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Innate warmongering: seeing conflict in Ukraine as inevitable : Comments
By Binoy Kampmark, published 23/2/2022The intoxicant that is war tends to besot its promoters, however balanced they might claim to be.
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Posted by diver dan, Wednesday, 23 February 2022 5:31:58 AM
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So...Putin decides to send in the troops and its everyone else's fault?
Posted by mhaze, Wednesday, 23 February 2022 6:26:20 AM
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Refreshing to see some nuance in amongst the mainstream media's incessant talking up of war and its simplistic branding of Putin as the aggressor.
The real aggressor is America, but of course we're never told that. Ever since Putin took over the Russian leadership and began to revert his country's Yeltsin-led slide into weakness and exploitation by the West, America has pulled out all stops to control and contain Russia. Putin is finally drawing a line. His efforts to engage in diplomacy have been ignored. His requests that NATO halt its eastward trajectory have been treated with contempt. If his recent treaty proposals had been taken seriously, as they should have been, Russia would not be taking the action it is today. When is the west going to start examining its own complicity in this current escalation? And start making some long overdue concessions to try and end this seemingly-intractable stalemate? Yes, I agree, it's all a re-run of the same old lies and propaganda the media bombarded us with before the Iraq invasion. And BTW, is this a typo? << Of the stable of papers run by Rupert Murdoch, only one of the 175 – the Hobart Mercury – supported the war. >> Shouldn't it read that the Hobart Mercury was the only one NOT to support the war? Posted by Bronwyn, Wednesday, 23 February 2022 10:04:05 AM
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When the shooting starts, I wonder how the left media are going to blame Trump. It will be interesting to watch the wriggling, if we're alive to see it.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 23 February 2022 10:33:21 AM
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If the Russians really wanted a war, they wouldn't have started running excercises on the eastern side of the Ukranian border, they would have jumped in boots and all before the West had woken up. They can't afford to have a war anyway.
Posted by VK3AUU, Wednesday, 23 February 2022 10:35:50 AM
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I see certain parallels between now and 1938. And today's Russia and prewar Germany!
Hitler only need a pretext that he was liberating German speakers from their overlords to take territory. As the liberal democracies did little more than thump lecterns and threaten retaliation. Retaliation for which there was no appetite nor preparedness. How many liberal democracies would be willing to hit the nuclear button to prevent Russia from expanding into the eastern Ukraine because, that's what it might take? And would Putin stop there, if nobody wanted to take military action in a boots and all war? Or call his bluster and bluff? A la President Kennedy, during the Cuba missile crisis? And should there be war how safe would we be, even if we declared our neutrality!? And how would we survive when we have to import so much of the staples of life!? We are so ill-prepared for a pandemic, let alone a war or its threat! We don't even have a maritime naval fleet, but are entirely dependent of foreign fleets for all imports, exports and critical energy supplies ! And in context to the latter, our parliaments have largely sat on their hands or traded away any semblance of independence in energy or manufactured goods. The latter made all but impossible by a price gouged energy component! AS MSR thorium was ignored for over half a century as if coal was all there was as affordable energy!? Now we race against time just to have a nuclear submarine fleet. And are powerless to prevent the Chinese navy from sailing anywhere in our waters! Ying tong, ying tong piddle li po, piddle li po. Alan B. Posted by Alan B., Wednesday, 23 February 2022 11:03:21 AM
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The biggest beneficiaries of war are the military, industrial, banking and intelligence complex and political elites who pretend to care for freedom, democracy and human rights. All the arms manufacturers are now rubbing their hands at the untold billions of dollars that will come to them as a windfall of war. So are the petrochemical industries and cartels which expect massive profits as a result of energy insecurity which they have supported.
It is ordinary people, the environment and democracies that suffer when the war propaganda drowns out sensible alternatives. Sadly, Australia's political elites on both side of politics were all to ready to support the West's declaration of Kosovo as an independent state against the UN Conventions, international laws and the sovereignty of Serbia. Posted by Macedonian advocacy, Wednesday, 23 February 2022 11:14:58 AM
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I quite like the nuanced assessment of the situation given by Tony Kevin in an essay titled Ukraine Shrinks Again (the March of Folly) featured on the Pearls & Irritations website.
Posted by Daffy Duck, Wednesday, 23 February 2022 11:27:52 AM
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Meanwhile why not also check out two essays (and much more too) featured on the always excellent The Saker (Stop the War on Russia) website
http://thesaker.is The Birth of Baby Twins The Day Russia's Patience Ran Out by the author of the Club Orlov website Posted by Daffy Duck, Wednesday, 23 February 2022 12:29:01 PM
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seriously, Binoy. You are a joke.
Tell us how the world should operate. You would not have a clue. Posted by Chris Lewis, Wednesday, 23 February 2022 1:06:38 PM
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Russia, especially under Putin, is not a place I would like to live in.
Given a choice between Russia and Ukraine, surely I would prefer to live in Ukraine. But, the people of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk chose otherwise, they want to be either independent or Russian, not Ukrainian. Is their decision foolish? quite likely, but it is their right to be fools. It would be duplicitous if we on the one hand tell these people that, like it or not, they must be Ukrainian while on the other hand support (as we should) the choice of the people of Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan to be free of China! There should be no one rule for the people we like and another for the people we don't: people of any region, large or small, should be able to choose for themselves whether to be independent or to join together with some neighbouring regions into a larger entity. Thus my unpleasant conclusion is that SO FAR, Russia has done nothing wrong by recognising and entering, by invitation, the two provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, thus so far, the sanctions on Russia seem premature. Obviously, if Russia proceeds (or already proceeded) further to invade other regions of Ukraine, then that would be a terrible crime which warrants every condemnation, sanctions and even war. Posted by Yuyutsu, Wednesday, 23 February 2022 11:56:18 PM
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Hey daffy Duck,
Thanks for the links to those articles. They were both good reading. "Finally, Western leaders may not realize this right away (they seem to be in a rather sorry state mentally) but it seems likely that they will eventually realize that 22.02.2022 was the day their bs finally stopped working. The idea of them spreading freedom and democracy rather than death and destitution (as evidenced by the Ukraine, on top of a log list of other countries they have “liberated” and “democratized”) is beyond preposterous. The idea that the US is a global hegemon and can dictate terms to everyone is dead as dead can be. NATO unity is just a couple of meaningless words on a piece of paper. Talking trash, such as demanding that Russia fulfill the terms of the Minsk agreements (according to which it has zero obligations) has no effect. It may take a little longer for them to realize that imposing additional sanctions on Russia is a really excellent way for them to pay $200 a barrel for oil while freezing in the dark. And at some point they will also realize that they have no choice but to grant the security guarantees that Russia has demanded because they have already done so, in speech and in writing, and weaseling out of their security commitments is not an option. It will be quite a steep learning curve for them and there is a question as to whether they can learn at all. The only ability they have demonstrated is for repeating the same litany of lies over and over again. Having been purpose-bred to carry water for banking and corporate interests, they may not be capable of the required level of rational thought. And that raises another question: What are the people in the West going to do about them?" Posted by Armchair Critic, Thursday, 24 February 2022 2:20:37 AM
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Armchair Critic
*…What are the people in the West going to do about them?"…* The answer is in history. The US is a diseased dog: So badly contaminated by the madness of left wing ideology, chances of any restoration of ability to deal with reality were lost with the disappearance of the strong leadership of Donald Trump. Dan Posted by diver dan, Thursday, 24 February 2022 6:33:18 AM
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Change that dynamic and there will be less of them.
Dan