Ukraine

Thoughts on Ukrainian nationalism, Feb. 2014
by Patrick Muldowney

Over in Ukraine ‘Christmas gifts’ are being unwrapped and all sorts of stuff is coming out from under the shiny paper that everyone wraps things up in. Hard to tell the real value of the ‘gift’ even when out of the paper, but it’s virtually impossible while it’s still wrapped up in paper. What’s the value of a V8 ute to a 18yr old high school student compared to a 36yr old builder?

Christmas only comes once a year, but wise people acquire gifts all through the year and they are put away for that one special day. When the day approaches a tree is set aside and decorated in the current fashion. The hidden gifts are then wrapped up in that shiny paper and left under the tree for anyone to wonder about.

By Christmas Eve most of the gifts have arrived and the pile sits there overnight in unseen beauty. The mystery of the decorated packages is only solved in the frenzy of opening and sometimes not even then. ‘Have I got what I asked for?’ is the unspoken thought from the children.

The kids get to the task of unwrapping the gifts, even if a beloved grandmother that bought some of them during the year has been dead and buried for months. They unwrap what is there and then make of it as they will!

They may have received blank paper and paints. It may be a model; or a flag; or a history book written by somebody with an ‘interest in promoting human rights’; or even a book written by a person keen on free and fair elections for a proportionately representative parliament that are IMV the foundation of those human rights. 

It maybe a Crucifix the old woman had thought a sacred object and when it’s unwrapped a discussion might start that leads all the young people into a more solid understanding that they just don’t share the old ideas.  On the other hand it might get put up on the mantle piece and everyone begin a fervent prayer just to get the old girl out of Purgatory. 

Who knows what the naked apes of Ukraine are making of the 21st C.  What is evident is that they are divided over how the country ought to orient it’s form of capitalism.  I think the majority favor a western lean away from what many see as ‘the old foe’ and half of the remainder would want to get more distance between themselves and Putin types generally.

We all know from experience that just as people change so do the organisations that they set up. It’s only in Neverland where people don’t change.  Self evidently many Ukrainians understand (even better than Syrians) that Putin is their enemy and that any political leadership that draws their country closer to Putin is to be opposed and struggled against.

The Irish up against the English is the best example of how a national movement of the Ukrainians against the Russians ought to be thought about, right down to the massive loyalist presence in a concentrated part of the country. The National question is still being resolved in Ukraine and Georgia and right across that big slab of territory north of the Caucuses that Putin has been waging his ruthless city smashing wars in for years.

Al Qaeda sorts thrive in the swamp that Putin is maintaining. Putin has not changed course and is not part of the solution to the national questions; or the struggle for democracy; nor women’s rights; or gay rights; and so on. His nonsense is a blockage to the swamp draining that extends right up into the Ukraine and beyond that. East European development is way behind Norway and the rest of the exemplar Scandinavian countries – even if the Norwegians have to deal with right-wing terrorists.

Putin keeps Assad’s air power going and democrats want to see that it gets smashed to bits.

Because the strategic grand plan is to fight oppression by uniting the many to defeat the few, we look to the current demands of the Ukrainians as Steve directed our attention with respect to the Sunni demands in Iraq.

Whatever the past role of Ukrainian nationalism way back at the time Stalin was coping with his problems, the current struggle is a no-brainer because the Ukrainian people are against Putin’s Russia.  I guess that the largest block of Ukrainian people want their government to resign and they want new elections to form a new government to lead their country away from Russia and towards greater connections with western Europe.  If they got that outcome it won’t solve all their problems anymore than the problems are solved in Ireland, Spain or Greece and I suppose that is obvious to them as they can see for themselves how bad things are in those Euro countries; but at least they will be that much further away from the system that Putin is running!

As with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt there are more than just a few “very conservative” democrats in the Ukrainian context, and just as there are Salafi parties that are more reactionary (and less democratic) in Egypt there are the equivalent in this part of the swamp.

As Arthur said re Egypt;

‘Anyone democratic is inherently less reactionary and conservative than the various “progressive” parties of the secular opposition who actually want to go BACKWARDS towards the Mubarak era.  So emphasizing the conservative or reactionary character of the brotherhood is likely to give a misleading impression to people who are unaware of how bad the opposition to the brotherhood is.’
END

My view is that issues that blow up this big ought to have been brought before the people in Referenda. The situation is well beyond that now and new elections are now how the issues of the Ukraine can be resolved. There is that, or a reasonably quick descent into the civil war scenario.   I think the police and the army would ‘quickly’ shatter and the country then divide along the two ethnic lines.  The Russian dominated regions – absent Putin meddling – would after a few months or whatever time it takes would lose out to the Ukrainian nationalist forces but Putin would/will meddle.  Eventually we could then see Putin’s tanks cross the border in the manner that he did with Georgia a couple of years back.

It is a little different to Georgia, but the resolution of the national question is at the heart of the issue and these are both historically ‘Promethean’ movement inspired countries.

Anyway the new Pinochet in Egypt has more support I’d bet than does the current friend of Putin running the show in Ukraine, where I’m sure ‘it isn’t just the disgusting liberals and “left” that have faith in the army’ [but like Egypt] ‘if a Syrian situation can be avoided (as has been successful in Tunisia) then it is well worth trying to avoid it.’

Nations do want liberation and Putin works against them. Countries do want independence and Putin won’t let them have it, and as far as I can see the peoples’ do want a revolutionary change in the way they are governed by the knuckle-dragging-ruling-classes, and their increasingly inbred ruling-elites. Oh and Putin backs the Assad sorts!

Supporting the fight for democracy I have endorsed the COW liberation of Iraq. I don’t pretend there is a fight for socialism in regions threatened by Putin, but there is a struggle for national liberation and democracy. I have no trouble working out where to stand. As in the Syrian case there are unsavory sorts all over the place, but that was the way it was with the struggle for national liberation in Vietnam, and in Ireland as well for that matter.

120 Responses to “Ukraine”


  1. 1 admin
  2. 2 admin

    As per ABC 24 Australia – despite the truce an estimated 25 are dead amidst the most serious clashes between protesters and government troops. The Ukrainian parliament has banned the further use of live round ammunition, and EU sanctions are on the cards. Barack Obama is also set to implement consequences if things do not improve quickly. Elections seem to be the best way out of this quagmire that has seen the streets near Independence Square turn to a war zone.

  3. 3 patrickm

    It doesn’t matter whatever the exact numbers are because no one doubts that ‘many’ Ukrainians believe that their last elections were crooked. New elections are now set for May 25. Crooked elections aren’t any good, but that seems enough time to ensure that they are both free and ‘fair’ in current context (and also organized so that they are seen to be so) That whole process of course will be the focus of Ukrainian democrats and it would undoubtedly be progress on what the peoples of Ukraine have had up to this date. So I hope for progress and we will know soon enough what those next electoral developments are.

    After such a worthwhile contest no ‘socialist’, communist, Marxist, or radical leftist of any kind will get the numbers in the new parliament. They won’t get the numbers and they won’t even make a good showing and whoever does win will have zero prospect of ‘fixing’ Ukraine’s current capitalist economic woes.

    No good pulling down Lenin statues, or for that matter putting one up of Marx just to pull it down. Essentially conditions will continue along the same path of ‘suspended’ development as is Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy etc., with no Lenin statues and massive levels of unemployed youth, hanging around or the over 50 dead end to employment etc.

    Despite all those years of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary struggle that came out of the horror of WW1 and the civil war period, the country of Ukraine is no doubt most marked by that other period of massive suffering before WW2. (and then the backwards and forwards of that total war) but it’s a long time ago and new generations have new problems.

    Whatever happened in the past, large numbers of those people who believe that recent elections were an act of theft that gave them their hated last government finally took action some months ago.

    They wanted rid of their President and that’s what all the various demands reduced to in the end. The protesters have got their way and the issues for them are those of the present. 88 lives down and elections are now only one part of the way forward. Plenty of other people otherwise concerned about the way their country’s economy was going down the drain in 2013 took to the streets as well and they stayed there quite determinedly occupying some public squares etc., while the weather got cold and stayed that way.

    The fighters won and now they want a future.

    For quite a while no-one from the state wanted the public spaces handed back. Then the authorities ordered the people to go home. The state authorities were directed by the ‘elected’ government that paid them. The demonstrators wouldn’t go to their homes! They defied the authorities and directly challenged them with barricades and so forth. Then they fought and wore those authorities down.

    Who is being paid now and why? Follow the money. Why ought the police who they fought be paid and they who fought them not?

    Those that have paid with their lives last week have left their mark on Ukraine. Their comrades and families require that somebody pay a price in their turn. Who is responsible beside the kleptocrat president? Authorities!

    After such a drawn out test of strength we now know the result is the president no longer felt welcome in the capital or even in the parliament. He thought it best to flee and reporters don’t know where he is. He will turn up (eventually) but he might not want to I suppose. After all he knows what he did to his opponents and so he is now probably just concerned with his own future. He would have no wish to be arrested and tried for any crimes but by the time such people are on the run it’s generally too little too late.

    According to MSM reports his personal guards were shooting as they fled. He will be looking for another country and what’s more he knows that sooner or later he will be held to account in the west so he won’t go west.

    I reckon Putin would rather he was killed than turn up in Russia. But Putin doesn’t always get what he would like in his Christmas stocking. None of us do. Whatever happens he will try to make the best of whatever turns up. In the end Grozny has shown what Putin has the stomach for.

    At any rate no one assumes that columns of his Russian tanks (often built in Ukraine) will be crossing that western border any time soon. The world has changed considerably since those tanks drove on FROM Ukraine across Slovakia and spread out right across Hungary ten years after WW2.

    It was mid 1941 when the first wave of Hungarian tanks had come east along the same roads to crush Bolshevism and they were – it must be said – often greeted as ‘liberators’ in parts of Ukraine.

    That thinking changed in all directions as the conflagration of WW2 unfolded and that is so long ago now that babies born then are long retired now. This is not the first time statues of my beloved Lenin have been pulled down by Ukrainians.(with or without what would at least appear as good cause) On reflection perhaps genuine Leninists ought to have removed them many years ago and put up statues of Campbell’s soup!

    Whatever the status of statues, nothing is as it was before Christmas. Some people have started to think about revolution and perhaps read Lenin while others burn his books. In some parts of the country Lenin statues are being pulled down and in other parts they are being defended. Statues don’t just play a passive role in an active period either and on reflection the destruction of just one statue can announce the arrival of 30 years of ‘troubles’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson%27s_Pillar There is not just one statue in Ukraine but I would bet there is a long march of troubles ahead for the Ukrainian peoples’.

    Over the protracted course of any ‘long walk to freedom’ the readers of books will get the better of book burners and build the new statues for the 21st C.

    The upshot is that after all that’s gone on since masses of people with all sorts of views took to occupying the squares months ago and working out their demands and their own protection etc., new elections are almost in view.

    The underlying issues that drove the people onto the streets will return. How are the bills paid? Why have some people got jobs and incomes and others line up for soup? Those who fought on the barricades could hardly be keen on allowing those they fought to keep their jobs and income and they themselves to remain jobless and once more really ‘out in the cold’, what would be the point in that? How can they protect themselves? Why do some people own so much?

    Unemployment has arrived as the issue of the time for the Ukraine. The heroes who faced the snipers and are still grieving for their dead are not about to learn how to run a society from Italy, Iceland, Spain or Greece and they know what lurks to the east. Nothing but tyranny and loan shark gangsterism lurks east.

    They are also not looking to the west for lessons on sustainable tyre burning and the benefits of a carbon tax. The silence from all the usual suspects of the western pseudoleft announces their difference like a bugle. If this revolution isn’t stamped with the mark of an enraged working class I don’t know what would be.

    Both the old leaders (one from the Oligarch class just out of a jail and the other an evident kleptocrat on the run) have lost any election winning levels of support. The people of Ukraine have moved on. But it is the deep state of the judges and police and so forth that have convicted and have released the political prisoners. It’s they that have directly let loose the snipers and THEY intend to continue in their jobs. Just as army thugs carry on as the ‘law’ in Egypt. Why ought they keep receiving their pay?

    Authority slipped directly into the hands of the armed fighters in Ukraine. The revolution requires more armed masses protecting themselves from the ‘authorities’.

    Compare the Occupy Wall Street protest and that airing of the 99% V 1% analysis. Whatever is thought of many of the people involved in that minor sleep out – this Ukrainian stuff is a serious insurrection by any measure. We haven’t seen anything like this in any other industrialised country ever and it didn’t drop from the sky either; it’s been built by a leadership schooled in the earlier ‘orange revolution’ experience. This revolution has been brewing, on and then off, for decades. I doubt that ‘it’ can all just go away with elections and IMF ‘money’ flowing to the new authorities.

    People take to the streets as a personal effort to air their frustration and build unity with others and this fight has sucked all manner of ‘frustrated’ people in, and has everyone talking and responding to each other. So everyone is trying to think!

    Hooray; the debates between them have run very deep and after months of all the talking the target for the frustration is undoubtedly the 1% Oligarchs and bureaucrats and the extended talking has isolated the 20% that directly or more indirectly served that 1%! The focus on the presidential ‘palace’ is just the obvious good stuff that points the way forward. Above all else the concentrated focus of the people’s hatred are the paid snipers and those that are also paid that ordered them into action.

    These events came as a surprise because the authorities thought that the cold would defeat the occupation and that they would go home! The ‘wise’ heads counselled patience. Revolutions were for spring and here they were in the middle of the freezing cold winter! By the time the authorities realised their mistake the initiative was already in the hands of the protesters. The cold favoured the protesters. The technology of rebellion was simplified.

    Ukrainian people in the vast majority don’t own Ukraine but they’d like to see new elections that were conducted in an above reproach manner. So whatever unfolds in the very short term I think such an electoral struggle is central to any revolution as it develops through the inevitable proportional power sharing arrangements.

    All that, will no doubt be good stuff and something for all manner of democrat to build on but still it won’t get the capitalist Ukrainian very far because capitalism is in trouble right across the world markets. Unemployment and the effects on the working masses is not going away this year in Ukraine and it’s these ‘minor’ problems that have more indirectly led to this stage of the democratic revolution.

    The economic crisis is still to break out and though it’s spreading country to country money still functions. What would happen if it didn’t? New authorities must still make their world function.

    The other day a friend said ;
    “Wow I did not predict the Ukraine as the next state to fall…
    Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Turkey even, but not the Ukraine. (it’s a bit like Lithuania revolting)

    If the ‘democratic revolution’ happens in Ukraine, then Russia is next? How does that reconcile with the filthy rich Oligarchy?”

    I’m not so surprised by Ukraine developments.

    I’ve long thought that countries that are still caught up in their struggle for independence – against whatever former imperial power was in the way of the progress, would continue to be the cutting edge of the struggle for human progress in the 21st C, and IMV the most prominent obstacle in the world was and remains Russia under the revanchist Putin.

    Back in August 2008 Georgia popped up as a new issue below the region of ongoing oppressive war north of the Caucasus and at the time I thought;

    ‘I think communists ought to argue that bourgeois democratic developments, and now flowering revolution that Georgia is experiencing (while Russia falls further into Putin’s gangster grasp) is a political distinction that has to be made not just in 2008, but from well before the 1990’s at least to the 1960’s.

    Georgia’s greatest allies are countries like Ukraine that face the same threat to their further democratisation. It is a Russian threat and the U.S. is now in favour of bourgeois democratic revolution spreading, and the alternative Democratic Administration of Obama will not be able to seriously reverse this trend in the Middle East or anywhere else.

    As social democrats or as communists we are for democracy. That is to say we are for voting in free and fair elections, and for proportional representation in representative parliaments(within a state with an effective separation of powers under agreed to constitutions).

    As communists we are for the establishment of “We the people”, and of course, we the people are for the suppression of gangsters, bandits and any other counter-revolutionaries resisting the achievement of these extremely modest aims. These rights are good for the peoples’ of Nepal led by Prachanda, and they are good for the country of Georgia with all the national minorities involved in both countries. (And they are good for the country of Iraq with the national and sectarian divides that are being struggled with in that area of revolutionary struggle)

    Putin and ‘his Russia’ is currently an enemy of the spread of democracy. Everywhere his army goes they oppress the people and hold back their struggle for democracy.

    Who else is resisting these aims in the country of Georgia and combining with Putin to defeat the country of Georgia’s various peoples’? What justifies any dismemberment of Georgia by Russian troops for these political forces? What is the policy platform of these forces evidently being supported by others on this thread?’
    http://kasamaarchive.org/2008/08/16/no-comment-on-john-mccain-quote/#comment-6049

    We at Strangetimes were once asked “How does your analysis of bourgeois style democracy fit in with the Marxist concept of class dictatorship?” Now we are being taunted over the ‘right-wing’ leadership of the current struggle in Ukraine. Yet the requirement for a revolution in Ukraine is almost as self evident as is the requirement for the revolutionary resistance to the Syrian tyranny. Around the world there is a lot of ‘it’ about. Venezuela, Thailand, Greece, Egypt, Somalia through to Western Sahara. This era has the smell of revolution and people can ‘follow the money’ easily enough.

    The U.S. once produced a class similar to what is running around in Russia and the Ukraine right now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_%28industrialist%29

    I have Putin in mind as the very symbol of what people are directly up against right across ‘the swamp’, but all us western leftists know they are also up against the oligarchs in the same way that the classes of the U.S. became pissed off with the degree of power that the ‘robber baron’ few wielded back when… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_oligarchs

    Arthur has observed that a;

    ‘failure to correctly analyse how bourgeois democracy and class dictatorship are related strikes me as being very central to the absence of a communist movement at present. The sharp problem of being simultaneously allied with the bourgeoisie in some aspects and fighting it in others seems to have always resulted in swings between social democratic reformism and puerile sectarianism without ever producing the kind of advance Mao made for developing countries with the concept of New Democratic revolution.’

    One current fact is that there is no communist movement in Eastern Europe and as we can see on the MSM Ukrainian revolutionaries are having a grand time pulling down the odd statue of Lenin that is STILL hanging around after all these years since whatever revolutionary soviet union died out with Stalin, or if people prefer even earlier! If there was a statue of Putin around they’d pull that down but one must make do when pulling down states and statues.

  4. 4 patrickm

    Latest news is that Putin has given the crook safe haven. Well that’s good news. Putin had no real choice and it does him no real good either!

    There is an unmistakable revolution unfolding in Ukraine tending to level the place away from oligarch power and this brings some degree of common decency to the parliament.

    It must expose where people actually stand on various issues as they are now thrown up day by day and will no doubt clear out the worst scoundrels throughout the bureaucracy. It has good stuff well overdue written all over it. All western leftists side with this Ukrainian revolution in all its complexity and confusion and mess! I have never seen anything in any advanced industrialised country quite like this.

    Naturally Pseudoleftists are either silent or worry about NATO meddling, and Lenin statues being pulled down and tattered old five pointed stars being removed from the pinnacle of the Parliament building. There are all sorts of people contributing and that is exactly the environment that will suit democrats who are genuinely concerned with the well being of the masses. A perfect opportunity for any Marxists that are around, or start to sprout to contribute to any progress forthcoming from this round of struggle.

    I think Putin will respond to what ‘has gone wrong’ in 2014 from what he might see as a failure to act. He will take the reverse course and act ‘now’ after some sort of provocation or incident to ensure the ‘safety’ of all Russians and preserve all Russian interests. The result will be columns of tanks and they are already being prepared for this eventuality.

    Putin is not happy and in Assad manner is likely to blunder his way into a long drawn out disaster by using military force to undo the 1950’s Khrushchev border.

    As far as I can make out the numbers will continue to go against Putin either way this goes. All the ‘other’ peoples’ of the old empire will continue to be hostile to revanchist Putin and his supporters. More liberal Russians will continue to be revolted by the direction that Putin drags their people. I see no direction for him to turn to gain more mass support unless others make bad errors. The current revolutionary leadership are doing well in reassuring the Russian section of the population and warning Putin to keep his troops in their barracks etc..

    Putin has been around a long time and the Russian masses would be pretty sure by now he isn’t concerned with their well being. Assad hasn’t done him any good over the last couple of years. Gays and the more broad minded conservatives especially the internet gen youth could hardly be happy with him. He has been gathering a few enemies.

    The exposure of his kitsch kleptocrat mates is not doing him any good either.

    Any revolutionary with a perspective of proletarian liberation could only be happy with the fall of the current authorities and the bleating of Putin and his thugs. Putin and his crew has long worn out their welcome internationally among western ruling classes and their ruling elites.

    Inside Russia, the further away from Moscow the more Putin rules by terror and the more he is being struggled against, but he still has a big support base, and he has a good measure of the Obama era NATO countries leaders. They only look good by comparison, but they all look real good by comparison to what this bastard has done for years in Grozny and what he has been and is supporting in Syria.

    This Georgian bourgeois leader is worth reading to pick up on the VIBE

    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/ukraine-revolution-saakashvili-103831.html#.Uw9Au87m7ts

    Because ‘times are tough’ there is a huge struggle for more democracy very noticeable in Eastern Europe. It’s not just that the swamp started draining after the political liberation of Iraq, it’s consequential over this period of time from all directions. This current movement for more freedoms comes with a multi-decade’s old history and baggage of the ‘wild west’ style freedoms gained after the collapse of the old -revisionist- USSR.

    I notice after Iraq the spread of the struggle for freedoms in the Middle East caused a massive disturbance to the stability of the region. Leftists without that perspective and often confused about what liberation is all about tend to focus on Tunisia and the one young man who had had enough there. His death undoubtedly caused the spark. As the old saying goes ‘everything is connected to everything’.

    Both perspectives are worth thinking about. But the liberals and conservatives of the mainstream and the pseudoleft that tag along behind them are turning their heads away and dealing with issues like Boko Haram is not on the agenda of western anti-imperialists and anti-war activists like the StWC. Just silence about Africa or another hands-off chant.

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/25/boko-haram-islamists-nigeria-killing-sleeping-children

    I note even Obama has had to promise to help in dealing with this lot.

