How is everything not collapsing in the US?

[innonimatu]

I totally agree on everything, but honestly, the Kurds were pretty much always the good guys. They were also always the ones getting screwed.

If there is such a thing as a historical good guy -- It's them

The armenians might disagree...

 

[Crezth]

Unemployment benefits haven't been extended, the uncontrolled pandemic rages on, groups of Freikorps Q-Anon militia roam America's cities attacking critics of the government, and y'all in here going on about "hmm what is the nature of good and evil and national guilt?"

America's screwed y'all. Keep praying that the Holy Line of Economy keeps going up, it's all you got.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

The armenians might disagree...

I was always under the impression that the Armenian genocide was an Ottoman/Turkish thing and that the Kurds participated to the extent that some Kurds were also Ottomans, or living in Turkey. Did they have any special role in the genocide? IIRC didn't the actual chain of command start with Abdul Hamid II and was then given onto every province? Am I misinformed?

 

[r16]

the Armenians were the "Loyal Nation" . They tended to , once acceptinjg the power of some distant capital . They were instrumental in defending Anatolia against the first phase of Muslim Conquest . Their decision to doubt the Byzantium explains a quite a bit of the rate of advance of the second phase of the Muslim Conquest , specifically declining to make a distinction here , between (Umeyyad) Arab and (Abbasid and more) Turkish . They were far less trouble than you might have imagined during the Ottoman times . But everything dies and the Ottomans would die and the Armenians were most ill placed ... Greeks set to benefit most from Western European interventions , in addition to their Russian connections , and naturally between you and me , they were not fondly looking forward to live peacefully with the Armenians . The Armenian strategical situation was so bad , they had to cover so much ground that the Russian secret police considered their Armenians the worst / most dangerous terrorists in Tsar's domains .

meanwhile the Kurdish thing is feodal or something . Paying some little taxes and lip service to a distant capital , the power firmly shared by the clan leader and his mollah cousin , they resisted missionaries , who then doubled their efforts amongst the Armenians . Who were quite prevalent around in the South East , leading to clashes given time . Clans would clash without any regards to etnicity or religion but by late 1800 , the Ottomans were losing territory for two centuries . lnstead of using direct power to police both sides with men he didn't have and money he couldn't pay , Abdülhamid had to make a choice and he chose "legitimizing" the Kurdish clans , the Hamidiye Regiments and all and whatever . Which naturally helped things to simmer . The finest of whatever the Ottomans had were directly sent to the Balkans where the same problems and the same game were present with equal hatred and far more intensity .

armenians didn't exactly help with employing "terror" right in the capital , trying to blow up the horse carriage of Abdülhamid . There would be some spat between neighbours , your goats might have eaten my oats if this presently invented sentence is not somehow unacceptable . Armenians priests would cause a frenzy after getting an assurance from Mr. Smith , the ever present Missionary , the feelings and prayers of the Christian World were with Armenians . lmams would be saying lots of things . One Muslim would be dead and 5 Armenians would be killed and Mr. Smith being Mr. Smith , would write a poignant letter to foreign newspapers , lamenting the 50 Armenians children gutted in the streets and also secretly receive the 500 rifles sent directly to him for distribution . The book of bringing Democracy to places was really written against us . Thus were the years upto 1915 were spent .

 

[innonimatu]

I was always under the impression that the Armenian genocide was an Ottoman/Turkish thing and that the Kurds participated to the extent that some Kurds were also Ottomans, or living in Turkey. Did they have any special role in the genocide? IIRC didn't the actual chain of command start with Abdul Hamid II and was then given onto every province? Am I misinformed?

For manpower reasons in the regionm if nothing else, it couldn't be just an ottoman/turkish thing. Empires have to be adept at throwing groups against each other.

 

[r16]

ı have tons of stuff ı haven't yet read on the laptop , the ability to trawl off the internet easily beats the ability to use the things . But one chapter in some book confirms stuff . Depending on what's the gain to be made at the moment , maths can suffer . Where the French embassy claims 7 thousand massacred , the British one might report 20 thousand ... And the inevitable feeling that the Armenians were "launched" earlier compared to what the Greeks might do in similar circumstances . Making them loose more to gain less and be driven out of selected areas , to perhaps to raise their concentrations in chosen locations . You know , they were found to be close to Europeans , despite still being Orientals , the West doesn't like such things .

 

[EgonSpengler]

I'm reading The Coming of the Third Reich and of course some of what happened in Germany in 1890-1930 rings alarm bells in the back of my head (or in the front of my head), but then the book still makes me think, "Okay, we're not even close to that yet." For example, the hyperinflation of 1923 is hard to even get my head around.

