There is a logical fallacy that dominates European neoliberal “thinking” at the moment. It goes like this.
“Hitler had unlimited territorial ambition and proceeded to attempt conquest of all Europe after annexing the Sudetenland. Therefore Putin has unlimited territorial ambition and will proceed to attempt conquest of all Europe after annexing Eastern Ukraine.”
This fallacious argument gives no evidence of Putin’s further territorial ambition. For evidence of Putin’s threat to the UK, Keir Starmer risibly refers to the Salisbury “novichok” affair, perhaps the most pathetic propaganda confection in history.
But even if you were to be so complacent as to accept the official version of events in Salisbury, does an assassination attempt on a double agent credibly indicate a desire by Putin to launch World War 3 or invade the UK?
Hitler’s territorial ambitions were not hidden. His desire for lebensraum and, crucially, his view that the Germans were a superior race who should rule over the inferior races, was plain in print and in speeches.
There is simply no such evidence for wide territorial ambition by Putin. He is not pursuing a crazed Nazi ideology that drives to conquest – or for that matter a Marxist ideology that seeks to overthrow the established order around the world.
The economic alignment project of BRICS is not designed to promote an entirely different economic system, just to rebalance power and flows within the system, or at most to create a parallel system not skewed to the advantage of the United States.
Neither the end of capitalism nor territorial expansion is part of the BRICS project.
There is simply no evidence of Putin having territorial goals beyond Ukraine and the tiny enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It is perfectly fair to characterise Putin’s territorial expansion over two decades as limited to the reincorporation of threatened Russian-speaking minority districts in ex-Soviet states.
That it is worth a world war and unlimited dead over who should be mayor of the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking city of Lugansk is not entirely plain to me.
The notion that Putin is about to attack Poland or Finland is utter nonsense. The idea that the Russian army, which has struggled to subdue small and corrupt, if Western-backed, Ukraine, has the ability to attack Western Europe itself is plainly impractical.
The internal human rights record of Putin’s Russia is poor, but at this point it is marginally better than that of Zelensky’s Ukraine. For example the opposition parties in Russia are at least allowed to contest elections, albeit on a heavily sloped playing field, whereas in Ukraine they are banned outright.
Still less convincing are the arguments that Russia’s overseas political activities in third countries require massive Western increases in armaments to prepare for war with Russia.
The plain truth is that the Western powers interfere far more in other countries than Russia does, through massive sponsorship of NGOs, journalists and politicians, much of which is open and some of which is covert.
I used to do this myself as a British diplomat. Revelations from USAID or the Integrity Initiative leaks give the public a glimpse into this world.
Yes, Russia does it too, but on a much smaller scale. That this kind of Russian activity indicates a desire for conquest or is a cause for war, is such a shallow argument it is hard to believe in the good faith of those promoting it.
I have also seen Russian military intervention in Syria put forward as evidence that Putin has plans of world conquest.
Russian intervention in Syria prevented for a time its destruction by the West in the same way that Iraq and Libya were destroyed by the West. Russia held back the coming to power of crazed Islamic terrorists, and the massacre of Syria’s minority communities. Those horrors are now unfolding, in part because of the weakening of Russia through the Ukraine war.
But for those nations that destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya to argue that Russia’s intervention in Syria shows Putin to be evil, is dishonesty of the highest degree. The United States has had a quarter of Syria under military occupation for over a decade and has been stealing almost all of Syria’s oil.
Pointing at Russia here is devoid of reason.
Strangely, the same “logic” is not applied to Benjamin Netanyahu. It is not argued by neoliberals that his annexations of Gaza, the West Bank and Southern Lebanon mean he must have further territorial ambitions. In fact, they even fail to note Netanyahu’s aggressions at all, or portray them as “defensive” – the same argument advanced much more credibly by Putin in Ukraine, but which neoliberals there outright reject.
The economies of Western Europe are being realigned onto a war footing, led by the utterly transformed European Union. The enthusiastic proponents of genocide in Gaza who head the EU now are channelling an atavistic hereditary hatred of Russia.
