cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/55370711
cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/55370708
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a remote Siberian prison two years ago, was almost certainly poisoned with a deadly toxin found in South American dart frogs, five European governments said Saturday.
A joint statement from Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands said they were “confident” Navanly had been poisoned after an analysis of samples taken from his body “conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine,” and that the Russian government was the likely culprit.
“Russia claimed that Navalny died of natural causes. But given the toxicity of epibatidine and reported symptoms, poisoning was highly likely the cause of his death. Navalny died while held in prison, meaning Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison to him,” it continued.
The five countries said they were reporting the case to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, alleging Russia violated the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Russian authorities had previously claimed Navalny, 47, died of natural causes while serving several sentences totaling more than 30 years at a high-security prison above the Arctic Circle.
“Scientists from five European countries have established: my husband, Alexei Navalny, was poisoned with epibatidine—a neurotoxin, one of the deadliest poisons on earth. In nature, this poison can be found on the skin of the Ecuadorian dart frog. It causes paralysis, respiratory arrest, and a painful death,” she said.
“I was certain from the first day that my husband had been poisoned, but now there is proof: Putin killed Alexei with chemical weapon. I am grateful to the European states for the meticulous work they carried out over two years and for uncovering the truth. Vladimir Putin is a murderer. He must be held accountable for all his crimes.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the poisoning shows that “Vladimir Putin is prepared to use chemical weapons against his own people to remain in power. France pays tribute to this opposition figure, killed for his fight in favor of a free and democratic Russia.”
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper added: "Only the Russian government had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to use that toxin against Alexei Navalny in prison. We are here today to shine a spotlight on the Kremlin’s barbaric attempt to silence Alexei Navalny’s voice.”
Russia announced Navalny’s death on Feb. 16, 2024, just as that year’s Munich Security Conference opened. On that day, Navalnaya delivered a speech, pledging that Putin “would pay for what they have done to our country, to my family, and to my husband.” After a weeklong dispute over custody, Russia released Navalny’s body to his mother.
Tankies will be the first to tell you Russia isn’t communist and isn’t anywhere near being Communist. We have to say that because Russophobia constantly conflates Russian with Communist and switches between them seamlessly. It’s usually the rabid right wing chuds that think Russia is still full of commies.
Anti-imperialism is not an attribute, it’s a movement. It’s not something you are, it’s something you do. When Russia acts against the EuroCentric world order, it is acting in an anti-imperialist mannerby default and there would need to be some additional analysis to establish that this action against the imperial world order is somehow imperialist in itself.
This debate over whether the annexation of Crimea and the invasion 7 years later constitute imperialism hinges on one’s position on Russian security concerns. Those who see Russia’s actions as anti-imperialist believe that Russia’s claims of national security concern are real and salient. Those who see Russia’s actions as imperialist believe that Russia’s claims of national security concern are both totally not real and also cynical cover for imperialist ambitions.
We don’t have to have that debate here, but you should understand the position of your opponents at least as well as they understand yours.
There’s a lot of history here, particularly around Stalin. There are many things said of Stalin that are both Western lies AND ALSO were said by the Soviet leadership. Both things can be, and are, true. But that requires an understanding of Kruschev, his program and ideology, his political ambitions and goals, and how it was received internally and internationally.
NATO being a Nazi reactionary body is a claim that comes from a couple places. First and foremost is the fact that the US selected Nazi officers to run NATO when it was formed. Second is Operation Gladio, the NATO program of funding, arming, training, organizing, and coordinating Nazi, neo-nazi, and adjacent reactionary movements all over Europe in the hopes they could use them to run revolutions anti-communist revolutions.
But anyway, tankies spend a lot of time understanding your positions in order to argue against them. You should do the same if you’re going to try to argue against them.
I haven’t noticed particularly enlightened, or well reasoned arguments from the defenders of Russia and China that purport to be left and reject all westerners because our governments are mean, what you call tankies.
If you talk to them, you can agree on, well the people in power are a problem, doing x, which is bad. You might say, which is why we need to do y, to mitigate the damage. The tanky will say no, y won’t help, the entire system is fucked, only wholesale revolution will help, (as if somethng better would result in our circumstance gtfo,) and fuck you I hope you all eat shit and die (their attitude,) for being a resident of a country with a mean government.
So the conversations don’t go anywhere productive, they are a waste of time, on any such subject. We can still find common ground on a lot of foreign policy stuff though. We both disagree on war with Iran for instance, disagree on restarting the cold war style coups in latin america like they are with venezuela, like they did when they made a de facto military coup, which agreed to give up the president and a few of his loyalists, and stand down and let US helicopters not be shot down, which they could’ve done.
