PC Roberts on the Ukrainian Question

[Chris Coles]

Re: Hudson: Go West, Young Man!

In truth, Woodsman was correct to point out the absurdity of my being so positive.

[gwynedd1]

Re: Hudson: Go West, Young Man!

Here in the UK we enjoy Channel 4 TV News, (and I use that word enjoy deliberately as their reporting is much less devoted to sound bites and always brings what does to my mind seem to be a real professionalism to reporting. The link is here http://www.channel4.com/news/catch-up/

Take the centre item: Investigating Russian Troops in Crimea by Lindsay Hilsum: http://www.channel4.com/news/catch-u...ON_CRIMEA3x_05

Ever since Channel 4 TV News started, they have stood out as constantly maintaining a very high degree of professionalism and their reporting of the likes of Ukraine is a very good example.

One last point. During the 1920 -30's purges, Stalin forceably removed the entire Crimean Tartar population and replaced them with Russians. It is only since 1991 that some of them have been repatriated. Crimea is not and never has been "Russian". PERIOD.

Hi Chris Coles,


With all due respect ..... The Kevian Rus were there well before any proto-Ukrainian as part of a long succession of changed hands . That is to say even Kiev belonged to the Rus let alone Crimea. Even the Zaparozians were in the Russian sphere since it was the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth that was attempting to pacify the region. These "Crimean Tartars" were decedents of the Golden Hoard. Only the long passage of time could make one shed a tear for them since they destroyed the Kevian state and ruthlessly conquered and enslaved. . Be that as it may the Crimean Tartar population was conquered by Russia, no doubt for the strategic region, but with a qualified legitimate pretext that the area was used to stage slave raids into Poland and Russia and sold to the Ottomans. Thus these Tartars were legitimate enemies of the Russian empire.


http://www.academia.edu/3706285/Slav...rimean_Khanate

Trade in slaves and captives was one of the most important (if not the mostimportant) sources of income of the Crimean Khanate in the sixteenth toeighteenth centuries. According to some estimates, in the first half of the sev-enteenth century the number of the captives taken to the Crimea was around150,000–200,000 persons.

Thus it was no thousand year homeland for anyone, and the previous residents got what they got based on what goes around, comes around.

Stalin , as is well known, shoved ethnicities all over the Soviet empire, including Russians. You may ask some of then how they happened to end up in the Urals and Siberia.

But I am sorry, your post is a train wreck of the usual very superficial view of Eurasian ethnicity and politics. Crimea of all places is much more a matter of what is than what briefly was Rus, Scythian, Hun, Byzantine, Kipchak, Mongol etc.

[gwynedd1]

Re: Hudson: Go West, Young Man!

Or maybe more relevant to Chris, no more than Scotland is British.

Scots are British, bot not so much English.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Hudson: Go West, Young Man!

I applaud and commend your attitude regarding your situation and the current benefits of the USA, and sour grapes indeed if the course of civilization is immutable; I don't think the decline of our civilization has to be inevitable, but the less we resist (and complain proactively) the more rapid will be the decline.

For how long can we expect artifical, top-down, centralized, nation-states to remain uncorrupted? Perhaps not for too long.

[vinoveri]

Re: Hudson: Go West, Young Man!

For how long can we expect artifical, top-down, centralized, nation-states to remain uncorrupted? Perhaps not for too long.

Righto. Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely; almost all great men are bad men - according to Lord Acton.

Small government with limited power is the answer - since human nature dictates that any power will be corrupted. The founders knew this well. Of course gov is there to insure common law is enforced and freedom is promoted, e.g., no monopolies/trusts or other anti-competitive "special privilege" which is sought by all - to promote the GENERAL welfare, i.e., the COMMONWEALTH.

My leftist friends tend to disagree with this b/c apparently they think gov can do great things that help people, and while I agree with them in principle on this point and we can both point to examples, they overlook the despotism and corruption that inevitably results, the favoritism of special interests, the entrenchment of power centers etc all leading to "tyranny over the mind of man" as Jefferson put it.

Good will and sense of fair dealing between individuals is the key to a healthy society. Once corruption is openly observed and tolerated at the levels of gov power,as is the case today, the common folk lose faith and trust first in their leaders and then in each other and down we go.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Hudson: Go West, Young Man!

But I am sorry, your post is a train wreck of the usual very superficial view of Eurasian ethnicity and politics. Crimea of all places is much more a matter of what is than what briefly was Rus, Scythian, Hun, Byzantine, Kipchak, Mongol etc.

