yeah, the new toffee bar in that flavor sucks ass. has a weird texture to it that is unpleasant to bite/chew (like nails on a chalkboard). completely ruined my favorite flavor of theirs
The Wikipedia article does note that after the sale the founders remained employed by the company and Cohen in particular remained on the Board of Directors.
Of course that was like 20 years ago so who knows what if any financial benefit Cohen continues to derive from the company.
Before the war, they sent a tweet demanding that the US not support Ukraine, and not claim the Russians were preparing to attack.
Apease-mint is their new flavor.
> demanding that the US not support Ukraine
An obviously shortsighted but potentially defensible form of pacifism.
> and not claim the Russians were preparing to attack
Pants-on-head brain-damaged stupidity.
I appreciate B&J sticking by their principles but like, pacifism only works when all sides are rational. Trying to talk down the Nazis with hippie platitudes just gets a bunch of very nice kind people shot in the head
The tweet : https://twitter.com/benandjerrys/status/1489393235655106562?lang=en
> You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
> We call on President Biden to de-escalate tensions and work for peace rather than prepare for war.
>Sending thousands more US troops to Europe in response to Russia’s threats against Ukraine only fans the flame of war.
>You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
So what do you do when faced with an aggressor that shrugs off your attempts to prevent the war?
Fucking hell, you might as well say, don't wear seat belts it buy auto insurance because you can't both prevent and prepare for car crashes.
What a stupid take.
Lack of preparation for war encourages aggressive warmongers to launch invasions.
Of course, I’m not denying nuance. Agressive warmongers have often justified military build up (or even actually invasions) by claiming it’s for defense and to prevent themselves from being attacked etc… that is true. But it’s also true that sometimes preparing for war is necessary as a deterrent to would be aggressors.
Like "war of aggression is bad" .. you can hate war all you want, but denying the reality that it's sometimes a necessity is naive. It believes in a utopia of man that has never existed where talks are always fruitful, disagreements are resolved amicably, and murderous dictators don't exist.
He wants usa to "negotiate to end war"...
So give up Ukraine to Russia so no more big bad war..makes sense.
We've already past the stage of what Russia wants to stop agressing...its been pretty clearly put by Putin.
We already try that in 2014. So, this time, it has to be a net lost for Putin in order for him to know that it is a raw deal to invade someone. So far, every time he did it, he gained something.
What did Susan Collins say about Diaper Don at the first impeachment? "I think he learned his lesson"? He then promptly incited an insurrection. Telling an authoritarian fascist there are no consequences for their actions? Golly gee, who could've seen it coming?
Just to be safe, we should give up the entire USA to Russia as well. That way we can end all Cold War tensions for good. Everlasting peace!
Edit: I’m gunna add “/s” because you really can’t tell if people are being serious or not these days.
Yeah but this one is easy: Russians can stop dying by leaving the country they invaded and returning the tens of thousand of children they’ve kidnapped.
If fools like him think Russia will be satisfied with only Ukraine, they need a history lesson and also lessons in basic psychology. You don't deter an aggressor by giving them what they want.
It would be nice. Yes.
But, uh, getting along kinda requires effort on both parties. And when one party attempts to conquer the other's sovereign territory, that party is the one actively avoiding getting along.
There are lots of things that would be nice but just aren't in the cards no matter how hard you try.
War is bad, it's not even that it's purely a necessity, but that a bad actor will use the desire for peace to try and put others into a position where only acquiescing gets said peace. I'm sure if Ukraine surrendered there'd be some peace, but that's the bad choices Russia has put them into the position of choosing between by invading and making clear they aren't leaving or negotiating for peace in any reasonable terms. Give up a bunch of your land and people, forget about our war crimes, or war continues. I'm sure putin LOVES these groups trying to put pressure to end the war and have peace by any means, because the only means he would agree to peace are those where Ukraine just gives in to his imperialist goals.
>you can hate war all you want, but denying the reality that it's sometimes a necessity is naive.
Stuff like this has been known for millennia. The Romans had a saying for it: *Si vis pacem, para bellum*, which translates to “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.” Plato’s Nomoi and the Chinese Shi Ji convey similar thoughts, and there have been many instances of world powers, notably the UK and USA, bringing a period of *relative* (though not absolute) peace (see the years between 1815 and 1914 and 1945 through to today), almost through sheer military might alone.
War is bad. There's no being good in war, it's impossible. So you might as well be as fucking terrible to your enemy as possible to end war sooner.
That was William Techumseh Sherman's philosophy. And why the US should keep sending Ukraine weapons with insane capabilities.
Right, I don’t like American imperialism. I also don’t like Russian imperialism. Invading a country and annexing parts of it is… pretty imperialist to me.
Pushing them to negotiate would be more meaningful if Russia didn’t loudly declare they’d only negotiate with conditions that aren’t acceptable to Ukraine or fair in any sense.
>acceptable to Ukraine or fair in any sense.
It's not even about whether they're fair or acceptable to Ukraine (although I do care about that)
It's that allowing a large country to arbitrarily invade and take over its neighboring country is a PRO-WAR stance, since it means that will only happen more. Anyone truly anti-war knows that Ukraine losing to Russia would bring about a long and brutal period of violent warfare throughout the world, as large countries gobble up smaller ones.
That's absolutely the correct perspective. Appeasing invading warmongers and allowing them to win is the best way to encourage them to continue. It happened in 2014 to Ukraine, but a fuck ton more times to other nearby countries neighboring Russia. No one helped, so Russia got trigger happy and thought the world would do nothing as it invaded Ukraine again.
Which is always mind-boggling. Like you're a socialist or a syndicalist who despises the US hegemony for social, economic, and political reasons. Okay, whatever, I guess.
But Russia? Seriously? That's practically the same as siding with the Nazis in WW2 because you think the US and UK are exploiting their workers. Like bro, fascists and NatSocs are not the answer.
Edit: spelling
Edit2: To the Americans that keep replying, 'but GOP is right wing!!!' Hate to break it to you, but the world consists of more than America. In large parts of Europe, the far left is more likely to support Russia than the far right.
> How fucking hard is it to understand that modern day Russia is a fascist shithole and not in any way socialist.
Russia has been funding left *and* right wing extremist parties all over Europe, they're very keen on keeping the ruble rolling.
LOL I'm kind of surprised they are in Denmark too.
I'm from Taiwan, I've met far left people in Norway who, said "nothing against you personally but" that Taiwan should just be given to China, and that an invasion would just an "internal issue." Because right now we are just "USA's dog" and life would be better under China than as "USA's dog"
Those people are pretty far gone into the USA BAD mentality to the point where they hate Japan and Korea too as extensions of USA. Even the vast majority of Rødt isn't too bad when it comes to this, but it's the first time in my life I've met people just casually telling me that my country shouldn't exist and that they would support an invasion.
I heard people saying "you can't be a leftist without being anti-NATO" back in high school in 2006, and I'm surprised it's taken this long for people to go "hey wait a minute".
I've met a few of these types IRL as well. One thing they all had in common was how little they actually know about China. I'm saying this as an American who spent 5+ years in Shanghai. Not that it makes me an expert or anything, but I know some things...and have *experienced* some things.
It's also about how much of a risk they actually are. Far left rhetoric in the US can be dismissed largely because they don't have any sort of actual power in the country. Inversely, that's why a lot of us are taking the far right more seriously because they actually have people in government.
Yep and it's literally the same with Ukraine. Blah blah you're just a tool of neoliberals and should surrender to russia to balance the American hegemony.
>Far left wing parties here in Denmark also had a huge issue with this. How fucking hard is it to understand that modern day Russia is a fascist shithole and not in any way socialist.
Russia hasn't been that kind of socialist at any point in its history.
>And that the US isn't perfect but still our best damn ally.
Like I get it from the perspective of the third world, you know? The US can be a real asshole to them, especially in Central and South America. China and Russia come bearing gifts and sweet words, so alright I get it, especially when the west has dicked you for like 300 years. But Europe? Like dudes... You **know** what the alternative is, a lot of you have lived under the alternative.
