Last night, gunmen with incendiary devices attacked the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnagorsk, a Moscow suburb. The death toll stands at around 150 people as I write this, and it will likely rise further, as most of the dead were killed in a fire and a partial roof collapse, and some bodies probably have yet to be recovered. The FSB have arrested eleven people, including four attackers who fled the scene in a white car. Russian authorities have hinted at Ukrainian involvement, while Western sources claim the assault was carried out by Islamic terrorists. For what it’s worth, the Islamic State in Khorasan have claimed responsibility for the attack. Many theories are circulating, but it is too early for me to comment on the plausibility of any of them.
I never thought that standing firm against civilians getting slaughtered for the misdeeds of their government was a controversial position, yet here we are. Every single event on the planet is now run through the 'political filter' to determine if it's a Good Thing or a Bad Thing.
Shooting at KC parade? VERY BAD THING -- until we find out who was involved....then it goes down the memory hole. Somebody shot by police barging in to serve a search warrant? VERY BAD THING....as long as the victim is Breonna Taylor. If it's Bryan Malinowski -- crickets.
Personally, I'm pretty tired of it. Things can be good or bad irrespective of who it helps politically.
Politics and wokedom are religion to these people. They are zealots. That is why no matter how much evidence you put in front of them contradicting their worldview, they will never consider it. To do so would threaten their religion and entire being.
"I never thought that standing firm against civilians getting slaughtered for the misdeeds of their government was a controversial position, yet here we are."
You must have not been around in 2001. I remember the online mob was as unhinged, celebrating the 9/11 attack and joyfully proclaiming that America had it coming. And this was in Central/Eastern Europe, of all places.
Arab and other moslem migrants to Sweden, along with swedish communists and socialists, were celebrating 9/11 in public.
At the school I was working at when it happened, the arab students started singing and crying from joy. This were students that had been born in Sweden by "refugee" parents.
Two of my colleagues, both swedish women engaged in socialist parties and feminist groups, looked as gleeful as kids getting presents.
As fas as I know, it was the same all over Sweden and Europe everywhere there was a sizeable moslem/arab population.
I don't think americans realise how hated they are in many parts of the world.
I'm an American, and now that I realize how extensively and relentlessly the CIA and DoD have meddled in the affairs of other countries that are none of our effing business, I'm surprised that we aren't hated a lot more and in a lot more places. It's obviously no excuse for attacks on civilians. No one who wants to claim the moral high ground would lay a finger on them, and the US has killed obscene numbers of civilians in countries where we had no right to be. And of course it turns out that the CIA and DoD are America's greatest enemies, too.
Yawn, Anonymous Coward, yawn. I only respond once to Anonymous Cowards. If you want to be taken seriously, stand up like an adult and be counted. Ooooooh, the scary "CIA and DoD" - yeah, they are the problem in the world, not evil Islamist death cults or Communist one-party dictatorships. It's the intelligence gathering agency in the freest most open country the world has ever seen, and the lumbering bureaucracy of the Department of Defense. Right. Sure. You nailed it. Spare us.
You mean the same agencies who have sponsored woke all over the Western World? The ones encouraging, amongst others, Islamists across the sourthern border. Those communist arseholes?
Which is it? CIA/DOD as all-knowing conspiratorial imperialists composed of thousands of latter day Machiavelli retreads? Or CIA/DOD as Communist woke propagandists? My point is boring bureaucracies rarely do much to alter the course of world events.
I’m American, and trust me I am fully aware of how hated we are across the world. Our biggest enemies in fact are not those who many would think. They aren’t the Muslims although one would think that. Take away the propaganda from Tel Aviv’s influence and speak directly to Muslims and they will tell you just leave them alone and all would be fine. Many in fact wish to be American. No, our largest group of American hating radicals are the regular person from Europe. For what reason when you consider that in many instances we are blood related. Why hated your brethren. I mean we did help the European socialist movement to be buffered into being able to evolve into full blown communism by defeating the only nation who was willing to stand up to communism. No they aren’t mad at us about that even though they live in a. Society which would appear to be communist to most Americans. Sadly lost Americans do t have a fucking clue what freedom and liberty actually are nor do they care as long as they can watch sports and eat McDonald’s but that’s besides the point. The reason why Americans are hated so much by Europeans is because you’re mad at us for having to be who is responsible for your safety.
Read that this way.
The men of your nations are to effeminate to tell your women to stop seeking foreign pats to cuckold you with and that you are who shall be defending and protecting them. But that costs money and it would be the destruction of your cradle to grace shit medical problems as well as the month off you all get yearly for holiday. For all the good perks you get as Europeans we have to save and scrape for. You’re mad at us for. Your nation decided that we would be who provided your security all you had to do was sign on to nato. Hell you didn’t even have to pay into it. You were supposed to but always found reason why you could not. But then hell you went off for a months vacay. More reason to be pissed at America. Our fault because you aren’t men enough to provide security for your own people. I can get the displaced anger. I really can. Our women do it here to us all the time.
I mean come on. We know you hate us and we hate that you’re being eradicated in your own countries. You aren’t even men enough to string up the aliens when they rape your women. Or worse. You get mad at the men who want to or try to.
No one wants to hear from a nation of cuckolded men who actually had a proposed law which would require that all males must squat like women when urinating to make it equitable. Muzzies dont hate us. They hate you because European men allow their women to cuckold them and force you to feel manly for allowing muzzies to rape them and their children because you refuse to be men.
We Americans know full well who our enemies are and who aren’t worth the time. Europe has shown it isn’t worth our time and effort. We are watching youballow yourselves to systematically be relaxed and you are happy about it yet complain like it’s our fault. So until your backs are really against the wall because you are being overwhelmed In an actual fight just shut up. You aren’t worth the time as to won’t defend yourselves in order to feel superior. You’re essentially a continent of the biggest Nancy boy losers I’ve ever seen.
I remember Americans saying that America had it coming, especially at universities and in the corporate press. Ward Churchill probably got the most notoriety out of it. Central and Eastern Europeans no doubt remember the illegal NATO intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999. Back then NATO thought that the massacre of 45 Kosovar Albanians required military intervention; now it's just peachy with 10,000 civilian Ukrainian deaths in a war it's done everything it could to instigate and prolong.
I think you are misinterpreting the very few voices who had the guts to say “Well, what the heck did you expect?” - because 9/11, if not an inside job, was a definite case of blowback. Unfortunately, those who dared say that 9/11 was in some measure the result of US actions abroad were roundly silenced and scolded for ‘celebrating’ the deaths of innocents. Moreover, many folks who wrote or talked about blowback were visited by nice men in black sunglasses or fired from their jobs or otherwise harassed.
What I would expect from someone with a grievance against the US government is something other than the slaughter of civilians during peacetime. I'd expect attacks on military targets or critical infrastructure like electrical grids or the employees of a certain organization in Langley, VA. Killing civilians isn't payback for US government actions. It's just slaughter for the sake of it, without any possibility of advancing a military objective--because there wasn't one. People who said "What did you expect?" in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 revealed their own premise that such attacks on civilians were somehow morally justified.
It was peacetime in the US - It wasn't "peacetime" in the Middle East. After the Gulf War, the US never really pulled out - and the 1st Gulf War wasn't the start of the deadly. murderous US policy in the Middle East. Between 100-200,000 civilians died in the first gulf war - so, though I deplore the killing if civilians, I don't know that the US is riding any moral high horse there.
