Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, I've known some Mennonites, they are on a "spectrum" of beliefs that overlap with Amish. Some Mennonite groups actually call themselves Amish, actually, but many of the "more conservative" Amish groups don't acknowledge the Mennonites as Amish, if that makes sense. Much like the Amish, the local church leadership for each local community kind of determines the scope of rules. There are Mennonite communities that don't do any of the technology eschewing stuff at all, and some who have stricter rules than some groups of Amish. There's a lot of terms for these groups that are primarily used by outsiders, for example "Beachy" Amish vs "Old Order" Amish are terms primarily used by outsiders, across the spectrum all of those people just call themselves Amish, but if you put them on the spot they may speak with derision about "other" groups of Amish who have different rules.

It can get a little confusing, there was a YouTuber (Peter Santinello) who did a few long form videos hanging out with Amish families in Ohio--the particular group he interacted with actually say they are Mennonites and Amish, which actually makes sense, Jakob Ammann sprung his movement out of the established Mennonite religion of the time, and kept most of the belief structure.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Ukrainian citizens living in Russian-occupied territories who accepted Russian passports are being turned away at the Russian border and told to present their Ukrainian passports:

https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/1570370006936072193

As they say in Dutch: "wie zijn gat verbrand moet op de blaren zitten" (you've made your bed, etc etc)

Imagine you're living in a warzone.  You're having trouble getting basic supplies, almost no access to medical care.  You have no idea if there's any hope that Ukraine will liberate you.  I have trouble being angry at Ukrainians in occupied territories accepting a Russian passport, even though by most reports most have not.

Here's one story about a lady who took a Russian passport in order to get access to free medical care in Crimea, only to find out her passport was useless.

https://twitter.com/DecodingTrolls/status/1568104687601160195

Sure, we can be pragmatic about that.
But if you take your passport to move to Russia then you've got a lot less right to any pragmatism.

[Barrister]

Final note on Mennos though is most of the ones I know from Manitoba are more "Cultural" mennonites: they drink (forbidden by the faith) and go to Church on the big holidays.  Much like many other faiths.

[celedhring]

Living in a country where so many things are named after things from Europe it amuses me that there is a town in Ukraine named New York.

Mind you as I checked the Wiki page for New York, Ukraine, it becomes more sad when I learn it was a Mennonite community (lots of mennonites back home in Manitoba), but that all the original Mennonite inhabitants were deported to Kazakhstan by Stalin in 1951.

Fuck the Mennonites. But yeah, I always find it interesting when you find random European towns named after American cities, it is a little more common than you'd think. Certainly, nowhere near as common as the reverse, but there's actually a lot of little towns in England for example with North American place names--Toronto, Columbia, Philadelphia etc.

There's a Miami Platja (Miami Beach in Catalan) near Tarragona.

[Barrister]

Huh.  Out of curiosity I googled what Edmonton was named after.  I knew it was somewhere in the UK - turns out to be an area now a part of London.

But I found this link that while there are 5 communities named Edmonton (mostly named after the part of London, with one in Kentucky having it's own origin), there are dozns and dozens of streets named Edmonton, mostly named after the city I live in.  Which includes even streets in the UK.

http://spacing.ca/edmonton/2015/03/24/edmonton-streets/

So maybe I was wrong to be surprised by New York, Ukraine.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It looks like the Xi-Putin summit didn't go amazing for Russia, China openly expressing it has "concerns" about the Ukraine War.

This isn't too surprising, and should probably pour ice cold water on any Russian dreams that a bilateral alliance with China is going to lead Russia to the promised land. The truth is it is not in China's interests for Russia to be strong. It is in China's interests for Russia to be isolated and weak, so that Chian can render it into a state of quasi-vassalage as a cheap source of natural resources.

China oddly cares about the idea of territorial sovereignty, which I think makes them "sus" as the kids say, on Russia's invasion. Anyone who is aware of China's own territorial ambitions wonders: how can the PRC care about territorial sovereignty? But it's pretty obvious--they consider their territorial claims to be "intrinsic parts of China", so paradoxically an international respect for territorial sovereignty would extend (in their minds) to acceptance of a Chinese annexation of Taiwan. This is one area where China and Russia are dissimilar, Russia wants to undermine institutions like the UN which has always tried to serve as a bulwark against territorial conquests. China wants to use the UN to secure its own ambitions. There is a reason China threw a Category 5 shitfit when Lithuania allowed Taiwan to open a diplomatic office in Vilnius, as Taiwan and not as Chinese Taipei (the preferred PRC term.) China has diligently worked ever since it got the Chinese UN recognition and Security Council seat to build broad international consensus that Taiwan is not an actual country, and undermining the very international institutions that allow this is not in China's interests at all.

[Barrister]

Another wacky meme video from the official Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, showing artillerymen dancing and, well, shooting artillery.

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1570494377767870464

[The Brain]

There was some reporting in Sweden on the fate of Gammalsvenskby (lit. Old Swedish Village) in Ukraine during the early days of the invasion, but AFAIK there was no heavy fighting there. It's a small place, where a few old folks still speak Swedish. It was founded by Baltic Swedes resettled in Ukraine in the 18th century.

