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451

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022

« on: February 25, 2022, 06:43:57 PM »

Frustratingly I'm finding a lot of this stuff really difficult to find on places other than Twitter (there are often wider articles, but actually you end up getting more depth from journalists doing original Twitter threads on the topics than from the actual news websites).

There are also the stories about Russian conscripts being flogged across the border (Herodotus to the courtesy phone please) and Russian soldiers deserting or surrendering when they realized that they were invading Ukraine or that Ukrainians are fighting back.  Edit: rando birdsite account citing Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers (Russia) via the Daily Beast (USA).

Twitter scares me as bad as anything short of nuclear weapons, and I'm trying to make peace with the fact that if people I thought I was like liked that site, maybe we don't have as much in common as I thought. It does scary things to people who hang out on it.

452

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022

« on: February 25, 2022, 05:15:26 PM »

This invasion seems (from my very uneducated peep into it) to be putting more strain on Russia's relationship with Turkey, and I'd imagine that a friendly Turkey is worth a whole lot more than a little slice of eastern Ukraine. But then again I suppose Turkey was never likely to ditch Nato anyway.

From what I remember, the situation in Syria was:

- Turkey supported the Islamist rebels as long as possible and hates the Kurds
- the rest of NATO supported the Kurds and the other rebels who kept the atrocities off the teevee and kept the names "ISIS" and "Al-Quaida" off their propaganda
- Russia supported the Syrian government because Russia really values having a friendly country in the Mediterranean and does not care if that government murders and tortures a city or two

So the Turkish government is on bad terms with both Russia and NATO right now.  Before Erdogan Turkey wanted to join the EU, and its still nominally part of NATO, but it and NATO supported opposite sides in Syria.

For all the vague noise in newspapers about the Russians besieging Kyiv or closing in on the city from north, east, and south, This map shows just the column from Belarus having penetrated close to the city. 

I don't know what to make of Putin saying he invaded Ukraine to demilitarize and denatzify the country on Thursday, then calling for the Ukrainian military to overthrow its government on Friday. 

453

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022

« on: February 25, 2022, 02:39:36 AM »

I'm still honestly just frozen up at the whole thing. I find it really hard to know what to say or do at these times: as a political activist and a historian interested in the wider region I don't feel I should be silent, but I'm also very far from an expert so it's hard to know what's best to say or not say, especially in more publicly-read locations.

Well, paying attention and not adding to the noise on social media is worth something.  And at least, judging by preliminary reports, the first day of this war is not a bad day (although the future of Ukrainians in a war or under Putin's control is very worrying).  Ukraine is claiming that 137 soldiers and civilians have been killed, and in a war like this that is a small butcher's bill.  Its possible that Russia is holding back some of its ground troops while it bombs every Ukrainian base, vehicle park, and command post it can find and the full offensive will come when it thinks Ukrainian forces can no longer communicate or maneuver.

And yes, this seems likely to tilt sentiment in Ukraine towards the EU and away from Russia even if Putin can put a puppet government in Kyiv.

This appears to be a small, online-only paper in Kyiv https://kyivindependent.com/

454

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022

« on: February 24, 2022, 08:34:49 PM »

Yes, I would see that as a third possible outcome but unlikely.  My understanding is that politically Ukraine is a lot like Russia was in the 1990s, its a democracy but the national government exists to keep a few well-connected people rich.  That is one major reason why Ukraine is so poor, but I don't think the government is so unpopular that the military will fall apart.

Canada has shamefully evacuated its embassy from Lviv.  The Guardian has printed an opinion piece saying that "Britain must show its steel" which is a lot easier than explaining what Britain should do when another nuclear power has invaded a country 1,000 km away the only access to which is through the federated Europe the UK has noisily separated from and through Turkish waters.

My rolodex is completely empty of people competent to comment on modern conflicts, and experts on Ukraine.  The only two things I can say are this.  War is the most unpredictable things people do, that is why the ancients said it was in the realm of the gods.  And there is no cheat code that Russia can use to make counterinsurgency or urban conflict end in a quick and clear victory.  Ukraine is close to Russia and the Ukrainians speak a language pretty similar to Russian, but taking defended cities is hard and suppressing an insurgency is hard.

