About the Russian aggression of Ukraine

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2 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Nope. As I said, the “popular culture” impression I had was a vague understanding and or agreement that NATO was the ‘good guys’ and was surprised to see that a Nazi was once picked as the military commander.

OK, sorry, your grammar was somewhat convoluted for me and I misunderstood you.

OTOH, you did not establish, either before or after you presented this as a fact , that that guy was indeed a Nazi (and remained one) in his beliefs.

Nor did you present facts that should have prevented him from being employed by NATO. Just innuendos and insinuations which present NATO as a Nazi/Fascist organization. This fits nicely with the present-day putinist - internal and external - propaganda which presents Ukraine as a Nazi state.

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Heh, the fact that a high placed Wehrmacht official ends up as NATO military commander ‘fits nicely’ with putinist ‘propaganda’ .

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On 9/25/2022 at 2:28 PM, tadmjones said:

I have no idea

9 hours ago, tadmjones said:

was surprised to see that a Nazi was once picked as the military commander.

You both have no idea if he was a Nazi, and know that he was a Nazi. But anyway, it doesn’t matter, because this still doesn’t say anything about NATO. As I said about Interpol, Nazis would be easy to blackmail. The US did this as well - using Nazis for espionage and intelligence operations. 

4 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Heh, the fact that a high placed Wehrmacht official ends up as NATO military commander ‘fits nicely’ with putinist ‘propaganda’ .

It’s actually pretty good propaganda, all you have to do is say “Nazi in NATO” and people’s imagination goes wild. 

12 hours ago, necrovore said:

My point being that what you are saying could be applied to any argument whatever and therefore is a rejection of reasoning as such

By the way, if you really think I’m being unfair, all you have to do is provide some piece of evidence that NATO is a large part a scheme to loot the US. Mostly I’m not buying it because you started engaging in some anti-capitalist rhetoric about profit and power. Just because there is an unfair structure to the way NATO is funded doesn’t mean that some plot was behind it. 

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6 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

Mostly I’m not buying it because you started engaging in some anti-capitalist rhetoric about profit and power.

Capitalism requires a separation of state and economics. What we have with NATO is not capitalism at all; it’s cronyism and corruption. There’s plenty of evidence for it.

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Ike is the original conspiracy theorist.

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2 hours ago, necrovore said:

What we have with NATO is not capitalism at all; it’s cronyism and corruption.

NATO is a treaty organization, it can’t be capitalism or not, because it doesn’t and can’t dictate state or economics. It would be like calling Amazon capitalism. It doesn’t make sense. But besides that, you are saying that some of the corruption is because of profit motive. Your entire story was about the corrupting influence of money. If money is being used in an illicit and shady manner, show me. Otherwise, the way money is being used makes sense. 

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All NATO expenditures , especially allocation and use of military equipment and man power is government spending , capital consumption . Any profit that accrues is ultimately tax revenue that is transferred to individuals via corporate structures. 

The more governments spend tax revenues on military equipment the more ‘profit’ is generated , or actually transferred. Or is there some sense that military spending is an investment and a sign of wealth creation ?

 

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And just to continue my tradition of throwing shit out there, willy nilly.

How is not imperialist of the US to have a ‘say’ in the financing and construction of the Nord Stream pipelines? 

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7 hours ago, Eiuol said:

But besides that, you are saying that some of the corruption is because of profit motive. Your entire story was about the corrupting influence of money.

It’s sounds like you’re trying to argue that money is such a good thing that we wouldn’t want to sully it by pointing out that it also motivates bank robbers (even though it does).

Ayn Rand wrote a great deal about money, including how it makes a big difference whether it was obtained honestly or dishonestly. In fact, those are some of her most famous quotes.

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OK, you did not care to react to my suggestion to indicate what are your most fundamental objections to Journo’s analysis, among all those you mentioned. Then my next step will be to examine a few of your objections.

On 9/19/2022 at 11:08 PM, whYNOT said:

[Journo’s analysis  is] disingenuous. Skirts around the end of NATO’s fundamental raison d’etre ("to defend against the Soviet Union " …) - with the disintegration of that very same Soviet Russia. What ‘enemy’ was its continuing purpose for existence, afterwards and now?

