John Cotter

William, So once again, instead of providing evidence that Aleksandar Dugin ever had an official role in the Russian government, you deposit another steaming pile of irrelevant nonsense. It’s your persistently disruptive online behaviour that raises questions about your personality, not I.

Sandy, Actually, my conclusion is correct. The fact that you bit off more than you can chew isn’t my fault.

I don’t drink poteen, William. I suppose I should go the easy “woke” way and object to the stereotyping, but I’d prefer to keep it logical and point out that your ad hominem discredits you, not me. As for the Dugin dodge, this is yet another instance of your awful habit of recycling nonsense that’s already been debunked. I’ve asked you repeatedly before to provide evidence of Dugin having an official Russian government role, and you failed to provide it. Does the time ever come when questions as to the personality of someone who evinces such persistent perversity must be asked?

Instead of logically rebutting my argument, you've again deflected with an unsubstantiated claim. I repeatedly asked you before to produce evidence of the Russian government "plan" that you refer to, and you failed to produce it.

Any dog that's willing to join the bear-baiter's pack is fair game for a swipe of the bear's paw.

The bear-baiting went on for decades. And then they vilify the bear when it eventually reacts. What a shower of reckless idiots!

I've explained its relevance to the JFKA case upthread.

Neither Chris nor I suggested that it’s a breeze for foreigners to fight in Ukraine. I don’t know where you got that idea. The contrary is the case. Both of us have referred to the Ukraine conflict as a shambles or words to that effect. Regarding your last substantial reply to me, I seem to have mistakenly interpreted your saying “Point taken” as agreement. My apparent misinterpretation seems to have arisen from your deploring both Russian and US imperialism at another point. Apropos the rest of your reply, I don’t see any point in rebutting it line by line, because I might as well be banging my head off a stone wall. Despite your commendable anti-war activism in your youth, you seem to have a blind spot regarding the Ukraine situation.* As Chris suggested, the reason for that is quite clear. Like a lot of your compatriots (and mine), you seem unwilling or unable to problematise your Americocentric world view. The fact that you cite western propaganda regarding the Bucha incident as gospel is just one symptom of this cyclopean world view. Have you never heard the saying, “The first casualty of war is the truth”? Do you know that Ukraine’s president Zelensky is an actor – you know, a make-believe professional? I’ve asked Sandy repeatedly to identify any flaws he sees in Prof Mearsheimer’s reasoning and he has failed to do so. I haven’t seen you do so either. You’ve both thereby confirmed the validity of Mearsheimer’s thesis. I would also refer you to Jeff Carter’s and Paul Brancato’s very informative posts, and I would suggest that you refrain from such wildly inaccurate and inflammatory accusations as referring to your opponents as apologists for genocide. *The anti-war activism, past or present, of a minority, or even a majority, of Americans is irrelevant as far as Mr Putin is concerned. It’s not those people he has to worry about. It’s the aforementioned neocon nobheads – whom Chris Hedges called “the pimps of war”.

In your first point you acknowledge the validity of Prof Mearsheimer’s argument, with which I agree, that the Ukraine shambles is the result of US aggression. I agree with your second point, as would Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer has argued that a fair and rational solution to the conflictual situation in eastern Europe would have been a buffer zone of independent states between the west and Russia. But of course, US aggression precluded that option. There is no reliable evidence that Putin targets civilians. That kind of baseless claim is of a piece with the Manichean rhetoric which has been used to “justify” US aggression for much of the past century. Regarding Finland, there’s nothing Putin could do about Finland joining NATO. As Mearsheimer also said, the Ukraine shambles wouldn’t have happened under a US president of JFK’s stature, which is clear from JFK’s American University speech of June 1963 in which he spoke about the need to end the Cold War, not win it. JFK was thus at least 60 years ahead of his time in advocating a multipolar world order instead of a unipolar US dominated world. As James Douglass has cogently elucidated, the heretical nature of that advocacy in the eyes of the US national security state marked JFK out for assassination.

Sandy, Perhaps you should answer the question I asked you about what flaw(s) you see in Prof Mearsheimer's reasoning, rather than deflect by asking questions of others.

