ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Kirill was a state asset under the USSR and the church an instrument of the state. He remains one for the state today and the church an instrument as well.

The state owned the major industrial and energy assets under the USSR, doling out special positions to political powerbrokers and political allies. The state still owns the major industrial and energy assets, doling out wealth to political powerbrokers and political allies.

Party heads approved who could and couldn't run for positions in the government under the USSR. Party heads approve who can and can't run for positions in the government today.

The state owned the major media outlets under the USSR. The state owns the major media outlets in Russia today.

The list goes on, but as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

---

When even the most aggressively anti-Putin and anti-Russian newspapers and commentators are not making the argument that the USSR and Russ. Federation are the same you should probably drop the losing argument.

1. No would could run for office in the USSR and not be a member of the Communist party. It was a totalitarian system

In the modern Russ Federation there are other parties in the State Duma even if United Russia has the lions share. Its autocratic not totalitarian

[The political system of the Soviet Union took place in a federal single-party soviet socialist republic framework which was characterized by the superior role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only party permitted by the Constitution.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma

2. Despite the similarity in corruption the economic system was drastically different under the USSR and Russ. Fed

[As a socialist state, the Soviet Union did not include open markets. The Soviet Union was a command economy, in which economic decisions were made by the state and not left to the market to decide. During the Soviet era, for example, industrial production was planned by the central government. The government would decide what would be produced, where it would be produced, the quantity produced, the number of workers who would produce it, where the raw materials would come from, and how the final product would be distributed. By mobilizing the entire country to work toward common goals, the USSR was able to achieve the rapid industrialization that it so desired. However, the Soviets underestimated the power and efficiency of free-enterprise capitalism, and their socialist system was undermined by waste, fraud, and corruption.

Another main economic feature of the Soviet Union was collectivized agriculture. The Soviet leaders did not want individual, capitalist farmers to become rich and threaten their economic system. Nor did they want thousands of small, inefficient farms when the country was perpetually unable to feed itself. Instead, they decided to streamline agricultural production into large farm factories. All the farmland in each area was consolidated into a government-owned collective operation....Collectivized agriculture remained the norm in the Soviet Union until the country's dissolution in 1991...

A Russian style of capitalism replaced the social, political, and economic system of the Communist era with a growing market economy. The export of Russia's vast quantities of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and timber, to Europe and the rest of the world helped the country rebound from the economic collapse of the 1990s. Russia has benefited from the recent increase in energy prices, and oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenues..]

[Wealth, once controlled by the political/party elite, was now being shifted to the business elite, a pattern found in most capitalist countries]

https://open.lib.umn.edu/worldgeography/chapter/3-2-the-ussr-and-the-russian-federation/

[One obvious difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is that the Soviet governing elite embraced Marxism-Leninism and its objective of world revolution. Today's Russia is not a messianic power. Its economic system is a rather mundane variety of corrupt crony capitalism, not rigid state socialism. The political system is a conservative autocracy with aspects of a rigged democracy, not a one party dictatorship that brooks no dissent whatsoever.
Russia is hardly a Western style democracy, but neither is it a continuation of the Soviet Union's horrifically brutal totalitarianism. Indeed, the country's political and social philosophy is quite different from that of its predecessor. For example, the Orthodox Church had no meaningful influence during the Soviet era something that was unsurprising, given communism's official policy of atheism. But today, the Orthodox Church has a considerable influence in Putin's Russia, especially on social issues.
The bottom line is that Russia is a conventional, somewhat conservative, power, whereas the Soviet Union was a messianic, totalitarian power. That's a rather large and significant difference, and U.S. policy needs to reflect that realization.]

https://www.cato.org/commentary/russia-not-soviet-union

---

The guy that wrote the Cato article was fired by them for being a Russian shill. True story.

---

Link to that story?

The guardian (not a conservative paper) was describing him as being with CATO recently and using him for expertise






PS

Looks they did part ways.


Do you have proof he was a "Russian shill"?

Or just opposed the war?

And now Ted Galen Carpenter has been fired from Cato, after 27 years there, because he doesn't support US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war. https://t.co/wuG5LIk7Y0

nb @scotthortonshow https://t.co/xOm3Qf3srq pic.twitter.com/fezdkpT9Qj

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 20, 2023

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Kirill was a state asset under the USSR and the church an instrument of the state. He remains one for the state today and the church an instrument as well.

The state owned the major industrial and energy assets under the USSR, doling out special positions to political powerbrokers and political allies. The state still owns the major industrial and energy assets, doling out wealth to political powerbrokers and political allies.

Party heads approved who could and couldn't run for positions in the government under the USSR. Party heads approve who can and can't run for positions in the government today.

The state owned the major media outlets under the USSR. The state owns the major media outlets in Russia today.

The list goes on, but as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

---

When even the most aggressively anti-Putin and anti-Russian newspapers and commentators are not making the argument that the USSR and Russ. Federation are the same you should probably drop the losing argument.

1. No would could run for office in the USSR and not be a member of the Communist party. It was a totalitarian system

In the modern Russ Federation there are other parties in the State Duma even if United Russia has the lions share. Its autocratic not totalitarian

[The political system of the Soviet Union took place in a federal single-party soviet socialist republic framework which was characterized by the superior role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only party permitted by the Constitution.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma

2. Despite the similarity in corruption the economic system was drastically different under the USSR and Russ. Fed

[As a socialist state, the Soviet Union did not include open markets. The Soviet Union was a command economy, in which economic decisions were made by the state and not left to the market to decide. During the Soviet era, for example, industrial production was planned by the central government. The government would decide what would be produced, where it would be produced, the quantity produced, the number of workers who would produce it, where the raw materials would come from, and how the final product would be distributed. By mobilizing the entire country to work toward common goals, the USSR was able to achieve the rapid industrialization that it so desired. However, the Soviets underestimated the power and efficiency of free-enterprise capitalism, and their socialist system was undermined by waste, fraud, and corruption.

Another main economic feature of the Soviet Union was collectivized agriculture. The Soviet leaders did not want individual, capitalist farmers to become rich and threaten their economic system. Nor did they want thousands of small, inefficient farms when the country was perpetually unable to feed itself. Instead, they decided to streamline agricultural production into large farm factories. All the farmland in each area was consolidated into a government-owned collective operation....Collectivized agriculture remained the norm in the Soviet Union until the country's dissolution in 1991...

A Russian style of capitalism replaced the social, political, and economic system of the Communist era with a growing market economy. The export of Russia's vast quantities of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and timber, to Europe and the rest of the world helped the country rebound from the economic collapse of the 1990s. Russia has benefited from the recent increase in energy prices, and oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenues..]

[Wealth, once controlled by the political/party elite, was now being shifted to the business elite, a pattern found in most capitalist countries]

https://open.lib.umn.edu/worldgeography/chapter/3-2-the-ussr-and-the-russian-federation/

[One obvious difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is that the Soviet governing elite embraced Marxism-Leninism and its objective of world revolution. Today's Russia is not a messianic power. Its economic system is a rather mundane variety of corrupt crony capitalism, not rigid state socialism. The political system is a conservative autocracy with aspects of a rigged democracy, not a one party dictatorship that brooks no dissent whatsoever.
Russia is hardly a Western style democracy, but neither is it a continuation of the Soviet Union's horrifically brutal totalitarianism. Indeed, the country's political and social philosophy is quite different from that of its predecessor. For example, the Orthodox Church had no meaningful influence during the Soviet era something that was unsurprising, given communism's official policy of atheism. But today, the Orthodox Church has a considerable influence in Putin's Russia, especially on social issues.
The bottom line is that Russia is a conventional, somewhat conservative, power, whereas the Soviet Union was a messianic, totalitarian power. That's a rather large and significant difference, and U.S. policy needs to reflect that realization.]

https://www.cato.org/commentary/russia-not-soviet-union

---

The guy that wrote the Cato article was fired by them for being a Russian shill. True story.

---

Link to that story?

The guardian (not a conservative paper) was describing him as being with CATO recently and using him for expertise






PS

Looks they did part ways.


Do you have proof he was a "Russian shill"?

Or just opposed the war?

And now Ted Galen Carpenter has been fired from Cato, after 27 years there, because he doesn't support US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war. https://t.co/wuG5LIk7Y0

nb @scotthortonshow https://t.co/xOm3Qf3srq pic.twitter.com/fezdkpT9Qj

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 20, 2023

---

You're answering your own question. Cato still has many contributors who are critics of US support of Ukraine.

Redbrickbear said:

---

Speaking of the Soviets and the Orthodox Church…

So many architectural and religious works of art destroyed

2. Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

Another of the wondrous, Byzantine-influenced domes of the Russian Empire (modern-day Kharkiv, Ukraine).

But this one was demolished by Stalin on his anti-religious campaign that razed thousands of churches. pic.twitter.com/f3PlbfmHaC

— Culture Critic (@Culture_Crit) June 12, 2024

---

Putin working to catch up.

https://www.oikoumene.org/news/500-churches-and-religious-sites-destroyed-in-ukraine-during-the-war

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Kirill was a state asset under the USSR and the church an instrument of the state. He remains one for the state today and the church an instrument as well.

The state owned the major industrial and energy assets under the USSR, doling out special positions to political powerbrokers and political allies. The state still owns the major industrial and energy assets, doling out wealth to political powerbrokers and political allies.

Party heads approved who could and couldn't run for positions in the government under the USSR. Party heads approve who can and can't run for positions in the government today.

The state owned the major media outlets under the USSR. The state owns the major media outlets in Russia today.

The list goes on, but as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

---

When even the most aggressively anti-Putin and anti-Russian newspapers and commentators are not making the argument that the USSR and Russ. Federation are the same you should probably drop the losing argument.

1. No would could run for office in the USSR and not be a member of the Communist party. It was a totalitarian system

In the modern Russ Federation there are other parties in the State Duma even if United Russia has the lions share. Its autocratic not totalitarian

[The political system of the Soviet Union took place in a federal single-party soviet socialist republic framework which was characterized by the superior role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only party permitted by the Constitution.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma

2. Despite the similarity in corruption the economic system was drastically different under the USSR and Russ. Fed

[As a socialist state, the Soviet Union did not include open markets. The Soviet Union was a command economy, in which economic decisions were made by the state and not left to the market to decide. During the Soviet era, for example, industrial production was planned by the central government. The government would decide what would be produced, where it would be produced, the quantity produced, the number of workers who would produce it, where the raw materials would come from, and how the final product would be distributed. By mobilizing the entire country to work toward common goals, the USSR was able to achieve the rapid industrialization that it so desired. However, the Soviets underestimated the power and efficiency of free-enterprise capitalism, and their socialist system was undermined by waste, fraud, and corruption.

Another main economic feature of the Soviet Union was collectivized agriculture. The Soviet leaders did not want individual, capitalist farmers to become rich and threaten their economic system. Nor did they want thousands of small, inefficient farms when the country was perpetually unable to feed itself. Instead, they decided to streamline agricultural production into large farm factories. All the farmland in each area was consolidated into a government-owned collective operation....Collectivized agriculture remained the norm in the Soviet Union until the country's dissolution in 1991...

A Russian style of capitalism replaced the social, political, and economic system of the Communist era with a growing market economy. The export of Russia's vast quantities of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and timber, to Europe and the rest of the world helped the country rebound from the economic collapse of the 1990s. Russia has benefited from the recent increase in energy prices, and oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenues..]

[Wealth, once controlled by the political/party elite, was now being shifted to the business elite, a pattern found in most capitalist countries]

https://open.lib.umn.edu/worldgeography/chapter/3-2-the-ussr-and-the-russian-federation/

[One obvious difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is that the Soviet governing elite embraced Marxism-Leninism and its objective of world revolution. Today's Russia is not a messianic power. Its economic system is a rather mundane variety of corrupt crony capitalism, not rigid state socialism. The political system is a conservative autocracy with aspects of a rigged democracy, not a one party dictatorship that brooks no dissent whatsoever.
Russia is hardly a Western style democracy, but neither is it a continuation of the Soviet Union's horrifically brutal totalitarianism. Indeed, the country's political and social philosophy is quite different from that of its predecessor. For example, the Orthodox Church had no meaningful influence during the Soviet era something that was unsurprising, given communism's official policy of atheism. But today, the Orthodox Church has a considerable influence in Putin's Russia, especially on social issues.
The bottom line is that Russia is a conventional, somewhat conservative, power, whereas the Soviet Union was a messianic, totalitarian power. That's a rather large and significant difference, and U.S. policy needs to reflect that realization.]

https://www.cato.org/commentary/russia-not-soviet-union

---

The guy that wrote the Cato article was fired by them for being a Russian shill. True story.

---

Link to that story?

The guardian (not a conservative paper) was describing him as being with CATO recently and using him for expertise






PS

Looks they did part ways.


Do you have proof he was a "Russian shill"?

Or just opposed the war?

And now Ted Galen Carpenter has been fired from Cato, after 27 years there, because he doesn't support US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war. https://t.co/wuG5LIk7Y0

nb @scotthortonshow https://t.co/xOm3Qf3srq pic.twitter.com/fezdkpT9Qj

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 20, 2023

---

You're answering your own question. Cato still has many contributors who are critics of US support of Ukraine.

---

Who are those contributors?

I would be interested in reading what they have to say

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

Speaking of the Soviets and the Orthodox Church…

So many architectural and religious works of art destroyed

2. Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

Another of the wondrous, Byzantine-influenced domes of the Russian Empire (modern-day Kharkiv, Ukraine).

But this one was demolished by Stalin on his anti-religious campaign that razed thousands of churches. pic.twitter.com/f3PlbfmHaC

— Culture Critic (@Culture_Crit) June 12, 2024

---

Putin working to catch up.

https://www.oikoumene.org/news/500-churches-and-religious-sites-destroyed-in-ukraine-during-the-war

---

Zelensky seems to enjoy played that evil game as well it would seem.

[The Ukrainian authorities responded by raiding churches and monasteries, and launching criminal cases against UOCMP clergy. The country's National Security Council has imposed sanctions on several members of the clergy in Crimea and the Donbas, as well as the head of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, and the church's biggest benefactor, the oligarch Vadim Novinsky.

Hot on the heels of the sanctions, the government moved swiftly to take control of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, the country's holiest site and the seat of the UOCMP.]

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Kirill was a state asset under the USSR and the church an instrument of the state. He remains one for the state today and the church an instrument as well.

The state owned the major industrial and energy assets under the USSR, doling out special positions to political powerbrokers and political allies. The state still owns the major industrial and energy assets, doling out wealth to political powerbrokers and political allies.

Party heads approved who could and couldn't run for positions in the government under the USSR. Party heads approve who can and can't run for positions in the government today.

The state owned the major media outlets under the USSR. The state owns the major media outlets in Russia today.

The list goes on, but as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

---

When even the most aggressively anti-Putin and anti-Russian newspapers and commentators are not making the argument that the USSR and Russ. Federation are the same you should probably drop the losing argument.

1. No would could run for office in the USSR and not be a member of the Communist party. It was a totalitarian system

In the modern Russ Federation there are other parties in the State Duma even if United Russia has the lions share. Its autocratic not totalitarian

[The political system of the Soviet Union took place in a federal single-party soviet socialist republic framework which was characterized by the superior role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only party permitted by the Constitution.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma

2. Despite the similarity in corruption the economic system was drastically different under the USSR and Russ. Fed

[As a socialist state, the Soviet Union did not include open markets. The Soviet Union was a command economy, in which economic decisions were made by the state and not left to the market to decide. During the Soviet era, for example, industrial production was planned by the central government. The government would decide what would be produced, where it would be produced, the quantity produced, the number of workers who would produce it, where the raw materials would come from, and how the final product would be distributed. By mobilizing the entire country to work toward common goals, the USSR was able to achieve the rapid industrialization that it so desired. However, the Soviets underestimated the power and efficiency of free-enterprise capitalism, and their socialist system was undermined by waste, fraud, and corruption.