Let no one ever say I do not know when to raise the white flag and retreat. Your history is way better than anything I have learned in the past; with the one saving grace; by sparking the debate, we get at answers.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Hudson: Go West, Young Man!

Good will and sense of fair dealing between individuals is the key to a healthy society. Once corruption is openly observed and tolerated at the levels of gov power,as is the case today, the common folk lose faith and trust first in their leaders and then in each other and down we go.

+ 1

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Hudson: Go West, Young Man!

I don't think the US acted any better. The Habsburgs were not exactly blood thirsty for example. Rome was actually pretty tolerant . The one difference that I see is that the US thinks its the world's liberator. In that respect the US is one of the worst in living up to what it thinks of itself. Its a side effect of its leaders having to fool its populace I think.

my thinking is similiar to yours. Much of the worst is done by the government tricking the voters (vietnam, iraq), or being tricked by foreign governments (iran-britain)

[don]

Re: PC Roberts on the Ukrainian Question

The Looting Of Ukraine Has Begun

Paul Craig Roberts

This supporter of the Ukraine joining the EU has received her reward: a 50% cut in her pension.

According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington’s stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine’s poor. http://www.kommersant.ua/doc/2424454 It is Greece all over again.

Before anything approaching stability and legitimacy has been obtained for the puppet government put in power by the Washington orchestrated coup against the legitimate, elected Ukraine government, the Western looters are already at work. Naive protesters who believed the propaganda that EU membership offered a better life are due to lose half of their pension by April. But this is only the beginning.

The corrupt Western media describes loans as “aid.” However, the 11 billion euros that the EU is offering Kiev is not aid. It is a loan. Moreover, it comes with many strings, including Kiev’s acceptance of an IMF austerity plan.

Remember now, gullible Ukrainians participated in the protests that were used to overthrow their elected government, because they believed the lies told to them by Washington-financed NGOs that once they joined the EU they would have streets paved with gold. Instead they are getting cuts in their pensions and an IMF austerity plan.

The austerity plan will cut social services, funds for education, layoff government workers, devalue the currency, thus raising the prices of imports which include Russian gas, thus electricity, and open Ukrainian assets to takeover by Western corporations.

Ukraine’s agriculture lands will pass into the hands of American agribusiness.

One part of the Washington/EU plan for Ukraine, or that part of Ukraine that doesn’t defect to Russia, has succeeded. What remains of the country will be thoroughly looted by the West.

The other part hasn’t worked as well. Washington’s Ukrainian stooges lost control of the protests to organized and armed ultra-nationalists. These groups, whose roots go back to those who fought for Hitler during World War 2, engaged in words and deeds that sent southern and eastern Ukraine clamoring to be returned to Russia where they resided prior to the 1950s when the Soviet communist party stuck them into Ukraine.

At this time of writing it looks like Crimea has seceded from Ukraine. Washington and its NATO puppets can do nothing but bluster and threaten sanctions. The White House Fool has demonstrated the impotence of the “US sole superpower” by issuing sanctions against unknown persons, whoever they are, responsible for returning Crimea to Russia, where it existed for about 200 years before, according to Solzhenitsyn, a drunk Khrushchev of Ukrainian ethnicity moved southern and eastern Russian provinces into Ukraine. Having observed the events in western Ukraine, those Russian provinces want to go back home where they belong, just as South Ossetia wanted nothing to do with Georgia.

Washington’s stooges in Kiev can do nothing about Crimea except bluster. Under the Russian-Ukraine agreement, Russia is permitted 25,000 troops in Crimea. The US/EU media’s deploring of a “Russian invasion of 16,000 troops” is either total ignorance or complicity in Washington’s lies. Obviously, the US/EU media is corrupt. Only a fool would rely on their reports. Any media that would believe anything Washington says after George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN to peddle the regime’s lies about “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,” which the weapons inspectors had told the White House did not exist, is clearly a collection of bought-and-paid for whores.

