Abstract: The advertized ferocity of Putin’s attempted annihilation of Ukraine is unsurpassed. There is now direct declarative admissions from RUSSIAN commanders that small children are deliberately killed, to foster the esprit de corps a la Putin. Even the Nazis didn’t sink that low for all to see.
But fancy Western electronics still makes its way to Putin’s mass murdering machine. Historical examples show why one should blockade the countries which provide Putin with advanced electronics he needs for his weapons.
While excesses such as Athens’ annihilation of “neutral” Melos have to be avoided, violations of blockades by pseudo-neutrals or outright allies, enabled fascist Germany to make wars for years. Twice.
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Denial and illusions must be rejected: Putin’s war is not just a fight between human democratic nature and the fascist instinct Russian orcs learned to leverage.
It’s a struggle for the survival of humanity.
The Russian Private Military Corporations Wagner ordered killing children as young as five (5) years old [1]. This is an old infamous trick, already found in Carthage: killing children is an excellent mental glue among perpetrators. See follies that bind: God ordered Abraham to kill his son, and Abraham agreed, because obeying the boSS is the ultimate principle of fascism (as promoted by the Bible).
World war indeed: More than 50 democracies help Ukraine militarily. Democracies have recognized that oligarchies armed with nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence are not the future.
So it is high time to act as if we were in a struggle for existence, because we are. Yet, Russia heavily relies on Western electronics for its more advanced weapons systems. Advanced French night vision, sold after 2014, is found on the most advanced Russian tanks.AMD, Analog Devices, Infineon, Intel and Texas Instruments shipments came after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Intel kept at it until April 2022…
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BLOCKADE TRAITORS TO DEMOCRACY:
Tyranosopher: Powers favorable to Putin, and, or Xi are hostile to democracy. If they actively help the tyrants by sending them advanced Western tech, as is presently the case, they should be considered enemies of democracy and thus of humanity having a future, and treated accordingly.
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The Melian Objection:
Simplicia: Those with a passing knowledge of Greek history may object that you are suggesting to make the mistake of Athens with the island city-state of Melos. In 416 BCE, in the middle of the Peloponnesian War, Athens sent a fleet to Melos and ordered that the Melians join the Delian League (Athens’ empire) and pay a tribute to Athens (the tribute corresponded to the upkeep of a trireme for 18 months). The Melians refused to submit, arguing that they were a neutral state, not part of the Athenian Empire, and of Spartan descent.
The Athenians then laid siege to Melos, and after six months, captured the city, killed all the men and enslaved the survivors. The Athenian historian and general, Thucydides, records the events in his work “History of the Peloponnesian War”. The Athenians showed no mercy to the Melians, despite their pleas and their claims of neutrality.
This event was couched in a famous dialogue by Thucydides, and is often cited as an example of Athens’ overreaching ambition and her willingness to use ultimate violence to assert her dominance over other city-states. The Athenians’ treatment of the Melians was seen as a violation of basic humanity by the principle of “might makes right“. Ultimately, Athens’ harsh treatment of Melos may have contributed to her downfall, as many city-states started to fear and hate her.
Tyranosopher: Thucydides explained that the purpose of conquering Melos was to demonstrate the strength and sternness of Athens to discourage the island territories of her empire from rebelling, in light of Sparta’ s ferocity. Moreover there were technical strategic reasons pertaining to trireme war for forcing Melos [2].
Simplicia: So aren’t you proposing to exhibit strength and sternness? And have the West antagonize neutral powers?
Tyranosopher: No. Melos, although ancestrally Spartan, did not obviously help Sparta during the Peloponnesian War. Melos looked neutral, while the truth was more nuanced: Melian non-help of Athens hindered the democracy [2].
Powers helping Putin are definitely NOT neutral, they help the child-killing tyrant crucially, and they can’t claim Russian ancestry (as Melos claimed Spartan ancestry). Moreover, the idea is not to submit Putinophiles militarily, just to extend the tech blockade to them, as if they were part of the Russian empire… because not only they are, but this is crucial to defeat Putin.
Simplicia: Still, I maintain, your proposal to extent war to neutral seems foolhardy. Didn’t work for Athens, and look where we are, still no direct democracy.
Tyranosopher: What sank Athens was not the Melos story, however tragic.
Simplicia: Yes, but that “strength and sternness” impelled a mood of ferocity, and that led in turn Athens to attack Syracuse and execute her successful high command, in totto… And those were the enormous errors which made Athens lose the war.
Tyranosopher: OK, you look correct about impelling a mood of excess. However, Athens had big excuses. The stakes were so enormous, we feel the consequences to this day. So Athens may have been rendered mad from other reasons. Sparta was a bit like Putin: so as not to lose, Sparta made an alliance with dictatorial Persia, which financed Sparta’s fleet, the fleet which ultimately defeated Athens. Executing all the generals and admirals, though, was worse than a crime, it was Athens shooting herself in the head. And that led directly to defeat and devastation.
I am not advocating hubris or madness, nor attacking Armenia or Georgia. I am advocating a high tech blockade, with extremely stiff prison sentences if violated on the Western side. Launch trials for high treason.