455

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022

« on: February 24, 2022, 07:59:41 AM »

Well, I was wrong.

I think the next thing to see will be whether Russian forces have enough of an advantage in skill and equipment to smash through Ukrainian forces with less than a thousand dead (I don't think they have greater numbers deployed than the post-2014 Ukrainian military).  That will determine whether this is a horrible grinding conventional war, or a horrible grinding insurgency.

456

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Canadian Politics 2022

« on: February 20, 2022, 10:35:34 PM »

By Sunday 20 February, the truck protest outside the house of parliament in Ottawa seems to have melted away (CBC).  Only 191 people were arrested, whereas about 1200 people have been arrested so far in the Fairy Creek logging protest.  Police had to be brought from as far as Vancouver!  The secretive camp in a parking lot remains but is smaller.  The vote on Monday 21 February confirming the invocation of the federal Emergencies Act is almost sure to pass (Liberals and NDP in favour, Tories and Bloc against)

In a classic case of crank magnetism or grifters seeking a new grift, Jordan Peterson is speaking at something called the 2022 bitcoin conference https://coinsnews.com/jordan-peterson-has-been-confirmed-as-a-speaker-at-the-2022-bitcoin-conference

An indigenous nation in BC says that their GoFundMe to build a longhouse on wheels was shut down after crowdfunding accounts and bank accounts (!) associated with the truck protests were frozen https://nitter.net/git_hetxwit/status/1494495062029266947#m

Edit: Oh, and on 22 Feb, People's Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier plead not guilty to violating COVID protections at rallies in Manitoba in 2021 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/maxime-bernier-to-plead-not-guilty-to-covid-19-charges-1.6360363

457

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022

« on: February 20, 2022, 05:34:24 PM »

A lot of coverage does not seem to observe that the dictator of Belarus has been struggling to keep control in the face of nonviolent resistance for the past year or two.  Remember when Belarusian forces forced down an airliner containing an opposition journalist in May 2021?  (Just like the USA forced down an Ecuadorian diplomatic flight in 2013). 

Russia often sends troops to support allied regimes against popular protests, as in Syria.  So one reading of the Russian troops in Belarus is that they were sent to keep Lukashenko in power.

Edit: someone shared this link to an opinion piece in Belarussian Pravda https://belprauda.com/budni-soyuznoj-reshimosti-2022/  That is a paper which a US project recorded during the 2020 Belarusian election, so it least it has not been put up in the past few months.

Military exercise "Allied Dexterity - 2022" on the territory of Belarus will definitely be included in the annals of Belarusian history. If not for the number of military personnel who take part in them, then at least for the opportunism ("pofigism") of its participants relative to both themselves, and "surrounding" which is our country.

...

In addition to disease, among the locals there is fear, and not even of war, but first, of the occupation, because no matter how much they say that the Russian military will leave the country at the end of the exercise, there are still doubts about this.

• COVID Omicron spreads rapidly and fills the field hospitals
• Russian soldiers are getting drunk, raping, and stealing.  People are afraid to go to the police.
• Belarussians are worried about all the non-Slavic minorities in Russian forces
• Russian armoured vehicles are destroying the roads
• Vast amounts of wood are being cut down for fuel and building of the camps, including from parks and beauty spots
• At Kharkopkovka in the Gomel region, some Russian soldiers "of Asian appearance" were found passed out and frostbitten after getting drunk on moonshine.
• The Russian soldiers are not well fed, and while some are stealing or extorting better food, others are selling fuel, uniforms, and possibly weapons and writing them off as "expended during the exercises."

So further Russian incursions into Ukraine would be monumentally stupid and destructive, but there is plenty of both in world politics.