Moreover - if one is to believe the 9/11 reports, there was an attack on the Pentagon. And as to attacking a symbol of American power and global hegemony, the Twin Towers certainly stood as that.
By saying 'What did you expect?" no one is expressing a sense of moral justification, anymore that a sane person would express moral justification over either Gulf Wars. The What Did You Expect question came due to years and years and years of US aggression in the region conducted with complete and utter impunity, You kick a dog enough, and it bites and turns mean. You beat a man, he'll eventually punch back. Doesn't make the dog justified, doesn't make the man justified - it just IS. It's what happens. Of COURSE there is going to be blowback when US diplomacy is almost always conducted at the end of a barrel.
I have never been convinced, not from the day it happened, that this wasn't the 'Pearl Harbor' type event needed to pass the patriot act and justify the horrendous bloodshed and reduction in civil liberties that followed.
The US turns out to be responsible for far more civilian deaths in far more places on far more fraudulent pretexts than I ever dreamed, and not just incidentally as unfortunate collateral damage in defensive wars--because not one of those conflicts has been defensive. This damned place has gone out of its way to instigate conflicts since at least WWII and most of our "leaders" and their coteries have been war criminals.
I was convinced at the time that 9/11 had come as a complete shock to the parasite class, although it was obvious that the TSA, NSA, the Reduction of Freedom Act, and the Gulf War were insanely inappropriate reactions to it. Since 2020 it's been clear that it was what you say: the 21st Century's Pearl Harbor moment, an engineered excuse for the deep state to extend its tentacles in a bigger increment than usual.
Still: A beaten dog reacts out of instinct and without the advantage of reason. A beaten man, when he punches back, has an option: react against the man who initiated the aggression, or against some random third party. Rationally there's only one moral choice for him to make.
“Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.”
Please don't use the word "illegal" in the international law context--It implies that there is some kind of global authority that can decide those kinds of questions.
"Law" in the international context means something more like "The customary behavior of nations regarding international relations, treaties, declarations of war, etc."
Good point. I should have said that NATO's actions were unauthorized by the UN Security Council. NATO violated the UN Charter's prohibition on the use of military force without the SC's approval or for something other than self-defense. The concept of "illegal" doesn't apply in that context.
“Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.”
We didn't really see anything like that here in the States -- some sporadic reports of 'people dancing', but that was about it. Just about everybody here was full up on rage and bloodlust.
And then it turned out to be what? A bold faced LIE by "our" own government. If you seriously believe the "official story" at this late juncture in time, you need to WTFU. Try checking out http://ae911truth.org and see what THOUSANDS of architects and engineers have to say about the total lies we've been fed on that subject. And also consider listening closely to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCzy9i4tIHU
Now that the entire Western ruling class and its many managerial parasites have converted en masse to the Social Justice faith, they have adopted Social Justice morality:
Standing firm against hapless citizens being slaughtered for the misdeeds of their rulers is an *incredibly* new position. I'm not surprised that it isn't more widespread or that the facade is very thin, regarding it.
I have not read of any protests in the US regarding the fairly indiscriminate bombing campaigns against the Germans or Japanese in WWII, for example.
By no means am I arguing against it. I think it's an enlightened position to take. But for the majority of human history, the peasantry has suffered for the doings of their leaders in war. And it shows now still, in the implicit agreement that nations seem to have regarding not targeting each other's leadership. Wars would happen a lot less frequently, I think, if the people picking them were likely to face any consequences for doing so.
" have not read of any protests in the US regarding the fairly indiscriminate bombing campaigns against the Germans or Japanese in WWII, for example."
How many Americans do you think know about these bombing campaigns?
The only lesson they were (and are) taught is that the war criminals from that time spoke either German or Japanese; WWII was the "good war", dontcha know, and the Americans, of course, were the good guys.
Educate yourself on Japan's Unit 731 while we're all standing around, throwing rocks at each other like a colony of spider monkeys. Their biological warfare unit tested anthrax, cholera, smallpox, and other scientifically developed diseases on a defenseless and unknowing Chinese population. They also infected American prisoners of war and drained their blood to get cultures, and jumped up and down on their chests to squeeze out the last drop as they were dying.
Japanese troops commonly engaged in cannibalism of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Islander populations during the war. In their occupation of Nanjing the horrors inflicted on the Chinese were thoroughly documented including a beheading contest between two junior officers to see who could cut off the most prisoners' heads before exhaustion. It was documented in the NYT and the Japanese public followed it like the World Series.
Very few people in the United States disagreed with the decision to firebomb Tokyo, or to drop the atomic bomb. Even after we dropped two atomic bombs, the Japanese took a couple of weeks to surrender, and the General Staff nearly assassinated the emperor to prevent surrender. Those bombs saved over a million American lives, to say nothing of the entire Japanese nation, which would have died to the last civilian.
"Japanese troops commonly engaged in cannibalism of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Islander populations during the war. In their occupation of Nanjing the horrors inflicted on the Chinese were thoroughly documented including a beheading contest between two junior officers to see who could cut off the most prisoners' heads before exhaustion. It was documented in the NYT and the Japanese public followed it like the World Series."
- Had they simply dropped incendiaries on Chinese villages, would their behavior have had your approval? (I don't see the logic in, "They were barbaric, so we had to burn them to death.")
The soviets had good reason to retaliate for the crimes of the German army ,when they entered German territory .The Americans and the British had no reason to retaliate like the Russians ,by bombing every town and city to rubble with civilians living in it . In 1945 as a nine year old ,I saw it with my own eyes the destruction when I came back from a village to the city I used to live in .Many of us kids where send out to the country side to survive .Now at 88 I even survived the covid BOMB .,By avoiding shots of any kind .
Please forgive me for my primitive English for witch some commentators where critical ,advising my to learn proper English . As a kid in that village the male teacher was at the front,so some girls did try to teach us tough boys .We did not take them serious ,some went home crying .Than came the retreating German Army and took over the little school house as a makeshift hospital ,later the U/S. army did the same .So learning anything was a joke .At 21 I migrated to northern British Columbia ,establishing a masonry construction business ,and learning in the school of life what I know now .I did work like a grown man from age 14 until age 76 ,when I retired . So again sorry for my bad English .
Tamenund ,Ich habe leider keine Freunde wo ich jetzt wohne in Vancouver ,nur meine Frau die viel juenger ist als ich .Ich gehe jeden Tag am Meer entlang spaziren ,koche all mein Essen und lese viel .Auch noch Danke fuer die Aufmerksamkeit .
Wieso entschuldigen? Jeder der den Inhalt vernachlässigt wegen der Form, ist nicht an ernsthaftem Lernen interessiert. Sondern...? Tack your pick. For the only english speaking people: try - but not trust - googlee translate.
A fascinating story - thank you. Glad you survived those extremely harsh times. For a man who is 88-years old, you seem remarkably proficient in handling online tasks that didn't even exist until you were in your late 60s. May you have many more productive years, sir. God bless.