In other words, in your view, NATO should have dissolved itself after the dissolution of USSR and of the Warsaw Pact. Let’s examine the facts.

a). The Warsaw Pact was created in 1955, as a counterpart to NATO; NATO was created much earlier, in 1949. Then, in logic, if NATO would have been dissolved, then the Warsaw Pact should have been too, but NOT the other way around, as you suggest.

b). It is not true that NATO was founded “to defend against the Soviet Union”. The North Atlantic Treaty specifies that its aim is to guarantee the collective security of its members against any attacks of “third parties”, any “third parties”. After the disappearance of USSR as a potential source of an attack, the other potential sources remained. In fact, ANY third party worldwide could become a danger. Therefore, the disappearance of one danger, even of the main one until then, is NOT a reason to dissolve the Alliance.

c). On the other hand, shortly after the dissolution of USSR and the fall of Communism, some of the former Communist countries and Soviet republics, in view of their history of relationship with Russia, considered the possibility of joining NATO for defense. According to Wiki, “countries wishing to join must meet certain stringent requirements and complete a multi-step process involving political dialog and military integration”. The process takes long years, a full decade for some.

d). Moreover, the events after the dissolution of USSR and the fall of Communism clearly demonstrate that the dissolution of NATO would have been an enormous mistake.

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expansion [of NATO] despite assurances made to Gorbachev: not an inch past Germany

There was indeed at least one assurance made to Gorbachev resembling to these words. But was about something different and very narrow: the deployment of non-German NATO forces on the territory of the former East Germany (GDR). Namely, in September 1990 it was agreed (in the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany) that the reunified Germany is allowed to join NATO, but it was also agreed that no non-German NATO military (and no nuclear weapons) are allowed one inch into the former East Germany (see here)

The narrative that there were “assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact” about the non-expansion of NATO beyond the reunified Germany seems to originate in the February 2007 Putin’s speech at a Security Conference held in Munich (see here). Here is an excerpt:

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(Putin, 2007) And we have the right to ask: against whom is this [NATO] expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?

 The question remains: were there any assurances above the one mention above, any authorized promises, in whatever binding form, about non-enlargement of NATO to former Communist countries and former Soviet republics?

Starting with 2007 and amplified by the 2008 Russia’s attack of Georgia and the 2014-2022 war against Ukraine, the question of the reality of a West’s pledge is intensely debated. The debate was fueled by newly discovered documents from Western archives which, according to an article published by the German publication _Der Spiegel, _November 2009 (see here), support the Russian position. Unfortunately, according to other studies based on the same documents, the opposite conclusion was inferred (see for example one by the Center for strategic and International Studies  here and The Brookings Institution here.) Therefore, the subject is at least disputed.

What now? The NATO subject was discussed between USSR and the West in 1990 and 1991, at the end of the Gorbachev era, when USSR has not yet fallen. It was not resumed during at least the next 10 years. This means that Gorbachev supervised all the pertinent negotiations. What does he say?

In October 2014 (after Donbass and Crimea, when Putin invoked again the “broken promises”) Gorbachev gave a long interview to the Moscow based governmental publication Russia Beyond the Headlines (RBTH), a predecessor of RIA Novosti and of Russia Today. Here is the relevant exchange with the reporter: 

RBTH: “One of the key issues that has arisen in connection with the events in Ukraine is NATO expansion into the East. Do you get the feeling that your Western partners lied to you when they were developing their future plans in Eastern Europe? Why didn’t you insist that the promises made to you – particularly U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s promise that NATO would not expand into the East – be legally encoded? I will quote Baker: “NATO will not move one inch further east.””

M.Gorbachev: " The topic of “NATO expansion” was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a singe Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn’t bring it up, either. Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces from the alliance would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement, mentioned in your question, was made in that context. Kohl and [German Vice Chancellor Hans-Dietrich] Genscher talked about it."

After this, le bare minimum which is certain about the allegedly promised non-enlargement of NATO is that it is strongly disputed.