Edit: Dr. Jeremy Morris in Aarhus has this take from the end of January https://postsocialism.org/2022/01/29/if-russia-invades-ukraine-again/  See also his essays on who writes and comment on Russi (mostly people sponsored directly or indirectly by Russian or NATO intelligence and armed services) "Russia coverage on Twitter is dominated by Washington DC policy types who may not be frauds (although some of them are), but who often have a very narrow, and second-hand, knowledge of Russia the country, and Russia the diverse population, as opposed to Russia the foreign policy problem. I’ve written about ‘imperial’ hierarchies of knowledge production before here. ... These issues pertain just as much to ‘natives’. There are plenty of Russian Russia experts who have long had a comfortable DC or US media gig and who have a weak direct grasp on events. Just as much as others, they are vulnerable to bad takes due to the secondary, or belated sources of their analysis. Another hobbyhorse of mine is the extreme self-selection and self-reproduction of this group: in the main they are privileged Russian liberals who are often the last people to ask about the diversity of Russia itself. Think for a moment about who can and who can’t up-sticks and move to the US, regardless of the level of repression in Russia.  ... If the first elephant is the clear leveraging of latent public sympathy abroad for the Russian regime by our friends at the English-language offices of RT, then the other elephant is the continuing relevance of academic and think-tank contacts with the security services in the West."

458

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022

« on: February 19, 2022, 10:33:16 PM »

pushing into Ukraine would allow Russia to use the Dnieper and other major rivers as a defensive western border from potential land invasion whilst also securing fresh water supply to the Crimea, which itself has immense strategic value as a base for naval power in the black sea.

But who on earth could possibly invade Russia from the west?  First, Russia has atomic weapons, and second, Russia has large and well-trained conventional forces.  As far as I know, the only power which could do it would be the United States, and first they would never get buy-in from the EU and Turkey, and second they are trying to focus on their long-term encirclement of China by withdrawing from Europe and the Arab world.  Gwynne Dyer laid out the issue in the oughties: the USA can see that its position as sole superpower is crumbling as India and China grow economically, so it does what great powers in that situation do and launches a series of far-fetched aggressive gambles.  Invading Iraq with a small army was supposed to intimidate the middle powers like Iran, while at the same time the USA was busy building an anti-Chinese alliance around the Pacific rim.

The Russian seizure of the Crimea and de-facto seizure of the Donbas sort of made sense in an old-fashioned kind of way, but invading central Ukraine would just cut off Russia's markets and get it entangled in a giant bloody war.

459

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022

« on: February 18, 2022, 05:39:02 PM »

Here is one of Gwynne Dyer's columns on the crisis in 2014.

Hilariously, I am told there are in fact many neo-Nazis in Ukraine and the Ukranian diaspora in Canada.  That is as ridiculous as the Greek Neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn (how many Greeks did the Nazis shoot, starve, work to death, or gas?) but its a mad world.  Otto Wächter and his inoffensive son Horst Arthur Wächter in Austria are good names to look up.

Edit: One problem interpreting the jingoism in the US and UK media is that Russia's invasions of Ukraine are exactly as illegal and dangerous as the US and UK's invasion of Iraq.  And the US's problems with Russia and China have nothing to do with how they treat their own people (see US policy towards Israel and Saudi Arabia and the dictatorship in Egypt), and everything to do with old-fashioned great power rivalries.  So its very hard to find anyone I trust to comment and not just spout propaganda.  For what it's worth, Gwynne Dyer has been skeptical that Russia plans to invade Ukraine (although as he warns, you don't get your money back if he is wrong).

460

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Canadian Politics 2022

« on: February 14, 2022, 06:56:02 PM »

Because of the police's abdication of responsibility to enforce the law or clear out the protestors, residents of Ottawa have started to form their own blockades against motorcades heading to the protests.  The following writeup is from a web magazine with a red star in its logo, so YMMV:

a group of dog-walkers and moms organized themselves on social media and then set up a blockade at Riverside and Bank Streets, one of the major routes into the parliamentary precinct from the main highway. It started with about 20 people before 9am, and by noon there were more than 200 people blocking a line of flag-flying pickup trucks that stretched back hundreds of metres. Many of the participants were white-haired seniors, and many of them were women. Another human blockade set up in front of police headquarters on Elgin Street, stopping traffic coming off the highway there.

I got to Riverside after 2pm and by then there were about a thousand of us blocking the road, swarming in amongst the stopped traffic, blasting dance music through a portable PA, and generally feeling like finally we were starting to take something back. I’m told that the police initially tried to negotiate with the blockade to allow the trucks to pass, and when nobody would budge, said to them: “If you don’t move, how does this end?” As you can imagine, after having gone through two and half weeks of far-right hooligans dug in on Parliament Hill, and literally everybody in the country asking that very question, this did not go over super well with my neighbours. Nobody budged and the crowd continued to swell as word spread.
...
Sometime after 4pm, after being caught in the blockade for more than seven hours and with the sun starting to set, we began to allow the pickup trucks to leave one by one, on condition that they surrender their flags and jerry cans and remove the convoy decals from their vehicles.