[Barrister]

There was some reporting in Sweden on the fate of Gammalsvenskby (lit. Old Swedish Village) in Ukraine during the early days of the invasion, but AFAIK there was no heavy fighting there. It's a small place, where a few old folks still speak Swedish. It was founded by Baltic Swedes resettled in Ukraine in the 18th century.

I looked it up.  Gammalsvenskby was incorporated into the town of Zmiivka.  Zmiivka is on the west bank of the Dnipro river in Kherson Oblast - the part that is Russian controlled, but the Ukrainians destroyed all the bridges.  Things could get very spicy there...

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

[Admiral Yi]

Re Chomsky, I think it's only fair to read what he said in full in the interview and not just the pulled quotes in the letter responding to him:

I read through this twice and can't find the stuff about Western propaganda regarding Ukraine's desire for weapons.  Can you guide me?

[The Minsky Moment]

The US has always maintained a certain distance from the court on the grounds that the US Constitution is the highest law that the US government recognizes.

That is a tired excuse.  The Constitution does poses some limitations but nothing that would (say example) prevent application of the ICJ Nicaragua judgment.  A more limiting factor is refusal to enact implementing legislation. And another limiting factor is that the US insists on carving out exceptions that go beyond the purely constitutional.

The US could do more to facilitate enforcement of international law and human rights norms within its borders if it chose to do so.  It chooses otherwise.

[The Minsky Moment]

Re Chomsky, I think it's only fair to read what he said in full in the interview and not just the pulled quotes in the letter responding to him:

I read through this twice and can't find the stuff about Western propaganda regarding Ukraine's desire for weapons.  Can you guide me?

It may refer to this passage

We can, however, look at the United States and we can see that our explicit policy — explicit — is rejection of any form of negotiations. The explicit policy goes way back, but it was given a definitive form in September 2021 in the September 1 joint policy statement that was then reiterated and expanded in the November 10 charter of agreement.

And if you look at what it says, it basically says no negotiations. What it says is it calls for Ukraine to move towards what they called an enhanced program for entering NATO, which kills negotiations; — this is before the invasion notice — an increase in the dispatch of advanced weapons to Ukraine, more military training, the joint military exercises, weapons placed on the border. We can't be sure, but it's possible that these strong statements may have been a factor in leading Putin and his circle to move from warning to direct invasion. We don't know. But as long as that policy is guiding the United States, it's basically saying, to quote Ambassador Chas Freeman, it's saying: Let's fight to the last Ukrainian. [That's] basically, what it amounts to.

So the questions you raised are important, interesting, just what is the appropriate kind of military aid to give Ukrainians defending themselves enough to defend themselves, but not to lead to an escalation that will just simply lead to massive destruction? And what kinds of sanctions or other actions could be effective in deterring the aggressors? Those are all important, but they pale into insignificance in comparison with the primary need to move towards a negotiated settlement, which is the only alternative to destruction of Ukraine, which of course, Russia is capable of carrying out.

This whole passage is a good example of Chomsky veering into straight up disingenuousness.  The US policy was never against negotiations.  Biden was crystal clear that he was prepared to support negotiations prewar and that he hoped Russia would step back from the brink.  But what he said was that US intelligence indicated that Russia had already committed to war, intel which with hindsight proved to be sound.  In that context refraining from rushing weapons to Ukraine would have been highly irresponsible.

The bolded question strikes me as left wing version of the Tucker Carlson "just asking questions" game.  He isn't committing to a position and of course there are real limits to the appropriate levels of military aid (e.g. we aren't going to send Ukraine ICBMs). But the clear implication is to suggest that the existing supplies of HIMARS and heavy artillery went too far, which is also not a reasonable position to take.

[Admiral Yi]

Oh.  I thought the first link was using verbatim quotes for some reason.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The US has always maintained a certain distance from the court on the grounds that the US Constitution is the highest law that the US government recognizes.

That is a tired excuse.  The Constitution does poses some limitations but nothing that would (say example) prevent application of the ICJ Nicaragua judgment.  A more limiting factor is refusal to enact implementing legislation. And another limiting factor is that the US insists on carving out exceptions that go beyond the purely constitutional.

The US could do more to facilitate enforcement of international law and human rights norms within its borders if it chose to do so.  It chooses otherwise.

And there is nothing inappropriate about that. International law is not remotely the same as statutory law which is imposed on a people by a ruling government, international law is entirely about consent and agreement. Countries have sovereignty. There may be diplomatic consequences for sovereign choices, which is up to national leader to determine if they wish to risk.

[The Minsky Moment]

Customary international law is similar to common law, in fact it is a variety of common law.  And common law is still good law in the US. 

International treaty law like the Geneva Conventions or the Genocide Convention is akin to statutory law.  There is no reason why such treaty law cannot be imposed by statute by national governments that sign the treaties.  In fact the US historically did that all the time.

The US has adhered to lots of international treaty based law either on a self-executing basis or through implementing statutes.  The policy question for the US is what norms and rules the US wants to adhere to and to what extent the US wants to commit to acceptance and enforcement of rulings from international tribunals. The US can do quite a bit through its own statutory enactments if it wants to.