I have always equated Klingons to be like the Mongols....even though the series gave a Romulan "Khan" name...to me, the Klingons are more like Genghis and Kublia Khan....what is the stat? All males on earth have 1% Mongol DNA to them...that is quite the conquering point system...
Spoilers Who is sympathetic to the Klingons?
- Thread starter Charles Phipps
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Castro early on worked with the Orthodox Party to win reform and elections within the system. When the Orthodox party won, Batista suspended the Constitution and declared emergency powers. When it became clear Batista would no abide by the rules that threatened his agenda and power, it convinced Castro and the Revolutionaries that they must rise up and depose Batista.
As JFK once said, "those who make peaceful reform impossible, only make violent revolution inevitable."
I am going to disagree and say Castro was better than Batista, if we are thinking about Cubans and not North Americans. Leaving for a moment aside the question if Castro is or is not a dictator (being in power for many years doesn't automatically make a leader a dictator, President FDR only implemented reforms and programs only a fraction of what the Cuban Revolution did, and he was still elected president until he died, so there is a separate debate to be had about how popular Castro is with the Cubans remaining in Cuba and the Cuban system), being a dictator is only a style of rule, not the same as the agenda implemented by the rule. In other words not all dictators are tyrants (just like there are good kings and bad kings, good presidents ad bad presidents).
Cuban living standard have gone up considerably due tot he reforms of the Cuban Revolution, even with the hefty embargo in place. Look at how Cuba measures up to its neighbors, who have a similar history and geography but were instead developed under a different economic and social model. Using the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (which looks at education, life-expectancy, nutritional standards, infant mortality, income, etc) here is how Cuba's neighbors measure up:
Puerto Rico 0.735
Jamaica 0.609
Mexico 0.587
Dominican Republic 0.565
Haiti 0.298
Where as Cuba's Human development index is:
Cuba 0.775
Even with the embargo, Cuba's become a leader in quality of life for the Caribbean.
Maybe you disagree with the methods or the politics, but the Cuban Revolution has been successful in changing the system of Batista, a highly unequal system, to a society that has guaranteed employment, universal free education, free healthcare for all citizens and no homelessness. If we judged a society by how it treated its worst off members, Cuba is a better society than nations which are richer but do less for their people who struggle. Being a 30-something here in the USA, when I speak to my peers who are 30-something and 20-something, the biggest complaints are massive student debt, lack of affordable healthcare or put off needed operations because of lack of money, etc. In Cuba, those aren't problems, but for the world's richest nation, they are for a great number of people. If there was ever a North American politician who could forgive student debt and bring North Americas universal healthcare, reform property regarding large land-owners, corporations and banks and begin distributing to poorer people, I bet they'd add a new face to Mount Rushmore and pass an amendment so that president would be president for life.
You forget that the Soviets pumped the equivalent of several billion dollars a year into Cuba for decades.
And no offense but just who are your "peers" to be needing operations? I'm sure there are some here and there but overall 20-somethings and 30-somethings are just about the healthiest people in the United States.
And no offense but just who are your "peers" to be needing operations? I'm sure there are some here and there but overall 20-somethings and 30-somethings are just about the healthiest people in the United States.
Flash forward a hundred or so years and we have the UFP redraw borders with the Cardassians in an attempt to keep the peace. That didn't exactly work out well.
But if a planet on the border of Klingon space votes to join the Federation should the Federation deny that application because it might antogonise the Klingons? What ever happend to self determination?
I kind of don't like using the good vs evil argument, because then it is just like Star Wars, and life isn't like that. Still we are never given elaboration about aspects of the Federation system, so I think we are suppose to take the Federation as good, albeit a flawed good by the time we got to DS9 and after. So it isn't really a lesser evilism either.
Modern day antagonism between the Russian Federation and NATO are definitely more complicated than what is presented in any Trek, including Discovery. I already talked about how it is very likely NATO was always formed with the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation in mind, and in modern times as the intervention in Libya showed, also for interventionism to eliminate rival regimes.