  5. 5 patrickm

    Russian troops are taking control of key points and massive numbers of troops will now follow;
    http://www.debka.com/article/23718/Russian-marines-paratroops-seize-Crimean-airports-Moscow%E2%80%99s-creeping-invasion-continues-

    the die is cast and the invasion and occupation of whatever Putin has decided to grab control of is now underway. It can’t be the lot. But it will be a very big chunk.

    Europe and the US will have to find ways to make him pay an economic price.

  6. 6 patrickm

    Never a dull moment with Putin’s Russia.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/world/europe/aleksei-navalny.html?_r=0

    If Ukrainians handle this patiently and move forward in small steps then Putin will gradually be isolated and be left looking like the thug that he is because this can’t just be about Crimea. The national divisions that have been in the Ukraine from the start are still there – but there are less Putin supporters now on both sides of his border and that will be the case when he faces elections again in 4 years time.

    IF the Ukrainian revolutionaries deliver more democracy and direct more efforts at solving the economic issues and they keep control of their hot heads, that’s an eternity in the current context; he is 61 now and I am confident that he will try to retain power for another 6 year term when he is 65 and if the trend continues he would have to rig the election to ‘win’. But what the world will look like by then well… What he requires is drama now. He wants an excuse and if he can’t get one he will create one.

    For now this is the most important type of map
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/01/24/this-is-the-one-map-you-need-to-understand-ukraines-crisis/

    When it comes to the middle to long game the Crimea is only the first bite and the invasion of the ⅓ plus of Ukraine that Putin wants ‘back’ in the fold and in his tender care – for the sake of all Russians no less – is still to unfold. But come it will as the one area makes little sense by itself -you only have to look at the map to get the bigger picture that Putin will want to deal with.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/world/europe/crimeas-bloody-past-is-a-key-to-its-present.html?&action=click&contentCollection=Europe&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article

    At some point, after laying claim to be the protector of all the Russian peoples’ in territories that the current Russian state borders, Putin will no doubt make the inevitable ‘I have no further territorial ambitions’ speech. But as GWB once remarked of Putin in deadpan delivery ‘with some leaders you never know if they are telling you the truth but with Vlad, you always know’.

  7. 7 steve owens

    http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-09/why-we-should-care-about-crimea
    The failed American adventure in Iraq has lead to American inaction over Syria and now Ukraine?

  8. 8 patrickm

    Would you mind attempting to connect the link to your sentence. The link seems to be just an attempt to promote your anti communism and spread lies about Stalin ‘killing’ Tartar peoples when they died during the events of WW2.

    Anyway it was your sort that actively wanted the US people to elect Obama and it is now evident that Tweedledee McCain is the leader that they would have been better electing.

    History is being made by the POTUS that is there. The pseudoleft and the realists are marching in lock step. Now what do you say ought to be done?

  9. 9 steve owens

    The link? Yeah sure. The US went on a big Iraq adventure that just failed.
    Now like their failure in Vietnam their failure in Iraq had consequences. The US became risk adverse because of their failure in Iraq. Now they do almost nothing to help in Syria and so more people die than necessary because the US is too tentative to do quite modest stuff. Now we come to Ukraine and the US flip flops into quite strange stuff sending a warship to the Black Sea and 6 Hornets to the Baltic. Really does anyone think that the US is going to take on Putin when they went to water over Assad.
    If Putin wants the Crimean peninsular no one will stop him, moving assets around by Obama fools no one. The US wont fight over a piece of territory where integration back into Russia is actually popular.
    You and McCain can do all the armchair generalship you want, you like him command zero forces.
    If McCain was President he would do exactly nothing.
    McCain still clangs like broken bell but hey the world is full of leaders who have no followers. (cough cough)

  10. 10 steve owens
  11. 11 steve owens

    More bullshit posturing
    http://airheadsfly.com/2014/03/05/eagles-stratotanker-to-baltics/
    Putin supports Assad because Assad lets him have a naval base in Syria.
    Anyone who thinks that Putin will allow the naval base of Sevastopol be walked into the anti Russian block aka NATO doesn’t understand Russian history. Sevastopol for gods sake. Cities in order of heroics in the Great Patriotic war go Stalingrad, Leningrad, Sevastopol I recon.

  12. 12 steve owens

    If you read this through to the end you will notice that the dogged defense of Sevastopol tied up troops that Hitler could have used at Stalingrad.
    Also there’s a nice picture of Putin paying tribute to those who defended Sevastopol.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sevastopol_%281941%E2%80%9342%29
    Oh yeah Putin’s going to give Sevastopol to NATO yeah get real

  13. 13 patrickm

    I don’t want to be unkind but there is a flavour of you talking to voices in your own head at the moment. ‘Oh yeah Putin’s going to give Sevastopol to NATO yeah get real’

    I’ve not said anything about Putin backing down. He has his own motives for this aggression and he will play this out as he sees fit. I have no need to get real. I just think that this issue will not stand still and everything go back to normal after a little while, like I think some people are wishfully thinking. I also think Putin has been predictable and predictably nasty.

    I have already indicated that this reminds me of the (long) Irish national question, but I think it’s far more serious and much could go wrong and could eventually see some minor events spin out of ‘control’ and into a wider conflict.

    I don’t believe that Putin ought to be let ‘get away with this’ either and have said so, though dealing with the issues ought not start with some sort of armed struggle. I think that hot heads and agent provocateurs are a real concern.

    I get the feeling that you think it would be best if Putin were let get away with it, is this correct? Whatever your views are the question was ‘what do you say ought to be done?’

    Just slow down a bit and remind yourself of why we are even putting our thoughts down and making them available. As I recall you said ‘we’ should at least keep this site clear of spam and ticking over even if we couldn’t think about what to do next right now. OK we are doing no more than that here, so stop with the above style, and at any rate it’s boring. Try to answer the questions because they are not anything that are self evident to me and the exercise can’t hurt us.

    You’re somebody with an ‘interest in promoting human rights’ and a person keen on free and fair elections for a proportionately representative parliament, and so am I. So let’s build our thinking up from there. Putin is playing democrat with a referendum what do you say about that?

    I think Russian outsiders are moving in to do Putin’s dirty business. He won’t let anyone in to see what is going down and the minority are being tyrannised and that is going to get worse. What’s more I can’t see how this will stop in the Crimean peninsula either. Consider also the reason that it became part of Ukraine – that’s the natural connection for most trade plus power, water etc.

    You say ‘Putin supports Assad because Assad lets him have a naval base in Syria.’ fine it may be as ‘little’ as that, but here is a point of U.S. leverage that I would like to see exploited over the next couple of years as this struggle unfolds. This is yet another reason for Obama to put more effort into the Syria debacle. I think we agree that the FSA type Syrians could stand more help.

    I think we might also both agree that Georgia and the region north of the Caucuses are hostile to Putin and now the entire border to Putin’s west is very hostile, and all manner of wise precautions and economic shunning will be his ‘just reward’ for his behaviour to date.

    Belarus is currently being run in the manner that Ukraine was when this round of struggle started back before Christmas. I imagine that the crook that runs that joint is not loved by very many of his people anymore than people anywhere love their politicians when they have been around awhile and times are tough and they are corrupt running dogs for foreign masters. But I don’t know the details of yet another country. It’s the usual plot I would have thought, but if you want me to admit that the devil is exactly in the detail fine I think we can agree on that.

    Russia has a growing internal resistance to Putin and this is bound to grow if the youth face the common problems that are currently spreading right round the world.

    Ukraine points to the big problem across all the old soviet territories. For example the 3 Baltic countries are loaded to the gills with Russians that Putin might want to ‘protect’, despite them not actually requiring it at present and half of them loathing him and all he stands for! He has repeatedly stirred Russian chauvinism up in the south why not stir north next? I don’t claim to know what is going to happen next but, Putin can’t in my view have yet another win and move onto his next target.

    Just try to answer the bigger questions and stop the anti commo slant just for now. Just remember the particular communists and fellow travelers at this site are very keen on genuine democracy and have a track record of deeds to prove it.

    You say;

    ‘The US went on a big Iraq adventure that just failed.’ and so Now like their failure in Vietnam their failure in Iraq had consequences.

    OK you just say what BUSH intended to happen and how that is not happening.

    Oil is out of the picture and installing puppets out, and he always knew that the place was a swamp that would end with islamists in power if elections were the way things ran. (because he was authoritatively told so) So what exactly are you saying Bush did not achieve, because despite all that he still ordered the troops in to depose the government and facilitate the elections?

    There was an entire political movement in 2002-3 that the masses took to the streets behind – essentially following the realists and liberals. It was huge and then almost disappeared once people understood that this war would NOT be like Vietnam and it wasn’t. The masses walked away from the movement and listened to the real debate then re-elected Bush, Blair and Howard.

    When they did put in the other Tweedle it looked much like the usual swap turnaround.

    You say;

    ‘The US became risk averse because of their failure in Iraq.’
    I agree that they are risk averse but this could be because of the cost of their success, no?

    Obama’s world view has left him consistently wrong footed IMV. For example he opposed the surge and so did the rest of the anti-war movement. If the U.S. failed as you say they have, then I guess you think that the surge failed and that Obama and the anti-war usuals were correct all along. Yet here is me still saying the cost was worth it and demanding that you compare the cost to Syria and stay away from the so-called high moral ground because it does not exist. Stop pretending that it does. There was never any cheap way for this regions ‘naked apes’ to get past their mass murdering oppressors.

    The extremely hard to accept truth is that the COW liberated the Iraqi peoples’ as clearly as did any WW2 army liberate anyone. For christ’s sakes look at Nth Korea right now.

    It was hardly wrong for the Soviet armies to defeat the horror of the Japanese armies AFTER dealing with the German, Rumanian, Hungarian, Finn and other rightist armies and lots of Ukrainians and Tatars and so forth in the west! Instead of spreading lies about bad old uncle Joe killing Tatars when they died in the course of this gigantic war that had no precedent and was unavoidable cast aside all illusions talk about genuine complexity and prepare for more genuine messy struggle.

    It is a classic conundrum for the ‘peace’ mongers of our time that the threat of a missile strike by Obama is producing the handing over and destruction of Assad’s chemical weapons. Those threats were credible because forces were moved into place to do the job and the attacks were really imminent. All of the required actions were opposed that finally brought the outcome the good of which can only be denied in Neverland in a private huddle of the pseudoleft; until one of the more idiotic members blurts it out publicly and shames all into turning away in silence.

    Obama sought to press a reset button with Putin’s Russia! How is that working out?

    You say
    ‘Now they do almost nothing to help in Syria and so more people die than necessary because the US is too tentative to do quite modest stuff.’

    ‘They’ is actually Obama; the modest stuff is to get dragged along to join with NATO and deal with the Libyan war. But the U.S. military did have to do the heavy lift. Or do you mean join with virtually all the world’s countries and make war to liberate Kuwait? That is modest stuff in my book.

    While there is a role for the drone war I am sure that Obama is not a good war leader what do you say to this thinking?

    You say;
    ‘Now we come to Ukraine and the US flip flops into quite strange stuff sending a warship to the Black Sea and 6 Hornets to the Baltic. Really does anyone think that the US is going to take on Putin when they went to water over Assad.’

    No I don’t think anyone does. But governments are not going to simply do nothing either. This can go in any direction. These military moves are very mild but it would be ‘strange’ if they did not make them, and that appears to be what you think would be preferable.

    You say;

    ‘If Putin wants the Crimean peninsular no one will stop him, moving assets around by Obama fools no one. The US wont fight over a piece of territory where integration back into Russia is actually popular.’

    I don’t know that integration back into the loving arms of Putin’s thug state is as popular as the Russian % of the population of that peninsular alone would indicate. There is a real flavour to the way this has NOT gone mass but instead has just been small bands of armed thugs who won’t talk etc.

    Keeping military discipline of the thugs has been the evident problem and so they are now being formed up in ranks and put in uniforms. The whole look of the blokes involved and the style is opposite to what we have seen in the rest of Ukraine in the Christmas period building towards the revolutionary overthrow. That different flavour is the whole ‘vibe’ of proletarian involvement in a bourgeois revolution. This Putin scam has reactionary bullying stamped all over it.

    You say;

    ‘You and McCain can do all the armchair generalship you want, you like him command zero forces. If McCain was President he would do exactly nothing. McCain still clangs like broken bell but hey the world is full of leaders who have no followers. (cough cough)’

    Don’t be ridiculous a contest of ideas exists and Obama had to talk before people voted for him. Ideas have to form up before people can talk and contest elections. The strong can grow weak and the weak strong so let’s have no more of that. The struggle to change people’s thinking could never be conducted with this attitude and you know it.

    IMV informed people know that McCain would be doing things differently even if you don’t. NOBODY seriously thinks the U.S. alternate ruling elite want war with Russia. But actions have consequences. It’s the old known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

    Just imagine the world’s theoreticians and analysts putting forward their thinking in an open honest and above board manner that people can freely choose to make use of or not. Then do so.

  14. 14 steve owens

    Look the Crimean Tartars were not decimated by the “normal” to and fro of war. Six days after the last pockets of German resistance were extinguished on the Crimean Peninsular Tartars were rounded up placed on cattle trucks and sent to inhospitable parts of the Soviet Union. Tartar members of the Red Army were demobbed at the same time. This wasn’t some occurrence of war this was ethnic cleansing, this was collective punishment because some Muslims had cooperated with Hitler and had been taken in by his promises of religious freedom.
    OK so you are not supporting war with Putin, then I guess you are not in support of America sending warships and war planes to the area.
    I really don’t care who rules the Crimea(unless those in charge couldn’t point to some sort of democratic mandate) I do care about people in the Crimea having their human rights observed.
    If I was a Russian Nationalist I would expect Putin to seize Sevastopol and want him shot if he didn’t.
    I don’t think any amount of hot air or sanctions will make Russia give up the Crimea so I will leave the ranting to those with an excess of hot air.
    Id be interested to know what strategies will work.
    As to Bush and his “victory” in Iraq, well may he say save me from such victories. Theres any number of ways to look at Iraq as a failure, the league table of failed states, the reflections of people who whole heartedly supported the invasion who now write articles explaining how it all went wrong. I think the measure of any success or failure is a persons willingness to do it all over again. Just as in Vietnam America was reluctant to put troops on the ground I think that it will be a long time post Iraq before any President voluntarily moves troops into harms way.

  15. 15 steve owens

    It does trouble me that Im conversing with someone who doesnt seem to know basic stuff about Russia. Like being unaware of Stalins ethnic cleansing. I mean you just have to read Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman to realise that world war two Russians took it for granted that wrong ethnicity during the war was a death sentence. If you read the part where the nice old German lady is sent away and everyone knows that she is dead as soon as she leaves.
    But you dont have to read Russian novels theres plenty of straight history oh yes I forgot “lies.”
    I met up with an old Communist who said Steve about Stalin you can believe Socialist sources or you can believe Capitalist sources, why would anyone choose to believe Capitalist sources. So in the end I guess he was right its what we choose to believe. Me I choose to believe what makes the best sense given the known facts but I try to uphold peoples right to get their beliefs from other sources.

  16. 16 patrickm

    I can’t think of any period where ‘co-operative’ economic decisions from financially stressed governments were more crucial for keeping a ‘sluggish’ world’s capitalism going than now. (read shit loads of developed countries with 60% youth unemployment and mass underemployment etc.) So IMV the probable peaceful measures that will be taken as the first part of standing up to Putin, could well tip the world into a depression if the world is not already sliding into it now. That is as bad and unpredictable from that point as it could get I would think.

    So I’ll leave aside the historical diversion you predictably plunge into, and focus on the fact that your current position betrays all the Tatars and Ukrainians and Russians who were doing just fine before Putin responded to an opportunity with his predictable Russian ‘Nationalist’ sentiment.

    Putin’s conduct has remarkable similarities to a familiar German dictator right down to the bare faced lying to the world.

    You say. ‘I really don’t care who rules the Crimea (unless those in charge couldn’t point to some sort of democratic mandate) I do care about people in the Crimea having their human rights observed.’

    The people there have just copped an unprovoked invasion by troops from ‘Mars’, without any flag or declaration of war just a flood of heavily armed Martians!! The world has had a giant Hitlerite lie thrown in our face and you don’t care?!

    Try this;

    ‘If I was a German Nationalist I would expect Hitler to seize Austria and the Sudetenland and want him shot if he didn’t and I don’t think any amount of hot air or sanctions will make Hitler give up the Sudetenland, so I will leave the ranting to those with an excess of hot air. I’d be interested to know what strategies will work.’

    Does that ring a bell yet?

    Years ago when Saddam was compared to Adolf people scoffed that he was no threat to world peace. Would you be comfortable scoffing at the comparison this time?

    I note BTW that Nazi Germany probably didn’t rank as a failed state (bloody good trains) and Syria is a failed state obviously. But here stripped of mealy mouthed words is your answer to a very specific question about Iraq.
    1. save me from such victories
    2. see the league table of failed states
    3. other people told me it all went wrong
    4. GWB is THE person and he would do it all over again but….‘I think the measure of any success or failure is a person’s willingness to do it all over again.’ and ‘I think that it will be a long time post Iraq before any President voluntarily moves troops into harms way.’

    Anyhow you are wrong about my view on the U.S. sending moderate numbers of military assets to Europe. Large numbers of warships and war planes and troops worked with Kuwait and Iraq and with only a few specialist troops Libya. Even disarming Assad of his chemical weapons (plus the troops on the border and doing all the training and satellite work etc.) required more than just a threat it requires a credible imminent threat. You don’t get to credible without taking the first steps.

    I also note drones are still working and Al Qaeda is still kicking on and the lastsuperpower continues to lose superpower capacities and confidence and military budgets are having to be cut. Diminishing U.S. power is nothing new for people who called a site lastsuperpower to indicate the direction that we thought it was all going! By golly it’s gone that way!

    Glad you have noticed something of the 21st C between the anti-communist novels. Now you might like to think about just how bad the ethnic slaughter could get in Africa (where you know Boko Haram slaughtered those kids the other day) unless some more real troops step in to actively intervene! You can stop spitting half truths and distortions about Stalin long enough to say you support the French intervention in Mali and you support the navies of the world dealing with the pirates, just before you get back to the questions you were asked to respond to above.

    As an aside you could note that Alawites in Syria will require protection as well as being the vast majority of Assad’s support and that the regime has to be defeated as part of the bourgeois democratic revolution. Ethnic cleansing is currently in progress in Syria and millions are being driven out of their homes and made into refugees and you want to play games about how many ethnic peoples’ ought to have been shifted back during WW2. As if these issues now were not real!

    Right now Assad is cutting out an enclave in Syria. It is an ethnic war NOW. Alawites won’t be able to keep what he is creating sans Assad! The refugees will want the right of return and will fight for it. No room for any hands off chant there!!

    That’s the sort of problem that you couldn’t face a couple of years back in Baghdad when someone had to deal with the real death squads let loose in the course of a real revolutionary change unleashed in the swamp. We don’t even have to think about the huge real problems of India and Pakistan. (when they didn’t have a Stalin to help sort out the mess) What sometimes had to be done when groups were literally at each others throats might have to be done some more. Don’t go getting caught out on another phoney moral high ground.

    You’re so busy bagging the Georgian – renowned for his expertise on the national question – and painting communists black to even begin to understand the real problems. For Karls sakes give over with the anti Stalin shit. WW2 saw peoples moved around on one side and gassed on the other and your beloved capitalists got the whole show going just like they did in WW1. I remain glad that Stalin led the winning side, but right now I’d rather think about how to stop Putin from furthering his imperialist capitalist agenda.

    As to your 10:16 pm you seem to have missed this sentence so here it is again. ‘Just try to answer the bigger questions and stop the anti-commo slant just for now.’

    Wrong ethnicity and wrong politics during the war was a death sentence and that is why the anti-communist set up Auschwitz and came for communists 1st and Jews 2nd.

    Putin is very keen on protecting Russians, just like the anti-communist was keen on protecting Germans. The peaceful gathering in of the Russians has me mindful of the ‘peaceful’ gathering in of the Germans.

    100 years ago WW1 started and the other night I was watching a show about it on TV the Austrians were hanging Serb children so get some perspective.

    We could think about ethnic slaughtering going on in Syria, and how it was unleashed in Iraq and how death squads got to work – and still do so now – and how this stuff is complex when conflicting ethnicities MUST be separated. Don’t try to pretend that this stuff can be done without a broad brush.

    At some points in the past various peoples’ had to be dealt with strategically (Germans before during and after ww2 for example) and must be separated from time to time is a reality that Stalin was well aware of and so are you.

    We could talk about nations wanting liberation and how to apply Stalin’s very useful work Marxism and the National Question – or we could allow you to escape the current reality of you selling out the Tatar people of the Crimea peninsula NOW with dust thrown up from the past.

    I choose not to let you sell out another lot of peoples’ without being called on it!

  17. 17 steve owens

    Firstly may I direct attention to the Washington Post which has run a number of oppinion pieces about the current Crimean situation.
    Secondly the Grossman novel is worth a read written by someone who was at Stalingrad and about how people coped in those circumstances.
    Thirdly I dont see that the Ukraine situation will lead to a problem of Capitalism. Once Ukrainians experience what intergration into Western Capitalism means then I expect for a period there will be more unrest in Ukraine.
    Fourthly Your idea that measures taken against Putin will tip the world into a depression just seems nonsensicle. The measures suggested are targeting the oligarcy and Im sure that travel bans might inconvienience people who populate Londongrad but just no more than inconveinience.
    Serious trade sanctions would hurt Western Europe and Putin is more likely to invoke them rather than be subject to them.
    The real threat is war and its a strange world but is it really that strange?
    Fithly The wellbeing of the people of the Crimean Peninsular is of concern but so far no lives have been lost and the authorities are conducting some sort of democratic process. My point was that I am unconcerned who rules Crimea, Ukraine, Russia or stand alone independant. What matters is the human rights of the people not the specific administrative structure.
    Lastly I think that there are some superficial similarities between Crimea and the Sudatenland in that both had majorities that favoured either Hitler or Putin but the difference that is significant is that giving the Sudatenland to Hitler significantly changed the balance of military forces in Europe (the Sudatenland having armaments factories and other military assets) while the significant military asset of the Crimea is already in Russian hands.

