this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Here’s a map of the global freedom status, and Russia seems to be in the same group with most of Africa Middle East and Asia. Considering this context, the news article doesn’t seem surprising at all. Just another sad day in Russia.
The makers of this map, Freedom House, receive funding mainly from the US government. They also took money from BAE Systems, Britain's biggest arms manufacturer.
And your point would be...
The argument would be that their findings are therefore somehow tainted and unreliable. However, without any evidence that this is so, simply pointing it out as if it's some kind of "gotcha" is in fact fallacious, as you suggest.
Yeah, well it might not be the best source, but at least they have a map that measures something interesting. The second best option would have been the map of press freedom index. It’s not quite the same things and it isn’t entirely relevant to the conversation either, but there you go. At least it tells you something about the attitude different countries have towards the media, which may or may not be associated with the attitude towards activists. This map also paints a slightly more nuanced picture, but the conclusion is largely the same as before.
See also: Wikipedia
Ukraine's being yellow is just wrong. It doesn't really matter if it's fair, but with the ongoing war and the effects of it on the society and its attitudes towards press the color should be orange.
....and Russia seems to be in the same group with most of Africa Middle East and Asia. Considering this context, the news article doesn’t seem surprising at all. Just another sad day in American brain dead news for morons.
Honestly how do you people manage to tie your shoelaces?
So is Turkey, your NATO ally who bombs minorities and steals other peoples cultural heritage. Stop being a hypocrite
Yes Turkey is a controversial country to most of us in NATO. Terrible example.
Turkey is a genocidal horde. Russia one could call controversial before 2022, now it's just miserable and on its way to becoming a trainwreck.
EDIT: What I meant - it's a good example, if you just call that "controversial" and not a problem to be solved now, while Russia somehow is.
Big words from someone who just brought three different forms of sharia law into BRICS.
I still don't fucking understand why tankies simp so hard for this shit. It's like you are trying to prove that your philosophy is no deeper than "America bad."
Unfortunately NATO wasn't designed in a way that conceived of a rogue member state like Turkey. This means that it has a very limited toolkit for reigning in Erdogan's excesses. He also has a huge amount of leverage due to Turkey's pivotal role on the Black Sea which is obviously critical to everything happening in Ukraine. For now, NATO really does have its hands tied with regard to Turkey.
No, it doesn't really, they just don't want to do anything. Everything happening in Ukraine started happening much later than Turkey happened.
And about NATO design not conceiving of something - when Turkey was admitted to NATO, there were people still alive who saw not their parents and grandparents, but their children and grandchildren killed before their eyes in 1915-1921.
It was conceived that if somebody really wanted to get rid of that thing, then it'd be possible to make a shortcut on paperwork with all the military power. 1952, remember. But then again, it was 1952, you know, colonial powers still being that and not caring much about genocides of brown people. So nobody would see Turkey's current behavior as a problem.
I don't think I follow your arguments. Is there a way you can rephrase your point such that a dummy like myself might understand it?
About rogue member states not being thought of when NATO was being created - when NATO was being created, even France and UK were more likely to behave like "rogue member states" and they did in some little known cases (Biafra, for example, or the Suez crisis). And Turkey was full-blown fascist (well, it didn't stop being that at any point since then till now, just Westerners conveniently assumed that it changed like Japan, say, one my relative in the US from Jewish side is just in complete denial that it hasn't as it wasn't civilized by bombs, while at the same time uneasy with my cousins going to Germany).
About NATO having its hands tied against Turkey due to Ukraine - if A happened before B, you can't justify A with B. So you can't justify Turkey getting away with everything it does by Russia vs Ukraine taking all the attention.
I'm not talking about anyone being justified; I am talking about realpolitik and the fact that in international relations it's often the case that what ought to be is often in direct conflict with what actually is.
It would be awesome if we could live in a world of absolutes wherein national interests never conflicted with moral ambiguity, but that's just not reality at all, sorry to inform.