Another main economic feature of the Soviet Union was collectivized agriculture. The Soviet leaders did not want individual, capitalist farmers to become rich and threaten their economic system. Nor did they want thousands of small, inefficient farms when the country was perpetually unable to feed itself. Instead, they decided to streamline agricultural production into large farm factories. All the farmland in each area was consolidated into a government-owned collective operation....Collectivized agriculture remained the norm in the Soviet Union until the country's dissolution in 1991...

A Russian style of capitalism replaced the social, political, and economic system of the Communist era with a growing market economy. The export of Russia's vast quantities of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and timber, to Europe and the rest of the world helped the country rebound from the economic collapse of the 1990s. Russia has benefited from the recent increase in energy prices, and oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenues..]

[Wealth, once controlled by the political/party elite, was now being shifted to the business elite, a pattern found in most capitalist countries]

https://open.lib.umn.edu/worldgeography/chapter/3-2-the-ussr-and-the-russian-federation/

[One obvious difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is that the Soviet governing elite embraced Marxism-Leninism and its objective of world revolution. Today's Russia is not a messianic power. Its economic system is a rather mundane variety of corrupt crony capitalism, not rigid state socialism. The political system is a conservative autocracy with aspects of a rigged democracy, not a one party dictatorship that brooks no dissent whatsoever.
Russia is hardly a Western style democracy, but neither is it a continuation of the Soviet Union's horrifically brutal totalitarianism. Indeed, the country's political and social philosophy is quite different from that of its predecessor. For example, the Orthodox Church had no meaningful influence during the Soviet era something that was unsurprising, given communism's official policy of atheism. But today, the Orthodox Church has a considerable influence in Putin's Russia, especially on social issues.
The bottom line is that Russia is a conventional, somewhat conservative, power, whereas the Soviet Union was a messianic, totalitarian power. That's a rather large and significant difference, and U.S. policy needs to reflect that realization.]

https://www.cato.org/commentary/russia-not-soviet-union

---

The guy that wrote the Cato article was fired by them for being a Russian shill. True story.

---

Link to that story?

The guardian (not a conservative paper) was describing him as being with CATO recently and using him for expertise






PS

Looks they did part ways.


Do you have proof he was a "Russian shill"?

Or just opposed the war?

And now Ted Galen Carpenter has been fired from Cato, after 27 years there, because he doesn't support US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war. https://t.co/wuG5LIk7Y0

nb @scotthortonshow https://t.co/xOm3Qf3srq pic.twitter.com/fezdkpT9Qj

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 20, 2023

---

You're answering your own question. Cato still has many contributors who are critics of US support of Ukraine.

---

Who are those contributors?

I would be interested in reading what they have to say

---

We may have disagreements, but I have high confidence in your Googling skills. You don't need me to do that for you.

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Kirill was a state asset under the USSR and the church an instrument of the state. He remains one for the state today and the church an instrument as well.

The state owned the major industrial and energy assets under the USSR, doling out special positions to political powerbrokers and political allies. The state still owns the major industrial and energy assets, doling out wealth to political powerbrokers and political allies.

Party heads approved who could and couldn't run for positions in the government under the USSR. Party heads approve who can and can't run for positions in the government today.

The state owned the major media outlets under the USSR. The state owns the major media outlets in Russia today.

The list goes on, but as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

---

When even the most aggressively anti-Putin and anti-Russian newspapers and commentators are not making the argument that the USSR and Russ. Federation are the same you should probably drop the losing argument.

1. No would could run for office in the USSR and not be a member of the Communist party. It was a totalitarian system

In the modern Russ Federation there are other parties in the State Duma even if United Russia has the lions share. Its autocratic not totalitarian

[The political system of the Soviet Union took place in a federal single-party soviet socialist republic framework which was characterized by the superior role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only party permitted by the Constitution.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma

2. Despite the similarity in corruption the economic system was drastically different under the USSR and Russ. Fed

[As a socialist state, the Soviet Union did not include open markets. The Soviet Union was a command economy, in which economic decisions were made by the state and not left to the market to decide. During the Soviet era, for example, industrial production was planned by the central government. The government would decide what would be produced, where it would be produced, the quantity produced, the number of workers who would produce it, where the raw materials would come from, and how the final product would be distributed. By mobilizing the entire country to work toward common goals, the USSR was able to achieve the rapid industrialization that it so desired. However, the Soviets underestimated the power and efficiency of free-enterprise capitalism, and their socialist system was undermined by waste, fraud, and corruption.

Another main economic feature of the Soviet Union was collectivized agriculture. The Soviet leaders did not want individual, capitalist farmers to become rich and threaten their economic system. Nor did they want thousands of small, inefficient farms when the country was perpetually unable to feed itself. Instead, they decided to streamline agricultural production into large farm factories. All the farmland in each area was consolidated into a government-owned collective operation....Collectivized agriculture remained the norm in the Soviet Union until the country's dissolution in 1991...

A Russian style of capitalism replaced the social, political, and economic system of the Communist era with a growing market economy. The export of Russia's vast quantities of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and timber, to Europe and the rest of the world helped the country rebound from the economic collapse of the 1990s. Russia has benefited from the recent increase in energy prices, and oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenues..]

[Wealth, once controlled by the political/party elite, was now being shifted to the business elite, a pattern found in most capitalist countries]

https://open.lib.umn.edu/worldgeography/chapter/3-2-the-ussr-and-the-russian-federation/

[One obvious difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is that the Soviet governing elite embraced Marxism-Leninism and its objective of world revolution. Today's Russia is not a messianic power. Its economic system is a rather mundane variety of corrupt crony capitalism, not rigid state socialism. The political system is a conservative autocracy with aspects of a rigged democracy, not a one party dictatorship that brooks no dissent whatsoever.
Russia is hardly a Western style democracy, but neither is it a continuation of the Soviet Union's horrifically brutal totalitarianism. Indeed, the country's political and social philosophy is quite different from that of its predecessor. For example, the Orthodox Church had no meaningful influence during the Soviet era something that was unsurprising, given communism's official policy of atheism. But today, the Orthodox Church has a considerable influence in Putin's Russia, especially on social issues.
The bottom line is that Russia is a conventional, somewhat conservative, power, whereas the Soviet Union was a messianic, totalitarian power. That's a rather large and significant difference, and U.S. policy needs to reflect that realization.]

https://www.cato.org/commentary/russia-not-soviet-union

---

The guy that wrote the Cato article was fired by them for being a Russian shill. True story.

---

Link to that story?

The guardian (not a conservative paper) was describing him as being with CATO recently and using him for expertise






PS

Looks they did part ways.


Do you have proof he was a "Russian shill"?

Or just opposed the war?

And now Ted Galen Carpenter has been fired from Cato, after 27 years there, because he doesn't support US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war. https://t.co/wuG5LIk7Y0

nb @scotthortonshow https://t.co/xOm3Qf3srq pic.twitter.com/fezdkpT9Qj

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 20, 2023

---

You're answering your own question. Cato still has many contributors who are critics of US support of Ukraine.

---

Who are those contributors?

I would be interested in reading what they have to say

---

We may have disagreements, but I have high confidence in your Googling skills. You don't need me to do that for you.

---

Hey I'm working on it

Can't find any article that say he was fired for being "a Russian shill"

You said that so you must have proof no?

Or at least a link so I can read about it

Panic in Russia after news of new US sanctions against the Russian economy

Currency trading on the Moscow Exchange has been stopped & people are gathering in front of banks to withdraw their savings, fearing that the Ruble will implode

Via @officejjsmart pic.twitter.com/5LoH5tHwnR

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) June 12, 2024

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Kirill was a state asset under the USSR and the church an instrument of the state. He remains one for the state today and the church an instrument as well.

The state owned the major industrial and energy assets under the USSR, doling out special positions to political powerbrokers and political allies. The state still owns the major industrial and energy assets, doling out wealth to political powerbrokers and political allies.

Party heads approved who could and couldn't run for positions in the government under the USSR. Party heads approve who can and can't run for positions in the government today.

The state owned the major media outlets under the USSR. The state owns the major media outlets in Russia today.

The list goes on, but as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

---

When even the most aggressively anti-Putin and anti-Russian newspapers and commentators are not making the argument that the USSR and Russ. Federation are the same you should probably drop the losing argument.

1. No would could run for office in the USSR and not be a member of the Communist party. It was a totalitarian system

In the modern Russ Federation there are other parties in the State Duma even if United Russia has the lions share. Its autocratic not totalitarian

[The political system of the Soviet Union took place in a federal single-party soviet socialist republic framework which was characterized by the superior role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only party permitted by the Constitution.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma

2. Despite the similarity in corruption the economic system was drastically different under the USSR and Russ. Fed

[As a socialist state, the Soviet Union did not include open markets. The Soviet Union was a command economy, in which economic decisions were made by the state and not left to the market to decide. During the Soviet era, for example, industrial production was planned by the central government. The government would decide what would be produced, where it would be produced, the quantity produced, the number of workers who would produce it, where the raw materials would come from, and how the final product would be distributed. By mobilizing the entire country to work toward common goals, the USSR was able to achieve the rapid industrialization that it so desired. However, the Soviets underestimated the power and efficiency of free-enterprise capitalism, and their socialist system was undermined by waste, fraud, and corruption.

Another main economic feature of the Soviet Union was collectivized agriculture. The Soviet leaders did not want individual, capitalist farmers to become rich and threaten their economic system. Nor did they want thousands of small, inefficient farms when the country was perpetually unable to feed itself. Instead, they decided to streamline agricultural production into large farm factories. All the farmland in each area was consolidated into a government-owned collective operation....Collectivized agriculture remained the norm in the Soviet Union until the country's dissolution in 1991...

A Russian style of capitalism replaced the social, political, and economic system of the Communist era with a growing market economy. The export of Russia's vast quantities of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and timber, to Europe and the rest of the world helped the country rebound from the economic collapse of the 1990s. Russia has benefited from the recent increase in energy prices, and oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenues..]

[Wealth, once controlled by the political/party elite, was now being shifted to the business elite, a pattern found in most capitalist countries]

https://open.lib.umn.edu/worldgeography/chapter/3-2-the-ussr-and-the-russian-federation/

[One obvious difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is that the Soviet governing elite embraced Marxism-Leninism and its objective of world revolution. Today's Russia is not a messianic power. Its economic system is a rather mundane variety of corrupt crony capitalism, not rigid state socialism. The political system is a conservative autocracy with aspects of a rigged democracy, not a one party dictatorship that brooks no dissent whatsoever.
Russia is hardly a Western style democracy, but neither is it a continuation of the Soviet Union's horrifically brutal totalitarianism. Indeed, the country's political and social philosophy is quite different from that of its predecessor. For example, the Orthodox Church had no meaningful influence during the Soviet era something that was unsurprising, given communism's official policy of atheism. But today, the Orthodox Church has a considerable influence in Putin's Russia, especially on social issues.
The bottom line is that Russia is a conventional, somewhat conservative, power, whereas the Soviet Union was a messianic, totalitarian power. That's a rather large and significant difference, and U.S. policy needs to reflect that realization.]

https://www.cato.org/commentary/russia-not-soviet-union

---

The guy that wrote the Cato article was fired by them for being a Russian shill. True story.

---

Link to that story?

The guardian (not a conservative paper) was describing him as being with CATO recently and using him for expertise






PS

Looks they did part ways.


Do you have proof he was a "Russian shill"?

Or just opposed the war?

And now Ted Galen Carpenter has been fired from Cato, after 27 years there, because he doesn't support US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war. https://t.co/wuG5LIk7Y0

nb @scotthortonshow https://t.co/xOm3Qf3srq pic.twitter.com/fezdkpT9Qj

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 20, 2023

---

You're answering your own question. Cato still has many contributors who are critics of US support of Ukraine.

---

Who are those contributors?

I would be interested in reading what they have to say

---

We may have disagreements, but I have high confidence in your Googling skills. You don't need me to do that for you.

---

Hey I'm working on it

Can't find any article that say he was fired for being "a Russian shill"

You said that so you must have proof no?

Or at least a link so I can read about it

---

You just pivoted to a different question without answering your original one I responded to. Find those contributors and articles on Ukraine War critiques from CATO?

---

Can you link some articles by other writers at CATO that have called out the hypocrisy and stupidity of this DC funded proxy war?

You said there were other contributors there with realist criticisms of DC war policy….can you link them please?

I would love to read the works of other clear eyed analysts who see this war for the foreign policy disaster that it is….

ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Kirill was a state asset under the USSR and the church an instrument of the state. He remains one for the state today and the church an instrument as well.

The state owned the major industrial and energy assets under the USSR, doling out special positions to political powerbrokers and political allies. The state still owns the major industrial and energy assets, doling out wealth to political powerbrokers and political allies.

Party heads approved who could and couldn't run for positions in the government under the USSR. Party heads approve who can and can't run for positions in the government today.

The state owned the major media outlets under the USSR. The state owns the major media outlets in Russia today.

The list goes on, but as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

---

When even the most aggressively anti-Putin and anti-Russian newspapers and commentators are not making the argument that the USSR and Russ. Federation are the same you should probably drop the losing argument.

1. No would could run for office in the USSR and not be a member of the Communist party. It was a totalitarian system

In the modern Russ Federation there are other parties in the State Duma even if United Russia has the lions share. Its autocratic not totalitarian

[The political system of the Soviet Union took place in a federal single-party soviet socialist republic framework which was characterized by the superior role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only party permitted by the Constitution.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma

2. Despite the similarity in corruption the economic system was drastically different under the USSR and Russ. Fed

[As a socialist state, the Soviet Union did not include open markets. The Soviet Union was a command economy, in which economic decisions were made by the state and not left to the market to decide. During the Soviet era, for example, industrial production was planned by the central government. The government would decide what would be produced, where it would be produced, the quantity produced, the number of workers who would produce it, where the raw materials would come from, and how the final product would be distributed. By mobilizing the entire country to work toward common goals, the USSR was able to achieve the rapid industrialization that it so desired. However, the Soviets underestimated the power and efficiency of free-enterprise capitalism, and their socialist system was undermined by waste, fraud, and corruption.

Another main economic feature of the Soviet Union was collectivized agriculture. The Soviet leaders did not want individual, capitalist farmers to become rich and threaten their economic system. Nor did they want thousands of small, inefficient farms when the country was perpetually unable to feed itself. Instead, they decided to streamline agricultural production into large farm factories. All the farmland in each area was consolidated into a government-owned collective operation....Collectivized agriculture remained the norm in the Soviet Union until the country's dissolution in 1991...

A Russian style of capitalism replaced the social, political, and economic system of the Communist era with a growing market economy. The export of Russia's vast quantities of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and timber, to Europe and the rest of the world helped the country rebound from the economic collapse of the 1990s. Russia has benefited from the recent increase in energy prices, and oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenues..]

[Wealth, once controlled by the political/party elite, was now being shifted to the business elite, a pattern found in most capitalist countries]

https://open.lib.umn.edu/worldgeography/chapter/3-2-the-ussr-and-the-russian-federation/

[One obvious difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is that the Soviet governing elite embraced Marxism-Leninism and its objective of world revolution. Today's Russia is not a messianic power. Its economic system is a rather mundane variety of corrupt crony capitalism, not rigid state socialism. The political system is a conservative autocracy with aspects of a rigged democracy, not a one party dictatorship that brooks no dissent whatsoever.
Russia is hardly a Western style democracy, but neither is it a continuation of the Soviet Union's horrifically brutal totalitarianism. Indeed, the country's political and social philosophy is quite different from that of its predecessor. For example, the Orthodox Church had no meaningful influence during the Soviet era something that was unsurprising, given communism's official policy of atheism. But today, the Orthodox Church has a considerable influence in Putin's Russia, especially on social issues.
The bottom line is that Russia is a conventional, somewhat conservative, power, whereas the Soviet Union was a messianic, totalitarian power. That's a rather large and significant difference, and U.S. policy needs to reflect that realization.]

https://www.cato.org/commentary/russia-not-soviet-union

---

The guy that wrote the Cato article was fired by them for being a Russian shill. True story.