  18. 18 steve owens

    Patrick I know you critisise me for dodging stuff but you traverse so many topics that its hard to keep track.
    Look at your last entry and keep in mind that we are talking about the situation on the Crimean peninsular,
    You start with a prediction about the coming worldwide depression and then my betrayal of the Tartars, Ukrainians and Russians ok close to topic then its straight to Hitler a bit of a stretch then to Mars OK tounge in cheek back to the Crimea then the world tour Austria, Sudatenland, Saddam gets a look in then back to Germany and off to Syria the US almost steered us back to topic but bang we are in Kuwait and Iraq Al Qaeda appear then Boko Haram, Mali and of course pirates . How can we discuss the Crimea without mentioning pirates. Then Alawites yes its Syria again back to Baghdad, India, Pakistan, death squads, the moral high ground Auschwitz and round it up with some words about WW1

  19. 19 admin

    Steve, GET THIS the big picture is the whole picture…If there is any discussion of staying on track it will be done by a moderator. You have been warned it really annoys me and I am not very tolerant at present.

  20. 20 steve owens

    As I said Washington Post has some excellent opinion pieces maybe you prefer the Rice or Krauthammer pieces
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-ukraine-carries-the-echoes-of-sudetenland/2014/03/10/36ba5b6c-a873-11e3-8599-ce7295b6851c_story.html

  21. 21 admin

    Cohen piece suffers from anti-Stalinist blinkers as well. Anyone who puts Stalin and Hitler in the same reference as similarly inclined and equivalent is not worth the resources they use to pedal their revisionist propaganda. Personally I thank our lucky stars that there were the great Leninist thinkers who were able to lead the long suffering Russians to ‘victory’ in WW2.

  22. 22 steve owens

    admin Cohen states “but he is not Hitler or Stalin” and in the literal sense he is correct. I think that virtually everyone from liberals rightwards takes it as written that Stalin and Hitler were both equally bad murderous dictators.
    Socialists generally don’t argue this and see Hitler as way worst.
    But virtually any Liberal and any conservative will hold the wrong position on this and if we are going to read their stuff well its just a given.
    Myself I see Hitler as way worse and I can prove that I hold this view because I uphold the idea of uniting with Stalin to defeat Hitler where as I would never unite with Hitler to defeat Stalin.
    The irony is thats exactly what Stalin accused his opponents of doing.

  23. 23 admin

    OK. It is easy to get the wrong impression from your one-liners and the link. So, please don’t bother putting up Liberal articles such as this.

  24. 24 steve owens

    Im glad that the Ukraine crisis is being sorted out by adults oops maybe not. Dmitri Kiselyov on Russian state TV reminded viewers that
    “Russia is the only country that can turn the United States into radioactive ashes.” Hmm a little early isnt it to start talking about the nuclear option.
    Oh well at least on the US side sanity rules oops John McCain describing Russia as “a gas station masquerading as a country” Is this really how diplomacy works?

  25. 25 Byork

    Thousands of Russians have protested in Moscow in solidarity with the Ukrainians and against their common oppressor, Putin. “The Kremlin’s far-fetched “antifascist” pathos proved even more absurd when Russian state media touted “international monitors,” who validated Sunday’s Soviet-style 97 percent result in Crimea’s official annexation “referendum.” The head of this “international monitoring mission” was Mateusz Piskorski, a Polish far-right sympathizer who once headed a neo-Nazi magazine, Odala, that glorified Adolf Hitler and the “Aryan race” and promoted Holocaust denial. The “monitoring mission” in Crimea also included Belgian far-right politicians Luc Michel and Frank Creyelman, and Hungarian ultranationalist Bela Kovacs—all of them, presumably, also principled fighters against “fascism” in Ukraine”. http://worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/vladimir-kara-murza/thousands-russians-protest-putin%E2%80%99s-aggression-ukraine?utm_source=World+Affairs+Newsletter&utm_campaign=88ed216628-March_20_2014_Blogs_Chang_Zantovsky_Kara-Murza&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f83b38c5c7-88ed216628-246992597

  26. 26 patrickm

    Apparently ‘What matters is the human rights of the people not the specific administrative structure.’

    Yesterday I saw a presumably Russian speaking man (and presumably Ukrainian citizen) lift up his balaclava and call on ‘comrade Putin’ to come to the assistance of those in the latest chunk of Ukraine who are all of a sudden ripping down the Ukrainian flag. Today, I saw another man keep his balaclava on and muff his lines admitting to being Russian and then correcting himself. Two days ago I saw (in a repeat of the Crimea episode) clearly well drilled ‘martians’ operating for all the world like Russian troops. They can’t be Russian troops because the Russian leadership has told the world that such troops are not in the Ukraine. They can’t be locals either because one of them would want to talk to the world and explain why they are taking charge just like our man calling on ‘comrade’ Putin.

    The whole world is watching a deadly pantomime where so far only a few people have been killed. It’s happening in one sense because there is no free press in Russia and so Putin can’t be publicly shamed out of office. The bourgeois democratic revolution has stalled in Russia and the world has to put up with his blatant gangsterism. After paying a pathetically small but ongoing price for his last acquisition Putin is responding and moving on, in his predictable and stupid manner and now his Russia will pay a far higher price and so on.

    Putin’s none too subtle push has come to a Ukraine shove back and so I expect Russian troops to now flood into Ukraine in hours. Who can be sure from the other side of the world, but that is what it looks like. It may be days away (things usually take longer that I think they ought to), but it won’t be weeks if the Ukrainian troops continue to move towards and within their eastern regions!

    What is going on in Ukraine right now is clearly not a revolution where the masses have taken to the streets. The masses have stayed home and that is where they will stay for now. There are elements on the streets and they have no legitimate demands that stem from their streets and lives. In contrast, the nationalist demands in Northern Ireland came from a clear, real civil rights struggle. No such struggle was evident and required in Ukraine streets. Moscow map makers are at work here! Putin’s thugs are at work, so naturally for the pseudoleft western governments standing up to Putin’s aggression is about to become the real problem. NATO expansion the real problem!

    The ‘martians’ if they did their job very well might have captured most of the territory with only a few casualties and those could of then as usual be ignored. ‘The real threat is war’ don’t ya know! But the ‘martians’ have not been allowed to dictate. They will be stood up to. That provides pseudoleft’s the opportunity to blame those standing up to the aggression for the war when the rest of the Russian forces cross the border and join in.

    What the masses take to be 21st century western leftism is as bankrupt now and as right-wing as was the revisionism ‘comrade’ Putin served in his youth. With phonies all over the western world presenting as left it’s no surprise that the masses of people have difficulty engaging in any sort of materialist analysis of world events. What would George Orwell make of this? Would he recommend unite and be prepared to fight? If ‘we’ don’t do that the powerful WILL pick people off one by one. Putin’s elite troops are now operating (as shown on TV for Karl’s sakes) as the powerful in another chunk of Ukraine. Realistically how are they to be resisted / fought?

    Putin’s diplomats are lying about all this right now but they are putting a ‘credible spin’ to what we nevertheless know is a blatant lie from our own eyes and totally justified inferences. What’s in it for us they say? It is not clear that these parts of the Ukraine would even vote to join Russia; they say; and that’s quite true. The pseudoleft know it as well. Sell out time has arrived yet again.

    Putin wanted to ensure that the new and revolutionary government of Ukraine was bluffed into not acting while he himself was acting from over the border! Some people watch all this and their silence is telling. They are Putin’s enablers. Putin does not want war. Why would he when he can just send in special forces to shove guns in people’s faces like little brothers who can get away with it, because his big brothers are all lined up on the fence just watching. ‘Turn away; come away; don’t get involved; you’ll just make it worse.’ That’s the way a hand full of petty gangsters can rule the neighborhood. Slowly the sell out develops. I get the feeling that soon it will be time for a history lesson.

  27. 27 steve owens

    At least its nice to know that Ukrainian politicians are a measured and considered group not prone to hysterical outbursts
    http://rt.com/news/tymoshenko-calls-destroy-russia-917/

  28. 28 steve owens

    OK so Tymoshenkos a nut job at least we can rely on the religious leaders to preach love and forgiveness or can we
    “The head of Ukraine’s Orthodox Church Patriarch Filaret accused Russia of “aggression” and “evil”.

    Russian Church Patriarch Kirill asked God to end the designs of those who wanted to rip apart Russia and Ukraine.”
    Not to worry I heard that the US is considering sending troops to Poland.
    I for one am never very happy to hear that anyone is sending troops to Poland it hasn’t turned out well in the past.

  29. 29 steve owens

    Patrick you are correct those Martians are Russians. Photo graphic evidence clearly shows a Russian soldier with a beard and a Martian with the same beard.
    And Putin thought he could get away with this.
    War cant be far away now.
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27104904

  30. 30 steve owens
  31. 31 patrickm

    BTW Steve are you now prepared to speak out against Putin’s aggression in Ukraine? What do you think of my thinking from 6 months ago? Those ‘martians’ are still Russian troops! Do you accept that this is just a war behind a screen of Hitlerite lying, and that this is no way to move into a modern world fit for proletarian politics?

    Neverland is selling out yet another people while knowing perfectly well that Putin is a lying gangster that all democratic political forces should shun. Check out the brain dead lying censors at Kasama! ‘Maoists’ that follow the trot line over WW2 are just about as weird as it gets in the political junk pile that remains of the post 9/11 ‘anti-war’ anti-imperialist movement.

  32. 32 Red Blob aka steve owens

    Patrick I think your characterisation of Putin as Hitleresk has more to do with hysterical over reaction than sober analysis. This situation gains nothing from military escalation but this is the path that both sides have chosen.

  33. 33 patrickm

    So Putin is a blatant liar and you want to divert the question of what is to be done about the blatant aggression by squawking about what type of liar he is. As GWB pointed out with some leaders one is never certain if they are telling you the truth but with Vlad you always know.

    Give your sober analysis because this war that is underway got started by someone and it is being run by someone.

    I say the Ukraine politicians did not start an aggressive war to redraw the borders PUTIN DID! What do you propose to say about this?

    Am I to assume that the aggression of the Iraqi tyrant and your attitude to that redrawing of borders is the model that you are proposing to follow yet again?

    Why the Libyan tyrant can’t even drive his tanks around Libya but Putin can drive his through the Ukraine is beyond me!

    I say that this attitude obviously encourages aggression.

  34. 34 Red Blob aka steve owens

    Well there was a revolution in Ukraine. I think that after any revolution borders are often redrawn. It was clear that a sizable population in the East were unhappy with the new regimen, they were pro Russian and Im sure Putin was giving them material support.
    In this situation it would have been advisable for the new Ukrainian government to open up negotiations with the rebels there was stuff to discuss and the new government could have offered greater autonomy, federalism or just aknowledgment that the rights of the rebels would get a fair hearing.
    The government decided to invoke the military option which could have worked if Putin had stood aside but I never expected Putin to stand aside and low and behold thousands of Russian troops have decided to spend their annual leave in Ukraine.
    I cant see the logic of the Ukrainian government if they win militarily they will rule over a hostile population in the East. If they loose Ukraine could be set afire by war with a much more powerful neighbour and if they think that they can drag the West in well they are in for an even bigger shock.

  35. 35 patrickm

    You are wrong on so many levels it’s difficult to know where to start but the key point is that you are once more handing the initiative over to the aggressor. You accept the narrative of the liar.

    1st this is not an internal breakaway being brutally suppressed by an ethnic majority from another region of an artificial country. This is not about Russian’s rebelling to secure their freedoms after suffering from ethnic repression. The kleptocrat that was overthrown who turned up in Russia protected by Putin is no longer even spoken about! There is no Russian Majority seeking Putin’s protection quite the reverse.

    You are returning to a style that sold out the Tartar people in the Crimea 6 months ago and now you want to sell out everyone that want’s to stay out of Putin’s revanchist gangster grasp. You don’t care that the numbers do not add up.

    The ‘rebels’ did not have the democratic numbers seeking Russian annexation for the local region! The rebels are the isolated thugs that are infiltrating from Russia under Putin’s plan and direction. Those that declared their independence were actually led by the Russian military thugs!

    You always find a way of leaving the aggressor smelling of roses. Instead of taking the initiative and discouraging aggression by demonstrating what a dumb idea it is by ensuring collective security as a policy against those who cross borders with the explicit purpose of annexing territory and securing greater Israel or greater Iraq or Greater Russia you make excuses.

    Now you are supporting Australian air power being deployed to Iraq to confront ISIL as it emerges out of the Obama led mess of Syria. Speak up. Stop fudging about the Ukraine government ruling over a hostile population. Demonstrate some way forward that can legitimately establish who has what support! You are excusing Russian aggression and you know it!

  36. 36 Red Blob aka steve owens

    All Im saying is that the rebels in the East could easily be over run by the Ukraine army but for the fact that Putin wont let that happen.
    Foaming against Putin will not stop him, the sanctions are a joke that wont stop him. If Ukraine ups the fighting they will come off second best. If they are expecting real help from the West then they are deluded. Their best option is to sit down and start discussing what they can salvage.
    This has not got anything to do with what I think is right but is just looking at the facts and suggesting what is likely to bring about a resolution. The other option is WW3 are you advocating WW3?

  37. 37 patrickm

    Your thinking demonstrates why the Vietnamese could never defeat the US superpower. Putin has bitten and now he wants to be left alone to chew. That is a very bad idea. Putin essentially thinks he ought to be in charge of all the territory of the former USSR or as much of it as he feels like grabing hold of and that Ukraine is not a real country at all. He has gambled the same way that the Iraqi tyrant did when he invaded Kuwait. He has nothing good to bring to the worlds people with this gangster conduct. If the world caves into gangsters then the world will always be run by them. Why do you use the NIC Red? It makes no sense whatever.

    Nations want liberation but this is not about any legitimate Russian liberation. Countries want independence and this country has been invaded. The people want revolution and Putin stands in the way.

    If the sanctions are a joke you ought to be advocating more sanctions! Putin is prepared to wage a very bloody war and cut out anything he wants. Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians know what that means for them if he can do to Ukraine what he has done to Georgia.

  38. 38 patrickm

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/07/russia-parades-detained-estonian-police-officer
    Northern issues 2 days after Obama gives his speech.
    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/03/obama-nato-support-ukraine-military-russia
    Obama is attempting to stand up to Putin but it’s not very convincing.

    So – your time to shine – Steve. What’s to be done?

    For those of us who wish to see humanity continue a descent from the trees there is an obvious affront to the civilised peoples of the world happening right in our face. It’s an affront to even functioning at the pathetic level of a bourgeois democracy. It’s been thrown in our face by a thug tyranny straight out of Moscow. It actually looks farcical as it unfolds and the western leaders look gob smacked at the way Putin is treating them in the manner that they treat their peoples! But at any rate there is no real confusion across the planet. Putin’s regime is understood to be an aggressive bully regime that stands as a refutation to the western worlds functioning bourgeois democracies.

    The world is confronting what only appears as ‘mad’ in these bad gangster regimes like North Korea and we also have the alternatives to them ruling from an also reactionary perspective in Al Qaeda and ISIL etc. There is a spectrum of opposition to the functioning of bourgeois democracy. So progressives fight on 2 fronts.

    The way all thugs carry on is intolerable. That is something not to be tolerated. So at a very minimum they must be shunned. In this current situation ought not democrats of any stripe advocate that trade be shut down? Ought not sanctions be ramped up as a policy priority? Just as Israel ought be shunned ought not Russia? Ought not Europe reorient and pay the price NOW as a sort of investment? The former Iron curtain from Stettin to Trieste has moved vast distances east BUT ought not there be an iron curtain re-established this time from the outside? None of these countries that has emerged from behind that former curtain want a bar of Putin’s Russia. Even a Europe that has fallen into a massive recession that is showing no sign of ending; even with all that, looking east brings on nothing but a shudder.

    Moldova then Georgia and now Ukraine have Russian aggressions all continuing and because of the history of that vicious Czarist imperialism – inherited by the revolutionaries that put modernity on the agenda for a short while and now via whatever twists and turns are long gone from the scene and so this bygone era is NOT relevant – the Russian people constitute essentially unloved minorities in all the neighbors and regions that ought to be neighbors but are not permitted their freedom from decisions out of Moscow. What is a left view on all this and how ought we sum up what our thinking has been over this over as little as 8 months.

    Putin is redrawing borders as I said he would.

  39. 39 patrickm

    5 months further down the track in the struggle against Putin gangsterism and ‘your time to shine’ Steve has so far been a bit dim.

    Are you proposing that because there are Russians in the regions that Putin has designs over he be allowed to carve out whatever borders seen fit?

    The country he is now the effective dictator of is not just any old reactionary country it is a true empire. But Russia is not like Britain was when it was the workshop of the world it’s an extractive giant at a time when a boom has just gone bust and there is a glut of raw materials thrown on the international market.

    I understand Russia and China have just signed up to the largest ever trade deal or some such business. What do you make of this? Russia has a weak industrial base as far as any products that any consumer might want goes, but China provides virtually all of that in a one stop shop.

    Ought Europe and the US be pushing harder and increasing sanctions across the board? Ought progressives be demanding that sanctions be broadened and deepened or is it OK to let things slide and stay silent while the ruling classes attend to these things? Sanctions will after all cut both ways, and Europe in particular will pay a big price; but won’t the civilised world pay in one way or another no matter what? The Russians would shove back and this will include surprises as they get creative.

    Putin heads up not just an imperialist power but a massive military power; and is in my view rightly hated by the peoples’ of the world but are there any political forces in the west that are in your view pushing a form of appeasement currently? Would it not be appeasement in its purest form to do nothing while Putin makes war?

    What of trade sanctions? If they are to be ramped up will this be considered aggressive acts that might provoke further conflict? Ought the Russian economy be destroyed in response to his naked aggression? Is that too warlike a term to use?

    Is there going to be any red line placed in front of Putin in your theoretical proposal of how to move forward? Ought the young people of Ukraine now be learning how to use weapons?

    Do you think that Marxists like Mao – those that took a stand against revisionism and old style imperialism as represented by the US imperialists in Vietnam (and so on and on) – have been vindicated by the unfolding of events AFTER Mao identified the USSR as the greater danger to the peoples’ of the world? That is as a danger to those trying to move forwards with their various revolutionary struggles, especially to get to even the miserable level of achievement known as western democracy?

    Is western style democracy now in your view genuinely -generally at least- seen to be in the interests of and thus really advocated (at least for now)by the countries that formerly preached democracy and practiced imperialism such as the US, Britain, France etc.?

    Even if many parts of the world are not operating in any bourgeois democratic manner I think that we working people in the west are now dealing with a system called global capitalism. Greece and Spain are but they have however been fascist dictatorships in my lifetime and the ruling elites of both could attempt to revert to such systems. Do you Steve expect – given the Greek political developments and the economic proposals that are now being implemented for there to be a complete disaster in these and other countries in reasonably short order? Do you expect the Greek and Spanish economies to now implode further as the current creditors are dudded? And do you think this will rebound on those that promised that they had some sort of ‘answer’ if only voters elected them to do the re-negotiations of the loans?

    To me it looks a lot like the masses are thrashing about voting people out rather than these other politicians in. Perhaps throwing governments out after one term could well be expected now as the economic failures are going to be faster than the ‘usual’ political cycles.

    In short by this time next year do you think that capitalism and the capitalists will be doing better than now or worse? What about the number of proletarians with employment? Do you think sharing out the work with mass underemployment spreading the pain to be the next best bet for the owning class to stave off chaos from the mass of non owners?

    Do you think that the numbers of people across the globe who are able to be absorbed from pre- capitalist societies into a proletarian relationship to the means of production to be able to return to positive numbers – or do you expect the blockage to continue and those numbers continue to ramp up as they have done for a number of years?

    The general betting is probably on a worldwide economic downturn but the world markets never move in straight lines; after the 1st GFC has shown no sign of being all fixed up do you expect another GFC crunch?

  40. 40 Steve Owens

    There is a methadone clinic inside the rebel territories. Methadone is provided by an International charity and the government in Kiev has refused to allow this medicine to be delivered. The Kiev government has refused Doctors Without Borders access to the rebel held areas. The Kiev government has cut off pension payments to people inside the areas and frozen bank accounts. The Kiev government has stopped paying doctors in the rebel areas. The doctors in the Methadone Clinic have worked for no wages for 6 months.
    The director of the clinic referring to his patients said “This is essentially a death sentence for them”
    300 patients on the Methadone program in the Donetsk area wrote President Poroshenko and the health minister an open letter asking for medicine to be allowed into the area in December.
    As to austerity I have always argued against it. The EU is a living example of its failure. Contributors here are locked into a 19th C view of economics and argued that nothing could help where as I argued that stimulus would and has worked. Remember the arguments over banks only having weeks to survive? Remember the argument over Steve Keens idea that the Australian housing market would collapse in 2008? Remember the argument over Iceland? Remember the argument over China collapsing? Austerity is a horrible idea cheers to all the people in Europe who are prepared to make a stand against it.
    End Austerity now, demand a fiscal union, nationalise the banks let medicine into Donetsk.

  41. 41 patrickm

    So after a year of Putin’s naked aggression your focus is on the Ukraine government! What a surprise. Some sectarians from the dumbest depths of Neverland blame NATO expansion so I suppose your washing your hands of those bad Ukrainians ought not surprise me.

    BTW austerity is comming to a capitalism near you.

    Communists have no requirement for a system that produces this outcome but you want to pretend that the Greeks are not going to implode the system that they have got with this idiocy.

    I have no problem with the requirement to deal with the property question but you’re as usual in LA LA land.

    No wonder you can’t even attempt to string two coherent sentences together as ANY kind of narrative.

