When War Is Better Than The Alternative


Plutocracy is cancer of civilization. It affects societies at all ages: Napoleon’s plutocracy blossomed within a decade of the proclamation of the Rights of Men, and the collapse of the massive, humiliating, enfeebling, but less lethal, plutocracy of the Ancient Regime.

In the 1930s, a coalition of Stalinists, Nazis, and hard core Western plutocrats collaborated to grab whatever they could. The Nazis lost in 1945, the plutocrats have never been stronger, and Putin wants to re-establish “the big country” (aka Stalinism).

The present invasion of Ukraine is a demonstration of the blossoming of the most diabolical urges around the Kremlin, amplified by the power of advancing technology. Those urges are also self-amplifying: they are in all nasty, expanding, empires. The Duchy of Moscow has been the most successful power in the matter of land grabbing in the world, in the last five centuries. This is all the more remarkable as quite a bit of the expansion was by destroying old, well established military powers (not just a few Neolithic Indians as in the Americas).

1600 CE: Moscow Is Pointing Its Muzzle. Crimea Still Not In Russia.

1600 CE: Moscow Is Pointing Its Muzzle. Crimea Still Not In Russia.

Unsurprisingly, if one wants to fight for Human Rights right now, one is accused to be a “Neo-Con”. Real “Neo-Cons” invaded Iraq, wanted to do the same to Iran, and loved Putin’s and Qaddafi’s “souls”.

Interestingly, Napoleon’s plutocracy was way worse, at least in term of the number of people killed: Under Louis XVI, over twenty years of his reign, pretty much no one got killed. Even if one considers the dead of the Revolution as caused by Louis XVI (which is not fair), and add the dead of the war in Vendee, one gets to around 100,000 dead. Napoleon killed two million in France, and more millions throughout the world.

So one can say that Napoleon was orders of magnitude worse than Louis XVI.

A simpler way to look at it is that Louis XVI, from the time he became king, to the Revolution he contributed to instigate, was trying to dismantle the plutocracy he headed (making Louis similar to Gorbatchev!), whereas Napoleone, like Putin, tried to bring plutocracy back (an illustration of that is their manipulation of justice, gon to cold blooded assassination, Corsican style, in the case of Napoleone)

However, Napoleon is much admired, worldwide. Putin helps to understand why: many on the pseudo-left admire Putin’s domination and virility, The truth is that the weak want to surrender to the strong, and so, in their simplicity, they look for someone who looks strong, even when he is just a parody.

Plutocracy, like any cancer, tends to happen more in older bodies, and, like cancer, varies its genetics constantly.

The cancer of plutocracy needs to be extirpated always. In very old societies, and some societies lasted several millennia, it has been extirpated in countless revolutions. Polybius’ theory of the cycles of history can be explained that way.

Naïve ones from pseudo-left’s do-nothing attitude is GUARANTEED to bring a World War. Punching the unpredictable Putin back, hard and early, is the only hope to bring peace back.

Apparently Chris Snuggs could agree more: “The suffering in Syria is the fault of yet another dictator and the free world could have immensely reduced it. The failure to punish Assad for his crimes against humanity is sickening, and Labour’s stance pathetic, cowardly and shameful. We learn NOTHING from history. Hitler could have been stopped in 1936, possibly saving over 20,000,000 lives. The free world is morally sick as well as stupid. We have to watch the grotesque spectacle of the soppy, over-privileged cow Michelle Obama sucking up to a Chinese leadership that SENDS BACK DESPERATE FLEEING REFUGEES to North Korea, where they and their families then face torture and often death. China supplies and supports what is by far the world’s most brutal and inhuman regime, which is the strong ally of China, our great friend and trading partner. You could not make it up.”

I agree on all points except the “cow label” where I have to piously record my official, hypocritical dissension.

The over-privileged nature of “leadership” is an intrinsic part of the problem. In France you have one guy deciding everything, in the USA you have one guy deciding supposedly everything, and being treated a thousand times more divinely as a pharaoh (although his presidency was characterized by despondency… which is perfect for the plutocrats in power).

To over privilege a few individuals (apparently) elected by the people is all the excuse plutocrats need for their own privileges (such as making money out of thin air, through the fractional reserve system).