The foreign policy of the EU is propelled by Kaja Kallas and Ursula von der Leyen. The fanatical Russophobia these two are spreading, and their undisguised desire to escalate the war in Ukraine, cannot help but remind Russians that they come from nations which were fanatically Nazi.
To Russians this feels a lot like 1941. With Europe in the grip of full-on anti-Russian propaganda, the background to Trump’s attempt to broker a peace deal is troubled and Russia is understandably wary.
The UK continues to play the most unhelpful of roles. They have despatched Morgan Stanley’s Jonathan Powell to advise Zelensky on peace talks. As Blair’s Chief of Staff, Powell played a crucial role in the illegal invasion of Iraq. He was also heavily implicated in the death of David Kelly.
Wherever there is war and money to be made from war, you will find the same ghouls gathering. Those involved in launching the invasion of Iraq should be excluded from public life. Instead Powell is now the UK’s National Security Adviser.
I am not a follower of Putin. The amount of force used to crush Chechnya’s legitimate desire for self-determination was disproportionate, for example. It is naive to believe that you get to be leader of the KGB by being a gentle person.
But Putin is not Hitler. It is only through the blinkers of patriotism that Putin appears to be a worse person than the Western leaders behind massive invasion and death all around the globe, who now seek to extend war with Russia.
Here in the UK, the Starmer government is seeking actively to prolong the war, and is looking for a huge increase in spending on weapons, which always brings kickbacks and future company directorships and consultancies for politicians.
To fund this warmongering, New Labour are cutting spending on the UK’s sick, disabled and pensioners and cutting aid to the starving overseas.
This is a picture of Keir Starmer meeting with Israeli President Herzog, six months after the ICJ interim ruling quoted a statement by Herzog as evidence of genocidal intent.
The Starmer government was voted for by 31% of those who bothered to cast a vote, or 17% of the adult population. It is engaged in wholesale legal persecution of leading British supporters of Palestine, and is actively complicit in the genocide in Gaza.
I see no moral superiority here.
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Well,
Russia has asked for over a decade (iirc, the first occurrence was at the 2007 Munich Security Conference) for a European security architecture.
One can make the argument that it then has to invade & occupy the UK, to prevent the British from playing funny games & dirty tricks.
But the rest of Europe has not much left of interest to Russia.
Times have changed. Back in the days of Hitler, ‘territorial ambitions’ meant invading foreign countries to capture their resources, their wealth. It implied tanks, artillery, and general infantry.
Nowadays, this is no longer necessary. In the global economy, you can achieve the same goals without an actual invasion.
Does Trump’s regime plan to invade Canada? Obviously not. But Canada may become a satellite state of the US.
Has Putin’s regime invaded Belarus? What for? And yet Belarus has become a satellite state of Russia.
There’s no hiding it’s a little different in the case of Israel, where the leadership has falsely claimed historical rights over neighboring regions as an excuse for their expansion policies that go together with ethnic cleansing of inconvenient residents.
We’ll see what happens with Ukraine. I cannot seriously imagine the current gesturing of the British government having the slightest impact on the outcome of the current situation. Despite widespread wishful thinking, if one Empire has faded away and for ever, it is that of the United Kingdom.
Yes. Nowadays, The shock troops are the World Bank and the IMF ably assisted by the UN in all its guises; pushing ‘democracy’, open borders, privatisation and promotion of minorities to the detriment of the majority.
The effect is the same: divide, conquer, destroy.
Russia went through this abomination 30 years ago, but thanks to the likes of Putin they have mostly managed to shake off the west and its malign influence.
Thankfully Trump appears to be putting Starmer and his crew of imbeciles in their place.
Unfortunately though, we’ll now have to live with the Israel and China agendas.
You write “There is simply no evidence of Putin having territorial goals beyond Ukraine and the tiny enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia”. You overlooked Transnistria, occupied since 1992. And those tiny enclaves represent 25% of Georgia. Before 1992, Russia had no designs on Moldova. Before 2004, it had no designs on Georgia. Before 2014, it had no designs in Ukraine. All of these were – surprise – surprise attacks.