At the end of WW2, the USA came out the biggest winner, by far (even though most of the winning of the war was done buy the USSR with 85% of Nazi casualties on the Eastern Front, the Soviet Union in this sense was a loser with some 28 million deaths). The new order had the US as the main capitalist power and other capitalist powers as either vassal states or junior partners with the USA. The competition among capitalist empires which lead to World War I and World War II for a time ended while the nations rebuilt under the protection of the relatively unscathed USA.
But with the Socialist bloc gone in Europe and Russia, I think the only thing holding together NATO and the EU is their fear of Russia. If it had not been for the USSR and Russia now, I think the interests of these states are not aligned and are contradictory and competitive, and it would only be a matter of time before the resumed waring on each other. Already the EU is falling apart, for many reasons, but I suspect eventually it will end and go the way of the Warsaw Pact before it and collapse when the countries who are in debt and can't print money, like Greece and Spain, will eventually have to resist either their governments or their people.
But what the West wanted to do to Russia, it had the opportunity to do under Yeltsin. The results of shock therapy (which killed some four million people, note that those who love to accuse Socialism as artificially manufacturing deaths as an economic system fail to apply the same culpability in reverse to shock therapy) were that the western multi-national corporations and banks began to reduce Russia to a colony for resources and wealth for the West and as a land where property was held privately, mostly by oligarchs and mafiosi. Putin is just a response to that period. He came to power in a country with a heavy executive (which the West allowed Yeltsin to create when he suspended the parliament {Duma} and sent tanks to fire on them, and rushed in his new Constitution which gave the presidency expanded powers), he came to power because Yeltsin selected him hoping that Yeltsin's family would not be prosecuted for their corruption, and he stayed in power by reversing shock therapy which the people hated. Those who advocate Putin's removal don't realize that he is one of the least anti-Western or anti-American political forces in his country. Most Russians hate the West and the USA more than Putin.
The actions of Russia in South Ossetia, Crimea and Donbas are reactive moves rather than provocative ones. The problem with the liquidation of the Soviet Union, aside from the massive deaths, was that one third of all the world's Russians now lived in countries other than Russia. The EU's report on the conflict in between Georgia and the Russian Federation over South Ossetia did not absolve Saakashvili for his role in provoking the conflict. In the case of Crimea, there had been a coup in the capital of Ukraine, Kiev. The Crimean politicians enjoyed a close relationship to the Russian Federation and worried about the anti-Russian bent of the Euromaidan and the coup. The Crimean politicians asked to be annexed to protect the status quo (so it is almost more like Crimea annexed Russia). In the Donbas, because the new Kiew government announced anti-Russian measures, such as protecting both the Ukrainian and Russia languages to just protecting Ukrainian which would be made official, appointing new governors from Western Ukraine into the Donbas which the local populace neither selected or supported, and so on, all caused backlash which allowed for the "foreign volunteers" to step into.
I look at the actions of the Russian Federation under Putin, therefor as reactive (to Saakashvili or the the coup in Kiev), not as proactive. This is not to say they are justified, but that the sequence of causality is not purely subjective. If Putin or any Russia ruler were to sit by as Russians in a neighboring country are bombed or massively persecuted, the Russian populace would not stand for it. Thereby, the Russian state must act or loss favor with its populace.
By the way, notice that ever post-Soviet state to have a so-called "color revolution" but the next election cycle they vote out those who came to power in the "color revolution" and return to the old elites. That is because the pro-Western color revolution politics always sell of the country to Western corporations, banks, the IMF, World Bank and so on. It seems to me the populations do not like their ruling elite, but the like the pro-West ruling elite even less. I suspect their local corrupt elites will steal less than the West will. Meanwhile, i think the post-Soviet ruling elites would happily work with the West if they would be kept in charge, where as the West has no interest in keeping the ruling elites in charge, they want regime change.