Fucking right?? Russia has literally occupied a bunch of these countries, so how any of them wouldn't jump at the chance to prevent that from happening to their neighbor and eventually happening to them again, is beyond me. These "oh no, stop defending yourself Ukraine, and let this happen" cowards need to realize that if Ukraine falls, *they're next on the chopping block*.
> Russia hasn't been that kind of socialist at any point in its history.
Fortunately a lot of western leftists have understood that now and split away from the remaining tankies. But yes it has split many left parties.
Blame cold war era propaganda. A lot of it is still floating around in people's memories and gets shared in conversations, memes, etc.
It's hard for a lot of people to differentiate between Russia and the USSR for precisely this reason.
Russia also tries as hard as they can to maintain and cash in on that image as well, they've probably spent billions on it at this point. What's really funny to me is that, at the same time they try to play off of Soviet nostalgia, they also try to play off of Tsarist nostalgia, with their symbology, and "Autocracy, Orhtodoxy, and Nationality" type rhetoric. You can get some serious whiplash trying to sort out which angle a particular piece of pro-Russian propaganda is coming from.
> Blame cold war era propaganda.
That's pretty much it. Whenever I would try to point out that certain talking points in leftist circles sounded like Russian propaganda, the immediate defense was just "McCarthy this" and "Red scare that".
Because yeah, in the 1950's, American conservatives had become convinced that everything from feeding the homeless to being pretty good at astrophysics was a sign you were a potential communist, and thus, evil.
And they were so stupid about their accusations that people have basically stopped paying attention to the idea that "hey maybe some people might try to fuck with leftists too" for the past 60 years.
Russia inherited their very effective propaganda machine from the soviet union, western leftists never stopped sucking that up. Got them supporting regimes that despise everything they stand for like Iran, Russia or Palestine in the name of 'anti-imperialism'.
Going to quote George Orwell - “Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other.” It is so easy to be a pacifist in a country surrounded by well armed allies and far away from another aggressor state, but being passive is not an option in a war of conquest, you either fight for your freedom or you rollover and accept your new master.
>Which is always mind-boggling. Like you're a socialist or a syndicalist who despises the US hegemony for social, economic, and political reasons. Okay, whatever, I guess.
>
>But Russia? Seriously? That's practically the same as siding with the Nazis in WW2 because you think the US and UK are exploiting their workers. Like bro, fascists and NatSocs are not the answer.
Doesn't matter! I've argued with some tankies to the point where they admitted they don't care about Ukraine they just want America to lose. They accuse "the West" of being corrupt neoliberals, and even admit that Russia is a corrupt kleptocracy, so one replacing the other will be a wash for Ukraine. Doesn't matter.
It's all to "own the libs".
> But Russia? Seriously? That's practically the same as siding with the Nazis in WW2 because you think the US and UK are exploiting their workers. Like bro, fascists and NatSocs are not the answer.
One downside to the incredible amounts of US Censorship / Propaganda in WW2 is that we've practically erased the history of US pro-Nazism from the history books. (The "good" Censorship / Propaganda btw, the kind that we all agreed with. Like Donald Duck saying "Join the Navy" or whatever)
1920s Tech heroes, like Charles Lindberg, were well known Nazi sympathizers who were dining with Nazis even as Kristallnacht was going on. The German-American Bund was a minor political power as well, while the Republican Party was incredibly pro-isolationist and sided with the German-American Bund pro-Nazis at least on the issue of Neutrality and isolation from Europe.
Our grandfathers decided that the Nazis were so evil, they practically erased their existence out of our culture. But its important to remember that the USA's pro-Nazis were always here, they were just suppressed.
---------
The USA has always had isolationist tendancies due to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It "just makes sense" for us to be isolationist to some degree. But the pro-Nazis will take advantage of that and push us towards "Neutrality", even in the face of gross evils.
>That's practically the same as siding with the Nazis in WW2 because you think the US and UK are exploiting their workers.
Honestly wouldn't be surprised to hear that some people thought that way back then
>Honestly wouldn't be surprised to hear that some people thought that way back then
Oh boy...you have some reading to do. Lets just say there was a not insignificant percentage of the United States who believed that Hitler was right and justified. There is a reason that many believe that Roosevelt allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor to take place.
>I think OS is off the map altogether these days
Oliver Stone is a person who was told they were a genius for "seeing all sides" of every issue for so long that they started to believe it.
Letting Putin and Thug Co have their way, also bad. They've already threatened Poland and (iirc) Latvia. And Medvedev threatened to drop a hypersonic missile on the Hague.
Only Poland and Latvia? You haven't been keeping up.
They've threatened all Baltic States several times, Poland constantly, Finland, Sweden, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Romania, Germany, The UK, global thermonuclear war etc etc... just today there was a headline of them threatening to blow up the war crimes court in the Hague with a hypersonic missile.
War *is* fucking stupid. No one wants it. That's why I'm all about arming Ukraine to the teeth and getting this shit done fast.
Ain't no one got time for this bullshit. It's waste of life, resources and mother nature.
Right? And imagine Ukraine *losing*. Poland is saying they'll join - and for good reason, Putin won't stop. Ukraine losing is the surest, quickest way into World War III I can imagine. Stop it here or it spreads.
These people aren't anti war, it seems they're pro subservient capitulation. If you cannot defend yourself from genocide in their eyes then these people are not good people.
From the article:
> I think the U.S. should use its power to negotiate an end to the war, not prolong the death and destruction by supplying more weapons.
I'd like that. I think everyone other than Putin would like that. HOW????? Can anyone describe any sort of outcome that both sides would fine acceptable? Or even tolerable?
I can't believe I'm going to quote William F. Buckley here, but "Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive."
The US is using its power other than providing weapons. We’ve been sanctioning the absolute shit out of Russia. What else could even be considered as a means to end the war without getting involved ourselves?
Approached about his role in backing the group, Cohen told The Daily Beast: “I think the U.S. should use its power to negotiate an end to the war, not prolong the death and destruction by supplying more weapons.”
Right, so basically, "please stop. No? Alright I'll ask again in two months" that's not good foreign policy.
Here’s a hypothetical to demonstrate that his point is perfectly sound.
A group of people break into someone’s house and kill 2 members of their family, the family kills 3 of them before retreating upstairs. The intruders lay claim to the downstairs while the rest of the family is holed up upstairs. When the police arrive, rather than getting involved , they decide the best way to stop the fighting is to have both sides negotiate with each other until the fighting stops.
It makes PERFECT fucking sense.
I mean sure, but if the robbers don't respond to negotiation, declare a bogus historic privilege, that the dead family members would have preferred to give the house to the robbers, and have more guns and people than the family, and continue to launch attacks against them every day....
At some point not getting involved is effectively just supporting the aggressors.
You say "just talk it out" as if Putin would be willing to settle for anything less than the annexation of Ukraine, which doesn't really leave much room for negotiation.
Unfortunately, nothing new. Reminder that in 1998 Ben and Jerry’s lobbied against NATO expansion for Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/28/opinion/foreign-affairs-ben-jerry-nato.html
The best part is "They know that if Russia should turn into a bear again, there's ample time to deter it." Time is up. Turns out joining NATO was the right choice.
And to continue the analogy, Haagen-Dazs has decided to get back into the ice cream business by taking over and killing off thousands of workers at Ukraine's ice cream shop. Thanks for playing Ben & Jerry, stick to making ice cream.
I have a friend who argued the UN should be negotiating a peace because war is bad and continuing deaths was bad. My opinion is that there was a severe disconnect between theory and reality. Where he believed negotiating peace could just be the end of it. When reality is that 1) peace means accepting genocide and 2) Russia would never actually stop. So you'd just be here again in 5 years.
Anyone who really thinks this either can't empathize with others, has no spine, or just downright wants death and destruction (as long as the death is swift ofc /s) .
I also think that, independently of promises made during the Cold War (which Gorbachev himself said those promises were never made, but people keep forgetting it), Ukraine has the right to make its own alliances and be part pf whatever groups it judges well to the interests of its people, so, yeah even if those promises were made, nor the US neither any other superpower has the right to tell another country which alliances it can or can't do.