The US wouldn’t have attempted that operation without the agreement of the generals, not the least in one of the most protected areas in the country in a mobilized venezuela. Helicopters are vulnerable to numerous ground weapons that the US couldn’t reliably take out, not just anti aircraft batteries, but shoulder fired weapons like rpg’s, machine guns, including those mounted on trucks, manpads, other russian made small arms, etc. The military is the de facto puppet governor of Venezuela, and when they start exporting the oil wealth, there will be resistance, the army will mobilize against it, and the CIA will use black market drug and weapon sales monies to fund paramilitaries to run death squads to collectively punish villagers. Because that’s the template the US is working off of, and they are rotten, incapable pieces of shit with no vision.
Then you’re not looking for them. There are plenty of well reasoned arguments.
You’re already off the path. The problem is very rarely the individuals in power, as we see because we replace those people and the same things happen and get worse. The problem is class society and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Yes, harm reduction strategies can be quite limited in their effectiveness. Attempting to stop flooding with sandbags, while a valid harm reduction strategy, does nothing to address rising sea levels.
Are you 12 and talking to other 12-year-olds?
Sounds more like a you problem, to be honest. I have plenty of productive conversations with tankies.
Cool cool. Have a nice day.
So we’re gonna pretend Putin isn’t an imperialist dictator? If anything, Putin is as imperialist as his Western peers. And he’s a dictator.
Getting tired of this hypocrisy. You can be a leftist and condemn Western imperialism as well as Russian imperialism. Condemn it as a whole ffs. It doesn’t always have to be “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
Fuck the US. Fuck Russia.
You’re using words in a meaningless way. Dictators rule by dictate. Russia is a functioning bureaucratic republic. Putin, by definition, is not a dictator.
Individuals are not imperialist except in so far as they support imperial ideology. Imperialism, as a historical phenomenon, is still fundamentally dominated by the same handful of countries that dominated 80% of the world - Spain, France, Portugal, Britain, and The Netherlands - all seated and combined with the economic and military might of their former colony America. NATO is predominantly armed by these same countries for the most part. Russia has always been a target of the Western imperialists, even when it was a lesser imperial power under the Tsar. But today? No. Russia is not imperialist. It literally does not have the capabilities to be imperialist. In so far as it is in fighting with the US via the US’s proxy of Ukraine, it is an inter-capitalist war, but not an inter-imperilaist war.
Despot is the word you’re looking for. Putin is a despot. He uses the legal bureaucratic power of the state in ways that make people miserable, that hurt people, that enrich his friends and advance his own interests. He’s a corrupt despot but not an imperialist dictator. The Pope is more of an imperialist dictator than Putin is.
I never said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It’s not hypocrisy. My assessment of the situation is that Russia has legitimate national security concerns. In so far as Russia is in involved in an armed conflict with the imperial core, I hope Russia wins. But I do not support Russia creating colonies or neocolonies, engaging in debt entrapment of third world countries and exploiting their resources to their detriment, or using its monopolies to engage in collaborative management of the world’s natural resources with imperial partners. These things that I just described are the things imperialists do, and they are things done today by USA, Britain, and France, predominantly (although some other former European empires still do to a lesser extent). Russia does not do these things.
Does Putin secretly harbor imperial ambitions? I don’t have access to his pillow book so I can’t say. What I can say is that he tried to join the imperial club when he first took office. He worked closely with the US and Western Europe, built trade relationships, built military alliances, and petitioned multiple times to become part of the club. But the imperialists kept expanding NATO, kept developing it specifically to counter Russia, and eventually told him to go pound sand. And since then, I would say it’s very clear that not only is he not an imperialist, but even if he was ideologically, there is no path for Russia to become imperialist. Their challenge as of the early 2000’s went from “rebuild capitalism in Russia and join the rest of the capitalists” to “survive the inevitable onslaught of the West as they attempt to extract every single ounce of wealth from Russia up to and including through full military invasion”.
And honestly I think the West almost did it. If it wasn’t for China becoming an economic super power and using that position to build BRICS, I think Russia would have been a neocolony of the USA by 2050 at the latest.
But today? Today we watch Russia fighting for its future and we condemn the US for its use of Ukraine as a proxy, for putting the lives of Ukrainians at a lower priority than strategic expansion of Western military dominance over Asia, and we call for it to stop being an existential threat to so many nations in the world. And if Russia is going to help stop that expansion by fighting against US interests, we offer critical support. We are critical of Russian use of cluster munitions, of their handling of civilians, of their destruction of civilian infrastructure, of their repression of their own people inside Russia, of their violation of law and of human dignity. We are critical, yes, but we do not call for military intervention to stop them. Their crimes do not rise to the level of the crimes of imperialism, which is the primary threat to all human life on earth today.