I don't care much for Putin, but I don't view him as some evil mustache-twirling mastermind. He isn't playing a big chess game, the Russian state is lumbering, stumbling and bumbling along from crisis to crisis. Notions that he is a great mastermind are in my view projections by those who don't understand context or the culpability of the Western side in the tensions, and those who don't want to admit that the Democratic Party in the USA has fallen out of favor because it wasted its mandate to end the wars and crack down on the banks and also that Hillary Clinton was a lousy campaigner who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by being a very poor politician. It isn't that different to the Red Scare, when all union organizing in the USA was alleged to be done from Moscow, or even the segregationists who insisted that Civil Right was a plot by communist agitators, or that all rebel and terrorist movements around the globe were being created by and run by Moscow. Its the same kind of projection/conspiracy thinking.
I suppose if any Klingon ruler were analogous to Putin, I would argue that retroactively it should be seen as Gowron, a figure who rose in power with the help of the Federation, who for a while enjoyed a healthy friendship with he Federation, but never the less, because of rapidly shifting geopolitics (the lead into the Dominion War) was in a political position whereby the Klingons felt they had to intervene now or the risk of waiting would be too late. These moves, viewed as hostile and provocative by the UFP, eventually led to Gowron's falling out of favor with the UFP. That sounds close to what happened with Putin and the USA.
Lastly, I wouldn't go as far as to say what the UFP's "real motives" are. I think the UFP and Starfleet seem sincere in their values and actions. However, we are never fully aware of the scope and power of Section 31, particularly in the 22nd century. Section 31 I suppose is mostly an analog to the CIA, with perhaps some FBI and NSA thrown in.
As far as legality, depends on whether we are looking at the US Constitution, although the Constitution states that treaties the USA signs are the highest law. But the USA constantly violates treaties it doesn't agree with (even when they sign them), and can afford to do so because they are too powerful for anyone to try and hold them accountable. I am sure a criminal investigation into the CIA would reveal numerous violations of international law including but not limited to: assassinations, torture, arming and training of terrorists, libel and the promoting of deliberate misinformation, economic and civilian sabotage, illegal wiretapping and surveillance, and election tampering.
The other day I joked that if President Trump wanted to get back at the intelligence agencies that are now pushing for investigation of his campaign, he should announce a criminal investigation of the intelligence agencies. Of course he won't do that, and anybody who doesn't want to end up like JFK wouldn't dare even mention it. If such an investigation were to actually occur (and miraculously the incriminating documents wouldn't some how mysteriously and "accidentally" be destroyed) I am fairly certain the CIA would through at least the deceased presidents under the bus and say they were ordered to do so and they serve the president, in which case a case for a former president's criminal charges could be brought up to any living president implicated. Again, it is a fantasy, because the law will never be applied to those that high up.
To be frank, real life politics has always been about trying to balance national relations with your own nation's agenda.
"Should we deny that application because it might antagonize the Klingons?"
Yes or not are both valid answers.
Certainly, in Star Trek we saw the Federation not help in the Bajoran humanitarian crisis until the Cardassian War and even then that was because the Cardassians basically threw it in because they didn't want it anymore.
That is true. And I can see some of the argument that the Cubans traded one master for another, although again I differ, but even if I were to concede that, there is no Soviet Union anymore, so Cuba is for the first time in its history independent.
I need an operation for one. I have hardly any cartilage left in my knee due to how my knees are shaped. I can't afford another surgery (this would be my third) at this time, until I get a better job with better benefits, so I am using a brace and ibuprofen to keep the swelling down. I have a few other friends with similar situations.
For a fraction of the cost of the operation, I could buy a plane ticket to Cuba and have it done there for free.
Cuba by the way has a lower infant mortality rate than the USA. Cuba has 4.76 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2013, compared to 5.90 for the United States.
I agree with some of what you say and disagree with others. Particularly with Putin who has always stated his public agenda was restoring some of the Soviet Union's past glories without the repression (and in this case, it's mostly religious repression and quite possibly only because Putin is religious himself). I also think your interpretation of the EU is overly cynical given its primary purpose isn't fear of Russia but salvaging economies which have become interdependent but also failures in many ways. NATO only existing because of Russia is also kind of an odd observation because, yes, that is exactly why it was created. It's like saying, "only fear of terrorism is what keeps the Department of Homeland Security going."