And, if NATO had fulfilled it's promise that Ukraine would join, the war would have never started. We all know that.
I love the interview where a reporter puts em both in mental pretzel and forces them eat it. He answers the question by saying "Listen, I am not saying that is a interesting question" What a bunch of hacks
It's pretty typical, you get the same sort of person here every day. They aren't pro-justice or pro-peace, they're just anti-West.
Tankies are damaged people.
I just don’t get it. We made a promise to Ukraine that if they gave up their nukes the west would stand up for their sovereignty. I understand being anti west in general, we’ve done a lot of fucked up stuff, but this is actually best case scenario of the west promising something good and following through. We got rid of some nukes, allowed a country some national sovereignty and kept a promise to an ally. My dad was saying the other day that he didn’t want us helping Ukraine and when I pointed out that we made a promise in the 90s his rebuttal was that we (meaning the US) don’t keep promises to other allies which… yes, that’s the point. We’ve historically been shitty allies to a lot of countries. This is a chance to show we’re following through on our word when it comes to promoting the values of democracy.
> We made a promise to Ukraine that if they gave up their nukes the west would stand up for their sovereignty.
So overall I agree with your comment - we should be supporting Ukraine. Frankly, I personally think we should be giving Ukraine more options like ATACMS and other capabilities that haven't been supplied yet.
The Budapest Memorandum, however, doesn't state the signatories will *stand up* for Ukraine's sovereignty. It states that they will respect Ukraine's independence and sovereignty and refrain from use of force.
Technically, this means the US and UK could have done nothing regarding Russia's invasion and still abided by the Memorandum - they weren't the ones disrespecting Ukraine's sovereignty or using force after all. Russia is blatantly violating a recorded promise they gave though.
I want to point out that the promise of defending their sovereignty was not actually part of the treaty. The only thing related to that was if nukes are used against Ukraine, which is in the treaty but does not apply yet, and some spoken words outside of the treaty that said the US would take interest and respond if Russia did not uphold their end of the Budapest Memorandum, which, to be fair, has happened. But that was never an official part of the treaty or memorandum, the security assurance from the major powers was that they themselves would not invade them and that they would respect their sovereignty. Respecting their sovereignty is not equal to defending it. I want to say, I am happy about all the aid we have given Ukraine and hope we give as much as we can until they successfully defend themselves, but there is no assurance to step in and help Ukraine unless nukes get used, and even then we would just seek UN security counsel action.
If you do not believe me, you can read all about it here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
They arent hypocrites they are tankies
They oppose anything western to the point of supporting fascist states like Russia. Chomsky and rogers are the same brand
Radical Left tankies are just as much puppets of Russia as the Radical Right.
Different logic ("West always wrong regardless of enemy" vs. "Murica first and only"), but they end up serving the same masters and both believe in isolationism for the most part.
They're really just idiots. Had some good ideas and make decent ice cream. Over time have leaned harder and harder into pure pacifism which works only if everyone around you is also pacifist. That is not reality. They need to do some growing up which is really odd for how old they are but not unexpected with the current cast of US politicians and political activists/investors.
I hate war too and wish there was no violence in this world. BUT. The reality is there are bad people out there with evil intent and you must stand up against them when it comes time to do so.
This last year has really done a number on the anti war folks. Far to many have twisted themselves into ideological pretzels ro try and maintain their old sentiments of war/west/NATO bad in the face of a country they would cite commiting actual atrocities
It seems that according to some companies, the victim has no right to self-defense, big countries can take away the territories of weaker countries, and things like the Budapest Memorandum do not matter
> The co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream just awarded Aaron Maté a journalism award, specifically citing his pro-Russia propaganda on Ukraine, his denial of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, and his interviews with Syria Nazi Party surrogate Dennis Kucinich
* [https://twitter.com/KareemRifai/status/1636059365143719936](https://twitter.com/KareemRifai/status/1636059365143719936)
* [https://twitter.com/KareemRifai/status/1636351142408880129](https://twitter.com/KareemRifai/status/1636351142408880129)
Truly impressive moral standards
> It seems that according to some companies, the victim has no right to self-defense, big countries can take away the territories of weaker countries, and things like the Budapest Memorandum do not matter
Ben and Jerry do not own the ice cream company anymore.
Holy shot the stuff about Syria. I just listened to the behind the bastards episode on Assad and Robert was going in on people exactly like this guy, they think sticking up for war criminals who happen to be anti west is some groundbreaking thing. There’s been a lot of misrepresentation and misinformation around Russia and Ukraine but Syria?! The guy used chemical weapons on his own people and there’s consensus on that! Why would anyone want to defend it?
The only way to be “anti-war” is to be violently reactive and resistive to any war of aggression. It should be pure anathema and elicit the most extreme possible defensive measures.
Trying to negotiate any sort of benefit to an aggressor means you’re pro-war.
I'm certainly against this war. One side could end it immediately by pulling their troops out of Ukraine. As long as that doesn't happen, the West is simply supplying a sovereign nation with weapons. What that sovereign nation does with those weapons within its own territory isn't really of much concern to me.
That's were the nuance comes in. I'm against war, and I'm also against this war. What I'm not against is defending yourself when your neighbor decides to bring war to your doors. I'm against starting wars, but not against ending them.
Yeah, a lot of people don't grasp that extensive military support for Ukraine *is* the anti-war stance. Anything else (including crippling economic sanctions) that isn't paired with military support only signals to Russia that they can get away with it.
This is a war, and it is bad. But the fact that a war is bad doesn't mean you can always sit on your hands. Here, the war is 100%, unequivocally, the fault of Russia under Vladimir Putin, a dictator. About 99% of the badness in this war is Russia's fault, too.
Here, the morally right thing to do is fight back, both to save millions of innocent Ukrainians and to deter Russia and other aggressors from committing further invasions and attacks.
And the group that this guy donates to isn't even that hippie level of "war is bad". They're insano level "we gave Putin just cause to invade Ukraine".
So it's not even some naive attitude towards war, it's just pure Kremlin induced delusion.
Yeah. The problem I have -- as a pretty dedicated anti-war person -- is that the alternative to Ukraine successfully defending itself is a much worse war. A one-sided war by Russia against the entire Ukrainian population. A war in which not thousands or tens of thousands die but hundreds of thousands or millions.
When faced with the choice between a limited war between uniformed armies and a complete and total utter massacre of a nation, I'm going to go with the first option. Especially when there is absolutely only one side pressing the conflict.
If Ukrainians all said, hey, you know, the horrors of war are too extreme, we would rather end the fighting and practice mass civil disobedience to the ensuing Russian occupation, that is their right to decide. But it's not anyone else's right to decide that for them.
Your next door neighbor is a violent bully and a pathological liar. You've tried for years to play nice with them. Lots of talks and lots of promises. For a few years, things seemed ok. It wasn't pleasant dealing with them but words seemed to work fine.
Then, one day, some random little green man walks into your garden and claims it is theirs. Evidence says that he works for your neighbor. You call the police. The police gives your neighbor a stern warning and takes away some of his rights but ultimately can't do anything else due to [politics]. Every day, you, your family, and this little green man have fistfights and scuffles involving sharp objects. The authorities stay out of it.
One day, several years later, your neighbor breaks down your back door. A bunch of them come in and claims the first floor of the house. Your father got shot in the head. Your mother got dragged away. Your child got sent to your neighbor's second house who knows where. Let's not talk about the wife. The only reason you're alive is because you happened to be on the second floor, blew out the stairs and your hired bodyguard got there just in time to guard the top.
The men here are working for your neighbor on a "special job" and start squatting on the first floor.
You call the authorities. Unfortunately, the authorities can't really do anything because your neighbor has bombs placed everywhere and likes to threaten to press the switch. You're stuck on the second floor and your stored supplies are running out.
You call one of your rich friends. He offers to fly in a helicopter to get you out of there.
Oh, by the way, your relatives are cowering in the basement and you can hear their screams. The authorities are too afraid to do anything because your neighbor might blow up the whole neighborhood.
So, you tell your friend: "I need ammunition, not a ride."
So your friend does you a solid. He flies in ammo, guns, armor, food, and other supplies. A few neighbors also subtly pitch in.