  42. 42 Steve Owens

    If the Ukraine government wants to convince the people of Donetsk that they should rule in Donetsk then they should be trying to find ways of making life easier for non combatants rather than harder. Theres no military solution in the offing so I would suggest talks.
    We have gone over this stuff a hundred times, a hundred years ago it was realised that financial crisis could be resolved by making the reserve bank the lender of last resort and by disciplining banks by either nationalisation or strict banking regulations Glass Stiegle and all that.
    Economies falter because those with money wont invest.During WW2 the US government raised taxes to the sky and ordered Capitalists to invest. Its not rocket science but it does take political will.
    Lenin was happy to work with factory owners but if the owners wouldn’t play their part well you just promote them to the working class.

  43. 43 patrickm

    1. Putin launched a war once the people of Ukraine had taken a revolutionary turn away from his anti-democratic Russia.
    2. Putin sustains this war with naked violence.
    3. Putin is intent on redrawing borders and continues his steady aggression with only this end in mind whatever the nationalist smoke screen. Standard imperialist conduct!
    4. Putin is the enemy of the majority of the people in the regions that he is invading. His thug army is busy enslaving a people that will never have the option to be free from Putin. Anyone who resists him will end up like that poisoned Russian in London; dead!
    5. Steve is appeasing naked aggression. This is very familiar.
    6. ‘Talks’ is your code word for surrender to Putin’s agression. You have nothing else to say other than to turn on anyone that proposes to resist the invasion and the imperialist redrawing of borders to suit the aggressor.

    As to your ‘Economies falter because those with money wont invest.’ You haven’t got a clue. Every day it is the responsibility of those that direct the flow of real funds to place them profitably – the problem starts when they can’t find anywhere for the flow and speculation bubbles start.

    A few decades of this is not going to be any more of a solution to a real crisis breaking out.

  44. 44 patrickm

    Putin did not ‘convince the people of Donetsk that he should rule in Donetsk’ he simply moved mafia style infantry into the city and shoved guns in peoples faces disrupting their life with terror from the very start of his war making. Putin started out with a military solution that you say is not ‘in the offing’ and then you say in response to his war making ‘so I would suggest talks’.

    That is the sum total of your further contribution.

    Throw some dust and sell out the revolution. You forget that there even has been a revolution.

    You first remind people of how powerful the mafia style forces are but you don’t call them that and that people had better do what they say because they can’t be beaten by any fighting because they are actually the remnant power of a former superpower. Thats what your ‘talks’ is all about otherwise you would have something to actually say. You have really NOTHING to say because you never want to be held to account.

    That you have nothing upfront to say about Putin’s interference and blatant aggression but focus on the Ukrainian government speaks volumes about your dead end politics. Your method is to sell out an independence struggle and back the imperialist conquest (for the sake of peace to be sure).

    You want nothing to do with this country because ‘countries want independence’ for you is nothing but a Maoist trap that contradicts ‘nations want liberation’. ‘people of Donetsk’ is whatever the region required by Putin in his map making. Donetsk is spreading with Russian tanks and you know that.

    This is NOT a mass based Nationalist struggle where an oppressed nation is struggling for national liberation – that is a fraud that Putin is fooling stupid people with and you are collaborating with the fraud.

    This is rather a revolutionary struggle against a countries oppression by a big neighbor.

    Steve reminds everyone that the government of Ukraine have areas – where Putin’s invading forces have invaded and taken power in parts of their own country – under siege! Well what do you know!

    Your whole methadone is classic sect silliness.

  45. 45 Steve Owens

    It is wrong to think that I support Putin
    It is wrong to think that I am against the overthrow of the previous Ukrainian dictator
    Ukraine had a revolution and consequently 2 Eastern areas rebelled.
    IMO the Ukrainian government was foolish to move against the rebels militarily because Putin was always going to support them thereby making a military solution impossible.
    The solution was always going to be through negotiation.
    My point is and has been that the Ukrainian government needs to show the non combatant population that it has their interests at heart. Cutting off pensions to the sick, stopping the wage payments of doctors and stopping the supply of medicine is not the way forward for anyone who wants to convince people that the government in Kiev will rule in the interests of all Ukrainians.

    As to speculative bubbles, well technically Australia is experiencing a real estate bubble right now. Is the government powerless to stop this? Well no, it could move against the bubble with broad brush strokes like raising interest rates or raising Banks capital reserve ratios or raising Capital gains tax, it could do targeted stuff like increase land releases, build low cost public housing, stop negative gearing, stop first home buyers grants, increase land tax, increase stamp duty or capital controls on overseas investments in real estate. The government will no none of the above because the ruling ideology is neo liberalism but this will change as nothing remains the same forever.

  46. 46 patrickm

    “I bought my friend an Elephant for their room, they said thank you, I said don’t mention it.”

    ‘It is wrong to think that I support Putin’
    Not many in the west openly support Putin and not very many ever openly supported Saddam Hussein, but just as you were not prepared to stand up to the latter’s blatant aggression against the country of Kuwait (except with some waffle about sanctions that others who were your firm allies at the time complained of as a terrible burden that cost the lives of innocent Iraqi children etc.) you are not now prepared to stand firmly against Putin’s aggression.

    You want to waffle about negotiations without any proposals. You were for capitulation under Putin’s steady and building threat. A year goes past and what do you now advocate?

    The ABC of struggle – and the only way to fight gangsterism – is to build a democratic force that holds some territory and then expands into the contested territory. If the democrats don’t expand the gangsters will. That is what struggle is all about. That is what the revolutionary transformation of Ukraine is about.

    Push will come to shove. It did from the start. The democrats took and held the public square and snipers attacked them. No region in Ukraine had a mass nationalist uprising against the oppressive Ukrainian revolutionary forces. That is exactly the false impression that the gangsters – led by the world’s most notorious gangster have fostered. You are spreading that false view as if the revolution is the problem and Putin’s gangster regime is not.

    This time last year you focussed on the Crimea when I was focussed on how Putin was going to continue to make aggressive war to carve out more territory as part of his reactionary nationalism – where he would like to bring all the Russians ‘outside’ back under HIS loving care! He has been making war all around him as a way of life for his entire life. He is the purest definition of a fascist thug standing in the way of democratic revolution, yet you Steve make excuses for him and cover his behaviour by explaining how there is no military solution to his aggression and that people have to TALK to him.

    You accept that he is a complete liar that is engaged in aggressive conquest but you don’t lay the stress on this fact. He is a liar as was Saddam – yet – to prove you are a vacuous waste of space that has learnt nothing about standing up to aggression you then say precisely nothing.

    You leave ALL the initiative in Putin’s hands.

    When thinking about Ukraine the current focus of some people – that are thought of as of the left – is to talk about NATO expansion east! That is part of their narrative of how the world works. Do you Steve think as some right wingers do that ‘Russia’ has legitimate interests, in what military bloc of countries Ukraine joins? Do you think that NATO is a dangerous imperialist bloc and expansionary moves into former Soviet countries – the Baltic countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and further moves into countries like Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine – are menacing and warlike moves against Russian interests?

    The leaders of Germany and France just met Putin in Moscow and the U.S. Sec. of State and VP are all gathering to deal with Russian aggression. What must they seek in actions from this liar?

    Talking is worthless with a liar as you know. What must happen? What actions are to be required of him? He won’t for example arrest and hand over for trial the ‘previous’ Ukrainian dictator. Are you implying that there is a current dictator or that all these leaders are essentially to be thought of as the same?

    The revolution ought to ‘become’ the government ASAP that is what revolutionaries want. That is to say that the demands of the revolution have to be followed through to the point of creating a government!

    You say ‘It is wrong to think that I am against the overthrow of the previous Ukrainian dictator’ and that ‘Ukraine had a revolution and consequently 2 Eastern areas rebelled.’ This is merely dust in people’s eyes, because then out comes your real point.

    ‘IMO the Ukrainian government was foolish to move against the rebels militarily because Putin was always going to support them thereby making a military solution impossible.’

    The solution was always going to be through negotiation.
    My point is and has been that the Ukrainian government needs to show the non combatant population that it has their interests at heart. [and Putin needs to do nothing other than continue to make war as he sees fit because he has a more powerful army! You literally have nothing that is up front required of him in your narrative!] ‘Cutting off pensions to the sick, stopping the wage payments of doctors and stopping the supply of medicine is not the way forward for anyone who wants to convince people that the government in Kiev will rule in the interests of all Ukrainians.’

    Putin’s gangsters rule in nothing more than a mafia style rule full stop. That is the sum total of what is going on in any region of Ukraine where the aggression is underway or being spread to.

    As the aggression spreads you refuse to draw any line and want talks with a well known thug and liar.

    Here Steve, your politics are the politics of the useful idiot. The world is not going to become more democratic under your ‘western peace movement’ methods.

    A war is underway and you are not proposing building any unity against the reactionary aggressor that is the Putin regime AND all the ‘rebels’ it arms and otherwise bankrolls.

    Ought NATO openly arm the Ukrainian government that is more democratic than what it has replaced?

    Ought all manner of sanctions be directed at the Putin regime and those that are currently in place escalated whatever this cost to western interests?

  47. 47 General Armchair

    Message to General Pieinsky from General Armchair. This conflict has gone on for almost a year. The Germans refuse arms and troops arguing that negotiations and required. The French have offered negotiating skills but no arms and no troops. The Americans god love them have supplied night vision googles.
    I suggest that you bring your imaginary divisions from the north while I work my imaginary divisions in a pincer move from the south.
    Boy wont Putin shit his pants when he realises that hes been outmanovered by 2 imaginary divisions.

  48. 48 patrickm

    Better get that attention span looked at.

    How many years after the Syrian war started did the first U.S. bombs start falling? How many years until the Jordanians got involved? Putin has been supplying Assad all along and that is not a good investment IMV.

    I first thought the Syrian war would be a very big war when casualties were about half of what the casualties are said to be in Ukraine right now.

    There have been 100’s of thousands of dead added while Obama dithered. There are millions of refugees and ethnic cleansing on a grand scale with barrel bombs clearing the trouble streets in a sort of neighborhood botch scheme. All this may well be just getting going in Ukraine.

    Whatever is getting going it WILL stamp its impact on the relations of the world’s countries for decades to come. Push keeps meeting shove.

    The key to the German and French stands that you are not supporting is that Putin is required to do things not say things. You as usual have nothing to contribute when directly asked.

  49. 49 Steve Owens

    One of us is delusional about the French German peace proposals. You think it is requiring Putin to do stuff and I think that they are redrawing borders to reflect the advantageous position that the rebels now occupy.
    “German government sources said the key problem for resuming peace talks was that the current front line no longer tallies with what was agreed at talks in Minsk, Belarus, last year. One idea was that a new attempt at a ceasefire should take in the current front line, which reflects rebel gains.

    For talks to begin anew, Kiev would have to accept that the separatists now control several hundred square kilometers more than agreed in Minsk — without Kiev having to give up its claim to these areas as part of the Ukrainian state.”
    Kiev is being asked to change their position not Moscow.

  50. 50 patrickm

    I understand what you think is a good idea; you are not complaining that the ‘Kiev’ authorities signed up to Minsk last year, it’s just that you now want them to sign up to surrender the territory acquired by the Russian army from the next level of attacks by these patiently advancing armed forces. You want them to hand over actual authority for this latest conquered territory to ‘rebels’ and then later on the next territory in its turn – you know that time will come because you know that Putin has a plan of acquisition obviously in play and the map does not yet make sense – and until you are quite sure that Putin has attacked and grabbed hold of ALL that HE requires your procedure is to blame the victim country and its government for not understanding that they should not only hand over the territory but also send to the territory all that the ‘rebels’ require in that territory for the well being of the peoples’ they have acquired with this territory.

    If at any stage the Ukrainians do resist the aggression when it happens – and it has and will again you will point out that there is no military solution and naturally if – or rather when that later aggression comes (after Putin constructs whatever excuse for his action) as Putin requires more territory (that his obvious plan requires to make sense) you will require ‘Kiev’ to agree to whatever ‘Moscow’ takes at that stage as well.

    You want Ukrainians to do this because Putin is very powerful and no one wants war with such a powerful and demonstrably aggressive fascist.

    You must think that the Germans and French require that as well, because that is what is happening in your view. Putin is redrawing the map of Europe with artillery and you know this is true but NOTHING is required of HIM in anything you propose.

    You only require that I not think that you support Putin.

    I think this style of peace-movement capitulationism may be the most pathetic of all the styles. You ought to have left it behind in neverland. As a cruise missile something or other you would be well advised to review ‘Long March’ thinking that communists are well known for. The weak can grow strong fighting, just as the strong can exhaust themselves and become weak.

    You might want to try to convince people that you have a method in mind to fight gangsterism but first you would have to point to the enemy and retreat with us progressives rather than stand on the side with the rest of the old gang still pretending that their sects are not dead but rather reborn as the ‘Syriza’ lunacy.

    So far you still have zero narrative. But remember you are supporting the U.S. bombing in Syria and IRAQ. So take a BEX and have a good lie down for now. Then have a try to think about fighting a revolution rather than just doing whatever Putin wants.

  51. 51 patrickm

    this from the BBC

    ‘Putin’s aggression’

    In his last tweet, Mr Nemtsov sent out an appeal for Russia’s divided opposition to unite at an anti-war march he was planning for Sunday.

    “If you support stopping Russia’s war with Ukraine, if you support stopping Putin’s aggression, come to the Spring March in Maryino on 1 March,” he wrote.

    Speaking earlier this month to Russia’s Sobesednik news website, he had spoken of his fears for his own life.

    “I’m afraid Putin will kill me,” he said in the article (in Russian) on 10 February.

    “I believe that he was the one who unleashed the war in the Ukraine,” he added. “I couldn’t dislike him more.”

    I don’t think the owning classes across the world will deal effectively with Russian fascism and that means Putin gangsterism.

    The world first took a lot of notice of the Ukraine about a year ago when 60 plus people were killed by the orders of the pro-Putin Kleptocracy. Since then Putin has ordered a war that has now killed 100X that and apparently ‘at least 1.25 million have fled their homes, according to the UN.’

    I don’t think people are in anyway shocked that he has had another political opponent killed and fully believe that he is ultimately going to continue with what he has been doing until it stops being to his advantage.

    The fact that Putin is a blatant gangster with the usual gross nationalist pretensions and there are plenty of such people around the globe can’t excuse any western progressive from formulating a general policy of what the west ought to be doing in response to his conduct. People ought not be turning a blind eye to such conduct and ought to want to shun Putin led Russia.

    The destruction in the Ukraine is exactly what I expected Putin to have both the appetite and the stomach for and there is no end in sight to this methodical aggression.

    The Russian millitary have been let loose in a war where Putin ultimately sets ALL the rules.

    Has NATO really overdrawn its current red line by accepting the Baltic countries as members and do people think that ‘volunteer war’ won’t ultimately break out in these countries. Gangster war only esscalates as it has in Ukraine because people stand up to the gangsters. Gangsters will not be stopped by any borders when there are good opportunities on both sides of pointless lines that they don’t believe ought be on the map anyway.

    How would NATO deal with the next stage of Russian aggressian after Putin’s thugs get shoved against? Nobody can see where this will meander.

  52. 52 patrickm

    The ground is now freezing up in Ukraine so the conflict looks like it might well be about to be unfrozen, ‘How would NATO deal with the next stage of Russian aggression after Putin’s thugs get shoved against? Nobody can see where this will meander.’

    I don’t think Putin is bluffing and clearly, the West is! Hope I’m wrong. But the Belarus rot is turning to a ‘favorable’ crisis/excuse and blackmail is being resisted so push is turning to shove and that is not a good sign! No one would be surprised if this conflict sprang to life!

    Very dangerous times for democrats if Russia and China are going to behave recklessly while Biden is floundering.

    Nice to see the Georgians and Turks getting on so well and the talk is about ending the Russian occupation https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/diplomacy/georgia-attaches-great-importance-to-ties-with-turkey
    https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/georgia-thanks-turkey-for-backing-territorial-integrity/2174202

  53. 53 patrickm

    This is the best they can do! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7ziiGwZl5s Democracy Summit!

  54. 54 patrickm

    After the Biden / Putin phone call and the Lavrov/ Putin visit to India for weapons sales we have the Liverpool conference of G’7′ that ups the warnings of what will be the consequences of any further attacks by Russia; and China is getting a run as well as Iran.

    I can’t remember a more dangerous tone to international relations ever. The Cuban missile crisis must have had a similar tone but it hasn’t got anything like this background and buildup and worldwide spread of push v shove issues.

    The western world has demonstrated with a lack of strategic unity after the attacks of 9/11, that it has no stomach for the protracted nature of revolutionary war.

    The liberal ‘managerial class’ and their woke poison is the direct enemy of any defence against the spreading fascism.

    In Australia, it’s important that the more openly conservative or less woke of the tweedle parties be returned at what will probably be the May election. National defence and resistance to the green cult that would otherwise harm the economic well being of the masses require that the Morrison Government be re-elected. Gladys running would have helped that so her not doing so is a pity. It is a big ask but the alternative is Albanese and the ALP!

    The openly rightwing has long been further left than the self-proclaimed lefts of the Greens or the ALP. So neither politics as business-as-usual, is not a stand that must just go ever on. Woke carryon requires a fightback!

  55. 55 steve owens

    I guess if you think that current tensions out point the Cuban Missile crisis then you haven’t heard of Vasily Arkipov

    Vasili Aleksandrovich Arkhipov 30 January 1926 – 19 August 1998) was a Soviet Navy officer credited with preventing a Soviet nuclear strike (and, potentially, all-out nuclear war) during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Such an attack likely would have caused a major global thermonuclear response.

    As flotilla chief of staff and second-in-command of the diesel powered submarine B-59, Arkhipov refused to authorize the captain’s use of nuclear torpedoes against the United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard.

    In 2002, Thomas Blanton, who was then director of the US National Security Archive, said that Arkhipov “saved the world”.

    Just to clarify 11 US ships were involved in depth charging the Soviet submarine to force it to the surface.
    The senior officers held a vote about using a nuclear torpedo the vote was 2-1.
    Wake me when we get to that level of tension.

  56. 56 patrickm

    Russian troops are already regularly killing Ukrainian soldiers on the front line and I think they intend to start killing a lot more in the next round as soon as they get their pretext sorted. This almost frozen front IS being unfrozen by Putin and that can only result in a massive intervention if the Russians intend to force any backward movement from the Ukrainians and there would be no point in upping the rate of killing Ukrainians unless they intend to force a move from the Ukrainians. So 200,000 Russian troops going to work to force some territorial and other consessions out of the Ukrainians is at least ‘Very dangerous times for democrats if Russia and China are going to behave recklessly while Biden is floundering.’

    Biden is floundering and Russia and China are rather obviously behaving like typical fascist bullies.

    Democrats have to deal with the new world as Putin’s war-making shape it! There are people who think of themselves as leftists that will blame NATO when the next round of Russian aggression starts. I wonder what the half theorists will make of this next round. I will bet that any remnant Trots and the greenies will disgrace themselves as usual.

  57. 57 steve owens

    I think that to understand the situation we need to consider the Russian point of view particularly those who occupy the Kremlin. Russia fears invasion from the west. This dates back at least to Napoleon’s failed drive to Moscow. People in the Kremlin responded by developing a system of collective security but this fell on its face when German troops in WW1 occupied most of the western Russian empire. The leaders of the 1930’s sought new collective security arrangement but again this failed and they settled for a deal with the Nazis. After WW2 the Soviet leadership settled for a system of buffer states giving security extending beyond Berlin.
    Since the fall of the Soviet Union they have witnessed each of the buffer states being militarily incorporated into NATO an anti Russian military alliance.
    And now that the buffer states have been incorporated there are moves to incorporate ex Soviet republics like Ukraine.
    Putin may be the worse person on the planet but any Russian leader would have to respond to an anti Russian alliance that creeps closer and closer to the heartland.
    Putin may be a thug but he is not an idiot, he is faced with a western alliance that is encroaching on what he thinks is rightfully his. I expect him to take advantage of every opportunity to lie about what his intentions are but to confront NATO with the very substandard Russian military no that would make him a fool and he is no fool.
    Currently NATO stations troops in 3 ex Soviet republics as well as all the old buffer states. Countries such as Serbia a traditional Russian ally have been bombed into submission by NATO.
    Do you think that Putin doesnt notice this?
    Politics always has a personal side and I think that we should consider Putin’s history. His grandmother was killed in WW2 his father was badly wounded in WW2 his mother survived the siege of Leningrad although his older brother didnt. He talks of a story his father told of entering Leningrad only to see the piles of corpses of starvation victims. This sort of stuff must affect a persons outlook and may turn you into a bad person but a person willing to launch war to reclaim Ukraine well only if he thought that he could get away with it but I cant see how he could come to that conclusion. He wants to take risks but they are calculated. Annexing Crimea and eastern Ukraine were risks but bolstered by the fact that annexation was popular in both these places.
    Can he miscalculate well history is full of people who miscalculated.

  58. 58 steve owens

    Theres a saying that Im fond of, its amateurs’ talk about strategy professionals talk logistics.
    Heres a look at the logistic nightmare Russia would face if it launched an invasion of the Baltic states in an effort to present the west with a fait accompli
    Logistics are the key stumbling block in the fait accompli timeline. The railroad is wide gauge and usable, but the timeline is too short for captured railheads to be put back into operation. A dozen NATO air-launched cruise missiles fired over Germany can destroy key rail bridges at Narva, Pskov, and Velikie Lugi, shutting down rail traffic into the Baltics for days until those bridges are repaired. Logistic planners in Russian Western Command have to plan for a scenario in which Baltic states choose to fight a battle in their capital. Historically, urban combat consumes massive amounts of ammunition and takes months to conclude. During the two most prominent examples, the battles of Grozny in the Chechen wars and the Battle of Mosul in 2016, defenders tied down four to 10 times their numbers for up to four months. At Grozny, Russians were firing up to 4,000 shells a day — that’s 50 trucks a day.