But whYNOT presented it as a fact , an essential one, against the Journo’s analysis… Elsewhere whYNOT comments:

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Amazed how little you know [about “broken promises”]. Why “anecdotal”? This was common knowledge

Maybe you know a lot more than I do, but is also true whatever you claim to know ? Doesn’t seem to be… As most of your other claims on the subject of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. And what you claim is, visibly, “common knowledge” only among those who form their opinion by contrasting such diversified sources as Russia Today, TASS and D. Simes’ The National Interest…

Besides: until about 2007 the Russian leadership accepted calmly the enlargement : after Germany (1990), followed Poland+Hungary+Czechia (1999), in 2004 - Baltic states, Bulgaria, Romania etc. Even Russia was pondering the possibility to join NATO. There even was a “Russia–NATO Council” (2002, see Wiki) for handling security issues and joint projects. However, Russia aspired to be recognized again as a Great Power and bypass all the “stringent requirements and the passage through a multi-step process”; it aspired to acquire from the very beginning a leading position alongside US, France and UK. This did not work and Putin was, apparently extremely offended and frustrated…

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To steadily continue the expansion (despite assurances made to Gorbachev: not an inch past Germany) in these circumstances, NATO has been provocative, indeed. Why would it accept/invite many new members, mostly ex-Warsaw Pact, closing in on Russian borders? One doesn’t need to be paranoid to find nothing benign in that. Nor certainly would any free-er, more respectable nation allow such an unexplained, irrational encroachment by any ‘organisation’ (one which refused its admission too). Conclusion: The isolation, weakening, and regime change by revolution for Russia was intended and planned by think tanks, quite far back.

This conclusion is about NATO leadership intentions , which is something going in people’s heads. Something like that is almost impossible to prove. Moreover, I gave above an alternative explanation which does not postulate sinister intentions. Therefore this conclusion is arbitrary.

To conclude : I considered the first four of whYNOT’s objections to Journo’s analysis. They are NOT based on fact, to say the least. Simply and succinctly stated, they are crap. As usual, unfortunately​:frowning:

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On 9/25/2022 at 3:46 AM, Eiuol said:

It really doesn’t matter, he’s just going to talk about how woke he is about Russia and Ukraine and how blind we are to the real world and victims of propaganda. Anyway, Crimea was part of the Ukraine, notwithstanding that he is skeptical that it really was (insinuating that Crimea was actually part of Russia, therefore Russia wasn’t actually invading the Ukraine, but Russia was asserting authority over its own land). 

 

I inquired out of interest if Ukraine owned Crimea. I did not know and am sure it’s new on most here, it was “administered by Ukraine”, which might be different. But you would call this my “insinuating” it was part of Russia - mind-reading again, which is why I find discussion with you pointless.

Republic of Crimea - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Republic_of_Crimea

 

 

“Before its invasion and annexation by Russia in 2014, the territory was administered by Ukraine as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea…”

 

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On 9/26/2022 at 4:11 PM, AlexL said:

, supports the neo-Nazi state which is Ukraine - according to the latest and greatest Soviet studies…

The neo-Nazi influence is and has traditionally been strong in Ukrainian politics and the military, which is not to say it is majorly a neo-Nazi state. Naturally this is sanitized and brushed aside by the West. Lefty warmongering msm especially can’t be seen to be supporting Nazis. This account, inculcating of children in fascism to hate Russians, from a hard leftist (but antiwar) website.

https://mronline.org/2022/08/31/from-nurseries-to-nazis/

 

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Well the other Ukrainian officials will always have a blackmail element to fallback on.

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On 9/24/2022 at 4:02 PM, AlexL said:

You brought forward a whole lot of - purported - arguments and evidence for calling Journo’s analysis “disingenuous”.

I did  not refuse to consider your arguments and evidence. I simply asked you to chose yourself 2-3 from the multitude, the ones you consider fundamental to your verdict, so that I can concentrate on these, make a reasoned argument of my own, and see, at the end, if your evidence is true and your verdict is correct.

I am trying to avoid the situation when, if I eventually succeed in refuting your arguments, you will then raise other arguments (“but what about this, what about that”), and this will never end.

So: please read carefully what I wrote and tell me what do you decide about the path I propose.

At this point you can simply say that you do or do not agree. The I will decide about my next step. I believe this is a fair proposal, and I explained why it is fair.

The “verdict” is self-evident if you apply logic to the facts.

A. there was not any concerted effort by the sponsors, Germany and France, or the UN, EU and NATO to pressure Kyiv into compliance with its Minsk agreements. This alone could have averted conflict. Zelensky who ran and was overwhelmingly elected on a “peace platform”, made a small effort to negotiate with the separatists and was told by ultra-nationalists he’d be strung up from a tree if he continued; result, he turned 180 on his promises, called the separatists “terrorists” and redoubled the assaults on the Donbas. As the President, responsible for all his electorate, he showed he is a fraud and a cheat, who should not be lecturing the world on saving “democracy”.