Transnistria of course is part of a Moldovan state where the Western powers recently blatantly rigged the EU referendum and Presidential election. I don’t think the addition of another tiny Russian speaking enclave invalidates my argument – in fact it reinforces it. Putin’s territorial ambition extends only to a finite number of Russian speaking territorial enclaves.
Putin’s empire-building transcends language lines, as shown by his full-scale attempted conquest of Ukrainian cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv, places where Russian speakers are a minority. Transnistria’s Cuciurgan power plant once supplied 70% of Moldova’s electricity, and Transnistria had over 50% of Moldova’s industry proving Russia prioritizes control of energy and industry over cultural ties. When Moscow weaponized gas supplies in 2024, it didn’t just freeze Moldovan homes but crushed Transnistria’s economy as well. This isn’t about protecting Russian speakers; it’s about strangling sovereign nations through pipelines, power grids and war crimes. Ukraine’s fight isn’t just theirs — it’s the fight against a regime trying to resurrect its Stalin-era dominion.
Do you watch Russian TV? Why don’t you believe them when they say they want every Ukrainian dead – man, woman or child?
“Kyiv and Kharkiv, places where Russian speakers are a minority”
Oh boy, the amount of ignorance contained in this sentence is breathtaking. Jesus $%&! Christ ….
In the real world, walking around Kiev in 2012 the only Ukrainian I heard was in the rare cases that a local realised I was a westerner who could understand Russian… Kharkiv, of course is even more Russian speaking.
“Why don’t you believe them when they say they want every Ukrainian dead – man, woman or child?”
Oh my god, the delusion! If you believe russian TV says that, you will believe anything! Is this some kind of troll comment? People cannot be so brainwashed…
Mea culpa – I meant Russians, not Russian speakers. I understand you are looking forward to the US occupying Canada along linguistic lines. All in the name of preserving American culture against les Quebecois, of course.
Here director of Russia Today’s broadcasting Anton Krasovsky suggests drowning Ukrainian children, says Ukrainian women should pay for being raped by Russian soldiers in Ukraine, says Ukraine should not exist and Ukrainians who resist Russia should be burnt in their “shitty huts”. When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
https://youtu.be/8lkshypC2Rk
Surely CIP, you mean so called sovereign nation who use and shut off international pipelines for their own thiefing political aims.
Nazi worshippers who should have thanked Cruitshov for his gift to Ukraine rather than erecting war memorial to killers.
Who were only too happy at the sabotaged NS2, cutting off 42% gas supplies designated for German industrial energy use.
Lets see Ukraine survive without begging for arms, paid for by western nations with monies cut from aid programs, reducing social and health benefits and empoverishing millions of children, so Nazi worshippers can buy expensive properties in Spain.
Ukraine might be as corrupt as other EU countries and Governments, but wanting to join NATO is taking the mikey/piss.
“Do you watch Russian TV? Why don’t you believe them when they say they want every Ukrainian dead – man, woman or child?”
Do they then want to dismember ~40 million corpses and use them to make a big artistic display to memorialise a certain long-passed moustachioed Georgian, with an eternal red five-pointed star on the top, as they cackle “You can do one, democratic citizens of Leatherhead with your Daily Telegraph and your Help for Heroes bump
I reckon the BBC tells the truth and upholds democracy and freedom, whereas Russian TV pumps out pro-regime propaganda, eh, @CIP?
Lets be fair Mr Murray.
Transnistria was part of the Soviet Republic of Moldova not post-Soviet Moldova. Which itself is widely regarded, as an utter quasi-fictional farce of a “country”.
They decided on that themselves, even before the final fall of the U.S.S.R. Never bothering to ask for Moscow’s permission.
It was General Lebed, who put a stop the essentially ethnic warfare there. By banging heads together.