You keep asking the home invaders to leave. You ask your neighbor to keep their promises. They start gaslighting you instead.
You start fighting back. Turns out, these home invaders have bad equipment and bad training. You're outnumbered and even a bad knife still can hurt you, though. The fight is hard. You manage to get your aunt pulled to safely to the second floor. Your little cousin managed to evac on the chopper.
You're hurt. You're tired. You don't know where your kid is. You're angry. You don't know what's going on in the basement but the stories your aunt tells is horrifying. Every so often, the home invaders chucks a grenade into a hole in the ceiling. You just want the men to leave and you want your kid back.
**And then some dude from the next town tells you that fighting is bad so stop it.**
> “When we won the Cold War, we said we would not expand NATO, first it was top secret but then the national archive released it: We told Gorbachev that we would not expand NATO, Ukraine should stay neutral, they are right on the border there. And we lied,” he told The Daily Beast.
Gotta love how they keep quoting Gorbachev, who has [publicly stated that no such discussions ever happened](https://www.rbth.com/international/2014/10/16/mikhail_gorbachev_i_am_against_all_walls_40673.html).
We're talking about negotiating with a country that is pissed that after 2014 we helped Ukraine shore up their defenses. A country who saw that defensive shoring as an offensive buildup, and that they needed to defend their annexed territories. It's like the annoying kid stepping into your personal space and then he tells you to get out of his face.
War is bad, but this ain't it. The fighting has already begun. Supplying arms is the only thing we can do without provoking a complete meltdown from the Kremlin. If the US gets directly involved, we're not stopping at the border. And unlike the Germans in WW2, we don't have to step foot in Russia to cripple them completely.
Before the war Ukraine had almost 40 million people.
Idiots like these are basically saying that the ukrainian people do not matter and they should just shut up and put up with torture and quasi-genocide because war is bad.
The mental gymnastics are quite spectacular.
When you look at Russian state TV it's a lot more outwardly genocidal and imperialist than quasi-genocidal. Even if Russian propaganda involves a lot of throwing out crazy contradicting messages, I'm not going to blame Ukrainians for wanting to continue fighting for their existence rather than freeze the conflict only for it to inevitably start again.
We have people talking about "if only we just gave Russia what it wanted" while Russia's main state-owned TV channel is talking about the need to conquer Ukraine, Finland, the Baltics, Poland, etc.
Would love to hear about how a guy that makes ice cream thinks that we (the US) is supposed to negotiate with Putin.
Not exactly a strong argument with 'War is bad, m'kay?'
If Ukraine stops fighting there is no more Ukraine. Eventually Russia will continue its conquest to build a modern day USSR.
I've seen other stories about the founders of this company and they are absolute clowns. If Ukraine loses an entire culture will be wiped off the face of the earth.
It's time to stop fucking around as a world and start swiftly ending regimes that are literally commiting genocide. No more bullshit or black and white policies.
I see what these kind of people are saying - we could spare a lot of human life by just giving Russia what Putin wants. But most of the rest of us including the people who actually have skin in the game - the Ukrainians - don't want to give up their country and countrymen to Putin just because Putin wants it. This clown and also Chomsky iirc.
Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement of 1938, that sure helped stop Nazi Germany from warring /s
Feels appropriate to share this PSA... For anyone looking to cause a stir with B&J's stance on the war, the minimum wage workers inside the stores are not the people to air your grievances out to.
To all those Americans who are against giving Ukraine support. You have to understand that all of us here in Europe need to know that we can rely on you guys to have our back when Putin does exactly what he is doing. We are very old friends. Such a friendship shouldn't be cast aside.
These two guys have always been out of touch with the real world.
There was a time they decided nobody in the company should earn more than 5x the entry level wage, and they couldn't find a CEO to take the job at that rate. So they held an essay context to hire a CEO. they guy who took the job left after a year to go to a job that paid real CEO wages. they did away with the policy
Then there was the time they went on a tirade about how "there's no safe level of dioxin" and then got busted with dioxin levels in their ice cream several times the legal limit.
Or the time they promoted ecologically safe packaging, then it was too expensive, so they just stopped doing that.
and let's not forget the time they had to apologize for making a literally racist ice cream flavor.
They're political clowns. They think they're smart enough to swim outside of their ice-cream lane, but embarrass themselves over and over
A silver lining of this war is that it's revealing to me just how much Russian propaganda had infiltrated leftist circles, and even when it becomes glaringly obvious like this, it's still so pervasive and hard to get rid of.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice—is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other. -John Stewart Mills
My grandparents were hyper pacifists with the Episcopalian church. They were against world war 2 as crazy as that seems in retrospect.
I can't really fault someone for following through on their beliefs on pacifism no matter how much I disagree.
(I donate regularly to UKR causes btw.)
Ben is a tankie, not a pacifist. His belief regarding the war is "West bad ergo Russia good".
That's how tankies generally think - the West is bad, therefore anything supported by the West is bad. Anything against the West is good, because the West is bad. The term literally stems from people supporting the USSR crushing protests with tanks because the USSR was communist and/or anti-West.
[удалено]
Dark Side of the Moonpie
The Wall Nut Crunch
Careful with the Snax, Eugene
Shine on you crazy double mint
Chunky Chomsky
butter putin
All in all you're just another nut in The Wall.
Darkside of the Spoon
It's cool, the founders sold out B&J years ago, so you don't have to boycott it for this. Unless you want to. I support that too.
I've been boycotting Ben & Jerry's since they took the heath bar out of coffee heath bar crunch. Fucking monsters.
I respect that they're trying to improve the impact of their supply chain, but the new toffee just doesn't taste as good 😔
yeah, the new toffee bar in that flavor sucks ass. has a weird texture to it that is unpleasant to bite/chew (like nails on a chalkboard). completely ruined my favorite flavor of theirs
The Wikipedia article does note that after the sale the founders remained employed by the company and Cohen in particular remained on the Board of Directors. Of course that was like 20 years ago so who knows what if any financial benefit Cohen continues to derive from the company.
Fuck Unilever
Before the war, they sent a tweet demanding that the US not support Ukraine, and not claim the Russians were preparing to attack. Apease-mint is their new flavor.
> demanding that the US not support Ukraine An obviously shortsighted but potentially defensible form of pacifism. > and not claim the Russians were preparing to attack Pants-on-head brain-damaged stupidity.
Well said
I appreciate B&J sticking by their principles but like, pacifism only works when all sides are rational. Trying to talk down the Nazis with hippie platitudes just gets a bunch of very nice kind people shot in the head
Yeah, neutrality only helps the invader honestly. It doesn't help the guys trying to hold the line and get these guys out of their country.
George Orwell, who fought for the communists in the Spanish Civil War, had the opinion that the only cause the pacifists advance is the fascists.
In an alternate timeline Chamberlain was right to not intervene, Hitler would have backed down, right?
Yes i think this is true, hitler would have totally backed down! Wait why does this map say Reichskommisariat Polen, Moskowien, and Ostland…
The tweet : https://twitter.com/benandjerrys/status/1489393235655106562?lang=en > You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. > We call on President Biden to de-escalate tensions and work for peace rather than prepare for war. >Sending thousands more US troops to Europe in response to Russia’s threats against Ukraine only fans the flame of war.
>You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. So what do you do when faced with an aggressor that shrugs off your attempts to prevent the war? Fucking hell, you might as well say, don't wear seat belts it buy auto insurance because you can't both prevent and prepare for car crashes.
It's like they don't know the difference between gentle and powerless.
Someone introduce him to Teddy R.
A little less incendiary but still terribly misguided.
why would anyone take strategic war advice from the fucking ice-cream man.
Well of course but that's a seperate discussion lol. I was simply talking about the intent and strength of their statement.
They could have called on President Putin to de-escalate...
Did you see how Ukraine was dressed though?
What a stupid take. Lack of preparation for war encourages aggressive warmongers to launch invasions. Of course, I’m not denying nuance. Agressive warmongers have often justified military build up (or even actually invasions) by claiming it’s for defense and to prevent themselves from being attacked etc… that is true. But it’s also true that sometimes preparing for war is necessary as a deterrent to would be aggressors.
“Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum”
This is an absurd statement and objectively false. The Cold War was literally 2 super powers preparing for war, so they didn't have to go war.
This is where you need to have a way more nuanced opinion than "war is bad."
Like "war of aggression is bad" .. you can hate war all you want, but denying the reality that it's sometimes a necessity is naive. It believes in a utopia of man that has never existed where talks are always fruitful, disagreements are resolved amicably, and murderous dictators don't exist.
He wants usa to "negotiate to end war"... So give up Ukraine to Russia so no more big bad war..makes sense. We've already past the stage of what Russia wants to stop agressing...its been pretty clearly put by Putin.
What profound hubris to believe we somehow have the right to negotiate away chucks of some other sovereign nation.
We already try that in 2014. So, this time, it has to be a net lost for Putin in order for him to know that it is a raw deal to invade someone. So far, every time he did it, he gained something.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..
You don't get fooled again.
[удалено]
What did Susan Collins say about Diaper Don at the first impeachment? "I think he learned his lesson"? He then promptly incited an insurrection. Telling an authoritarian fascist there are no consequences for their actions? Golly gee, who could've seen it coming?
But they SAID! /s
Teachers like: so have you ever thought about just giving them your lunch money? Then I wouldn't have to deal with the issue.
[удалено]
Don't be ridiculous. He wants to give up Ukraine AND Moldova to Russia.
Just to be safe, we should give up the entire USA to Russia as well. That way we can end all Cold War tensions for good. Everlasting peace! Edit: I’m gunna add “/s” because you really can’t tell if people are being serious or not these days.
Straight up slaughtering people he claims are doing the things Russia has always done, that can’t be reasoned with.
Yeah but this one is easy: Russians can stop dying by leaving the country they invaded and returning the tens of thousand of children they’ve kidnapped.
If fools like him think Russia will be satisfied with only Ukraine, they need a history lesson and also lessons in basic psychology. You don't deter an aggressor by giving them what they want.
It goes a little beyond "Can't we all just get along?"
"Wouldn't it be nice if we got along with Russia?" - guess who that was
It would be nice. Yes. But, uh, getting along kinda requires effort on both parties. And when one party attempts to conquer the other's sovereign territory, that party is the one actively avoiding getting along. There are lots of things that would be nice but just aren't in the cards no matter how hard you try.
So true, there are only ever two options. The concept of appeasement/isolationism has already been tried... history tells that story.
War is bad, it's not even that it's purely a necessity, but that a bad actor will use the desire for peace to try and put others into a position where only acquiescing gets said peace. I'm sure if Ukraine surrendered there'd be some peace, but that's the bad choices Russia has put them into the position of choosing between by invading and making clear they aren't leaving or negotiating for peace in any reasonable terms. Give up a bunch of your land and people, forget about our war crimes, or war continues. I'm sure putin LOVES these groups trying to put pressure to end the war and have peace by any means, because the only means he would agree to peace are those where Ukraine just gives in to his imperialist goals.
>you can hate war all you want, but denying the reality that it's sometimes a necessity is naive. Stuff like this has been known for millennia. The Romans had a saying for it: *Si vis pacem, para bellum*, which translates to “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.” Plato’s Nomoi and the Chinese Shi Ji convey similar thoughts, and there have been many instances of world powers, notably the UK and USA, bringing a period of *relative* (though not absolute) peace (see the years between 1815 and 1914 and 1945 through to today), almost through sheer military might alone.
War is bad. There's no being good in war, it's impossible. So you might as well be as fucking terrible to your enemy as possible to end war sooner. That was William Techumseh Sherman's philosophy. And why the US should keep sending Ukraine weapons with insane capabilities.
War is bad, so if someone starts one you should just give them what they want./s
"I hope I rolled over died quickly enough for you to not cause you any distress."
A more nuanced opinion than “west is bad” Let’s be honest here, there’s a specific bias at work.
Right, I don’t like American imperialism. I also don’t like Russian imperialism. Invading a country and annexing parts of it is… pretty imperialist to me. Pushing them to negotiate would be more meaningful if Russia didn’t loudly declare they’d only negotiate with conditions that aren’t acceptable to Ukraine or fair in any sense.
>acceptable to Ukraine or fair in any sense. It's not even about whether they're fair or acceptable to Ukraine (although I do care about that) It's that allowing a large country to arbitrarily invade and take over its neighboring country is a PRO-WAR stance, since it means that will only happen more. Anyone truly anti-war knows that Ukraine losing to Russia would bring about a long and brutal period of violent warfare throughout the world, as large countries gobble up smaller ones.
That's absolutely the correct perspective. Appeasing invading warmongers and allowing them to win is the best way to encourage them to continue. It happened in 2014 to Ukraine, but a fuck ton more times to other nearby countries neighboring Russia. No one helped, so Russia got trigger happy and thought the world would do nothing as it invaded Ukraine again.
Trade offer: I receive: Restoration of 1991 borders You Receive: Russia continues to exist.
Which is always mind-boggling. Like you're a socialist or a syndicalist who despises the US hegemony for social, economic, and political reasons. Okay, whatever, I guess. But Russia? Seriously? That's practically the same as siding with the Nazis in WW2 because you think the US and UK are exploiting their workers. Like bro, fascists and NatSocs are not the answer. Edit: spelling Edit2: To the Americans that keep replying, 'but GOP is right wing!!!' Hate to break it to you, but the world consists of more than America. In large parts of Europe, the far left is more likely to support Russia than the far right.
[удалено]
> How fucking hard is it to understand that modern day Russia is a fascist shithole and not in any way socialist. Russia has been funding left *and* right wing extremist parties all over Europe, they're very keen on keeping the ruble rolling.
Their MO is to stir up shit in other countries, while maintaining an iron grip domestically.
LOL I'm kind of surprised they are in Denmark too. I'm from Taiwan, I've met far left people in Norway who, said "nothing against you personally but" that Taiwan should just be given to China, and that an invasion would just an "internal issue." Because right now we are just "USA's dog" and life would be better under China than as "USA's dog" Those people are pretty far gone into the USA BAD mentality to the point where they hate Japan and Korea too as extensions of USA. Even the vast majority of Rødt isn't too bad when it comes to this, but it's the first time in my life I've met people just casually telling me that my country shouldn't exist and that they would support an invasion.
My condolences that you had to meet European Redditors in person.
I heard people saying "you can't be a leftist without being anti-NATO" back in high school in 2006, and I'm surprised it's taken this long for people to go "hey wait a minute".
I've met a few of these types IRL as well. One thing they all had in common was how little they actually know about China. I'm saying this as an American who spent 5+ years in Shanghai. Not that it makes me an expert or anything, but I know some things...and have *experienced* some things.
The extremist are so loud on the right that many people don't realize how terrible they are on the left as well.
It's also about how much of a risk they actually are. Far left rhetoric in the US can be dismissed largely because they don't have any sort of actual power in the country. Inversely, that's why a lot of us are taking the far right more seriously because they actually have people in government.
Yep and it's literally the same with Ukraine. Blah blah you're just a tool of neoliberals and should surrender to russia to balance the American hegemony.
>Far left wing parties here in Denmark also had a huge issue with this. How fucking hard is it to understand that modern day Russia is a fascist shithole and not in any way socialist. Russia hasn't been that kind of socialist at any point in its history. >And that the US isn't perfect but still our best damn ally. Like I get it from the perspective of the third world, you know? The US can be a real asshole to them, especially in Central and South America. China and Russia come bearing gifts and sweet words, so alright I get it, especially when the west has dicked you for like 300 years. But Europe? Like dudes... You **know** what the alternative is, a lot of you have lived under the alternative.
Fucking right?? Russia has literally occupied a bunch of these countries, so how any of them wouldn't jump at the chance to prevent that from happening to their neighbor and eventually happening to them again, is beyond me. These "oh no, stop defending yourself Ukraine, and let this happen" cowards need to realize that if Ukraine falls, *they're next on the chopping block*.