Russia attacked Ukraine. Putin thought it would be easier, though, but now faces the consequences of his hubris. I, as a European, can not support this. Period. Same thing with Trump wanting to take Greenland.
There’s two despots, Trump shoving more towards that definition every day, wanting to expand their borders by force. Just look at Venezuela.
You state that “you really hope Russia wins”. That it wins what, exactly? Ukraine? What’s their next step, then? Restore the former borders of the USSR?
Honestly, fuck that. Fuck leftists supporting Russia because they once were anti capitalist. I’m sick and tired. Be a conscious leftist and condemn both. What one was, is not anymore.
You’re critical towards their repression, but not towards their invasion of another sovereign country? I can’t rhyme that together.
Crimes of imperialism are terrible. Crimes of Russia as well. I know of no leftist calling to arms to take military action towards Russia because of their repression. I do know of criticism towards their attack on Ukraine, and rightly so.
Be reasonable. Call out any bad side, be it USA, NATO, Russia, North Korea …
But why did Russia attack Ukraine? What were the material reasons for the action? We need to analyze these things, not vibe about them.
Analyzing this will answer many other questions like:
And it solves problems like this:
You don’t understand the world because you refuse to analyze it, so you don’t understand the people who disagree with you. I understand your position and I disagree with it. You don’t understand my position and you disagree with it. We are not the same.
Russia attacked Ukraine because its military analysts determined that the risks of not attacking were worse than the risks of attacking. And they knew what the risks of attacking were: the US could get openly involved, NATO could get involved, their economy could get sanctioned, their top capitalists could get sanctioned, the US could activate covert operations up to and including terrorism against the people of Russia, popular sentiment could turn against the administration, etc.
It’s not like they didn’t know that these were the risks, so why did they do it anyway?
Their claim, and the claim I believe is true, is that the situation in Ukraine had reached the level of imminent national security threat and that there was a limited window of time where Russia could act and have a chance of survival. After that window, however, the chances of the survival of the Russian state would be significantly lower.
What evidence do we have for this claim? Obviously there’s a lot of back and forth about NATO, nuclear capabilities, missiles, etc. But there’s a few things that are incredibly salient and real and not much up for debate.
This is why the US has a strategy of encirclement. With 600+ foreign military bases around the world (Russia has fewer than 25 for comparison), the US has the ability to launch missiles with short flight times from many directions in many waves leaving less than 10 minutes for adversaries to OODA. They also have the ability to detect and attempt to intercept launches from all locations surrounding their opponents. They’re ultimate goal is to establish a monopoly on the nuclear deterrent by rendering everyone else’s nuclear deterrent far less effective than MAD would require.
The first invasion was by Napoleon in 1812. Napoleon raised an army and literally marched entirely across Europe to invade Russia and the strategic weak point was the very long border from present day Ukraine north through present day Ukraine and Belarus. This war killed so many people it’s hard to imagine.
But then in 1918 the WW1 allies invaded Russia to stop the socialists from taking over. The Americans invaded from the East, but the Western imperial powers invaded Russia through the present day border with Ukraine. They made allies with the anarchists and the anarchists happily agreed to work with the imperialists to invade their own country.
But the worst would be in 1941 when the Third Reich invaded Russia in 3 places, with the Ukraine border being a central theater for the entire conflict. All three of these invasions were existential threats, but this one was the closest Russia ever came to not being a country anymore, with a death toll in the tens of millions.
NATO joint exercises with Ukraine started in the fall of 2013, about 1 month before the Euromaidan protests began. Those protests shortly thereafter deposed the leadership of Ukraine and Russia reacted by seizing Crimea. This series of 3 events - first NATO exercise, government change over, annexation - is evidence for the claim that Russia was reacting to the situation on the ground, not engaging in a proactive campaign of imperialism.
People like to claim that NATO is a purely defensive alliance and could not possibly threaten Russia. First, we have to consider point 1 (the US desire to undermine MAD) and NATO’s part in that, But then we have to consider that NATO has been involved in multiple offensive campaigns including campaigns not in Europe (like Libya and Afghanistan) essentially at the behest of the US imperial war machine. Russia’s national security analysts cannot include in their analysis that NATO is purely defensive in the face of NATO offensive campaigns.