Very reassuring to meet fellow citizens of my own age class and background in this forum! Not vaccinated. Never forgetting me, at age 7, for the first time coming to a big city: We were walking through streets and streets and streets, left and right nothing but rubble. This was in the 50th! Nobody spoke about it. The horror of my parents generation who all had near relatives, friends, children burned to death in the "Feuersturm", buried alive under the rubble, crushed to death, frozen to death in the ensuing years of homlesses and hunger years was too great to put into words. Irony of the times: My uncle, first send to KZ for distributing anti- Hitler leaflets, then sentenced to a "Strafbatallion" (penalty unit in the army), there escaping certain death by "Fahnenflucht" (deserting and surrendering) to the american army, was imprisoned by the very same american army as a prisoner of war and spend years in a prison camp in USA.
I visited Dresden in 2003; there were still gutted buildings across the street from the Hauptbahnhof and the Lutheran Frauenkirche was still a pile of rubble. I showed my pictures to my German instructor at the time (eine Berlinerin) who looked at them and told me that she grew up in that kind of a neighborhood.
eva ,being born in 1936 in Germany ,i could tell similar stories .We did experience things ,that the young generation can only read about in history books .
The Americans were never told that the USAAF was participating in area bombing; look at the vitriol one faces when he brings it up.
The discussion over the Abombs every August is all the evidence you need; nobody mentions the fact that we had been dumping napalm on Japanese cities for months prior.
OK, watch a few episodes of one of those WWII documentaries based on newsreels from the time. Plenty of footage of bombers. Plenty of bomber crews who talked. The controversy over strategic bombing was not over civilian casualties, it was about whether it was an effective strategy. The prohibition on bombing civilians was breached by the axis early in the war. We dropped white phosphor bombs on the Germans and Japanese - napalm came later.
Strategic bombing? Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki were strategic targets? Like Dresden Germany was a strategic target? Like the forests of Vietnam were strategic targets? I guess my understanding of the word STATEGIC is either wrong, or yours is.
The German and Japanese villages that the USAAF built in the Dugway Proving Grounds were bombed with napalm (as part of the testing to see which bomb type was most effective in burning down a village); this was in 1943, long before the Marianas had been siezed and the B-29s staged for their raids. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2020/11/the-german-japanese-village-where-most.html
Strategic bombing as strategy was first advanced by Italian General Douhet based on Italy's campaign in Ethiopia in WW1, and accepted as the primary function of air power throughout WW2. It wasn't invented by the Allies. In fact, check out the Spanish Civil War; Picasso did a painting.
Ironically, given the position I'm staking out in this thread, I also think that using the nukes was the best option we had at the time, though I also wish that humanity had never thought of them. But we'd probably have to be a different species for that to happen. *shrug*
"I also think that using the nukes was the best option we had at the time ..."
Best option for what purpose? For the purpose of testing two atom-bomb technologies on live targets? For the purpose of scientific monitoring of blast and radiation-sickness death tolls? For the purpose of showing Stalin that the US would enjoy post-war military supremacy?
For all these purposes, it was undoubtedly the best option.
For any other purposes, it was certainly not. The bomber planes deliberately passed over military targets (arms factories, naval harbors) to bomb civilians in their cities. The bombings, by the way, were opposed almost unanimously at the time by all but one of the most senior US army, navy and airforce officers - this has nothing to do with pacifism (in case you'd like to disregard it on that pretext).
Even if we disregard this war crime and the resulting civilian death toll and concentrate on US deaths, the bombing strategy did the opposite of what the myth says. The Japanese had been trying to negotiate surrender terms to the US. Ultimately, their only condition was the retention of the Emperor, which the US later granted in any case, but the US insisted on prolonging the war by demanding unconditional surrender.
This prolongation of the war was needed only in order to bring the atomic-bomb operation to readiness, and cost many US soldiers their lives in the southern Japanese islands that could already have been surrendered at that stage.
So the dropping of the atomic bombs served no strategic purpose in the war with Japan. It was only to impress Stalin with US military supremacy, although the Soviet Union achieved parity a few years later, thanks to the extreme carelessness of FDR's administration, which was riddled with Soviet agents of influence up to the highest levels (not FDR himself, who acted with a mixture of naivety and cynicism, and declared himself deeply disappointed in Stalin not long before his death).
As Churchill reported, Truman's demeanor at the Potsdam Conference and behavior changed radically on the dropping of the first bomb, and he now spoke to Stalin with confidence, making demands he hadn't dared to present before the bombing.
A further disastrous by-product of the atomic-bombing strategy was the victory of Mao in China. If the war had ended as soon as the Japanese offered to surrender, Mao would not have benefitted from Stalin's assistance. Instead, part of the strategy was to allow Stalin to enter war against Japan (just prior to the bombings), which entailed his invasion of Manchukuo, the large north-eastern section of China that had been under Japanese control since the 1930s. The Soviet intervention tilted the military balance of power to Mao, and Chiang-Kai-Shek's soldiers and government (a major US ally) had to flee to Taiwan.
As with so many amoral utilitarian schemes, the atomic bombings were a disaster even on their own utilitarian terms.
Not true. Another option was a negotiated peace, which was the way it was usually done before. But Roosevelt insisted on “unconditional surrender”, leaving the Japanese no choice, as they saw it, but to fight to the bitter end. The war could have ended a year earlier absent Roosevelt’s insouciant arrogance.
I mean, to a certain extent I agree with the position that the Americans were "the good guys" there... Mostly. Though again, the leadership has a lot to answer for there, in both WWI and WWII.
But I also feel pretty bad for the millions of Russians that were fed into the meat grinder of the Eastern Front. And likely even a majority of the people from Germany and Japan. Though obviously I have a lovely position of hindsight here.
"I mean, to a certain extent I agree with the position that the Americans were 'the good guys' there..."
- Our hands were most certainly cleaner than those of the Japanese and the Germans at the time. But the idea that the American GI was somehow incapable of participating in a war crime by dint of being part of the "Greatest Generation" is simply irrational; our hands were not as clean as we would wish them to be.
Almost 4,000 years ago, King Hammurabi of Babylon, Mesopotamia, laid out one of the first sets of laws. They included: “229. If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction firm, and the house which he has built collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death.”
Lots of good ideas in that Code. The whole thing, including annotations and such, can be found online. It's safely outside the 70 years limit for IP and copyright after all. I think implementing this one would lead to an immediate change in policy re: looting, theft, shoplifting and such:
"§23. If the brigand be not captured, the man who has been robbed,
shall, in the presence of god, make an itemized statement of his
loss, and the city and the governor, in whose province and jurisdiction the robbery was committed, shall compensate him for whatever was lost."
I expect people like Gavin Newscum or however itäs spelled wouldn't stay in office for long, no?
I apologize, but I believe I have missed the connection between my comment and yours. Would you be so kind as to explain it in greater detail? I know of Hammurabi but I'm not seeing how these things are related.
No, I am the one who should apologize. Sorry for the confusion. I tried to use the example of the ancient draconian law to point to the wrongdoers who promote and implement these tragedies without being held accountable. Without being severely punished. Without having any "skin in the game" as some say. But the connection was much too flimsy. I'm sure you were not alone in being puzzled. :)
"I have not read of any protests in the US regarding the fairly indiscriminate bombing campaigns against the Germans or Japanese in WWII, for example."
Sure, but those are countries that we were actively at war with.
Dresden was inexcusable as well as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were in the throws of surrender when that took place. It was the psychopaths behind the bomb that wanted to see what they would do in real life.