In the former Russian provinces of eastern Ukraine, Putin’s low-key approach to the strategic threat that Washington has brought to Russia has given Washington a chance to hold on to a major industrial complex that serves the Russian economy and military. The people themselves in eastern Ukraine are in the streets demanding separation from the unelected government that Washington’s coup has imposed in Kiev. Washington, realizing that its incompetence has lost Crimea, had its Kiev stooges appoint Ukrainian oligarchs, against whom the Maiden protests were partly directed, to governing positions in eastern Ukraine cities. These oligarchs have their own private militias in addition to the police and any Ukrainian military units that are still functioning. The leaders of the protesting Russians are being arrested and disappeared. Washington and its EU puppets, who proclaim their support for self-determination, are only for self-determination when it can be orchestrated in their favor. Therefore, Washington is busy at work suppressing self-determination in eastern Ukraine.

This is a dilemma for Putin. His low-key approach has allowed Washington to seize the initiative in eastern Ukraine. The oligarchs Taruta and Kolomoyskiy have been put in power in Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk, and are carrying out arrests of Russians and committing unspeakable crimes, but you will never hear of it from the US presstitutes. Washington’s strategy is to arrest and deep-six the leaders of the secessionists so that there no authorities to request Putin’s intervention.

If Putin has drones, he has the option of taking out Taruta and Kolomoyskiy. If Putin lets Washington retain the Russian provinces of eastern Ukraine, he will have demonstrated a weakness that Washington will exploit. Washington will exploit the weakness to the point that Washington forces Putin to war.

The war will be nuclear.

[Chris Coles]

Re: PC Roberts on the Ukrainian Question

Don, you have put that up without comment; I would be obliged for your immediate thoughts, Chris.

[vinoveri]

Re: PC Roberts on the Ukrainian Question

The war will be nuclear.

OK, perhaps PCR has indeed gone over to the other side ...

[BadJuju]

Re: PC Roberts on the Ukrainian Question

OK, perhaps PCR has indeed gone over to the other side ...

Other side....other continent....other planet....other solar system...other galaxy.

[Woodsman]

Re: PC Roberts on the Ukrainian Question

OK, perhaps PCR has indeed gone over to the other side ...

Other side of what? Surely you're not accusing him of any disloyalty?

[Woodsman]

Re: PC Roberts on the Ukrainian Question

The Looting Of Ukraine Has Begun

Paul Craig Roberts

This supporter of the Ukraine joining the EU has received her reward: a 50% cut in her pension.

According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington’s stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine’s poor. http://www.kommersant.ua/doc/2424454 It is Greece all over again.

Before anything approaching stability and legitimacy has been obtained for the puppet government put in power by the Washington orchestrated coup against the legitimate, elected Ukraine government, the Western looters are already at work. Naive protesters who believed the propaganda that EU membership offered a better life are due to lose half of their pension by April. But this is only the beginning.

The corrupt Western media describes loans as “aid.” However, the 11 billion euros that the EU is offering Kiev is not aid. It is a loan. Moreover, it comes with many strings, including Kiev’s acceptance of an IMF austerity plan.

Remember now, gullible Ukrainians participated in the protests that were used to overthrow their elected government, because they believed the lies told to them by Washington-financed NGOs that once they joined the EU they would have streets paved with gold. Instead they are getting cuts in their pensions and an IMF austerity plan.

The austerity plan will cut social services, funds for education, layoff government workers, devalue the currency, thus raising the prices of imports which include Russian gas, thus electricity, and open Ukrainian assets to takeover by Western corporations.

Ukraine’s agriculture lands will pass into the hands of American agribusiness.

One part of the Washington/EU plan for Ukraine, or that part of Ukraine that doesn’t defect to Russia, has succeeded. What remains of the country will be thoroughly looted by the West.

The other part hasn’t worked as well. Washington’s Ukrainian stooges lost control of the protests to organized and armed ultra-nationalists. These groups, whose roots go back to those who fought for Hitler during World War 2, engaged in words and deeds that sent southern and eastern Ukraine clamoring to be returned to Russia where they resided prior to the 1950s when the Soviet communist party stuck them into Ukraine.

At this time of writing it looks like Crimea has seceded from Ukraine. Washington and its NATO puppets can do nothing but bluster and threaten sanctions. The White House Fool has demonstrated the impotence of the “US sole superpower” by issuing sanctions against unknown persons, whoever they are, responsible for returning Crimea to Russia, where it existed for about 200 years before, according to Solzhenitsyn, a drunk Khrushchev of Ukrainian ethnicity moved southern and eastern Russian provinces into Ukraine. Having observed the events in western Ukraine, those Russian provinces want to go back home where they belong, just as South Ossetia wanted nothing to do with Georgia.