@Urban – What’s your point? It’s good that the ethnic warfare stopped, surely? If the large majority of people living in Transnistria want to live in Russia de jure or de facto, fine. What’s the problem? Same applies in the 6 territories disputed between Russian and Ukrainian governments.
Save me from British journo commentators, tourists in all but name, who visit Transnistria and can only talk about the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union, they saw a flaking mural, OMG, the hotel even served borshch…
It’s a fair point that yourself and others derided the notion that Russia would invade Ukraine as Russia phobic hysteria…
I think it is absurd to suggest Russia has any designs on western Europe, but you can’t blame eastern states for worrying they’re in the sights of Russian opportunism, if not ideological expansions
Also note that the US has no ideological basis for world conquest but that doesn’t stop them invading with abandon for economic motives. I don’t give Russia any more benefit of the doubt, and it’s frustrating to see the anti war movement given to a naivete over Russian motivations (you really think Putin’s interest in Syria were beneficent to protect religious minorities?)
Could you make a strong case for the Russian rulers having designs on Poland?
More so than for the Polish rulers aiming to increase their influence in Lvov and elsewhere in East Ukraine?
Georgia was indeed a surprise (if very expected) attack. By a Georgian army entirely armed by USA*.
As of course the EU inquiry confirmed the next year. Georgia attacked Russian peacemakers, who in turned counter attacked and beat the Georgian army. And then promptly left Georgia.
Transnistria has about 5000 peacekeepers who the locals very much appreciate.
You are being mislead by Ukrainian propaganda. Kiev wants to attack Transnistria as an alternative front and to embarrass Putin (a kind of more sensible Kursk). Therefore it talks nonsense about russian aggression in Transnistria. Some mugs choose to believe it.
*Ok the tanks were soviet, but the turrets had been replaced by US ones.
No the Georgian army was not entirely armed by the USA.
It got a lot of weapons as well as training from Israel.
Incidentally Georgia even had Hebrew-speaking Israelis in its government, in charge of both the war effort and the negotiations.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/tel-aviv-tbilisi-israels-role-russia-georgia-war/7664
https://time.com/archive/6944223/what-israel-lost-in-the-georgia-war/
Henry Kissinger, who I am not necessarily a fan of, but he had a good understanding of the issues. He had analysed the implications of NATO moving further east. He accurately predicted that there would be war with Russia. Here he is with some thoughts still worthy of consideration:-
30 years ago today: Kissinger on Russia & NATO expansion Dec. 5, 1994 PBS Newshour, w/ Jack Matlock (6 Dec 2024) – YouTube, 16m 45s
Ukraine was a bit of problem for Kissinger’s strategising. Then there was his assumption that Germany will always be hand-in-hand with the USA.
Later he backed even Ukrainian NATO membership – having originally opposed it – which is absurd because Ukraine will never be in NATO:
https://www.rferl.org/a/henry-kissinger-evolution-views-russia-ukraine-obituary/32708682.html
Israel executed 25,000 Palestinian children in cold blood, with the blessing and assistance of virtually the entire Western liberal political class and their media.
Nobody who remained silent throughout those 15 months and who continues to support and parrot the politicians and media that oversaw it will ever have a voice in anything remotely related to morality.
Such discussions are not for you.
“It is naive to believe that you get to be leader of the KGB by being a gentle person.”
It is naive to believe that Putin got anywhere near being the leader or even a leader of the KGB
An upper-middle ranked officer of the SVR. Who specialized in German.
Whom then years later got the post-Soviet head post at the FSB, because he was an outsider.
Funny how people trot out the KGB shite, without knowing what it actually was organisationally.
“An upper-middle ranked officer of the SVR. Who specialized in German.”
The SVR was still called the First Chief Directorate of the KGB in those days.
Nowadays both the SVR and the FSB go in for a double-headed Romanov eagle and a royal crown. It’s fair enough to say “~KGB” if one remembers the tilde.
“Hitler had unlimited territorial ambition and proceeded to attempt conquest of all Europe after annexing the Sudetenland. Therefore Putin has unlimited territorial ambition and will proceed to attempt conquest of all Europe after annexing Eastern Ukraine.”