@SIMULATIONCOMMANDER- You are incredibly ignorant. Actively at war does not condone crimes against humanity, genocide, or any other rules of war (what an oxymoron). Many USA citizens were protesting the inhumanity of the Vietnam War, TImor war, Abu Graib torture, civilian deaths in Yemen ad nauseum.
Funny how someone with a different OPINION starts claiming someone else is IGNORANT. The use of the word in and of itself in the context of these comments is ...hmmmm...what's the word I'm looking for...Oh yeah, IGNORANT.
Irrelevant, IMO, to the philosophical position regarding the massacre of civilians for the crimes of their leaders. Ukraine is at war with Russia, are they not?
Sure, and therefore it's completely understandable that Ukrainians would be 'happy' with Russian civilian deaths.
But we're not talking about Ukrainians being happy in this article, are we? We're talking about GERMANS being happy with Russian civilian deaths.....as they side with the group that blew up Nordstream.
And I understand that, but I was responding to your initial post wherein you stated, "I never thought that standing firm against civilians getting slaughtered for the misdeeds of their government was a controversial position". I was thinking of my objections to civilians being slaughtered by our military in Iraq and Afghanistan, who we were at war with, even if it wasn't legally declared. I presume you felt the same way. Likewise, though I despise their government, I don't wish the people of China any particular harm. Hell, I'd rather free them from their bondage whole, if that were possible.
I'm just saying it's a relatively new position for people to take, as far as I know, and so I am not shocked to see it fall apart in practice for many of the people who claim it.
Yes it's gotten a lot worse with the Woke Filter that screens all MSM 'news' for whether it's 'politically correct'. But the 'The News' has always been a fraud on account of the inevitable Editorial Selectivity. For instance, some murders warrant months of agonising and outrage whilst other never even get a mention.....or bathroom dilemmas faced by sex changers is a hotter public interest issue than the forced marriages and ‘honour’ beatings faced by daughters of immigrant communities. I too am pretty tired of it.....but there are millions who just lap it up: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/non-binary-sibling-is-entertaining
Thanks for that.... it's also why I started my Slouching Towards Bethlehem 'stack. We both seem to be in a similar territory....fighting the lefty groupthink,
I’d add a mass slaughter of innocent Christmas parade attendees in Wisconsin by an avowed Facebook racist. Yep don’t try to define the issue or event if it doesn’t fit the preferred narrative.
Leftists consider everything political, and the more influenced by Marxism they are (whether they know it or not) the more that's the case. To the Marxist, every single thing in life is political, so you can't get away from it because they force you to take a political stand whether you want to or not.
I would actually consider a universalist respect for life to be a liberal, humanist value. While Eugyppius often disparages contemporary liberals, it is often in relation to how liberals fail to live up to actual liberal values. I don’t think Eugyppius is concern trolling the liberal establishment, but I do wonder if he actually has a a value system that he thinks should supplant liberalism.
According to liberalism, my people's nation - the lands where my ancestors settled after the last Ice Age - is just geography, available to all who feel like settling.
Is that right? Is it fair? Is it just?
Does my people have a right to our land?
Values and principles are worthless unless looked at as practice.
And classic liberalism operated under the assumption it only applied to and only ever would apply to white western (english especially) cultures.
I agree that there are very few people on the left who are liberal. But I don’t think Eugyppius actually agrees with classical liberalism or libertarianism as a suitable philosophy for governing. I believe he actually thinks the basic form of Western government since the Enlightenment was a mistake. I would be interested in hearing his thoughts on what would be a better system of government.
The phenomena I call Team Sport Politics: My team wins, your team loses, by any means necessary, including changing the rules and moving the goal posts.
And in your description--of who's doing what to whom--you need a program to learn of the teams and their players, in order to root for "your" team.
It's a bit grizzly when any atrocity can be rationalized by a distinction as between my team (good) and your team (bad). A depravity taken so low there is no longer a morality.
The result is 'might makes right,' which never ends well. Cheers.
Well, the Good Thing/Bad Thing binary is necessary for the social credit system isn't it? No one's getting likes and well-compensated roles as DEI commissars or MSNBC shills for saying "It's complicated."
(On a somewhat related note: How does the Social Justice set deal with the dissoance that non-binaries are cultural cachet everywhere except in their judgment of our fellow man?)
As you noted, whether something is a Good Thing or Bad Thing depends not on the nature of the thing itself or the context, but on whom it was done to. If someone is part of the favored marginalized group, anything that causes the slightest discomfort or inconvenience is a Bad Thing and must be condemned. If it's done to the oppressor class, it is a Good Thing and must be celebrated.
It's an attitude that tears apart society, at the hands of those who nominally want to bring it together. But for them, those lost are mere collateral damage.
In either of these two incident you mention, it could have simply been AVOIDED by not utilizing NO KNOCK raids. Those have GOT to go away or WE THE PEOPLE are going to have to start utilizing some of our own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAfe7YRqDqk
It will be on my Substack tomorrow. It's important to note that his was a SEARCH WARRANT, not an arrest warrant. The case was still in the pre-indictment phase, meaning Malinowski was legally innocent.
That part to me is even more damning. They were literally tracking him, had agents assigned to watch his movements, and knew his routine. It sure seems like the only reason this warrant was served at the earliest allowable moment (6 AM) is because they wanted this type of reaction.
You'll notice they didn't bust down the doors of the criminals who supposedly ended up with the guns.
It’s a terrorist attack, it seems unreal when you hear people supporting something so awful.
I’m listening to the patreon recording from 2 Russian commentators discussing what evidence has been uncovered so far. I remain convinced that the folks who did Nordstream did this too. The commentators keep mentioning how dumb the guys are and how they were hired online, not real hardline Islamacists. It’s another op. And this crap is now impossible to hide, so I hope it all comes out.
I didn’t know that Ukraine, since 2014 (Nuland/Brennan/Obama), have been supporting Islamist terrorists in the Tartar region. So the links are already there.
I never thought that standing firm against civilians getting slaughtered for the misdeeds of their government was a controversial position, yet here we are. Every single event on the planet is now run through the 'political filter' to determine if it's a Good Thing or a Bad Thing.
Shooting at KC parade? VERY BAD THING -- until we find out who was involved....then it goes down the memory hole. Somebody shot by police barging in to serve a search warrant? VERY BAD THING....as long as the victim is Breonna Taylor. If it's Bryan Malinowski -- crickets.
Personally, I'm pretty tired of it. Things can be good or bad irrespective of who it helps politically.
Politics and wokedom are religion to these people. They are zealots. That is why no matter how much evidence you put in front of them contradicting their worldview, they will never consider it. To do so would threaten their religion and entire being.
"I never thought that standing firm against civilians getting slaughtered for the misdeeds of their government was a controversial position, yet here we are."
You must have not been around in 2001. I remember the online mob was as unhinged, celebrating the 9/11 attack and joyfully proclaiming that America had it coming. And this was in Central/Eastern Europe, of all places.
Arab and other moslem migrants to Sweden, along with swedish communists and socialists, were celebrating 9/11 in public.
At the school I was working at when it happened, the arab students started singing and crying from joy. This were students that had been born in Sweden by "refugee" parents.
Two of my colleagues, both swedish women engaged in socialist parties and feminist groups, looked as gleeful as kids getting presents.