In August 1939, Hitler had gone too far into viciousness to stop: his neurohormonal system had been firmly built that way by then. If Hitler had not been stopped in 1939, he would have gone on the attack in 1945, when his military was ready, as he had planned, 12 years after he acquired power. (Notice that Putin has been in power for 15 years, much of which have been spent with a quadrupled military budget.)

In the 1950s, 1960s, the USSR viciously dominated more than 400 million people, then about 15% of humanity. The system built by Stalin was vicious just as the Southern USA was vicious under slavery.

Some will disagree. That’s because they don’t know the details. Stalin killed at least ten million slaves, whom he used for great works, like a giant canal system (that allows to cruise from the Baltic to Moscow).

Stalin also built a second, secret military subway system in Moscow. (The present leadership denies its existence.) To do this, Stalin used slaves. Survivors were executed.

And so on. The craftiest of pseudo-leftists will say: “OK, maybe they are bad, but it’s their country, leave them alone.”

Truth: 1) it’s not “their” country (there were only 100 million or so genuine ethnic Orthodox Russians).

2) Stalin was a Georgian; something like two-third of the initial Soviet leadership was NOT genuine ethnic Orthodox Russian. What happened is that the viciousness of the dictatorial (= plutocratic) system captured all on its way, including the communist and democratic ideals.

3)  When a major plutocratic, or dictatorial power dominates, there is a danger, at any moment, that the immense power a few unchecked individuals have at their command slips into madness.

The best example of this is the attack on the world in August 1914 of the Kaiser and his henchmen. But the invasion of Russia by Napoleon also comes to mind (although the Czar was bad, a defensive posture would have been preferable rather than the adventure Napoleone plunged into.

The megalomaniac madness autocrats  tend to fall into has long been in evidence: witness the incredible butcher, Saint Louis, who went on distant, useless and immensely costly (in lives and treasure) crusades… When all he had to do, if breaking the nasty aspects of Islam was what he was really after, was being less of a racist, and pursue the alliance between Mongol and Franks that already existed!

In the 1950s and 1960s, the nasty confrontation with the plutocrats in the Kremlin was all the excuse plutocrats in Washington and Wall Street needed to grow their power. Initially said power was subdued by the so called “populist” policies pursued by FDR to solve the crisis of the 1930s, WWII, and the subsequent reintegration of ten million soldiers (then about 7% of the population) into a civilian society that had to be made for them.

The nasty confrontation of viciousness with viciousness brought the world close to a particularly nasty thermonuclear war, more than once (the bomb delivery systems and the bombs themselves were crude at the time, and that was compensated by making the bombs enormous and numerous, guaranteeing an apocalypse).

It’s important not to fall into the same madness again. The Plutos around Putin are used to get away with anything, hence the present invasion. The earlier they are stopped, the sooner they get back to reason.

Patrice Aymé

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29 Responses to “When War Is Better Than The Alternative”

  1. Paul Handover Says:

    If you contend, as you do very eloquently and powerfully, that history is littered with the remains of wars that have served the interests of plutocrats, then why would another ‘great war’ between Russia and the West be any different?

    The answer, surely, is to give the ‘man on the street’ a real voice in politics. By using the technological tools so widely available today as you mentioned in a comment to a recent post over at Learning from Dogs. (see footnote)

    Because if there was real democracy in the Western nations, then my bet is that the majority of people would not vote for war.

    Footnote:

    From here: http://learningfromdogs.com/2014/03/14/real-democracy/

    You commented:

    “The Swiss do it the old fashion way. The Americans are voting on Tuesday, preferably with giant lines in workers’ area, so that the working class can’t vote.

    To change things in the USA, voting should happen on Sunday, first of all. The citizens’ involvement can proceed from there. But of course, there is will to the opposite.
    Democrats just lost a by-election for Congress. Their candidate? A super plutocrat, Alex Sink. She lost to a Republican plutocrat.

    I don’t know/care that much about Loomio, or other capitalist outfits: the French government has already instituted a part Internet voting system overseas (I took part in it). It works.

    What does not work is the will to switch to direct democracy from the oligarchic system.”

    War has never been and never will be the answer!