It’s not just the logic that’s wrong. The premise is wrong too. Hitler did not have unlimited territorial ambition and did not attempt to conquer all of Europe.
It’s the kind of “reason” that’s made up or truly believed by fuckwits who see nothing wrong with rule by the ruling class, especially the part in “their” little bit of the world. Not even to the point where they’re taking part in a mass cull. (You know the Milgram experiment?) Treat it with contempt. Don’t get sucked in or use words such as “neoliberal”. They would believe arseholes grew on trees if the guys one step above them in the opinion chain had been told to tell them so. That’s how the culture works. All their concepts reek. All their premises reek. All their logic reeks.
Trump may well swing round and start a military conflict between the US and Russia, even while all the dickheads are still fantasising about what happens when GIs cross the Canadian border or US aircraft fly to the Canadian theatre from Lakenheath. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Trump and his puppeteers pull one at Zaporozhye, for example. He is interested in nuking hurricanes, so I’m sure they’ll be able to get him to okay some other nuclear shit if they put it to the gumby in the right way and tell him it’s real big stuff. That would leave the media and internet commentators in a true “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia….no, peace….no, war” situation. Even then they wouldn’t wise up.
I seem to remember that back in 2021 Craig you were saying that there was no evidence Putin wanted to invade Ukraine at all. As for Hitler’s territorial ambitions not being hidden in September 1938 after being handed the Sudetenland he promised he had no further territorial ambitions although the plans for invading the rest of Czechoslovakia had already been finalised. Within six months the Germans had occupied the rest of the country and five months after that carved up Poland with the Soviet Union.
It might no longer be Putin’s plan to eventually occupy the whole of Ukraine even though this was his initial objective, but bearing in mind what happened in 1939 can we really afford to take the risk?
Do you realise how expensive the occupation of such a large area with such a long border, with strong nationalist resistance expected, would be, both to achieve and to sustain? Putin had to do a deal in Chechnya FFS. Kadyrov is his best buddy now. Before that, there was Afghanistan.
As for “Putin” (or is it Nasser or some other bugbear), here’s what he was doing in 2016:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/31/vladimir-putin-eton-boys-private-audience-kremlin
That’s 2016, two years after the conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk started.
He was with that deputation from Eton College for two hours. Sounds like they had a lot in common.
Politics dictates the goals. All wars are from an economics point of view negative sum games.
“Politics dictates the goals”? I think you should take Craig’s advice to read J A Hobson:
There’s Good Money in Death
Quoting Craig – “When I give talks on Murder in Samarkand, I am keen to emphasise that the driver behind US Central Asian policy was the meeting between Bush, Enron and the Uzbek Ambassador in 1997. From twenty years experience as a diplomat I can tell you that the idea that big companies drive foreign policy is not an abstract concept, but comes down to very real contracts, very real money and very real, and often very nasty, people.”
Plenty more:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/08/j_a_hobson_impe/
Quoting Hobson – Seeing that the Imperialism of the last three decades is clearly condemned as a business policy, in that at enormous expense it has procured a small, bad, unsafe increase of markets, and has jeopardised the entire wealth of the nation in rousing the strong resentment of other nations, we may ask, “How is the British nation induced to embark upon such unsound business?” The only possible answer is that the business interests of the nation as a whole are subordinated to those of certain sectional interests that usurp control of the national resources and use them for their private gain. This is no strange or monstrous charge to bring; it is the commonest disease of all forms of government. The famous words of Sir Thomas More are as true now as when he wrote them: “Everywhere do I perceive a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage under the name and pretext of the commonwealth.”
And more still:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/?s=hobson
We are talking about the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, not the humane corporate policies of the Belgium in Congo, or of Britain in India or SEA… or the revenge fantasies that led to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Cip
Sorry, but what you write is at odds with what I hear from people around me. I spoke to those who fled Ukraine to Russia, and that was long before the 2022 war.