---

Link to that story?

The guardian (not a conservative paper) was describing him as being with CATO recently and using him for expertise






PS

Looks they did part ways.


Do you have proof he was a "Russian shill"?

Or just opposed the war?

And now Ted Galen Carpenter has been fired from Cato, after 27 years there, because he doesn't support US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war. https://t.co/wuG5LIk7Y0

nb @scotthortonshow https://t.co/xOm3Qf3srq pic.twitter.com/fezdkpT9Qj

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 20, 2023

---

You're answering your own question. Cato still has many contributors who are critics of US support of Ukraine.

---

Who are those contributors?

I would be interested in reading what they have to say

---

We may have disagreements, but I have high confidence in your Googling skills. You don't need me to do that for you.

---

Hey I'm working on it

Can't find any article that say he was fired for being "a Russian shill"

You said that so you must have proof no?

Or at least a link so I can read about it

---

I mean the guy openly admits he was fired (and on bad terms as he put it) because of his opposition to the Ukraine War, has numerous articles and tweets on such and even got caught up in promoting some Russian disinformation stuff on social media.


But I'm sure what will now happen is the discussion will turn to the finer points of shilling versus opposing in 3…2…1…

---

You call the guy a "Russian shill" for opposing the Ukraine war then you demand to NOT have a conversation where you even define the term.. explaining how and in what way he is "shilling"…or posting us a link to this "disinformation" you accuse him of sharing

Preemptively trying to protect yourself from being called out and having the explain your accusations in any rational way.

A pretty dishonest way of having a discussion no?

Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

---

Kirill was a state asset under the USSR and the church an instrument of the state. He remains one for the state today and the church an instrument as well.

The state owned the major industrial and energy assets under the USSR, doling out special positions to political powerbrokers and political allies. The state still owns the major industrial and energy assets, doling out wealth to political powerbrokers and political allies.

Party heads approved who could and couldn't run for positions in the government under the USSR. Party heads approve who can and can't run for positions in the government today.

The state owned the major media outlets under the USSR. The state owns the major media outlets in Russia today.

The list goes on, but as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

---

When even the most aggressively anti-Putin and anti-Russian newspapers and commentators are not making the argument that the USSR and Russ. Federation are the same you should probably drop the losing argument.

1. No would could run for office in the USSR and not be a member of the Communist party. It was a totalitarian system

In the modern Russ Federation there are other parties in the State Duma even if United Russia has the lions share. Its autocratic not totalitarian

[The political system of the Soviet Union took place in a federal single-party soviet socialist republic framework which was characterized by the superior role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only party permitted by the Constitution.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma

2. Despite the similarity in corruption the economic system was drastically different under the USSR and Russ. Fed

[As a socialist state, the Soviet Union did not include open markets. The Soviet Union was a command economy, in which economic decisions were made by the state and not left to the market to decide. During the Soviet era, for example, industrial production was planned by the central government. The government would decide what would be produced, where it would be produced, the quantity produced, the number of workers who would produce it, where the raw materials would come from, and how the final product would be distributed. By mobilizing the entire country to work toward common goals, the USSR was able to achieve the rapid industrialization that it so desired. However, the Soviets underestimated the power and efficiency of free-enterprise capitalism, and their socialist system was undermined by waste, fraud, and corruption.

Another main economic feature of the Soviet Union was collectivized agriculture. The Soviet leaders did not want individual, capitalist farmers to become rich and threaten their economic system. Nor did they want thousands of small, inefficient farms when the country was perpetually unable to feed itself. Instead, they decided to streamline agricultural production into large farm factories. All the farmland in each area was consolidated into a government-owned collective operation....Collectivized agriculture remained the norm in the Soviet Union until the country's dissolution in 1991...

A Russian style of capitalism replaced the social, political, and economic system of the Communist era with a growing market economy. The export of Russia's vast quantities of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and timber, to Europe and the rest of the world helped the country rebound from the economic collapse of the 1990s. Russia has benefited from the recent increase in energy prices, and oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenues..]

[Wealth, once controlled by the political/party elite, was now being shifted to the business elite, a pattern found in most capitalist countries]

https://open.lib.umn.edu/worldgeography/chapter/3-2-the-ussr-and-the-russian-federation/

[One obvious difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is that the Soviet governing elite embraced Marxism-Leninism and its objective of world revolution. Today's Russia is not a messianic power. Its economic system is a rather mundane variety of corrupt crony capitalism, not rigid state socialism. The political system is a conservative autocracy with aspects of a rigged democracy, not a one party dictatorship that brooks no dissent whatsoever.
Russia is hardly a Western style democracy, but neither is it a continuation of the Soviet Union's horrifically brutal totalitarianism. Indeed, the country's political and social philosophy is quite different from that of its predecessor. For example, the Orthodox Church had no meaningful influence during the Soviet era something that was unsurprising, given communism's official policy of atheism. But today, the Orthodox Church has a considerable influence in Putin's Russia, especially on social issues.
The bottom line is that Russia is a conventional, somewhat conservative, power, whereas the Soviet Union was a messianic, totalitarian power. That's a rather large and significant difference, and U.S. policy needs to reflect that realization.]

https://www.cato.org/commentary/russia-not-soviet-union

---

The guy that wrote the Cato article was fired by them for being a Russian shill. True story.

---

Link to that story?

The guardian (not a conservative paper) was describing him as being with CATO recently and using him for expertise






PS

Looks they did part ways.


Do you have proof he was a "Russian shill"?

Or just opposed the war?

And now Ted Galen Carpenter has been fired from Cato, after 27 years there, because he doesn't support US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war. https://t.co/wuG5LIk7Y0

nb @scotthortonshow https://t.co/xOm3Qf3srq pic.twitter.com/fezdkpT9Qj

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 20, 2023

---

You're answering your own question. Cato still has many contributors who are critics of US support of Ukraine.

---

Who are those contributors?

I would be interested in reading what they have to say

---

We may have disagreements, but I have high confidence in your Googling skills. You don't need me to do that for you.

---

Hey I'm working on it

Can't find any article that say he was fired for being "a Russian shill"

You said that so you must have proof no?

Or at least a link so I can read about it

---

You just pivoted to a different question without answering your original one I responded to. Find those contributors and articles on Ukraine War critiques from CATO?

---

Can you link some articles by other writers at CATO that have called out the hypocrisy and stupidity of this DC funded proxy war?

You said there were other contributors there with realist criticisms of DC war policy….can you link them please?

I would love to read the works of other clear eyed analysts who see this war for the foreign policy disaster that it is….

---

You're more than capable of Googling for your own confirmation bias.

sombear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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Realitybites said:

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sombear said:

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As I've illustrated, very much similar in numerous ways that count. I'm still waiting on that list of major differences in name and practice.

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Well, here's the most important one: under the Bolsheviks, the USSR martyred millions of Christians and destroyed around 43,000 churches. In modern Russia, Christianity is flourishing.

---

He literally thinks the Orthodox Church under the Soviets had a similar relationship as the Orthodox Church under the Russian Federation

---

We have our back and forth, which I enjoy, but you're usually honest. You know this is not what I said. We had multiple exchanges on this very topic. What I said, which really is not controversial except evidently in this thread, is that (1) for most of the Soviet empire, the treatment of ROC and its members was nowhere near as bad in practice as it was on paper, (2) the relationship between the state and church improved dramatically starting in the 70s, and (3) there were about as many ROC members then as now.

---

the primary dynamic to evaluate is in relationships between the ROC and societal elites.

An ordinary Russian going to church in the USSR was not in any existential risk. It would only be a problem for him as a compounding factor should he run into some kind of difficulty (real or contrived) as an aggravating factor - " this man is not a good communist...." But no Russian who wanted to climb the ladder at work or in politics could have anything to do with the ROC. Faith was a risk, a weakness that would be exploited by your career competitors at every opportunity to shut you aside, take you out..... Now, we see that Russian elites are using, rather than suppressing, the ROC institution as a pillar of legitimacy.

Doc Holliday said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ron.reagan said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ron.reagan said:

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How many pro-hamas/anti-us rallies do you attend a week?

---

You're the liberal internationalist on here…so you tell me.

I'm not interested in supporting either side of a Semitic blood fueled on the other side of the planet.

---

The only thing you could point out liberal about me was I hurt your Russian feelings

---

I only have American feelings there little guy

You should try putting America first for a change before some other foreign country like Ukraine or Israel

---

you should try not putting Russia first......

---

Name me one way I have ever "put Russia first"

Advocating for less wasteful spending and a more rational foreign policy is in the interest of America and the American people first and foremost

---

Russia invades Ukraine to subsume it in entirety? It's the natural order of things.
We send help to Ukraine? it's empire!

The Maidan protests weren't caused by Russian interference in Ukrainian politics (to reject an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian Parliament that he'd promised for years to sign). Oh no. It was caused by interference from Victoria Nuland.

Yanukovich signs an agreement with the political opposition to end the Maiden, then flees the country. the Ukrainian Parliament then formally removes him from office and forms an interim government followed by elections. You describe the whole thing as a CIA-led coup d'etat.

I could go on a bit. Russia can do no wrong in Ukraine, and we have a moral obligation to let them.

---

1. You assume the war is to "subsume" the entirely of Ukraine into Russia. For all we know its just a regime change operation to install a friendly government in Kyiv.

Not much different than the war DC waged in Iraq.

You don't see how to most countries in the world the actions of DC and Moscow seem very similar (invade who they want and over throw governments they don like)
The stated goal (see annexations) is to subsume parts of Ukraine. The obvious implicit goal, both from statements and actions, was to move the remnant of Ukraine toward Belarus status. And it is fairly obvious that Belarus is a client leaning toward return to Russian polity.

2. The Maidan protests of course had a native element to them (so do our own BLM protests) but the fact that you and others refuse to deal with the role of Victoria Nuland and the CIA/State Department in those protests just makes it seem like you don't want any criticism spoken of about ruling class. DC has spent billions on Ukraine to influence their internal political system (for good or bad)
Neither Nuland nor CIA organized unarmed crowds to fight police and paramilitary units for days. No evidence. There was no "leader" of that. Names please. What you completely ignore is that those leaderless crowds did not take power after Yanukovich fled. Nope. Yanukovich was removed and replaced by entirely constitutional processes.....by existing elected leadership in an interim unity coalition of elected parties. At literally every step of analysis, facts blow your presumption clean out of the water. There was no coup. There was no change in constitutional order. Just spontaneous riots when Yanukovich at the last minute (due to Russian meddling) refused to sign an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian parliament, a bill which had overwhelming public support, for years, a bill he'd made repeated promises to sign, in campaigns and in office.
It was RUSSIAN MEDDLING which caused the Maidan, not American meddling!

But no one ever said Russia was not active in Ukraine...hat is the whole point....Russia has always been there on the political level...its DC getting itself involved in the country that is new and outside our traditional area.
You keep issuing that platitude with studious indifference to the real world. We were involved at the breakup of the USSR, were we not? We were involved in the disposition of Ukranian nukes, were we not? We are a part of Nato, are we not? Ukraine is a strategic question for Nato, is it not? And on and on and on. Ukraine does not belong to Russia. It is a sovereign country recognized by the entire world.

3. I never said it was a completely thought up and executed CIA coup...Ukraine (like our own country was political-cultural divided) yet from the perspective of the ethic russians in the East of the country and the powers that be in Moscow that protest/coup in Kyiv was a massive seismic event in the internal politics of Ukraine.
Stop it with the motte & bailey. Your entire argument is premised on the idea that we orchestrated the Maidan. You say it just like you did above "the role of Nuland/CIA." Well, were their actions dispositive or not?

How many voters in the East of the country looked at what happened in Kyiv and said "well even when we vote our guy in they just use street thugs to throw him out"
about half. And Russia exploited that with little green men to destabilize the province, then invade it. Which of course, is our fault, according to you.

Example...lets say you were an average conservative American in flyover country and you watched as the BLM protesters drove Trump from power in summer of 2020 how would you feel? What if you then found out that the Chinese communists had been giving billions to Leftists NGOs and Leftists activist groups on the ground. What if Chinese politicians had flown into DC to give encouragement to the protestors? What if Chinese bureaucrats were seen on the streets handing out sweats?
The proper analog would be this: the MAGA movement drove Trump from power for NOT signing a bill that would fully fund the wall and build the infrastructure to conduct mass deportations like he promised, because the Mexico (controlled by drug cartels) paid him to balk at it. And then, after he left and RDS was sworn in and started actually building wall and deporting people, Mexico invaded to take New Mexico and Arizona. Yeah, the public would be pretty upset about that. People from all across the political spectrum would line up to go fight the Mexican Army and take back Arizona and New Mexico.

Would you come away from that bloody event thinking everything was on the up and up?
You are letting false premises lead you to sophomoric conclusions.

---

A governing majority of Ukrainians wanted to join the EU. That number has risen, thanks the the Russian invasion of their country. It is in our interest that Ukraine belong to EU rather than some notional Russian equivalent. it is in our interest that Russians not have any more military bases in Ukraine. it is in our interest that if Ukraine cannot be non-aligned, that it is aligned with us rather than Russia. All very simple, obvious facts......

Ukraine has fought Russia to remain independent many times. We are not obligated to stand by and let them lose this one just because they've lost others. We are in fact obligated to do what is good for us. And a Ukraine aligned with us is good for us. That getting to that point involves destroying tens of thousands of tanks and arty tubes and killing a generation of Russians?.....well that is tens of thousands of tanks and tubes and a generation of Russian soldiers that we no longer have to plan to destroy in central Europe. That we will have to help rebuild Ukrainian cities rather than Baltic cities, Polish cities, Romanian cities, etc......that is an entirely noble endeavor. It's why we engage in alliance. To deter, and if necessary defeat threats.

---

This 'good guys vs. bad guys' bs has got to stop. Its all bad guys.

We're not fighting to keep Ukraine independent. We're fighting to own them.

You have to fight for peace so the bankers can make $$ on the bombs and then loans to the country for the rebuild, and when they cant pay the debt, the bankers take the REAL ASSETS. Same playbook has been used for centuries. Warriors and fighters are being eliminated, resistance to the western machine is being culled on all fronts.

If Russia owns them, then oligarchs run the show, and there's a VERY TINY chance they are more powerful and become a marginally larger threat to Europe.

If the west owns them, we flood their country with anti Judeo-Christian immigrants and spread our woke dogma just like we've done all over Europe for quite some time now.

Lets just skip to the end and set aside $5 trillion, get directly involved in this war, avoid peace and spread the woke gospel as the American people continue to be wage slaves battling money printing to make this all possible.

---

if we're going to get into cynical moral equivalence, then let's say it this way: better Ukraine be controlled by our oligarchs than the Russian oligarchs, since only former will prevent Russian armies from deploying along the Polish and Romanian borders.

Doc Holliday said:

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Realitybites said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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I have just been notified by US Congressman @RepJimBanks that I am listed on an enemy of the state list compiled by a Ukrainian organization

This organization has received funding from the US government pic.twitter.com/DAnLyxTSlX

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 11, 2024

---

Well, a little disappointed I didn't make it.

Tell Zelensky to...

---

Seems like everyone here doesn't care that Zelensky suspending elections because of war...I suppose that means they won't care if Biden did the same thing if we are in direct war.

---

Did Britain hold elections during WWII?

whiterock said:

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Doc Holliday said:

---

Realitybites said:

---

Doc Holliday said:

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I have just been notified by US Congressman @RepJimBanks that I am listed on an enemy of the state list compiled by a Ukrainian organization

This organization has received funding from the US government pic.twitter.com/DAnLyxTSlX

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 11, 2024

---

Well, a little disappointed I didn't make it.