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Dear Paul: The People, left to its own instruments, looking at history, votes so much for war, that all direct democracies were heavily armed and on a continuous war footing.
      That people would not vote for war, or not prepare for vote against Putin is highly unlikely. The Plutocratic Alliance Putin is a major element of, reigns over the West, and controls the Main Stream Media, including the vast pseudo-left. That’s crawling with pro-Stalinist propaganda now, as it was in the 1930s (when Stalin and Hitler were allies).
      PA

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      If Athens had been led by plutocrats when the Persian plutocracy came knocking, the former would have accepted to lead another Satrapy. Instead, the Western ideals of the Rights of man gave Pluto a bloody muzzle.

      Instead, indeed, against all odds, an army of free men charged the Persian invasion at Marathon, & the Western ideals of the Rights of man gave history a new meaning.
      PA

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      • Paul Handover Says:

        Patrice, thank you for both replies. In the case of your second, I regret my knowledge of ancient history is appalling, to the extent of me not being clear about your conclusion. What was the “new meaning” given to history?

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        • Patrice Ayme Says:

          Dear Paul, thanks for the follow-up:

          Athens, population 80,000 citizens, a free direct democracy and republic, declared war to Persia, a giant plutocratic empire subdivided in “Satrapies” each a plutocracy of its own with a master commanding. Persia covered three continents, and its population was 80 million. It was by far the world’s largest empire that had ever been.

          When Persia asked the Athenians to submit, the Athenians refused. Persia decided to invade Greece, landed at Marathon.

          The new meaning given to history is that 80,000 free men can destroy an arbitrarily large plutocracy. Freedom trumps servitude. Freedom is not just nicer to have, it’s stronger.

          Right now a host of (obviously) paid commenters in the West tell us it’s folly to resist Putin, and it’s even immoral: they learned nothing from Marathon. Freedom is not folly, it’s life.

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          • Paul Handover Says:

            That’s a very compelling answer; thank you. You know, as a regular reader of my own writings, that freedom and integrity mean all. I don’t have to reflect for very long to know that I would fight for freedom, truth and integrity. Indeed, it is not unknown for dogs to fight those that threaten their pack.

            So you have won me around!

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          • Patrice Ayme Says:

            Thanks a zillion, Paul. Brains without freedom is a non sequitur, thus denying freedom denies the essence of what makes man whole (integrity).
            New essay out, BTW, on related subject.

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  2. gmax Says:

    It’s pretty sick that so many of those perceived as on the left in the US say Putin is right, and Obama an imperialist. WEIRDLY they had no problem with drones when Obama used them right and left…

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  3. Patrice Ayme Says:

    [In l’Express, Jacques Attali, an author of great influence in Europe, adviser to several presidents, ex-head of the European bank for development, wrote a short editorial saying that opposing Putin was “folly”; on the way he re-iterated the great canons of plutocracy: World War One was an accident, the Versailles Treaty a tragedy, Nazism was caused by the isolation of Germany, etc.

    This is my answer below, in non accented French. L’Express published it, BTW, differently from the New York Times with my last answer to Krugman’s editorial: that will allow Krugman to present my ideas in the future, as if they were his, which he was doing in that editorial already…].

    Pas un seul mot sur les Tatares, Grecs et Armeniens de Crimee. Staline a tue’ la moitie des Tatares de Crimee en Juin 1944. En 1967 une loi fut passee pour interdire aux Tatares survivants de revenir en Crimee. Sur mon site, vous pouvez consulter l’histoire et les cartes: la Crimee est Russe depuis tres peu de temps, et grace a de tres gros massacres (a partir de 1853).

    Il est interessant que Monsieur Attali qualifie le Traite’ de Versailles de “tragique”. Pourquoi? A cause de ce que Putin appelle avec mepris la “parade des etats souverains”? Dans son discours cette semaine, Putin dit avoir recu l’autorisation d’envahir l’Ukraine et de ramener le “grand pays”. Il y plusieurs essais a ce sujet, en Anglais, sur mon site (Google: Patrice Aymé Thoughts). Avec beaucoup de details et de cartes.

    Ceux qui sont foux sont ceux qui font semblant de connaitre l’histoire, pour dire son contraire. Putin est un dictateur, isoler un dictateur n’est pas isoler un pays.

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  4. HGR Says:

    HGR
    It is a little more delicate. You do not want to fan the fires of nationalism with in Russia and neither do you want to completely eliminate her influence in neighbors that would otherwise devolve into anarchy. Russia does provide stability in that regard.

