Russian invasion of Ukraine

[Magpietothemax]

^ I notice from your comments above that you seem to be very much focussing on the strength of the EU. However, the only way to interpret your comments is that you view the EU as another imperialist alliance who can challenge for world supremacy. You seem to think it is positive for mankind that the EU should challenge US power by increasing its military budget? Rather than spending money on the needs of the working class, health, education etc? Do you understand where that logic leads? You are saying that it is great that the EU is preparing to challenge US imperialism with military power. Lenin would be laughing at you right now, because your very arguments confirm exactly what he explained when he wrote:Ïmperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism"'. The only way for capitalism to resolve the organisation of the world economy is through global war. Exactly what we are seeing in Ukraine, the antechamber of World War 3.d
I haven't been following your writings over the past decade, but i can see from what you are writing here that you are in favour of a European based bloc to temporarily align itself with US imperialism, and when the opportunity presents itself, stab them in the back.
An imperialist den of thieves, as Lenin said.
^^^^^^
Dam collapse in Dnipro: an ecological and humanitarian catastrophe. No evidence yet as to how it occurred or who was responsible. While NATO and the German government were quick to claim that it was an act of sabotage by Russian military forces, the US government was much more cautious and declared that it was still attempting to assess what happened.

[pietillidie]

^Why you'd be holding your mind back by using the same limited frameworks as neo-Marxian leftists pre-1990 is beyond me. Have you stopped reading and learning since then? It's not even close to reasonable to think that the tiny amount of world knowledge and experience we had decades ago was somehow miraculously sufficient for all time.

On what planet do nations not need to be able to defend themselves? That's basic, responsible risk management. Do you also oppose spending on police forces? Car alarms? Flood levies? Insurance policies? Vaccines? Risk management is an extraordinarily basic expression of human intelligence and planning.

And what strange moral system makes you think allowing nutcases to kill and terrorise others within their sphere without helping defend them is a superior ethical model? Or that the entirety of American existence can be reduced to 'US imperialism' once and forever in all ways. Or that Europe has no right to align with whoever it wants to defend its citizens from attack, economic terrorism and destabilisation?

You still can't seem to cope with the fact that Ukraine, Ukraine's neighbours and the EU have invited the US to defend them from an invading power. It's as if the fact has gone straight through to the keeper; like nothing else on earth matters except the voice in your head screaming 'but American imperialism'.

I'm in favour of nothing but a process of achieving fairer competition, widening the sphere of opportunity for more of humanity to express itself creatively to its fullest extent. And that's exactly what Ukraine has been trying to do by moving away from Russia's stifling, oppressive influence.

That always means achieving a better competitive balance. The EU offsetting the worst of American impulses achieves exactly that. The US helping Ukraine, Ukraine's neighbours, Eastern Europe, the EU and the global economy fend off Putin's violence and destabilisation achieves exactly that.

There is no ideal world; there are only improvements. And sending Putin back home to focus on his own pathetic, oppressive economy, facing the reality of the decline of fossil fuels, does just that. Every situation needs to be engaged on its own merits, which is exactly why the constrained, grossly overgeneralised neo-Marxian thought is not doing your intellectual capability justice.

Oh, and here's a list of the ongoing terrorism my friends in Dnipro and their families face, with this no doubt barely the half of it. What do you think this would this be doing to you psychologically?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%8 ... le_strikes

[Magpietothemax]

Sorry for your friends in Dnipro. They are victims of a horrific war.
I have full sympathy for all those who are suffering from its consequences, and hope that they will stay safe.
You and I disagree on the causes of this war, and its implications.
That is where it stands.

[pietillidie]

^Look, I really do rate your thinking on a whole heap of things and likely almost everything.

Russia also has its own rationale. I can empathise with being trapped inside a system outside one's control, having lived inside another culture and seen how people have to accept the boundaries they're given. I can also safely assume many Russians themselves hate the place, especially those who have experienced something better. But like Trump's MAGA cult members, while I can understand that they're trapped in a culture outside of time, I'm not willing to let their state extend that misfortunate by imposing it on others. It's not a position taken against individuals.

I love Chomsky as much as the next person, but he has far less world experience than he imagines, whether that be living and immersing himself in another culture, working in a corporation, meeting the payroll of workers, saving a firm from collapse, growing up with limited opportunities, and so on.

Like us the rest of us, he's at his worst when he's poking at things far outside his sphere of experience.

[David]

[David]

[pietillidie]

^Yep, just another of the 'but both sides' dumbness out there, and encouraged by an irresponsible media, that wreckers like Putin and Trump feast on.

[Magpietothemax]

[David]

[Magpietothemax]

"at the end of the day, you don't care who said it"...well that is a real issue, because in judging the truth of anything in politics, the history, character and political orientation of the individual who says it is surely of critical importance.
Karadjis defends terrorist cannibals, drug trafficking KLA criminals, and tries to discredit Seymour Hersch without any evidence whatsoever. He is a member of a political organisation which in 2012 totally supported the witch hunt against Julian Assange. (In 2012, Socialist Alliance was demanding that Assange return to Sweden to face bogus rape claims. Most recently, Socialist Alliance has tried to cover its tracks by demanding the end of Julian Assange's persecution, without ever accounting for their 180 degree u turn on this question)
Yet you think that this track record is irrelevant in judging the merit of his claims regarding the war in Ukraine??
Naturally it is up to you how you determine what is true and what is not, but in the end success depends on how much you really want to find it.

[roar]

^^ and others defend the likes of Putin. Is he any better?

Talk to any non-russian living in any of the countries that border russia and there will be a consistent opinion on who is to blame.

[think positive]

well this is getting interesting!

[David]

[David]

[Magpietothemax]

^^ and others defend the likes of Putin. Is he any better?

Talk to any non-russian living in any of the countries that border russia and there will be a consistent opinion on who is to blame.

Condemning Zelensky for what he is, a US and NATO stooge in NATO's undeclared war against Russia, does not automatically
imply that Putin is somehow "better" than Zelensky. Putin's government is a corrupt regime defending the interests of the Russian financial oligarchy. The war in Ukraine was provoked by US imperialism through the policies and actions of its buddy Zelensky. Zelensky and the Ukrainian oligarchs he represents agreed to offer up Ukraine as a battlefield to the US and NATO in return for their own self-enrichment. Putin invaded because he hoped in this way to apply pressure on the US and thereby establish some kind of security guarantee for Russia that NATO would cease its neverending encroachment towards Russia's borders. Putin's calculations were catastrophically wrong, because the US does not want a negotiatied settlement and has systematically escalated the war by supplying the Ukrainian government with ever deadlier munitions, and crossing red lines that it had previously said it would not.
Both the Ukrainian and Russian government stand condemned for the slaughter that has been unleashed, but in reality the major force responsible is US imperialism and its Nato allies.