Tell Zelensky to...

---

Seems like everyone here doesn't care that Zelensky suspending elections because of war...I suppose that means they won't care if Biden did the same thing if we are in direct war.

---

Did Britain hold elections during WWII?

---

They were invaded. Would we have elections in parts of AZ, NM and TX were occupied? Or focus on regaining control? We have never been invaded in modern times like that, hard to hold that against them.

Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ron.reagan said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ron.reagan said:

---

How many pro-hamas/anti-us rallies do you attend a week?

---

You're the liberal internationalist on here…so you tell me.

I'm not interested in supporting either side of a Semitic blood fueled on the other side of the planet.

---

The only thing you could point out liberal about me was I hurt your Russian feelings

---

I only have American feelings there little guy

You should try putting America first for a change before some other foreign country like Ukraine or Israel

---

you should try not putting Russia first......

---

Name me one way I have ever "put Russia first"

Advocating for less wasteful spending and a more rational foreign policy is in the interest of America and the American people first and foremost

---

Russia invades Ukraine to subsume it in entirety? It's the natural order of things.
We send help to Ukraine? it's empire!

The Maidan protests weren't caused by Russian interference in Ukrainian politics (to reject an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian Parliament that he'd promised for years to sign). Oh no. It was caused by interference from Victoria Nuland.

Yanukovich signs an agreement with the political opposition to end the Maiden, then flees the country. the Ukrainian Parliament then formally removes him from office and forms an interim government followed by elections. You describe the whole thing as a CIA-led coup d'etat.

I could go on a bit. Russia can do no wrong in Ukraine, and we have a moral obligation to let them.

---

1. You assume the war is to "subsume" the entirely of Ukraine into Russia. For all we know its just a regime change operation to install a friendly government in Kyiv.

Not much different than the war DC waged in Iraq.

You don't see how to most countries in the world the actions of DC and Moscow seem very similar (invade who they want and over throw governments they don like)
The stated goal (see annexations) is to subsume parts of Ukraine. The obvious implicit goal, both from statements and actions, was to move the remnant of Ukraine toward Belarus status. And it is fairly obvious that Belarus is a client leaning toward return to Russian polity.

2. The Maidan protests of course had a native element to them (so do our own BLM protests) but the fact that you and others refuse to deal with the role of Victoria Nuland and the CIA/State Department in those protests just makes it seem like you don't want any criticism spoken of about ruling class. DC has spent billions on Ukraine to influence their internal political system (for good or bad)
Neither Nuland nor CIA organized unarmed crowds to fight police and paramilitary units for days. No evidence. There was no "leader" of that. Names please. What you completely ignore is that those leaderless crowds did not take power after Yanukovich fled. Nope. Yanukovich was removed and replaced by entirely constitutional processes.....by existing elected leadership in an interim unity coalition of elected parties. At literally every step of analysis, facts blow your presumption clean out of the water. There was no coup. There was no change in constitutional order. Just spontaneous riots when Yanukovich at the last minute (due to Russian meddling) refused to sign an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian parliament, a bill which had overwhelming public support, for years, a bill he'd made repeated promises to sign, in campaigns and in office.
It was RUSSIAN MEDDLING which caused the Maidan, not American meddling!

But no one ever said Russia was not active in Ukraine...hat is the whole point....Russia has always been there on the political level...its DC getting itself involved in the country that is new and outside our traditional area.
You keep issuing that platitude with studious indifference to the real world. We were involved at the breakup of the USSR, were we not? We were involved in the disposition of Ukranian nukes, were we not? We are a part of Nato, are we not? Ukraine is a strategic question for Nato, is it not? And on and on and on. Ukraine does not belong to Russia. It is a sovereign country recognized by the entire world.

3. I never said it was a completely thought up and executed CIA coup...Ukraine (like our own country was political-cultural divided) yet from the perspective of the ethic russians in the East of the country and the powers that be in Moscow that protest/coup in Kyiv was a massive seismic event in the internal politics of Ukraine.
Stop it with the motte & bailey. Your entire argument is premised on the idea that we orchestrated the Maidan. You say it just like you did above "the role of Nuland/CIA." Well, were their actions dispositive or not?

How many voters in the East of the country looked at what happened in Kyiv and said "well even when we vote our guy in they just use street thugs to throw him out"
about half. And Russia exploited that with little green men to destabilize the province, then invade it. Which of course, is our fault, according to you.

Example...lets say you were an average conservative American in flyover country and you watched as the BLM protesters drove Trump from power in summer of 2020 how would you feel? What if you then found out that the Chinese communists had been giving billions to Leftists NGOs and Leftists activist groups on the ground. What if Chinese politicians had flown into DC to give encouragement to the protestors? What if Chinese bureaucrats were seen on the streets handing out sweats?
The proper analog would be this: the MAGA movement drove Trump from power for NOT signing a bill that would fully fund the wall and build the infrastructure to conduct mass deportations like he promised, because the Mexico (controlled by drug cartels) paid him to balk at it. And then, after he left and RDS was sworn in and started actually building wall and deporting people, Mexico invaded to take New Mexico and Arizona. Yeah, the public would be pretty upset about that. People from all across the political spectrum would line up to go fight the Mexican Army and take back Arizona and New Mexico.

Would you come away from that bloody event thinking everything was on the up and up?
You are letting false premises lead you to sophomoric conclusions.

---

A governing majority of Ukrainians wanted to join the EU. That number has risen, thanks the the Russian invasion of their country. It is in our interest that Ukraine belong to EU rather than some notional Russian equivalent. it is in our interest that Russians not have any more military bases in Ukraine. it is in our interest that if Ukraine cannot be non-aligned, that it is aligned with us rather than Russia. All very simple, obvious facts......

Ukraine has fought Russia to remain independent many times. We are not obligated to stand by and let them lose this one just because they've lost others. We are in fact obligated to do what is good for us. And a Ukraine aligned with us is good for us. That getting to that point involves destroying tens of thousands of tanks and arty tubes and killing a generation of Russians?.....well that is tens of thousands of tanks and tubes and a generation of Russian soldiers that we no longer have to plan to destroy in central Europe. That we will have to help rebuild Ukrainian cities rather than Baltic cities, Polish cities, Romanian cities, etc......that is an entirely noble endeavor. It's why we engage in alliance. To deter, and if necessary defeat threats.

---

And we are not obligated to get involved.

Also its reasonable to believe that most Ukrainians in the central and western parts of the country have now become even MORE pro-Western in their views since the invasion.

But also reasonable to believe that the eastern part of the country (Donbas & Crimea) have become MORE pro-Moscow in its orientation since the war
Uh, no. The opposite. I mean, we have a remarkably consistent stream of evidence to the contrary.
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukrainian-unity-identity-poll-russian-invasion/32001348.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/russia-war-ukraine-national-identity/671685/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/11/ukraine-poll-war-russia-stalemate/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nana.12986

In a sane world a UN monitored partition of the country along lines that are reasonable to the voters would be on the table. (we did it in Serbia with Kosovo)
The Ukrainians want Donbas and Crimea back.

Kyvi can't control the 20% of the east that wants out of Ukraine. Russian can't absorb the 80% of the rest of Ukraine that wants to be with the USA-EU
The East does not "want out" of Ukraine........

---

Ukraine has fought Russia for independence before, many times. The Russian invasion has galvanized Ukrainian nationalism to historic highs....80-90% levels on a range of issue, from generic questions of identity to more specific questions about refusing to cede territory for peace.

your error is here = you have over-weighed "Russian speaking" with "national identity." Poll after poll after poll shows that Russian-speaking Ukrainians identify as Ukrainian nationals at rates similar to Ukrainian speaking Ukrainians.

whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ron.reagan said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ron.reagan said:

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How many pro-hamas/anti-us rallies do you attend a week?

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You're the liberal internationalist on here…so you tell me.

I'm not interested in supporting either side of a Semitic blood fueled on the other side of the planet.

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The only thing you could point out liberal about me was I hurt your Russian feelings

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I only have American feelings there little guy

You should try putting America first for a change before some other foreign country like Ukraine or Israel

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you should try not putting Russia first......

---

Name me one way I have ever "put Russia first"

Advocating for less wasteful spending and a more rational foreign policy is in the interest of America and the American people first and foremost

---

Russia invades Ukraine to subsume it in entirety? It's the natural order of things.
We send help to Ukraine? it's empire!

The Maidan protests weren't caused by Russian interference in Ukrainian politics (to reject an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian Parliament that he'd promised for years to sign). Oh no. It was caused by interference from Victoria Nuland.

Yanukovich signs an agreement with the political opposition to end the Maiden, then flees the country. the Ukrainian Parliament then formally removes him from office and forms an interim government followed by elections. You describe the whole thing as a CIA-led coup d'etat.

I could go on a bit. Russia can do no wrong in Ukraine, and we have a moral obligation to let them.

---

1. You assume the war is to "subsume" the entirely of Ukraine into Russia. For all we know its just a regime change operation to install a friendly government in Kyiv.

Not much different than the war DC waged in Iraq.

You don't see how to most countries in the world the actions of DC and Moscow seem very similar (invade who they want and over throw governments they don like)
The stated goal (see annexations) is to subsume parts of Ukraine. The obvious implicit goal, both from statements and actions, was to move the remnant of Ukraine toward Belarus status. And it is fairly obvious that Belarus is a client leaning toward return to Russian polity.

2. The Maidan protests of course had a native element to them (so do our own BLM protests) but the fact that you and others refuse to deal with the role of Victoria Nuland and the CIA/State Department in those protests just makes it seem like you don't want any criticism spoken of about ruling class. DC has spent billions on Ukraine to influence their internal political system (for good or bad)
Neither Nuland nor CIA organized unarmed crowds to fight police and paramilitary units for days. No evidence. There was no "leader" of that. Names please. What you completely ignore is that those leaderless crowds did not take power after Yanukovich fled. Nope. Yanukovich was removed and replaced by entirely constitutional processes.....by existing elected leadership in an interim unity coalition of elected parties. At literally every step of analysis, facts blow your presumption clean out of the water. There was no coup. There was no change in constitutional order. Just spontaneous riots when Yanukovich at the last minute (due to Russian meddling) refused to sign an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian parliament, a bill which had overwhelming public support, for years, a bill he'd made repeated promises to sign, in campaigns and in office.
It was RUSSIAN MEDDLING which caused the Maidan, not American meddling!

But no one ever said Russia was not active in Ukraine...hat is the whole point....Russia has always been there on the political level...its DC getting itself involved in the country that is new and outside our traditional area.
You keep issuing that platitude with studious indifference to the real world. We were involved at the breakup of the USSR, were we not? We were involved in the disposition of Ukranian nukes, were we not? We are a part of Nato, are we not? Ukraine is a strategic question for Nato, is it not? And on and on and on. Ukraine does not belong to Russia. It is a sovereign country recognized by the entire world.

3. I never said it was a completely thought up and executed CIA coup...Ukraine (like our own country was political-cultural divided) yet from the perspective of the ethic russians in the East of the country and the powers that be in Moscow that protest/coup in Kyiv was a massive seismic event in the internal politics of Ukraine.
Stop it with the motte & bailey. Your entire argument is premised on the idea that we orchestrated the Maidan. You say it just like you did above "the role of Nuland/CIA." Well, were their actions dispositive or not?

How many voters in the East of the country looked at what happened in Kyiv and said "well even when we vote our guy in they just use street thugs to throw him out"
about half. And Russia exploited that with little green men to destabilize the province, then invade it. Which of course, is our fault, according to you.

Example...lets say you were an average conservative American in flyover country and you watched as the BLM protesters drove Trump from power in summer of 2020 how would you feel? What if you then found out that the Chinese communists had been giving billions to Leftists NGOs and Leftists activist groups on the ground. What if Chinese politicians had flown into DC to give encouragement to the protestors? What if Chinese bureaucrats were seen on the streets handing out sweats?
The proper analog would be this: the MAGA movement drove Trump from power for NOT signing a bill that would fully fund the wall and build the infrastructure to conduct mass deportations like he promised, because the Mexico (controlled by drug cartels) paid him to balk at it. And then, after he left and RDS was sworn in and started actually building wall and deporting people, Mexico invaded to take New Mexico and Arizona. Yeah, the public would be pretty upset about that. People from all across the political spectrum would line up to go fight the Mexican Army and take back Arizona and New Mexico.

Would you come away from that bloody event thinking everything was on the up and up?
You are letting false premises lead you to sophomoric conclusions.

---

A governing majority of Ukrainians wanted to join the EU. That number has risen, thanks the the Russian invasion of their country. It is in our interest that Ukraine belong to EU rather than some notional Russian equivalent. it is in our interest that Russians not have any more military bases in Ukraine. it is in our interest that if Ukraine cannot be non-aligned, that it is aligned with us rather than Russia. All very simple, obvious facts......

Ukraine has fought Russia to remain independent many times. We are not obligated to stand by and let them lose this one just because they've lost others. We are in fact obligated to do what is good for us. And a Ukraine aligned with us is good for us. That getting to that point involves destroying tens of thousands of tanks and arty tubes and killing a generation of Russians?.....well that is tens of thousands of tanks and tubes and a generation of Russian soldiers that we no longer have to plan to destroy in central Europe. That we will have to help rebuild Ukrainian cities rather than Baltic cities, Polish cities, Romanian cities, etc......that is an entirely noble endeavor. It's why we engage in alliance. To deter, and if necessary defeat threats.

---

And we are not obligated to get involved.

Also its reasonable to believe that most Ukrainians in the central and western parts of the country have now become even MORE pro-Western in their views since the invasion.

But also reasonable to believe that the eastern part of the country (Donbas & Crimea) have become MORE pro-Moscow in its orientation since the war
Uh, no. The opposite. I mean, we have a remarkably consistent stream of evidence to the contrary.
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukrainian-unity-identity-poll-russian-invasion/32001348.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/russia-war-ukraine-national-identity/671685/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/11/ukraine-poll-war-russia-stalemate/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nana.12986

In a sane world a UN monitored partition of the country along lines that are reasonable to the voters would be on the table. (we did it in Serbia with Kosovo)
The Ukrainians want Donbas and Crimea back.

Kyvi can't control the 20% of the east that wants out of Ukraine. Russian can't absorb the 80% of the rest of Ukraine that wants to be with the USA-EU
The East does not "want out" of Ukraine........

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Ukraine has fought Russia for independence before, many times. The Russian invasion has galvanized Ukrainian nationalism to historic highs....80-90% levels on a range of issue, from generic questions of identity to more specific questions about refusing to cede territory for peace.

.

---

Possibly so

But has it galvanized such opinion in the East?

Even if Kyiv could retake Donbas and Crimea…how would they hold if with intense local opposition?

ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Kirill was a state asset under the USSR and the church an instrument of the state. He remains one for the state today and the church an instrument as well.

The state owned the major industrial and energy assets under the USSR, doling out special positions to political powerbrokers and political allies. The state still owns the major industrial and energy assets, doling out wealth to political powerbrokers and political allies.

Party heads approved who could and couldn't run for positions in the government under the USSR. Party heads approve who can and can't run for positions in the government today.

The state owned the major media outlets under the USSR. The state owns the major media outlets in Russia today.

The list goes on, but as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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When even the most aggressively anti-Putin and anti-Russian newspapers and commentators are not making the argument that the USSR and Russ. Federation are the same you should probably drop the losing argument.