    Even in a Baltic scenario, Russian planners have to consider the risk that Poland, which can muster four divisions, will launch an immediate counter-attack, trying to catch the Russian army off-balance. The Russian army would have large forces tied to sieges of Tallinn and Riga while fending off a Polish counter-attack from the south. The ammunition consumption would be massive. During the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, some Russian forces expended an entire basic load of ammunition in 12 hours. Assuming the same rates, the Russians would have to replace substantial amounts of ammunition every 12 to 24 hours.

  59. 59 patrickm

    More to go on with while democrats fight a war https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4wRdoWpw0w

  60. 60 Stephen Owens

    You do realise that I already posted this vid on March 6 on the War thread.
    A couple of interesting developments or at least one non development Putin has been reported as shopping around for Syrian mercenaries which is way earlier than I thought that he would need to plus no troops yet from Belarus.
    Russian trucks are reported to be having difficulties with their cheap Chinese tires. What can I say you got to buy quality.
    Reports that Russia has lost 2 generals ant that the Chechian assasination team was intercepted due to intel leaked by the FSB. Washington putting it out that they knew the exact invasion timetable because theres a rat in the FSB just to give Putin something to mull over (paranoid little prick)

  61. 61 patrickm

    My attempt at humour was too subtle. Please disregard!

    Look I have been very critical of western political and military figures for many years. Now many people agree with me. Merkel was a disaster! Obama was a disaster. Bernie Sanders would have been the most insane of all possible US presidents.

    The choice is now to ‘drill baby drill’ and pipe that oil! This is a very good show and a thoughtful contribution from a cautious german woman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzQLQk4

  62. 62 Stephen Owens

    Did I mention the unexpected absence of troops from Belarus this may be why

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbH-mAjoq3U

  63. 63 patrickm

    14 months on and the strong have grown weaker! Now what is to be done by the AFU Armed Forces of Ukraine.? We pro Ukrainian westerners await the coming offensive with baited breath and I do so with confidence. I had better chance my luck and write about this very soon as any predictions won’t look so convincing after the event! It could be underway right now, or could really be 2 weeks away,but best guess is not quite yet, and the encirclement of Bakhmut is now top priority for destroying Russian morale and creating surrender mood conditions, right along the entire front as soon as the AFU start turning up in any numbers. Regrettably, this is going to be spectacularly brutal, but with 369,000 Russians (minus today’s 500 plus KIA captured and or wounded) the next 3 months is going to be very busy indeed!

    It is of course all such a crying shame but There Is No Alternative. (TINA)

    I feel sure that even Stephen Owens would think that Ben Hodges, who no longer has command of a single soldier is well worth listening to. He is as I was and am, convinced, that there is ONLY a military solution. When I re-read this thread there is much in what General Pie-in-sky was on about! A pity that General Armchair could not learn from his numerous defeats!

  64. 64 patrickm

    Nine years ago I started this thread and I’m glad I did because this stage of the Ukraine war was -in my view stated at the time- always coming and here in this thread my basic views are recorded just as they are for the others who were involved at this site!

    Here is an example of the thinking that even as late as last September still persisted with Steve Owens;
    ‘Just a note on 2014. When Russia stole Crimea, Ukraine could do nothing about it. Its military had been gutted. Sometimes you just have to accept an unpalatable reality. As to the Donbas region, militias sprang up and grabbed what they could, Ukraine decided to defeat the rebels, but Putin sent enough troops and military hardware to stabilize the line of conflict. Ukraine and Russia did come to a negotiated settlement, but the deal was thwarted by both sides being unable to control hostile actions by combatants at the front.
    My argument over these years has been that if Ukraine as it does claims all the territory that it held prior to 2014 then it should treat people in those areas as if they are citizens of Ukraine, but this would mean not cutting off water supplies, not cutting off medical supplies, continuing to pay pensions and wages of state employees and probably most important not allowing rouge militias to lob artillery shells into rebel positions especially after you have signed a peace accord.’

    This paragraph demonstrates that the whole process of fighting a war for a countries independence let alone furthering the peoples struggle for their democratic rights is not being thought about.

    This is the style of thinking of the ‘peace protester’ and the outright pseudoleft.

    Fighting leftists, have to have some theory of what this war is all about and after this coming offencive culminates, perhaps all that will remain will be the territories that Putin seized and attempted to conquer back in 2014. Perhaps the western COW will then start to split as we have to apply our theories directly to the concrete issue that will remain. I hope not. It may be the case that Crimea is liberated in this round and we are left with the northern sector still to deal with with western supplies able to pour in for the last push…

    Whatever unfolds the left must stand with the Ukrainian people who want to fully restore their country and then join NATO! Before they do gain that membership they must get NATO protection on the next day after the last Russian has cross back over the border that they violated in 2014.

    So some larger or smaller portions that still remain occupied when this offensive culminates either in Crimea and or the Donbass region will exist in the context of a shattering Russian army and yet will be the issue for some waivering elements who will and do see this war as a territorial dispute. It is no such war. The war must continue! Russia must be defeated. Nuclear threats must be ignored and use must result in NATO upping the anti and speeding up the Russian defeat.

  65. 65 patrickm

    Just to remind people.

    Crimea was handed over to Ukraine to administer by Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev less than a year after he got the top job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_of_Crimea_in_the_Soviet_Union
    On 19 February 1954, the oblast was transferred from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR jurisdiction,[3] on the basis of “the integral character of the economy, the territorial proximity and the close economic and cultural ties between the Crimea Province and the Ukrainian SSR”[4] and to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Ukraine’s union with Russia. (The Pereiaslav Agreement as it was known in the Soviet Union).[5][6]
    Sevastopol was a closed city due to its importance as the port of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and was attached to the Crimean Oblast only in 1978.[citation needed]
    Khrushchev was born in 1894 in a village in western Russia. He was employed as a metal worker during his youth, and he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil War. Under the sponsorship of Lazar Kaganovich, he worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He supported Joseph Stalin’s purges and approved thousands of arrests. In 1938, Stalin sent him to govern the Ukrainian SSR, and he continued the purges there. During what was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Khrushchev was present at the defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin’s close advisers.

    Now as humanity confronts the end of the middle stage of this big war we can review how people have been dragged along by reality.

    7 and 1/2 years have flown by and Assad is still alive and well and still backed by Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, some Iraqi (Shia militias), his own Syrian supporters and factions and with closer ties than ever to Egypt -HIRISE-

    We all eagerly await the new Ukrainian offensives that will (even before they culminate) demonstrate that the Russian army has no future on Ukraine territory.

    This war, in my view, sets humanity’s main course for the remaining 3/4s of the 21st century. But after these long months of winter and a wet muddy spring this is a separate stage when all manner of new difficulties confront the players. Those of us that are self-proclaimed pro-western, radical leftists/democrats must have our own take for the independence of a country and for democracy for its peoples yet with national rights for any minorities still on the agenda.

    My pre-2022 views are on record here essentially recorded as the issues arose and especially Vlad Putin but also the other players like Merkel and Obama and VP Biden etc as they took their stands.

    for example
    patrickm February 28, 2014 at 9:40 am

    ‘I think Putin will respond to what ‘has gone wrong’ in 2014 from what he might see as a failure to act. He will take the reverse course and act ‘now’ after some sort of provocation or incident to ensure the ‘safety’ of all Russians and preserve all Russian interests. The result will be columns of tanks and they are already being prepared for this eventuality.

    Putin is not happy and in Assad manner is likely to blunder his way into a long drawn-out disaster by using military force to undo the 1950’s Khrushchev border.

    As far as I can make out the numbers will continue to go against Putin, either way, this goes. All the ‘other’ peoples’ of the old empire will continue to be hostile to revanchist Putin and his supporters. More liberal Russians will continue to be revolted by the direction that Putin drags their people. I see no direction for him to turn to gain more mass support unless others make bad errors. The current revolutionary leadership are doing well in reassuring the Russian section of the population and warning Putin to keep his troops in their barracks etc…

    Putin has been around a long time and the Russian masses would be pretty sure by now he isn’t concerned with their well being. Assad hasn’t done him any good over the last couple of years. Gays and the more broad minded conservatives especially the internet gen youth could hardly be happy with him. He has been gathering a few enemies.’
    END

    Well Putin’s gained a lot more enemies over the last year! That’s not good for him as an individual, yet IMV he is far from done’ he is only doomed. Sure all manner of things could suddenly go wrong for him but he is now in a fight to the death that he will lose. We all do die might be a response. But his control of Russia must end to end this war!

    A great many people used to say there was no military solution to this conflict. Now lots are saying there is only a military solution.

    Take Arthur Dent. Back in 2015 I quoted him
    patrickm
    October 3, 2015 at 2:20 pm Edit

    1. Arthur has said
    ’In our universe there is no such Western failure. No Western government is even allowing the Ukrainian government to buy weapons to defend itself against the Russian bullying because they understand with total clarity that they have no power to confront Russian bullying behaviour in that part of the world. The facts Switzer recites about that from lessons about geopolitics drummed into him more than half a century ago are totally obvious to every policy maker and ignored only by the usual shouters.’

    Well I think this is a credible fellow talking about the issue
    http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/08/west-must-consider-arming-ukraine-ex-nato-head.html What is more I am sure that his position would now have hardened rather than softened in the face of the Syrian intervention to kill the fighters of the FSA. This credible talk explains that this will probably be an issue for decades to come.

    2. Then there is this type of report
    https://www.google.com/search?q=Ukraine+arms+supply&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 but anyway hothead talk or not I would think that Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and Czech would all be arming Ukraine to one extent or another. I also guess that with this latest demonstration of Putin assistance to the Syrian masses that ALL European governments might be reconsidering the help that they might like to provide to every country that has a Putin problem just as the US is reconsidering and changing from the Obama policies of the past.

    3. Is McCain another shouter? I don’t think so. The Syrian policy that he advocates of the US ‘flying where the hell they want and the Russians had better get out of the way’ is not going to be adopted by Obama! http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/01/politics/john-mccain-cia-russia-airstrikes/
    END
    and because he had not yet taken bat and ball and gone off to play at a quality site run by Barry York no less he replied

    Arthur
    October 4, 2015 at 4:14 am Edit

    My point was that the West does know it is not a power in the Ukraine while Switzer claims they do not and then further illustrates his ignorance by claiming that Russia is a Mediterranean power when it equally obviously is not.

    That is an entirely separate question from whether arms SHOULD be supplied to the world’s nineth largest arms exporter although I also think advocacy of that is the kind of dangerous posturing of people who don’t think about whether they can actually help the Ukraine militarily beat Russia before encouraging it to fight.

    We supported the Vietnamese taking on the much more powerful Americans because we correctly believed they would win, not as the sort of “heroic gesture” the Polish cavalry made. Khruschev sending missiles to Cuba when Russia simply has no capability in that region was purest adventurism, which no Russian leader is likely to emulate after Afghanistan.
    END

    That ‘smart’ comment looks a bit sick now! No wonder the half theorists are so silent!

  66. 66 patrickm

    I think this development is very interesting and important either way. That is if there is further delay while smallish encirclement type events are unleashed all along the 1,000 kl front or when the big offensive is either underway or culminates. We must remember that the Ukrainians made the big advances last ‘fighting season’ without all the new kit and training. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYd2Ktr0kPA

    Are they waiting for GLSDB (Ground launched small diameter bomb) that will turn up in large numbers in June? Well quite frankly no. But when they do turn up it will shatter what stands in the way in Crimea and then in the Donbas.

    What remains of the current 368,000 Russians will be leaving their guns and running for the border in cars. Moral https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfYWZYshv5Q

    The Belorus fighters in Ukraine may very well decide to liberate their own people right away!

    The next 100 days are IMV going to be spectacular. Nations do want liberation, countries do want independence and the people do want revolution. Go against these trends at your peril.

    But things usually do take much longer than I think, so I also must try to cast aside any illusions I have and prepare for struggle.

    Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG8ykVrlfZQ this is mostly good sense!

    A further -disconnected thought- is that when 1 in 3 of the 369,000 Russian occupiers (123,000) have been in one way or another dealt with over these next 100 days as I fully expect they will -so that would mean a little more than a doubling of the current probable 500 enemy attrition rate sustained across the entire war- then the supply situation would be completely untenable for the rest and large scale surrenders and a withdrawal would begin irrespective of the orders from any high command.

    With a bit of luck 100’s of thousands of lives may yet be spared, and this war ended in 2023! It’s not beyond the possible and we can as always hope for the best as we prepare for the worst.

  67. 67 patrickm

    Just how silly Arthur was when he reminded us (see above) that at the time I was calling for the arming of Ukraine, it was the 9th largest arms exporter in the world no less. Well today I read that the number of different ‘weapons’ that have gone to Ukraine now sits at 600 different pieces of kit! So calling for the supply of any and all of these things back in 2014-15 was something far short of what we ought to have been discussing. We ought to have been developing our thinking by the process of respectful posting our thoughts on all the training and western methodology issues as well! It was completely obvious that any and every country has kit from others that it would like and that even includes the US. But I just shook my head and didn’t bother to even respond to such an idiotic comment. Now I am sorry I didn’t! People will just have to trust me -I was thinking about it- but the caravan moved on and the idiocy over Putin turning up with his contribution in Syria was in full swing at the time and for the next few months.

    After that just years of denying reality.

    Alas not 1 of the supposed ‘collective site’ bloggers was prepared to put their thoughts on the record as they developed and or encouraged others to do so even after all of them realized that Arthur had completely blundered and was not facing up to the facts.

    Development of this site was already frozen and then an old style cancel culture ‘card’ was played. It did not really work as all these types of blogs were either going to evolve or were dying by then or around that time anyway.

    Barry York’s method and his site 21stC pointed the way into don’t face up to anything land! But that was a ‘quality site’ where Arthur could post well hardly anything really.

    A very sad end for people who spent many years exposing pseudo-left idiocy but there you go facts are stubborn things!

  68. 68 patrickm

    We Have Important News for Our Defense Soon: Zelenskyy’s Address.
    Boils down to your all doing very well now hold on just a little longer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAX7gbsaZ-A and I will have some good news.

  69. 69 patrickm

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziCluJ3KPNg
    Taras Kuzio – How Experts on Russia and Military Analysts got Analysis of the Ukraine War so Wrong.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5SatMKV23Q
    ‘Russian morale will crack and backbone will crumble’ | Richard Dannatt mostly correct, but western support will now not falter even if the war drags on through 2024 and into 25! When we consider the situation in Belarus where the revolution is stalled but undoubtedly has 75-80%plus type levels of support and also the problems in ‘Transnistria’ and the 2 Russian enclaves in Georgia as well as the resolution to the Syrian catastrophe and also Libya and other parts of Africa where Russia has been brutally meddling not to even mention the seething animosity in Chechnya then in one way or another ‘this’ war will go on now far into the future!

    Properly understood Ukraine is but a part of the world wide democratic revolution (where in Mao’s words nations want their liberation, countries want their independence and the peoples want revolution). So it is all connected and thus is nothing if not protracted.

  70. 70 patrickm

    No wonder the confusion over Erdogan is so wall to wall
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7Z-bQSd7dQ

    I for one hope he wins in the second round. We will wait and see.

    He is now perhaps the second most important political leader on our tiny speck of a planet. But he has vast experience over Zelensky!

  71. 71 patrickm

    Ben Hodges making very good sense https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Wwt1GsYHU

  72. 72 patrickm

    2 months further along and NATO backed Ukraine is systematically breaking the gangster regime. The Russian collapse is coming.

  73. 73 patrickm

    Steve Owens said:
    ‘I have always argued [only since 2022 before that according to you there was no military solution] in favor of victory to Ukraine and [post 2022] support any measure that would bring this forward.

    However, I don’t think that NATO or specifically the imperialist power that runs NATO (the USA) [what France, Britain, Germany etc are no longer imperialist powers?] shares my victory at all costs [??] mentality because well they have their own interests that may or may not coincide with those of the Ukrainian people. [But irrespective of what they ‘may’ think what is it that you think they ought to think in this case at this time for what you consider their own interests?]

    This is a very different struggle from Kuwait where the Kuwaiti royal family lead their people’s struggle from the penthouse of the Savoy in London. [where you were prepared to say that the Kuwaiti people’s enemy that invaded and annexed the land and enslaved them ought to be subjected to sanctions till they gave in and went home or more realistically the western world got bored and moved on while the Baathists carried on with a different set of trading partners like Nth Korea, China, Russia and even dare we say eventually even Iran or South Africa and Brazil etc]

    The USA will do what the Pentagon thinks is in the USA’s best interest [no they won’t! Quite the reverse. The Pentagon will do what their political masters decide!]. Just as one day they [GHWB to be precise, the political masters POTUS and undisputed Commander in Chief -following the realist policies that communists said were actually bad for the owning class, as a class; policies that we said ought to be dumped in favor of actually spreading the bourgeois democratic revolution, which they later did when they swept away the Iraqi Baathists and sent middle eastern stability into history’s dustbin, till Obama tried to revers the ‘dumb’ policies but really couldn’t] were urging Iraqis to overthrow Saddam and the next day they [the military functionaries were doing what they were told to do and thus] were opening their lines so that the Iraqi troops could get at the insurgents. [Interestingly and in refutation a similar outcome was predicted in 2003 by the likes of John Pilger etc who even named the specific general that would be installed but he wasn’t and the Iraqi masses chose the South African electoral system that they have operated under ever since; as THEY sell their oil to fund THEIR 60/20/20 multinational and congregational state. What do you know; a revolutionary transformation from fascist tyranny to 1st step bourgeois democracy with all the characteristics of the region at this actual time rather than somewhere over the rainbow!]

    Hodges [a senior youngish retired US general] is committed to total victory. Here’s why I think Ukraine won’t [be able to push those Russian troops all the way out and thus] get it [the independence of Ukraine, yet I bet you haven’t even thought about Belarus, Georgia and Moldova and lets face it who could have guessed how easily the minnows of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania got their total independence and NATO membership! How quickly Finland AND Sweden signed up and worked through the Kurdish war ending issues with the democratic government of Turkey, looks like they can walk and chew gum!]

    The US won’t want to push Putin out of Crimea. [Yet wouldn’t that demonstrate more than a little resolve to say China?] The US is committed to having Vlad run Russia. The last thing they want is to see Russia with 10s of thousands of nukes collapse and fall into rival fiefdoms. Which is way more probable if Putin loses Crimea. [This would result from the loss of all territory gained in Ukraine since 2014? I don’t think so. I think they can withdraw from empire in places like Georgia and Moldova etc just in a bit more disarray like Britain and the US have had to and still run their gangster infighting corrupt tyrannies that eventuate until the masses take the stage again and make the next logical attempts to resolve the big 3 issues of our lifetime]

    Crimea is mainly pro Russia [that is pure assertion and does not address how artificial majorities are created nor how this place can be actually sustained. It MUST be seen in the full context of where it gets its water and power and natural trade etc from.] I am assuming that a lot of Ukrainians don’t want it. To them this meat grinder of a war is tolerable to push the Russians out of Kherson [and Zaporizhzia] but do they really want to sacrifice sons and daughters for [a then isolated and logistically difficult to sustain] Crimea. Ukrainians only have to be older 2 years older than you or me to remember when Crimea was Russia.

    Sevastopol is [we recently heard that Kieve was the mother of Russia yet not so important now] majorly important to Russia it’s home to the fleet, and it’s a hero city from WW2. As I said 9 years ago Putin will not let Ukraine walk Sevastopol into NATO.

    If the Russian army doesn’t collapse how does Ukraine take Crimea? [It is being slowly isolated and it will in the course of this protracted struggle eventually fall to the AFU in the same manner as Minsk will fall to the Belarus people and the Russians get driven out. It is not yet on the agenda but the people of Belarus wan’t their democracy and want the Russians out!! Their time is coming and Putin’s Russian empire time is going!].

    We can see how politics trumps the military by explaining why Russian gas still transits Ukraine. [Have the good sense to doubt that you have any understanding of what the gas issues are all about and leave it at that for the next couple of years at any rate.] If you understand that you will understand why this war won’t end in total victory. I may be wrong I didn’t think that Putin was stupid enough to invade but then sometimes stupidity trumps everything.’

    Here is the big problem you have. Putin is stupid only (in your view) because he went too far. But you say that now that they have been driven out of the overextension and are dug in within the more manageable target region, they will now hold on, at least till everybody decides it’s no longer worth the lives trying to rid Ukraine of Russian imperialist forces. Day by day territory is returning to the advancing AFU and the Russian military’s ‘logistic’ and hence strategic condition deteriorates in all respects and yet this is the conclusion you reach essentially because some deep Russian national pride is involved in retaining Crimea and they have more than 3 times the population to draw from! You seem to think that the Russian steamroller failed but the Russian Maginot line will hold. Yet you seem to have lost track of the fact that the Rusians are being out ranged by more accurate artillery. I don’t think you have thought deeply about what massive quantities of cluster munitions and GLSDB’s, plus the Grey Eagle Drones and Switchblades and the arrival of F16’s to add to all the rest of the western kit and training will mean for the next phase of this artillery centric war. You seem to think that as the Russians have been driven back and withdrawn thus their lines have somehow shortened but that is NOT the case as any close study of the detailed maps reveal. Crimea is becoming more difficult to sustain, not less.

    If you want the war to carry on over the liberation of Kherson and Zaporizhzia Oblasts firstly say so clearly and then I would suggest withhold your speculative thoughts until those objectives are achieved and you can reasonably reassess the situation at that point. I think that just as the situation today looks vastly different from 365 days back in what is now only 513 days since the resumption of this war shattered any number of illusions (inline with my original they will be doing well with 5 years of warfare estimate) another 365 may come and go until we reach that point. Then a new US president will be looming and god knows what else will be surprising us. Your thinking may have solid grounds at that point even if I very much doubt it now.

  74. 74 Steve

    You love your Maginot Line but the reality was that the Maginot Line was never breached. The French were defeated because the French high command were incompetent. Maurice Gamelin (the man who would not use a telephone) refused to believe that that the Germans were moving through the Ardennes despite reconnaissance reports to that effect. He did draw up reasonable counter offensive plans but these were put on hold until his replacement Maxime Weygand could review and approve them.
    Defense is easier than attack. You just have to revisit the Seelow Heights battle to see how Gotthard Heinrici outpointed Gregory Zhukov and his massive artillery barrage. Basically Heinrici worked out where Zhukov would hit and he moved his troops elsewhere.

