationalist narrative. He highlights how undergoing control by both Stalin and Hitler in quick succession was particularly bad news for the area described by the book's title.

[Jacksgranda]

On 16/02/2022 at 16:29, invergowrie arab said:

Thanks I know how Gibraltar works.

I'm just pointing out that concern trolling about a country carrying out military operations within its own borders doesn't carry much weight when the countries doing it literally occupy their near neighbours.

Also you wouldn't have to redraw the borders given the Kingdom of Spain was extant at the time the UK occupied was ceded Gibraltar in perpetuity.

 

[LongTimeLurker]

Spain would have a stronger case if they hadn't held onto Ceuta and Melilla:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceuta

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melilla