1. No would could run for office in the USSR and not be a member of the Communist party. It was a totalitarian system

In the modern Russ Federation there are other parties in the State Duma even if United Russia has the lions share. Its autocratic not totalitarian

[The political system of the Soviet Union took place in a federal single-party soviet socialist republic framework which was characterized by the superior role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only party permitted by the Constitution.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma

2. Despite the similarity in corruption the economic system was drastically different under the USSR and Russ. Fed

[As a socialist state, the Soviet Union did not include open markets. The Soviet Union was a command economy, in which economic decisions were made by the state and not left to the market to decide. During the Soviet era, for example, industrial production was planned by the central government. The government would decide what would be produced, where it would be produced, the quantity produced, the number of workers who would produce it, where the raw materials would come from, and how the final product would be distributed. By mobilizing the entire country to work toward common goals, the USSR was able to achieve the rapid industrialization that it so desired. However, the Soviets underestimated the power and efficiency of free-enterprise capitalism, and their socialist system was undermined by waste, fraud, and corruption.

Another main economic feature of the Soviet Union was collectivized agriculture. The Soviet leaders did not want individual, capitalist farmers to become rich and threaten their economic system. Nor did they want thousands of small, inefficient farms when the country was perpetually unable to feed itself. Instead, they decided to streamline agricultural production into large farm factories. All the farmland in each area was consolidated into a government-owned collective operation....Collectivized agriculture remained the norm in the Soviet Union until the country's dissolution in 1991...

A Russian style of capitalism replaced the social, political, and economic system of the Communist era with a growing market economy. The export of Russia's vast quantities of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and timber, to Europe and the rest of the world helped the country rebound from the economic collapse of the 1990s. Russia has benefited from the recent increase in energy prices, and oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenues..]

[Wealth, once controlled by the political/party elite, was now being shifted to the business elite, a pattern found in most capitalist countries]

https://open.lib.umn.edu/worldgeography/chapter/3-2-the-ussr-and-the-russian-federation/

[One obvious difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is that the Soviet governing elite embraced Marxism-Leninism and its objective of world revolution. Today's Russia is not a messianic power. Its economic system is a rather mundane variety of corrupt crony capitalism, not rigid state socialism. The political system is a conservative autocracy with aspects of a rigged democracy, not a one party dictatorship that brooks no dissent whatsoever.
Russia is hardly a Western style democracy, but neither is it a continuation of the Soviet Union's horrifically brutal totalitarianism. Indeed, the country's political and social philosophy is quite different from that of its predecessor. For example, the Orthodox Church had no meaningful influence during the Soviet era something that was unsurprising, given communism's official policy of atheism. But today, the Orthodox Church has a considerable influence in Putin's Russia, especially on social issues.
The bottom line is that Russia is a conventional, somewhat conservative, power, whereas the Soviet Union was a messianic, totalitarian power. That's a rather large and significant difference, and U.S. policy needs to reflect that realization.]

https://www.cato.org/commentary/russia-not-soviet-union

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The guy that wrote the Cato article was fired by them for being a Russian shill. True story.

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Link to that story?

The guardian (not a conservative paper) was describing him as being with CATO recently and using him for expertise






PS

Looks they did part ways.


Do you have proof he was a "Russian shill"?

Or just opposed the war?

And now Ted Galen Carpenter has been fired from Cato, after 27 years there, because he doesn't support US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war. https://t.co/wuG5LIk7Y0

nb @scotthortonshow https://t.co/xOm3Qf3srq pic.twitter.com/fezdkpT9Qj

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 20, 2023

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You're answering your own question. Cato still has many contributors who are critics of US support of Ukraine.

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Who are those contributors?

I would be interested in reading what they have to say

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We may have disagreements, but I have high confidence in your Googling skills. You don't need me to do that for you.

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Hey I'm working on it

Can't find any article that say he was fired for being "a Russian shill"

You said that so you must have proof no?

Or at least a link so I can read about it

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You just pivoted to a different question without answering your original one I responded to. Find those contributors and articles on Ukraine War critiques from CATO?

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Can you link some articles by other writers at CATO that have called out the hypocrisy and stupidity of this DC funded proxy war?

You said there were other contributors there with realist criticisms of DC war policy….can you link them please?

I would love to read the works of other clear eyed analysts who see this war for the foreign policy disaster that it is….

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You're more than capable of Googling for your own confirmation bias.

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That sounds like you're dodging the question and you don't have those links….

Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ron.reagan said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ron.reagan said:

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How many pro-hamas/anti-us rallies do you attend a week?

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You're the liberal internationalist on here…so you tell me.

I'm not interested in supporting either side of a Semitic blood fueled on the other side of the planet.

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The only thing you could point out liberal about me was I hurt your Russian feelings

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I only have American feelings there little guy

You should try putting America first for a change before some other foreign country like Ukraine or Israel

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you should try not putting Russia first......

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Name me one way I have ever "put Russia first"

Advocating for less wasteful spending and a more rational foreign policy is in the interest of America and the American people first and foremost

---

Russia invades Ukraine to subsume it in entirety? It's the natural order of things.
We send help to Ukraine? it's empire!

The Maidan protests weren't caused by Russian interference in Ukrainian politics (to reject an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian Parliament that he'd promised for years to sign). Oh no. It was caused by interference from Victoria Nuland.

Yanukovich signs an agreement with the political opposition to end the Maiden, then flees the country. the Ukrainian Parliament then formally removes him from office and forms an interim government followed by elections. You describe the whole thing as a CIA-led coup d'etat.

I could go on a bit. Russia can do no wrong in Ukraine, and we have a moral obligation to let them.

---

1. You assume the war is to "subsume" the entirely of Ukraine into Russia. For all we know its just a regime change operation to install a friendly government in Kyiv.

Not much different than the war DC waged in Iraq.

You don't see how to most countries in the world the actions of DC and Moscow seem very similar (invade who they want and over throw governments they don like)
The stated goal (see annexations) is to subsume parts of Ukraine. The obvious implicit goal, both from statements and actions, was to move the remnant of Ukraine toward Belarus status. And it is fairly obvious that Belarus is a client leaning toward return to Russian polity.

2. The Maidan protests of course had a native element to them (so do our own BLM protests) but the fact that you and others refuse to deal with the role of Victoria Nuland and the CIA/State Department in those protests just makes it seem like you don't want any criticism spoken of about ruling class. DC has spent billions on Ukraine to influence their internal political system (for good or bad)
Neither Nuland nor CIA organized unarmed crowds to fight police and paramilitary units for days. No evidence. There was no "leader" of that. Names please. What you completely ignore is that those leaderless crowds did not take power after Yanukovich fled. Nope. Yanukovich was removed and replaced by entirely constitutional processes.....by existing elected leadership in an interim unity coalition of elected parties. At literally every step of analysis, facts blow your presumption clean out of the water. There was no coup. There was no change in constitutional order. Just spontaneous riots when Yanukovich at the last minute (due to Russian meddling) refused to sign an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian parliament, a bill which had overwhelming public support, for years, a bill he'd made repeated promises to sign, in campaigns and in office.
It was RUSSIAN MEDDLING which caused the Maidan, not American meddling!

But no one ever said Russia was not active in Ukraine...hat is the whole point....Russia has always been there on the political level...its DC getting itself involved in the country that is new and outside our traditional area.
You keep issuing that platitude with studious indifference to the real world. We were involved at the breakup of the USSR, were we not? We were involved in the disposition of Ukranian nukes, were we not? We are a part of Nato, are we not? Ukraine is a strategic question for Nato, is it not? And on and on and on. Ukraine does not belong to Russia. It is a sovereign country recognized by the entire world.

3. I never said it was a completely thought up and executed CIA coup...Ukraine (like our own country was political-cultural divided) yet from the perspective of the ethic russians in the East of the country and the powers that be in Moscow that protest/coup in Kyiv was a massive seismic event in the internal politics of Ukraine.
Stop it with the motte & bailey. Your entire argument is premised on the idea that we orchestrated the Maidan. You say it just like you did above "the role of Nuland/CIA." Well, were their actions dispositive or not?

How many voters in the East of the country looked at what happened in Kyiv and said "well even when we vote our guy in they just use street thugs to throw him out"
about half. And Russia exploited that with little green men to destabilize the province, then invade it. Which of course, is our fault, according to you.

Example...lets say you were an average conservative American in flyover country and you watched as the BLM protesters drove Trump from power in summer of 2020 how would you feel? What if you then found out that the Chinese communists had been giving billions to Leftists NGOs and Leftists activist groups on the ground. What if Chinese politicians had flown into DC to give encouragement to the protestors? What if Chinese bureaucrats were seen on the streets handing out sweats?
The proper analog would be this: the MAGA movement drove Trump from power for NOT signing a bill that would fully fund the wall and build the infrastructure to conduct mass deportations like he promised, because the Mexico (controlled by drug cartels) paid him to balk at it. And then, after he left and RDS was sworn in and started actually building wall and deporting people, Mexico invaded to take New Mexico and Arizona. Yeah, the public would be pretty upset about that. People from all across the political spectrum would line up to go fight the Mexican Army and take back Arizona and New Mexico.

Would you come away from that bloody event thinking everything was on the up and up?
You are letting false premises lead you to sophomoric conclusions.

---

A governing majority of Ukrainians wanted to join the EU. That number has risen, thanks the the Russian invasion of their country. It is in our interest that Ukraine belong to EU rather than some notional Russian equivalent. it is in our interest that Russians not have any more military bases in Ukraine. it is in our interest that if Ukraine cannot be non-aligned, that it is aligned with us rather than Russia. All very simple, obvious facts......

Ukraine has fought Russia to remain independent many times. We are not obligated to stand by and let them lose this one just because they've lost others. We are in fact obligated to do what is good for us. And a Ukraine aligned with us is good for us. That getting to that point involves destroying tens of thousands of tanks and arty tubes and killing a generation of Russians?.....well that is tens of thousands of tanks and tubes and a generation of Russian soldiers that we no longer have to plan to destroy in central Europe. That we will have to help rebuild Ukrainian cities rather than Baltic cities, Polish cities, Romanian cities, etc......that is an entirely noble endeavor. It's why we engage in alliance. To deter, and if necessary defeat threats.

---

And we are not obligated to get involved.

Also its reasonable to believe that most Ukrainians in the central and western parts of the country have now become even MORE pro-Western in their views since the invasion.

But also reasonable to believe that the eastern part of the country (Donbas & Crimea) have become MORE pro-Moscow in its orientation since the war
Uh, no. The opposite. I mean, we have a remarkably consistent stream of evidence to the contrary.
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukrainian-unity-identity-poll-russian-invasion/32001348.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/russia-war-ukraine-national-identity/671685/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/11/ukraine-poll-war-russia-stalemate/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nana.12986

In a sane world a UN monitored partition of the country along lines that are reasonable to the voters would be on the table. (we did it in Serbia with Kosovo)
The Ukrainians want Donbas and Crimea back.

Kyvi can't control the 20% of the east that wants out of Ukraine. Russian can't absorb the 80% of the rest of Ukraine that wants to be with the USA-EU
The East does not "want out" of Ukraine........

---

Ukraine has fought Russia for independence before, many times. The Russian invasion has galvanized Ukrainian nationalism to historic highs....80-90% levels on a range of issue, from generic questions of identity to more specific questions about refusing to cede territory for peace.

.

---

Possibly so

But has it galvanized such opinion in the East?

Even if Kyiv could retake Donbas and Crimea…how would they hold if with intense local opposition?

---

Most polling shows slightly lower but still strong levels of Ukrainian nationalism, which is remarkable given that so many Ukrainians in occupied areas have been deported to Siberia. There is nothing about being occupied by Russia that increases affection for Russians. Russians are a people who invade and steal toilets to send back home to mamma.....

Crimea would be easy. You just deport all the Russians, a sizeable majority of which would likely do so on their own. Then you declare it a military zone and require residence permits so you can control demography to prevent what happened in 2014. the lack of a land bridge to Russia would make it quite difficult for them to deploy little green men to destabilize.

Donbas, with a long land border with Russia.....that would be a challenge. I would give up some of it, well short of the Dnieper and Crimean approaches, to avoid the hassle to constant struggle, but the Ukrainians are still not inclined to cede the point.

ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Kirill was a state asset under the USSR and the church an instrument of the state. He remains one for the state today and the church an instrument as well.

The state owned the major industrial and energy assets under the USSR, doling out special positions to political powerbrokers and political allies. The state still owns the major industrial and energy assets, doling out wealth to political powerbrokers and political allies.

Party heads approved who could and couldn't run for positions in the government under the USSR. Party heads approve who can and can't run for positions in the government today.

The state owned the major media outlets under the USSR. The state owns the major media outlets in Russia today.

The list goes on, but as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

---

When even the most aggressively anti-Putin and anti-Russian newspapers and commentators are not making the argument that the USSR and Russ. Federation are the same you should probably drop the losing argument.

1. No would could run for office in the USSR and not be a member of the Communist party. It was a totalitarian system

In the modern Russ Federation there are other parties in the State Duma even if United Russia has the lions share. Its autocratic not totalitarian

[The political system of the Soviet Union took place in a federal single-party soviet socialist republic framework which was characterized by the superior role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only party permitted by the Constitution.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma

2. Despite the similarity in corruption the economic system was drastically different under the USSR and Russ. Fed

[As a socialist state, the Soviet Union did not include open markets. The Soviet Union was a command economy, in which economic decisions were made by the state and not left to the market to decide. During the Soviet era, for example, industrial production was planned by the central government. The government would decide what would be produced, where it would be produced, the quantity produced, the number of workers who would produce it, where the raw materials would come from, and how the final product would be distributed. By mobilizing the entire country to work toward common goals, the USSR was able to achieve the rapid industrialization that it so desired. However, the Soviets underestimated the power and efficiency of free-enterprise capitalism, and their socialist system was undermined by waste, fraud, and corruption.

Another main economic feature of the Soviet Union was collectivized agriculture. The Soviet leaders did not want individual, capitalist farmers to become rich and threaten their economic system. Nor did they want thousands of small, inefficient farms when the country was perpetually unable to feed itself. Instead, they decided to streamline agricultural production into large farm factories. All the farmland in each area was consolidated into a government-owned collective operation....Collectivized agriculture remained the norm in the Soviet Union until the country's dissolution in 1991...

A Russian style of capitalism replaced the social, political, and economic system of the Communist era with a growing market economy. The export of Russia's vast quantities of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and timber, to Europe and the rest of the world helped the country rebound from the economic collapse of the 1990s. Russia has benefited from the recent increase in energy prices, and oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenues..]

[Wealth, once controlled by the political/party elite, was now being shifted to the business elite, a pattern found in most capitalist countries]

https://open.lib.umn.edu/worldgeography/chapter/3-2-the-ussr-and-the-russian-federation/

[One obvious difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is that the Soviet governing elite embraced Marxism-Leninism and its objective of world revolution. Today's Russia is not a messianic power. Its economic system is a rather mundane variety of corrupt crony capitalism, not rigid state socialism. The political system is a conservative autocracy with aspects of a rigged democracy, not a one party dictatorship that brooks no dissent whatsoever.
Russia is hardly a Western style democracy, but neither is it a continuation of the Soviet Union's horrifically brutal totalitarianism. Indeed, the country's political and social philosophy is quite different from that of its predecessor. For example, the Orthodox Church had no meaningful influence during the Soviet era something that was unsurprising, given communism's official policy of atheism. But today, the Orthodox Church has a considerable influence in Putin's Russia, especially on social issues.
The bottom line is that Russia is a conventional, somewhat conservative, power, whereas the Soviet Union was a messianic, totalitarian power. That's a rather large and significant difference, and U.S. policy needs to reflect that realization.]

https://www.cato.org/commentary/russia-not-soviet-union

---

The guy that wrote the Cato article was fired by them for being a Russian shill. True story.

---

Link to that story?

The guardian (not a conservative paper) was describing him as being with CATO recently and using him for expertise






PS

Looks they did part ways.


Do you have proof he was a "Russian shill"?

Or just opposed the war?