  75. 75 patrickm

    I take it some people talk about defenses while ‘professionals talk logistics’ and about how logistics plus time win wars NO?

    So now that the potential logistics lines from the NATO plus other very powerful countries is firmer than before and the supply train to the Russian forces is apparently quite a deal weaker, we are to refocus on why that supply train will now fail for lack of political will. Yet the last month of events would suggest Russian military and political will is very much less stable than the will of the NATO plus backed AFU.

    And the Russian defensive lines are nowhere near the standard of the Maginot line so I suppose we could compare them to the hastily constructed WW1 German lines that Monash had to deal with. In the end they will be breached and very often left to wither under artillery fire as they are cut off and run out of supplies.

    Many of these lines have to be defeated ‘If you want the war to carry on over the liberation of Kherson and Zaporizhzia Oblasts or these Oblasts will simply not be recovered either. So you ought to say your OK with that outcome or you are not OK with it.

    Clearly state your position on these 2 huge areas otherwise this is just pointless gameplaying on your part.

  76. 76 patrickm

    It would seem to vary from the following quote from much earlier in this very thread!

    The other day a friend said ;
    “Wow I did not predict the Ukraine as the next state to fall…
    Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Turkey even, but not the Ukraine. (it’s a bit like Lithuania revolting)

    If the ‘democratic revolution’ happens in Ukraine, then Russia is next? How does that reconcile with the filthy rich Oligarchy?”

  77. 77 patrickm

    Like Twiggy and Gina in Oz?? How do their interests line up with the national interests? Good question even if I do say so.

  78. 78 Steve

    “So you ought to say your OK with that outcome or you are not OK with it.”
    I’m OK with rolling the Russian army back to the Feb 22 boundaries. Then I think the way forward is negotiation. That negotiation should be between representatives of Luhansk. Donetsk and Crimea and the government of Ukraine.
    In 2014 after Maidan the people who favoured a weak Federation were at risk. In Odessa they were massacred and the authorities were very lenient towards the perpetrators. In the East openly fascist militias like the Azov Battalion were moving against local authorities who formed their own militias. There clearly is a case for both sides and should be resolved via negotiations.

  79. 79 Stephen

    I should point out that there is a difference between what I want and what I think will happen.

  80. 80 patrickm

    This formula can’t possibly work because it implies the absence of the very Russian forces that are in typical fascist manner imposing the conquest and annexation in the first instance. They’re not going anywhere without first being defeated and driven out and when that happens any collaborators are going to run away with them! That’s why a ‘golden bridge’ lane will be left up, but we can be sure the rail bridge is coming down and the sooner the better.

    The formula might sound like some kind of balanced and reasonable starting point for a ‘negotiated’ outcome but it’s actually almost the purest form of ‘supporter’ capitulationism.

    Pseudoleftists could attempt to sell out the ukrainians with this line and yet still present as not just an open supporter of Russian aggression but as a defender of democracy no less but it’s not going to fool anyone but themselves. It is the typical ‘bob each way’ line that was run from the start -way back in 2014 when the future aggression was spelt out- and people ignored the spelling lesson and ALL it implied! It’s right here in this very thread. Putin attacked again just as it was predicted because the borders at that point made no sense! He was left with the option of when to restart his needless war of choice; all that is plainly objected to now is that Putin didn’t just tidy up and grab the sensible hinterland that Crimea and the Donbas rely on. He went too far! Well boo hoo for tyranny!

    This capitulationist line accepts the starting point that these actual enemies of Ukrainian independence and democracy have a legitimate national struggle that under the cover of they can then divide and rule the joint with. It’s an unworkable formula that will only suit those pseudoleftists that think that NATO expansion is some kind of problem and that Putin really was protecting oppressed ‘rebels’. It is utter Tosh.

    The starting point is the foolish belief that the Russian aggressors can’t be driven out of their ‘mighty’ defenses because the Ukrainian masses will not want to pay the blood price but it’s sufficient for outside supporters to leave that matter to the Ukraiians. Genuine supporters of the Ukrainian war effort will not make any distinction between what the Putin led fascists grabbed first or second because justifications from the well known lying invaders are just that. Our job as outside western supporters is to advocate for keeping up the logistics and consequently ensure that Russia loses.

    The Ukrainian fighters and their democratic political support base will continue to grow stronger with the struggle and Putin style tyranny will continue to implode back through the layers of imperialist aggression that it’s always been enmeshed in provided the masses of Ukranians continue to make revolution. Western democrats ought rather than to weaken their resolve to be thinking of how to realistically deal with the various African and Syrian outposts of this 21st C monstrosity and certainly not continue with any of the blatantly failed appeasement policies like those of the Merkel-Obama period.

    This is an empire imploding and it’s not going to be a cheap cost to any country that wants it’s independence nor any nation that fights for its liberation and as for any people that want greater democracy well ‘cast aside illusions and prepare for struggle’ is undoubtedly the motto!

    But while any ‘soon time to negotiate’ surrender monkeys are still half arsed supporting the Ukrainian war of resistance they ought to draw some comfort from the raw data. That raw data is one thing UA-MOD-Total combat losses of the enemy.xlsx – Microsoft Excel Online (live.com) but the revealed trend line graphs are sensationally clear! Consider the Special Equipment graph UA-MOD-Total combat losses of the enemy.xlsx – Microsoft Excel Online (live.com) the implications are massive! So too are the Anti aircraft systems graph!

    Best of all the destruction of the Russian artillery and all this before the cluster munitions begin to wreck their welcome havoc.

    Consider who will be objecting to the use of cluster munitions and how they won’t see the positive side but only the negative. That’s the way they roll. Just like Fossil fuels they only ever talk about a supposed negative side!

    No matter what the problems that beset the GLSDB’s these problems will be solved and they too will be deployed and all this stuff is the genuine force multiplying factors in any mechanized army.

    At some point in this artillery centric war the Russians will go as blind as Odysseus made Polyphemus -a cyclops who had eaten 6 of his men- before ‘Nobody Atall blinded me’ Polyphemus yelled. The Cyclopes of Greek Mythology – (Greek Mythology Explained) – Bing video Why ought we believe these trend lines? Well the boss of Wagner seemed to think there was more than just a minor problem and I think we can believe him!

  81. 81 patrickm

    Good effort Professor but it is all just a case of just too little too late given the supply problems! Logistics are not resolved by getting the children ready to die for the motherland in a couple of years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jrbGOPZqfE

    The best and the brightest will still try to bolt for the border!

  82. 82 Steve Owens

    Just go back to 2014. We both support the Maidan and the removal of the President however I am not unaware that the Right sector played a role in this, not a dominant role but a role none the less. The resulting government contained 6 ministers from the fascist Svoboda party including the position of Deputy Prime Minister. Svoboda had a history of recruiting skinheads. The Right Sector were the people who committed the Odessa massacre which the government aided and abetted. Then you have the rise of fascist paramilitaries like the Azov Brigade who were clearly going to repeat the Odessa massacre in Donbas. In principle I have nothing against people organising self defense units when faced with a fascist threat. That was the situation in 2014. Its not the situation now.
    Ukraine does have a significant fascist problem signified by the many statues and streets erected and named after Stepan Bandera.
    Ukraine has dealt with this well since 2014 the Azov Brigade was brought under military discipline and Svoboda went from having 6 ministers to being unable to breach the electoral barrier to get any representatives elected to the Rada.
    Military victory over Russia is essential and I would be in favour of NATO providing the necessary air cover but when this is over the government will need to talk to the rebels as they are Ukrainian. Some political settlement will be needed.
    The Kiev government has been very ham fisted in this regard ie the cutting off of water to Crimea and the non payment of public servants like doctors in the rebel areas. If you are the national government you have to act like you have the best interest of the people at heart even if these people happen to be outside your administrative control.

  83. 83 Steve Owens

    Correction, when the post Maidan government was formed there were 3 Svboda ministers and 3 Oblast governors.
    “On 27 February 2014 the Yatsenyuk government was formed, including three Svoboda ministers: Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Sych, Agrarian Policy and Food Minister Ihor Shvaika and Environment and Natural Resources Minister Andriy Mokhnyk.[83][84] Party members were appointed governors of Poltava (Viktor Buhaychuk on 2 March 2014), Ternopil (Oleh Syrotyuk on 2 March) and Rivne Oblasts”

  84. 84 Steve Owens

    48 people died in the Odessa clashes most died in the trade union building as it burnt with a chanting crowd urging them to burn.
    The reaction of the Right Block and a representative of Svoboda
    “Right Sector’s website called the incidents in Odesa “a bright page in our national history,” and Svoboda MP Iryna Farion posted on Facebook “Bravo, Odesa. Pearl of Ukrainian Spirit. The birthplace of great nationalists Ivan and Yurii Lypa. Let the devils burn in hell. Football fans are the best rebels. Bravo!”

  85. 85 patrickm

    As I said near ten years ago on 4 Feb 2014 in the article that starts this thread;

    ‘Whatever the past role of Ukrainian nationalism way back at the time Stalin was coping with his problems, the current struggle is a no-brainer because the Ukrainian people are against Putin’s Russia. I guess that the largest block of Ukrainian people want their government to resign and they want new elections to form a new government to lead their country away from Russia and towards greater connections with western Europe. If they got that outcome it won’t solve all their problems anymore than the problems are solved in Ireland, Spain or Greece and I suppose that is obvious to them as they can see for themselves how bad things are in those Euro countries; but at least they will be that much further away from the system that Putin is running!’

    That thinking played out as I expected, and so too Putin has run true to the form that made him and those that were meddling for him, the main danger then as they still are now! These people constantly lie and are without any credibility. So currently I wonder what it was that I wrote in this thread from 2014 that you Steve think was misfocused on back then? I have read this thread through and I’m very pleased that I wrote these thoughts down for the record.

    I also wonder what you think YOU were wrongly focussed on? Because people were already going to war at that stage against these enemies of all progress! The advanced elements were starting to fight this deadly enemy that is now directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of casualties, yet you are still unwilling to look at that one incident that you return to and genuinely try to see it in true context and scale i.e., as part of the continuing fightback against the oppressors, and obvious opening salvos of this revolutionary life and death struggle. A struggle against the continuation of these imperialist thugs rule even in Odessa.

    For pity’s sake, they were still throwing their weight around in Odessa and thankfully they came off second best in the ‘clashes’ that broke out. Now every day brings reports of 10-15 times these numbers just on the Russian side, and supporters of Ukraine are delighted with the progress of the fighting. We just want more. It seems; ‘All men must die, but death can vary in its significance. The ancient Chinese writer Szuma Chien said, “Though death befalls all men alike, it may be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather.” To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather.’

    Anyway (506) The Real Meaning of Girkin’s Arrest – YouTube I enjoy listening to Vexler’s take, he is at least trying to be open and honest! If people like Girkin are in the dock for slandering Putin the rot has well and truly set in.

    The following from Denys Davydov shows a 150mm Cluster munitions air burst pattern demonstrating the munitions limitations in some trench warfare conditions. (506) Update from Ukraine | Ukrainian army Hits Hard! Clusters id use | Drone Video Confirmation – YouTube but they can surely keep peoples head down in other nesting style trench systems that are covering the extensive minefields; and these cluster muniions help to clear a path through these minefields. They also incidentally provide a good supply of the right size and type bombs for drones to drop directly into those trench lines! Plus the US has huge numbers of them as they also have huge numbers of dumb bombs that will – with the addition of a rocket booster and a bolt on set of wings- become reborn as the much awaited GLSDB’s! How good is that for next year when the F16’s will also be showing up in an environment where so much more of the Russian air defenses and specialist equipment has been attrited and so much more Russian logistical capacity has ‘gone with the wind’.

    It must be noted that the Russians have not even been able to repel the bridgehead crossing of the Dinpro and this is going to develop like a boil on their backside that they can’t quite get at. The Russians must draw up some artillery and even airpower to contest the foothold only to then be vulnerable to the more accurate and out-ranging western kit!

    (506) Konstantin Samoilov – Mutiny, Insurgency, Arrests and Economic Pressures – Is Russia Imploding? – YouTube the best of the best have left and continue to do so and the profound Russian troubles have only just started! So in my view the future is bright for the Ukrainian revolutionary forces – and that is what they remain; even as they hold state power! A democratically motivated though linguistically and culturally divided people that have struggled to gain democratic control of their own country over nearly a decade and that after having had 2 more earlier decades of dramatic lessons for the working masses. I suspect that the Ukrainian masses have all along known they were living in a corrupt Russian gangster class infested country. Either way they have now taken up the revolutionary challenge and are willing to fight on till the imperialist aggressors are driven right out.

    Steve Owens says in a typical post above…

    ‘Just go back to 2014. [Note that is why you Steve have been directed to this thread!]

    We both support the Maidan [yet you nominated the collected footage and doco stye produced film ‘Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom ’ as winter white wash or something]

    And the removal of the President [Yet there is no indication that there is any real agreement on what is to be done or any indication that we are anything like on the same side NONE! My concern is almost solely with Putin led Russian aggression and it turns out my focus was correct and yours was misdirected as the following demonstrates]

    however I am not unaware that the Right sector played a role in this, not a dominant role but a role none the less [they are now not important according to you -and me- and it was clear they were not then when that was what drew your efforts but rather Putin and the aggression is the be all end all to this war ].

    The resulting government contained 6 ministers from the fascist Svoboda party including the position of Deputy Prime Minister. Svoboda had a history of recruiting skinheads. [Now that you have discovered it was only half the ‘problem’ you thought it was that discovery will noy change a thing I’ll bet. The following sentence demonstrates just where you are coming from. You have bought the line that they -Putin and the Russian crew that invaded are selling! Their local agents and very few actual supporters that you call ‘rebels’ are quite irrelevant! They are no more than mere collaborators in a foreign annexation. With good old Girkin these few shot down the Dutch airliner and the same type of forces barrel bombed Syrian hospitals all these years etc ]

    The Right Sector were the people who committed the Odessa massacre which the government aided and abetted. [Nothing different in this totally out of balance presentation of what is your focus and what ought to be the important focus. For instance, was a massacre committed or did deaths occur in a very typical open conflict of a civil war and did this happen without any national government ‘aid or abetting’ even if local authorities similar to our local governments did little to intervene when the fighting got going?]

    Then you have the rise of fascist paramilitaries like the Azov Brigade who were clearly going to repeat the Odessa massacre in Donbas [how the hell do you know they were going to fightback in the manner that you describe as ‘clearly going to repeat the Odessa massacre in Donbas .’ no wonder you could not work out what the fuck was going on with Pell! You clearly wanted nothing to do with the Ukrainians! That is why you were not building a sensible narrative in cooperative spirit but instead took the oppositional stance as demonstrated in this very thread! There is no hint that you would like to see Ukraine assisted by all the western powers and especially the US imperialists and no hint that you were expecting more war from the aggressors! Instead you say]

    In principle I have nothing against people organising self defense units when faced with a fascist threat [and with a different focus you ant the issue to be the punishing of the civil war fighters who threaten/ fought these so called Rebels. But they are just part of Putin’s cobbled together gangster collection! They are not struggling for ANY democracy be it for their nationality or the peoples more generally, they were then and are now just after gangster control and spread division to fool the gullible! ]

    That was the situation in 2014. Its not the situation now. [So your whole explanation of why you were right in 2014 and also right now is just a steaming pile of crap!]

    Ukraine does have a significant fascist problem signified by the many statues and streets erected and named after Stepan Bandera. [Better to say it’s almost impossible for stupid western pseudoleftists to even begin to grasp how things turn into their opposite. Those of us living the other side of the world with zero cultural connection and no language etc could well be more generous of spirit as I was in this thread.]

    [You Steve just say] Ukraine has dealt with this well since 2014 the Azov Brigade was brought under military discipline and Svoboda went from having 6 ministers to being unable to breach the electoral barrier to get any representatives elected to the Rada. [But all of this is just throat clearing because all along the focus ought not have been for one moment taken off the Russian aggression.]

    [NOW YOU SAY] Military victory over Russia is essential and I would be in favor of NATO providing the necessary air cover [and that is more than is on offer]

    but when this is over the government will need to talk to the rebels as they are Ukrainian. Some political settlement will be needed. [Says you! Perhaps the surviving collaborators will have all run away with the withdrawing murderously brutal Russian imperialist army! Perhaps those that remain will face trials rather than a negotiating table and those convicted spend x,y and z time in jail for their various crimes. Perhaps the rest will accept that what was on offer from before the Russians formally invaded -and that was acceptance of the culturally different provided they were loyal to Ukraine! Something like a Jewish Russian speaking President perhaps! Total acceptance in theory but naturally messy in practice. But where is the focus??]

    Steve says ‘The Kiev government has been very ham fisted in this regard ie the cutting off of water to Crimea and the non payment of public servants like doctors in the rebel areas. If you are the national government you have to act like you have the best interest of the people at heart even if these people happen to be outside your administrative control. [But the Kiev governments first job is to win the war! They don’t do that by paying the enemy. What you lay stress on is not the right of the Ukrainian people to fight against a imperialist invasion and annexation with all the well known Putinesque lies that come with it; such as ‘they are all Nazis’ and ‘they are all oppressing the local Russian speakers’ and you say instead ‘In principle I have nothing against people organising self defense units when faced with a fascist threat.’ but you are not Referring to the Ukrainians!!]

    That was the situation in 2014. It’s not the situation now. [So your focus was correct then I suppose you STILL think because you say] ‘Ukraine does have a significant fascist problem signified by the many statues and streets erected and named after Stepan Bandera.’ and yet ‘Ukraine has dealt with this well since 2014 the Azov Brigade was brought under military discipline and Svoboda went from having 6 ministers to being unable to breach the electoral barrier to get any representatives elected to the Rada.’ [So it turns out you didn’t have to focus that way at all!]

    You accept that ‘Military victory over Russia is essential’ but still stressed something else ‘and I would be in favor of NATO providing the necessary air cover’ but this is not on offer; rather it has been like drawing teeth as system after system has been extracted often led by the imperialist British.

    Then curiously you throw in ‘but when this is over the government will need to talk to the rebels as they are Ukrainian. Some political settlement will be needed.’ But perhaps there will not be any rebels that are not just going to jail as collaborators or fleeing with the withdrawing Russian invaders. Then there would be no one to settle with! Perhaps all that will happen is just the enforcement of what is declared already in that all rights are assured in Ukraine for the Russian speakers but in the same way that South Vietnam was a mere puppet state so too are these so called ‘rebel’ territories. They will disappear altogether!

    After all that ought to have been learnt out comes the old crap line about sending resources to enemy held territories ‘The Kiev government has been very ham fisted in this regard ie the cutting off of water to Crimea and the non payment of public servants like doctors in the rebel areas. If you are the national government you have to act like you have the best interest of the people at heart even if these people happen to be outside your administrative control.’ Not the slightest focus on defeating the enemy!

    If you read this very thread you will see where the focus ought to have been all along! We were not in agreement in 2014 and you were not on any kind of leftist path then or now! (505) Update from Ukraine | Girkin (Strelkov) Jailed | Ruzzian Clans eat each other | Milirary map Review – YouTube

    I will continue to try to think through how to sensibly connect this decade of ‘diary’ entry notes together so that I contribute to the development of leftist theory. People that started Strange Times have said for decades we were on about developing theory fit for our times. What is more I think we have done some small effort towards this end in every one of those last four decades! But now I would like a small result from this latest decade. No good just talking about developing theory ‘one day’ when the thinking that pulled people in different directions as life happened is a reflection of the real theory they work with in their actual practice.

  86. 86 Stephen

    My question to you. Is Svoboda a fascist party?
    Yes or no.

  87. 87 patrickm

    Under the conditions that apply in Ukraine I don’t think it is! I think it went through a sufficient transformation to give it a different status altogether! What is more I think that from the other side of the world and with such a low knowledge base I think it beyond me to go very much further than give a benefit of the doubt to them and instead advocate long term unity with all such forces as Mao did with Chiang Kai-shek and thus remain focused on what I know to be the clear enemy and that is the imperialist Russian invaders.

    By now you ought to understand that there is only a military solution and this war is a protracted struggle as was the war in Vietnam against the French and then the Japanese and then the French and then the US and their Australian allies.

    There is scope for long term unity with these rightist forces -as the very struggle changes them (and everybody else)- and that policy is what the Jewish Russian speaker Zelenskyy seems to be about. They can and will unite and fight for the independence and security of Ukraine and so they will have to defeat the Russians and expel them and deal with collaborators. There isn’t anything else they can do that makes real world sense to me.

  88. 88 steve Owens

    Benefit of the doubt? Have a read about their youth organisation that should help you with your doubts.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S14_(Ukrainian_group)

  89. 89 patrickm

    I think you would want to avoid wikipedia as a distraction and focus on the Russian army! They are the ones that have invaded and that is where the focus ought to be, no?

  90. 90 Steve Owens

    The discussion is about the situation in 2014.
    Svoboda are clearly a fascist party but you want to give them the benefit of the doubt an advisor to Svoboda’s leader started a political institute named the Joseph Gobbles Political Institute. I honestly don’t know how it could be any clearer. Several of their MP’s met with the head of the national broadcaster and beat him up in an effort to get him to sign a resignation letter. We know this because they uploaded the beating to you tube. Benefit of the doubt?
    Sometimes they did their work inside parliament
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDE646LhA8s
    Luckily the Ukrainian people woke up and stopped electing them.

  91. 91 Steve Owens

    The Joseph Gobbles Political Research Center
    benefit of the doubt LOL
    https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/136008/commentary_56.pdf

  92. 92 patrickm

    That is the best you can do? Looks like an alp run union brawl! Like the Russians paid to fill up wikipedia it’s just rot! That avoids where the focus ought to be. It just proves that you would rather spread Russian twaddle than fight any kind of war to drive those bastards out!

    Here is a firm proposal. Sort out what they are after the war against the Russians has been concluded and all of Ukraine freed from the invaders and the collaborators dealt with. How is that for a good deal!