A kilo of rye bread, that staple of the German daily diet, cost 163 marks on 3 January, 1923[...] and 233 billion marks[...] on 19 November.

The inflation was so fast, a working man getting his meager pay of hundreds of thousands of marks would have to quickly hand his wife half of the money so she could run to the grocers while he ran to pay the utility bills before the shops closed for the day, because if they waited even until morning, their money would be effectively gone and they'd run out of food before the next pay day.

Germany was grinding to a halt. Businesses and municipalities could no longer afford to pay their workers or buy supplies for public utilities. By 7 September sixty out of the ninety tram routes in Berlin had stopped running.

As money lost its value, goods became the only thing worth having, and a huge crime wave swept the country. [...]

Pilfering on the Hamburg docks, where workers had traditionally helped themselves to a portion of the cargoes they were paid to load and unload, reached unprecedented levels. Workers were said to be refusing to load some goods on the grounds that they could not use any of them.

And while The Proud Boys and these 'militia' dudes walking around with their [units] out concern me a great deal, they're still nothing compared to pitched battles between the Freikorps and the Communists, with 200 guys on each side using knives, prybars and handguns on each other while the cops wait down the block.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm reading The Coming of the Third Reich and of course some of what happened in Germany in 1890-1930 rings alarm bells in the back of my head (or in the front of my head), but then the book still makes me think, "Okay, we're not even close to that yet." For example, the hyperinflation of 1923 is hard to even get my head around.

The inflation was so fast, a working man getting his meager pay of hundreds of thousands of marks would have to quickly hand his wife half of the money so she could run to the grocers while he ran to pay the utility bills before the shops closed for the day, because if they waited even until morning, their money would be effectively gone and they'd run out of food before the next pay day.


And while The Proud Boys and these 'militia' dudes walking around with their [units] out concern me a great deal, they're still nothing compared to pitched battles between the Freikorps and the Communists, with 200 guys on each side using knives, prybars and handguns on each other while the cops wait down the block.

Point out facts and logic around here you'll get called a fascist enabler lol.

Yeah even Trump's inept handling so far has been better than Hoovers it's not the governments job approach.

The German hyperinflation was deliberate to both pay down domestic war debt and wiggle out of paying reparations.

 

[Socrates99]

Point out facts and logic around here you'll get called a fascist enabler lol.

Yeah even Trump's inept handling so far has been better than Hoovers it's not the governments job approach.

The German hyperinflation was deliberate to both pay down domestic war debt and wiggle out of paying reparations.

Oh the Senate has happily taken over Hoover's role.

 

[Naskra]

The German hyperinflation was deliberate to both pay down domestic war debt and wiggle out of paying reparations.

Not so. The debts were payable in gold only. The papiermark (introduced 1914) had no relation to them.

 

[Hrothbern]

The German hyperinflation was deliberate to both pay down domestic war debt and wiggle out of paying reparations.

"Everybody" mentions these war debts and war damage
But is it really correct ?
How much is it correct ?
I once did read an article concluding that the main financial issue of the Weimar Republic was bad financial economical policies.
And that the war debt payments were only a small part of the new debt build up.
With as implied conclusion that the argument that Versailles was the root cause was only used because Versailles did hit the national pride of the Germans and was therefore perfect for Hitler.

 

[innonimatu]

Not so. The debts were payable in gold only. The papiermark (introduced 1914) had no relation to them.

No, Zardnaar was right, it was a policy decision to default on those debts. The domestic debt could be inflated away, and was. The international debt was (nominally) payable in gold but the hyperinflation was specifically a consequence also do the government coordinated shutdown done to stop paying the debt to the french in goods. No goods produced, no payments. The message was eventually successful, see the London Conference.

 

[Naskra]

The WWI debt was fully repaid in 2010. After several restructerings.

 

[Naskra]

policy decision to default on those debts. The domestic debt could be inflated away, and wa

It wasn't a decision, it was inescapable, an outright default, on the domestic debt. The reparations were senior debt, and inescapable, without winning the next war.

 

[Hygro]

Germany lost much of its manufacturing when the French seized the factories as part of collecting that debt. The German workers went on strike. The government printed money so that striking workers could eat. Money printing in the face of the massive loss in output/supply drove prices up in the legendary way that it did.

It ended when they issued a new currency tied to land after they got their manufacturing back and their output in order.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Germany lost much of its manufacturing when the French seized the factories as part of collecting that debt. The German workers went on strike. The government printed money so that striking workers could eat. Money printing in the face of the massive loss in output/supply drove prices up in the legendary way that it did. It ended when they issued a new currency tied to land after they got their manufacturing back and their output in order.

