Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

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Gerard Killoran
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Gerard Killoran » Tue Aug 02, 2022 9:34 am

It's not the willingness to die (if only some warmongers were more willing), it's the willingness to kill, and kill in large numbers that I object to.

To quote:

"War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

I am not a pacifist, I support the right of people to defend themselves from war and occupation. However, I don't take lectures from supporters of wars of aggression.

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Gerard Killoran
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Gerard Killoran » Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:08 pm

To return to Gary Kasparov's political views, here's a excerpt from another article he wrote for the Wall Street Journal:

The Western Media Distort The Mideast Picture, April 9, 2001
By Garry Kasparov. Mr. Kasparov, a Wall Street Journal contributing editor, is currently the world's top-ranked chess player.

[...]
Palestinians began to leave the country as a result of the Arabs' own enmity for Israel. The first Palestinian exodus occurred in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli war of 1947-48. The war resulted from the refusal of Arab states -- with the full encouragement of the British government -- to accept the U.N.-determined partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab sectors. The newly born state of Israel miraculously survived this onslaught, giving the world's Jews the chance to build a future on a patch of land with scant natural resources.

Would the BBC also in this way promote a right of return for Germans who were brutally expelled from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia at the end of World War II? After all, they were forced to leave behind not huts and withering fields, but cultivated land and sophisticated infrastructure, even though most of them had nothing to do with the Nazis' crimes.
[...]
It's hard to know where to start with this ahistorical and frankly racist rubbish. This is who Peter Heine Nielsen thinks we should listen to on the subject of international politics.

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Chris Goodall
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Chris Goodall » Tue Aug 02, 2022 8:25 pm

To support only wars of resistance and to oppose wars of aggression, is to beg the question. Every party to every war believes themselves to be the resistance, and carries out aggressive brand management in the media to that effect. Britain was resisting the unprovoked Argentinian raid on their Falkland islands; Argentina was resisting the century-and-a-half-old occupation of their Malvinas by the British. If it's not your own country that you're defending, it's your smaller and weaker allies.

Deciding which country is the True Resistance is an act of moral discernment. You can't get around it. Sometimes it's a very easy decision, but Corbyn managed to go on a Middle Eastern TV station today and get it badly wrong, so it is unavoidably a decision.
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Gerard Killoran
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Gerard Killoran » Tue Aug 02, 2022 10:16 pm

Chris Goodall wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 8:25 pm
To support only wars of resistance and to oppose wars of aggression, is to beg the question. Every party to every war believes themselves to be the resistance, and carries out aggressive brand management in the media to that effect. Britain was resisting the unprovoked Argentinian raid on their Falkland islands; Argentina was resisting the century-and-a-half-old occupation of their Malvinas by the British. If it's not your own country that you're defending, it's your smaller and weaker allies.

Deciding which country is the True Resistance is an act of moral discernment. You can't get around it. Sometimes it's a very easy decision, but Corbyn managed to go on a Middle Eastern TV station today and get it badly wrong, so it is unavoidably a decision.
Most of the time it's very clear who is the agressor and who is resisting aggression and 'moral discernment' - whatever that it is - doesn't come in to it. The wars that Kasparov was inciting were all wars of aggression.

You're also completely wrong about Jeremy Corbyn, he got it right, so maybe your moral discernment isn't up to scratch.

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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Roger de Coverly » Tue Aug 02, 2022 10:25 pm

Gerard Killoran wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 10:16 pm

You're also completely wrong about Jeremy Corbyn, he got it right
Wasn't he saying that wars are prolonged when the defender against aggression is supplied with arms to defend themselves?

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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Gerard Killoran » Wed Aug 03, 2022 12:32 am

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 10:25 pm
Gerard Killoran wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 10:16 pm

You're also completely wrong about Jeremy Corbyn, he got it right
Wasn't he saying that wars are prolonged when the defender against aggression is supplied with arms to defend themselves?
No he wasn't making any sort of general point. Specifically he was criticising the lack of any attempt to end this war by negotiation as Ukraine's so-called allies (and forces inside Ukraine) have blocked any peace talks and insist on Ukraine fighting to the last Ukrainian.