And now Ted Galen Carpenter has been fired from Cato, after 27 years there, because he doesn't support US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war. https://t.co/wuG5LIk7Y0

nb @scotthortonshow https://t.co/xOm3Qf3srq pic.twitter.com/fezdkpT9Qj

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 20, 2023

---

You're answering your own question. Cato still has many contributors who are critics of US support of Ukraine.

---

Who are those contributors?

I would be interested in reading what they have to say

---

We may have disagreements, but I have high confidence in your Googling skills. You don't need me to do that for you.

---

Hey I'm working on it

Can't find any article that say he was fired for being "a Russian shill"

You said that so you must have proof no?

Or at least a link so I can read about it

---

I mean the guy openly admits he was fired (and on bad terms as he put it) because of his opposition to the Ukraine War, has numerous articles and tweets on such and even got caught up in promoting some Russian disinformation stuff on social media.


But I'm sure what will now happen is the discussion will turn to the finer points of shilling versus opposing in 3…2…1…

---

You call the guy a "Russian shill" for opposing the Ukraine war then you demand to NOT have a conversation where you even define the term.. explaining how and in what way he is "shilling"…or posting us a link to this "disinformation" you accuse him of sharing

Preemptively trying to protect yourself from being called out and having the explain your accusations in any rational way.

A pretty dishonest way of having a discussion no?

---

Dishonest?? LOL. Some things speak for themselves,.

---

I'd say so

You dropped in to attack the author of an article explaining to you the differences between the USSR and the modern Russian Federation….to call the author a shill and accuse him of posting disinformation.

When asked for evidence you ducked it and continue to do so.

That's pretty dishonest

Redbrickbear said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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ron.reagan said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Chechnya is part of the Russian Federation.

One China has been recognized under US policy since 1972.

---

No it hasn't.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/96th-congress/house-bill/2479

First line:

"Taiwan Relations Act - Declares it to be the policy of the United States to preserve and promote extensive, close, and friendly commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people on Taiwan, as well as the people on the China mainland and all other people of the Western Pacific area."


later:

"Stipulates that the absence of diplomatic relations with or recognition of Taiwan shall not affect U.S. laws relating to Taiwan. "

That is One China policy in the same way North Korea has a democratic republic.

---

China and Russia only understand one thing, strength. They go about it different ways, but it is the same mentality, they will take as much as you give. They rely on the US and NATO playing the diplomatic, reasonable and want peace game. All the talk is just that talk, until you stop them from invading Nations, making islands in the S China Sea, stealing tech, and so on. This play nice and they will play nice what Putin and Xi are counting on.

---

They understand diplomacy exponentially better than we do. Russia has some of the top diplomats in the world where we have mostly amateurs.

---

I don't know if they have good diplomats...or if its more like other nations just want to trade with Russia for its natural resources.

But many other countries are sitting out this conflict

---

Russian Diplomats Are Eating America's Lunch
By JAMES BRUNO
April 16, 2014

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is fairly typical. A graduate of the prestigious Moscow Institute for International Relations (known by its Russian acronym, MGIMO) and 42-year Foreign Ministry veteran, Lavrov speaks fluent English as well as Sinhalese, Dhiveli and French. A former U.S. ambassador who had dealt with Lavrov at the United Nations described him to me as disciplined, witty and charming, a diplomat so skilled "he runs rings around us in the multilateral sphere."

Russia has always taken diplomacy and its diplomats seriously. America, on the other hand, does not. Of this country's 28 diplomatic missions in NATO capitals (of which 26 are either currently filled by an ambassador or have nominees waiting to be confirmed), 16 are, or will be, headed by political appointees; only one ambassador to a major NATO ally, Turkey, is a career diplomat. Fourteen ambassadors got their jobs in return for raising big money for President Obama's election campaigns, or worked as his aides. A conservative estimate of personal and bundled donations by these fundraisers is $20 million (based on figures from the New York Times, Federal Election Commission and AllGov). The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, a former Microsoft executive, bundled more than $4.3 million.

By contrast, all but two of Moscow's ambassadors to NATO capitals are career diplomats. And the two Russian equivalents of political appointees (in Latvia and Slovakia) have 6 and 17 years of diplomatic experience respectively. The total number of years of diplomatic experience of Russia's 28 ambassadors to NATO nations is 960 years, averaging 34 years per incumbent. The cumulative years of relevant experience of America's ambassadors are 331, averaging 12 years per individual. Russia has 26 NATO ambassadors with 20-plus years of diplomatic service; the United States has 10. Furthermore, 16 American envoys have five years, or fewer, of diplomatic service. The figure for Russia: zero. Five U.S. NATO posts currently have no ambassador. None of Russia's is vacant. With Michael McFaul's departure in February, there is no U.S. ambassador in Moscow at the moment.

Domestically, the situation is equally worrisome. Three-quarters of the top policy and management positions at the State Department currently are occupied by non-diplomats, mainly Democratic Party activists or liberal think tankers. "Most are competent, but must pass an ideological test to be appointed," a former senior official who worked with Obama's appointees at State told me. "These positions," she added, "are handed out based on party connections and loyalty." In the hands of these decision-makers, all major foreign policy issues are viewed through an "ideological prism as opposed to an eye toward the long-term interests of the United States," she said. The White House's National Security Council staff, furthermore, has ballooned from about four dozen three decades ago to more than twice that today, a shift that has had the effect of concentrating power in the White House, and infusing key decisions with political calculations.

By contrast, the Russian Foreign Ministry is staffed top to bottom with career diplomats.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/04/russias-diplomats-are-better-than-ours-105773/

Sam Lowry said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

ron.reagan said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Chechnya is part of the Russian Federation.

One China has been recognized under US policy since 1972.

---

No it hasn't.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/96th-congress/house-bill/2479

First line:

"Taiwan Relations Act - Declares it to be the policy of the United States to preserve and promote extensive, close, and friendly commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people on Taiwan, as well as the people on the China mainland and all other people of the Western Pacific area."


later:

"Stipulates that the absence of diplomatic relations with or recognition of Taiwan shall not affect U.S. laws relating to Taiwan. "

That is One China policy in the same way North Korea has a democratic republic.

---

China and Russia only understand one thing, strength. They go about it different ways, but it is the same mentality, they will take as much as you give. They rely on the US and NATO playing the diplomatic, reasonable and want peace game. All the talk is just that talk, until you stop them from invading Nations, making islands in the S China Sea, stealing tech, and so on. This play nice and they will play nice what Putin and Xi are counting on.

---

They understand diplomacy exponentially better than we do. Russia has some of the top diplomats in the world where we have mostly amateurs.

---

I don't know if they have good diplomats...or if its more like other nations just want to trade with Russia for its natural resources.

But many other countries are sitting out this conflict

---

Russian Diplomats Are Eating America's Lunch
By JAMES BRUNO
April 16, 2014

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is fairly typical. A graduate of the prestigious Moscow Institute for International Relations (known by its Russian acronym, MGIMO) and 42-year Foreign Ministry veteran, Lavrov speaks fluent English as well as Sinhalese, Dhiveli and French. A former U.S. ambassador who had dealt with Lavrov at the United Nations described him to me as disciplined, witty and charming, a diplomat so skilled "he runs rings around us in the multilateral sphere."

Russia has always taken diplomacy and its diplomats seriously. America, on the other hand, does not. Of this country's 28 diplomatic missions in NATO capitals (of which 26 are either currently filled by an ambassador or have nominees waiting to be confirmed), 16 are, or will be, headed by political appointees; only one ambassador to a major NATO ally, Turkey, is a career diplomat. Fourteen ambassadors got their jobs in return for raising big money for President Obama's election campaigns, or worked as his aides. A conservative estimate of personal and bundled donations by these fundraisers is $20 million (based on figures from the New York Times, Federal Election Commission and AllGov). The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, a former Microsoft executive, bundled more than $4.3 million.

By contrast, all but two of Moscow's ambassadors to NATO capitals are career diplomats. And the two Russian equivalents of political appointees (in Latvia and Slovakia) have 6 and 17 years of diplomatic experience respectively. The total number of years of diplomatic experience of Russia's 28 ambassadors to NATO nations is 960 years, averaging 34 years per incumbent. The cumulative years of relevant experience of America's ambassadors are 331, averaging 12 years per individual. Russia has 26 NATO ambassadors with 20-plus years of diplomatic service; the United States has 10. Furthermore, 16 American envoys have five years, or fewer, of diplomatic service. The figure for Russia: zero. Five U.S. NATO posts currently have no ambassador. None of Russia's is vacant. With Michael McFaul's departure in February, there is no U.S. ambassador in Moscow at the moment.

Domestically, the situation is equally worrisome. Three-quarters of the top policy and management positions at the State Department currently are occupied by non-diplomats, mainly Democratic Party activists or liberal think tankers. "Most are competent, but must pass an ideological test to be appointed," a former senior official who worked with Obama's appointees at State told me. "These positions," she added, "are handed out based on party connections and loyalty." In the hands of these decision-makers, all major foreign policy issues are viewed through an "ideological prism as opposed to an eye toward the long-term interests of the United States," she said. The White House's National Security Council staff, furthermore, has ballooned from about four dozen three decades ago to more than twice that today, a shift that has had the effect of concentrating power in the White House, and infusing key decisions with political calculations.

By contrast, the Russian Foreign Ministry is staffed top to bottom with career diplomats.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/04/russias-diplomats-are-better-than-ours-105773/

---

That is super interesting

Thanks for the article

whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ron.reagan said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ron.reagan said:

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How many pro-hamas/anti-us rallies do you attend a week?

---

You're the liberal internationalist on here…so you tell me.

I'm not interested in supporting either side of a Semitic blood fueled on the other side of the planet.

---

The only thing you could point out liberal about me was I hurt your Russian feelings

---

I only have American feelings there little guy

You should try putting America first for a change before some other foreign country like Ukraine or Israel

---

you should try not putting Russia first......

---

Name me one way I have ever "put Russia first"

Advocating for less wasteful spending and a more rational foreign policy is in the interest of America and the American people first and foremost

---

Russia invades Ukraine to subsume it in entirety? It's the natural order of things.
We send help to Ukraine? it's empire!

The Maidan protests weren't caused by Russian interference in Ukrainian politics (to reject an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian Parliament that he'd promised for years to sign). Oh no. It was caused by interference from Victoria Nuland.

Yanukovich signs an agreement with the political opposition to end the Maiden, then flees the country. the Ukrainian Parliament then formally removes him from office and forms an interim government followed by elections. You describe the whole thing as a CIA-led coup d'etat.

I could go on a bit. Russia can do no wrong in Ukraine, and we have a moral obligation to let them.

---

1. You assume the war is to "subsume" the entirely of Ukraine into Russia. For all we know its just a regime change operation to install a friendly government in Kyiv.

Not much different than the war DC waged in Iraq.

You don't see how to most countries in the world the actions of DC and Moscow seem very similar (invade who they want and over throw governments they don like)
The stated goal (see annexations) is to subsume parts of Ukraine. The obvious implicit goal, both from statements and actions, was to move the remnant of Ukraine toward Belarus status. And it is fairly obvious that Belarus is a client leaning toward return to Russian polity.

2. The Maidan protests of course had a native element to them (so do our own BLM protests) but the fact that you and others refuse to deal with the role of Victoria Nuland and the CIA/State Department in those protests just makes it seem like you don't want any criticism spoken of about ruling class. DC has spent billions on Ukraine to influence their internal political system (for good or bad)
Neither Nuland nor CIA organized unarmed crowds to fight police and paramilitary units for days. No evidence. There was no "leader" of that. Names please. What you completely ignore is that those leaderless crowds did not take power after Yanukovich fled. Nope. Yanukovich was removed and replaced by entirely constitutional processes.....by existing elected leadership in an interim unity coalition of elected parties. At literally every step of analysis, facts blow your presumption clean out of the water. There was no coup. There was no change in constitutional order. Just spontaneous riots when Yanukovich at the last minute (due to Russian meddling) refused to sign an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian parliament, a bill which had overwhelming public support, for years, a bill he'd made repeated promises to sign, in campaigns and in office.
It was RUSSIAN MEDDLING which caused the Maidan, not American meddling!

But no one ever said Russia was not active in Ukraine...hat is the whole point....Russia has always been there on the political level...its DC getting itself involved in the country that is new and outside our traditional area.
You keep issuing that platitude with studious indifference to the real world. We were involved at the breakup of the USSR, were we not? We were involved in the disposition of Ukranian nukes, were we not? We are a part of Nato, are we not? Ukraine is a strategic question for Nato, is it not? And on and on and on. Ukraine does not belong to Russia. It is a sovereign country recognized by the entire world.

3. I never said it was a completely thought up and executed CIA coup...Ukraine (like our own country was political-cultural divided) yet from the perspective of the ethic russians in the East of the country and the powers that be in Moscow that protest/coup in Kyiv was a massive seismic event in the internal politics of Ukraine.
Stop it with the motte & bailey. Your entire argument is premised on the idea that we orchestrated the Maidan. You say it just like you did above "the role of Nuland/CIA." Well, were their actions dispositive or not?

How many voters in the East of the country looked at what happened in Kyiv and said "well even when we vote our guy in they just use street thugs to throw him out"
about half. And Russia exploited that with little green men to destabilize the province, then invade it. Which of course, is our fault, according to you.

Example...lets say you were an average conservative American in flyover country and you watched as the BLM protesters drove Trump from power in summer of 2020 how would you feel? What if you then found out that the Chinese communists had been giving billions to Leftists NGOs and Leftists activist groups on the ground. What if Chinese politicians had flown into DC to give encouragement to the protestors? What if Chinese bureaucrats were seen on the streets handing out sweats?
The proper analog would be this: the MAGA movement drove Trump from power for NOT signing a bill that would fully fund the wall and build the infrastructure to conduct mass deportations like he promised, because the Mexico (controlled by drug cartels) paid him to balk at it. And then, after he left and RDS was sworn in and started actually building wall and deporting people, Mexico invaded to take New Mexico and Arizona. Yeah, the public would be pretty upset about that. People from all across the political spectrum would line up to go fight the Mexican Army and take back Arizona and New Mexico.

Would you come away from that bloody event thinking everything was on the up and up?
You are letting false premises lead you to sophomoric conclusions.

---

A governing majority of Ukrainians wanted to join the EU.

---

So did Yanukovych. Just not on the predatory terms that we tried to dictate.

whiterock said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ron.reagan said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ron.reagan said:

---

How many pro-hamas/anti-us rallies do you attend a week?

---

You're the liberal internationalist on here…so you tell me.

I'm not interested in supporting either side of a Semitic blood fueled on the other side of the planet.

---

The only thing you could point out liberal about me was I hurt your Russian feelings

---

I only have American feelings there little guy

You should try putting America first for a change before some other foreign country like Ukraine or Israel

---

you should try not putting Russia first......

---

Name me one way I have ever "put Russia first"

Advocating for less wasteful spending and a more rational foreign policy is in the interest of America and the American people first and foremost

---

Russia invades Ukraine to subsume it in entirety? It's the natural order of things.
We send help to Ukraine? it's empire!

The Maidan protests weren't caused by Russian interference in Ukrainian politics (to reject an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian Parliament that he'd promised for years to sign). Oh no. It was caused by interference from Victoria Nuland.

Yanukovich signs an agreement with the political opposition to end the Maiden, then flees the country. the Ukrainian Parliament then formally removes him from office and forms an interim government followed by elections. You describe the whole thing as a CIA-led coup d'etat.

I could go on a bit. Russia can do no wrong in Ukraine, and we have a moral obligation to let them.

---

1. You assume the war is to "subsume" the entirely of Ukraine into Russia. For all we know its just a regime change operation to install a friendly government in Kyiv.

Not much different than the war DC waged in Iraq.

You don't see how to most countries in the world the actions of DC and Moscow seem very similar (invade who they want and over throw governments they don like)
The stated goal (see annexations) is to subsume parts of Ukraine. The obvious implicit goal, both from statements and actions, was to move the remnant of Ukraine toward Belarus status. And it is fairly obvious that Belarus is a client leaning toward return to Russian polity.