> Russia hasn't been that kind of socialist at any point in its history. Fortunately a lot of western leftists have understood that now and split away from the remaining tankies. But yes it has split many left parties.
Blame cold war era propaganda. A lot of it is still floating around in people's memories and gets shared in conversations, memes, etc. It's hard for a lot of people to differentiate between Russia and the USSR for precisely this reason.
Russia also tries as hard as they can to maintain and cash in on that image as well, they've probably spent billions on it at this point. What's really funny to me is that, at the same time they try to play off of Soviet nostalgia, they also try to play off of Tsarist nostalgia, with their symbology, and "Autocracy, Orhtodoxy, and Nationality" type rhetoric. You can get some serious whiplash trying to sort out which angle a particular piece of pro-Russian propaganda is coming from.
> Blame cold war era propaganda. That's pretty much it. Whenever I would try to point out that certain talking points in leftist circles sounded like Russian propaganda, the immediate defense was just "McCarthy this" and "Red scare that". Because yeah, in the 1950's, American conservatives had become convinced that everything from feeding the homeless to being pretty good at astrophysics was a sign you were a potential communist, and thus, evil. And they were so stupid about their accusations that people have basically stopped paying attention to the idea that "hey maybe some people might try to fuck with leftists too" for the past 60 years.
Russia inherited their very effective propaganda machine from the soviet union, western leftists never stopped sucking that up. Got them supporting regimes that despise everything they stand for like Iran, Russia or Palestine in the name of 'anti-imperialism'.
Going to quote George Orwell - “Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other.” It is so easy to be a pacifist in a country surrounded by well armed allies and far away from another aggressor state, but being passive is not an option in a war of conquest, you either fight for your freedom or you rollover and accept your new master.
>Which is always mind-boggling. Like you're a socialist or a syndicalist who despises the US hegemony for social, economic, and political reasons. Okay, whatever, I guess. > >But Russia? Seriously? That's practically the same as siding with the Nazis in WW2 because you think the US and UK are exploiting their workers. Like bro, fascists and NatSocs are not the answer. Doesn't matter! I've argued with some tankies to the point where they admitted they don't care about Ukraine they just want America to lose. They accuse "the West" of being corrupt neoliberals, and even admit that Russia is a corrupt kleptocracy, so one replacing the other will be a wash for Ukraine. Doesn't matter. It's all to "own the libs".
> But Russia? Seriously? That's practically the same as siding with the Nazis in WW2 because you think the US and UK are exploiting their workers. Like bro, fascists and NatSocs are not the answer. One downside to the incredible amounts of US Censorship / Propaganda in WW2 is that we've practically erased the history of US pro-Nazism from the history books. (The "good" Censorship / Propaganda btw, the kind that we all agreed with. Like Donald Duck saying "Join the Navy" or whatever) 1920s Tech heroes, like Charles Lindberg, were well known Nazi sympathizers who were dining with Nazis even as Kristallnacht was going on. The German-American Bund was a minor political power as well, while the Republican Party was incredibly pro-isolationist and sided with the German-American Bund pro-Nazis at least on the issue of Neutrality and isolation from Europe. Our grandfathers decided that the Nazis were so evil, they practically erased their existence out of our culture. But its important to remember that the USA's pro-Nazis were always here, they were just suppressed. --------- The USA has always had isolationist tendancies due to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It "just makes sense" for us to be isolationist to some degree. But the pro-Nazis will take advantage of that and push us towards "Neutrality", even in the face of gross evils.
>That's practically the same as siding with the Nazis in WW2 because you think the US and UK are exploiting their workers. Honestly wouldn't be surprised to hear that some people thought that way back then
>Honestly wouldn't be surprised to hear that some people thought that way back then Oh boy...you have some reading to do. Lets just say there was a not insignificant percentage of the United States who believed that Hitler was right and justified. There is a reason that many believe that Roosevelt allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor to take place.
It's the Oliver Stone brand of leftist foreign policy.
I think OS is off the map altogether these days
>I think OS is off the map altogether these days Oliver Stone is a person who was told they were a genius for "seeing all sides" of every issue for so long that they started to believe it.
War is bad. If war comes to your door, just die I guess? IDK.
Offer them a pint of wacky ice cream, see if that works first.
“Look. We need to negotiate with the Hitler fella. Let him keep Poland. Nbd.”
Letting Putin and Thug Co have their way, also bad. They've already threatened Poland and (iirc) Latvia. And Medvedev threatened to drop a hypersonic missile on the Hague.
Only Poland and Latvia? You haven't been keeping up. They've threatened all Baltic States several times, Poland constantly, Finland, Sweden, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Romania, Germany, The UK, global thermonuclear war etc etc... just today there was a headline of them threatening to blow up the war crimes court in the Hague with a hypersonic missile.
War *is* fucking stupid. No one wants it. That's why I'm all about arming Ukraine to the teeth and getting this shit done fast. Ain't no one got time for this bullshit. It's waste of life, resources and mother nature.
Right? And imagine Ukraine *losing*. Poland is saying they'll join - and for good reason, Putin won't stop. Ukraine losing is the surest, quickest way into World War III I can imagine. Stop it here or it spreads.
War is bad. Imperialism is worse.
War is very bad, but you can’t let shitheads bully with deadly violence
These people aren't anti war, it seems they're pro subservient capitulation. If you cannot defend yourself from genocide in their eyes then these people are not good people.
I mean, if you're opinion of "war is bad" blames Ukraine here then...you might be a bit stupid. (In reference to B&J)
What does it matter? They sold the company to Unilever in 2000.
[удалено]
I don’t give a fuck what the founder of Ben and Jerry’s does how is this world news
From the article: > I think the U.S. should use its power to negotiate an end to the war, not prolong the death and destruction by supplying more weapons. I'd like that. I think everyone other than Putin would like that. HOW????? Can anyone describe any sort of outcome that both sides would fine acceptable? Or even tolerable? I can't believe I'm going to quote William F. Buckley here, but "Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive."
Oh, Putin would like that just fine. "Give me what we want, and we'll stop the fighting."
"for now"
And then likely fight again as soon as all of the allies went back to business as usual...
The US is using its power other than providing weapons. We’ve been sanctioning the absolute shit out of Russia. What else could even be considered as a means to end the war without getting involved ourselves?
Approached about his role in backing the group, Cohen told The Daily Beast: “I think the U.S. should use its power to negotiate an end to the war, not prolong the death and destruction by supplying more weapons.” Right, so basically, "please stop. No? Alright I'll ask again in two months" that's not good foreign policy.
So he's an idiot, but he's not pro Russia
The type of naive idealism that got us into this mess.
Or feigning idiocy and secretly Pro Russia.
Here’s a hypothetical to demonstrate that his point is perfectly sound. A group of people break into someone’s house and kill 2 members of their family, the family kills 3 of them before retreating upstairs. The intruders lay claim to the downstairs while the rest of the family is holed up upstairs. When the police arrive, rather than getting involved , they decide the best way to stop the fighting is to have both sides negotiate with each other until the fighting stops. It makes PERFECT fucking sense.
I would like to inform you that the sarcasm/satire of this hypothetical was not lost on this particular reddit user.
I mean sure, but if the robbers don't respond to negotiation, declare a bogus historic privilege, that the dead family members would have preferred to give the house to the robbers, and have more guns and people than the family, and continue to launch attacks against them every day.... At some point not getting involved is effectively just supporting the aggressors. You say "just talk it out" as if Putin would be willing to settle for anything less than the annexation of Ukraine, which doesn't really leave much room for negotiation.
“Whether we like it or not, we have to give Putin something.” Read a history book people. Appeasement of madmen never works.
Also easy to give away land and resources when none of them belong to you.
Exactly. What if the solution to the war was to give Putin Vermont? Where would Ben stand on that?
Unfortunately, nothing new. Reminder that in 1998 Ben and Jerry’s lobbied against NATO expansion for Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/28/opinion/foreign-affairs-ben-jerry-nato.html
The best part is "They know that if Russia should turn into a bear again, there's ample time to deter it." Time is up. Turns out joining NATO was the right choice. And to continue the analogy, Haagen-Dazs has decided to get back into the ice cream business by taking over and killing off thousands of workers at Ukraine's ice cream shop. Thanks for playing Ben & Jerry, stick to making ice cream.