But if we look at Napoleon and Hitler, and the invasions of Russia that they launched, we can see a pattern that NATO is the next iteration of. Napoleon controlled or allied with nearly all of the countries he needed to march through. That was a requirement. He had to manage long supply chains to make the invasion work. Hitler was appeased by everyone, allowing the Third Reich to establish forward operations for their supply chains, and they moved slowly until they unleashed blitzkrieg on the world, changing war analysis forever.
NATO is made up of the same countries that invaded Russia in 1812, and in 1918, and in 1941. It’s literally the same group of countries that for over 2 centuries have been open adversaries of Russia, openly speaking of stealing its resources, enslaving its people, and dominating its government. And when NATO was formed, it was able to rationalize its existence in a world where the US had just unleashed nuclear hellfire on civilians, so they got to say “wouldn’t it be terrible if the commies did that?” But it was very clear that they were a military alliance designed to counter the large alliance of Soviet republics.
But then the USSR was dismantled, NATO was not. NATO remained but no longer could say it was an alliance against the USSR, because the USSR didn’t exist anymore. NATO, having been originally staffed with Nazi officers, was the inheritor of the Third Reich’s invasion plans of Russia. And NATO started to expand Eastward. It built supply chains, recruitment offices, training facilities, logistics, ammunition stores, missile silos, air fields, armor depots. In essence, it began doing exactly what Napoleon had to do and what Hitler had to do. Except this time it was in the modern age. NATO didn’t need to control the countries it operated in, it just needed to control the land the countries gave to it. NATO didn’t need to invade, it just needed to convince weaker governments to accept its protection. It’s a classic extortion racket, with the threat backed up by the same exact imperialists who have been extorting an entire nations with violence for 600 years.
This is the analysis that supports the claim that Russia was reacting to an imminent threat and not attempting to engage in proactive expansion. But we ALSO have the US’s own CIA assessment that Russia lacks the capability and intent to invade any other country in Europe. That doesn’t sound like an expansionist program does it? It sounds like a country that actually shouldn’t have gotten involved in any military conflict that could get bigger than it can handle. So again, we’re left with the analysis that attacking Ukraine appears to have been the least bad option for Russia, not the most glorious.
Maybe now you can. These two positions are consistent if you accept the framing that Russia was facing an existential threat. If you deny that Russia has real national security interests, which is what the imperialists have been doing since 1991, then of course you won’t be able to see how the positions can be consistent. This is the fundamental issue that people don’t understand about the discourse. We are inundated with soft propaganda from all angles that Russia’s demands for national security are unreasonable, and once that’s accepted, then every single thing they could possibly do in self-defense is easily spun as evil. The reality is that Russia has real national security concerns and was not engaged in expansion, while the US and Europe were not under any threat from Russia and yet continued to expand their military alliance. It’s classic DARVO.
Maybe now you can understand the position of your debate opponents on this topic.
Don’t make me write another whole essay on the DPRK.
yeah, dude, you’re obviously way ahead of me writing walls of text. don’t waste your energy on this. you won’t change my views and I won’t change yours.
sorry for being not as left as you.
if you’d ever change your mind, vote for the green party. ecology is and will always be more important than any of this us vs them shit.
and now before my final goodbye
fuck putin fuck trump fuck xi fuck kim fuck netanyahu fuck despots and dictators
anyway, I’ll be playing the drums now, fine evening to you too
When you refuse to engage in anything larger than a sound bite, meme, or video short, you’re not going to understand anything other than what the ruling class wants you to understand.
That’s great because I never said anything about modern Russia being communist?
I cannot think of another interpretation of “Residual Sovietness” other than “residual communism”.
Sounds like a “you” problem
Could be. Let me think of the other things it could mean?
Well, in Russian, “Soviet” means “Council”, so maybe what you meant was that tankies attribute some sort of residual council-ness to Russia. No, that’s probably not right since councils were the fundamental democratic building block of the communist government, and that would be residual communism.
Maybe you meant Soviet as in Soviet Russia, which was communist, so no, that’s not what you meant.
Maybe you meant Soviet as in “the other” in a war with the West. Tankies wouldn’t think like that because that’s a Western framing and not a communist one.
Hm. Yeah, maybe it is a me problem. I can’t think of anything you could have possibly meant that would make any sense unless you were using the words purely for their vibes.
This just in: local dumbass thinks every use of every word must be 100% literal. Non-literal and metaphorical uses of words have been banned and deemed “just vibes”, and any such use is grounds for a labour camp sentence.
:goose-meme: WHAT’S THE NON-LITERAL METAPHORICAL SENSE OF THE WORD SOVIET THAT YOU INTENDED IN YOUR COMMUNICATION?