It is a “proxy war” - and what’s the problem? If we get directly involved (which might eventually happen) that is de facto WWIII. If you don’t like the idea of Ukraine fighting and dying so we don’t have to - then go and help.
Yes. Biden stumbled into war with a nuclear power and spends his time focusing on CO2 and trans-sexuals, who are real people but very rare. His protection against impeachment is Kamala Harris, who cannot be either President or VP with Gavin Newsome.
Cornell West is an acolyte of the big flip—from a nation of heroes to a nation of apologists. Technical innovation and cultural values and patterns of organization flow outward from areas of concentration to those of less density. Vibrant cultures expand to fill available niches, and in turn defend beachheads established against the forces of entropy or those of competing systems. Peace is dynamic balance and as such relative rather than absolute. West is of idealist stripe: war, like poverty, is not nice so we won’t have it. Removed from reality’s necessity, we may imagine a perfect world. One may live in that bubble, but there is a question of its sustainability.
Putting the USA involvement to the side: the Russian people have no right to the country's that the communist regime had overran at the end of World War II.
Them wanting to have a say over how those people determine their own future's is just plain wrong.
Again, putting aside anything at all to do with the United States.
Isn't it Russia's militaristic attitude that remains, from NATO's original reason for being, it's reason for being?
Our choice, as a nation, is do we help our neighbors when their neighbors attack them. I'm not claiming to have an answer for all morality, but that is the question.
Of course it is a proxy war. The question is why is there a war? what role did we play in starting it? Which side should we support and why? What type of support should we offer? I haven’t seen a lot of light on those issues, though plenty of heat.
Had Ukraine made an agreement with Russia not to join NATO there would be no war. America wouldn't tolerate increasing Russian military presence near its borders.
If Ukraine agreed to such would Putin withdraw from Eastern Ukraine Crimea and Georgia do you think? Pacifism always has a place in any conversation but Peace At Any Price didn't stop Hitler and won't stop Putin.
Have you considered going to Ukraine and picking up a an AK-47 and fighting the Russians since you have strong animus against Putin? Your pic indicates you're a healthy man. Walking the talk? Lol!
Bush's grandfather had business relationships with the German industrialists while Adolf Hitler was in power. The KGB now the FSB didn't flood the Black inner cities with cocaine like Ronald Reagan's CIA did in the 80s to fund the Contras, a right-wing Latin American group. The CIA has a history of assassinating a number of democratically elected leaders around the world, including in Latin America and Africa, to install right wing puppets. The FBI COINTELPRO surveillance program under Hoover tried to get MLK to commit suicide, and coordinated with a city police agency to have a Black Panther Party leader, Fred Hampton, assassinated. The American white man's reasoning ? Lol!
What the fuck are you babbling about? Black inner cities? There are more blacks that frequent this comments section than there are in Russia. Putin looks pretty damn white don't you think?
The literal words out of Putin’s mouth give lie to that.
Also, unless you’re arguing that the US is a direct threat to either Canada or Mexico the analogy is utterly meaningless as anyone in the states of Eastern Europe could tell you.
You dismiss their concerns and their agency but appear to care about supposed ‘threats’ to Russian.
You say I should pay more attention to Dr. Loury. Unfortionately, my spouse Dr_____ wouldn't go for that. 😂🤣😅 Lol!!! I'm rolling on the rolling floor with uncontrollable laughter.
I've traveled extensively around the world, including Russia. I have an extensive collection of books---philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, economics, finance, natural science, criminal justice, world history, American history, war history, etc...etc. You? I keep my bar filled with Bourbon for my white guests. 😂🤣😅😆
I’m somewhat unclear what any of that has to do with the fact your theory about avoiding the war is contracted by Putin’s own words, but this very clearly not a a productive conversation, bye.
I find it hard to get past the irony of people who on the one had are so critical of American power in the world, taking a view of Russia’s actions that essentially says it’s for America to ‘make promises’ on behalf of other states and that this ultimately must be about America, a so called ‘proxy war’. That seems both arrogant and narcissistic.
This argument almost entirely erases the agency not only of Ukrainians, but in the sense of considering the history, the agency of people in former Soviet states and the other Eastern European countries that suffered under Soviet influence.
If after the fall of the Soviet Union these states who moved towards open, market based societies, broadly democratic, broadly free were to say that they had genuine fears based on history and the likely nature of post Soviet Russia and wanted part of security club of western democratic nations, it was for the US to say no, to deny them that request, that the US gets to decide based on ‘promises’?
There is every reason to believe that were these nations not NATO members Russia would have made attempts to control them in some way, to deny them the ability to shape their own futures. Politicians from these countries have been open and clear about this and what’s happening in Ukraine would seem to very much validate those fears.