As fas as I know, it was the same all over Sweden and Europe everywhere there was a sizeable moslem/arab population.
I don't think americans realise how hated they are in many parts of the world.
I'm an American, and now that I realize how extensively and relentlessly the CIA and DoD have meddled in the affairs of other countries that are none of our effing business, I'm surprised that we aren't hated a lot more and in a lot more places. It's obviously no excuse for attacks on civilians. No one who wants to claim the moral high ground would lay a finger on them, and the US has killed obscene numbers of civilians in countries where we had no right to be. And of course it turns out that the CIA and DoD are America's greatest enemies, too.
Yawn, Anonymous Coward, yawn. I only respond once to Anonymous Cowards. If you want to be taken seriously, stand up like an adult and be counted. Ooooooh, the scary "CIA and DoD" - yeah, they are the problem in the world, not evil Islamist death cults or Communist one-party dictatorships. It's the intelligence gathering agency in the freest most open country the world has ever seen, and the lumbering bureaucracy of the Department of Defense. Right. Sure. You nailed it. Spare us.
You mean the same agencies who have sponsored woke all over the Western World? The ones encouraging, amongst others, Islamists across the sourthern border. Those communist arseholes?
Which is it? CIA/DOD as all-knowing conspiratorial imperialists composed of thousands of latter day Machiavelli retreads? Or CIA/DOD as Communist woke propagandists? My point is boring bureaucracies rarely do much to alter the course of world events.
Awful. Fascinating.
I’m American, and trust me I am fully aware of how hated we are across the world. Our biggest enemies in fact are not those who many would think. They aren’t the Muslims although one would think that. Take away the propaganda from Tel Aviv’s influence and speak directly to Muslims and they will tell you just leave them alone and all would be fine. Many in fact wish to be American. No, our largest group of American hating radicals are the regular person from Europe. For what reason when you consider that in many instances we are blood related. Why hated your brethren. I mean we did help the European socialist movement to be buffered into being able to evolve into full blown communism by defeating the only nation who was willing to stand up to communism. No they aren’t mad at us about that even though they live in a. Society which would appear to be communist to most Americans. Sadly lost Americans do t have a fucking clue what freedom and liberty actually are nor do they care as long as they can watch sports and eat McDonald’s but that’s besides the point. The reason why Americans are hated so much by Europeans is because you’re mad at us for having to be who is responsible for your safety.
Read that this way.
The men of your nations are to effeminate to tell your women to stop seeking foreign pats to cuckold you with and that you are who shall be defending and protecting them. But that costs money and it would be the destruction of your cradle to grace shit medical problems as well as the month off you all get yearly for holiday. For all the good perks you get as Europeans we have to save and scrape for. You’re mad at us for. Your nation decided that we would be who provided your security all you had to do was sign on to nato. Hell you didn’t even have to pay into it. You were supposed to but always found reason why you could not. But then hell you went off for a months vacay. More reason to be pissed at America. Our fault because you aren’t men enough to provide security for your own people. I can get the displaced anger. I really can. Our women do it here to us all the time.
I mean come on. We know you hate us and we hate that you’re being eradicated in your own countries. You aren’t even men enough to string up the aliens when they rape your women. Or worse. You get mad at the men who want to or try to.
No one wants to hear from a nation of cuckolded men who actually had a proposed law which would require that all males must squat like women when urinating to make it equitable. Muzzies dont hate us. They hate you because European men allow their women to cuckold them and force you to feel manly for allowing muzzies to rape them and their children because you refuse to be men.
We Americans know full well who our enemies are and who aren’t worth the time. Europe has shown it isn’t worth our time and effort. We are watching youballow yourselves to systematically be relaxed and you are happy about it yet complain like it’s our fault. So until your backs are really against the wall because you are being overwhelmed In an actual fight just shut up. You aren’t worth the time as to won’t defend yourselves in order to feel superior. You’re essentially a continent of the biggest Nancy boy losers I’ve ever seen.
What does it feel like to squat to piss?
I remember Americans saying that America had it coming, especially at universities and in the corporate press. Ward Churchill probably got the most notoriety out of it. Central and Eastern Europeans no doubt remember the illegal NATO intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999. Back then NATO thought that the massacre of 45 Kosovar Albanians required military intervention; now it's just peachy with 10,000 civilian Ukrainian deaths in a war it's done everything it could to instigate and prolong.
I think you are misinterpreting the very few voices who had the guts to say “Well, what the heck did you expect?” - because 9/11, if not an inside job, was a definite case of blowback. Unfortunately, those who dared say that 9/11 was in some measure the result of US actions abroad were roundly silenced and scolded for ‘celebrating’ the deaths of innocents. Moreover, many folks who wrote or talked about blowback were visited by nice men in black sunglasses or fired from their jobs or otherwise harassed.
What I would expect from someone with a grievance against the US government is something other than the slaughter of civilians during peacetime. I'd expect attacks on military targets or critical infrastructure like electrical grids or the employees of a certain organization in Langley, VA. Killing civilians isn't payback for US government actions. It's just slaughter for the sake of it, without any possibility of advancing a military objective--because there wasn't one. People who said "What did you expect?" in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 revealed their own premise that such attacks on civilians were somehow morally justified.
It was peacetime in the US - It wasn't "peacetime" in the Middle East. After the Gulf War, the US never really pulled out - and the 1st Gulf War wasn't the start of the deadly. murderous US policy in the Middle East. Between 100-200,000 civilians died in the first gulf war - so, though I deplore the killing if civilians, I don't know that the US is riding any moral high horse there.
Moreover - if one is to believe the 9/11 reports, there was an attack on the Pentagon. And as to attacking a symbol of American power and global hegemony, the Twin Towers certainly stood as that.
By saying 'What did you expect?" no one is expressing a sense of moral justification, anymore that a sane person would express moral justification over either Gulf Wars. The What Did You Expect question came due to years and years and years of US aggression in the region conducted with complete and utter impunity, You kick a dog enough, and it bites and turns mean. You beat a man, he'll eventually punch back. Doesn't make the dog justified, doesn't make the man justified - it just IS. It's what happens. Of COURSE there is going to be blowback when US diplomacy is almost always conducted at the end of a barrel.
That aside, it turns out that the culprit for the trade towers were Saudis, the pilots apparently CIA assets, and the entire incident smells to high heaven. (https://www.propublica.org/article/long-secret-fbi-report-reveals-new-connections-between-9-11-hijackers-and-saudi-religious-officials-in-u-s)
I have never been convinced, not from the day it happened, that this wasn't the 'Pearl Harbor' type event needed to pass the patriot act and justify the horrendous bloodshed and reduction in civil liberties that followed.
The US turns out to be responsible for far more civilian deaths in far more places on far more fraudulent pretexts than I ever dreamed, and not just incidentally as unfortunate collateral damage in defensive wars--because not one of those conflicts has been defensive. This damned place has gone out of its way to instigate conflicts since at least WWII and most of our "leaders" and their coteries have been war criminals.
I was convinced at the time that 9/11 had come as a complete shock to the parasite class, although it was obvious that the TSA, NSA, the Reduction of Freedom Act, and the Gulf War were insanely inappropriate reactions to it. Since 2020 it's been clear that it was what you say: the 21st Century's Pearl Harbor moment, an engineered excuse for the deep state to extend its tentacles in a bigger increment than usual.
