I seriously feel like we are back in 2002 and if you're not baying for an invasion of Iraq, you were being told "Say hello to Saddam Hussein for me!"

Well the point is to be in 2022 and not live in the past.

I think flooding the country with guns and turn the place into another proxy war, calls from all quarters of the "Serious People" to establish a no fly zone, etc need to be spoken out against.

It's certainly no proxy war as Russia is directly involved in it and for the most part it's in fact not the Serious People who are calling for a no-fly zone. Scholars in international relationships generally oppose, as do most media outlets and NATO. Zelensky might want one, but he's not getting it and the way I read his message to Congress is that he knows this, which is why he laid out alternatives. Biden didn't support Zelensky's wishes either.

It's absolutely TRUE that NATO has no leg to stand on calling out Russian aggression with our record. We do need to condemn NATO for the role it did play in leading up to this.

How did NATO lead into the war?

None of this is to say "No one should care about the plight of the Ukrainian people." It's to say "Hold your got dang horses, let's not dive headlong into another damn war."

But the DSA IC is also opposed to sanctions, which are not warfare. What sort of means of opposing powerful states trying to annex weaker ones are you for?

I'm just finding the appeal to Jacobin and Noam Chomsky to be signs of parochial and a sign of inflexibility, inability to develop self-standing expertise and research outside of one's own echo chamber, but it is also snark just as /u/devtesla said.

There's value in being level-headed, and let's be real: the statements of the DSA international committee do not affect anything anywhere at all. Why even bother getting pressed about it

But I enjoy dunking on them. There's a distinct pleasure in it. If I were positioned better, perhaps I could have slight impact on discrediting them enough for them to be replaced, but alas, I don't hold myself to have such powers.

Fundamentally, this thread they've published isn't even about the war! It's about how the war has been exploited by moneyed interests!

I certainly didn't get the impression myself. Rather mine was that the explicit purpose of the thread was to oppose war hawks, but even then I find it untenable to conflate them with moneyed interests.That is, I ain't no vulgar Marxist on the war in Ukraine.

On the analytical side of foreign policy, I find it most regrettable that Iraq war has so much shaped leftist anti-imperialism, especially so given how enthusiastically the false explanation through greed of oil is still being endorsed as an explanation for that war. Wars are no mere repetitions, but have their own complex sets of causes.

What are you talking about???

I just find it cringe to so strongly appeal to saint Noam and The Jacobin. It reeks of parochialism concerning a conflict in Eastern Europe, which is a bad look for an International Committee, like they were just indulging in some light reading from vaguely lefty spaces and making things up as they go.

There's people actively advocating for a no fly zone, not sure why you're acting like it's a distant possibility.

Biden and NATO are opposed to it because it goes against their own interests, mostly. The popular opinion likely won't matter, as it often doesn't in politics and some of the proposals have been fantastical, such as a 'non-kinetic no-fly zone' being operated from space.

A no-fly zone goes against long standing thinking in nuclear deterrence, which is the basis on which NATO was originally found upon. NATO didn't think that they could win a conventional war against Soviet Union (and the position of West Germany strategically fragile in such a conflict), which lead to a lot of theorizing on the use of nuclear deterrence instead. To enforce a no-fly zone, NATO needs to destroy antiair weaponry in Belarus and Russia (to keep its own air superiority in tact), but from a Russian point of view, it's impossible to distinguish between conventional and nuclear payloads and both them and the US has not disavowed the option to use first nuclear strikes, for strategic nuclear deterrence reasons. To this day, Russia still has a fail-deadly system known as Perimeter in place. The potential price of escalation is thus high.

I have seen exactly one person argue that the risk of nuclear war is no barrier for establishing a no-fly zone, but I can't imagine Biden or NATO leadership willingly sacrificing themselves to the Ukrainian cause.

There's nothing in that thread that disagrees with that anarchist statement.

I praised them for their moral clarity. That is, I found the DSA IC to be muddled in comparison and too close to sitting by sidelines. Appeals to hypocrisy just can't hold candle to the light of principles.

Not really sure what you're going so hard in here for

I was mostly just ranting myself, thus I kept myself from positive proposals and I didn't want to spent effort into debunking either. If I was writing a serious piece, I'd discard the OP as my first draft and write a couple more before starting to polish it up.

I think the statement is fine.

I seriously feel like we are back in 2002 and if you're not baying for an invasion of Iraq, you were being told "Say hello to Saddam Hussein for me!"

I think flooding the country with guns and turn the place into another proxy war, calls from all quarters of the "Serious People" to establish a no fly zone, etc need to be spoken out against.

It's absolutely TRUE that NATO has no leg to stand on calling out Russian aggression with our record. We do need to condemn NATO for the role it did play in leading up to this.