The analogy to the US and Mexico is ridiculous as the modern US doesn’t have designs and isn’t trying to turn Mexico into a client state.
The Baltic states and others NATO membership is a direct result of those countries very real fears and it insults them to try and argue its really just about American power, empire and a supposed ‘proxy war’ with Russia.
Thank you. It’s something I note on all sides be it the so called anti imperialist left, the International Relations ‘Realist’ thinkers or the ‘America first’ right, they all run roughshod over the agency of those most directly effected.
I’m reading Anthony Beevor’s excellent book ‘Berlin’ and I can’t help thinking about Yalta, and Stalin’s view which sadly Roosevelt didn’t stand up to enough, that it was for ‘great powers’ to decide the fate of small nations. I fail to see how this is all that different. Poland, Latvia etc suffered for decades as a result and I can guarantee if you asked them they’d tell you their NATO membership hasn’t made them part of some ‘American empire’ it’s simply prevented them from falling back under a Russian one.
I think people are naive as to the extent which the Russian elite continues to cling to an imperialist world view.
The entire world doesn’t not revolve around the US. The ‘true winner’ will either be Russian authoritarianism and its designs of empire or the Ukrainian people who will retain the possibility of shaping their own futures.
To suggest that it’s all a side show to the deal which is the MIC seem narcissistic at best.
I live in the deep South. How is banning books, nonviolent protests, gerrymandering, and voter suppression prosperity? For what segment of the society? Who's American in your first thoughts? The criteria? Facts?
The real threat of authoritarianism is here in America---movement toward neo fascism. Whites are becoming a minority and fear losing their power. Ukraine is irrelevant to me, having to live in the deep South wherein white supremacist Gerrymandering and voter suppression is on steroids.
I'm 72 years old, and the war in Vietnam was total American imperialistic bullshit! Black soldiers suffered disproportionate casualties, while their loved ones were being treated like shit here. Geronimo Pratt, a Black American Purple Heart recipient in Vietnam, came back as a member of the Black Panther Party. With the help of FBI COINTELPRO program, he was falsely convicted and sentenced to prison.
The think you’re ignoring is that some of the loudest voices either outright supporting Putin or at the very least arguing against supporting Ukraine are MAGA types.
Go and read the views of that branch of the GOP or other conservative sources, the types of people sympathetic to authoritarianism they’re often the loudest voices saying the US shouldn’t be supporting Ukraine.
There isn’t a meaningful comparison to Vietnam. There aren’t US boots on the ground and Ukraine aren’t calling for there to be.
African nationals trying to leave Ukraine at the start of the war, were held back to let the white Ukrainians go first. Poland didn't want to accept African nationals who were fleeing Ukraine. Poland treated these people like shit.
Even if what you are saying is true and keep making essentially the point over and over, it changes nothing to mine that viewing this (or indeed anything else) through such a racially reductive is anything but a zero sum dead end.
I don't care about changing your views. My priorities are black folks. Black folks need to concentrate on themselves first and foremost, not stupid irrevelant horizontal issues like the white left vs. the white right.
America has over 2 million inmates incarcerated---30 to 40% are black. Russia: about 550,000. Biden (D) is the main architect of the racist 1994 racist crime bill which put Black mass incarceration on steroids. Black drug offenders caught with crack cocaine received more severe prison sentences than white boys caught with more cocaine. I worked in the prison industrial complex for 34 years. Both parties are 2 wings on the same trifling bird.
Given the history of racial politics in Europe that’s an ironic take, but I’d suggest you might want to consider where such racially reductive thinking leads. You aren’t the only person capable of viewing other people’s suffering through a racially reductive lens.
I can’t see how looking things in such terms leads to anything positive.
The only thing I have against it, is that it cost so much treasure that the Europeans should be putting up. However, we all know that they are spineless, so what did we really expect?
Ok - just 60 seconds in and the wonderful and esteemed Dr West exposes himself as the authoritarian apologist that he is and that serves his irrelevant presidential campaign. Sometimes egos just take over for intelligence and am sorry to see, but not all surprised to see his capitulation to the easy way out. It’s possible his best days are behind him.
You should talk to Stephen Kotkin on this issue
It is a “proxy war” - and what’s the problem? If we get directly involved (which might eventually happen) that is de facto WWIII. If you don’t like the idea of Ukraine fighting and dying so we don’t have to - then go and help.
Yes. Biden stumbled into war with a nuclear power and spends his time focusing on CO2 and trans-sexuals, who are real people but very rare. His protection against impeachment is Kamala Harris, who cannot be either President or VP with Gavin Newsome.