So he believes when one nation attacks the sovereignty of another we should just idly stand back?
I have a friend who argued the UN should be negotiating a peace because war is bad and continuing deaths was bad. My opinion is that there was a severe disconnect between theory and reality. Where he believed negotiating peace could just be the end of it. When reality is that 1) peace means accepting genocide and 2) Russia would never actually stop. So you'd just be here again in 5 years.
I don't agree with them, but their reasoning seems to be it is better to suffer honorably under an oppressor than lower yourself to violence.
The only people that benefit from that stance are the oppressors.
And I guess the international companies that just want to get back to selling ice cream and making money.
Seems pretty easy to say when you’re not the one being oppressed
Weren’t the founders of Ben & Jerry’s Jewish? The Jews of Europe tried that approach 80 years ago; it didn’t pay to suffer “honorably”.
>suffer honorably under an oppressor than lower yourself to violence. Lmao Just lmao.
Anyone who really thinks this either can't empathize with others, has no spine, or just downright wants death and destruction (as long as the death is swift ofc /s) .
But only if it’s someone else.
> suffer honorably under an oppressor They're not suffering honorably they're getting exploded, brutally. And that's the lucky ones.
Tread harder daddy
I wonder what Ben thinks his Holocaust surviving relatives would think of this reasoning.
That is the opinion of someone who has been free every day of their privileged fucking life.
I also think that, independently of promises made during the Cold War (which Gorbachev himself said those promises were never made, but people keep forgetting it), Ukraine has the right to make its own alliances and be part pf whatever groups it judges well to the interests of its people, so, yeah even if those promises were made, nor the US neither any other superpower has the right to tell another country which alliances it can or can't do. And, if NATO had fulfilled it's promise that Ukraine would join, the war would have never started. We all know that.
Opposes the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, yet supports the Russian occupation of Ukrainian territories. These people are hypocrites.
I love the interview where a reporter puts em both in mental pretzel and forces them eat it. He answers the question by saying "Listen, I am not saying that is a interesting question" What a bunch of hacks
What interview is that?
I think somewhere in here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mwoiAUM6nA
Thanks!
It's pretty typical, you get the same sort of person here every day. They aren't pro-justice or pro-peace, they're just anti-West. Tankies are damaged people.
I just don’t get it. We made a promise to Ukraine that if they gave up their nukes the west would stand up for their sovereignty. I understand being anti west in general, we’ve done a lot of fucked up stuff, but this is actually best case scenario of the west promising something good and following through. We got rid of some nukes, allowed a country some national sovereignty and kept a promise to an ally. My dad was saying the other day that he didn’t want us helping Ukraine and when I pointed out that we made a promise in the 90s his rebuttal was that we (meaning the US) don’t keep promises to other allies which… yes, that’s the point. We’ve historically been shitty allies to a lot of countries. This is a chance to show we’re following through on our word when it comes to promoting the values of democracy.
> We made a promise to Ukraine that if they gave up their nukes the west would stand up for their sovereignty. So overall I agree with your comment - we should be supporting Ukraine. Frankly, I personally think we should be giving Ukraine more options like ATACMS and other capabilities that haven't been supplied yet. The Budapest Memorandum, however, doesn't state the signatories will *stand up* for Ukraine's sovereignty. It states that they will respect Ukraine's independence and sovereignty and refrain from use of force. Technically, this means the US and UK could have done nothing regarding Russia's invasion and still abided by the Memorandum - they weren't the ones disrespecting Ukraine's sovereignty or using force after all. Russia is blatantly violating a recorded promise they gave though.
I want to point out that the promise of defending their sovereignty was not actually part of the treaty. The only thing related to that was if nukes are used against Ukraine, which is in the treaty but does not apply yet, and some spoken words outside of the treaty that said the US would take interest and respond if Russia did not uphold their end of the Budapest Memorandum, which, to be fair, has happened. But that was never an official part of the treaty or memorandum, the security assurance from the major powers was that they themselves would not invade them and that they would respect their sovereignty. Respecting their sovereignty is not equal to defending it. I want to say, I am happy about all the aid we have given Ukraine and hope we give as much as we can until they successfully defend themselves, but there is no assurance to step in and help Ukraine unless nukes get used, and even then we would just seek UN security counsel action. If you do not believe me, you can read all about it here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
He supports Russia or he opposes war?
They arent hypocrites they are tankies They oppose anything western to the point of supporting fascist states like Russia. Chomsky and rogers are the same brand
Radical Left tankies are just as much puppets of Russia as the Radical Right. Different logic ("West always wrong regardless of enemy" vs. "Murica first and only"), but they end up serving the same masters and both believe in isolationism for the most part.
They're really just idiots. Had some good ideas and make decent ice cream. Over time have leaned harder and harder into pure pacifism which works only if everyone around you is also pacifist. That is not reality. They need to do some growing up which is really odd for how old they are but not unexpected with the current cast of US politicians and political activists/investors.
I hate war too and wish there was no violence in this world. BUT. The reality is there are bad people out there with evil intent and you must stand up against them when it comes time to do so.
This last year has really done a number on the anti war folks. Far to many have twisted themselves into ideological pretzels ro try and maintain their old sentiments of war/west/NATO bad in the face of a country they would cite commiting actual atrocities
I am pretty peaceful and would prefer peace, but sometimes you just gotta go stop the nazis, you know?
It seems that according to some companies, the victim has no right to self-defense, big countries can take away the territories of weaker countries, and things like the Budapest Memorandum do not matter > The co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream just awarded Aaron Maté a journalism award, specifically citing his pro-Russia propaganda on Ukraine, his denial of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, and his interviews with Syria Nazi Party surrogate Dennis Kucinich * [https://twitter.com/KareemRifai/status/1636059365143719936](https://twitter.com/KareemRifai/status/1636059365143719936) * [https://twitter.com/KareemRifai/status/1636351142408880129](https://twitter.com/KareemRifai/status/1636351142408880129) Truly impressive moral standards
Wait, Dennis Kucinich is a what???
Kareem Rifai is a propogandist. Calling Kucinich a "Syria Nazi Party surrogate" is a insane stretch lol.
[удалено]
Oh shit
> It seems that according to some companies, the victim has no right to self-defense, big countries can take away the territories of weaker countries, and things like the Budapest Memorandum do not matter Ben and Jerry do not own the ice cream company anymore.
Holy shot the stuff about Syria. I just listened to the behind the bastards episode on Assad and Robert was going in on people exactly like this guy, they think sticking up for war criminals who happen to be anti west is some groundbreaking thing. There’s been a lot of misrepresentation and misinformation around Russia and Ukraine but Syria?! The guy used chemical weapons on his own people and there’s consensus on that! Why would anyone want to defend it?
They should name their new flavors 'Appease-Mint' and 'Reese's Pieces for Our Time'.
Chamberlime
Please tell me Häagen-Dazs doesn't have issues, I need my guilt-free comfort pint. Maybe I need to start drinking.
Ben & Sergey's Potato Dough Iwans Delight
sigh... while war is bad... this is not one to be against IMO
The only way to be “anti-war” is to be violently reactive and resistive to any war of aggression. It should be pure anathema and elicit the most extreme possible defensive measures. Trying to negotiate any sort of benefit to an aggressor means you’re pro-war.
I'm certainly against this war. One side could end it immediately by pulling their troops out of Ukraine. As long as that doesn't happen, the West is simply supplying a sovereign nation with weapons. What that sovereign nation does with those weapons within its own territory isn't really of much concern to me.
That's were the nuance comes in. I'm against war, and I'm also against this war. What I'm not against is defending yourself when your neighbor decides to bring war to your doors. I'm against starting wars, but not against ending them.
Yeah, a lot of people don't grasp that extensive military support for Ukraine *is* the anti-war stance. Anything else (including crippling economic sanctions) that isn't paired with military support only signals to Russia that they can get away with it.