    But you can’t allow land grabs of that sort against weaker neighbors with out cost. The strategy is being used by China also and there it will lead to violence.

    By the way, Ukraine is vulnerable at the moment and unable to exact a high price from Russia for taking over the Crimea. But that might not be true in the future. And the Europeans will react to this

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Agreed, except that Russia is burning hot with anger right now, that Putin has transmutated into nationalistic madness… When of course it’s deep down generated by Putin’s brutal dictatorship.

      Like

  5. Chris Says:

    Chris

    “Things will change dramatically, once Putin charges into the rest of Ukraine. US & EU have never been richer; war will help the needed redistribution of riches, and, first of all, employment (only about half of employable people in USA-EU are employed, as the employment rate of the 24 to 54 years old is around 60%).”

    It’s appalling that the Western powers seem to be in recession by choice. Austerity has been a massive failure. Youth unemployment is very high. Infrastructure (at least in North America) seems to be falling apart from age. And yet all of this could be fixed, simply by abandoning neo-liberal economics and pursuing something more egalitarian.

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  6. Benign Says:

    The alternative press here in the US says Bush I and Clinton did not honor an agreement between Gorbachev and Reagan not to pull Ukraine et al into NATO if Gorbachev disbanded the USSR. And Crimea is historically Russian. Gorbachev was a heroic and tragic figure who really wanted democracy for the Soviet Union, but who inherited the Russian distrust of the West.

    The antics of the CIA that you (Patrice) and a some other Euro’s with fresh memories of WWII celebrate devolved into destructive imperialism in the postwar period (economic hit men in service of Anglo-American financial plutocrats). So I cannot share your enthusiasm. Putin has seen all this, and became concerned that Ukraine would join EU/NATO and “vote” to dismantle his warm water port in Crimea, put nukes on his border, mess with his gas lines, etc. The CIA involvement with the coup is out in the open.

    There is apparently a proposal from Putin for continuing plebiscites within Ukraine leading to a federal structure, possibly splitting ethnically east/west. This seems rational and democratic. There is little doubt Crimea would vote again to go with Russia (watch the excellent Vice news videos). Eastern Ukraine might do as well. However, if the Kiev-aligned plutocrat now controlling eastern Ukraine (or the CIA) practice violence against ethnic Russians, Putin will have his justification for further invasion. The takeover of Crimea has been peaceful. A majority of the Ukrainian military there have joined the Russians. You may quibble with my history but you see my point.

    The best outcome would be for an open democratic process to be pursued, monitored by outsiders. The resentment of the Kiev government is quite strong, even the new government, everywhere in the Ukraine, is my impression. They trust no one.

    I don’t think a military response will improve things. I agree with your central supposition that there is an international plutocratic class running the world into the ground, who would love a war to line their military-industrial pockets. They win if we go that way. Putin is probably smart enough to know a shrinking nation of early-dying drunks will not win any more of Europe than Crimea and maybe half of the Ukraine. And unlike the Germans, they have more than enough space. I say let the people vote, then leave Russia alone, and make damn sure not to play dirty tricks in the Ukraine, where the people have lost virtually all hope in government of any stripe.

    cheers,
    benign

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      What I saw, so far, of the so called “alternative press”, is that, clearly it’s paid by Putin and his agents. The situation is exactly the same as when Stalin was paying the Communists until late June 1941, to sing the praises of Stalin. That had disastrous consequences.

      Among them, many of the latest French fighter planes were not equipped with guns, as some in government feared workers would follow the orders of Stalin, and seize the guns in an insurrection, when France was at war with him and Hitler in 1939-1940.

      “The alternative press here in the US says Bush I and Clinton did not honor an agreement between Gorbachev and Reagan not to pull Ukraine et al into NATO if Gorbachev disbanded the USSR.”

      A tissue of lies:
      1) Gorbachev did not make an accord to disband the USSR. Not with anyone, and in particular not with the neo-fascists in the USA.
      2) There was no agreement with USA presidents to not “pull Ukraine and al.” in to NATO.
      3) Ukraine is NOT in NATO.
      4) There was a international nuclear disarmament agreement of Ukraine in 1994 between Ukraine, Russia and other parties.