2. The Maidan protests of course had a native element to them (so do our own BLM protests) but the fact that you and others refuse to deal with the role of Victoria Nuland and the CIA/State Department in those protests just makes it seem like you don't want any criticism spoken of about ruling class. DC has spent billions on Ukraine to influence their internal political system (for good or bad)
Neither Nuland nor CIA organized unarmed crowds to fight police and paramilitary units for days. No evidence. There was no "leader" of that. Names please. What you completely ignore is that those leaderless crowds did not take power after Yanukovich fled. Nope. Yanukovich was removed and replaced by entirely constitutional processes.....by existing elected leadership in an interim unity coalition of elected parties. At literally every step of analysis, facts blow your presumption clean out of the water. There was no coup. There was no change in constitutional order. Just spontaneous riots when Yanukovich at the last minute (due to Russian meddling) refused to sign an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian parliament, a bill which had overwhelming public support, for years, a bill he'd made repeated promises to sign, in campaigns and in office.
It was RUSSIAN MEDDLING which caused the Maidan, not American meddling!

But no one ever said Russia was not active in Ukraine...hat is the whole point....Russia has always been there on the political level...its DC getting itself involved in the country that is new and outside our traditional area.
You keep issuing that platitude with studious indifference to the real world. We were involved at the breakup of the USSR, were we not? We were involved in the disposition of Ukranian nukes, were we not? We are a part of Nato, are we not? Ukraine is a strategic question for Nato, is it not? And on and on and on. Ukraine does not belong to Russia. It is a sovereign country recognized by the entire world.

3. I never said it was a completely thought up and executed CIA coup...Ukraine (like our own country was political-cultural divided) yet from the perspective of the ethic russians in the East of the country and the powers that be in Moscow that protest/coup in Kyiv was a massive seismic event in the internal politics of Ukraine.
Stop it with the motte & bailey. Your entire argument is premised on the idea that we orchestrated the Maidan. You say it just like you did above "the role of Nuland/CIA." Well, were their actions dispositive or not?

How many voters in the East of the country looked at what happened in Kyiv and said "well even when we vote our guy in they just use street thugs to throw him out"
about half. And Russia exploited that with little green men to destabilize the province, then invade it. Which of course, is our fault, according to you.

Example...lets say you were an average conservative American in flyover country and you watched as the BLM protesters drove Trump from power in summer of 2020 how would you feel? What if you then found out that the Chinese communists had been giving billions to Leftists NGOs and Leftists activist groups on the ground. What if Chinese politicians had flown into DC to give encouragement to the protestors? What if Chinese bureaucrats were seen on the streets handing out sweats?
The proper analog would be this: the MAGA movement drove Trump from power for NOT signing a bill that would fully fund the wall and build the infrastructure to conduct mass deportations like he promised, because the Mexico (controlled by drug cartels) paid him to balk at it. And then, after he left and RDS was sworn in and started actually building wall and deporting people, Mexico invaded to take New Mexico and Arizona. Yeah, the public would be pretty upset about that. People from all across the political spectrum would line up to go fight the Mexican Army and take back Arizona and New Mexico.

Would you come away from that bloody event thinking everything was on the up and up?
You are letting false premises lead you to sophomoric conclusions.

---

A governing majority of Ukrainians wanted to join the EU. That number has risen, thanks the the Russian invasion of their country. It is in our interest that Ukraine belong to EU rather than some notional Russian equivalent. it is in our interest that Russians not have any more military bases in Ukraine. it is in our interest that if Ukraine cannot be non-aligned, that it is aligned with us rather than Russia. All very simple, obvious facts......

Ukraine has fought Russia to remain independent many times. We are not obligated to stand by and let them lose this one just because they've lost others. We are in fact obligated to do what is good for us. And a Ukraine aligned with us is good for us. That getting to that point involves destroying tens of thousands of tanks and arty tubes and killing a generation of Russians?.....well that is tens of thousands of tanks and tubes and a generation of Russian soldiers that we no longer have to plan to destroy in central Europe. That we will have to help rebuild Ukrainian cities rather than Baltic cities, Polish cities, Romanian cities, etc......that is an entirely noble endeavor. It's why we engage in alliance. To deter, and if necessary defeat threats.

---

This 'good guys vs. bad guys' bs has got to stop. Its all bad guys.

We're not fighting to keep Ukraine independent. We're fighting to own them.

You have to fight for peace so the bankers can make $$ on the bombs and then loans to the country for the rebuild, and when they cant pay the debt, the bankers take the REAL ASSETS. Same playbook has been used for centuries. Warriors and fighters are being eliminated, resistance to the western machine is being culled on all fronts.

If Russia owns them, then oligarchs run the show, and there's a VERY TINY chance they are more powerful and become a marginally larger threat to Europe.

If the west owns them, we flood their country with anti Judeo-Christian immigrants and spread our woke dogma just like we've done all over Europe for quite some time now.

Lets just skip to the end and set aside $5 trillion, get directly involved in this war, avoid peace and spread the woke gospel as the American people continue to be wage slaves battling money printing to make this all possible.

---

if we're going to get into cynical moral equivalence, then let's say it this way: better Ukraine be controlled by our oligarchs than the Russian oligarchs, since only former will prevent Russian armies from deploying along the Polish and Romanian borders.

---

At great cost.

I'm not sure how having 100,000 missiles that haven't been serviced in a decade, aged out warheads, dud munitions, fighter planes that have had their payloads and flight time decreased by green regs, and watching Ukraine turn into Syrias is a great strategy.

The endless weapons support to Ukraine has got to be hurting the our ability to deter China from invading Taiwan and win if a conflict with China did break out. Surely it will take a decade or so starting from now to develop the human capital and stockpiles, and now we have enormous competition for light/heavy metals, etc. Example Korea.

This isn't the America you grew up with. It's a highly dysfunctional self serving government.

On the other hand, maybe this is true and Russia is very weak. If so, they're never going to attack Poland or Romania. Or really what's happening is the west needed to convince (lie) to the public that Ukraine stopping Russia is an easy task to garner support and less backlash.


At the end of the day my opinion doesn't matter, and we will spend trillions and way too many men will die when this is all over.

Doc Holliday said:

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whiterock said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ron.reagan said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

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ron.reagan said:

---

How many pro-hamas/anti-us rallies do you attend a week?

---

You're the liberal internationalist on here…so you tell me.

I'm not interested in supporting either side of a Semitic blood fueled on the other side of the planet.

---

The only thing you could point out liberal about me was I hurt your Russian feelings

---

I only have American feelings there little guy

You should try putting America first for a change before some other foreign country like Ukraine or Israel

---

you should try not putting Russia first......

---

Name me one way I have ever "put Russia first"

Advocating for less wasteful spending and a more rational foreign policy is in the interest of America and the American people first and foremost

---

Russia invades Ukraine to subsume it in entirety? It's the natural order of things.
We send help to Ukraine? it's empire!

The Maidan protests weren't caused by Russian interference in Ukrainian politics (to reject an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian Parliament that he'd promised for years to sign). Oh no. It was caused by interference from Victoria Nuland.

Yanukovich signs an agreement with the political opposition to end the Maiden, then flees the country. the Ukrainian Parliament then formally removes him from office and forms an interim government followed by elections. You describe the whole thing as a CIA-led coup d'etat.

I could go on a bit. Russia can do no wrong in Ukraine, and we have a moral obligation to let them.

---

1. You assume the war is to "subsume" the entirely of Ukraine into Russia. For all we know its just a regime change operation to install a friendly government in Kyiv.

Not much different than the war DC waged in Iraq.

You don't see how to most countries in the world the actions of DC and Moscow seem very similar (invade who they want and over throw governments they don like)
The stated goal (see annexations) is to subsume parts of Ukraine. The obvious implicit goal, both from statements and actions, was to move the remnant of Ukraine toward Belarus status. And it is fairly obvious that Belarus is a client leaning toward return to Russian polity.

2. The Maidan protests of course had a native element to them (so do our own BLM protests) but the fact that you and others refuse to deal with the role of Victoria Nuland and the CIA/State Department in those protests just makes it seem like you don't want any criticism spoken of about ruling class. DC has spent billions on Ukraine to influence their internal political system (for good or bad)
Neither Nuland nor CIA organized unarmed crowds to fight police and paramilitary units for days. No evidence. There was no "leader" of that. Names please. What you completely ignore is that those leaderless crowds did not take power after Yanukovich fled. Nope. Yanukovich was removed and replaced by entirely constitutional processes.....by existing elected leadership in an interim unity coalition of elected parties. At literally every step of analysis, facts blow your presumption clean out of the water. There was no coup. There was no change in constitutional order. Just spontaneous riots when Yanukovich at the last minute (due to Russian meddling) refused to sign an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian parliament, a bill which had overwhelming public support, for years, a bill he'd made repeated promises to sign, in campaigns and in office.
It was RUSSIAN MEDDLING which caused the Maidan, not American meddling!

But no one ever said Russia was not active in Ukraine...hat is the whole point....Russia has always been there on the political level...its DC getting itself involved in the country that is new and outside our traditional area.
You keep issuing that platitude with studious indifference to the real world. We were involved at the breakup of the USSR, were we not? We were involved in the disposition of Ukranian nukes, were we not? We are a part of Nato, are we not? Ukraine is a strategic question for Nato, is it not? And on and on and on. Ukraine does not belong to Russia. It is a sovereign country recognized by the entire world.

3. I never said it was a completely thought up and executed CIA coup...Ukraine (like our own country was political-cultural divided) yet from the perspective of the ethic russians in the East of the country and the powers that be in Moscow that protest/coup in Kyiv was a massive seismic event in the internal politics of Ukraine.
Stop it with the motte & bailey. Your entire argument is premised on the idea that we orchestrated the Maidan. You say it just like you did above "the role of Nuland/CIA." Well, were their actions dispositive or not?

How many voters in the East of the country looked at what happened in Kyiv and said "well even when we vote our guy in they just use street thugs to throw him out"
about half. And Russia exploited that with little green men to destabilize the province, then invade it. Which of course, is our fault, according to you.

Example...lets say you were an average conservative American in flyover country and you watched as the BLM protesters drove Trump from power in summer of 2020 how would you feel? What if you then found out that the Chinese communists had been giving billions to Leftists NGOs and Leftists activist groups on the ground. What if Chinese politicians had flown into DC to give encouragement to the protestors? What if Chinese bureaucrats were seen on the streets handing out sweats?
The proper analog would be this: the MAGA movement drove Trump from power for NOT signing a bill that would fully fund the wall and build the infrastructure to conduct mass deportations like he promised, because the Mexico (controlled by drug cartels) paid him to balk at it. And then, after he left and RDS was sworn in and started actually building wall and deporting people, Mexico invaded to take New Mexico and Arizona. Yeah, the public would be pretty upset about that. People from all across the political spectrum would line up to go fight the Mexican Army and take back Arizona and New Mexico.

Would you come away from that bloody event thinking everything was on the up and up?
You are letting false premises lead you to sophomoric conclusions.

---

A governing majority of Ukrainians wanted to join the EU. That number has risen, thanks the the Russian invasion of their country. It is in our interest that Ukraine belong to EU rather than some notional Russian equivalent. it is in our interest that Russians not have any more military bases in Ukraine. it is in our interest that if Ukraine cannot be non-aligned, that it is aligned with us rather than Russia. All very simple, obvious facts......

Ukraine has fought Russia to remain independent many times. We are not obligated to stand by and let them lose this one just because they've lost others. We are in fact obligated to do what is good for us. And a Ukraine aligned with us is good for us. That getting to that point involves destroying tens of thousands of tanks and arty tubes and killing a generation of Russians?.....well that is tens of thousands of tanks and tubes and a generation of Russian soldiers that we no longer have to plan to destroy in central Europe. That we will have to help rebuild Ukrainian cities rather than Baltic cities, Polish cities, Romanian cities, etc......that is an entirely noble endeavor. It's why we engage in alliance. To deter, and if necessary defeat threats.

---

This 'good guys vs. bad guys' bs has got to stop. Its all bad guys.

We're not fighting to keep Ukraine independent. We're fighting to own them.

You have to fight for peace so the bankers can make $$ on the bombs and then loans to the country for the rebuild, and when they cant pay the debt, the bankers take the REAL ASSETS. Same playbook has been used for centuries. Warriors and fighters are being eliminated, resistance to the western machine is being culled on all fronts.

If Russia owns them, then oligarchs run the show, and there's a VERY TINY chance they are more powerful and become a marginally larger threat to Europe.

If the west owns them, we flood their country with anti Judeo-Christian immigrants and spread our woke dogma just like we've done all over Europe for quite some time now.

Lets just skip to the end and set aside $5 trillion, get directly involved in this war, avoid peace and spread the woke gospel as the American people continue to be wage slaves battling money printing to make this all possible.

---

if we're going to get into cynical moral equivalence, then let's say it this way: better Ukraine be controlled by our oligarchs than the Russian oligarchs, since only former will prevent Russian armies from deploying along the Polish and Romanian borders.

---

At great cost.

I'm not sure how having 100,000 missiles that haven't been serviced in a decade, aged out warheads, dud munitions, fighter planes that have had their payloads and flight time decreased by green regs, and watching Ukraine turn into Syrias is a great strategy.

The endless weapons support to Ukraine has got to be hurting the our ability to deter China from invading Taiwan and win if a conflict with China did break out. Surely it will take a decade or so starting from now to develop the human capital and stockpiles, and now we have enormous competition for light/heavy metals, etc. Example Korea.

This isn't the America you grew up with. It's a highly dysfunctional self serving government.

On the other hand, maybe this is true and Russia is very weak. If so, they're never going to attack Poland or Romania.

---

Honestly I think most people had forgotten that was going on....

Great thing about owing the Corporate Media is you can endlessly give life to some stories (racism in America) and you can totally starve other stories of oxygen (Syrian civil war)

NPR fresh air today was...and I kid you not...was talking about the whole "40 acres and a mule" issue from almost 200 years ago while the bloody Syrian civil war still rages and the death toll continues to climb up toward the 1 million dead mark. Damage in the $1.7 trillion level

Amazing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war

Redbrickbear said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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whiterock said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ron.reagan said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ron.reagan said:

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How many pro-hamas/anti-us rallies do you attend a week?

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You're the liberal internationalist on here…so you tell me.

I'm not interested in supporting either side of a Semitic blood fueled on the other side of the planet.

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The only thing you could point out liberal about me was I hurt your Russian feelings

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I only have American feelings there little guy

You should try putting America first for a change before some other foreign country like Ukraine or Israel

---

you should try not putting Russia first......

---

Name me one way I have ever "put Russia first"

Advocating for less wasteful spending and a more rational foreign policy is in the interest of America and the American people first and foremost

---

Russia invades Ukraine to subsume it in entirety? It's the natural order of things.
We send help to Ukraine? it's empire!

The Maidan protests weren't caused by Russian interference in Ukrainian politics (to reject an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian Parliament that he'd promised for years to sign). Oh no. It was caused by interference from Victoria Nuland.

Yanukovich signs an agreement with the political opposition to end the Maiden, then flees the country. the Ukrainian Parliament then formally removes him from office and forms an interim government followed by elections. You describe the whole thing as a CIA-led coup d'etat.

I could go on a bit. Russia can do no wrong in Ukraine, and we have a moral obligation to let them.

---

1. You assume the war is to "subsume" the entirely of Ukraine into Russia. For all we know its just a regime change operation to install a friendly government in Kyiv.

Not much different than the war DC waged in Iraq.

