It's impossible to not get affected even if you are paid in foreign currencies. As the economy spirals down, everything gets heavily taxed by the government trying to save itself (and only itself).
So the price increases are MORE than the devaluation of the currency itself, which is extremely devaluated already.
That number will probably be much more than 73% if normalized to actual purchasing power.
For example: I could fill my car's tank ~550₺ (Turkish Lira) around October.
Last month, it was ~1600₺. There are tons of more examples, and without any actual production in the country, I don't see any bright future here.
Everyone who has at least very basic education and comprehension skills knows he's the 100% reason of it. (Some are just evil and still at his side, but let's forget it for a moment)
But, there is a lot of corruption and there's about ~30% of the population which is exteremely uneducated and/or under Stockholm Syndrome and still supporting him.
That percentage + cheating in elections + telling "the west is the reason" keeps him in power.
> But, there is a lot of corruption and there's about ~30% of the population which is exteremely uneducated and/or under Stockholm Syndrome and still supporting him.
Sorry, while I'm far (very far) from being a fan of Erdogan. I take a distance quickly when I read someone talking like this about their own people. From experience (from another 3rd world country) we have people that say the exact same words, and they're the most ignorant people on the local politics but they think they are superior and they know better because they are "liberal" and they follow the foreign (usually western) press but they keep loosing most of their political fights because they only see from very narrow angle. I'm not implying you're like that, I just want to say that this is dangerous way of thinking on the local politics of most countries.
You might be right on your specific case, I can't speak of your condition.
But if you were here and see the big picture and how gullible his supporters are you'd probably be at my side.
The opposition (CHP) is liberal yet is definitely very powerless and bad at politics, but I vote for it because that's the only party that is a threat to Erdoğan's party (AKP).
In short, I position myself as liberal and agree with the fact that liberals are sometimes lost in their own echo chamber of feeling superior, yet I don't vote for the liberalist party because that I'm liberal. I vote for it because that's the only possible opposition that can win majority against Erdoğan's party.
If there was a conservative party that would threat the current regime, I'd vote that even as a liberal. There is one (İYİ Party) but their votes are far too low currently to be a threat against AKP.
Is the 73% inflation number true? Experts say it is more like 156%.
"The Inflation Research Group (ENAG), an independent group of academics and economists working on key data that map economic performance, however, on Thursday said the country’s month-on-month consumer prices rose 8.68 percent, while annual inflation jumped to 156.86 percent in April."
It's interesting to see the 30% pop up again in this context. That is roughly the percent who are Trump supporters in the US and there are similar fears that with various voting impediments and fraud that is enough to win.
Are there other populations where the 30% figure holds up in this context?
In Poland, the right-wing populist party that is basically buying votes with money also has 30% that is more or less stable in spite of numerous scandals, glaring incompetence in almost everything they touch, supporting Putin's team (Le Pen, Orban, etc.), publicly lying on numerous occasions (the prime ministers has been convicted of lying, so you can legally call him a liar) and so on. In spite of all this, they can still count on their 30%, mostly because they took over state media and entered into alliance with the Catholic Church which is still strong in villages and smaller towns, especially in the east.
In theory no, they have election and he / his party has lost elections "recently", notably the mayoral election in ankara and istanbul. He even cancelled and ordered the redo of one of those elections because he didn't like the result (in a not so legal way), but his party still lost it and they did let the transition of power happen.
In practice the fairness of national elections are in doubt, but more importantly Erdogan willingness to leave office if he loses is the big unknown. Given that he has purged all institutions, including the army, to only have his people everywhere, what happens if he refuses could go from Trump "but at the end he still had to go because enough people kept their sanity" all the way to lukashenko "and then he stopped pretending there were elections".
Until Erdogan came to power, Turkey was arguably more democratic and more secular than the US. In recent decades whenever Turkey occasionally got a leader who began to act too Islamist or too dictatorial, the army would stage a coup, toss the rascal out, and restore democratic rule. This happened in 2016 but for the first time since Ataturk, the coup failed (badly!) and Erdogan emerged even more powerful. I worry for the future of Turkey.
Turkey was actually going through the process of joining the EU. It was Turkey that stopped the process, not the EU.
Besides, Turkish immigrants are very unlikely to cause real issues in the EU. I will concede that they may cause some imaginary problem and upset some people.
We're already dealing with it. In Greece gas prices have reached €2,3/litre. Inflation is north of 10% and rising. Electricity costs have more than doubled and caused a lot of political stir. If this goes on for months it's more than likely there would be civic unrest.
I could. I'm (relatively luckily, I admit) living in the most modern-minded minority in Turkey and have fully remote software jobs paid in dollars. That + having all my family, many friends here and some hobbies/lifestyle that would be hard/impossible if I moved, outweigh the advantages of migrating for now.
"There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." - John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919.
Keynes wrote that to warn about the risk of inflation in Germany and its potential consequences -- years before high rates of inflation led to the failure of the German mark, the collapse of the Weimar republic, the rise of dangerous ideologues (the Nazis), and ultimately, World War II.
If Turkey doesn't get inflation under control, it will implode.
As far as I understand Erdogan created the situation himself and fired everybody who would disagree. I don’t think he plans to get the inflation under control.
The world is extremely complex and it's very hard to model in a lab or a computer. Economists due to this have a very hard job. Sometimes they get it right but it's not surprising their models have high errors of margin.
Venezuela is not only almost completely dependent on oil exports (extreme price fluctuations) but it's also not agriculturally self sufficient. It's not the only country with those problems, and they're not insurmountable problems, but it requires good economic planning to be able to handle downturns in those conditions, something Venezuela didn't have.
Argentina, on the other hand, has somewhat more varied exports (though soy and corn products are a large portion) and is agriculturally self sufficient. Unlike Venezuela, which had a "export oil, import everything else" mentality, Argentina has a large degree of economic protectionism and so they do have other sectors to help supply domestic demand to some degree.
There's obviously many other factors, but those are the largest ones in my opinion.
Argentina is blessed with natural resources and vast fertile land. It is perhaps the second best piece of geography in the world in terms of natural resources and fertile land after America
The mystery is why it doesn’t grow, not why it doesn’t collapse. Inflation is a beast if people can’t get enough food. But Argentina has never had much of a problem in that respect
There are some who argue Argentina would face massive social unrest if it weren't for it's welfare programs.
"Benítez is one of millions of Argentines who survive largely thanks to soup kitchens and state welfare programs, many of which are funneled through politically powerful social movements linked to the ruling party. Almost a third of Argentine households are estimated to receive some kind of social assistance."
> If Turkey doesn't get inflation under control, it will implode.
Their geopolitical significance and NATO membership will prevent this from happening even at the cost of cementing Erdgodan's power. There is also sizable community of Turks economically anchored in Germany.
>Keynes wrote that to warn about the risk of inflation in Germany and its potential consequences -- years before high rates of inflation led to the failure of the German mark, the collapse of the Weimar republic, the rise of dangerous ideologues (the Nazis), and ultimately, World War II.
>If Turkey doesn't get inflation under control, it will implode.
As others have told you, Turkey and other countries have seen very high inflation rates for years/decades without collapsing.
Your history of Germany isn't correct, either. The hyperinflation that afflicted Germany in the early 1920s did hurt the Weimar Republic and caused a lot of chaos, but it didn't collapse. Yes, the Nazis were born during the chaotic years, but it remained insignificant as the Weimar government reined in inflation. By the late 1920s Germany was growing again and showed every sign of again becoming Europe's industrial leader. The Nazis took power in 1933, during the worldwide economic depression.
Turkish banks still have foreign currency accounts and its not being confiscated by government in any way (so far). Exhcnage rates from EUR / USD to Turkish Lira is generally extremely close to FX rate. Ziraat exchange rate is better than one of Wise when markets are open..
And for those in Turkey who worry about economy and banks failing there are crypto exchange on every corner. You can turn USDT into USD cash and other way around for 2-3% fee.
I would guess confiscation (forced replacement with lira) is not that many steps ahead. The trigger would likely be if the government sees people starting to move their foreign currency accounts out of the country.
This is already being applied to companies selling to foreign countries. As soon as you receive your payment you are forced to convert to TRY. You have to kind of immediately convert back to foreign currency and take the exchange markup and fees hit if you hope to be able to get new raw materials. Very few materials can be sourced locally. You also cannot enter contracts with foreign currency domestically anymore. The government has done almost everything save for flat out banning foreign currencies.
Keep in mind that the Turkish government is planning to heavily regulate the crypto market too. I remember reading that they were going to require a license for companies operating in the crypto market, and forbid transfers outside of licensed operators, which makes the whole idea kinda moot (unless you're in for the speculation), since at that you might as well just keep your money in the bank.
On the other side, I remember seeing one Bitcoin ATM in Istanbul.
Where exactly in Turkey are you? In Istanbul and Antalya they're literally everywhere. There are no less crypto exchanges than money transfer points like Western Union.
