Paine

How does this pragmatic approach get started when one side is run by a man in a bunker calmly loading his revolver for the final scene? You make it so...

That's the sticky wicket there. How can the good faith be extended to the Russians in this regard when Putin has played so many for fools for doing it...

Yes, I spoke too broadly on that. But my point is that what is shared is horror at what Russia is doing.

Pride? What is being shared is the desire to exist as a people and to defeat an organization that is really good at erasing such people. That is why b...

Your observations upon the reluctance to level Kiev make sense. On the other hand, the distance of supply lines for that sort of thing is much greater...

You have opened up too many wounds to talk about this with equanimity. I spare you from any curses.

I don't understand this idea of withdrawing from dialogue. There are many people desperately trying to talk to a recluse with a special button.

So, as one who promotes dialogue, how does the denial of Ukrainian identity play a part? Doesn't one have to stop doing that to have a conversation?

Sure. But the propaganda in play here is saying that Nazis have taken control of Ukraine and must be rooted out. Could get rough. U.S. citizens did fi...

I guess this is precisely what I question. Russians were cool with the Chechen wars and the tactics used in Syria. If Kiev was a smoking heap, how is ...

What do you mean they could have destroyed Kiev? Bomb it out of existence? And what propaganda would that go against? As for the gap between what they...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH6V1XvQC3c

I see where you are going with that. Do you have a passage that underlines that for you?

I did not have a point. I was only asking if you had wrestled with his text. Edit to add: I am not asking that to establish some kind of authority but...

Have you read Aristotle?

I wasn't putting forth what I think may be different but observing that Aristotle intended to highlight knowing for the sake of knowing from solving p...

I am pretty sure Aristotle would object to this on the basis that the desire for knowledge is for its own sake. Wondering what is happening may be rel...

And the grinding reluctance of the Biden Administration to give the weapons to Ukraine that would fold the Russian invasion in a fortnight is a part o...

Interesting development in the weapons supply coming from U.S: In bid for new long-range rockets, Ukraine offers U.S targeting oversight

Yes, Putin was afraid the store would close before he could rush in to steal the item.

This exacerbates having partial control of regions where success now requires complete control. Before the annexation, the standard of victory was wha...

If that is the case, doesn't that condition apply to your assessment that the attack on Kiev was only a feint? As a piece of military strategy, a fein...

Also, the purpose of taking the airport is to use it. Failure to secure it through combined forces is part and parcel to the failure of the whole oper...

In the face of your criticism of what previous attempts at radical change have amounted to, what do you propose instead?

I have had a long relationship with this bit of music. I like this version because it underscores the dissonance with the harmony. https://www.youtube...

As the Continental once said: "Pour champagne on me once, shame on you. Pour champagne on me twice, shame on me." The process of application aside, wh...

I read the dialectic as an interaction between people where there are always subjects acting in objective conditions. The subjects are changed through...

Well, that was a light and refreshing afternoon snack! Seeing that both the Russians and the European ultra-nationalists are dependent upon the contin...

Slantchev presents a solid argument for how Putin might respond to further losses. I think the logic of proportional response to such escalation would...

I am curious about not considering 'the future enough' One benefit of being mortal is that line of thinking is not available to us. We can think in te...

That makes sense to me as an effort to be less stupid. But I am not sure how to apply the maxim to a map of the world.

Before setting forth upon the special operation, Putin was a popular figure in European ultranationalist circles. At the same time, he courted the EU ...

lgor Girkin on Lyman:

If their command gave a crap about force protection, they would have had them retreat while they could do it in order.

Another factor on Lyman is whether the Russians can retreat. If not, it won't encourage others to hold fast in precarious conditions.

I don't know what Putin's ambitions are. But if he thought using tactical nukes would give him Ukraine, I think he would use them. I hear what you are...

I am not convinced that the line between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons is a thing. Thankfully, we don't have any precedent to guide us in the...

Yes, that is why I thought a 'proportional' response would employ 'conventional' weapons. What if that response wiped out strategic use of nuclear wea...

I don't know how deep the support may go toward supporting the use of weapons of mass destruction in the Putin regime. But I am pretty sure that there...

If they were used for a tactical advantage, then some units would have to advance through the corridor provided. There is no evidence that the existin...

Those passages are good to compare with Dostoievski's concern for the monsters he depicts who become destructive through their isolation and denouncem...

This topic reminds me of the time when I was at school, reading Aquinas' argument regarding what was a just war. The reaction of one of my colleagues ...

I think this misrepresents Kierkegaard attempts to understand the human condition in the terms of sin and redemption. In The Concept of Anxiety, he ar...

Not a convincing argument that your view should prevail over others.

Infesting ad hominem response.

What about you? Stand and deliver, my dear friend.

So, if you did not want to end up like that, what are the alttenatives?

The devil advocate in me would like to argue both sides of that question. What I meant to say about Orwell is that he had become aware of a certain pr...

I am helping. I read Orwell as saying we need a countervailing cluster of claims to oppose pure rhetoric. A world, and we live in it.

1984 is an over-the-top personal story told against the background of a process that integrated the resistance against the State with the agenda being...