I would also like to add that.

Post Ruhur occupation is when German Hyperinflation occurred, all that money printing.
The German government then switch policy from defaulting on reparations to a kind of reconciliation and ordered the Ruhur workers back to work thats how the Germans managed to secure new reparation terms with the allies.

 

[EgonSpengler]

And while The Proud Boys and these 'militia' dudes walking around with their [units] out concern me a great deal, they're still nothing compared to pitched battles between the Freikorps and the Communists, with 200 guys on each side using knives, prybars and handguns on each other while the cops wait down the block.

So I guess I have to pay more attention. This was published a few days before I posted the above:

The Washington Post, 22 August 2020 - "Portland police stand by as Proud Boys and far-right militias flash guns and brawl with antifa counterprotesters"

So... yeah... yay, us.

PORTLAND, Ore. — On Saturday afternoon, a large crowd of more than 100 far-right activists, including Proud Boys and armed militia members, descended on Portland, Ore., staging a “Back the Blue” rally in front of the Justice Center that houses the downtown police precinct. Hundreds of antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters gathered to oppose the far-right crowd.

People in the far-right crowd came armed with paintball guns, metal rods, aluminum bats, fireworks, pepper spray, rifles and handguns. Some people in the opposing left-leaning crowd brought rocks, fireworks and bottles filled with chemical solutions. Both crowds sported shields and helmets.

As the brawls unfolded, Portland police officers remained at a distance. They made several announcements over loudspeakers, encouraging the crowds to “self-monitor for criminal activity,” even as people beat others with sticks, and at least two right-wing activists brandished handguns.

 

[Farm Boy]

They threw fireworks and shot paintballs at each other, one person bled a little by the end?

So, should they have tear gassed them till they went home?

 

[Commodore]

So I guess I have to pay more attention. This was published a few days before I posted the above:

The Washington Post, 22 August 2020 - "Portland police stand by as Proud Boys and far-right militias flash guns and brawl with antifa counterprotesters"

So... yeah... yay, us.

On the surface stuff like this makes it seem like the police support one group over another, but this is actually established riot control doctrine. When two groups of protestors begin fighting with each other the police are trained to just contain the fight to prevent it from spreading, not to intervene in the fight itself. The reasoning being that police are always going to be outnumbered in such situations, so intervening runs the risk of having the opposing groups sort of unite to fight the police. And if the police are occupied just trying to defend themselves, their ability to effectively contain the riot drops considerably.

So as crappy as it sounds, from a tactical standpoint it's better to allow the two groups to fight it out and make arrests later than to intervene and try to stop the fight altogether. I learned all this in a sort of mini-documentary explaining why the Charlottesville Police seemed to just sit back and let protestors fight each other.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I wasn't intending those posts to be a critique of the police, but of course police misconduct is a proximate cause of all this, so it's not a huge leap to think that they were (and I'm not shy about criticizing the police, when I think they deserve it). I was commenting more on the state of our country, that we're not in as bad a state as Germany was in the 1920s, because at least we don't have big groups of armed men literally fighting pitched battles in the streets, in full view of the people nominally responsible for dealing with violence. Oops.

Whatever the role of the police here, something's gone badly wrong. In the context of wondering whether "everything is collapsing", this doesn't seem like a republic operating as intended. In the case of Germany in the 1920s, it really was a symptom of the republic failing. Although that's less likely to be the case here, it's certainly worrying. The Weimar Republic was barely 5-6 years old, and there were prominent Germans who saw democracy and liberalism as the problem and wanted to bring the monarchy back. I certainly don't see that happening here. But, as always, anyone who wants an analogy to line up perfectly is Diogenes looking for an honest man.

While these events aren't solely about the police, to me, if we want to keep our focus on that for a minute, I think it's clear that "tear-gassing them 'til they go home" doesn't accomplish much. I mean, they've been doing that for months now, haven't they? It may even make the situation worse. If I were going to critique the Portland police in this instance, I might note that they seem to go from tear-gassing peaceful protestors to allowing two armed gangs to rip into each other, and I might wonder what they're there for. It would seem that, at best, they're inconsequential in the current crises, and we need to maybe try something else. If there's a good time to use tear-gas, it doesn't seem like the Portland police know when that is. 'Cause, look.

I also hadn't thought that the police, in this instance, were supporting one side over the other, but now that the idea has been put in my head, I guess I do have to wonder, don't I? There's that photo in the other thread, of a different confrontation, where the police are standing between the two sides, clearly focusing their attention on one side and literally turning their backs to the other. (In that scene, there didn't appear to be any violence happening. I think it was just a protest-counterprotest.)