      That agreement has been grossly violated by Putin by using the lie that the present government of Ukraine is NOT constitutional, which is a 100% lie (as I thoroughly explained in essays).

      Confronted to such giant lies, the evidence is that the “alternative press” is paid to lie. I also explained, in details, that Crimea is NOT historically Russian.

      You obviously did not read that part of my essays, why should I spent time cutting and pasting? I have FOUR maps about Crimea NOT being Russian.

      Russia is 5 centuries old, Ukraine more like 13 centuries. Crimea was Ukrainian more than 1,000 years ago. I mentioned ALL these facts in essays. But then, I do not repeat Putin’s lies.

      The last holocaust to make Crimea Russian was in 1944. The no return law of the survivors was passed in 1967.

      Calling me CIA, and using my own theory about plutocracy against me, etc. is not constructive. I have myself nearly been killed by Neo-Nazis in the past, so I am not amused.

      We will see what the “Alternative Putin Press” say when Putin’s tanks roll into the rest of Ukraine. Probably my fault, me and the CIA, etc.

      My theories are much more interesting than that: I do believe that plutocrats are behind Putin, and many are located in the West. The same story happened with Hitler.

      You do not understand that Putin started a war, already. That’s what such a giant breach of international law is. He is in a neurohormonal state that makes it very hard for him to stop.

      BTW, equating the toothless, endlessly debating, neutrally dominated EU with NATO will amuse most people.
      PA

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  7. Benign Says:

    PA – I am in accord with the central thesis that it is plutocrats running the world into the ground, including presently in the US, where most households’ incomes are falling as the government coffers are looted by the financial military industrial complex. So I fail to see “law” being so much on our side, although more so than in Russia. FYI, I didn’t say you were CIA, just pointed out their dirty tricks; kindly elevate away from the ad hominem. No, the alternative press here are not being paid by Putin (except RT); Americans are distrustful of their government. So I agree that Western plutocrats would like to see a war this time, just as in 1939. Their bad debts are not getting repaid, so they would like an excuse to go and take what they like and kill off some cannon fodder. I have been saying that the world’s plutocrats are in a state of neurohormonal imbalance for some time; it ain’t just Putin.

    Russia is a very sick society that seems to be doing a good job of destroying itself. You beat the war drums loudly. Do you want a world war? Who benefits? The US and the EU are being run for the bankers who would like “equity” in the nations they have destroyed. Doesn’t humanity need to throw off the plutocrats’ yoke? Doesn’t that mean saying no to war as “history”?

    I know the war-cycle models have all been predicting war for this time frame for some time, but I have hope of peaceful resolution. A lot will depend on whether Putin–and the plutocrats everywhere–are as jacked up as you suggest. War is not inevitable.

    cheers,
    benign

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      When France and Britain declared war to Hitler in 1939, they had no choice. It’s the treachery of the USA that made them lose in 1939-1940. If the USA had supported France and Britain in 1939, the war would have been over in months.

      It has nothing to do with plutocrats. Plutocrats, at least the over-active ones, were on the side of Hitler.

      I have written a zillion lines on the subject.

      At some point decent people have to chose the lesser of two evils.

      War is not the worst that can happen.

      Fortunately (and probably not by accident) Obama is 100% of my opinion, and so the USA’s behavior is opposite in 2014 from what it was in 1914 and 1939. In the two preceding cases, the USA sided on the side of greater evil.

      The collusion of MOST plutocrats, plutophiles and their politicians, on the side of Putin, for 15 years, smears plutocracy, and, just as in the 1930s-1940s, may be just what the doctor ordered, to mitigate it.

      I read/support the Reader Supported News, and I have a whole panoply of pseudo-alternative sinkers, constantly published, who tell absurdities, pro-Putin, same as I have never really seen them being truly anti-plutocratic (plutocracy would get killed with well adjusted taxes, I have said for, like, ever). Instead they are full of indignation about NOTHING (like ad hominem on the Tea Party).

      What’s RT? I have been barred an eternity ago from the Daily Kos, for telling some truths. Then I discovered it had been founded by the CIA (basically, in appearance). I have ben barred from countless sites, including supposedly progressive sites, for mundane considerations such as denouncing the collusion between bankers and Hitler in 1920s.

      I find very hard to believe all those sites are not paid for their propaganda.