B. NATO had been training the Ukraine forces for several years since Maidan.

C. When Putin invaded, Zelensky seemed amenable to peace talks but was told by Boris Johnson: The Russians can be beaten by Ukraine–but if you negotiate with them you can expect no support from the West. And he obediently complied. Talks and concessions at that point, also could have prevented war. 

D. the deep background, NATO expansion: knowingly and deliberately against Putin’s warnings of his “red line” at Ukraine. A little respect or simple acknowledgment for his position as leader responsible to the RF and its right to security and self-determination was called for. But, “to hell with Putin’s red line” was stated in reply.

Connect the dots if you are looking for “logic”. This was a seemingly senseless invasion that was anticipated and prepared for by the West. With Journo focusing solely on NATO, i.e. Mearsheimer’s legitimate ‘realist’ argument and accurately predicted warning; by presuming Putin’s writings as deterministic of his “imperialism” - and a few irrelevant ad homs about Putin (guilt by association, e.g. “Trump’s” favorable impression of Putin–and you know what that means to some…) Journo doesn’t even penetrate to the cause of this war and Putin’s intentions, so Journo hasn’t shown grounds to pass moral judgment. 

Unprovoked and unjustified, the media’s mantra. “Unprovoked”, clearly false. Putin knew with certainty that Russia was facing an existential threat from the West, as the above proves, in retrospect. I.e, despite opportunities to do so,  the West did not want the war to be stopped - but much more he would have learned as privy to many covert misdoings and meddling. Simply, the West wanted and wants Russia beaten and fragmented. Only “Unjustified” (morally) gives one pause for thought. Is and was Putin’s loyalty and concern for the unsafe Russian-Ukrainian people in their regions, an over-riding motive, his high value? Not having that insight, events point that way.

He and the RF have paid and will pay a colossal price to “liberate” the East’s people from their plight and to try to demilitarize Ukraine and remove the existential threat. 

There are enough evasions to spread around all parties involved.

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14 hours ago, necrovore said:

It’s sounds like you’re trying to argue that money is such a good thing that we wouldn’t want to sully it by pointing out that it also motivates bank robbers (even though it does).

As far as I saw, you didn’t demonstrate that money is being used for some nefarious end, and you still haven’t attempted to substantiate that money is being used wrongfully. You could say that there is a monetary imbalance that is unfair (which is basically common knowledge), that much is fine. The narrative you provided goes off to say that the imbalance is intentional and manipulative, and evidence that NATO should not be trusted. Apparently the evidence for this intention is that they want the money flowing, and the power that comes with this. But what power are you referring to if not the power of money to accomplish productive things? Why would the desire to keep the money also lead to the desire to make war last longer? 

The desire for money has nothing to do with it. That you mention money is irrelevant. What matters is if you have a reason to say that NATO has some nefarious idea in mind, because you would then say that money enables them to accomplish that nefarious intention. It seems to me that you wouldn’t trust NATO even if the monetary imbalance was corrected. 

 

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Britain’s warmongers: https://declassifieduk.org/explainer-britains-proxy-war-on-russia/

"Whitehall’s major problem with Moscow is that it “is seeking its own independent sphere of influence separate to any American-backed global order or rule book”, the then head of the British army, General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, said last year.

Unacceptably to British planners, Russia elected to become a rival. Then defence secretary Michael Fallon said in 2017 that “Russia has chosen to become a strategic competitor of the West”.

His successor, Gavin Williamson expressed a similar lament, saying that “after 1990 we … believed there would be only one superpower”, referring to the US. Now, “Russia wants to assert its rights”, he complained.

“After 1990 we … believed there would be only one superpower.”

This Russian independence and rivalry has contributed to the “erosion of strategic advantage” for the West which must be regained, General Sanders says. The UK wants to see Russia confined to a status of global pariah.

Whitehall is making extraordinary efforts to help Ukraine, and defeat Russia, in its war".

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On 9/28/2022 at 4:13 AM, whYNOT said:

The “verdict” is self-evident if you apply logic to the facts.

A. B. C. D. 

[…]

In my previous post I analyzed your arguments in favor of your "disingenuous” verdict.

I expected you to refute my analysis/arguments.

Instead, you came up with additional criticism of the West – your points A to D. Then you continue with some more criticism. Even if all these were justified, they are, in the context, off topic.

You simply dodge a serious, structured, rational debate and switch, instead, to the “stream of consciousness” mode.