I’m in Bursa currently, bought gold in the old Bazar today, I was in Istanbul last week. Perhaps I’m blind but I’m pretty sure I would notice Bitcoin logos if I was seeing them.
I’ll look more closely when I’m back in Istanbul. I wonder if it is focused on tourist areas or locations? I’m living as average Turk not currently in tourist focused areas.
Yes. He has polls done very frequently and is famous for saying/doing one thing today and exactly the opposite the next day. However all he cares about is staying in power. He will not reverse course in economy or anything else unless it effects his chances of getting reelected. His being a candidate in the next election is not even constitutionally allowed but we do not talk about these kinds of irrelevant details.
I agree this is not his main concern, but it's surprising how much dictators care about public opinion, and how much they pay attention to the press, education, and culture.
It's as if they knew their system was fragile, and they can't let any small thing fall out of place, otherwise an immediate danger would be posed.
Like I said. If the elections happen on time he cannot even be a presidential candidate. This is due to term limits in the constitution that he himself passed with a referendum. They'll probably argue semantics and claim he can be a candidate. They have never discussed this in public yet.
The other option is if the parliament decides to have early elections which requires opposition parties to vote in that direction too - which they might. The constitution allows him to be a candidate in this case. They might just do it. There are examples of them doing dumb things or maybe they are colluding with him. Who knows.
If he can't run, any other AKP candidate has basically zero chance of being elected.
He and central bank Gov. Sahap Kavcioglu believe this is the peak and inflation will begin declining to near 43 percent by the end of the year and single digits by end of 2024 “thanks to a gradual decrease in supply-demand mismatches and disruptions in supply chains, in addition to the results of the steps taken for price stability” (remarks from central bank governor last month).
Country that had high inflation forever blames Covid supply chain disruptions and "supply-demand mismatches". It doesn't help but it's not the problem either.
He's old, autocratic and in power, also hugely trying to appeal to the (rural) "believers" ...so I don't think so... I think you have to be a special kind of honest when being a believer to admit you may be wrong.... and besides power is hugely corrupting, maybe a lot of the problem is patriarchy... I mean women are so beautiful they represent a danger (vulnerability ) to the hold men in general have on power...
Funny how many young expat Turkish men in Germany seem to admire him (sad too) but that's anecdotal
It’s not like everyone else is chilling with the current inflation running wild. True, Turkey had a lot of inflation before the whole war thing, but that was due to an atrocious monetary policy, with rampant nepotism on Erdogan’s behalf.
Sanctions have to hurt to be effective. Europe foolishly integrated with the Russian energy economy in the 80s. We are rightfully reversing course on that mistake, but doing so inherently involves substantial pain. But not willing to pay the price is a furtherance of Russia's power, control, and mass murder of Ukrainians.
While true, I think it’s the wrong criticism in this case, as the necessity of hurt has to be at the target of the sanctions rather than at the one imposing them.
Rather:
The sanctions that appeared after the Russian annexation of Crimea were the painless ones. The current situation is so much worse for EU interests that the EU feels it needs to demonstrate that it is willing to experience at least some discomfort in order to prevent Russian aggression.
> EU feels it needs to demonstrate that it is willing to experience at least some discomfort in order to prevent Russian aggression.
The problem here is... are we really stopping the conflict by eg. banning import of russian oil? Russia is just exporting it to eg. India and China, them having cheaper oil is making their economies stronger, russia still gets the money, and europes economy is going down. So, we're hurting our economy to not hurt the russian one while helping china and india.
Nowhere near the same volume. Not the least because the infrastructure to transport this oil in volume aren’t there.
I don’t think sanctions will make Russia stop the war, the only thing that will is a large enough flow of dead soldiers coming back home. But it will impact its ability to finance this war, its military capabilities (replace hardware), and potentially (though not clear to me), create opinion backlash in Russia.
Nobody should want war, war is hell for all who see it up close, even when it’s the only way to keep your friends and family safe from a greater horror; yet from this far away, the only thing I fear is that Russian nukes might not be as badly maintained as their tanks.
There's no pipelines from Russia to India and China. Russia has to ship the oil. That's way more expensive, and there's just no infrastructure for that right now.
There is actually a gas pipeline from Russia to China, it's near capacity, and extending it would be a major undertaking, which is planned but will take a decade or so.
How many piplines do we (EU) have from other countries that will provide us oil, after we totally stop importing it from russia? Won't the price hike hurt us too, possible even more than russia?
There are no pipelines that cross the EU's external border that transport crude oil from outside the EU into the EU, except the ones that are fed from Russia.
Before the UK left the EU, there was technically one such pipeline from Norway, but it was mainly used to supply an oil export terminal located in the UK, rather than for importing oil into the UK for domestic consumption.
Europe expects to rely on sea transport to import oil after foregoing use of oil from the Russian pipelines. This is why the landlocked countries of Hungary, Czechia, and Slovakia were concerned during the sanction talks, though Hungary's Orban has exaggerated the concern to obstruct sanctions and/or to score dubious Realpolitik points.
Hungary's only alternative is the Adria pipeline that starts at a port in Croatia; it can be used in either direction and has sufficient capacity to meet current demands. Czechia's only alternative is the IKL pipeline that starts at a pipeline junction and tank farm in Vohburg (near Ingolstadt) in Germany. Slovakia's only alternative (if my research is accurate) is to be supplied through Hungary, using the Adria pipeline and a soviet-era connection between Hrkovce and Százhalombatta to be run in reverse mode.
You need to be extremely careful with what you mean by “hurt” when you want to compare the economies of EU and Russia.
The EU has about 10x the nominal GDP of Russia. Is a 10% contraction of the EU for one year equivalent to the entire Russian population reverting to subsistence farming for a year?
But they're not subsistence farming, they're doing the stuff they did before, export their stuff to countries like india and china, and buying stuff from them too. Replacing their iphone with a Xiaomi/Huawei phone will hurt them a lot less, than possible power outages and no heat will hurt us. If we read between the lines, we're also at the brink of a massive food crisis (wheat and fertilizers + of course fuel cost) that russians have enough of.
I’m talking hypothetically: The economic cost to the EU is also not 10%, but would you consider those two costs — hypothetical 10% EU recession and hypothetical Russia reduced to subsistence farming — to be equal?
Also: I should’ve thought of this before, but cost to each party isn’t the right metric — it’s what does the EU gain at what cost to the EU (and likewise for each party), so the question is probably more like:
Q1) does this situation look like a warmongering power trying to rebuilding a lost empire? If so, what’s the cost of sitting back and doing nothing?
A1) let’s say p=0.1, €3T/year
Q2) [insert more hypotheticals, probability estimates, and costs here, a real analysis wouldn’t fit in a comment]
Finally: multiply the chances by the costs, add them all up, that’s what it makes sense for the EU pay.
> If we read between the lines, we're also at the brink of a massive food crisis
We’re not even close to that, despite the breathless headlines and the fact the Russian forces interfered with a significant quantity of food production and are blockading the ports that would normally export it from Ukraine.
Hell, even the UK isn’t that screwed and they’re short of farm hands to pick crops and vets to certify the abattoirs because of Brexit.
Russia produces enough food, that we (=rest of europe) have problems if they don't export it and not vice-versa, they also have enough oil/gas, that again, we have problems, if they don't export it, they also have most of the raw materials available locally plus a lot of companies that produce everything needed for basic infrastructure.
They're also friendly with countries like china and india for the rest of the things they need, and have gas to export/sell to them to be able to pay for all that stuff.
I'm more afraid that Janez and Hans and Pierre will have to pick up crops to survive, and not Boris.
> Hell, even the UK isn’t that screwed and they’re short of farm hands to pick crops and vets to certify the abattoirs because of Brexit.
And it's funny, because this is a purely economical issue... pay more and you'll get workers to do the work for you. You cannot pay romanian paychecks to british workers.
You’re still missing the point of “hypothetical”. It’s not a word I’d gotten around to learning the German for before writing this comment despite moving to Berlin in 2018, so as you’ve indicated you’re from the Balkans, I’m wondering if you know what I mean by it?
I’m not asking you to judge the likelihood of two things, nor their consequences, I’m asking you to tell me if you think they are equivalent. Does A=B, where A is a 10% recession, etc.
> Russia produces enough food, that we (=rest of europe) have problems if they don't export
False.
Russia exported €1.8 billion agricultural products to the EU last year:
The EU agriculture sector is about 1.5% of its $US 17,000 billion nominal GDP, i.e. $US 255 billion nominal, which at current exchange rates is €237 billion, or to put it another way, what it gets from Russia is 0.75% by value of what it makes itself.
I’m old enough to remember when the EU’s biggest problem was colossal over-production of food, and it’s agricultural policy being called a market-distorting subsidy.
This is also backed up by EU countries having access to more food per person than Russia. Not that it matters because both are about 1000 kcal/day higher than actually needed: https://ourworldindata.org/food-supply (because, in case you skimmed over the bit at the top, hypotheticals about what constitutes “equal harm”).