I think one friend of mine summarized it best as "Castro was an awful person who killed a lot of innocent people as well as ruled the country with a totalitarian control but had the understanding 1 doctor for 100 people makes a lot more sense than 1 for every couple of thousand." The United States' handling of Cuba has also consistently been someone handing them the Stupid BallTM.
The current sanctions, for example, probably have done more to keep the regime in power than anything.
I didn't, but then what could have been done? I argue that this is the result of the Federation's rapid growth and allowing colonists that close to the borders of Cardassian space to begin with. I think we always are given the impression that the UFP is rapidly expanding, even if peaceful between new admissions in the UFP and colonists. In the case of Cardassia it was definitely colonists, and with hindsight being 20/20, declaring those worlds to be off-limits for colonization could have created an effective Neutral Zone type of border which worked more-or-less for keeping the peace between the UFP, the Romans and Klingons for extended eras of time.
It is kind of like the politics mentioned before about Cuba switching to the Socialist Bloc shows how even with self-determination proximity can cause conflict by those who rightly or wrongly fear danger.
Eh, in real life, diplomacy is often angry and horse trading because people push you as far as you can until you push back even in the interests of peace (ESPECIALLY).
But to use the Cardassian and Federation issue, both powers were always pushing their borders out and eventually, those borders met.
In the case of the Klingons, them being on the borders worked well.
I don't agree with that characterization. I think the propaganda has been pretty good at portraying Castro as a tyrant and as similar to likes of Saddam Hussein or something. Not true. Whether you want to argue if Cuba qualifies as democratic or not, it certainly has not had waves of mass executions and violent repressions. There are opposition parties in Cuba, they have open-air meetings where they speak against government policies, and pretty much all of the executions in Cuba were of the deposed Batista regime, with a public, televised trial which executed some of Batista's worst henchmen and torturers, or of those government officials found to be corrupt or even committing treason by conspiring with enemy powers.
I also disagree with he notion of "totalitarianism", and I stated in an earlier post, most discipline in academia, political science, history, sociology etc, have discarded the idea. It was a term that was useful for propaganda to portray fascism and socialism as the same, where as capitalist liberal democracies were eh exception. But it was a backwards reading. Fascist and socialist states are not really that similar at all. And the notion of a totalized power, all controlling in the society just didn't make sense to sociologists studying those societies, because that is not how power and ideology work. Just my advice, authoritarian works better as a substitute, although I wouldn't exactly call Cuba authoritarian either. Autocratic is what I call the sort of the mid-point between authoritarian and democratic.
I agree that the sanctions/embargo has helped that government stay in power, for sure. I think the advances in social services, literacy, healthcare, etc, play an even bigger role in the government's popularity.
As for Putin, he would say what you expect a politician to say. Donald Trump says he too, wants to "Make America Great Again." It is good rhetoric but ultimately a slogan. Putin said that those who don't miss the Soviet Union have no heart, but those who want it back have no brains. I don't think there are plans to bring it back, mostly because Putin isn't a socialist, and a nationalist capitalist the current system works fine, where as introducing new peoples and factions could introduce elements and types of organization autonomous from the control of the current ruling elite.
I think we are seeing the events which lead to the establishment of the Neutral Zone in Discovery, is that right?
If so it shows an interesting pattern. Earth and Romulus go to war, the result is a Neutral Zone, the UFP and the Klingons go to war, the result is a neutral zone. The Cardassians and the UFP go to war, new borders are established.
Yeah, but it goes both ways. Poland has always had the unfortunate lot that it has been sandwiched between Germany and Russia. But Poland also took part in it's own provocations. The Polish right wing dictator Jozef Pilsudski invaded the Soviet Union and expanded Poland's borders east taking territory away from the Soviet Union, land which the USSR took back after WW2. In fact, the countries the Soviet Union occupied after WW2 and formed their bloc with, had almost all joined the Axis powers and attacked the USSR, such as Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Finland, etc. The Soviets would argue that their occupation of those who waged war against them was justified.
I guess all I have been trying to say, is that a look at International Relations means trying to understand the viewpoints and motives of all parties each on their own terms.