Still: A beaten dog reacts out of instinct and without the advantage of reason. A beaten man, when he punches back, has an option: react against the man who initiated the aggression, or against some random third party. Rationally there's only one moral choice for him to make.
Exactly. From Derrick Jensen:
“Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.”
Please don't use the word "illegal" in the international law context--It implies that there is some kind of global authority that can decide those kinds of questions.
"Law" in the international context means something more like "The customary behavior of nations regarding international relations, treaties, declarations of war, etc."
Good point. I should have said that NATO's actions were unauthorized by the UN Security Council. NATO violated the UN Charter's prohibition on the use of military force without the SC's approval or for something other than self-defense. The concept of "illegal" doesn't apply in that context.
From Derrick Jensen:
“Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.”
We didn't really see anything like that here in the States -- some sporadic reports of 'people dancing', but that was about it. Just about everybody here was full up on rage and bloodlust.
Yeah, I forgot to mention this was right after the Kosovo war, which might explain some of those attitudes in these parts.
Ah yes, the dancing Israelis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZHTVg2R3Aw
And then it turned out to be what? A bold faced LIE by "our" own government. If you seriously believe the "official story" at this late juncture in time, you need to WTFU. Try checking out http://ae911truth.org and see what THOUSANDS of architects and engineers have to say about the total lies we've been fed on that subject. And also consider listening closely to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCzy9i4tIHU
Here's another good dissection of 9/11 from another Canadian.
https://youtu.be/ZBnJBocjxVM?si=46Os3li8ESDaGtQh
I don’t recall that
Now that the entire Western ruling class and its many managerial parasites have converted en masse to the Social Justice faith, they have adopted Social Justice morality:
WHO/WHOM is the only game in town.
Standing firm against hapless citizens being slaughtered for the misdeeds of their rulers is an *incredibly* new position. I'm not surprised that it isn't more widespread or that the facade is very thin, regarding it.
I have not read of any protests in the US regarding the fairly indiscriminate bombing campaigns against the Germans or Japanese in WWII, for example.
By no means am I arguing against it. I think it's an enlightened position to take. But for the majority of human history, the peasantry has suffered for the doings of their leaders in war. And it shows now still, in the implicit agreement that nations seem to have regarding not targeting each other's leadership. Wars would happen a lot less frequently, I think, if the people picking them were likely to face any consequences for doing so.
" have not read of any protests in the US regarding the fairly indiscriminate bombing campaigns against the Germans or Japanese in WWII, for example."
How many Americans do you think know about these bombing campaigns?
The only lesson they were (and are) taught is that the war criminals from that time spoke either German or Japanese; WWII was the "good war", dontcha know, and the Americans, of course, were the good guys.
Educate yourself on Japan's Unit 731 while we're all standing around, throwing rocks at each other like a colony of spider monkeys. Their biological warfare unit tested anthrax, cholera, smallpox, and other scientifically developed diseases on a defenseless and unknowing Chinese population. They also infected American prisoners of war and drained their blood to get cultures, and jumped up and down on their chests to squeeze out the last drop as they were dying.
Japanese troops commonly engaged in cannibalism of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Islander populations during the war. In their occupation of Nanjing the horrors inflicted on the Chinese were thoroughly documented including a beheading contest between two junior officers to see who could cut off the most prisoners' heads before exhaustion. It was documented in the NYT and the Japanese public followed it like the World Series.
Very few people in the United States disagreed with the decision to firebomb Tokyo, or to drop the atomic bomb. Even after we dropped two atomic bombs, the Japanese took a couple of weeks to surrender, and the General Staff nearly assassinated the emperor to prevent surrender. Those bombs saved over a million American lives, to say nothing of the entire Japanese nation, which would have died to the last civilian.
"Japanese troops commonly engaged in cannibalism of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Islander populations during the war. In their occupation of Nanjing the horrors inflicted on the Chinese were thoroughly documented including a beheading contest between two junior officers to see who could cut off the most prisoners' heads before exhaustion. It was documented in the NYT and the Japanese public followed it like the World Series."
- Had they simply dropped incendiaries on Chinese villages, would their behavior have had your approval? (I don't see the logic in, "They were barbaric, so we had to burn them to death.")
And you KNOW this how?
Just read RFK Jr's new book ("The Wuhan Cover-Up and The Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race").
The US military and our intelligence agencies brought these Japanese (and German) scientists/psycopaths here to the US after the war.
By being retired CIA.
The soviets had good reason to retaliate for the crimes of the German army ,when they entered German territory .The Americans and the British had no reason to retaliate like the Russians ,by bombing every town and city to rubble with civilians living in it . In 1945 as a nine year old ,I saw it with my own eyes the destruction when I came back from a village to the city I used to live in .Many of us kids where send out to the country side to survive .Now at 88 I even survived the covid BOMB .,By avoiding shots of any kind .
Please forgive me for my primitive English for witch some commentators where critical ,advising my to learn proper English . As a kid in that village the male teacher was at the front,so some girls did try to teach us tough boys .We did not take them serious ,some went home crying .Than came the retreating German Army and took over the little school house as a makeshift hospital ,later the U/S. army did the same .So learning anything was a joke .At 21 I migrated to northern British Columbia ,establishing a masonry construction business ,and learning in the school of life what I know now .I did work like a grown man from age 14 until age 76 ,when I retired . So again sorry for my bad English .
Joe,
Mach keine Sorge; Dein Englisch ist noch viel besser als mein Deutsch. Es gibt anscheinend eine grosse deutsche Gemeinschaft in British Columbia; Franz Stigler hat auch dabei gewohnt. https://factstory.org/franz-stigler-charlie-brown-and-wartime-friendship/
Tamenund
Tamenund ,Ich habe leider keine Freunde wo ich jetzt wohne in Vancouver ,nur meine Frau die viel juenger ist als ich .Ich gehe jeden Tag am Meer entlang spaziren ,koche all mein Essen und lese viel .Auch noch Danke fuer die Aufmerksamkeit .
Wieso entschuldigen? Jeder der den Inhalt vernachlässigt wegen der Form, ist nicht an ernsthaftem Lernen interessiert. Sondern...? Tack your pick. For the only english speaking people: try - but not trust - googlee translate.
Thank's eva .It has bean said ,that once you stop learning ,you start rusting .
A fascinating story - thank you. Glad you survived those extremely harsh times. For a man who is 88-years old, you seem remarkably proficient in handling online tasks that didn't even exist until you were in your late 60s. May you have many more productive years, sir. God bless.
hank you for the kind words .Sir
Very reassuring to meet fellow citizens of my own age class and background in this forum! Not vaccinated. Never forgetting me, at age 7, for the first time coming to a big city: We were walking through streets and streets and streets, left and right nothing but rubble. This was in the 50th! Nobody spoke about it. The horror of my parents generation who all had near relatives, friends, children burned to death in the "Feuersturm", buried alive under the rubble, crushed to death, frozen to death in the ensuing years of homlesses and hunger years was too great to put into words. Irony of the times: My uncle, first send to KZ for distributing anti- Hitler leaflets, then sentenced to a "Strafbatallion" (penalty unit in the army), there escaping certain death by "Fahnenflucht" (deserting and surrendering) to the american army, was imprisoned by the very same american army as a prisoner of war and spend years in a prison camp in USA.