> they also have enough oil/gas, that again, we have problems, if they don't export it
Yes (hence Hungary realpolitik), but not insurmountable problems, and we should be moving away from those fuels anyway even without this war.
> they also have most of the raw materials available locally plus a lot of companies that produce everything needed for basic infrastructure.
Define “basic infrastructure”.
Then ask yourself why Russian tank production halted.
> have gas to export/sell to them to be able to pay for all that stuff.
Not on the scale they need to keep their economy running.
> pay more and you'll get workers to do the work for you.
Vets are licensed. The number required is greater than all of the ones in the UK.
As for crops, the farmers have tried this and get basically no takers. Can they try again for even more money? Only if the supermarket are willing to pay more for the food, which requires the customers to be willing to pay more for the food, which they can’t because too many are already short of money.
> are we really stopping the conflict by eg. banning import of russian oil?
I wouldn’t know.
But I can say the fungibility (or not) of oil is necessarily equivalent for both importers and exporters.
Consider the implications if it were trivial to change markets: Russia losing X units of exports per year to the EU and increasing exports to China and India by a total of X, means China and India are buying X fewer units from not-Russia, which means the EU could buy X more units on the everyone-else marketplace.
They can't get the oil, because there are not any (additional) pipelines. They can't really ship the oil, because there's not enough (additional) capacity to do that. Most tankers can't get insured and only smaller tankers can transit ports available to Russia (or they have to transfer oil mid ocean). As a result Turkey, India, and China will get marginally more 10-30% cheaper oil from Russia, but that pushes their imports from the middle east down... which lowers prices in Europe!
Realistically, Turkey China and India are mostly exporters. When Europe and the US go into recession, they won't need as much oil because they won't be exporting as much (they are the dominant importers)... and that likely means that Russia turns off wells when their storage fills up (soon). Those wells are slow to restart. The rest of OPEC replaces their oil (at somewhat higher prices) for the next few years.
What is an immediate concern is food, oil, and fertilizer not being exported from Ukraine (can't plant/harvest or ship) for much of the developing world. Turkey, Egypt, Sri Lanka... Sudan are all very dependent on wheat, sunflower oil, and fertilizer from eastern Ukraine. Even India will be quite affected. See how evil EU starves the poor! Only beautiful Russia can save them!
I don't think the EU is simply trying to signal willingness to experience discomfort. I don't know if you intended it, but your phrasing gives me the impression that you think the they are choosing a specific level of discomfort merely for show.
This seems wrong. 1) Russia cannot be penalized to any great degree with it producing negative consequences. Though I'm open to being wrong in this, and would entertain ideas about alternative sanctions that would penalize Russia equally without being uncomfortable. And 2) The discomfort is a function of EU tying itself too closely to Russia, something about which it was warned repeatedly over the decades even by some of its own members. The discomfort here is not merely necessary to penalize Russia, but also to remedy reliance on a Russian government wielding that clout as a license to act just as it is acting now in the Ukraine.
The EU must be willing to experience discomfort, but they are not doing so right now merely as a hollow signal.
> I don't know if you intended it, but your phrasing gives me the impression that you think the they are choosing a specific level of discomfort merely for show.
Thanks, I was afraid I might have come across that way. Was aiming more for “we have to show we’re tough and not just talk it”.
Id be more willing to suffer discomfort if diplomatic options were exhausted before this war.
As it is we are made to suffer ultimately, because NATO and Russia are spoiling for a proxy war and because the US has been itching to sell us some overpriced LNG.
The US should be giving us LNG at a discount on prewar levels. This is largely their proxy war, not ours.
I don’t see how you can call a direct conflict between Russia and anyone a proxy war for Russia.
If you did, the USA involvement in Vietnam would be a proxy war for the USA, and the American war of independence would be a proxy war for the British — in both cases some other power also had some interest, but I would never call either a proxy war for the USA and British respectively.
Vietnam absolutely was a proxy war - US against Moscow. Domino theory and all that.
The US has a long history of demanding others to sacrifice themselves at the altar of its imperialist struggles, whether it's Australians being sent to die in vietnam or European pensioners being asked to die of cold in dec 2022.
I'd prefer sanctions where it hurts them more than it hurts us. Especially, since the current ukranian conflict is no different than eg the war in afghanistan, syria, libya, and as putin says it, also kosovo/yugoslavia. Those were all the wars for US power, control and mass murder of all those people, and we silently supported all those wars, even sent our own soldiers to fight there.
This is ridiculous. The wars are incredibly different in literally every way.
Every war has horrible tragedies and innocent lives lost or harmed, but to suggest invading a stable democracy to annex it is even remotely the same as supporting a locally led uprising against a murderous dictator like in Syria is absurd and offensive.
Is the west’s [silent] support of Yemen’s slaughter any different? That’s a travesty just as much as Ukraine.
To be clear, I don’t agree we shouldn’t sanction Russia. EU should remove its dependence on Russia since Putin doesn’t seem to be going any where and if he does, we don’t know what that means
But our politicians are fucking up that too... just look at the german fight against nuclear power, while being happy to buy coal-generated power from poland.
We have a nuclear powerplant in slovenia, and we're talking about expanding it for literally 30 years now, and all the arguments against it are "this will take 10years, that is too long, we need power now". ...well, and austrians protesting against it.
I always feel bad my Slovene friend and I only talk about world or US stuff. Now I have something to talk about for her country! Sucks that the topic is not a completely positive one though. Hopefully some progress will be made
Some one posted that Yemen is complicated. It really isn’t. If the exact same Yemenese conflict was happening to a white country or a country involving China or Russia no matter what, the world would be all over it.
If you think the US actually acted in Syria to increase human rights and reduce bloodshed I have a few bridges to sell you.
From the very beginning the "locally led uprising" was 50% Islamists.
And by the way, Turkey is essentially annexing Syria right now. Unlike Ukrainians, the Syrians can't meaningfully fight back because Turkey is in NATO, so their forces have absolute safe harbor.
Beyond this, there is no reasonable moral argument that an annexation is any worse than installing a puppet dictator.
Completely false. If tomorrow Russia defended Syria against Turkey by attacking mainland Turkey, Article 5 would certainly apply. Similarly if a Libyan faction fired a ballistic missile onto Paris tomorrow I guarantee Article 5 would be considered. Or if Iran sunk a Turkish ship off the coast of Syria in retaliation for a strike on the SAA, etc...
NATO means that Turkey doesn't have to worry about any retaliation from Syria's allies. That is to say, impunity. On the other hand if Israel invaded Syria and IRGC troops fired a missile onto a base in Israeli territory, the US wouldn't invade Iran, but they would if it was into Turkey. That's a significant chilling effect.
For a certain person, it is. Easier to have someone who makes right wing claims and then cites a Marxist to deal with the cognitive dissonance and introspect on how their worldview has gone wrong, than to spend twenty minutes on a thorough rebuttal.
You can always tell when someone is polluting HN with Russian propaganda from these small details other than their obviously toxic pro-Putin narrative…
Ukraine was attacking russian minorities in donbas and lugansk.
I'm not pro putin, i'm just saying that we're not any better than him, while acting so, and that we're destroying our own countries with sanctions, that don't hurt putin but hurt as. Maybe we deserve them though, but i'd prefer better economy for us.
“Donbas and lugansk” is not a thing. You are incorrect about very basic details in these issues, that I’d advise actually listening to people that know “Donbas” refers to both Donetsk and Luhansk Republics, for starters, unlike yourself.
Azoic is a tiny group relative to the whole population that barely registers as a factor in Ukrainian politics. Using them as a reason to invade the nation of Ukraine is a ridiculous excuse. How can a government be nazis if their leader is Jewish? It’s contrived conspiracy theory nonsense.
I think it’s worth pointing out inaccuracies like this when they are shared by someone who is clearly engaging in whataboutery and the spread of misinformation across several comments in this thread.
Is it really whataboutery if we're not any better than the russians.... and meanwhile destroying our own economies while not really hurting russia that much?
The Russians have been shown to have slaughtered civilians, indiscriminately bombed and shelled residential areas, looted, raped and abducted people on massive scale.
What do you mean by ‘not any better than the Russians’? What has Azov or anyone else in Ukraine been doing that rises the the same level?
Russia has been promoting and funding racist and white supremacist groups just as bad all over Europe. The only thing about Azov that’s different is they are anti Russian.
I know Azov are an unpleasant lot and have distributed hate propaganda and harassed people, but as part of the national guard they are under military command and discipline. Furthermore politically speaking they were utterly insignificant and got absolutely nowhere in elections. The whole ‘fighting nazis’ line is utter garbage.
They were. Most of the right-wing elements (there weren't that many of them as Kremlin propaganda would like you to believe) were purged as part of this process, or left the battalion themselves.
There's a decent article on this (from a strongly pro-Ukraine publication) that expounds on this theme in a relatively neutral way (IMHO). The sad thing it's in Russian, but should be readable through the magic of google translate if you're interested enough.