It doesn’t make sense for me to continue such a debate.

If someone else has questions, I will try to answer.

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On 9/29/2022 at 4:35 PM, AlexL said:

Instead, you came up with additional criticism of the West

Is it just me or does the spouting of anti-Western talking points coincide pretty well with fascism? I mean, Putin’s MO has always been pretty authoritarian, and something of a third way that isn’t communism or liberalism. Crying how the West is being mean to illiberal governments, upset by the power of the capitalist class (in this case, the political class to be specific), and blaming defensive military actions of others as the cause of their own aggressive and offensive military actions that originated 20 years earlier. 

Beware the fascist apologists. Just wait till they start going on to rationalize the policies of the new prime minister of Italy. 

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Anti western ,lol.

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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

upset by the power of the capitalist class (in this case, the political class to be specific)

The political class is not capitalist. Just because someone has money doesn’t mean they’re capitalist. It is even possible for someone to earn money legitimately and still not be capitalist. They can be corrupted later, or as they go. (If they are not corrupted, I would not call them members of the political class. There is no “capitalist class.”)

The political class are criminals, like gangsters or bank robbers. They have the same psychology. They don’t earn money by producing anything; they get it either by favors or by taxation or by just printing it. They regard productivity itself as a plum to be handed out, or a favor to be fought over; although they are willing to compete against each other, they do not want random people being productive and inventing new successful businesses in their garages (unless they can seize them, or buy them with printed money). They would rather have a few big businesses than thousands of little ones. (One of them said “I don’t think we want people starting banks in their garages.”) They want businesses to be awarded to people. They want to control who succeeds and who fails, so that they can ensure that they keep the successes among themselves and their friends. They do not want capitalism or freedom for anyone else (“You will own nothing and be happy”), just themselves, and maybe not really even that. They are trying to create the “state of ultimate inversion” that Ayn Rand warned about, where the people have to act by permission, but the government can do anything it pleases. That is fascism.

Some of them claim to be supporters of Ayn Rand or freedom or capitalism but they are not selfish in the Ayn Rand sense. They have victims and (metaphorically speaking) they hide the bodies under layers and layers of bureaucracy.

The political class likes to provoke crises and emergencies (“never let a crisis go to waste”) because it gives them an excuse to seize political power and do end runs around mechanisms (such as due process) that are intended to protect individual rights, because, hey, it’s an emergency!

Even if they didn’t originally provoke the war in Ukraine, they are acting to prolong it, because it is useful to them.

The political class seeks to eradicate the rights of the West’s citizens. They seek to have all the wealth for themselves. They would rather destroy wealth than not possess it, so Ayn Rand’s observations that the mind is the root of wealth and that the mind only functions when free, are irrelevant to the political class. The never-ending “emergencies” are just one way for them to proceed. (Sensing that time is running out, they are trying to speed up the process.) The Covid lockdowns were the first large-scale example, but that didn’t work. They’ve decided it’s in their best interests to keep provoking Putin and to deliberately get rid of any possibility of a diplomatic solution. (Blinken was recently caught saying that the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines was a good thing…)

This does not make Putin a good guy and I don’t much care what happens to Putin in all this.

What I do care about is the people of the West who are losing their rights (and, secondarily, their wealth) because of the self-appointed elites in charge of the bureaucracies of Western governments. (Douglas Adams was right when he said that the purpose of the President was not to wield power, but to attract attention away from it…)

As far as I can tell the populist leaders who keep getting elected, like the Prime Minister of Italy, or Donald Trump, are derided because they are obstacles to the ongoing quest of the political class. Such populist politicians, if elected, are not always effective because all they (and almost all the people who voted for them) have is a sense of life and not an integrated philosophy. This can cause them to make stupid anti-freedom mistakes such as trying to ban “woke” books and the like. However, they are not integrated fascists; the political class are. And of course, as Ayn Rand herself observed, the mistakes of the defenders of capitalism make it easy to pick holes in their philosophical positions, and the holes, unfortunately, are very real.

On the other hand, the political class has much bigger holes in their theories, and they are doomed to fail eventually. If they keep printing money, the currency will collapse. If they keep pursuing shortsighted environmentalist policies, they will destroy their own ability to produce energy (or win wars). If they keep pushing Putin, eventually Putin will be forced to react violently. The important questions are only how many victims the political class will take with them – and what, if anything, will arise to take their place.

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