I visited Dresden in 2003; there were still gutted buildings across the street from the Hauptbahnhof and the Lutheran Frauenkirche was still a pile of rubble. I showed my pictures to my German instructor at the time (eine Berlinerin) who looked at them and told me that she grew up in that kind of a neighborhood.
eva ,being born in 1936 in Germany ,i could tell similar stories .We did experience things ,that the young generation can only read about in history books .
I agree.
How many knew? Most of them. Our bombing campaigns were public knowledge.
The Americans were never told that the USAAF was participating in area bombing; look at the vitriol one faces when he brings it up.
The discussion over the Abombs every August is all the evidence you need; nobody mentions the fact that we had been dumping napalm on Japanese cities for months prior.
OK, watch a few episodes of one of those WWII documentaries based on newsreels from the time. Plenty of footage of bombers. Plenty of bomber crews who talked. The controversy over strategic bombing was not over civilian casualties, it was about whether it was an effective strategy. The prohibition on bombing civilians was breached by the axis early in the war. We dropped white phosphor bombs on the Germans and Japanese - napalm came later.
Strategic bombing? Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki were strategic targets? Like Dresden Germany was a strategic target? Like the forests of Vietnam were strategic targets? I guess my understanding of the word STATEGIC is either wrong, or yours is.
"Plenty of footage of bombers. Plenty of bomber crews who talked."
- I don't doubt this, but nobody was standing up publicly and stating that the "Masters of the Air" were indiscriminately bombing cities.
"We dropped white phosphor bombs on the Germans and Japanese - napalm came later."
- You would have to show me this. Operation Meetinghouse (March 1945) consisted of loading B-29s to the gills with napalm-filled bombs and dropping them on Tokyo from an altitude of some three thousand feet. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/deadliest-air-raid-history-180954512/
The German and Japanese villages that the USAAF built in the Dugway Proving Grounds were bombed with napalm (as part of the testing to see which bomb type was most effective in burning down a village); this was in 1943, long before the Marianas had been siezed and the B-29s staged for their raids. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2020/11/the-german-japanese-village-where-most.html
Strategic bombing as strategy was first advanced by Italian General Douhet based on Italy's campaign in Ethiopia in WW1, and accepted as the primary function of air power throughout WW2. It wasn't invented by the Allies. In fact, check out the Spanish Civil War; Picasso did a painting.
I do... 😅
Ironically, given the position I'm staking out in this thread, I also think that using the nukes was the best option we had at the time, though I also wish that humanity had never thought of them. But we'd probably have to be a different species for that to happen. *shrug*
"I also think that using the nukes was the best option we had at the time ..."
Best option for what purpose? For the purpose of testing two atom-bomb technologies on live targets? For the purpose of scientific monitoring of blast and radiation-sickness death tolls? For the purpose of showing Stalin that the US would enjoy post-war military supremacy?
For all these purposes, it was undoubtedly the best option.
For any other purposes, it was certainly not. The bomber planes deliberately passed over military targets (arms factories, naval harbors) to bomb civilians in their cities. The bombings, by the way, were opposed almost unanimously at the time by all but one of the most senior US army, navy and airforce officers - this has nothing to do with pacifism (in case you'd like to disregard it on that pretext).
Even if we disregard this war crime and the resulting civilian death toll and concentrate on US deaths, the bombing strategy did the opposite of what the myth says. The Japanese had been trying to negotiate surrender terms to the US. Ultimately, their only condition was the retention of the Emperor, which the US later granted in any case, but the US insisted on prolonging the war by demanding unconditional surrender.
This prolongation of the war was needed only in order to bring the atomic-bomb operation to readiness, and cost many US soldiers their lives in the southern Japanese islands that could already have been surrendered at that stage.
So the dropping of the atomic bombs served no strategic purpose in the war with Japan. It was only to impress Stalin with US military supremacy, although the Soviet Union achieved parity a few years later, thanks to the extreme carelessness of FDR's administration, which was riddled with Soviet agents of influence up to the highest levels (not FDR himself, who acted with a mixture of naivety and cynicism, and declared himself deeply disappointed in Stalin not long before his death).
As Churchill reported, Truman's demeanor at the Potsdam Conference and behavior changed radically on the dropping of the first bomb, and he now spoke to Stalin with confidence, making demands he hadn't dared to present before the bombing.
A further disastrous by-product of the atomic-bombing strategy was the victory of Mao in China. If the war had ended as soon as the Japanese offered to surrender, Mao would not have benefitted from Stalin's assistance. Instead, part of the strategy was to allow Stalin to enter war against Japan (just prior to the bombings), which entailed his invasion of Manchukuo, the large north-eastern section of China that had been under Japanese control since the 1930s. The Soviet intervention tilted the military balance of power to Mao, and Chiang-Kai-Shek's soldiers and government (a major US ally) had to flee to Taiwan.
As with so many amoral utilitarian schemes, the atomic bombings were a disaster even on their own utilitarian terms.
Not true. Another option was a negotiated peace, which was the way it was usually done before. But Roosevelt insisted on “unconditional surrender”, leaving the Japanese no choice, as they saw it, but to fight to the bitter end. The war could have ended a year earlier absent Roosevelt’s insouciant arrogance.
I mean, to a certain extent I agree with the position that the Americans were "the good guys" there... Mostly. Though again, the leadership has a lot to answer for there, in both WWI and WWII.
But I also feel pretty bad for the millions of Russians that were fed into the meat grinder of the Eastern Front. And likely even a majority of the people from Germany and Japan. Though obviously I have a lovely position of hindsight here.
"I mean, to a certain extent I agree with the position that the Americans were 'the good guys' there..."
- Our hands were most certainly cleaner than those of the Japanese and the Germans at the time. But the idea that the American GI was somehow incapable of participating in a war crime by dint of being part of the "Greatest Generation" is simply irrational; our hands were not as clean as we would wish them to be.
I would never claim that American GIs are incapable of committing war crimes. I may be naive, but not *that* naive. ;)
Almost 4,000 years ago, King Hammurabi of Babylon, Mesopotamia, laid out one of the first sets of laws. They included: “229. If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction firm, and the house which he has built collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death.”
Lots of good ideas in that Code. The whole thing, including annotations and such, can be found online. It's safely outside the 70 years limit for IP and copyright after all. I think implementing this one would lead to an immediate change in policy re: looting, theft, shoplifting and such:
"§23. If the brigand be not captured, the man who has been robbed,
shall, in the presence of god, make an itemized statement of his
loss, and the city and the governor, in whose province and jurisdiction the robbery was committed, shall compensate him for whatever was lost."
I expect people like Gavin Newscum or however itäs spelled wouldn't stay in office for long, no?
Old school, sometimes GOOD school
I apologize, but I believe I have missed the connection between my comment and yours. Would you be so kind as to explain it in greater detail? I know of Hammurabi but I'm not seeing how these things are related.
No, I am the one who should apologize. Sorry for the confusion. I tried to use the example of the ancient draconian law to point to the wrongdoers who promote and implement these tragedies without being held accountable. Without being severely punished. Without having any "skin in the game" as some say. But the connection was much too flimsy. I'm sure you were not alone in being puzzled. :)
Ah!
Yes, that makes much more sense now. Thanks!
"I have not read of any protests in the US regarding the fairly indiscriminate bombing campaigns against the Germans or Japanese in WWII, for example."