This [1] is an article from Time in 2018. You can find other countless similar articles elsewhere. You'll find that the narrative before and after the Ukraine war took an extremely hard 180 to the point of absurdity. Just one segment from the article:
"After the worst such [anti-Islam terror] attack in recent years—the massacre of 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019—an arm of the Azov movement helped distribute the terrorist’s raving manifesto, in print and online, seeking to glorify his crimes and inspire others to follow. .... It might seem ironic for this hub of white nationalists to be situated in Ukraine. At one point in 2019, it was the only nation in the world, apart from Israel, to have a Jewish President and a Jewish Prime Minister. Far-right politicians failed to win a single seat in parliament in the most recent elections. But in the context of the white-supremacist movement globally, Azov has no rivals on two important fronts: its access to weapons and its recruiting power."
There's also stuff like [2] which is a freedom-of-information act report from the Department of Homeland Security. They're concerned about the fact that "Ukrainian nationalist groups including the Azo[v] Movement are actively recruiting racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist-white supremacists (RMVE-WS) to join various neo-Nazi volunteer battalions in the war against Russia".
This whole thing is becoming increasingly absurd where the information warfare is gradually moving from propaganda to 1984.
Azov isnt unique because it has extremists. It's unique because:
* It was founded by a nazi and most of its members appear to be nazis.
* It committed atrocities in a civil war against ethnic russians.
* It was instrumental in keeping ethnically russian majority areas of Ukraine under Ukraines control.
* It was made an official part of the army and lavished with praise by poroshenko despite being largely nazi and having committed atrocities because territory.
* When Zelensky came to them asking them to lay down their arms and help end the civil war they told him no and denounced him as a traitor.
Officially they have little power or democratic mandate but they told the president that the war shall continue until its bitter end and he capitulated. In the west nazis dont have that kind of power.
I don't think these sort of things are very comparable. Of course you'll always find extremists in militaries. But in this case the military itself integrated a real Nazi militia as an independent state force. It would be like if the US marines officially recognized the Aryan Brotherhood and gave them their own unit, including with integrating overt Nazi symbols as part of their uniform.
Sure, I would definitely agree they are worse in a lot of ways. I don’t really agree their existence is proof that all of Ukraine is a new Nazi Germany and therefore the invasion by Russia is justified. Maybe that’s not what you’re saying either, but that’s where this conversation started.
No, that's definitely not what I'm saying. And I also didn't read the original post that way. There are a lot of problems in Ukraine (outside of this war) and they have also done some pretty awful things. Many of the things that go unstated in our media can go some way towards explaining the war, but there's a difference between explaining and justifying. And I increasingly feel that that nuance is being lost in society, which divides us all even further.
The original is flagged now, but if we read it differently it makes sense we are coming away with different interpretations. In my opinion the person doesn’t seem particularly well informed about basic facts - getting the names of places and regions wrong - and their main argument seems to be that the US has done bad things, so there’s no point inconveniencing ourselves to try to stop Russia and I’m not really sure that follows. I didn’t (personally) find a lot of nuance in the discussion. I do agree that in general nuance and understanding are missing a lot of the times these days.
They seem to mainly be celebrated by people today (at least by the types who celebrate that sort of thing) for their white supremacism rather than their leftist policies.
The authoritarian far left and far right are very close together, with a tiny bit different politics, but the same end results. It's not a coincidence that the commies and the nazis started the WW2 together... somehow the modern left forgets the soviets/communist involvement.
Of course, these Russian minority casualties died as collateral from Russia and Russian backed separatists as well as from Ukraine. And more saliently, Russia is the aggressor so none of those people would have died if they hadn’t put Ukraine into an existential position.
Nonsense. Assad deliberately used chemical and kinetic weapons on civilians, moreover neither the US nor other western countries are using this as a pretext for annexing Syria. There is no analogue.
I am sorry, people in Syria. We can't condemn the use of heavy weapons against civilians, because... checking notes... NATO members used heavy weapons against civilians in 1999.
Ukraine deliberately shelled civians for 8 years, so what?
Their routine tactics of dealing with rebels is to bomb civians dear to those rebels. When they don't hope to make territorial gains, they wish to inflict some damage and civian targets are way easier to hit.
This week, they're using freshly supplied M777 to bomb areas of Donetsk they could not reach previously. Such as by hitting four schools in a single day.
Well, the USA has used an awful lot of depleted uranium shells, which burned down and now deposited in Iraqi children lungs. Not to mention all of the bombed weddings.
Assuming you’re talking about Poland and Romania, the consensus was that Russia’s initial plan would have been installing a puppet government.
So they wouldn’t have had Russia as neighbor, but a Russia-friendly country, just like they did for most of the rather brief time Ukraine existed as an independent country. Or another Belarus, which Poland at least is already neighboring.
I get why these countries are nervous but Ukraine’s very very different from Romania or Poland or any other EU country.
Honest question , how are they "very different from Romania or Poland"? Do you mean bigger? Also hypothetically if Belarus wanted to join the EU (after a regime change ofc) what would your objections be?
Stop your bullshit please, this is not Facebook or Reddit.
Anyone that doesn’t drink Russian propaganda every day can see what you are trying to do here..
I live in the balkans, I had american planes flying above my house, bombing a country (that we were once a part of a same country) ~400km away, for mostly the same reasons that putin is attacking ukraine now for.
Nah, they just set their own dictators, and if they stopped obeying the americans, they violently replaced them. Just look at latin america, Iran, etc. Just scrolling through the wiki article takes a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
Perhaps I'm biased, because I'm from a country (Poland) that's actually actively protected by the US from a murderous dictator (Putin). Even when Poland was on her knees in the early ninetiess, the US never tried to install their dicator here, but instead actively promoted democracy and protected us from Russians. The only benefit that US takes from that is that Poland became a part of the global trade network, we pay for US companies for their intellectual property (i.e. piracy is no longer legal) etc.
Amoral countries can still in some cases be a lesser evil. I agree in the case of Poland the US is a force for good, but on the scale of the world the US definitely gives Russian destruction a run for it's money.
The benefit the US gets from protecting Poland is that in doing so it helps keep Russia boxed in, it keeps great influence over the EU (Poland is a pivot of US influence on the EU), thereby greatly helping curtail 2 out of 3 threats to the US's position as the most powerful country on Earth. It's not done out of benevolence but it's quite great for Polish people.
Same can be said for Japan, Germany, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea. That's hundreds of millions of people enjoying great lives thanks to being or having been protected by US from the beasts across their borders. At the same time, is there any nation on Earth that's actually grateful for what Putin's Russia did for (to) them?
Yes. Syria and Iran would likely be wastelands if it wasn't for Russian intervention and assistance allowing them to hold their own against Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey, which would have undoubtedly implemented much greater invasion or intervention plans in Syria than they already have. There is also Armenia that isn't Azerbaijan only because of Russian defence guarantees (that don't apply to Nagorno Karabakh), and the Stans would be greatly vulnerable to China if it wasn't for Russia as a counterbalance.
That's, by the way, a result of a 12 year period, compared to the list you gave that's over 80 years.
Those aren't great lives by any means, but avoiding Iran-Iraq V2, or Turkish invasion of most of Syria, a complete Azerbaijani victory, or complete subservience to China, is genuinely a positive. On the greater balance, simply existing as a counterbalance to the US is something that's useful for most of the world, which explains indifférence over Ukraine.
I suppose the issue is that there is precedent for the USA to support democracies until they decide to side against American insterests. Then the US supports a local dictator instead.
Making them US citizens would be too problematic. It's better to make them subject of an easily controllable puppet. And yes, that means killing everyone who resists. A million people if that's what it takes.
I mean, Russian propaganda claims that the reason is the same: intervening in a genocide. But obviously this isn’t the case—Russia started a war in a region of Ukraine that has a lot of ethnic Russians and attributed all casualties (including the Kremlin-backed Russian separatist combatants) as “victims of a genocide campaign” including those who were killed by Russian and Russian-backed forces.
So no, it’s not the same at all as NATO intervening in an actual ethnic cleansing campaign.
US (and a few other countries) attacked Iraq, because propaganda claimed that they had weapons of mass destruction. Let's not forget the time before that, where iraqis supposedly killed babies in a hospital.
Somehow we treat those wars and those agressors differently.
> Somehow we treat those wars and those agressors differently
We really don't. There's been much acknowledgement that the Iraq war was a mistake and wasn't justified, since no weapons of mass destruction were found.
I think it would have been great for countries to sanction the US over it, but at the time, part of Europe also thought that if Iraq had nuclear weapons they'd be a threat to them. But Russia should have sanctioned US and Europe, they should have cut their supply of oil for example. I'd have been for it.
Just as the US should have been sanctioned then, and the war in Iraq should have not happened or been prevented, so is the war in Ukraine.