Washington’s stooges in Kiev can do nothing about Crimea except bluster. Under the Russian-Ukraine agreement, Russia is permitted 25,000 troops in Crimea. The US/EU media’s deploring of a “Russian invasion of 16,000 troops” is either total ignorance or complicity in Washington’s lies. Obviously, the US/EU media is corrupt. Only a fool would rely on their reports. Any media that would believe anything Washington says after George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN to peddle the regime’s lies about “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,” which the weapons inspectors had told the White House did not exist, is clearly a collection of bought-and-paid for whores.

In the former Russian provinces of eastern Ukraine, Putin’s low-key approach to the strategic threat that Washington has brought to Russia has given Washington a chance to hold on to a major industrial complex that serves the Russian economy and military. The people themselves in eastern Ukraine are in the streets demanding separation from the unelected government that Washington’s coup has imposed in Kiev. Washington, realizing that its incompetence has lost Crimea, had its Kiev stooges appoint Ukrainian oligarchs, against whom the Maiden protests were partly directed, to governing positions in eastern Ukraine cities. These oligarchs have their own private militias in addition to the police and any Ukrainian military units that are still functioning. The leaders of the protesting Russians are being arrested and disappeared. Washington and its EU puppets, who proclaim their support for self-determination, are only for self-determination when it can be orchestrated in their favor. Therefore, Washington is busy at work suppressing self-determination in eastern Ukraine.

This is a dilemma for Putin. His low-key approach has allowed Washington to seize the initiative in eastern Ukraine. The oligarchs Taruta and Kolomoyskiy have been put in power in Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk, and are carrying out arrests of Russians and committing unspeakable crimes, but you will never hear of it from the US presstitutes. Washington’s strategy is to arrest and deep-six the leaders of the secessionists so that there no authorities to request Putin’s intervention.

If Putin has drones, he has the option of taking out Taruta and Kolomoyskiy. If Putin lets Washington retain the Russian provinces of eastern Ukraine, he will have demonstrated a weakness that Washington will exploit. Washington will exploit the weakness to the point that Washington forces Putin to war.

The war will be nuclear.

From the wikis

---

2010 Military Doctrine
Russia's 2010 military doctrine defines itself as strictly defensive.^[10]
The doctrine^[11] points out 11 actions seen as constituting "external dangers" (Russian: "опасности" opasnosti dangers) to the Russian Federation which include:

• striving to give NATO forces global functions, moving NATO infrastructure closer to Russia's borders
• attempt to destabilize the situation in various states and regions and undermine strategic stability
• deployment of foreign military contingents in countries and waters adjacent to Russia and its allies
• deployment of strategic anti-missile defense systems, undermining global stability, and violating the established nuclear balance of forces, the militarization of space, and deployment of non-nuclear precision weapons;
• territorial claims against Russia and its allies and interference in internal affairs
• spread of weapons of mass destruction, missiles and missile technology, increase in the number of nuclear states
• violation by some states of international agreements and non-compliance with previously concluded arms limitation and reduction treaties
• use of military force in adjacent states in violation of the UN Charter and other international legal norms
• presence of sources and escalation of military conflict in territories adjacent to Russia and it allies
• spread of international terrorism
• occurrence of sources of inter-ethnic (inter-faith) tensions, activity of international armed radical groups in areas adjacent to Russia and its allies, growth of separatism and forcible extremism in various regions of the world

It also lists five actions seen as constituting military threats:

• a sharpening of the military-political situation and creation of conditions for the use of military force
• hindrance of the working of the state and military command and control system, interference in the functioning of its strategic nuclear forces, missile attack warning systems, space monitoring systems, nuclear warhead storage facilities, nuclear power and other potentially dangerous facilities
• creation and training of illegal armed formations and their activity on Russian territory or that of its allies
• demonstration of force in the course of conducting exercises in states adjacent to Russia or its allies with provocative intent
• activation of military forces in various states with the conduct of partial or full mobilization and transition to wartime footing

Under the new doctrine, Russia continues to develop and modernize its nuclear capability. "Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it or its allies, and also in case of aggression against Russia with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened."^[12]

[vinoveri]

Re: PC Roberts on the Ukrainian Question

sorry, other side of sanity/rationality - or perhaps just turned into a flamer - it was his unqualified assertion that there will be nuclear war over this that discredits his judgment on this IMO (of course if he's right, I'll fully apologize, but we may be dead ....)