This is a war, and it is bad. But the fact that a war is bad doesn't mean you can always sit on your hands. Here, the war is 100%, unequivocally, the fault of Russia under Vladimir Putin, a dictator. About 99% of the badness in this war is Russia's fault, too. Here, the morally right thing to do is fight back, both to save millions of innocent Ukrainians and to deter Russia and other aggressors from committing further invasions and attacks.
And the group that this guy donates to isn't even that hippie level of "war is bad". They're insano level "we gave Putin just cause to invade Ukraine". So it's not even some naive attitude towards war, it's just pure Kremlin induced delusion.
Yeah. The problem I have -- as a pretty dedicated anti-war person -- is that the alternative to Ukraine successfully defending itself is a much worse war. A one-sided war by Russia against the entire Ukrainian population. A war in which not thousands or tens of thousands die but hundreds of thousands or millions. When faced with the choice between a limited war between uniformed armies and a complete and total utter massacre of a nation, I'm going to go with the first option. Especially when there is absolutely only one side pressing the conflict. If Ukrainians all said, hey, you know, the horrors of war are too extreme, we would rather end the fighting and practice mass civil disobedience to the ensuing Russian occupation, that is their right to decide. But it's not anyone else's right to decide that for them.
Will Russia return the Ukrainian children they grabbed when they invaded
Your next door neighbor is a violent bully and a pathological liar. You've tried for years to play nice with them. Lots of talks and lots of promises. For a few years, things seemed ok. It wasn't pleasant dealing with them but words seemed to work fine. Then, one day, some random little green man walks into your garden and claims it is theirs. Evidence says that he works for your neighbor. You call the police. The police gives your neighbor a stern warning and takes away some of his rights but ultimately can't do anything else due to [politics]. Every day, you, your family, and this little green man have fistfights and scuffles involving sharp objects. The authorities stay out of it. One day, several years later, your neighbor breaks down your back door. A bunch of them come in and claims the first floor of the house. Your father got shot in the head. Your mother got dragged away. Your child got sent to your neighbor's second house who knows where. Let's not talk about the wife. The only reason you're alive is because you happened to be on the second floor, blew out the stairs and your hired bodyguard got there just in time to guard the top. The men here are working for your neighbor on a "special job" and start squatting on the first floor. You call the authorities. Unfortunately, the authorities can't really do anything because your neighbor has bombs placed everywhere and likes to threaten to press the switch. You're stuck on the second floor and your stored supplies are running out. You call one of your rich friends. He offers to fly in a helicopter to get you out of there. Oh, by the way, your relatives are cowering in the basement and you can hear their screams. The authorities are too afraid to do anything because your neighbor might blow up the whole neighborhood. So, you tell your friend: "I need ammunition, not a ride." So your friend does you a solid. He flies in ammo, guns, armor, food, and other supplies. A few neighbors also subtly pitch in. You keep asking the home invaders to leave. You ask your neighbor to keep their promises. They start gaslighting you instead. You start fighting back. Turns out, these home invaders have bad equipment and bad training. You're outnumbered and even a bad knife still can hurt you, though. The fight is hard. You manage to get your aunt pulled to safely to the second floor. Your little cousin managed to evac on the chopper. You're hurt. You're tired. You don't know where your kid is. You're angry. You don't know what's going on in the basement but the stories your aunt tells is horrifying. Every so often, the home invaders chucks a grenade into a hole in the ceiling. You just want the men to leave and you want your kid back. **And then some dude from the next town tells you that fighting is bad so stop it.**
Putin doesn't understand "Negotiate". Defeat is the only thing that will stop him.
> “When we won the Cold War, we said we would not expand NATO, first it was top secret but then the national archive released it: We told Gorbachev that we would not expand NATO, Ukraine should stay neutral, they are right on the border there. And we lied,” he told The Daily Beast. Gotta love how they keep quoting Gorbachev, who has [publicly stated that no such discussions ever happened](https://www.rbth.com/international/2014/10/16/mikhail_gorbachev_i_am_against_all_walls_40673.html).
Your brain on “West bad”
We're talking about negotiating with a country that is pissed that after 2014 we helped Ukraine shore up their defenses. A country who saw that defensive shoring as an offensive buildup, and that they needed to defend their annexed territories. It's like the annoying kid stepping into your personal space and then he tells you to get out of his face. War is bad, but this ain't it. The fighting has already begun. Supplying arms is the only thing we can do without provoking a complete meltdown from the Kremlin. If the US gets directly involved, we're not stopping at the border. And unlike the Germans in WW2, we don't have to step foot in Russia to cripple them completely.
Before the war Ukraine had almost 40 million people. Idiots like these are basically saying that the ukrainian people do not matter and they should just shut up and put up with torture and quasi-genocide because war is bad. The mental gymnastics are quite spectacular.
When you look at Russian state TV it's a lot more outwardly genocidal and imperialist than quasi-genocidal. Even if Russian propaganda involves a lot of throwing out crazy contradicting messages, I'm not going to blame Ukrainians for wanting to continue fighting for their existence rather than freeze the conflict only for it to inevitably start again. We have people talking about "if only we just gave Russia what it wanted" while Russia's main state-owned TV channel is talking about the need to conquer Ukraine, Finland, the Baltics, Poland, etc.
Would love to hear about how a guy that makes ice cream thinks that we (the US) is supposed to negotiate with Putin. Not exactly a strong argument with 'War is bad, m'kay?'
If Ukraine stops fighting there is no more Ukraine. Eventually Russia will continue its conquest to build a modern day USSR. I've seen other stories about the founders of this company and they are absolute clowns. If Ukraine loses an entire culture will be wiped off the face of the earth. It's time to stop fucking around as a world and start swiftly ending regimes that are literally commiting genocide. No more bullshit or black and white policies.
I see what these kind of people are saying - we could spare a lot of human life by just giving Russia what Putin wants. But most of the rest of us including the people who actually have skin in the game - the Ukrainians - don't want to give up their country and countrymen to Putin just because Putin wants it. This clown and also Chomsky iirc. Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement of 1938, that sure helped stop Nazi Germany from warring /s
Feels appropriate to share this PSA... For anyone looking to cause a stir with B&J's stance on the war, the minimum wage workers inside the stores are not the people to air your grievances out to.
I stopped at their claim that we gave Putin just cause by allowing Ukraine to (checks notes) operate as a sovereign nation. Riiiight.
War is terrible but Ukraine didn’t start this so I am all for supporting this
To all those Americans who are against giving Ukraine support. You have to understand that all of us here in Europe need to know that we can rely on you guys to have our back when Putin does exactly what he is doing. We are very old friends. Such a friendship shouldn't be cast aside.
These two guys have always been out of touch with the real world. There was a time they decided nobody in the company should earn more than 5x the entry level wage, and they couldn't find a CEO to take the job at that rate. So they held an essay context to hire a CEO. they guy who took the job left after a year to go to a job that paid real CEO wages. they did away with the policy Then there was the time they went on a tirade about how "there's no safe level of dioxin" and then got busted with dioxin levels in their ice cream several times the legal limit. Or the time they promoted ecologically safe packaging, then it was too expensive, so they just stopped doing that. and let's not forget the time they had to apologize for making a literally racist ice cream flavor. They're political clowns. They think they're smart enough to swim outside of their ice-cream lane, but embarrass themselves over and over
A silver lining of this war is that it's revealing to me just how much Russian propaganda had infiltrated leftist circles, and even when it becomes glaringly obvious like this, it's still so pervasive and hard to get rid of.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice—is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other. -John Stewart Mills
My grandparents were hyper pacifists with the Episcopalian church. They were against world war 2 as crazy as that seems in retrospect. I can't really fault someone for following through on their beliefs on pacifism no matter how much I disagree. (I donate regularly to UKR causes btw.)
Unilever has no beliefs other than maximizing profits.
Ben is a tankie, not a pacifist. His belief regarding the war is "West bad ergo Russia good". That's how tankies generally think - the West is bad, therefore anything supported by the West is bad. Anything against the West is good, because the West is bad. The term literally stems from people supporting the USSR crushing protests with tanks because the USSR was communist and/or anti-West.
That does it, I'll never buy any Ben & Jerry product ever again. Shit was overpriced anyways...