Normally we should learn from past mistakes, Iraq was a mistake, the world should have acted different back then and didn't. Now Ukraine is a chance to do better and act as we should have in Iraq.
Note: The other distinction is that Iraq was a clear and obvious dictatorship, so there was hope that it could improve the lives of the people of Iraq and lift them into more individual rights and prosperity.
Ukraine is not as clear, in appearance it seems they are on a good path to have more individual rights and prosperity, and it looks like Russia's trying to stop them from doing so. Is that completely accurate, hard to say, but probability wise it is a possibility.
So from the angle of picking a side as well, it's easier to side with Ukraine, which appear to support individual rights and democracy, and against Russia, which appears to oppose individual freedoms and seems to be moving towards full on dictatorship.
> We really don't. There's been much acknowledgement that the Iraq war was a mistake and wasn't justified, since no weapons of mass destruction were found.
But we didn't sanction them. We're still friends with them. We even helped them.
> but at the time, part of Europe also thought that if Iraq had nuclear weapons they'd be a threat to them.
I'm pretty sure 'we' (our leaders, who sent our armies there) knew that iraq had no such weapons... Tony Blair even half admited it.
> Normally we should learn from past mistakes, Iraq was a mistake, the world should have acted different back then and didn't. Now Ukraine is a chance to do better and act as we should have in Iraq.
So, we knew iraq was a mistake, and we stopped? After the first time? Or after the second time? What about syria? Libya? What about somalia? Didn't biden just send more troops there? I won't even mention afghanistan... US basically armed the terrorists for the next few decades with their pull-out.
> Ukraine is not as clear, in appearance it seems they are on a good path to have more individual rights and prosperity, and it looks like Russia's trying to stop them from doing so. Is that completely accurate, hard to say, but probability wise it is a possibility.
Let's be fair... ukraine has areas where a lot of russians live, and they weren't very nice to those russians (and i mean "nice" in the same way as israelis are not "nice" to palestinians...). Somehow many people have forgot about those things (ukraine) or don't care about the others (isreal).
I'm not sure what you're saying, that we should make the same mistakes we did in Iraq with Ukraine as well? Why repeat the same mistakes?
Yes, we didn't sanction them, and you seem to argue we should have, and I agree. That's why I think with Ukraine this time we're doing the right thing, same thing we should have done with Iraq. Do you disagree?
But for americans (and a lot of EU nato members) it's not a "mistake" but just a daily part of their war-fueling politics. If US had to wait until ukraine to realize that all of their wars were "mistakes", why did they send soldiers to somalia after the start of ukraine war? If they sent soldiers there, is it really by mistake? And if they sent soldiers there, shouldn't they be sanctioned? Shouldn't a bunch of other countries be sanctioned for invading afghanistan? Or syria, lybia etc (and still having soldiers there)? Are we really doing the same thing by sanctioning russia, while we (nato members) have our soldiers occpying quite a few countries around the world? If it's a mistake, why not atleast bring them home and stop the occupation, befure we point the finger at putin?
No, I'm saying that we're all the "baddies", and that we should either sanction every country that is occupying any other sovereing country (and that includes most of the nato countries, including mine), or, (preferably by me), we should pull our armies out of those countries, stop being the agressors, and then point the finger at putin. Why the hell does slovenia (my country) have soldiers in fucking Syria? Who asked us to go there? We even have to pay a lot of money to have them there.. for what? What effort have we, the EU, the americans, the "friendly west countries" invested into stopping ourselves from occupying all those countries?
This whataboutism is just more Russian propaganda (it’s a boilerplate argument that gets copy/pasted into every single debate about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). It has absolutely nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, and the Iraq War doesn’t justify Russia’s conquest of Ukraine.
Nah, I'm not going to accept deflection to unrelated wars. If you want to discuss the Iraq War in an appropriate thread, I'm happy to do so, but it doesn't justify Russia's ongoing conquest of Ukraine.
Nah, iraq war is over... maybe we can discuss syria, since my countries army is currently invading them as a part of nato forces. Maybe even lebanon. We're not in somalia (yet?), but americans are there now too. We luckily pulled our solders out of afghanistan in the last moment, but we were a part of occupying forces there too, just like the belarus army is in ukraine.
It theoretically could, but… why would they do that?
And before you say “Ukraine”, consider that Ukraine and Russia have a common history going back hundreds of years and together with Russia were part of the USSR. The attack on Ukraine is illegitimate, but at least it makes some logical sense.
Russia going after Romania or Poland which are part of EU and NATO and were never part of the USSR, but instead individual countries in the Warsaw Pact makes no sense at all.
The Baltics are more complicated, but once again - NATO and EU.
I care what I pay for gas, power and food, no matter what putin says. If the sanctions hurt me more than putin, I canot stay quiet about the sanctions.
I can't help but think it's a war of ideology. Nobody of us westeners (people that use hackernews are in a way entangled with the west more than lets say an Afghan or Syrian citizen) would care about a remote fight between two Arabian countries who have no real democracy established. But here its 1# close to the 1st world countries and 2# evolving democracy versus totalitarianism.
Its not really to safe the Ukrainians, that is just a farce.
I'm in the west and humanism is a significant part of our local community. Rapt attention to tigray and DRC among others right now. Please be precise or use a disclaimer when you make an offensive generalization.
Edit: locals have been at it for yemen in particular.
I'm not sure what you mean by offensive generalisation. If you were in charge of saving Ukranians' lives, could you have done things differently from what has been done? Instead of provoking your much stronger neighbour for decades in false believe of security, could you maybe have made decisions that would lead to a less precarious situation? I think so. It would have been better for all Ukranians if this war didn't happen. Would their general freedom suffer? Probably, but at least it wouldn't be as bad as now.
EDIT: Ok I see now what you took offensively. Most of us Westeners I should have wrote. Most regulars peoples' attention as example diverted much more to the case of Johny Depps' Trial than to the war in Ukraine.
You got the edit right, thanks yeah. Playing over the what-ifs of how this could have been diffused is painful; And considering how some high profile people against the war in Ukraine had previously committed atrocities is more than a little frustrating - Henry Kissinger and John Bolton come to mind. That being said, it is a, "the milk has already been spilt, lets clean it up" situation. If a monstrous person says the war shouldn't be, that doesn't mean the war should have began. Your points of criticism of the past dickheads can be construed as trying to excuse or divert blame for current atrocities there. It is kind of incendiary, people will just disengage and drop back to insults. General butt naked also comes to mind. The horror of what he did is hard to overstate. In his mind does his current occupation make him a purely self interested hypocrite, a person working to help his community, or both? If their self interest isn't in conflict with the humanism then sometimes it really is both, at least in their view. Focusing on not having had justice for the critics, i.e. vengeance or reparations, feels like it sows doubt in the thread about the good faith intent of your posts. It sucks because this is the kind of thing where communication really helps inform people rather than make them dig in their heels at perceived misinformation. Similarly, the past shit heads being so high profile really detract from getting consensus about the future and understanding the faults of the past.
Age of information, not communication and all that
I've read your message but I'll not engage in it, as it seems to be a personal attack. All I'll say is that the countries in Europe are not really interested in saving Ukrainian lives.
Local community maybe, national politics, probably not.
If your country is a member of NATO, i'm pretty sure there are a few countries right this moment, that consider your soldiers on their land as an occupation.
I live in slovenia, and even we have soldiers in places like syria , and I'm pretty sure none of the locals want us there... now we, the occupying force of country X, complain about someone else doing the same to country Y.
Kurds are a minority in syria, and so are the russians in ukraine, and both are happy for being protected by a larger force.
But native syrians have had their country basically destroyed by nato (too). So did afghanis, etc., and they're not happy for being occupied (as we saw after the pullout from afghanistan).
Considering turkey is a part of nato, it's interesting that we let them attack the kurds without any sanctions... maybe we have to wait until they annex a part of syria to make it "bad".... but in reality, noone will care.
>"Europe foolishly integrated with the Russian energy economy in the 80s"
Europe and the US also "foolishly" integrated with China and whole lot of other countries who are not exactly shining beacons of freedom. Either crawl to your own hole and do not deal with anyone or admit that there is a world around us and it sometimes does not conform.
Besides Europe did not become rich just by being nice. It and UK in particular had raped the rest of the world in the process. It does not seem to mind "mass murder" either when it is done by "right" countries to a "bad" ones.
Talking with peoples who believe they live in a democracy reminds me of talking with religious people: they think if you don't believe in their god, than it means you are evil immoral person. Rational arguments (facts, evidence) do not work.
In the 70's France went all-in on clean, green nuclear energy when they realized they had an outsized strategic dependency on foreign oil coming from unstable regimes.
America did the same in the 2000's and ramped-up domestic supply of oil.
There are many naive people. Try to look at relative military spending around the world and think about trust, about where all these weapons will be applied eventually.
I mean... germany also spent decades to kill of it's nuclear energy production. So it's not the only thing our (EU) politicians fucked up but will never take the blame for.