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When A Tyrant Attacks And A Democracy Defends, There Is No Neutrality:
Historically, many world wars have started slowly, typically because the good guys defended reluctantly whatever it was worth defending that made them good. Cynics and lump-thinkers will sneer that I am naive to believe there are good and bad guys, war is always bad, blah blah blah; but actually not just that, there are good and bad guys, but there are also good and bad issues [3].) The propaganda in the fascist Kaiserreich had been Between the start of the invasion of China by the Japanese military and stopping US oil making that invasion possible, a full decade elapsed. During that decade, Japan, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany slowly ramped up ever more outrageous behaviors and invasions. But for France, democracies kept looking elsewhere, and making deals with the fascist powers (although perpetrators were expelled from the League Of Nations,predecessor of the UN, and starting in 1938, France and Britain tried to get Hitler to stop). Some nations, in both WWi and WWII became wealthy from breaking the blockade and helping the fascists. Not just the USA… Not just the Netherlands, or Sweden… Not just Switzerland…
In World War One, the German Kaisereich was able to wage war because “neutral” countries (including the US, Netherlands, etc.) provided it with indispensable goods which skirted the Franco-British blockade. France and Britain protested to Washington in vain. And of course France and Britain took no serious hostile actions against the US. After the US joined France and Britain, the production of German high explosives collapsed to one tenth of the French production… in 1918.
“Neutral” countries are objective allies of fascist invaders if they make their invasion possible. Under this definiton, the USA helped imperial fascist Japan conquer China, for a decade, as US business provided the oil. A reason France lost in May 1940 was from sending the French mobile reserve to the Netherlands, which had been neutral until Hitler attacked it… just with the purpose of attracting the French, the most ridiculous, obvious trap… But it worked.
The democracies shouldn’t be afraid to force regimes which help the Kremlin to take sides. Typically the only power those regimes have is skirting around sanctions. So sanction them.
Sanction them in turn, in all ways.
After Athens was half destroyed by Sparta, and had to surrender, it went through an eclipse. Its spirit was not destroyed though, and Thebes in turn defeated Sparta, yanking away the city state it had enslaved. Then fascist Macedonia destroyed Thebes and Athens had not recovered enough to resist the successors of Alexander… When Romans came around, they used to make fun of Athens’ pretense at reliving her past. In any case, here we are 24 centuries later, and direct democracy, Athenian style, is still out of reach. As Putin gets small children killed (instead of enslaving them as the worst Greeks would have done), one must fear the next democratic eclipse to be worse…
Democracy is protected by power, and that comes greatly from superior tech. So one has to protect that superiority… And that must require to regain financial supremacy and control: right now autocratic regimes can hide their finances, and even mingle them, not just with the enormous wealth of individual “family offices” but also with the wealth of Putin’s Russia… Offering a back channel way to acquire Western tech (Turkey is a potential case in point…)
The weaker democracy is defended now, the harder it will be to save it in the long term. The fate of humanity is in balance, as only democracy can provide humanity with enough intelligence, decency, authenticity.
An entangled world it is, but evil, mixed with the rest, is explosive.
Patrice Ayme
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[1] One Wagner fighter, Azamat Yaldarov, admitted that Prigozhin ordered his unit to kill children while taking control of Soledar, and that he buried 18 children that he killed in Krasnodar Krai and Saratov and Kirov oblasts.[13] Yaldarov emphasized that Prigozhin gave the order for Wagner fighters to ”eliminate” everyone in Soledar, and that Yaldarov was specifically ordered to kill children. Another Wagner fighter and commander of a reconnaissance unit, Aleksey Savich, told the interviewer that he fired on his own men for disobedience and that he personally witnessed the executions of 80 Wagner fighters for refusing to follow orders. Savich claimed that Wagner’s command gave the order to kill all civilians in Bakhmut aged 15 and older, and that his unit killed 23 civilians, 10 of whom were unarmed teenagers.
Savich recounted other instances from operations in Bakhmut and Soledar in which he murdered children as young as five years old and other civilians.
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[2] No precise allegations of Melian help to Sparta exist (the Navy argument below may have been well known at the time). Some allege Melian “open hostility” to Athens, and archeology indicates 12 kilograms of Melian silver may have ended in Sparta.
As the war dragged on, the Athenians felt that their previous leniency made them look weak, encouraging revolts. The rising brutality of the Athenians responded to Spartan brutality, which had been extreme from the beginning. After the massacre committed by the Spartans at Plataea in 429 BC, the Athenians habitually massacred their own prisoners.
Moreover, Greek warships, the triremes, needed to be beached every night, in practice, as it was impossible to sleep on them, they carried no provisions, and they got water logged (thus slower). So Melian “neutrality”, considering the western Aegan position of Melos, was a serious hindrance to the Delian League… That explains why Athens felt so hostile.
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[3] The good versus bad debate hinges on looking exactly at what is going on, at some point in space and time. For example the Franco-English wars are full of the dance between good and evil, or even good versus good, one way, then the other…. Wars against Louis XIV of France were mostly caused by Louis’ persecution of the Protestants. He had definitely turned into a bad guy with a bad cause.. And the French who don’t see this yet, embrace the bad side, just as US citizens who embrace the Confederacy… Actually worse, as the Confederates battled to preserve what they knew, whereas Louis created his own horror….

This map explains much of the present cultural geopolitics. At full extent, the Mongol empire was even larger than this: Mongol scouting parties reached the Adriatic, and there were major battles in Poland. The Mongols turned around, because they were afraid of the Franks and what happened to their ancestors the Huns (according to the Secret History of the Mongols relating the acrimonious debate among the top lieutenants of Ghenghis Khan, Subutai, Batu, etc.).
It is not that the Mongols were bad in all ways, far from it. But the Mongols’ military junta, with its top generals, like Subutai and princes, or Khan, like Ogedei and Batu, definitely broke (relatively) democratic Kyivan Rus… And annihilated Kyiv, before making the Kremlin strongman, Alexander Nevsky… Prince of Kyiv!