Cornell West is an acolyte of the big flip—from a nation of heroes to a nation of apologists. Technical innovation and cultural values and patterns of organization flow outward from areas of concentration to those of less density. Vibrant cultures expand to fill available niches, and in turn defend beachheads established against the forces of entropy or those of competing systems. Peace is dynamic balance and as such relative rather than absolute. West is of idealist stripe: war, like poverty, is not nice so we won’t have it. Removed from reality’s necessity, we may imagine a perfect world. One may live in that bubble, but there is a question of its sustainability.
Putting the USA involvement to the side: the Russian people have no right to the country's that the communist regime had overran at the end of World War II.
Them wanting to have a say over how those people determine their own future's is just plain wrong.
Again, putting aside anything at all to do with the United States.
Isn't it Russia's militaristic attitude that remains, from NATO's original reason for being, it's reason for being?
Our choice, as a nation, is do we help our neighbors when their neighbors attack them. I'm not claiming to have an answer for all morality, but that is the question.
Of course it is a proxy war. The question is why is there a war? what role did we play in starting it? Which side should we support and why? What type of support should we offer? I haven’t seen a lot of light on those issues, though plenty of heat.
Had Ukraine made an agreement with Russia not to join NATO there would be no war. America wouldn't tolerate increasing Russian military presence near its borders.
If Ukraine agreed to such would Putin withdraw from Eastern Ukraine Crimea and Georgia do you think? Pacifism always has a place in any conversation but Peace At Any Price didn't stop Hitler and won't stop Putin.
Have you considered going to Ukraine and picking up a an AK-47 and fighting the Russians since you have strong animus against Putin? Your pic indicates you're a healthy man. Walking the talk? Lol!
As a matter of fact no. Are you considering fighting for Putin? I'm not following your line of reasoning. Putin is a madman.
Bush's grandfather had business relationships with the German industrialists while Adolf Hitler was in power. The KGB now the FSB didn't flood the Black inner cities with cocaine like Ronald Reagan's CIA did in the 80s to fund the Contras, a right-wing Latin American group. The CIA has a history of assassinating a number of democratically elected leaders around the world, including in Latin America and Africa, to install right wing puppets. The FBI COINTELPRO surveillance program under Hoover tried to get MLK to commit suicide, and coordinated with a city police agency to have a Black Panther Party leader, Fred Hampton, assassinated. The American white man's reasoning ? Lol!
What the fuck are you babbling about? Black inner cities? There are more blacks that frequent this comments section than there are in Russia. Putin looks pretty damn white don't you think?
The literal words out of Putin’s mouth give lie to that.
Also, unless you’re arguing that the US is a direct threat to either Canada or Mexico the analogy is utterly meaningless as anyone in the states of Eastern Europe could tell you.
You dismiss their concerns and their agency but appear to care about supposed ‘threats’ to Russian.
You say I should pay more attention to Dr. Loury. Unfortionately, my spouse Dr_____ wouldn't go for that. 😂🤣😅 Lol!!! I'm rolling on the rolling floor with uncontrollable laughter.
And my poker table is always available. 🤣🤣😅
I've traveled extensively around the world, including Russia. I have an extensive collection of books---philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, economics, finance, natural science, criminal justice, world history, American history, war history, etc...etc. You? I keep my bar filled with Bourbon for my white guests. 😂🤣😅😆
I’m somewhat unclear what any of that has to do with the fact your theory about avoiding the war is contracted by Putin’s own words, but this very clearly not a a productive conversation, bye.
My day has been very productive with tangibles apart from nonsense. It's quite measurable. You? 😂🤣😅
I find it hard to get past the irony of people who on the one had are so critical of American power in the world, taking a view of Russia’s actions that essentially says it’s for America to ‘make promises’ on behalf of other states and that this ultimately must be about America, a so called ‘proxy war’. That seems both arrogant and narcissistic.
This argument almost entirely erases the agency not only of Ukrainians, but in the sense of considering the history, the agency of people in former Soviet states and the other Eastern European countries that suffered under Soviet influence.
If after the fall of the Soviet Union these states who moved towards open, market based societies, broadly democratic, broadly free were to say that they had genuine fears based on history and the likely nature of post Soviet Russia and wanted part of security club of western democratic nations, it was for the US to say no, to deny them that request, that the US gets to decide based on ‘promises’?
There is every reason to believe that were these nations not NATO members Russia would have made attempts to control them in some way, to deny them the ability to shape their own futures. Politicians from these countries have been open and clear about this and what’s happening in Ukraine would seem to very much validate those fears.
The analogy to the US and Mexico is ridiculous as the modern US doesn’t have designs and isn’t trying to turn Mexico into a client state.