Sure, but those are countries that we were actively at war with.
Being actively at war with a brutal regime is sometime acceptable Capet bombing of mostly innocent civilians is a war crime .
Dresden was inexcusable as well as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were in the throws of surrender when that took place. It was the psychopaths behind the bomb that wanted to see what they would do in real life.
@SIMULATIONCOMMANDER- You are incredibly ignorant. Actively at war does not condone crimes against humanity, genocide, or any other rules of war (what an oxymoron). Many USA citizens were protesting the inhumanity of the Vietnam War, TImor war, Abu Graib torture, civilian deaths in Yemen ad nauseum.
Funny how someone with a different OPINION starts claiming someone else is IGNORANT. The use of the word in and of itself in the context of these comments is ...hmmmm...what's the word I'm looking for...Oh yeah, IGNORANT.
Irrelevant, IMO, to the philosophical position regarding the massacre of civilians for the crimes of their leaders. Ukraine is at war with Russia, are they not?
Sure, and therefore it's completely understandable that Ukrainians would be 'happy' with Russian civilian deaths.
But we're not talking about Ukrainians being happy in this article, are we? We're talking about GERMANS being happy with Russian civilian deaths.....as they side with the group that blew up Nordstream.
And I understand that, but I was responding to your initial post wherein you stated, "I never thought that standing firm against civilians getting slaughtered for the misdeeds of their government was a controversial position". I was thinking of my objections to civilians being slaughtered by our military in Iraq and Afghanistan, who we were at war with, even if it wasn't legally declared. I presume you felt the same way. Likewise, though I despise their government, I don't wish the people of China any particular harm. Hell, I'd rather free them from their bondage whole, if that were possible.
I'm just saying it's a relatively new position for people to take, as far as I know, and so I am not shocked to see it fall apart in practice for many of the people who claim it.
Too bad Yamamoto isn't around so we could ask him what he thought about that.
Yes it's gotten a lot worse with the Woke Filter that screens all MSM 'news' for whether it's 'politically correct'. But the 'The News' has always been a fraud on account of the inevitable Editorial Selectivity. For instance, some murders warrant months of agonising and outrage whilst other never even get a mention.....or bathroom dilemmas faced by sex changers is a hotter public interest issue than the forced marriages and ‘honour’ beatings faced by daughters of immigrant communities. I too am pretty tired of it.....but there are millions who just lap it up: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/non-binary-sibling-is-entertaining
In one paragraph, you described why I'm even doing this (Substack) to begin with.
Thanks for that.... it's also why I started my Slouching Towards Bethlehem 'stack. We both seem to be in a similar territory....fighting the lefty groupthink,
I’d add a mass slaughter of innocent Christmas parade attendees in Wisconsin by an avowed Facebook racist. Yep don’t try to define the issue or event if it doesn’t fit the preferred narrative.
Leftists consider everything political, and the more influenced by Marxism they are (whether they know it or not) the more that's the case. To the Marxist, every single thing in life is political, so you can't get away from it because they force you to take a political stand whether you want to or not.
Obama's Army
I would actually consider a universalist respect for life to be a liberal, humanist value. While Eugyppius often disparages contemporary liberals, it is often in relation to how liberals fail to live up to actual liberal values. I don’t think Eugyppius is concern trolling the liberal establishment, but I do wonder if he actually has a a value system that he thinks should supplant liberalism.
According to liberalism, my people's nation - the lands where my ancestors settled after the last Ice Age - is just geography, available to all who feel like settling.
Is that right? Is it fair? Is it just?
Does my people have a right to our land?
Values and principles are worthless unless looked at as practice.
And classic liberalism operated under the assumption it only applied to and only ever would apply to white western (english especially) cultures.
Just guessing but I think his "value system" revolves around common sense, with a little"live and let live"
The real liberals aren't on the left, we're libertarians. (small l)
I agree that there are very few people on the left who are liberal. But I don’t think Eugyppius actually agrees with classical liberalism or libertarianism as a suitable philosophy for governing. I believe he actually thinks the basic form of Western government since the Enlightenment was a mistake. I would be interested in hearing his thoughts on what would be a better system of government.
The phenomena I call Team Sport Politics: My team wins, your team loses, by any means necessary, including changing the rules and moving the goal posts.
And in your description--of who's doing what to whom--you need a program to learn of the teams and their players, in order to root for "your" team.
It's a bit grizzly when any atrocity can be rationalized by a distinction as between my team (good) and your team (bad). A depravity taken so low there is no longer a morality.
The result is 'might makes right,' which never ends well. Cheers.
Well, the Good Thing/Bad Thing binary is necessary for the social credit system isn't it? No one's getting likes and well-compensated roles as DEI commissars or MSNBC shills for saying "It's complicated."
(On a somewhat related note: How does the Social Justice set deal with the dissoance that non-binaries are cultural cachet everywhere except in their judgment of our fellow man?)
As you noted, whether something is a Good Thing or Bad Thing depends not on the nature of the thing itself or the context, but on whom it was done to. If someone is part of the favored marginalized group, anything that causes the slightest discomfort or inconvenience is a Bad Thing and must be condemned. If it's done to the oppressor class, it is a Good Thing and must be celebrated.
It's an attitude that tears apart society, at the hands of those who nominally want to bring it together. But for them, those lost are mere collateral damage.
React fast and hard. Thems the new rules. No room for time and nuance.
What misdeeds are we talking about, here?
Only those on the approved list can be victims.
In either of these two incident you mention, it could have simply been AVOIDED by not utilizing NO KNOCK raids. Those have GOT to go away or WE THE PEOPLE are going to have to start utilizing some of our own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAfe7YRqDqk
I have been waiting a little for the dust to settle, but my article about the situation should be out tomorrow.
It will be on my Substack tomorrow. It's important to note that his was a SEARCH WARRANT, not an arrest warrant. The case was still in the pre-indictment phase, meaning Malinowski was legally innocent.
That part to me is even more damning. They were literally tracking him, had agents assigned to watch his movements, and knew his routine. It sure seems like the only reason this warrant was served at the earliest allowable moment (6 AM) is because they wanted this type of reaction.
You'll notice they didn't bust down the doors of the criminals who supposedly ended up with the guns.
It’s a terrorist attack, it seems unreal when you hear people supporting something so awful.
I’m listening to the patreon recording from 2 Russian commentators discussing what evidence has been uncovered so far. I remain convinced that the folks who did Nordstream did this too. The commentators keep mentioning how dumb the guys are and how they were hired online, not real hardline Islamacists. It’s another op. And this crap is now impossible to hide, so I hope it all comes out.
I am listening to them right now as well :)
I didn’t know that Ukraine, since 2014 (Nuland/Brennan/Obama), have been supporting Islamist terrorists in the Tartar region. So the links are already there.
Who are you listening to?
Is it a secret?
Russians With Attitude podcast, most recent episode that came out on March 23rd.
Oh yeah I tried to listen to their chat with Big Serge but didn't want to sign up to Patreon (even if it were free).
This is a great point -- the German people are actively rooting FOR the government who blew up Nordstream? In what world does that make sense?
Welcome to our clown world dystopia. It's properly retarded.🤡🤡🤡💩💩
Nuland was salivating with more funding to Ukraine and warned Russia of asymmetrical warfare to occur.