    This from the bloke who couldn’t work out that Putin was a fascist! For fuck sake this is loopy!

  93. 93 patrickm

    The short answer is that Steve Owens has a big problem!

  94. 94 patrickm

    Putin is an imperialist so people who are -like we communists- also proclaimed democrats and are thus pro Ukrainian in this war -that actually started in 2014 NOT 2022- can in the following paragraph replace the word Communist and get back to the fight for freedom for the Ukrainians from imperialism.

    Imperialism as policy and practice is the enemy policy and practice. But what of ex-trots who are now anti communists? Some might think they are still internationalists; so can they be reliable fighters or are they vacillators? I see no reason why they can not stay focused on the goal of full liberation and the defeat of the imperialists. Imperialism as a policy of the capitalists must be fully discarded if any genuine democracy is to prevail right across the planet and we humans only have the one! Obviously elements that are collaborators must be dealt with.

    ‘Can a Communist, who is an internationalist, at the same time be a patriot? We hold that he not only can be but also must be. The specific content of patriotism is determined by historical conditions. There is the “patriotism” of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler, and there is our patriotism. Communists must resolutely oppose the “patriotism” of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler. The Communists of Japan and Germany are defeatists with regard to the wars being waged by their countries. To bring about the defeat of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler by every possible means is in the interests of the Japanese and the German people, and the more complete the defeat the better…. For the wars launched by the Japanese aggressors and Hitler are harming the people at home as well as the people of the world. China’s case, however, is different, because she is the victim of aggression. Chinese Communists must therefore combine patriotism with internationalism. We are at once internationalists and patriots, and our slogan is, “Fight to defend the motherland against the aggressors.” For us defeatism is a crime and to strive for victory in the War of Resistance is an inescapable duty. For only by fighting in defense of the motherland can we defeat the aggressors and achieve national liberation. And only by achieving national liberation will it be possible for the proletariat and other working people to achieve their own emancipation. The victory of China and the defeat of the invading imperialists will help the people of other countries. Thus in wars of national liberation patriotism is applied internationalism.

    “The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War” (October 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 196.

  95. 95 Steve Owens

    Well that’s just silly. Svoboda are clearly a fascist party. It reminds me of that George Orwell quote about Communists. He said something to the affect that one day they are the most vocal anti fascists and the next day they question whether the Gestapo really exists.
    Collaborators? You do realise that over half the voting population voted for Yanukovych and that Party of the Regions was the biggest party in the Rada. Are half the population collaborators?
    I support the war effort it’s the one thing I agree with Dutton about. Australia should be giving more aid. When the war broke out, I was in favour of expelling Russian ambassador still am.
    As to Putin how many times have I patiently explained to you that I catagorise Putin as a murderous kleptocrat. He is a very bad man but he is not a fascist because he doesn’t have a fascist ideology and he didn’t use a street army to propel himself to power.

  96. 96 patrickm

    As was explained already your foolish formula of what is a fascist reforms the second generation that come to power organically so that makes no sense at all; it’s the most daft and useless definition you could come up with.

    Not only that but you are now effectively proclaiming that the war only started in 2022. But you know that the imperialist armies crossed the border in 2014 when you were told by me no less that this bite would NOT be the end of it but only the start because the borders did not make any (imperialist sense) at that point. So the attackers would resume their aggression when they saw fit! Did you express a view in favor of expelling the Russian ambassador then? Not on this site. All you did was shrug your shoulders and -on memory- not address any of my arguments. You can review your efforts and correct me if you think fit but I recall nothing of substance. You could prove me wrong right now by simply pointing to anything that you thinks refutes me in anything you have posted above; but that ain’t going to happen.

    So here we find ourselves with a war effort to support that you say
    ‘I support the war effort it’s the one thing I agree with Dutton about.’ and yet I have some nagging doubts about what you (being so slippery and all) really mean by this declaration.

    For us to make progress on any agreed stance now it’s sufficient for you to agree that the murderous kleptocratic Putin led Russians are running an expansionist imperialist war and that the Ukrainians are not only fighting for their present but also for their future. They want no Russian territory just control of their own territories and internationally recognized borders plus the right to unite with whatever block of countries they choose to and to be a normal country with a normal defense profile. So if the first goals are achieved the war can end and then they can join Europe and ASAP NATO!

    It must be apparent to you that other issues are then negotiable such as return of Children and any adults that want to escape from the kleptocrat, reparations, sea of Azov access guarantees, flightpath rights and the like for black sea shipping etc but clearly a looming Russian threat became a reality from out of the regions that were seized in 2014-15 so they are NOT negotiable!

  97. 97 patrickm

    The culturally and Russian speaking part of the population like Zelenskyy are either wanting to be part of Ukraine (as I believe the majority will want to) or those that don’t will have to go and live in the loving arms of the kleptocracy! There is no realistic other alternative now!

    ‘We are at once internationalists and patriots, and our slogan is, “Fight to defend the motherland against the aggressors.” For us defeatism is a crime and to strive for victory in the War of Resistance is an inescapable duty. For only by fighting in defense of the motherland can we defeat the aggressors and achieve national liberation. And only by achieving national liberation will it be possible for the proletariat and other working people to achieve their own emancipation. The victory of China and the defeat of the invading imperialists will help the people of other countries. Thus in wars of national liberation patriotism is applied internationalism.’

    The democratic revolution points in one direction! Only Russian imperialism stands in the way and only they can realistically end this war before they are defeated and the war ended for them!

  98. 98 patrickm

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiOnCChtOtM
    How Does the War in Ukraine End? |
    A Discussion with Fiona Hill, Samuel Charap & Andriy Zagorodnyuk

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvPcPZP-6os
    Anders Puck Nielsen Jul 24, 2023
    Russia has left the grain initiative, and the naval war is back on the agenda. But it’s far from certain that Russia will benefit from this, and it almost raises the question of whether Russia was tricked into leaving.

    0:00 Intro
    0:31 History of grain deal
    1:12 Why Russia entered the deal
    2:17 Russian benefits with the grain deal
    2:57 Sea control
    4:18 Grain deal gave Russia control
    5:46 July renewal process
    6:39 Kerch Bridge attack changed the game
    7:52 Unclear what Russia will do now
    8:47 Requirements for a blockade
    10:21 Russian dilemmas
    11:11 A Ukrainian trap?
    12:07 Ukraine wants maritime control

    Are yes Democracy NEVER!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B41Ux-2xP8
    Jul 19, 2023 Latest Shows
    Multiple reports are reinvestigating the neo-Nazi fighters and militias involved in the war both in Russia and Ukraine. “You have neo-Nazis on both sides of this conflict,” says Ukrainian American journalist Lev Golinkin, a longtime reporter on the far right in Ukraine and Russia who is critical of the Western media’s normalization of groups like the Azov Battalion. “We are sending a very dangerous message that if you’re the right type of neo-Nazis, we will not only work with you, we will celebrate you,” Golinkin notes.

    We also speak with national security reporter Ben Makuch, whose investigations reveal the networks connecting Ukrainian and Russian militias and American neo-Nazis. An anti-Putin Russian militia that carried out attacks inside Russia in May was led by a neo-Nazi who has maintained links with American neo-Nazis. In a new piece, Makuch also shares the story of an American military veteran wanted for murder who is now fighting for ultranationalist groups in Ukraine. “We know there has been secretive pipelines and networks,” says Makuch. “That still exists.”

    Transcript: democracynow.org
    The Whitewashing of Neo-Nazis: Lev Golinkin & Ben Makuch on How Far Right Is Exploiting Ukraine War

    and then there are the predictable green nutters!
    https://www.euronews.com/2023/07/13/is-restoring-the-kakhovka-dam-the-best-thing-for-the-environment-and-ukraines-recovery

    The sublime irony is that the modern version of the Kulak class will be undoubtedly the most vociferous in arguing for the restoring of the dam (the original version of it was the pride of the first of Stalin’s 5year plans) as the absolute top priority after the war but not only them but the broadest number of the owning class in general and the working classes as the power is also vital and so as well the ships locks that permit navigation all the way to Kyiv! A complete no brainer! Yet the green are as thick as a brick on edge!

  99. 99 patrickm

    This Guy is mostly on the money with his strategically accurate bad news. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM4dbY6wZmE
    however the slow but steady destruction of Russian kit and constant disruption of the supply chain will radically alter the fighting capacity at the front and once a section collapses -as the ‘mood’ is indicating in the big picture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvy0g7w6Nzs then big changes will be happening in Russian troop and territory losses.

    The key KPI’s are still solid and constant having dramatically changed trajectory at the start of the ‘fighting season’ offensive. https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=E33161B435D127BA%21115352&ithint=file%2Cxlsx&authkey=%21AIUgFlGIk8-n1hM

    Here is Jake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvy0g7w6Nzs with a steady as you go type of post.

    and here is my 2nd favorite Aussie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpAyHO1Mgj0

    Perun is my favorite!
    https://www.youtube.com/@PerunAU
    and he is very good at what he does!

    In the end my view is that the masses make war and this will result in any protracted war favoring Ukraine not Russia. The Russians started as a much bigger force and are relatively shrinking by the month see those KPI’s (and yes I obviously think they are basically believable). The breakthroughs will come (sooner or later but they will come) and once big chunks are isolated and cut off from re-supply then the big changes will restart.

    This fighting season has however been a sobering reminder of the cost of peoples war. I find myself re-reading Mao and recalling the decades of struggle that he waged against the ‘murderous kleptocrat’ Chiang Kai-shek. If Mao could unite with such a character and take into the red army all those hundreds of thousands of Kuomintang troops then without doubt all this rot about the rightwing forces in Ukraine is utter junk! A total misfocus or misdirection when the whole point is now the liberation of all of Ukraine if not the world wide defeat of this virulent imperialism.

    We few Australian ‘drain the swamp’ revolutionary left theorists were proven correct on the issue of what a US led liberation of the Iraqi peoples from Baathist terror would mean in Iraq. We were correct on the question of how that liberation and institution of a ‘normal bourgeois constitution and democratic voting norms for a proportionally representative South African style government would impact the rest of the MENA and beyond! Now 20 years down the track, it has long ago shown to have done just as was predicted! We welcomed the ending of the terrible post ww2 stagnation previously beloved by the anti communist ‘realists’! Now that democratic revolution is all about us! The war for greater Israel is still looking a sick joke with no improvement in the Zionists position and greater exposure of the apartheid nature of the Israeli state. No progress on that front! Just less sympathy around the world for Zionism and ‘plucky little Israel’ as it keeps veering further to the extreme right year after year.

    The left is nothing if not internationalist so any genuine left ought to be leading the theoretical struggle and thinking about the full liberation and democratization of Eastern Europe and the rest of Africa. The issue has with the Wagner prominence been unavoidably thrown in everyone’s face. Just as the coup in Egypt and the comparison to Turkey is such a stark comparison of how Islamists must lead the fight against Islamofascists and the garden variety militarists as well!

    What is to be the Western progressives response to the Wagner type of imperialist meddling from the now beginning to implode empire of Vlad the Audacious Czar of all the Russians? Hands off is hardly an option for cruise missile liberals!

  100. 100 Steve Owens

    The leader of Svoboda blames Ukraine’s problems on Jews. An advisor to the leader founded the Joseph Gobbles Political Research Institute, it recruited skinheads, its youth section attacked Romani camps. Its MP’s would start brawls in parliament and several MP’s bashed the head of the national broadcaster in an attempt to get him to sign a letter of resignation. I’m pretty clear that Svoboda is a fascist party, but you said you want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you could just give your definition of fascism because if Svoboda isn’t I don’t know what is.

  101. 101 Steve Owens

    Svoboda MP describes the holocaust as a “bright period in history”
    https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/18/yes-there-are-bad-guys-in-the-ukrainian-government/
    Luckily for Ukraine the voters removed these scum from their parliament. I give them zero benefit of the doubt they are scum, fascist scum.

  102. 102 Steve Owens

    “My question to you. Is Svoboda a fascist party?
    Yes or no.

    patrickm
    July 24, 2023 at 8:05 am
    Under the conditions that apply in Ukraine I don’t think it is! I think it went through a sufficient transformation to give it a different status altogether! What is more I think that from the other side of the world and with such a low knowledge base I think it beyond me to go very much further than give a benefit of the doubt to them…”

  103. 103 patrickm

    As I said from our position on the other side of the world with such a low understanding of the local conditions there we aught to ‘…and instead advocate long term unity with all such forces as Mao did with Chiang Kai-shek and thus remain focused on what I know to be the clear enemy and that is the imperialist Russian invaders.’

    It is clear to me that Chiang Kai-shek was a very dangerous opponent of communists and after he started killing all such people in 1927 killed them and other democrats just as often as he could manage. So if Mao could propose unity with such an enemy then I think it a no-brainer to look to the same kind of policies in Ukraine. After all Mao won and Chiang Kai-shek lost. But first he lost most of his army that became members of the Peoples Liberation Army. This points to a clear difference between our approaches as we both declare our stand is with the Ukrainians. My focus -that I say you obviously ought to adopt- is to welcome any person who is willing to fight the invader and give them due credit for risking their lives to drive out the imperialist invaders!

    Who can tell how the Ukrainians will develop politically? Not me. I know that the problems they have to solve now are quite different to the many they will have to address after the full liberation of their country has been achieved.

    This multi cultural, dual language country with it’s complex history is clearly fighting for it’s independence and has the right policy settings in place to birth a democratic future for all the peoples that it contains. Including the historically Russian speaking elements but also the Jews and Romany types and the other minorities that are there particularly in the border regions.

    However loyalty to this democratic process and to this quite obviously real country is a prerequisite to be a member of ‘WE THE PEOPLE’ that must be established, and that is where you have gone wrong. It is clear to me, and I don’t know why it is not clear to you, that all of the political and economic problems that are before the people of that territory can be resolved within that territory.

    Ukraine is not an empire that needs breaking up. With no prospect of any new attempt at a democratic centralist soviet union it is the Russian controlled state that requires that breakup!

  104. 104 patrickm

    Then this turned up of Ukrainians fighting in Georgia in 1993! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaJ1U51y36Y They knew who the enemy was and they knew why it was and that it would go on that way far into the future. 30yrs has now slipped past and I would be confident in making the guess that they were all -at least- as anti communist as Steve Owens then and now! I would also guess that most of them are now dead! ‘At times you shoot the enemy…’ and at times you watch cartoons with them!

    And so we engage in philosophy https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/left-is-not-woke-with-susan-neiman/

  105. 105 patrickm

    Well, Steve Owens is now publicly demonstrating that his focus is determinedly misdirected away from the Russian invasion, to focus almost exclusively, both in 2014 and now in 2023 on a tiny and obscure anti-Russian element amongst Ukrainians. They are supposed to be worse than the anti-democratic, Kleptocrat, Chiang Kai-shek. I know him to have been an unprincipled militarist and the murderer of any democrats, leftists, and particularly Communists that he perceived as standing in his personally acquisitive way!

    Well ‘there’s your problem’! Right in front of your nose! The cart is again before any horse that can pull it.

    Steve’s had ample opportunity to direct the focus at the ousting of the imperialist invaders from Russia, and to discuss how that ought to be achieved, and what is to be done with ANY collaborators; but is quite determined to raise the ‘they are Nazis’ talking points, of ‘Vlad the Honest, benevolent Czar of all the Russian people’ (especially talking points about those ‘Nazis’ in Putin’s ‘near abroad’ oppressing Russians just waiting to be liberated no less).

    Who was it back in 2014 that warned that the small invasions were just the start of the killing and that tens of deaths would soon become tens of thousands of deaths? That would be me. But who was it that could care less what invading force was picking the eyes out of the Ukrainian territories – provided that these imperialist invaders could at some future point spin a plausible enough line about the democratic will of the people who lived in the particular spots! It was ‘Wrong Way Steve Owens’ that’s who!

    An invasion takes place that would lead to a further invasion at some future point, chosen only by the imperialist Czar! Steve Owens was not correctly focused then; and Steve – just as sure as the constant shooting needed to free Ukraine is blasting in our ears across the news channels – is nevertheless not even focused now.

    As is well known, Ukraine, like the rest of Eastern Europe is full of rabidly anti-Communist people and that does not bother a communist like me in the slightest. Why should it bother others?

    There are now people who have spoken Russian all their lives who have chosen in their disgust at what has happened to no longer speak their own native tongue! They will only now speak in Ukrainian! That is not even that astounding. They have no theoretical need to do this but they are choosing a very dramatic break with the past. It’s almost like the millions who arrived in America and vowed to become American and to do that they really had to speak English! So good on them for taking such a radical path into the future and I say may their god go with them.

    If instead they are confused over who they are or still love Vlad they can go live under his tyranny!

    Collaborators are a real problem for any country at war just like oligarchs are for any country not on the cutting edge of western style democracy! Reality hits home when it’s time to pay the bills.

    Working class people’s problems abound just because of the actual working of capitalism and how it impacts on the property less proletarian class.

    That proletarian class is now far larger than the peasant classes that we all have roots back to. What happened in Australia in the 20th century is about to happen in Ukraine now. Their agricultural production will tend more and more to resemble the Australian example of decline in the family farm model, and an explosion of the large scale capital intensive and vastly more productive and more industrial corporate farming model will result. One way or another, Steinbeck’s bulldozers are coming to crush anything that stands in the way of large scale farming in Ukraine.

    Indeed, now that (since late February 2022) Steve has joined us, he ought to feel reasonably comfortable with these anti-Communist Ukrainians and settle down and try to work out how a war for a country’s independence is most effectively fought and won. Hint; because the Steve Owens divisive style would only divide and weaken the various people involved instead try the ‘unite the many to defeat the few’ approach.

    East Europeans really do have all manner of strange and even foolish views currently and I feel sure that will remain the case long into the future! But they have learnt a bit about oligarchy over the last 3 decades and could surely teach the Anglo world a bit about proportionally representative democracy! For example, the ALP types running their 2 party dictatorships would not fool many Ukrainians when it’s only 1 party more than what they struggled free from decades ago!

    Yet obviously, despite the variety of their views they have a war to fight against Russian invaders and those that would and do collaborate with them. Patriotic Ukrainians are very keen to learn practical war fighting skills from the western ‘imperialist’ countries -that currently are not following imperialist policies- but opposing the imperialist policies of Vlad the Honest. Steve is in favor of them being taught by all these Western countries including the ‘Great Satan’ itself! Steve is not like the cretins at Democracy Now! Their policy is to get to democracy by starting from anywhere else than where we all are at. So they would arrive at democracy never! Steve wont get aboard that life raft.

    Countries going through the unavoidable turmoil that Ukraine has gone through since the very welcome and wonderful fall of the revisionist Soviet Union in 1991 (32 years ago can you believe) are absolutely bound to have all manner of rightist politics bubble up and that is as inevitable as is the unpopularity of the ‘Communism’ of the revisionists! Quite evidently a sham of an ‘ism’ by any fair evaluation; as with China today it was only ever a ‘left in form, while being totally right in practice’ fraud. It’s collapse a completely good thing not a any kind or degree of bad thing at all.

    But the free wheeling capitalism of the oligarchs that arose from those ashes is not something that can keep the people fooled for long and nor has it! That ‘solution’ to what ignorant people call ending Communism and what we communists call dealing with the collapse of state capitalism has had a good run and the results are evidently not what the masses want to see more of.

    But on the other hand, the East Europeans have virtually no theory that currently makes sense other than some totally supportable desperate struggle for more Western style democracy and that is enough for broad based unity.

    Now while that flowering of democracy is THE good thing, and much in the way of altruistic type endeavors are currently contributing to Ukrainians well-being, nevertheless like night follows day after the victory is won into the desperately smashed up Ukraine will come the carpetbaggers. The oligarch elements, gangsters and petty criminals get right back to their business (that any policeman could tell you never really stop) but opportunities beckons so in come the opportunists, good and bad.

    Ukraine will have to be wary of being promised the world by the western political leadership only to wake up a little ravaged and alone. The reconstruction aid will have to be massive and have a vast social component, and it probably can’t be done with the current Western political players and processes of the mid 2020ies. Time will tell on that one. I for one am deeply skeptical of the ability of those whose policies are wrecking their still mostly functional societies (in the manner described by Michael Shellenberger in his insightful book ‘San Fransicko. Why Progressives ruin cities’) to do the opposite in Ukraine.

    These ‘progressives’ won’t get much of a look-in. From what I can tell from my low knowledge base but as an interested outsider Ukrainians are far more awake to the woke threat and I would guess their institutions however much infiltrated are not yet captured as they are in the west. As we in the west have seen to our shock and horror when institutional capture is apparent it’s across the board as a social contagion and so the damage done then rapidly escalates.

    Fortunately, Ukrainians have the lessons of what went mad in the west to inoculate them, so we have good reason to expect a better result.

    The political and theoretical contest within the ranks of the people is of a different order of priority and is conducted democratically. That is all there is to that. All manner of views will start up political parties and then blocks of party’s form to test their solutions in governments. The masses will judge what is working for them and toss them in and out accordingly. All we communists will need is more democracy and an open honest and above-board method and there is then nothing to fear from the political struggle.

    It’s the same with the economic struggle that is not about to go away either. People will have to work out their own class interests and struggle through their own confusions, but the Ukrainians have a big advantage in that they are now at the cutting edge of working-class struggle. It’s overwhelmingly the vast majority who are property less proletarians that as a class with their class interests will have paid the huge price for their country’s very independence. People don’t like being left alone ‘holding the baby’ of poverty. They will organize for economic progress too.

    Consider the green poison that will be dumped by the Western woke on the non-receptive Ukrainians. It will not go down well in a desperately poor post war Ukraine! Enter the theoretical struggle.

    People like me will advocate using more coal and rebuilding – as THE top priority the massive Stalin era dam that was correctly built to ‘tame nature’ and bring abundance to the ‘endless’ fields of crops to feed and clothe Ukraine and the world’s peoples. That massive dam that all good greenies hate will get top priority after this war is concluded in victory.