I know, but i'm just saying what the public is feeling right now here.
Russia is still selling their oil to india and china, and europe is slowly destroying itself with the anti-russian sanctions and many other internal things they do. Germany went from one of the strongest economies in the world to telling their people to wear sweaters at home, because they'll be cold, while countries oposing the sanctions still have cheap gas (eg 1.23eur/l in hungary).
Media is saying one thing, but people in the streets (and surprisingly, also in the comments everywhere, somehow not censored yet) complain and most not in the politically-correct way. Add to this the blatant censorship of media, eg banning RT in europe (let's be fair.. putin, being somewhat a dictator, banning CNN is perfectly understandable... but EU, "a pillar of democracy" banning RT, to me, seems a very very bad precedent), and stories like "evacuation of azovstal" (and not saying it was a "surrender") make people trust the media even less.
Yes that was a very confusing moment when I read on aljazeera the Ukranian gov. had evacuated 200 soldiers from Azovstal. Ah yeah, the Russians just let them go, while it was besieged and POV swaps were happening? Someday in the past, journalism must have been of quality.
The past few years have taught me that, in the age of social media, nothing so unequivocally bad can happen that people wouldn’t be blaming it on mainstream media.
Dictator invades neighboring country, says their people don’t have a right to exist? The mainstream media is to blame for using a word I didn’t like. Dictator’s propaganda channel is removed from distribution? A conspiracy by the mainstream media and their political cronies. Etc.
It does make it much easier to understand the Americans who in 1939 were saying “Hitler is not our problem — at least he’s not a communist — look at the good job he’s done cleaning up the radical left — the press is out to get him — why should we hurt our own economy by not trading with Germany?”
Before 2022, we were listening about ukranians shelling russian settlements in ukraine. Ukraine had a nazi problem, Azov was nazis, and even the mainstream media said it: https://i.imgur.com/mRAaOo0.jpg Now they're acting as if none of this has ever happened.
On the other hand, we've let and activelly helped americans to the same thing to many, many different countries, lied about weapons of mass destruction, destroyed afghanistan for hiding obama in pakistan while bombing pakistani weddings while not being at war with them, plus of course syria, libya, etc. Now US troops are entering somalia. I live in a small EU country with a shitty almost non-existant army, and even we had soldiers in afghanistan (and still have them in eg. syria and lebanon). Yugoslavia was bombed for 78 days for doing the same as ukranians were doing to russian minorties, and civilian targets were intentionally chosen for the bombings.
Yes, the mainstream media is guilty of saying one thing until day X, and changing their narrative from day X+1.
> Dictator’s propaganda channel is removed from distribution?
You are aware that all of the media is just propaganda? CNN is propaganda, BBC is propaganda, and RT is propaganda. If we didn't ban the news outlets saying that iraq has WMDs, why are we banning RT? If RT saying that ukranians are nazis, why are we not banning all the mainstream media outlets from here: https://i.imgur.com/mRAaOo0.jpg ?
> It does make it much easier to understand the Americans who in 1939 were saying “Hitler is not our problem — at least he’s not a communist — look at the good job he’s done cleaning up the radical left — the press is out to get him — why should we hurt our own economy by not trading with Germany?”
Lets be fair.. for most of the world, americans are the largest problem for peace in their area. Russians are at worst, second, depending on how you look at saudi arabia vs yemen and israel vs palestine conflicts.
CNN is corporate media, RT is state media, Fox News is corporate media, xinhua is state media.
S
Corporate media is sometimes a cheerleader for government but most of the time in the United States its tearing the government apartment constantly. Not so with RT and xinhua. They aren’t equivalent and you have a grave misunderstanding of propaganda in form and effect. Corporate media can lie to you, but they aren’t part of the state apparatus with a police wing that will beat you down a la xinhua and RT for wrong expression of thought.
So you're saying that democratic countries (EU) need censorship, because of the ownership of some random TV station that most people never watch, because they're afraid some of their people will see something different than eg. this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2022/may/17/evacua... ?
The difference is that russian state owned propaganda is actively and intentionally trying to hurt western society. If there are two ways to do something and one way will do more damage then it will be done that way.
I do think that it is within a nations right and responsibility to defend against such actors.
Naturally there are no clear cut lines and things can get murky but this is the case with many aspects where we expect and accept government intervention.
They aren't nazis, they're radicalized Ukrainians. Radicalized because the 2014 invasion of Crimea and the current "special operation". The same reason Finland and Sweeden wants to join NATO and Denmark backtracked on its EU defense participation.
Thanks for making my point. Nothing so bad can happen that somebody safe in their bubble away from the suffering won't ramble endlessly about how the media is guilty of this and that and everything is propaganda and what about America.
The Nazi thing in Ukraine is just tired and old, especially since Russia has active ranks of Nazis (like the Wagner Group) that they send abroad. If the Nazi factions justify exterminating civilians in Ukraine, then for consistency's sake, the same could be said of extermination of Russians. (I support exterminating nobody)
America is wrong to start wars. Most people (especially outside of America) agree with that. That doesn't mean Russia gets a free pass to actively threaten Europe and commit genocide, and no amount of paragraphs will change that.
But as I said... it's not "tired and old", if we reported on it, and now we act as if we never did. We (well, our media is) basically lying now.
Of course russia doesn't get a free pass... but why do we get one? Why can my small shitty eu country (slovenia) get to have soldiers occupying foreign countries without sanctions? Why can americans do it without sanctions? The French? ...? Why do we treat russia differently for doing the same thing we are... and why are we hurting ourselves by those sanctions?
I’m originally from Finland. There are definitely neo-Nazis in the country. I’ve seen them marching on the Finnish Independence Day. (Interestingly these local Nazis are generally fans of Putin because his ethno-state is much closer to their dream than Finland itself.)
If Putin now decided to invade Finland, you’d presumably be here with the following arguments:
“Why is nobody talking about the Finnish Nazis? Media reported on that before, they’re not talking about it now. It’s all lies.”
“How do I know Russia is actually bombarding Helsinki? BBC is just propaganda and the Finnish media is probably controlled by the Nazis.”
“Finland sent peacekeeper troops to Afghanistan so they’ve implicitly supported American aggression. Why should we expect different from Russia. Can’t we sanction Finland too”
It’s safe for you to engage in this kind of nonsense pseudo-media-critical sophistry when nobody you know is getting killed.
EU-style nazis that limit themselves to marching with offensive signs do seem rather harmless, don’t they?
At least I assume that Finland’s nazis don’t form militias and aren’t part of the armed forces and don’t receive military weapons from NATO.
This doesn’t excuse Russia’s war, but it does make one wonder why Western politicians condemn right-wing extremists so often and so thoroughly with not a peep about the nazis they’re literally sending weapons to.
Well, there was a bit of a scandal when an interview with an Azov neo-nazi was broadcasted in the Greek parliament, but even the Greeks were mostly criticizing themselves for allowing that to happen.
Finland has a large conscription army. Since most Finnish men are trained reserve troops, presumably most of those neo-Nazis are as well. If Russia attacked, they’d get called into service like everybody else unless they have a criminal record that prevents it.
And then online posters would be using this is as proof that Russia has a point with the “denazification” tales they use to justify aggression on other countries’ sovereign territory. “Well, you have to ask why the Finnish army invites Nazis, and now NATO is supplying arms to them too. Just asking questions here that media doesn’t. I am very smart.”
The ultimate problem is oil and gas sanctions are useless when we are not doing anything ourselves to control the price.
It is unconscionable we are not trying to increase supply in the US IN ORDER to harm Putin.
I mean how do people not see that Putin is probably laughing at the idea of $120 oil meant to harm him.
By not increasing US supply we are basically helping Putin and forcing other countries to burn more coal. It is just unconscionable but we tend to not really care in the US about actual results as long as the moral intentions are good.
Some other terrible things are banned in the EU, not only RT. We don't have 100% freedom of speech, and for good measure. For example, child pornography is also illegal. As is glorification of Nazism and (in some countries) Communism.
Suppose someone purchased USDT with TRY in June 2021, and sold that USDT for TRY today, he would have doubled his TRY and effectively offset 100% inflation.
If you want to render world governments and their abusive monetary policies irrelevant in a short amount of time, you take away their monopolies they have on the money supply.
Hi from Argentina! At least here real state is a good option, but to buy a small single room "studio" apartment, I need to save one or two years of the total income of my family. Where do I save that meanwhile? With a high inflation $100 today are like $30 in two years. And that's assuming I save every single cent. If I spare some money for food and the electricity bill, buying an apartment takes much more time.
If you have plenty of money you can buy a big apartment, or a whole hotel or something.
The problem is how to save a small amount of money for a year. For example save each month to buy next year a new fridge or a notebook.
Instead of buying things to resell, I prefer to buy in advance things I'm going to use. For example enough concentrated laundry soap for 1 year, or tuna cans for two months. They have a good volume to price ratio, and they don't spoil. [I could boy more tuna cans, but it looks too weird.]