      BTW, who opposed the Iraq war? Nearly no one. I opposed all of it, from the start, even the Kuwait thing (Kuwait was horizontally drilling into Iraq, and the USA ambassador encouraged Saddam to use force, a magnificent bait & switch).

      As far as International Law is concerned, war has already started. That big time shooting did not start is just a detail. Putin is now extending his claims all the way to Moldova.

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  8. Patrice Ayme Says:

    PA: “Humans are minds, and minds can’t live on their knees. They inhabit too many dimensions.”

    Margot Winch likes this.

    Alexi Helligar: Well, some minds can’t live on its knees. Other minds prefer it.

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  9. Benign Says:

    So far US is not willing to do military war, which is correct, IMHO. Sanctions will hurt. What I would like to see is referendums supervised by international agencies to establish a federal structure giving the provinces more self-determination. If this program were declared today, instead of sending in “anti-terrorist” troops (there’s that word again–why weren’t the right-wingers in Kiev terrorists?), my sense of the mood of the people across the Ukraine is that they would all vote and it would be over. Vice News on YouTube has an excellent series of video reports from on the ground there.

    Putin is not so stupid he thinks he can conquer Europe, I believe. He may in the end not even send in troops (more than special forces) and let the bankrupt EU push the Ukraine into debt slavery while Putin collects his gas money. Russia has very little sovereign debt and so is not vulnerable to the IMF. Energy prices are not going down any time soon. Russia can get by. Ukrainians may decide after a couple of years of quasi-EU membership and watching Western plutocrats take ownership of their state assets to go over to Russia, at least the eastern parts.

    What would be really stupid would be a shooting war.

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Benign: The shooting war has already started. The number of people killed is above 250, including an unarmed Ukrainian Major in Crimea who was getting ready to leave with woman and children.

      Putin is doing, as we speak, his trick of sending unmarked special forces mixing with civilians, 200 kilometers inside Ukraine. Whether Putin is smart or not, is not the question. At this point, he is on the neurohormonal warpath. He is carried away by forces that he himself unleashed, and not just in his own brain.

      His corrupt regime led him there, same as Hitler in 1938.

      What you believe, or what even what Putin believes, is mostly irrelevant. Forces, very dark forces, have been unleashed. They rule.
      PA

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  10. Benign Says:

    The coup in Kiev was run by the CIA. This was the initial provocation. This is well documented. The coup was run out of the US Embassy.

    Putin says he has no designs on Europe or the Ukraine as part of Russia and I believe him. He is not Hitler. He wants a nonaligned buffer state in the Ukraine. He has been consistent about this. This is on the table in Geneva. Russia, Europe and US should monitor referendums to achieve this.

    The US continues to provoke because that is all the Washington consensus knows how to do, it butters their bread to destroy nations in the name of freedom. In reality, it is turning the world away from America at an accelerating pace.

    If you think Putin is bluffing, the West should call his bluff and ask for nonaligned or tri-partite peacekeeping troops to supervise referendums.

    The way I see it, the CIA and the KGB are on a par in sending in fifth column agents to stir up trouble at this point.

    Let’s see if America and the Europeans can behave like adults and pursue the Russian proposal for referendums. They should, in good faith. I do not share your psychoanalysis of Putin. We shall see. It certainly makes no strategic sense for Russia to invade the Ukraine.

    I am afraid the neocons/neoliberals think they can “win” a “limited” nuclear war against Russia–take it out once and for all, send it back to 1917 just as it is getting to its feet after the “free market shock therapy” that the West helped out with 23 years ago. If that is what you’re promoting, you are the one with severe psychological defects.

    Another ground war in Europe–which is more likely what we’d get if Putin invades–would simply be obscene. Let the West apply sanctions and bargain in good faith for true democracy in the Ukraine. Let the Ukrainians settle down. Vice News has excellent video reporting that shows that what the folks in the east want is guarantees of referendums (they chant “referendum!”) to assure their rights.

    cheers
    b9

    Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      “The coup in Kiev was run by the CIA. This was the initial provocation. This is well documented. The coup was run out of the US Embassy.”
      Oh, so the provocation was not the last minute sign-out, after years of negotiation with the EU, and Putin offering more than 23 billion dollars (which he does not have). And also the UN does not know what it is saying in its report of April 15th? (See my latest essay.)