One thing I don't understand is why the Ottawa police don't have the capacity to hotwire a truck?  Or why its so hard to just arrest the truck owners, take their keys, and move the trucks out of downtown at their own expense.  The number of big trucks is not huge, most of the protestors' vehicles are pickup trucks.  The response to this protest has been much more peaceful and hands-off than the response to protests by First Nations and environmentalists in BC, or the treatment of reporters trying to document those protests and the police response.

Edit: on 14 February 2022, Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act.  So far he does not plan to deploy the military. So we are about to see whether the RCMP can crush a protest of righty whities with the same enthusiasm they use against lefties and First Nations.

The RCMP have arrested a group at the border blockade in Alberta who they say were equipped with body armour, long guns, and illegal high-capacity magazines.

Edit: Four of the group have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder aside from their firearms charges.  So the RCMP's story is that something very worrisome was planned.

Edit: in his statement on the arrests in Alberta, Premier Jason Kenney has a take on why the police have been slow to act:

Let's be clear: there have been tens of thousands of Canadians involved in various protests in the past several weeks, and I am sure that the vast majority of them are law-abiding and peaceful Canadians.  But we now know, at Coutts, following an exhaustive investigation from the RCMP, is that there is, at least in that case, a small cell of people who wanted to take this in a very dangerous and dark direction.  ... There's been a lot of efforts to politicize the situation at Coutts, demanding immediate enforcement over the recent days.  I understand that expectation, but it was important for the government to work with the RCM to avoid further inflaming the situation until they could address the security risk posed by that potentially violent cell group.  This is deeply concerning and I think it should send a message to all the other folks who were not aware of that cell. 

Edit: on 15 February, Ottawa's chief of police announced his resignment.

461

Tabletop Games - The Game Room / Re: Economics of Publishing

« on: February 14, 2022, 02:38:52 AM »

I'd be curious about the COVID impact on recent numbers though - I imagine sellers of physical games that require physical groups of players will have suffered badly compared to online/remote stuff.

My statement about the low earnings of SJG's RPGs and higher earnings of Munchkin is based on their reports, and statements by staffing, for the past 15 years.  For the past five years or so, their flagship RPG has one full-time employee who can barely afford a shared apartment in Montreal.

Playing RPGs over video or audio chat was popular 15 years ago, and it exploded since.  Critical Role is one of the many podcasts and vlogs of people playing tabletop RPGs together.

Edit: I know several other small RPG companies which are one or two people plus contract workers such as Gaming Ballistic and the Taylor Corporation.  I think game designers today are often 'migrant workers,' working on a roleplaying game full-time for six months or a year then moving on to something else then coming back after a few years to write some adventure modules or a splatbook.

462

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Canadian Politics 2022

« on: February 10, 2022, 07:37:39 PM »

Three responses to the truck protest in Ottawa: interim CPC leader Candice Bergen asks the protestors to leave, flailing Alberta premier and former anti-gay-rights campaigner Jason Kenny 'accidentally' compared the unvaccinated to stigmatized AIDS patients in the 1980s, and the police chief of Ottawa seems to have given up on controlling the protest.  (He wants the government to call in the Canadian Armed Forces).

At the end of January, the death rate from COVID in my province was about 1 per 100,000 per week.  In the USA it was more like 4 per 100,000!

So far, the only declared candidate for CPC chief is Pierre Poilievre.  He grew up in Saskatchewan and went to the University of Calgary, so he may lean "Reform" over "Progressive Conservative."

The inquiry into the mass shooting at Portapique will start in late February.

463

Tabletop Games - The Game Room / Economics of Publishing

« on: February 07, 2022, 11:43:39 PM »

One of the things which fascinates me about RPGs is that they show how publishing works terribly as a capitalist enterprise.  Steve Jackson Games' annual report to the stakeholders reminded me of the issue.