None of this is to say "No one should care about the plight of the Ukrainian people." It's to say "Hold your got dang horses, let's not dive headlong into another damn war."

it's online posting snark, Lol. I think it's a weird thing to be snarky about but whatever just post

sure, but that's still totally unsupported by the actual contents of the thread??? its easy to say that DSA nerds love chomsky and jacobin, but the IC thread didnt have anything to do with them. just seemed like a totally unrelated barb thrown in for no reason

Also, the person we really ought to listen to is Noam Chomsky and the publication to read to stay informed on the war in Ukraine is The Jacobin.

What are you talking about???

I'm mainly lurking here but FWIW I read this as part of "The seeming conclusion", i.e. a take being criticized. I.e.

The seeming conclusion is [some stuff]. Also, the person we really ought to listen to is Noam Chomsky and the publication to read to stay informed on the war in Ukraine is The Jacobin.

Nowadays if you're on the left and you don't condemn the war with the most hysterics and bluster and calls for immediate intervention of a Rachel Maddow or a CNN you're assumed to be a closet Putin apologist or - gasp - a tankie, which is the worst thing anyone could ever be. There's value in being level-headed, and let's be real: the statements of the DSA international committee do not affect anything anywhere at all. Why even bother getting pressed about it

Fundamentally, this thread they've published isn't even about the war! It's about how the war has been exploited by moneyed interests! They made a separate statement over here which parallels with that Russian anarchist statement just fine. Apples and oranges

Also, the person we really ought to listen to is Noam Chomsky and the publication to read to stay informed on the war in Ukraine is The Jacobin.

What are you talking about???

In the specific case of Ukraine, what I'm seeing isn't necessarily that the entire country "needs guns to to defend themselves" and more that Zelenskyy wants more guns to send loads of untrained conscripts into a meat grinder. There's a difference between the government of Ukraine and the working class of the Ukraine, of which the men of the country aren't allowed to leave.

I don't have a solution to this problem but I don't think "let's not funnel weapons into this conflict" is an indefensible position, particularly when you look at everything the US has gotten involved with that go so much worse.

One last thing: NATO membership is something used by western countries to influence domestic policy in countries like Ukraine. Since Zelenskyy came to power, there's been a transformation of Ukraine to low cost labor source for the rest of Europe, causing GDP to crater and lots of people to already leave the country before the war started. This is how NATO has been since its founding. Being anti-NATO is supporting the working class.

I hope this somewhat makes the DSA position more clear? I know that this doesn't truly tackle anything that's horrifying about Russia and is a little bit US main character shit, but it's an American org so it's mostly gonna talk about America.

Agreed, it's bad. Take for instance the point about non-NATO European countries being pressured into joining. Like, we're not being pressured by the evil ghost of American imperialism, we're just finding out that apparently no one will help you when you get invaded if you're not part of NATO, because that will start WW3. And when it happens, socialists will write articles about how great solidarity is (in the abstract, of course), while actively advocating against sending you guns to defend yourself.

The statement is fine? There's people actively advocating for a no fly zone, not sure why you're acting like it's a distant possibility. There's nothing in that thread that disagrees with that anarchist statement. Not really sure what you're going so hard in here for

Addendum: a good Twitter thread on the deficiencies of arguments from hypocrisy, which largely apply to DSAIC here as well.

this sucks

I have yet to read this piece, but let me just say how much I appreciate the availability of book piracy nowadays. I'd be trapped in a prison of unaesthetic ignorance without it, for sure.

It's almost conventional to write about how I still buy books and want to support authors etc. after admissions like these, but eh, why bother? It will take a long time to come up with alternative systems of supporting creative labor.

maybe they'll all get stranded and we'll never have to see them again

dfgisdgpresgoijesrgoijregoi lmaaaao

every other libertarian utopia island paradise worked out fine so idk what your problem is. what could possibly go wrong

My favorite part was when the waiter served our protagonist rat poison. Big proletariat energy right there.

Oh my fucking God this is true

Their defense was this: https://twitter.com/cryptoland/status/1480191582909440005

"Our twitter is run by several people and not all of them are native english speakers."

What was the supposed interpretation then??? Like, I have heard some painful stories from non-native english speakers about mixups, but this just sounds like bullshit. You'd think they'd be quick to state specifically what the mistake was if that is the excuse they go with.

I read someone's summary of this video but it did not do it justice

it's real as well as a tweet that implied that the island wouldn't have an age of consent

God what the fuck

Please tell me this is making fun of cryptocurrency please tell me this is making fun of cryptocurrency please tell me this is making fun of cryptocurrency please tell me this is making fun of cryptocurrency please tell me this is making fun of cryptocurrency someone PLEASE tell me PLEASE that cryptoland isn't supposed to be real

Hearing "crypto" be short for "cryptocurrency" is bad enough, but then they stole Isle Delfino and the helicopter from Super Mario Sunshine?

woah is this real https://i.imgur.com/TPUvkQL.png

id probably literally like kill a man to be a fey little magic homo elf