Mind you, sometimes it's as simple as, "Stalin has the ball so he's not giving it back."
"Lorca has the Tardigrade and he’s not giving it back."
But the point is in realizing why he is doing what he did. I am not in this case trying to take a side, but more so present that there are many sides, and they aren't as simple as heroes and villains.
The Soviets had a viewpoint, and in their view point they suffered heavily in a war, a war that the USSR saw themselves as trying to avoid, offering alliances and pacts with the western powers leading up to the war, only to be buffed, even offering to help Poland against the Nazis but the Polish refused to allow Soviet tanks in Poland. While in the West, Stalin's non-aggression pact with Hitler is overblown into a full-fledged alliance, for the USSR it was the only logical option left after seeing what had happened in Spain where the West abandoned the Republic and allowed their banks to finance the fascists, and in Czechoslovakia (where the Soviets view the Allied order to tell the Czechoslovak to stand down to Hitler's invading armies as much more of a "collusion" than the non-aggression pact which in the Soviet view only restored the borders taken by Poland in their invasion).
Like I said, not about picking a side. What happened to Poland and Eastern Europe was a workable solution. I wouldn't say it was fair or just, because I don't think that entirely applies here. The Soviet saw the weak Eastern European states created because of WWI, and saw them with the exception of Czechoslovakia turn right-wing/fascist and then either ally against them with the Nazis or get steamrolled by the Nazis. Plus the Soviet Union/Russia has no real natural boundaries to speak up (except to its North, I suppose, where there is no one). The Ural Mountains are foothills, and have never stop invasions. For Stalin's part, he thought he had an agreement with Churchill and FDR. As per their plan, Churchill wanted Greece to remain in the British sphere because of Malta, the and the Suez canal allowed for British domination of the Mediterranean on one end, Gibraltar the other. Stalin withdrew any support for the Greek communists in the Civil War to prove he would stick to the agreement. The plan was to have Soviet-freindly governments and slowly build up the Communist parties until they gained power many years down the road. The rising of the Iron Curtain was accelerated in response to the Marshall Plan and other policy changes Truman put in place because he wanted to be tough on Communism, which worried the Soviets. Still as the Iron Curtain went up, the West largely just watched it happen recognizing they might not like it, but that was in the Soviet sphere, so they would stay out, just as the Soviets did as the British and Americans crushed the Greek communists. Again, not necessarily just or fair, but ultimately it proved a workable solution to avoid a third war, which nobody wanted.
They key is the actions through the Soviet prism were strictly defensive, not provocative. I would say the same about the nuclear deterrent for Cuba and North Korea, as actions to ward of future attacks/invasions by the West/USA. The media through news and documentaries tends to portray such actions as hostile, but I think the truth is they rarely talk about how hostile the West is. During the Cold War, 79% of the conflicts started were initiated by the Western Powers. The Soviets, with the notable exception of Nikita Kruschev's actions in Suez and Cuba, largely were all defensive posturing for the USSR (with the exceptions Cuba and Suez supposedly defensive for Cuba and Egypt), with the further away from the USSR it was, the less important. Meanwhile, as I said 79% of the conflicts involved Western powers, and 95% of the conflicts took place in the Third World in the Cold War. The West was the one acting globally in Korea, Vietnam, Algeria, Kenya, not to mention neighbors like the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, etc. So it wasn't as if the was no hostile actions on the side of the West. These actions have the effect of frightening other nations, and those nations are likely to act out of that fear. This just how it builds up over time.
And I guess that is the issue then with Star Trek Discovery's Klingons. They don't really make a clear case as to why the Klingons are fearful/angry at the Federation. It is obvious the Klingon Empire is divided and weak, and the Federation are at their borders with their satellites. Missing is the rationale/dialogue where the Klingons get to justify their actions/views (or at least convincingly present them). Instead it seems that they are talking about resisting assimilation and Klingon cultural or racial purity. I don't know if it is enough to give them a realistic motivation. It still seems like it is resting on the side of the Klingons been religious fundamentalist or racial supremacists without much of a clue as to why yet. Even if we were talking about the ISIS or the Nazis, there are reasons other than subjectively embracing radical evil that have to be taken in context, for Germany being stuck paying the war reparations and the following crash with hyperinflation, with ISIS the whole history of Western intervention/imperialism since World War I has had a lot to do with the rise of radical Islam.