As for your general point, when did 'the West' provide Palestinians 'with arms to defend themselves'? How about a no-fly zone over Gaza and Lebanon? Funny how these things go only one way.

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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Chris Goodall » Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:44 am

He said very, very clearly that Western Europe should stop sending arms to Ukraine, since Ukraine is using them to resist the occupation when it should be "negotiating".

If you like, I can ask the Ukrainian in my spare room whether Ukraine ought to be begging Russia for an end to the fighting, at the exact moment Russia has put plans in place for sham referendums in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia on joining Russia. Her response may not be printable, though.

(Moral discernment is discernment in matters of morals. It's working things out on a case by case basis when your general principles are pointing in conflicting directions.)
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Gerard Killoran » Wed Aug 03, 2022 12:26 pm

Chris Goodall wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:44 am
He said very, very clearly that Western Europe should stop sending arms to Ukraine, since Ukraine is using them to resist the occupation when it should be "negotiating".

If you like, I can ask the Ukrainian in my spare room whether Ukraine ought to be begging Russia for an end to the fighting, at the exact moment Russia has put plans in place for sham referendums in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia on joining Russia. Her response may not be printable, though.

(Moral discernment is discernment in matters of morals. It's working things out on a case by case basis when your general principles are pointing in conflicting directions.)
Ukraine has been receiving arms and training from NATO since 2014. It had one of the biggest, and best armed military forces in the world at the time of the Russian invasion. Since then it has seen its heavy armaments destroyed to such an extent it can't replace its losses despite NATO resupplies. Ukraine is outgunned by Russian artillery and has minimal or no air cover. Prolonging the war is prolonging the death and destruction.

By the way, Ukraine did take part in negotiations with Russia, until one of the negotiators, Denis Kireev was bumped off in mysterious circumstances. The others got the message.
Moral discernment is discernment in matters of morals.
'He digs deepest, who deepest digs.' - Roger Woddis

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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Wed Aug 03, 2022 1:12 pm

The elephant in the room for the likes of Corbyn is that the present Russian regime does not believe that Ukraine should even exist.
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Chris Goodall » Wed Aug 03, 2022 3:46 pm

Gerard Killoran wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 12:26 pm
Prolonging the war is prolonging the death and destruction.
Let me see if I've got this straight. Countries may resist war and occupation, for a period of time that depends on the number of weapons they happened to have stockpiled on the day the occupation began. They may not acquire more weapons, because that will make the fighting last longer, and by the same token countries may not supply them.

So the obvious question arises: why merely not arm Ukraine? Why not arm Russia instead? Arming Russia would "get the war done" even faster than not arming either side. Or at the very least, confiscate the weapons that the Ukrainians already have?
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Gerard Killoran » Wed Aug 03, 2022 4:58 pm

Chris Goodall wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 3:46 pm
Gerard Killoran wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 12:26 pm
Prolonging the war is prolonging the death and destruction.
Let me see if I've got this straight.
You haven't.

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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Gerard Killoran » Wed Aug 03, 2022 5:01 pm

Matt Mackenzie wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 1:12 pm
The elephant in the room for the likes of Corbyn is that the present Russian regime does not believe that Ukraine should even exist.
That's not an 'elephant in the room'. Also, who are 'the likes of Corbyn'? People who want the war to end before Ukraine is reduced to rubble?

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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by JustinHorton » Wed Aug 03, 2022 5:27 pm

This discussion could usefully be wound up or the last page and a half moved to Not Chess
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Gerard Killoran » Wed Aug 03, 2022 5:37 pm

JustinHorton wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 5:27 pm
This discussion could usefully be wound up or the last page and a half moved to Not Chess
Agreed.

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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Chris Goodall » Wed Aug 03, 2022 6:18 pm

Talking point «Каспаров – лицемер» not success. Commence hide of evidence
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