John Cotter

Mark, Since your post seems to refer to me, among others, I hereby respond. Firstly, insofar as your post immediately succeeds my refuting William Niederhut’s baseless accusation that I had dodged a (fallacious) question he had asked me, I hope you’re not insinuating that William’s accusation has any credibility. Indeed, the confused nature of your post could be interpreted as you opportunistically rushing in to that effect. When I say your post is confused, I refer to the fact that, among other things, your third paragraph doesn’t follow logically from your second paragraph. Whereas your second paragraph accurately describes the “poking the bear” argument that I and others have presented, your third paragraph is as scattered as a hare’s urine. Could you please try to recast your third paragraph so that (a) it follows logically from your second paragraph and (b) we have a clear idea of precisely what question you are asking? I would add that since the “poking the bear” argument is self-explanatory, your third paragraph seems redundant.

It's good to see you back, Joe. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Matthew is referring to people who tend to view matters through the lens of their party political biases when these biases are totally irrelevant to the matters in question.

William, Despite my answering your question, you falsely accuse me of dodging it – while in the same post implying that I had answered it! You seem very confused. Has your career in the authoritarian pseudo-science of mainstream psychiatry impaired your capacity to engage rationally with someone who disagrees with you and your capacity for self-reflection? The infamous Rosenhan experiment and Thomas Szasz’s classic critique of institutional psychiatry, The Manufacture of Madness, come to mind. There is another question which seems apposite. Have you ever lived and worked in a country other than the USA for a significant period of time?

By reference to Brandolini’s law, I haven’t got the time to rebut all your recycled nonsense, William. In relation to one of your nonsensical points, your question about where I would prefer to live is a tu quoque fallacy (if you don’t know what that is, please look it up because I haven’t time to explain it). Some years ago I watched the 2014 feature film Leviathan about crime and corruption in a town in Putin’s Russia. It painted a very bleak picture of Russian life, but I learned afterwards that the director and co-writer of the film took his inspiration for the film from events in a small US town. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(2014_film) I don’t know what it’s like to actually live in any of the places you mention, so I can’t answer your question. I could say the same about living in France, Sweden or the USA. I live in Ireland because it happens to be my homeland, not because it’s objectively better than any other country. I think I’ve said something along these lines to you before but that wouldn’t prevent you from pestering me about it – notwithstanding your own habit of dodging hard questions. As for the entitlement to freedom and self-determination, what countries – and people – are entitled to and what they get are two different things. That applies to Ireland as well as to Ukraine. Ireland is a small, corrupt, plutocratic vassal state of the US empire, largely owned by big tech and big pharma and controlled by Five Eyes. That’s the Realpolitik of geographical location. One doesn’t have to be a professor of geopolitics to understand these realities. Maybe if you stopped boasting about your academic credentials and stopped believing your own nonsense you might actually learn something about the real world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ngsmclqaes

Sandy, You apparently missed the Open Democracy article dated 28th February 2022 by Anthony Barnett titled, “Putin was shaped by US greed. His defeat must lead to change”, wherein it is stated: “Defeat for Putin will come much faster than for George W Bush and his vice president Dick Cheney after 2003.” https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/russia-ukraine-putin-defeat-global-change-us-greed/ You also apparently missed the Aljazeera article dated 30th March 2022 by Justin Bronk, senior research fellow in military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute in London titled, “Russia has effectively admitted defeat in Ukraine”. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/30/russia-has-effectively-admitted-defeat-in-ukraine There were other articles that I read at the time which predicted Russia’s early defeat and regime change due to its purportedly antiquated weaponry and its corruptly inept leadership. This was all of a piece with the widespread presumption of the moral and technological superiority of the west, which presumption underpinned the crusade-like zeal with which military support for Ukraine was advocated and ostensibly prosecuted.

There’s no harm in a bit of craic and divilment, as we say over here, Kirk. The importance of qualifications has been overblown in recent years, especially during covid. It’s just another authoritarian “we know best” ruse – much favoured of course by our mutual friend William. The dismissal of ordinary people’s capacity to think for themselves is profoundly undemocratic. The article I posted about the war in Ukraine makes a lot of sense to me. As always, time will tell. However, it seem that time has already told us a lot, given that we were told by our western overlords when the war began that Russia would be defeated and “regime changed” in a matter of weeks. These overlords have been wrong about a lot of things, mainly because through censorship, suppression of dissent and open debate, corruption (legal and otherwise), brainwashing of the masses by the compulsory “education” system and nobbling the mainstream media and regulatory agencies, they have destroyed the checks and balances of democracy and given themselves the power to say and do what they like with virtual impunity. There is little doubt that the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK in the 1960s played a huge and decisive part in this destruction of western democracy, and the Ukraine shambles is just one of its many manifestations.

Kirk, When I do have the time to read your posts, I generally find them amusing. They remind me of a passage in a book of Irish proverbs that I have. First, though, I need to preface the passage with the following quote: "Amongst the animals held to have spiritual significance for the Celts was the Hare, (known to some in America as jackrabbits)… In Celtic mythology and folklore the hare has links to the mysterious Otherworld of the supernatural… Celtic peoples looked on the hare as a creature with supernatural powers. This lonely creature was admired for strength, speed and was noted for being active at night and associated with the moon. They were seen as mysterious and magical, so thought of as an animal to be treated with caution. When the Romans invaded the British Isles, Julius Caesar made the observation that the Celtic people did not regard it lawful to eat the hare. In Ireland the animals association with women from the Otherworld who could shapeshift into the form of a hare also made eating them taboo." https://www.transceltic.com/pan-celtic/importance-of-hare-celtic-belief-and-our-duty-protect-all-wildlife The passage I alluded to is: “The hare looms large in oral Irish literature. A saying I was much taken by, when I first visited the Dingle peninsula, was ‘chomh scaipthe le mún giorrai ‘– as scattered as a hare’s [urine].” The author explains that the hare, apparently, urinates on the run. Right brain thinking (what Jungians call lunar consciousness) is a necessary complement to left brain thinking. The problems start when the two of them get mixed up. By the way, I think you might find it helpful when reading to focus on the concepts and logic behind the referents (words) rather than the referents themselves. By doing that you might better understand what you’re reading. John.