What these people say is a disgusting characterization of the Kiev regime. I do not wish for you to experience what they experienced, I’m simply telling you the facts.
You cannot take care of your elderly parents, because pensions have been cancelled, social guarantees have been cancelled, banking services have been cancelled. It is suddenly dangerous to speak your native language. It’s dangerous to express your civic position. There is less and less jobs. People feed themselves by cultivating the land and from humanitarian supplies. Access to medicine is difficult. People are disappearing and the police are not accepting missing persons reports. The government is directly threatening you through the media. An artillery shell can fall on you at any moment. There’s no protection. You are declared an unprotected segment of the population, an outlaw. You are forced to change your ethnic identity under the threat of physical extermination.
Healthy adults join the resistance. Women take their children to Russia. So the person who monitored the quality of hardware at a factory in the Donetsk region now earns money doing manicures nearby.
Where and when can this be considered a fair position for citizens, taxpayers, voters? Would you like to fund your government through your taxes and receive this kind of treatment?
I think it’s a shame on those who are empowered and paid for to stand up for human rights, freedoms, democracy and all those other ‘wonderful things’, like the UN, the OSCE and I’m sure a bunch of other officials.
I don’t justify the war and I’m sorry it happened, but I’m glad my country at least tried to stop it. While all the ‘good guys’ only give more weapons to Kiev and shout ‘continue the war!’.
Bearing in mind WWII, could “we” have afforded to take the risk of ignoring Saddam’s WMD? (Yet another Hitler).
“could “we” have afforded to take the risk of ignoring Saddam’s WMD?”
Well, seeing that they were imaginary, yes. What WWII has to do with it is not obvious. WWII was not started through anyone ignoring a threat.
What risk and to whom?
Not the UK, which manages to wreck itself without Russian assistance!
Also frankly given the track record of Russia, Belarus & Ukraine since 1991.
The latter would’ve/would be, legitimately better off under the rule of Moscow or Minsk. Instead they gotten Bandera & cargo-cultistism.
“He is not pursuing a crazed Nazi ideology that drives to conquest – or for that matter a Marxist ideology that seeks to overthrow the established order around the world.”
Neither the Soviet rulers in the past nor the state gangsters under Putin (or Zelensky) ever pursued any ideology, except perhaps that one might have been mentioned by ~KGB recruiters in Cambridge, East Anglia, 90 years ago. But even then, “I” was only one of four methods in what the CIA call “MICE” (money, ideology, coercion, ego).
The idea that the Soviet state was more ideological than the British one with its monarchy, its Napola-type boarding schools, its oh-so down-to-earth realistic “pragmatism” (especially in its civil service and judiciary), and its symbolism of the crown and the Countess of Salisbury’s garter everywhere (“Chesterton’s fence”, we are told), is for the naive only.
Neither Craig nor anyone else has stated that the Soviet state was “more ideological” than the British one. (I think one could argue that it was so at one time, but ever since neoliberalism took hold, it has felt to me that we are living under a totalitarian economic dogma which in some way is at least faintly reminiscent of Soviet communism.) But your statement that the Soviet rulers pursued no ideology at all seems almost too ridiculous to bother arguing with! I admit I could be wrong, because I’ve never read a history of the Soviet Union, and I’ve been exposed to anti-Russian propaganda all my life. So, can you back up your assertion with some kind of reference(s)? It might at least be an amusing belief to try to criticise, even if only in the same way as it might be amusing to try to refute somebody’s belief that the Earth is flat!
The fallacy is, and has always been, that if we can show that ‘they’ are doing very bad things, then they are the bad guys so we must be the good guys. One does not follow the other. And it seems to be common to accuse the ‘enemy’ of committing the crimes that you actually commit. If/when they respond with ‘but you do that’ then your comeback is simply ‘well, they would say that wouldn’t they?’
If anyone pays attention, these things become clear quite quickly. But that’s the REAL problem. People aren’t paying attention. So the narrative can change without being questioned and lies will be believed. A large section of the population is actively disinterested because ‘the news is too depressing’. When people are disengaged then our leaders can do as they will; their reasons don’t even need to be credible..