This is useful to absorb extra payments, for example we have a bonus half salary in July and December.
A few years ago I rented a house for 3000₺. Now I'm paying 4800₺ which is dirt cheap. If I were to rent it again, I probably wouldn't find it under 7000₺.
Real estate prices are somewhat proportional.
It's profitable if thought in terms of Turkish Lira. But when corrected for inflation, not really.
I keep dollars and crypto. Real estate isn't a bad option either. Basically anything that's not practically pegged to TL is a good choice in my opinion. And this includes almost anything: foreign currencies, crypto, real estate, cars, gold, stocks (foreign) etc.
If you have a house or a place to install them then something like solar panels in Turkey would be a great investment as it generates income (or at least cancels out future expenses )
I feel you man. Last week, I was in Turkey and I could fill my dad's car around ~1000₺. Honestly speaking, It has just started. End of 2022 and first quarter of 2023 will be terrible.
The %73 is the official number, which is absurdly obscured. This research group is more accurate: https://enagrup.org/?hl=en which states that the yearly inflation is %160.
You may be confusing percentage increases (bounded by nothing) with percentage decreases (which are often bounded at 100%). Though even decreases aren't actually bounded either -- like when the price of crude oil turned negative at the start of COVID, that resulted in oil experiencing a >100% decrease in cost.
At the end of the day it's all just multiplication, and you can multiply by any number.
If something costs $1 yesterday but costs $2.50 today that is an increase of 150%. How inflation is tracked differs from country to country but typically it's based on looking at the prices for goods the average citizen might buy and tracking the price increases/decreases from year to year.
Inflation is "measured" by tracking the price increase of some representative items like food staples or fuel. Prices of course are free to increase much more than 100%.
Some product basket costs $1 at the beginning of the year. At 100% inflation, at the end of the year it will cost $2. At 200%, it will cost $3, and so on.
Turkish person. We’ve founded a startup in November, local and global developments making me a bit worried. Since then everything is almost 2-3x expensive. Most visible and absurd thing to see is that People drive their cars noticably slowly so that they consume less. People dont go out as they used to. Driving in summer vacation and spending a few days would cost a signifcant sum. Even if earning foreign currency, everything feels very expensive.
I'm not Turkish, but I fled here from Russia due to a war. And rent certainly got super expensive in Antalya due to number of people like me, not inflation.
I noticed that only some prices are so badly expensive for person earning USD and it's mostly electronics. Though Turkey has 35% tax when buying from Amazon so yeah it's due to taxation and local regulation.
Can you please share some examples of what's got specifically expensive in last couple of years?
Got it. I guess it's just me comparing food prices in Turkey to Russia and United Kindom. At this moment food in Turkey have mostly the same price as in Russia before the war, but still mucu cheaper compared to London.
Fruits and vegetables I mostly buy on local markets and they're damn cheap considering that $1 == 16.5 Lira: tomatoes 5-10TL, cucumbers 2-8TL, Strawberry 10-15TL, oranges 2-4TL, apples 7-8TL, etc. Meat and sunflower oil kind of a pricey. Yeah at this point I get it's kind a pointless to list any kind of prices as they do in fact change with inflation.
I understand that for most of people outside of IT it's very unlikely to have salary higher than $800 in Turkey, but over 3+ months I live here prices stay mostly the same in USD.
AFAICT in modern times with modern government surveillance and weapons, instead of uprisings and coups, what we see instead are the quiet evacuation of the best and brightest, which then spirals a country into further decay over the course of a few years.
> in modern times with modern government surveillance and weapons, instead of uprisings and coups
None of that helped in Afghanistan — where the locals defeated the US via persistent warfare.
Such tactics will work even better when insurrectionists can directly attack US production facilities, ambush data centers and technical staff, assassinate politicians, and attack solder’s families.
And that’s before considering whether some portions of the military would side with an uprising.
They’re getting a large part of the brain drain from Russia. I’m not sure if those people are planning on staying and starting businesses or looking to continue on to EU for higher salaries
Many years ago in my South American country, I had to deal with 2000% inflation in 1 year. It is absolutely devastating for most people, but the top 10% in income had easy access to special investment instruments allowing them to lose nothing and even profit from the inflation. Does Turkey have anything like that?
Wouldn't it be as easy as having money invested with a foreign broker? Granted, this won't work if capital controls prevents money from easily flowing across the border, or if your country is sanctioned.
That’s assuming that you have significant money to put into savings. Most people live paycheck to paycheck so that will only protect 5% of their income that they can spare to put away. Ideally you could get paid in a stable currency
If you take a loan out to purchase a real asset (say real-estate, or something that holds value over time) for some amount, if the inflation goes up by 50% and you have the ability to make more money as you're earning money from outside the country, your load liability effectively goes down by 50%. So you're paying 50% less for that loan over time.
This makes capital investments cheaper. This is just one example.
Last time I visited Turkey 25 yesrs ago the Lira was basically counted in millions. I remember exchanging some beer money and getting stacks of freshly printed 10k bills. I assume that was also after a period of massive inflation in the 80s or 90s? Some time after that they must have redefined their currency and dropped a few zeros. Have there been any other similar periods in between or has it been a pretty stable 2 decades? Are the causes similar this time? External shock and some misguided voodoo macroeconomics?
The old lira was retired and the new lira came in 2005 roughly at about 1.30 to the dollar.
It's now 16 to the dollar, up from 8 to the dollar a year ago.
The old Lira was 15 to the dollar in 1975, by 1985 it was 500 to the dollar (devaluing 42% a year), 1995 was 43,000 to the dollar (56% a year), and by 2001 it reached 1.3 million to the dollar (77% a year)
From 2001 to 2005 it was relatively stable, and the new lira came in and only lost half its value from 2005 to 2015. Things have been getting worse since 2015 though.
I’m not really seeing a significant semantic difference between “inflation rose by 73%” and “inflation increases to 73%”
The latter puts the focus in a slightly different place, but they both seem to communicate the same essential fact, so I don’t see why the latter would be more accurate than the former?
What am I missing?
Edit: never mind, I understand now. “By” would be referred to a percent raise in the rate of change of inflation
I spent a few months in Turkey last year. You could tell that there was a risk of mass unrest because there were heavily armed police with armored vehicles prominently parading around.
I thought this was to be expected.
What I thought was interesting was that there was a major deployment with armored vehicles in a well to do neighborhood off the tourist trail. Literally outside the Carrefour Gourmet where I bought overpriced European ingredients, in fact.
IDK if they were extra sensitive coz expats were there, coz they were feeling extra protective of the upper middle classes or even coz they were afraid that the upper middle classes would be the ones to riot.
Ive not seen anything like it elsewhere except in altamira, caracas.
Ever been to Sicily? I counted 3 different types of police and heavily armed military units patrolling the streets on regular basis. That was well before the pandemic. Maybe that's how some places are run
It wasnt heavily armed & riot police deployments that surprised me it was their deployment in what seemed like fairly quiet upper middle class neighborhoods.
I only saw that once before - in altamira caracas.
Ive seen plenty of armed police in Italy but they were focused in highly trafficked city centre/touristy areas. Italy seems pretty excessively militarized but the pattern of deployment is normal.
My guess would be if that was to fend off PKK attacks then the police batons and riot shields wouldnt have been brought along. Theyre not much use against bomb planters.
The Turkish police typically raid and mass arrest people after some PKK activity happens (or is suspected to happen soon), even if there's no actual bombs going off. They arrive in riot gear to do the raids/arrests.
It’s funny, just a few years ago everyone was talking about the Turkey economic miracle- how Erdogan was a business genius and so forth. Turns out, it was just another financial bubble.
Almost all of the modern hyper inflation in countries is due to external debt in foreign currency which is usually USD. This could have been solved if interest rates were raised making the lira expensive.
Same with Zimbabwe with projects done in USD. Sri Lanka had a project boom last 10 years with USD.
This does not apply to US because the debt of US is either internal or USD. I guess partially the reason jpow is dragging his heels on raising interest rates
Zimbabwe had Hyperinflation more than 20 years after achieving independence and the civil war ended.
It was because of land invasions where land was stolen from productive white farmers (and later mines) and the resultant collapse of the agricultural sector and therefore loss of foreign currency which they tried to solve with money printing.
Everybody impoverishing themselves via hyperinflation seems a bit like a counterproductive way to deal with historical inequities. Many of the white farmers bought the land (from other farmers) and didn't take it by force.
Mugabe's land reforms most definitely had a devestating impact on agricultural productivity. But the hyperinflation was almost entirely a monetary phenomenon. All the productivity in the world won't mean anything if the money printers are running at full steam.
> Many of the white farmers bought the land (from other farmers) and didn't take it by force.
Knowingly buying stolen goods is not much better than stealing.
The hyperinflation had everything to do with the land grabs because the country ran out of foreign currency due to the collapse of the agriculture sector.