      What’s your proof that there was a “coup” in Kiev? As far as I can see the impeachment of ex-president was constitutional… and mainly engineered by his OWN party.

      The situation is worse than you depict it: Apparently Putin is a CIA agent as he ordered his subordinate, foreign minister Lavrov, a Siberian hard man, to meet with the Ukrainian government in Geneva to sign the April 17 accord. Read my latest essay on that.

      I am happy that Putin has found his way back to Langley, Virginia, and now obeys my friend Obama (and, thus, myself and I; I authorize you to say Heil Tyranosopher!” , while making a Roman salute, when in my presence). Let me bask in that happiness, as it seems that, with a heavy and steady hand, the forlorn sheep was able to find the barn again.

      Now let it be shorn.

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      “Putin says he has no designs on Europe or the Ukraine as part of Russia and I believe him.”

      Well, Putin admitted explicitly, April 17, 2014 that he lied about his invasion of Crimea (see my latest essay). Moreover, he is the head Mafioso of an oligarchy of demonic plutocrats (sorry about the pleonasm!) from St Petersburg. A rather curious choice of deity in whom to believe…
      😉

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  11. Benign Says:

    You attempt a face saving retreat just as Putin does just as Obama does. The games we humans play. This war offered no one a clear win.

    Shorn? No; perhaps the accord will work, Russia will be allowed to develop in peace, and the debt-deluged deficit-plagued EU and US can trade with them.

    I hope that the Washington Consensus, the neocon/neoliberal dream of world domination by the US dies with this farce. I do believe there are people in our government who would have liked to try to destroy Russia (and may yet try).

    cheers
    benign

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      I indeed hope that Putin’s changing mood will not change again before the May 25 election. It may. He still has to withdraw his operatives and special forces form East Ukraine. He will not before June. So anything could still happen.

      The fact remains that the criminal organization around Putin, set-up in Saint Petersburg in the past is more powerful than ever. An American professor of sociology, famous author of seven books published by Cambridge University Press (founded 1542) was barred to publish her latest work, on Putin and al. CUP told her (in an email meant to stay private) that it was… too dangerous.

      It’s precisely the entanglement of Putinocracy and the rest of the world’s plutocracy that is so oppressive, and dangerous. We saw that already in the 1930s.

      Hitler thought he could get the French Republic, and Poland, thanks to his allies, Stalin, Mussolini, and the immense army of Anglo-American plutocrats. His generals thought he was crazy, but Hitler got very lucky. For a while. Meanwhile the USA got to transmogrify in a People’s republic to win the war, hence the after WWII socialism…
      PA

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Oh, I did not notice this… I attempt a “face saving retreat”? About what? Putin recognized he had invaded Crimea when he claimed he did not, and now has agreed that his agents in the rest of Ukraine ought to step down (in exchange for amnesty). No doubt his own plutocratic lieutenants persuaded him, finally, that he was risking to lose everything.

      To claim to be against world plutocracy, but to support Putin, one of the world’s mightiest plutocrats is the real loss of face, and metal coherence, and it’s not benign.
      Cheers
      Non-benign (hopefully! ;-))

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Benign: You also comment on old stuff, conveniently ignoring the about-face of Putin and Lavrov of April 17, 2014.

      Putin’s Novorossiya Retreat?

      I explain the psycho mechanism that pushed Putin to call Ukraine “Russia”, and south Ukraine “New Russia”, while ignominiously retreating…
      PA

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      • Benign Says:

        Patrice, we agree that the threat is from international plutocracy. I am sorry to hear of Putin’s influence on publication in England. Re: the Ukraine, it is a liability, already plundered, and the plutocrats on both sides are trying to figure out what to do with it with minimum possible losses. That is why Putin won’t invade, I think. We differ on the degree of his derangement.
        cheers,
        benign

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        • Patrice Ayme Says:

          Benign: Maybe you should read my more recent essays on the subject. I view Putin as a patient. He needs to be cured, as it seems his derangement will long be in command. It was already diagnosed by some of his KGB instructors, way back.

          Putin (just as Hitler before him) is a loose electron in the Pluto system. Thereof his strength, self delusion, and much of his madness.
          Cheers to you too!
          PA

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