Its frustrating because a lot of fiction repeats more of the cartoon-y good vs evil tropes instead of the complex dynamics of international relations. Of Course, Frank Herbert's Dune being a notable exception, with its exploration of multiple actors and factions with multiple conflicting motivations, rarely with goals or viewpoints approaching anything like "good" or "evil". In some ways I hope this portrayal of the Klingons will be as rich as Game of Thrones or Dune, they certainly have shown a much more complex version of Starfleet in those regards. So far the Klingons have shown us two sides, religious cultural purists and for lack of a better term pragmatic and self-interested Klingons.
Maybe some folks' prediction will prove right, and it will be revealed that the push towards purity is a result of the Augmentation virus, which in a sense would be then portraying a more sophisticated international relations, where earlier actions of Starfleet had ramifications a hundred years later. That virus spreading among Klingons would certainly explain their anger and mistrust of the Federation further.
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Oh, I don't know...the Robert Pattinson thing was in the ball park...the image of Klingons as rabid consumers of supermarket tabloids is more whimsical than the notion of them as generic Trumpkins.
Honestly, I think that entire article is an attempt to think from the perspective of the Federation rather than the Klingons which is the entire problem the Federation is having. It's assuming the Klingons value peace and are attempting to achieve it but feel threatened. In fact, it's nothing more than Henry IV part I writ large.
"Occupy those unstable minds in foreign quarrels."
T'Kuvma can best be thought of as an analogue to Pope Urban II (who spearheaded the 1st Crusade) and his issue is not that the Federation has done anything wrong or is threatening them, though he certainly doesn't care for them and has marked distaste for their beliefs.
It's because they're NOT KLINGONS that they're being targeted. It's trying to get the civil wars of the Great Houses resolved by giving them a common enemy to fight.
The Federation can't process this because they keep thinking in terms of right/wrong and understanding when it's really because theyre THERE that they're being targeted. Genghis Khan didn't invade China because the Mongols had some greviance, he did it because it was there and rich.
"Occupy those unstable minds in foreign quarrels."
T'Kuvma can best be thought of as an analogue to Pope Urban II (who spearheaded the 1st Crusade) and his issue is not that the Federation has done anything wrong or is threatening them, though he certainly doesn't care for them and has marked distaste for their beliefs.
It's because they're NOT KLINGONS that they're being targeted. It's trying to get the civil wars of the Great Houses resolved by giving them a common enemy to fight.
The Federation can't process this because they keep thinking in terms of right/wrong and understanding when it's really because theyre THERE that they're being targeted. Genghis Khan didn't invade China because the Mongols had some greviance, he did it because it was there and rich.
Don’t forget the most important part: Crimea has always been part of Russia. (Only reason it ended up in Ukraine was because the border between the Ukrainian SSR and the Russian SSR was redrawn in the early sixties as sort of an anniversary present for Ukraine.) Georgia, Ossetia and all these other flashpoint has also always (or at least for centuries) been Russian.
And it’s rather curious how the principles of self determination applies to Georgia, but apparently not to people in the Crimea or Eastern Ukraine, if you ask many in Washington DC.
He’s a man who clearly loves his country and puts his country first, and that’s why Putin is still hugely popular in Russia. And that’s also what drives Russian policy. Even if it sometimes looks schizophrenic in Western eyes.
There’s a million Russians in Israel, so naturally that means there’s strong ties between the two countries and even an unofficial alliance in many respects. But that doesn’t stop Russia from also having a good relationship with Iran and Syria if it serves Russian purposes, and can undermine the threat from Sunni terrorism.
That’s one thing I wouldn’t mind in Star Trek btw. Alien races that aren’t just black and white. Imagine a Cardassian empire that isn’t just “bad” but has shades of grey. (DS9 aimed for this, but still needed a good villain, sadly.)
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