For instance Zimbabwe made a lot of foreign currency by exporting tobacco.
Btw much of the stolen land was given to government chronies and many of them took multiple, large and successful farms worth millions of dollars for themselves.
Knowingly buying stolen goods is not much better than stealing.
The land wasn't legally considered or treated as stolen goods and was available on the open market to all races for multiple decades.
The current government has basically acknowledged that the land was stolen because they've now promised to
compensate the white farmers.
> The hyperinflation had everything to do with the land grabs because the country ran out of foreign currency due to the collapse of the agriculture sector.
Hyperinflation has a lot more to do with the fact the government irresponsibly printed ridiculous amounts of money.
Farm confiscation and land redistribution happened in 2000 and 2001. Hyperinflation peaked in 2009.
> The land wasn't legally considered or treated as stolen goods and was available on the open market to all races for multiple decades.
Right. Because the colonial rule left all races at the same socioeconomic standing and there actually was a free market.
> The current government has basically acknowledged that the land was stolen
That's a very creative interpretation:
> The agreement signed at President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s State House offices in Harare showed white farmers would be compensated for infrastructure on the farms and not the land itself
This is correct, and I’m not sure why more people don’t realize this. You can run right down the list: Venezuela, Weimar Germany, etc etc and the rule always holds- hyper inflation is caused by printing money in your own currency to pay debts that are denominated in a foreign currency.
Turkey is suffering from a collapse in their terms of trade. They need to stop luxury imports to make room for food and fuel. And they need to put firms with foreign borrowings through administration to get rid of the foreign debt.
Ultimately though government needs to cut its spending because its capacity to tax is probably at the social limit the society can stand.
Well, Erdogan agrees with you and results are clear.
The argument is wrong, mostly because even if deposit and borrow rates were equal (they aren't), central bank offers and charges it on MB, but borrow rate is in the end charged on all loans in existence - much larger than MB.
1. someone borrows (new) $100 from the central bank at the variable central bank rate - currently 0%
2. someone buys something for that $100
3. that $100 is loaned to yet another person at the variable rate
4. that person buys something with it, the buyer deposits $100 to the central bank
At the end there's: $100 in the central bank. Loans for $200. Increasing the interest rate to 1% increases total liabilities by $2 after one year, but total base money only to $101. That's a deficit of $1. In other words demand for money has increased relative to the supply. This mechanism explains why more advanced economies can function with lower interest rates - because even a small base rate has a high multiplier, while in simple economies the multiplier is low. There are more implementation details in practice but the fundamental mechanism stays the same.
That article manages to contradict itself. In one place they state "In reality, neither are reserves a binding constraint on lending," and in another "But whether through deposits or other liabilities, the bank would need to make sure it was attracting and retaining some kind of funds in order to keep expanding lending", right after writing about running out of reserves, a direct contradiction. In general it's mostly correct but authors appear to be really confused, repeating statements from other sources without any understanding. A sign of how incompetent western establishment is becoming.
The mechanism is very simple. Central banks lend money and that's how money is created. They do it by accepting various collateral. Whether they lend directly as debt or by purchasing assets via a reverse repo is a detail. Banks remain liquid by either holding money directly, or assets that are accepted as collateral by the central bank to generate new money instantly. Sometimes that liquidity runs out, which may then require a special central bank intervention (like relaxing collateral rules during a wide crisis), or even a firesale of assets, which can lead to insolvency. They remain solvent by owning more assets than liabilities. The difference between all short term liabilities (deposits) in the banking system and central bank money is the total money multiplier.
Fortunately, unlike confused writers of that article, people actually making decisions in almost all central banks still know that's how it works - which is why they know that rising interest rates reduces inflation (although not instantly). Erdogan, in comparison, appears to believe that high interest rates create inflation - results are visible for everyone.
"In one place they state "In reality, neither are reserves a binding constraint on lending," and in another "But whether through deposits or other liabilities, the bank would need to make sure it was attracting and retaining some kind of funds in order to keep expanding lending", right after writing about running out of reserves, a direct contradiction."
It isn't is it.
Central bank reserves are an asset of a commercial bank. Deposits are liabilities of commercial banks.
Suggesting people at the Bank of England don't know how banking and central banking works is a bit hubristic don't you think.
The process they are talking about is the one that causes the central bank interest rate to bind [0]
The central bank simply threatens to operate as a wholesale depositor at a particular price.
"Central banks lend money and that's how money is created. "
They don't. They merely threaten. Commercial banks rarely borrow from the central bank.
Central banks discount assets into their own liabilities - just like every other bank. They just tend to stick to government securities. They do that reflexively at a particular price, because if they tried to do it at a quantity they would lose control of their interest rate and cause the payment system to collapse.
That's what QE is - additional discounting of government securities into bank reserves. Which then requires there to be a support rate paid on reserves or the interest rate would drop to zero or thereabouts.
Those reserves come from government spending more than it taxes, and that's what the central bank is discounting.
In technical terms the commercial bank lends to the central bank, not the other way around. The commercial bank has the asset, and the central bank the liability.
Just like a deposit at a bank lends to the bank. Hence why you are 'in credit'. Credit being the accounting term for a liability.
There is no such thing as a money multiplier and never has been. Loans create deposits. Deposits which are then used, in part, to swap for bank equity and bonds which creates the 'assets > liabilities' buffer in the banks. It's back filled, not front run.
Reserves have no quantity controlling power, and are merely an optimisation. You don't need them at all to do banking.
"And they need to put firms with foreign borrowings through administration to get rid of the foreign debt."
Though I totally understand the idea, I however think it is easier said than done.
Turkish ( or any other country) companies have the same issue: low us interest rates and common sense applied here: they took advantage of the situation by borrowing in US dollar.
There was nothing much the Turkish government could do about that.
"There was nothing much the Turkish government could do about that."
They can. They can change the "trading while insolvent" rules so that it is in all currencies the firms deals with, not just the reporting currency.
Then if you can't get the forward swaps, the firm is insolvent and has to be put through administration - which will wipe out the dollar debt rather than cause a wave of Lira for dollar selling.
Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Catholicism without hellfire. It stops the control system working.
My point was referring to any companies from emerging countries who need assess to finance ( exporting into the US or Europe which is the case for many Turkish company). Not only the ones being insolvent. They assesment is made at the entity level. The macro effect is not taken into account by them.
How can you MMT people exist when there are already thousands of business/credit cycles throughout history that disprove your beliefs?
To be clear, raising interest rates to appropriate levels curbs inflation as evidenced by all of financial history. Turkey kept rates low exactly as you suggest, and this massive inflation is the result
"To be clear, raising interest rates to appropriate levels curbs inflation as evidenced by all of financial history"
Except for the ones analysed by the Fed.
> We show that a nearly 90 percent reduction in inflation volatility is possible even without any changes in monetary policy when the economy transitions from equal shares of power between workers and firms to a new balance in which firms dominate. In addition, we show that the decline of trade union power reduces the share of monopoly rents appropriated by workers, and thus helps explain the secular decline of labor share, and the rise of profit share. We provide time series and cross sectional evidence.
Yes, fiscal factors and excess labor supply will keep inflation constrained. But to say higher interest rates lead to higher inflation is simply wrong as evidenced by a huge wealth of history/data.
Every country that has tried to combat inflation with lower rates has led to an inflationary spiral.
In a perfect world inflation would be controlled primarily via fiscal policy, but this is non-viable in the US political system. E.g. despite the Democrats being savaged in the polls due to inflation, they have yet to actually propose any package to help address inflation. Instead they just tried to convince people that BBB was inflation fighting, when in reality it's structured as a highly inflationary set of legislation.
The Fed can't be as targeted as fiscal policy can, so their mechanism to combat inflation naturally leads to recessions. Fiscal could be much more targeted, e.g. temporary taxes on discretionary goods etc.
It just so happens to be that sensible policy to curb inflation would also be highly unpopular to most
At this point -- how do one may try to fix such a situation (assuming there's a political will to do so, which judging from Erdogan's actions, may simply not be there).
Cutting public spending? Resetting the currency?
Imagine living in a country with this sort of inflation and running to dollars (with 15% inflation) instead of to bitcoin. It's amazing people can't see the writing on the wall for all printable currencies in 2022.
Bitcoin as a inflation hedge is a meme that takes 5 seconds to see has no basis in reality. During historic inflation in the US, Bitcoin the inflation protector is.. -40% against the USD in the last 6 months.
At least Gold is up 4% on the 6 month so that’s a small hedge.
It's impossible to not get affected even if you are paid in foreign currencies. As the economy spirals down, everything gets heavily taxed by the government trying to save itself (and only itself).
So the price increases are MORE than the devaluation of the currency itself, which is extremely devaluated already.
That number will probably be much more than 73% if normalized to actual purchasing power.
For example: I could fill my car's tank ~550₺ (Turkish Lira) around October.
Last month, it was ~1600₺. There are tons of more examples, and without any actual production in the country, I don't see any bright future here.