The Baltic states and others NATO membership is a direct result of those countries very real fears and it insults them to try and argue its really just about American power, empire and a supposed ‘proxy war’ with Russia.
Thank you. Spot on.
Thank you. It’s something I note on all sides be it the so called anti imperialist left, the International Relations ‘Realist’ thinkers or the ‘America first’ right, they all run roughshod over the agency of those most directly effected.
I’m reading Anthony Beevor’s excellent book ‘Berlin’ and I can’t help thinking about Yalta, and Stalin’s view which sadly Roosevelt didn’t stand up to enough, that it was for ‘great powers’ to decide the fate of small nations. I fail to see how this is all that different. Poland, Latvia etc suffered for decades as a result and I can guarantee if you asked them they’d tell you their NATO membership hasn’t made them part of some ‘American empire’ it’s simply prevented them from falling back under a Russian one.
I think people are naive as to the extent which the Russian elite continues to cling to an imperialist world view.
BREAKING NEWS: Biden is sending [cluster munitions] to Ukraine which has been banned in 100 countries.
The U.S. military industrial complex is the true winner. Defense stocks might be a good buy now.
The entire world doesn’t not revolve around the US. The ‘true winner’ will either be Russian authoritarianism and its designs of empire or the Ukrainian people who will retain the possibility of shaping their own futures.
To suggest that it’s all a side show to the deal which is the MIC seem narcissistic at best.
Donald Trump made narcissism and alternate facts normal.
Zero facts to support your assessment of Trump whose policies focused on AMERICAN freedom and prosperity.
I live in the deep South. How is banning books, nonviolent protests, gerrymandering, and voter suppression prosperity? For what segment of the society? Who's American in your first thoughts? The criteria? Facts?
The real threat of authoritarianism is here in America---movement toward neo fascism. Whites are becoming a minority and fear losing their power. Ukraine is irrelevant to me, having to live in the deep South wherein white supremacist Gerrymandering and voter suppression is on steroids.
I'm 72 years old, and the war in Vietnam was total American imperialistic bullshit! Black soldiers suffered disproportionate casualties, while their loved ones were being treated like shit here. Geronimo Pratt, a Black American Purple Heart recipient in Vietnam, came back as a member of the Black Panther Party. With the help of FBI COINTELPRO program, he was falsely convicted and sentenced to prison.
The think you’re ignoring is that some of the loudest voices either outright supporting Putin or at the very least arguing against supporting Ukraine are MAGA types.
Go and read the views of that branch of the GOP or other conservative sources, the types of people sympathetic to authoritarianism they’re often the loudest voices saying the US shouldn’t be supporting Ukraine.
There isn’t a meaningful comparison to Vietnam. There aren’t US boots on the ground and Ukraine aren’t calling for there to be.
African nationals trying to leave Ukraine at the start of the war, were held back to let the white Ukrainians go first. Poland didn't want to accept African nationals who were fleeing Ukraine. Poland treated these people like shit.
Even if what you are saying is true and keep making essentially the point over and over, it changes nothing to mine that viewing this (or indeed anything else) through such a racially reductive is anything but a zero sum dead end.
I don't care about changing your views. My priorities are black folks. Black folks need to concentrate on themselves first and foremost, not stupid irrevelant horizontal issues like the white left vs. the white right.
America has over 2 million inmates incarcerated---30 to 40% are black. Russia: about 550,000. Biden (D) is the main architect of the racist 1994 racist crime bill which put Black mass incarceration on steroids. Black drug offenders caught with crack cocaine received more severe prison sentences than white boys caught with more cocaine. I worked in the prison industrial complex for 34 years. Both parties are 2 wings on the same trifling bird.
Ukraine is a white European problem.
Given the history of racial politics in Europe that’s an ironic take, but I’d suggest you might want to consider where such racially reductive thinking leads. You aren’t the only person capable of viewing other people’s suffering through a racially reductive lens.
I can’t see how looking things in such terms leads to anything positive.
Russia didn't start flooding inner black cities in the 1980s with cocaine to fund the Contras (Mercury News).
Of course we are.
The only thing I have against it, is that it cost so much treasure that the Europeans should be putting up. However, we all know that they are spineless, so what did we really expect?
I agree with you, sparky.
Brother West has ever spoken better sense. What in heck are we Doing with our army and why? Who benefits?.
Ok - just 60 seconds in and the wonderful and esteemed Dr West exposes himself as the authoritarian apologist that he is and that serves his irrelevant presidential campaign. Sometimes egos just take over for intelligence and am sorry to see, but not all surprised to see his capitulation to the easy way out. It’s possible his best days are behind him.
This is a white man's war---white on white violence!