It’s disingenuous to use the term “defense” in referring to US foreign policy, because the core tenet of that policy is global dominance – in other words, aggression, not defence. Hence, as Prof Mearsheimer and other US foreign policy experts explained (and any gobdaw with two functioning brain cells could clearly see), NATO expansion in eastern Europe was an existential threat to Russia. In that context, Russia had no choice but to defend itself against further such expansion while there was still time to do so. Mischaracterising Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine as aggression rather than defence is convenient for US neocon nobheads, but it’s disastrous for Ukraine because it underestimates Russian determination to stay the course there.

Sandy, I’ve already explained why Putin has to be a ruthless autocrat. If he wasn’t, the CIA would have plotted his overthrow and the dismemberment of Russia years ago. That was the point of my reference to Che Guevara’s advice to Fidel Castro that he couldn’t afford to have an open society in Cuba. Guevara’s advice was based on what he had seen in Guatemala in 1954 when he had to take refuge in the Argentinian Embassy during the slaughter following the CIA-instigated coup against Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz. The USA is a ruthless kleptocracy which has imposed this form of dystopia on much of the rest of the world. You keep saying the Russian special military operation in Ukraine was unprovoked. Professor John Mearsheimer has explained why that’s not true. Can you please point out the flaw(s) in Prof Mearsheimer’s reasoning?

Thanks for that very interesting post and those links, Paul.

Kirk, I have criticised Ireland for the reasons you mention here and elsewhere. As an anti-authoritarian democrat (with a small 'd') and vegan, I totally reject Irish, American and western kleptocracy and ecocide.

Sandy, I agree with Oliver Stone that Putin is a great leader for his country. I've explained why here and elsewhere, and others including Professor John Mearsheimer have also explained why.

I'm still here, Cliff. It's just that there are worlds beyond your time zone where people have different circadian rhythms.

Are ye still here? I thought ye'd be half way to Ukraine by now. Cowards!

Lads, As Chris and I have said, all of this has already been debated to death elsewhere. I don’t have any more time or energy to go through it all again here with ye. Since ye seem so outraged by the evil, evil Putin and the evil, evil Russians, and since ye seem to have so much time and energy to spend in these rehashed debates, do ye not think ye’d be better off going over to “stand with Ukraine”, put ye’re boots on the ground and bodies on the line. They have a very hungry meat grinder there by all accounts.

@W. Niederhut, @Cliff Varnell and @Sandy Larsen, We’ve debated this ad nauseam elsewhere, so I’ll be as brief as possible here. Putin’s Realpolitik approach to foreign policy and – to some extent – to internal Russian politics has been elucidated by Professor John Mearsheimer among others. I find Mearsheimer’s analysis generally persuasive. Putin’s ruthlessness in respect of internal Russian politics is probably best explained by the long list of “undesirable” foreign leaders assassinated or targeted for assassination by the CIA down through the years. https://brutalproof.net/2019/11/cias-assassination-list/ I remember reading somewhere about Che Guevara advising Fidel Castro that having an open society in Cuba would be suicidal in view of the USA’s policy of global dominance involving the assassination of “undesirable” foreign leaders, regime change and so on. In view of all of this and the USA’s internal kleptocratic political regime – not to mention its being accessory to the assassinations of its own political leaders in the 1960s – I find moralistic finger-pointing at Russia by sanctimonious Americans and westerners generally quite sickening.

Thanks to Paul et al for this fascinating thread.

I know it's an extremely complex metaphor, Cliff, but I'll do my best to explain it. Ukraine is the arm.

Congratulations on getting those responses from two such MSM big beasts.

The question that Putin haters and Russophobes run away from like scalded cats: If you keep poking a bear and the bear eventually reacts by tearing off your arm, who’s to blame?

Are you working for the CIA, Jonathan? It’s supremely ironic that the CIA weaponised the term “conspiracy theory” in order to shut down investigations into their dirty work – the covert operations which were the very definition of conspiracies.

It doesn’t look like Matt is capable of providing those details, Chris. It looks like Matt has been baselessly pillorying Tucker Carlson, simply because Carlson is a default bogeyman for the tribal mainstream Democratic Party supporters.