And why then it's a problem that Russia wreaks havoc in Ukraine?..
And I don't see Western states acting in their best interest anyway. I actually see something between slow surrender to the worst of their competition and some weird kind of "let no one win", trying to empower the worst savages while simply not working with those of competitors who shouldn't necessarily be their adversaries. You can also take a look at the people which reach the top in European and US political classes, these are of, eh, declining quality.
Also for my second point - an event in the future still can't be the cause for an event in the past, justification or not.
Other than that - large parts of NATO \ West "civilization offering", so to say, were about freedom and human rights.
And large parts of the Soviet alternative were about humanism and equality and unification.
And if it's casual for you that people were not supposed to believe in any of that in either case, then I don't get it why people here are so eager to point out Soviet hypocrisies as if they were any different.
It'd be probably also awesome for realpolitik fans to not forget how real world works in terms of errors. Right now an error in your security systems means some protest, some Assange or Snowden, some scandal. Getting into realpolitik too much would shift those errors to justified terrorist acts. Well, I suppose that may be one reason why some countries are so eager to get rid of nuclear energy despite all the green agenda in PR. Single point of failure and all that.
I think you can join the Russian army if you really like the war crines of Russia.
Go and be a landmine exploder for Ukraine if you love freedom so much.
Lemmygrad 🤡
(Also Putin is not a communist, but a post-fascist masquerading as an anti-fascist)
Wow, so you do actually have eyes! Fucking hell, you are raising my respect for you!
Fun fact, I would nothing but for Putin to get hanged. But not by American imperialists and their lapdogs, but by the russian proletariat for the reestablishment of an RSFSR.
So sorry buddy. It seems your assumption about me has been wrong, I suggest lurking more before speaking about your opponents.
"Russian proletariat" is mostly ansyn or Trotskyist, when political, just informing you. EDIT: And also it's a very little portion of the society.
And most of those sporting Commie symbolic just use it cause USSR big, USSR strong, USSR everybody fear, USSR boom, but somehow later boom.
Well your best bet for that to happen is Ukraine crushing Putin's balls. As long as he has the full support of the nationalists the proletariat can eat bark
The best and last argument of dumb tankies is whataboutism. Thank you for your insightful contribution.
I don't think it's whataboutism to point out that a worse criminal you are fine with, and a smaller one not, because the latter kills "blue-eyed Europeans" and all that.
You can't just discard observations that you are a hypocritical bag of piss with that one word, "whataboutism". And it only refers to somebody defending their own crimes. Most of real whataboutism I see in social media comes from Turks and Westerners defending Turks.
Other than that, if somebody says that and you don't, I don't care if they're a tankie. Turkey is worse than a Stalinist dictatorship, and I have priorities.
Actually, that's exactly what whataboutism is.
Someone says: wow, topic A is bad.
Whataboutism says: oh yeah, well B is bad/worse!!!1!
Point is, we're not talking about B/Turkey. And B/Turkey being bad doesn't mean that A/Russia is excused from their terrible behavior.
And (gasp!) Just because I oppose A/Russia doesn't mean I support B/Turkey.
The entire argument is bad faith and lacking any logic or critical thinking.
If you support the side opposite to Russia, be it Ukraine or NATO, you sort of support Turkey, cause of the context of alliances and relations. Turkey is in NATO and Turkey is friendly with Ukraine.
We actually are doing that right now. If you don't want to, you can leave this conversation. That's the way conversations work.
Yes, it isn't. You seem to imply that I said it is. I haven't.
Not in general. But in our specific situation you sort of do through that opposing side being Turkey's friend more than Russia itself.
On all sides.
Now, about bad faith - if people like you yelling "whataboutism" can prevent a conversation on a certain subject, then it's not really whataboutism. If they can do that without preventing that conversation from happening, then maybe it is. "Whataboutism" is not a basic concept. Once we turn to logic instead of some list of common fallacies, we don't need it (and also logic beats any such shortcut).
Same with "critical thinking".
Stop supporting nazis.