Roughly ballparking things they have said over the years, SJG earns ~$300k/yr selling RPGs and ~$1m/yr selling card game Munchkin which make fun of RPGs and pop culture franchises.  Twitch says it pays the Critical Role vlog $5m/yr for their videos of celebrities playing RPGs (about as much as SJG earns from all its tabletop games and publications combined).  So there is no money in actually making the RPGs, but a lot in pop culture about RPG culture.

Nonfiction books have the same issue: writing a really good factual book does not predictable pay better than a rushed-together one.  The problem is that to evaluate the worth of information, you need that information (whereas I can evaluate a widget without owning it, and someone can use information about the widget to decide whether to buy it).

Further Reading: The Economics of Publishing (2018)

Ben Riggs, Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons and Dragons (2022) https://www.amazon.com/Slaying-Dragon-History-Dungeons-Dragons/dp/125027804X

Jon Peterson, Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons by (MIT Press, 2021)

464

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Canadian Politics 2022

« on: February 05, 2022, 07:38:34 PM »

We are definitely watching when Boris will get tossed out.  Anyone who replaces him will be an ugly person too, but at least he will be out of Number 10.

One issue for the Conservative leadership contest in Canada is that the last one was in 2020, then there was the election in 2021.  Because Canada restricts political donations, and its hard to hold the traditional face-to-face events in a Canadian winter during the COVID pandemic, some potential candidates may have trouble raising funds.

One confusing issue is that the truck protests coincide with many Canadian provinces rushing to end public health measures.  I doubt that the anti-maskers will get what they want, but the anti-vaxxers may well see an end of the requirement of proof of vaccination to attend many kinds of events.  These changes seem to be a mix of evidence-based (its not clear that being vaccinated makes you less likely to transmit Omicron), ideological (SAVE THE ECONOMY - ENDEMIC ENDEMIC ENDEMIC), and political (everyone has their own folk model of COVID, and their own preferences about which activities are worth the risk).

465

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Canadian Politics 2022

« on: February 04, 2022, 04:14:29 AM »

O'Toole was, if I recall, tacking a bit more centrist. Does this defeat mean that the Can-Cons are likely to veer right in how they present themselves?

That is an interesting difference, though - the UK Tories are generally the best of the parties at maintaining discipline in the ranks (with the possible exception at Westminster of the SNP, who are very disciplined too AFAICT). If UK Conservatives start breaking ranks in large numbers, it's a sign that the party is probably about to go into a major internal crisis.

O'Toole did a classic "appeal to the base to get nominated, then tack to the centre to try to win an election."  Parts of the Conservative base seemed quite upset that he did not push their pet causes.

The social conservative part of the Conservative base seems angry, as does the part influenced by US right-wing politics.  The problem is that "abortion, LGBT ideology, oppressive lockdowns, and liberty-destroying passports for abortion-tainted vaccines" (as a spokesman for the Campaign Life Coalition describes them) are pretty popular in Canada.  Likewise, their opposition to putting a price on GHG emissions puts the Conservative core membership outside the Canadian mainstream.  I don't know anything about their interim leader Candice Bergen. 

Canada has an affordable-housing crisis which is easy to blame on scary foreigners (the problem is that older Canadians who tend to own homes vote and write letters, so any policy to drive down housing prices faces heavy opposition).  Just like in other countries there is some unsettlement about the new ideas about gender and race which are being pushed by the Toronto media.  Old Media and the liberals have been using division about pandemic policy.  Its easy to present vaccines as a simple fix, then present the unvaccinated as the causes of everyone's troubles and not fellow Canadians who have often been misled by some very sophisticated, unscrupulous people.  The federal Liberal and CBC message on the truck protests has been that they are all far-right extremists who can never be spoken to, rather than a mix of ordinary right-wing activists and a few very hateful people.  This may drive some people who disagree with the Liberals on pandemic policy farther right. 

(OTOH, the truckers who wave banners saying "F**** Trudeau" are also confused about the difference between activism and clickbait - like him or not, Trudeau is in charge of the government whose policy they want to change).

I think a harder-right version of the federal Conservatives would focus on blaming the troubles of renters and resource workers on someone who does not vote in Canada, on opposing state action to shore up indigenous and visual minority rights, on opposing the idea of gender as identity, and on talking about how public health policy should be based on individual freedom.  But it really depends on who they chose as leader and which of that leader's gambits seem to get traction.