Insofar as I can make sense of what you’re trying to say in the first part of your post, William, you seem to be unwittingly endorsing what I said. As for your question about Irish independence from the British Empire, this is an example of your habit of recycling “arguments” that have already been repeatedly rebutted. I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’ve always supported Irish independence, and I’ve also explained why the US’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is completely different from the Irish struggle for independence. Since Britain was the dominant world power while Ireland was fighting against it for independence, Britain’s comparator in the Ukraine situation is the hitherto dominant world power, the USA. I could elaborate this further, but with your superior insight you should be able to deduce for yourself the full implications of the distinctions I’ve adumbrated.

I can’t either, James. The recklessness and stupidity of western leadership regarding Ukraine has been mind boggling, and those two articles you linked provide good examples of it. As professors Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer have said, none of the western leaders of today could hold a candle to JFK in terms of his geopolitical acumen. The proxy war cheerleaders here have tried to justify their stance by cherry picking one of the foreign policy speeches – the Berlin speech – made by JFK in June 1963. They don’t seem to realise that since Berlin is 700 miles and two countries away from the Russian border, there is a world of difference between pledging to defend Berlin and sponsoring wars against Russia in countries bordering Russia. They are ignoring history, geography and the geopolitical “sphere of interest” concept where great powers are concerned. But what’s new? Their ignorance in these respects has been abundantly displayed in debates in this forum during the past year or so. I see that some of these cheerleaders, including the self-styled insightful full spectrum polymath William Niederhut, are now realising too late that the carnage in Ukraine, which was caused by the Russophobic jingoism they endorse, now needs to be stopped – even at the cost of appeasing the antichrist Putin of their fevered imagination. To paraphrase Lord Byron, we must laugh that we may not weep.

Hysterics? What an ironic response to my exposing your nonsense. Meanwhile, the carnage in Ukraine caused by the proxy war-mongering of you and your fellow travellers continues. To what avail? https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/round-two-there-is-no-round-two

So NATO expansion in eastern Europe is only my subjective “impression” rather than an objective fact? Are you trying to gaslight me? The same could be said for your “faction ridden” argument. Have you ever heard of Spenlow and Jorkins? Please stop playing these silly games.

"Nuanced" is a euphemism.

Your evasive response to my question validates everything I said in my penultimate post.

Do you agree with the statement that the core tenet of US foreign policy is global domination?

Thanks for that, Paul. I won’t reply in detail to William and Michael here because these issues have been already debated ad nauseam. I would just say that the claim that eastern European countries willingly joining NATO legitimizes NATO’s eastward expansion is disingenuous, because NATO is an instrument of the US foreign policy of global domination. Therefore, by definition, the actions of these countries in joining NATO are not neutral or innocent vis-à-vis Russia – they clearly constitute an existential threat. Since this is simple logic, the relentless efforts by Russophobic US imperialists (effectively a tautology) to deny or obfuscate it are utterly perverse.

Fascinating article.

William, So you believe a Ukrainian view of the proxy war against Russia is objective. Thanks for further illustrating your one-eyed perversity, otherwise known as shadow projection. ____________________

So you believe a Ukrainian view of the proxy war against Russia is objective. Thanks for further illustrating your one-eyed perversity.

So rather than acknowledge the reality that things happened before Russia invaded Ukraine on 24th February 2022 that could be construed as existential threats to Russia, you cling to your childish caricature of Putin as evil personified. You thus justify the continuation of a war which will entail the deaths of thousands more Ukrainians and Russians, the further destruction of Ukraine and its probably defeat. You need to grow up and get real.

Physician, heal thyself.

Perhaps it's on this thread that I should have submitted my comments about William Niederhut's "shadow projection" in his relentless posts about Putin the Anti-Christ.

William, The excellent Academy of Ideas video, “Carl Jung, the Shadow, and the Danger of Psychological Projection”, elucidates the problems caused by the kind of childishly simplistic Manichean mentality constantly evinced by your postings. The video ends with this quote: “…modern people are ignorant of what they really are. We have simply forgotten what a human being really is, so we have men like Nietzche and Freud and Adler who tell us what we are, quite mercilessly. We have to discover our shadow. Otherwise we are driven into a world war in order to see what beasts we are.” (Carl Jung, Visions, Notes of the seminar given in 1930-1934). https://academyofideas.com/2018/02/carl-jung-shadow-dangers-of-psychological-projection/ I would add that monotheistic religions are probably especially conducive to shadow projection, for obvious reasons. Hence, I have found the writings of Jung’s most brilliant “protégé”, James Hillman, on polytheistic psychology immensely illuminating and liberating.

William, Your relentless banging on about Putin being the devil incarnate is bordering on pathological. As evidenced by the Jeffrey Sachs passage quoted by James Di above, that kind of “shadow projection” is the antithesis of the dialogue and striving for mutual understanding that JFK advocated. It’s a pity Sting spoiled his lovely updated rendition of his song “Russians” by his political correct, market-friendly, introduction. As DH Lawrence wisely said, “trust the tale [song] not the teller”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w3037nq23o

Hear, hear.

USA, the plutocracy that exports democracy at the point of a gun.