I’d like to add to this:
“Russia held back the coming to power of crazed Islamic terrorists, and the massacre of Syria’s minority communities. Those horrors are now unfolding, in part because of the weakening of Russia through the Ukraine war.”
Disturbing news come, I’ve bookmarked this on Picabu
https://pikabu.ru/story/reznya_v_sirii_i_kak_yeto_osveshchayut_nashi_smi_12472040
An ethnic massacre of Alawites has taken place in Syria.
The scale is impressive, the death toll among civilians is in the thousands. Maybe even tens of thousands. And all of this, accompanied by jokes and cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’, was carefully recorded on video and posted by the militants themselves. Hundreds of videos and photos, only they show hundreds of dead, the vast majority of whom are civilians, women and children.
The video inside the article stands as a reminder, it shows Assad’s ex-army going towards Iraq, when assad resigned. A Russian in the car comments ‘They are not men, they threw down their arms, they threw down their balls, assholes, they are not fighting for their country, they expect us to do it’.
Another report is here
https://topwar-ru.translate.goog/260669-sirijskij-bunt-ot-rossii-trebuetsja-ochen-tonkij-raschet-v-reakcii.html?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp
The Alawites (and Christians along with them) are in a much sadder and truly scarier situation. If they fail to cope and do not receive support, they will simply be slaughtered. Yes, in fact, everything is already happening, right now. The male population is being shot in groups of 5-15 people at a time. And, what is doubly sadder, everything that follows will essentially happen right opposite our base, simply demonstratively. Now the clashes have already escalated into that very massacre. People are gathering at the Russian base, asking for protection. According to unconfirmed reports, Alawite communities have sent requests for help to Moscow. As many as they could have been allowed into the territory, but this is a drop in the ocean.
The hatred for Russia in the west follow the “fallacy of attribution”, in sum, a racist view believing Russians act in a certain way simply because they are – Russian, that, there is something in their DNA that makes them do what they do. Hitler believed in this theory too.
“The fundamental attribution error refers to an individual’s tendency to attribute another’s actions to their character or personality, while attributing their behavior to external situational factors outside of their control”
https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/the-fundamental-attribution-error
For example, Russia did not start the war with Georgia in 2008, it reacted to Georgian provocations.
Russia did not unprovokedly invade Ukraine, it reacted to Nato encroachment, harassment and shelling of Russians inside of Ukraine. Russia did not fund, supported the Maidan Coup, it reacted to the Coup.
It is important to remember that Ukraine is also a very young state, it is just 34 years old, that there are frictions and that the border of Ukraine might change is not really surprising but instead of recognizing this obvious fact and solve it diplomatically, the west fall into the lazy theory conspiracy theory that the conflict is because of some grand imperial idea by Putin, instead it is the result of the quick breakup of the Soviet Union where former soviet states began to exclude, discriminate the ehtnic/lingual russians minority, espcially in the baltics and in Ukraine.
I like to think, maybe mistakenly, that the Western view of Russia, and indeed China, is based upon attributing the west’s perverted views onto Russia; ie. ‘if we were in their position then this is what we’d do’. But, Russia is not like the west, and China is a totally different ball game, therefore this attribution fails every time.
There will only ever be peace between nations when differences are acknowledged and respected.
We’ve got Craig Ashton on Picabu. He is an Englishman living in Russia.
Yesterday he posted an observation describing the difference in mentality and communication.
Briefly, the difference is in responsibility for the interlocutor’s feelings, behavior in an open conflict of opinions, and the way to express or hide disagreement.
Craig assures that the English, yes, take responsibility for the interlocutor’s feelings and expect the same. So I tend to agree with you, Stevie Boy.
His story opened my eyes to how invasive and impolite, argumentative, bad mannered and just plain awful I must seem to many here. I apologize, it’s not out of disrespect. This way of conversation is simply common here.