    No Victory, no safe rebuild! Simple as that.

    The unavoidable irony will make me LOL when all the world’s ruling elites will fudge away, as best they can, while they solemnly agree that the first priority for their various aid packages must be to rebuild the pride of the Communist era first five-year plan!

    War against Russian invaders (the like of which and the implication going forward tops anything that I have ever seen) is the issue Steve has avoided since 2014 and only now and reluctantly has he been dragged into it; but he is looking for a way out and back to his comfort zone. How often have we seen that move on Steve’s part?

    With no workable theory to move Steve forward he sits on any fence he can find! Even the weather kooks and the carbon dioxide cultists get a pass from Steve as they proceed to reverse the process of capitalism that ought to be cheapening energy and everything else. The Woke cultists are more often than not doing a very bad job of presenting their mixed bag of lollies to Ukrainians. More like a dog’s breakfast of broken pseudo-left theory and exhausted peacenik drivel.

    Steve mistakenly thought he could leave this war with honor under the old formula. After all, he reasoned that he was right in 2014 AND that he is right now. But it HAS also dawned on Steve that the war won’t end with Russia back behind the pre 2022 lines in the Donbas region and/or in Crimea.

    Like the various one-eyed, right-wing Americans and Europeans etc., Steve started by saying there is no military solution and so there would have to be negotiations, but none could think how this could really work, other than by rewarding aggression. So, Steve will be stuck on the sidelines gesticulating and dragging up Russian talking points while trying to go unnoticed and imperceptibly back away.

    Further hint; that attempt at a life-raft will not float! It’s just imaginary!

    Just as the other Cyclopses were roused from their beds by all the commotion, and then came crashing about in the outer darkness coming to the aid of their neighbor …

    “What is it Polyphemus? Who’s in there with you?” Our Polyphemus desperately called back through the boulder that he sealed his cave with ‘No-Body. No-Body Atall has hurt me. No-Body Atall is in here. Oh, somebody tell my father! No-Body Atall has blinded me!’ So the rest of today’s Cyclopses will peer at each other in the moonless darkness. ‘Well, that’s alright then. A nightmare obviously. We’re glad to hear it Polyphemus! Peace be upon your eyelid till morning!’ And away they will go, a little bad tempered for having been roused up for no purpose.

    That is how it is with the pseudoleft bereft of any workable theory to steer by.

    The other Cyclopes in utter confusion will go back to their beds leaving our Polyphemus also in utter confusion and furious at their incomprehension of his plain declaration and ‘obvious’ plea for assistance. Every last word spoken as plainly as could be yet the result is utter incomprehension as if they’re speaking Russian to an Irishman!

    The end result was that Polyphemus was still blinded and alone and with his attacker still lurking in what was now for him, an eternal darkness. He may not have sought change but change had come to him, and his old way of seeing the world would never return. And it won’t return to the bankrupt pseudoleftist who in reality want nothing to do with Ukraine!

    Try this for a revolting look at what passes for a Marxist in 2023!
    ****
    ‘The current situation resembles the process leading up to the First World War when Europe’s socialists abandoned internationalism and the class standpoint and instead chose to support their capitalist nation-state in its rivalry with other states. In the imperialist part of the world, you have to be a “traitor” to the country to be a socialist.

    It is not just a simple inter-imperialist power struggle between US and China for world hegemony. It is a conflict on how to organize the world-system and visions of the future. However, the hostile international relations created by the US strategy will hamper efforts to diminish the ecological and climate problems, and its policy is disrupting investment and trade worldwide, creating economic crises not just for 2023.

    For the time being the US is still the dominant and offensive aspect, using its military and cultural power. However, the erosion of the neoliberal world market under US control and the emergence of a part of the world system with alternative political and financial institutions, and without the dollar as the trade currency may change the balance in the contradiction.

    New Year status 2023 – Anti-Imperialist Network Torkil Lauesen.

    In the 1970s-80s, he was a member of a ‘communist’ cell which eventually carried out a series of robberies in peaceful Denmark, netting -after expenses- very large sums which were then sent on to various national liberation movements in the Third World. Following their capture in 1989, Torkil spent six years in prison.
    *****
    Revolting rubbish. Histories dustbin is full of such twaddle!

  106. 106 Steve Owens

    So let me get this straight. This is a thread started as a commentary on 2014 but I can’t mention that neo-nazi elements played a significant role at Maidan. I can’t mention that fascists were placed in the ministry and command structure of the security forces (defense minister no less). I can’t mention that in 2014 Nazis conducted a massacre in Odessa. I can’t mention that the authorities covered for the massacre. I can’t mention that Nazis formed militias to fight the separatists in the east. These aren’t my opinions these are facts.

  107. 107 patrickm

    This thread posted Feb 4 was about…
    Thoughts on Ukrainian nationalism, Feb. 2014
    by Patrick Muldowney
    And I wrote in reply to the ‘debate’ between Darlec and Barry that arose from a Ukraine thread posted a couple days earlier. http://strangetimes.lastsuperpower.net/?p=2882
    *******************
    ‘Q&A: Stand-off in Ukraine over EU agreement Published by admin on February 1, 2014 in Russia, Ukraine and Vladimir Putin 26 Comments
    Protests have gripped Ukraine since the government rejected a far-reaching accord with the EU in favour of stronger ties with Russia in November 2013.
    They turned violent on 19 January, and deadly on 22 January in the capital, Kiev, where confrontation degenerated into rioting after the government brought in tough new legislation to end mass protests on the main square.
    Opposition leaders and President Viktor Yanukovych then held talks, and on 28 January, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and his cabinet resigned, and the Ukrainian parliament voted overwhelmingly to annul the anti-protest laws.
    In another apparent concession, parliament then passed an amnesty law for detained protesters – but the opposition dismissed it and the demonstrations continue.
    How bad is the violence?………’
    ****************

    Darlec’s first comment and all his other comments on that thread could have well been written by Steve Owens. But the events of 2014 that you are focused on had yet to unfold!

    The point is; my article is about how nothing remains the same and the Ukrainians on the side of greater unity with Europe were not anything like predominantly fascists but rather the side that was trying to maintain and strengthen links to Putin’s Russia were the enemy of the Ukraine masses and so it has self evidently turned out! In 2023 that is clear.

    You Steve want to pretend you were correct in your 2014 stand and that you are also correct in your 2023 stand when I say you are only slightly better now than you were when hopelessly wrong way back then!

    There was zero genuine shoulder shrugging basis for the dismemberment of Ukraine by the invading Russians and that is what you were doing. When you were shrugging your shoulders and declaring how you couldn’t care less who ruled in these regions so long as they could make a plausible case that they had some kind of democratic mandate.

    You didn’t have a clue then and you are not much better now as you try to back away from supporting this protracted and massive conflict with all its complexity.

    My point back at the start of 2014 was that we can’t treat anything like political groups as permanently one thing or another in our dealings with them. For example new generations make of old things what they will. Nothing stays the same except in the Neverland world of the pseudoleft.. Complex events like the Molotov Ribbentrop pact utterly refute the contrary point of view. Such events are always misrepresented by the enemy but that is what the enemy does.

  108. 108 patrickm

    The last part of this podcast in particular the interview of war reporter Criss Miller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3mopDcLeJI He’s ‘been around’ for all those years and has a good understanding of how the war dropped off the radar and people forgot about aiding Ukraine.

    Ordinary people fight wars and most of them have very unsophisticated world views; but the world does not stand still for them nor anyone else.

  109. 109 Steve Owens

    Yes I did shrug my shoulders about Russia’s invasion of Crimea. Was there another option? Was Ukraine prepared to fight for Crimea? Was NATO prepared to fight? Would the people of Crimea be helped by turning it into a war zone?
    I have some sympathy for the Eastern separatists. They were faced by a government comprised in part of fascists, a defense minister from a fascist party and independent fascist militias heading their way. The situation bore some resemblance to Kosovo where an authoritarian national government decided to crush a separatist movement. In that case NATO decided to drop hundreds of thousands of bombs in support of the separatists.
    As to Molotov-Ribbentrop I fail to see how doing friendship deals with Nazis helped the situation. It enhanced Nazi aggression and as to secretly offering the Nazis a submarine base on Soviet soil I just shake my head.

  110. 110 Steve Owens

    I should also point out that Yanukovych was the democratically elected president of Ukraine Maidan wasn’t a democratic revolution it was a revolution to overthrow a corrupt and autocratic president. I approve of his dismissal from power but it wasn’t democratic and it wasn’t even constitutional. The parliament wasn’t in a position to impeach him they didn’t have a large enough majority and they needed it authorised by the judiciary. In the end they just dismissed him for deserting his post which is fine by me.

  111. 111 Steve Owens

    I guess that raises the question of where I stand so here it is I support Maidan and the overthrow of Yanukovych but I do not support the Yatsenyuk government because it had Nazis in it. I support the idea of a snap election and a care taker government with no Nazis.

  112. 112 patrickm

    Even VERY mainstream conservatives GET quite a bit of IT! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGh4YSs71cU This is worth a look from that perspective.

    Steve ought to have no difficulty in reviewing his comments on this very thread. Hint, it’s not any kind of medal winning performance; and as even a ‘dead Helen Keller’ can see holes in these comments repudiating his past stands and misdirected focus ought not be difficult. Yet here we are and nothing so far and with his track record I’m not ‘holding my breath’.

    But even if he won’t or can’t I’ll go further and say this is what comprehensive failure over a decade looks like.

    I’m working on a full review of his 47 comments that now extend for 9.5 years Unfortunately I’m a bit distracted with more pressing issues so I will post when I can get some time. (I don’t sleep that much, so I can often get late night writing time… but we shall see it will be soon as I can).

  113. 113 patrickm

    This is good past about 13.5 with Frederick Kagan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RLyZ4LxXOo
    then this with Ben hodges
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wwu8Ff-SOw

  114. 114 patrickm

    As I said above and as the junk level comment from Steve shows.

    ‘The end result was that Polyphemus was still blinded and alone…He may not have sought change, but change had come to him, and his old way of seeing the world would never return. And it won’t return to the bankrupt pseudoleftist who in reality wants nothing to do with Ukraine!’

    No way out for you Steve!

    Your now all for cluster bombs no less! You want longer range missiles plus as long-term war making as it takes! Because you are for throwing the Russians all the way out of all territories from 2014 and Ukraine then joining NATO.

  115. 115 patrickm

    The rot of Peter Hitchens…

    Western Intervention Has Been Mostly Disastrous

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfyRtrk7Jpo

  116. 116 patrickm

    The rightist sanity of Alex Epstein. If he only knew he was fighting pseudoleftists! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgG2KNKh74I

  117. 117 patrickm

    Steve Owens comments over 9.5years.
    Looks like?

    As anyone can see from this thread that is now spread over 9.5 years, Steve has currently and has consistently had from the beginning, what I would call an odd focus on Ukrainian rightists. He began by indicating his support for greater US involvement in resisting the Russian imperialist invasion. We infer this, in as much as Steve was critical of the US inaction that he pointed out was as a direct result of its own experience from fighting the big war in the territory of Iraq. But from the earliest comment a great concern is evident about what a few Ukrainian rightists were and perhaps still are up to. But people can see that when asked directly by me Steve refuses to respond demonstrating absolutely no concern about historical Chinese rightists! Later in another thread with no connection to that threads topic of research ie unemployment steve posts a link to a chinese news real type vid of a state visit of Nikolai Ceausescu. to China and Steve is implicitly very critical of Mao in running this revolution and in welcoming Nikolai. This is odd because Mao welcomed Nixon a few years later and the question Steve was asked to address was, what do we think about Mao working with people like the mass murder of communists specialist Chiang with exactly the same implication for Ceausescu and Nixon etc!

    Steve has nothing to say about the Chinese communists policy of unity with the KMT to fight the Japanese invaders, even doing a deal to formally end the civil war and releasing Chiang after the Sian incident! Some people who are anti Mao claim that Mao wanted Chiang tried and properly sentenced (ie. executed) for his obvious crimes but IMV that altogether goes against the weight of evidence! These writers say Mao was overridden but I would doubt that entirely! Steve has nothing to say about Nixon or Ceausescu but in posting his old video with no comment is simply critical with no alternative in China other than Chiang greeting international quests but with perhaps a less employed and well fed population! Who can say after all my point is that things change.

    But at any rate the communists adopted a lenient attitude to Chiang in the Sian incident. I say they did so in order to follow a course of national unity so that the fight against the Japanese imperialist could be the focus of the Chinese masses. This issue is tending to refute Steve’s policy that I view as exemplified by the content of the 47 comments. I say the structure of these comments and purpose is always to divide rather than unite. Steve’s focus for his decade of comment, is essentially on Ukrainian rightists; and it’s revealing. Steve’s focus is not on the invading Russian -anti democratic mass murdering- imperialist army that is being slowly but surely ground down with massive casualties inflicted on these unfortunate or depending on your POV fully deserving soldiers.

    There was never the proper assessment from Steve of what stand did he owe a democratic left title to his name. That stand ought to have been that comment ought to start with a fighting view on the imperialist warmaking that would have an endless future otherwise.

    Steve has consistently failed the tests that were set down -by reality no less- before any genuine leftists. The struggle for more democracy and less tyranny was continuing to unfold in all 3 realms of focus available to Steve.
    1/ The economic struggle was in our western face as was
    2/ the political and
    3/ the theoretical.

    These 3 areas are the problems where working people of Ukraine were/are struggling against their owning class and class enemies of all manner of other types as well. These areas of base leftist concerns must nevertheless go to the back burner to put the struggle against imperialism at the forefront because imperialism means war!

    The current Russian 2022 escalation was always on a Russian -to do list- imperialist agenda. The maps as at the end of 2015 still did not make any sense. At least from a Russian Imperialist POV. Ukraine patriots, nationalists and democratically minded working people of all ilk would understand what imperialist war making on the country of Ukraine would mean for them. They understand the requirement to fight a war of resistance. They get the Mao policy of ‘unite and don’t split’!

    The big country -Russia- following pretty standard imperialist policies well known to any Czar, British, French and US etc ruling elites and their governments and bureaucracies, was making war against its smaller victim country and Steve has consistently failed by not addressing the priority questions nor in meeting the word count requirement! From his first comment at 1/ Steve owens March 10, 2014 at 1:50 pm to this last one at 47/ Steve Owens August 3, 2023 at 3:32 pm the ‘contributions’ have not built on the developing arguments of fightback and resistance as they became clearer but have done the exact opposite.

    The following from previous examples is an interesting reminder of what we are thinking about as to what course Ukrainians ought to have been talking about when under threat from the very powerful imperialist forces of Russia over these last couple of decades!

    Jim Gordon tl/dr: The Germans had completely trained eight Army divisions for the Chinese Army by 1937, and were in the process of training 11 or 12 more, plus the Chinese air force and navy. The outbreak of WW2 caused the Germans to ally with Japan, China’s enemy, because Japan was more capable and likely to oppose the USSR, thus ending the close Sino-German relationship.

    (image: Wikimedia commons)
    ‘Shared Anti-Communism
    KMT founder Sun YatSen sent Chiang KaiShek to the Soviet Union for three months in 1924, which apparently convinced Chiang that Communism would not be acceptable for China [read himself]. Sun died in 1925, and Chiang succeeded him as head of the KMT. In 1927, Chiang drove the Communists out of the KMT [Read mass murdered them on a scale that made the night of the long knives look like a teenage sleepover] and looked for anti-communist sources for support in the Chinese Civil War that followed.

    Germany had decades of economic and political turmoil, before and after WW1, and militaristic anti-communism was one of the factors contributing to the fall of the Weimar Republic in 1930 and the 1932-33 crisis that led to Hitler becoming Chancellor.

    Image.

    In the 1880s, Germany had built two battleships for China. As one of the late 19th-century colonial powers operating in China’s “treaty ports,” the Germans had actually created a favorable impression through their contributions to the modernization and industrialization of the Qingdao region in the northeastern Shandong peninsula. The 1900 Boxer Rebellion and aggressive German reaction cooled relations, a situation lasting through the end of WW1. After WW1, Germany lost its overseas possessions, and was seen as less imperialistic, especially compared to Britain. German contributions to the industrial and institutional development of China continued from the end of WW1 through 1937.

    The German Military had a very positive reputation for its innovative general staff system, its strong discipline and its technical accomplishments. Chiang and the Germans arranged for a German Military Mission to China in the late 1920s, and the relationship became much more active as the Nazis came to power in 1932-33.’

    Steve Owens was -wrong way Steve- in 2014 and was blind to reality even on the very day of the big 2022 escalation of the aggression and now 18 months further along -rather than learn from his errors- keeps his anti-communist focus determinedly misdirected away from the Russian invasion that militarily started in 2014 and instead keeps jabbering about Putin’s favorite distraction -the Ukrainian Nazis threat!

    Steve fully understands that the Chinese ‘Kleptocrat’ whose army looked for all the world like they were inspired by the Nazis who were training and equipping them,

    image

    Chiang Kai-shek was a hell of a killer of communists and other democrats.

    The oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk don’t get a mention from Steve. I don’t wonder why! They weren’t fully captured in 2014 so here they were a festering anti imperialist struggle not worth noticing by the likes of wrong way Steve. I on the other side thought that from little invasions big things grow!

    From Steve no comment on how the Russian imperialists were picking the eyes out of the Ukrainian territories. No mention that they have recently spun an implausible vote and guess who overwhelmingly won this ‘free and fair’ vote to join the Russian Federation! How could anybody with a democratic disposition accept that they could even spin a plausible enough line about the democratic will of the people who lived in the particular spots!’

    Collaborators are a real problem that Steve fails to even discuss!

    Anti-communist Steve fully understands that Steinbeck’s bulldozers are coming to crush anything that stands in the way of large-scale farming in Ukraine. But being a vacuous supporter of capitalism has nothing to contribute to this direction either.

    Indeed, now that (since late February 2022) Steve has joined in defending Ukraine, he ought to feel reasonably comfortable with these anti-Communist Ukrainians and settle down and try to work out how a war for a country’s independence is most effectively fought and won. Hint; because the Steve Owens divisive style would only divide and weaken the various people involved instead try the ‘unite the many to defeat the few’ approach.

    East Europeans really do have all manner of strange and even foolish views currently and I feel sure that will remain the case long into the future! But they have learnt a bit about oligarchy over the last 3 decades and could surely teach the Anglo world a bit about proportionally representative democracy! For example, the ALP types running their 2 party dictatorships ($275 cheaper power prices by 2025 no less) would not fool many Ukrainians when it’s only 1 party more than what they struggled free from decades ago!

    Obviously, despite the variety of their views they have a war to fight against Russian invaders and any locals that would collaborate with them must be dealt with.

    Patriotic Ukrainians are very keen to learn practical warfighting skills from the western ‘imperialist’ countries -that currently are not following imperialist policies- but opposing the imperialist policies of Vlad the Honest. Steve is in favor of them being taught by all these Western countries including the ‘Great Satan’ itself! Steve is not like the cretins at Democracy Now! Their policy is to get to democracy by starting from anywhere else than where we all are at. So they would arrive at democracy never! Steve wont get aboard that life raft.

    Countries going through the unavoidable turmoil that Ukraine has gone through since the very welcome and wonderful fall of the revisionist Soviet Union in 1991 (32 years ago can you believe) are absolutely bound to have all manner of rightist politics bubble up and that is as inevitable as is the unpopularity of the ‘Communism’ of the revisionists! Quite evidently a sham of an ‘ism’ by any fair evaluation; as with China today it was only ever a ‘left in form, while being totally right in practice’ fraud. Its collapse is a completely good thing, not any kind or degree of bad thing at all.

    But the freewheeling capitalism of the oligarchs that arose from those ashes is not something that can keep the people fooled for long and nor has it! That ‘solution’ to what ignorant people call ending communism and what we communists call dealing with the collapse of state capitalism has had a good run and the results are evidently not what the masses want to see more of.

    But on the other hand, the East Europeans have virtually no theory that currently makes sense other than some totally supportable desperate struggle for more Western style democracy and that is enough for broad based unity.

    That flowering of democracy is THE good thing democrats are after, and when the victory is won opportunities will arise like wild mushrooms for the foragers. Some will be toxic. In will come the opportunists, but they will be both good and bad. Into the desperately smashed up Ukraine will also come the carpetbaggers. The currently quiet oligarch elements, gangsters and petty criminals will also get right back to their businesses that any policeman could tell you never really stop.

    Ukraine will have to be wary of being promised the world by the western political leadership only to wake up a little ravaged and alone. The reconstruction aid will have to be massive and have a vast social component, and it probably can’t be done with the current Western political players and processes of the mid 2020ies. Time will tell on that one.

  118. 118 Steve Owens

    I have no disagreement with Mao over uniting with Nationalists to defeat the Japanese. I have no disagreement with inviting Ceausescu to visit China. I posted the video as an example of how running a state where only enthusiasm is allowed is such a crock.
    I cant see how you can have socialism without universal suffrage. Its an admission that more than 50% of the population oppose you. In Russia they claimed that Soviets were a higher form of democracy ie direct election by the workers soldiers and peasants but the Soviets were a dead letter well before the end of the civil war. So you have to fall back on party democracy but by 1921 no party group other than the leadership were allowed to organise. Party congresses still elected the ruling body but seeing that the ruling body was able to determine who was and who wasn’t a party member it’s not hard to see how the party becomes a self replicating creature.
    I have no disagreement with Zelenski about defeating Russia however I am skeptical that they can reconquer to the 2014 boundaries but I have zero military insight so my opinion on this carries little weight.

  119. 119 patrickm

    Here is a bloke who is focused. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7g3X3ctUfo A he said they don’t have a fucking clue.

  120. 120 Steve Owens

    OH FFS at the 4 minute mark of the youtube clip Georgie says Azov “were just a bunch of guys”
    I guess by this logic the SS and the SA were just a bunch of guys.
    Azov were just a bunch of Nazi guys who should never been tolerated driving about looking for insurgents.
    Maybe you should stop trying to teach people and instead pick up a book.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGdUtUefjCA

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