You don't see how to most countries in the world the actions of DC and Moscow seem very similar (invade who they want and over throw governments they don like)
The stated goal (see annexations) is to subsume parts of Ukraine. The obvious implicit goal, both from statements and actions, was to move the remnant of Ukraine toward Belarus status. And it is fairly obvious that Belarus is a client leaning toward return to Russian polity.

2. The Maidan protests of course had a native element to them (so do our own BLM protests) but the fact that you and others refuse to deal with the role of Victoria Nuland and the CIA/State Department in those protests just makes it seem like you don't want any criticism spoken of about ruling class. DC has spent billions on Ukraine to influence their internal political system (for good or bad)
Neither Nuland nor CIA organized unarmed crowds to fight police and paramilitary units for days. No evidence. There was no "leader" of that. Names please. What you completely ignore is that those leaderless crowds did not take power after Yanukovich fled. Nope. Yanukovich was removed and replaced by entirely constitutional processes.....by existing elected leadership in an interim unity coalition of elected parties. At literally every step of analysis, facts blow your presumption clean out of the water. There was no coup. There was no change in constitutional order. Just spontaneous riots when Yanukovich at the last minute (due to Russian meddling) refused to sign an EU bill passed by the Ukrainian parliament, a bill which had overwhelming public support, for years, a bill he'd made repeated promises to sign, in campaigns and in office.
It was RUSSIAN MEDDLING which caused the Maidan, not American meddling!

But no one ever said Russia was not active in Ukraine...hat is the whole point....Russia has always been there on the political level...its DC getting itself involved in the country that is new and outside our traditional area.
You keep issuing that platitude with studious indifference to the real world. We were involved at the breakup of the USSR, were we not? We were involved in the disposition of Ukranian nukes, were we not? We are a part of Nato, are we not? Ukraine is a strategic question for Nato, is it not? And on and on and on. Ukraine does not belong to Russia. It is a sovereign country recognized by the entire world.

3. I never said it was a completely thought up and executed CIA coup...Ukraine (like our own country was political-cultural divided) yet from the perspective of the ethic russians in the East of the country and the powers that be in Moscow that protest/coup in Kyiv was a massive seismic event in the internal politics of Ukraine.
Stop it with the motte & bailey. Your entire argument is premised on the idea that we orchestrated the Maidan. You say it just like you did above "the role of Nuland/CIA." Well, were their actions dispositive or not?

How many voters in the East of the country looked at what happened in Kyiv and said "well even when we vote our guy in they just use street thugs to throw him out"
about half. And Russia exploited that with little green men to destabilize the province, then invade it. Which of course, is our fault, according to you.

Example...lets say you were an average conservative American in flyover country and you watched as the BLM protesters drove Trump from power in summer of 2020 how would you feel? What if you then found out that the Chinese communists had been giving billions to Leftists NGOs and Leftists activist groups on the ground. What if Chinese politicians had flown into DC to give encouragement to the protestors? What if Chinese bureaucrats were seen on the streets handing out sweats?
The proper analog would be this: the MAGA movement drove Trump from power for NOT signing a bill that would fully fund the wall and build the infrastructure to conduct mass deportations like he promised, because the Mexico (controlled by drug cartels) paid him to balk at it. And then, after he left and RDS was sworn in and started actually building wall and deporting people, Mexico invaded to take New Mexico and Arizona. Yeah, the public would be pretty upset about that. People from all across the political spectrum would line up to go fight the Mexican Army and take back Arizona and New Mexico.

Would you come away from that bloody event thinking everything was on the up and up?
You are letting false premises lead you to sophomoric conclusions.

---

A governing majority of Ukrainians wanted to join the EU. That number has risen, thanks the the Russian invasion of their country. It is in our interest that Ukraine belong to EU rather than some notional Russian equivalent. it is in our interest that Russians not have any more military bases in Ukraine. it is in our interest that if Ukraine cannot be non-aligned, that it is aligned with us rather than Russia. All very simple, obvious facts......

Ukraine has fought Russia to remain independent many times. We are not obligated to stand by and let them lose this one just because they've lost others. We are in fact obligated to do what is good for us. And a Ukraine aligned with us is good for us. That getting to that point involves destroying tens of thousands of tanks and arty tubes and killing a generation of Russians?.....well that is tens of thousands of tanks and tubes and a generation of Russian soldiers that we no longer have to plan to destroy in central Europe. That we will have to help rebuild Ukrainian cities rather than Baltic cities, Polish cities, Romanian cities, etc......that is an entirely noble endeavor. It's why we engage in alliance. To deter, and if necessary defeat threats.

---

This 'good guys vs. bad guys' bs has got to stop. Its all bad guys.

We're not fighting to keep Ukraine independent. We're fighting to own them.

You have to fight for peace so the bankers can make $$ on the bombs and then loans to the country for the rebuild, and when they cant pay the debt, the bankers take the REAL ASSETS. Same playbook has been used for centuries. Warriors and fighters are being eliminated, resistance to the western machine is being culled on all fronts.

If Russia owns them, then oligarchs run the show, and there's a VERY TINY chance they are more powerful and become a marginally larger threat to Europe.

If the west owns them, we flood their country with anti Judeo-Christian immigrants and spread our woke dogma just like we've done all over Europe for quite some time now.

Lets just skip to the end and set aside $5 trillion, get directly involved in this war, avoid peace and spread the woke gospel as the American people continue to be wage slaves battling money printing to make this all possible.

---

if we're going to get into cynical moral equivalence, then let's say it this way: better Ukraine be controlled by our oligarchs than the Russian oligarchs, since only former will prevent Russian armies from deploying along the Polish and Romanian borders.

---

At great cost.

I'm not sure how having 100,000 missiles that haven't been serviced in a decade, aged out warheads, dud munitions, fighter planes that have had their payloads and flight time decreased by green regs, and watching Ukraine turn into Syrias is a great strategy.

The endless weapons support to Ukraine has got to be hurting the our ability to deter China from invading Taiwan and win if a conflict with China did break out. Surely it will take a decade or so starting from now to develop the human capital and stockpiles, and now we have enormous competition for light/heavy metals, etc. Example Korea.

This isn't the America you grew up with. It's a highly dysfunctional self serving government.

On the other hand, maybe this is true and Russia is very weak. If so, they're never going to attack Poland or Romania.

---

Honestly I think most people had forgotten that was going on....

Great thing about owing the Corporate Media is you can endlessly give life to some stories (racism in America) and you can totally starve other stories of oxygen (Syrian civil war)

NPR fresh air today was...and I kid you not...was talking about the whole "40 acers and a mule" issue from almost 200 years ago while the Syrian civil war still rages and the death toll continues to climb up toward the 1 million dead mark

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war

---

Western citizens are under the assumption that we live in the free world and our media is independent of the state. It's simply not true. All governments are cartels that control their media and the people at the top are self serving. No need for a formal conspiracy, its all conditioned. The behavior of the media acting as cohorts of special interests is financially beneficial to the media versus the media being truly independent.

boognish_bear said:

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Panic in Russia after news of new US sanctions against the Russian economy

Currency trading on the Moscow Exchange has been stopped & people are gathering in front of banks to withdraw their savings, fearing that the Ruble will implode

Via @officejjsmart pic.twitter.com/5LoH5tHwnR

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) June 12, 2024

---

Russian media report that websites of several large Russian banks are not downloading or not allowing clients to log in.

These include Rosbank, Gazprombank, and Moscow Stock exchange. https://t.co/Qik83E2NXT pic.twitter.com/2B1tInSPjS

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) June 13, 2024

Sam Lowry said:

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Redbrickbear said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

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ron.reagan said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Chechnya is part of the Russian Federation.

One China has been recognized under US policy since 1972.

---

No it hasn't.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/96th-congress/house-bill/2479

First line:

"Taiwan Relations Act - Declares it to be the policy of the United States to preserve and promote extensive, close, and friendly commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people on Taiwan, as well as the people on the China mainland and all other people of the Western Pacific area."


later:

"Stipulates that the absence of diplomatic relations with or recognition of Taiwan shall not affect U.S. laws relating to Taiwan. "

That is One China policy in the same way North Korea has a democratic republic.

---

China and Russia only understand one thing, strength. They go about it different ways, but it is the same mentality, they will take as much as you give. They rely on the US and NATO playing the diplomatic, reasonable and want peace game. All the talk is just that talk, until you stop them from invading Nations, making islands in the S China Sea, stealing tech, and so on. This play nice and they will play nice what Putin and Xi are counting on.

---

They understand diplomacy exponentially better than we do. Russia has some of the top diplomats in the world where we have mostly amateurs.

---

I don't know if they have good diplomats...or if its more like other nations just want to trade with Russia for its natural resources.

But many other countries are sitting out this conflict

---

Russian Diplomats Are Eating America's Lunch
By JAMES BRUNO
April 16, 2014

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is fairly typical. A graduate of the prestigious Moscow Institute for International Relations (known by its Russian acronym, MGIMO) and 42-year Foreign Ministry veteran, Lavrov speaks fluent English as well as Sinhalese, Dhiveli and French. A former U.S. ambassador who had dealt with Lavrov at the United Nations described him to me as disciplined, witty and charming, a diplomat so skilled "he runs rings around us in the multilateral sphere."

Russia has always taken diplomacy and its diplomats seriously. America, on the other hand, does not. Of this country's 28 diplomatic missions in NATO capitals (of which 26 are either currently filled by an ambassador or have nominees waiting to be confirmed), 16 are, or will be, headed by political appointees; only one ambassador to a major NATO ally, Turkey, is a career diplomat. Fourteen ambassadors got their jobs in return for raising big money for President Obama's election campaigns, or worked as his aides. A conservative estimate of personal and bundled donations by these fundraisers is $20 million (based on figures from the New York Times, Federal Election Commission and AllGov). The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, a former Microsoft executive, bundled more than $4.3 million.

By contrast, all but two of Moscow's ambassadors to NATO capitals are career diplomats. And the two Russian equivalents of political appointees (in Latvia and Slovakia) have 6 and 17 years of diplomatic experience respectively. The total number of years of diplomatic experience of Russia's 28 ambassadors to NATO nations is 960 years, averaging 34 years per incumbent. The cumulative years of relevant experience of America's ambassadors are 331, averaging 12 years per individual. Russia has 26 NATO ambassadors with 20-plus years of diplomatic service; the United States has 10. Furthermore, 16 American envoys have five years, or fewer, of diplomatic service. The figure for Russia: zero. Five U.S. NATO posts currently have no ambassador. None of Russia's is vacant. With Michael McFaul's departure in February, there is no U.S. ambassador in Moscow at the moment.

Domestically, the situation is equally worrisome. Three-quarters of the top policy and management positions at the State Department currently are occupied by non-diplomats, mainly Democratic Party activists or liberal think tankers. "Most are competent, but must pass an ideological test to be appointed," a former senior official who worked with Obama's appointees at State told me. "These positions," she added, "are handed out based on party connections and loyalty." In the hands of these decision-makers, all major foreign policy issues are viewed through an "ideological prism as opposed to an eye toward the long-term interests of the United States," she said. The White House's National Security Council staff, furthermore, has ballooned from about four dozen three decades ago to more than twice that today, a shift that has had the effect of concentrating power in the White House, and infusing key decisions with political calculations.

By contrast, the Russian Foreign Ministry is staffed top to bottom with career diplomats.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/04/russias-diplomats-are-better-than-ours-105773/

---

So you trot out a 10 year old article that was written prior to Russia first invading Ukraine in 2014...and that's what you're rolling with? ? Length of diplomatic career?


Jeez dude. That's some weak shlt even from you.

boognish_bear said:

---

Panic in Russia after news of new US sanctions against the Russian economy

Currency trading on the Moscow Exchange has been stopped & people are gathering in front of banks to withdraw their savings, fearing that the Ruble will implode

Via @officejjsmart pic.twitter.com/5LoH5tHwnR

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) June 12, 2024

---

From a well known Polish disinformation site.

trey3216 said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

ron.reagan said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Chechnya is part of the Russian Federation.

One China has been recognized under US policy since 1972.

---

No it hasn't.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/96th-congress/house-bill/2479

First line:

"Taiwan Relations Act - Declares it to be the policy of the United States to preserve and promote extensive, close, and friendly commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people on Taiwan, as well as the people on the China mainland and all other people of the Western Pacific area."


later:

"Stipulates that the absence of diplomatic relations with or recognition of Taiwan shall not affect U.S. laws relating to Taiwan. "

That is One China policy in the same way North Korea has a democratic republic.

---

China and Russia only understand one thing, strength. They go about it different ways, but it is the same mentality, they will take as much as you give. They rely on the US and NATO playing the diplomatic, reasonable and want peace game. All the talk is just that talk, until you stop them from invading Nations, making islands in the S China Sea, stealing tech, and so on. This play nice and they will play nice what Putin and Xi are counting on.

---

They understand diplomacy exponentially better than we do. Russia has some of the top diplomats in the world where we have mostly amateurs.

---

I don't know if they have good diplomats...or if its more like other nations just want to trade with Russia for its natural resources.

But many other countries are sitting out this conflict

---

Russian Diplomats Are Eating America's Lunch
By JAMES BRUNO
April 16, 2014

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is fairly typical. A graduate of the prestigious Moscow Institute for International Relations (known by its Russian acronym, MGIMO) and 42-year Foreign Ministry veteran, Lavrov speaks fluent English as well as Sinhalese, Dhiveli and French. A former U.S. ambassador who had dealt with Lavrov at the United Nations described him to me as disciplined, witty and charming, a diplomat so skilled "he runs rings around us in the multilateral sphere."

Russia has always taken diplomacy and its diplomats seriously. America, on the other hand, does not. Of this country's 28 diplomatic missions in NATO capitals (of which 26 are either currently filled by an ambassador or have nominees waiting to be confirmed), 16 are, or will be, headed by political appointees; only one ambassador to a major NATO ally, Turkey, is a career diplomat. Fourteen ambassadors got their jobs in return for raising big money for President Obama's election campaigns, or worked as his aides. A conservative estimate of personal and bundled donations by these fundraisers is $20 million (based on figures from the New York Times, Federal Election Commission and AllGov). The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, a former Microsoft executive, bundled more than $4.3 million.

By contrast, all but two of Moscow's ambassadors to NATO capitals are career diplomats. And the two Russian equivalents of political appointees (in Latvia and Slovakia) have 6 and 17 years of diplomatic experience respectively. The total number of years of diplomatic experience of Russia's 28 ambassadors to NATO nations is 960 years, averaging 34 years per incumbent. The cumulative years of relevant experience of America's ambassadors are 331, averaging 12 years per individual. Russia has 26 NATO ambassadors with 20-plus years of diplomatic service; the United States has 10. Furthermore, 16 American envoys have five years, or fewer, of diplomatic service. The figure for Russia: zero. Five U.S. NATO posts currently have no ambassador. None of Russia's is vacant. With Michael McFaul's departure in February, there is no U.S. ambassador in Moscow at the moment.

Domestically, the situation is equally worrisome. Three-quarters of the top policy and management positions at the State Department currently are occupied by non-diplomats, mainly Democratic Party activists or liberal think tankers. "Most are competent, but must pass an ideological test to be appointed," a former senior official who worked with Obama's appointees at State told me. "These positions," she added, "are handed out based on party connections and loyalty." In the hands of these decision-makers, all major foreign policy issues are viewed through an "ideological prism as opposed to an eye toward the long-term interests of the United States," she said. The White House's National Security Council staff, furthermore, has ballooned from about four dozen three decades ago to more than twice that today, a shift that has had the effect of concentrating power in the White House, and infusing key decisions with political calculations.

By contrast, the Russian Foreign Ministry is staffed top to bottom with career diplomats.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/04/russias-diplomats-are-better-than-ours-105773/

---

So you trot out a 10 year old article that was written prior to Russia first invading Ukraine in 2014...and that's what you're rolling with? ? Length of diplomatic career?

---

I'm sure this has some sort of relevance in your mind, but I can only guess what it would be.