I wouldn’t dare to translate from Russian into English what a native English speaker wrote 🙂 If anyone is curious, please read it using machine translation
https://pikabu-ru.translate.goog/story/anglosaksyi_russkie_spornyiy_razgovor_12478066?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp
That’s bullshit from Ashton, it really is. If he thinks that English people are normally polite and gentle, I wonder whether he’s ever been to England. His whole argument relies on a cultural stereotype identified with a nationality. Why does he choose the quintessentially polite English gentleman over the (rather more common) English football hooligan (who can make a pretty good go of being crude and direct, I assure you!). It all depends on whether you think of the manners and etiquette in a high-class debating chamber or restaurant instead of a typical home, or pub, or workplace. Even highly educated academics can verbally tear at each other’s throats sometimes.
Maybe British diplomats are more indirect in their rhetoric than their Russian counterparts? But then we’ve seen some examples from Craig that would challenge that pigeon-hole too. As Craig (Murray) might be inclined to put it, Craig (Ashton) is being a total fuckwit.
All this is obvious to anyone who follows world events to even a minimal extent, and who has average thinking ability.
The astonishing thing is that a lot of otherwise intelligent Europeans believe the lies of Starmer, Mark Rutte, and Kaja Kallas.
It’s amazing how easy it is to convince yourself of the truth of something that you really want to be true. There are plenty of examples on this very blog of the “it’s true because I want it to be true and anything to the contrary is therefore lies” argument.
The media, guided by their government briefings/orders, have to talk in caricatures, and in black-and-white, because any nuance would undermine their foreign policy case. That’s why any debate about Zelensky, and certainly, Netanyahu, is virtually verboten in our ‘free and fearless’ British media – even though the UK isn’t officially at war with anyone. Nevertheless, the government has to preserve the image of Zelensky ‘the brave freedom fighter’ and Netanyahu ‘the implacable defender against terrorists’ via the media, because if they told the truth, the entire public would realise that the government is backing a couple of immoral, and probably plain evil puppets. Meanwhile, you can almost literally say what you want about Trump and Putin, who are separately smeared as ‘fascist’ or ‘Hitler’ – basically because the western war industry wants the conflict prolonged, and talks between the US and Russia get in the way.
“Hitler’s territorial ambitions were not hidden. His desire for lebensraum and, crucially, his view that the Germans were a superior race who should rule over the inferior races, was plain in print and in speeches.”
If you read A.J.P. Taylor’s “The Origins of the Second World War” (and, Craig, I would definitely recommend that you do, if only for the parallels with today), you will see that Hitler’s “territorial ambitions” were, in the most part, limited to areas that had been Germany until the treaty of Versailles in 1919 and were inhabited almost exclusively by Germans, Hitler’s invasion of Poland, which kicked off WWII, was, in fact an invasion of an area that twenty years previously had been German. There seems to be a very odd idea today that borders, once they have been rearranged, are thereby set in stone for all eternity, despite the fact that most European borders have changed many times over the centuries. Ditto states. Countries have appeared, disappeared and reappeared again, sometimes after millennia. Perhaps it’s an Anglo thing and comes from living on an island, where the borders are defined by the sea rather then diplomacy.
‘appeared, disappeared and reappeared again’
Oh, yes! Borders and their constant movement back and forth.
Someone recently commented wittily:
“I live 50 km from the Estonian border and since the time of the Teutons it’s been a public passageway. Actually, given the situation, I’d like to ask – do you think it is worth planting flowers this year, or will they be trampled?”
“…opposition parties in Russia are at least allowed to contest elections, albeit on a heavily sloped playing field, whereas in Ukraine they are banned outright.”
What slope? How does it compare with the fascist ‘electoral’ system in Britain?
PS Germany was not fanatically nazi, the public rejected the nazi partei at every free election and the half-bent election of March 1933.
I’ve never understood the benefit of a “level playing field”. If you have to play uphill in the first half, you will be playing downhill in the second. Isn’t that why the sides change ends half way through in any case?