March 8, 2014

Putin is thinking like an ex-husband

A few days ago I suggested that Vladimir Putin's emotional state is not exactly that of a master strategist coldly executing his long-hatching secret plan for world conquest. Instead, his point of view is akin to that of a man whose ex-wife has announced plans to marry his archrival, so he barricades himself into their former beach house that is technically hers under the divorce agreement but, in his view, is rightfully his. That'll show her!

Now, from the NYT:
An examination of the seismic events that set off the most threatening East-West confrontation since the Cold War era, based on Mr. Putin’s public remarks and interviews with officials, diplomats and analysts here, suggests that the Kremlin’s strategy emerged haphazardly, even misleadingly, over a tense and momentous week, as an emotional Mr. Putin acted out of what the officials described as a deep sense of betrayal and grievance, especially toward the United States and Europe.

Some of those decisions, particularly the one to invade Crimea, then took on a life of their own, analysts said, unleashing a wave of nationalistic fervor for the peninsula’s reunification with Russia that the Kremlin has so far proved unwilling, or perhaps unable, to tamp down. 
The decision to invade Crimea, the officials and analysts said, was made not by the national security council but in secret among a smaller and shrinking circle of Mr. Putin’s closest and most trusted aides. The group excluded senior officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the cadre of comparatively liberal advisers who might have foreseen the economic impact and potential consequences of American and European sanctions. 
... Nevertheless, Mr. Putin’s strategy in the last two weeks has appeared ad hoc, influenced by events not always in his control. 
“We shouldn’t assume there was a grand plan,” said Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia’s security forces from New York University who is in Moscow and regularly meets with security officials. “They seem to be making things up as they go along.” 
... They also suggest a deepening frustration with other world leaders that has left him impervious to threats of sanctions or international isolation, such that he shrugged off threats by members of the Group of 8 countries to boycott this year’s summit meeting in Sochi, Russia. 
Because of Mr. Putin’s centralized authority, Russia’s policies and actions in moments of crisis can appear confused or hesitant until Mr. Putin himself decides on a course of action. That was the case in the days when violence erupted in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, prompting a frantic effort by the Europeans to mediate a compromise. Mr. Putin, perhaps preoccupied with the Olympics

He was watching the ladies' figure skating when the key events happened.
did not send a representative to those talks until the agreement was ready to be initialed.

In general, Russian behavior toward Ukraine before the overthrow of the government was more moderate, compromise-oriented, conciliatory, non-violent, and business-like than American behavior. The Russian view was that Ukraine is more important to them than it is to the West, so they were willing to pay more for cooperation with Ukraine's elected government. Contrast the old Russian offer of $15 billion versus John Kerry's offer in Kiev this week of, as Dr. Evil would say, "One ... billion ... dollars!"
Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Moscow Carnegie Center, said that Russia’s role in Ukraine’s upheaval was “very passive” up until the moment that the government of President Viktor F. Yanukovych collapsed. This was true, he said, despite the Kremlin’s wariness about any new Ukrainian trade agreement with the European Union and its pledge in December to provide a $15 billion package of assistance to shore up the country’s faltering finances. Jolted by the government’s collapse, Mr. Trenin said, the Kremlin “sprang into action almost immediately.” 
He and other officials and analysts said that Mr. Putin’s reaction stemmed from the collapse of the agreement on the night of Feb. 21. Mr. Putin, by his own account at a news conference on Tuesday, warned Mr. Yanukovych not to withdraw the government’s security forces from Kiev, one of the demands of the agreement being negotiated. 
“ ‘You will have anarchy,’ ” Mr. Putin said he told him. “ ‘There will be chaos in the capital. Have pity on the people.’ But he did it anyway. And as soon as he did it, his office and that of the government were seized, and the chaos I warned him about erupted, and it continues to this day.” 
By then, however, Mr. Yanukovych had already lost the support of his party, whose members joined others in Parliament in ordering the security services off the barricades that they had maintained around government buildings in Kiev. 
Mr. Yanukovych, fearful because of reports of armed protesters heading to Kiev from western Ukraine

This has been the theory of the New York Times reporters: that the sacking of the armory of the Interior Ministry armory in Lviv by Galician rightists was the key move.
, packed up documents from his presidential residence and fled in the early hours of the next morning. That night Mr. Putin was still assuring President Obama in a telephone call that he would work to resolve the crisis. 
By the next day, however, Ukraine’s Parliament had stripped Mr. Yanukovych of his powers, voted to release the opposition leader Yulia V. Tymoshenko from prison and scheduled new presidential elections. Russia’s initial response was muted, but officials have since said that Mr. Putin fumed that the Europeans who had mediated the agreement did nothing to enforce it. Mr. Putin and other officials began describing the new leaders as reactionaries and even fascists that Russia could not accept in power. 
“It was probably not just thought of today,” Aleksei A. Chesnakov, a political strategist and former Kremlin aide, said of Mr. Putin’s move in Crimea, “but the trigger came when it was clear that the authorities in Ukraine were not able to return to the compromise of the 21st.” 
Two days later Mr. Putin attended the closing ceremony of an Olympics that he hoped would be a showcase of Russia’s revival as a modern, powerful nation. He then ordered the swift, furtive seizure of a region that has loomed large in Russia’s history since Catherine the Great’s conquest. ...
The question now is how far Mr. Putin intends to go. Sergei A. Markov, a political strategist who advises the Kremlin, said it was not yet clear. “He is improvising,” he explained. 

And why did she get both wings of their main house in the divorce? Maybe he'll break into the east wing and set up housekeeping there. That'll show her.
     
Unfortunately, this kind of black comedy Danny Devito divorce movie behavior can also turn very bad.
    

205 comments:

1 – 200 of 205   Newer›   Newest»
5371 said...

Taking the self-interested, CYA warblings of US officials seriously is a major mistake of the NYT. Taking the NYT seriously would be a major mistake for anyone else.

Anonymous said...

In the last few days the Kiev government has clamped down on demonstrations by Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine. There's a lot of hypocrisy there. The current Ukrainian government came to power after illegal seizures of government buildings in Kiev. Now it's beating up and arresting Russian speakers for illegal seizure of government buildings in Kharkov and Donetsk.

The situation seems to be stabilizing. Russia is getting the Crimea. The Ukraine is keeping the Russian-speaking parts of its mainland.

Next up will be the deepening of the economic crisis in the Ukraine. The Ukraine is economically worse off than Russia for two reasons: 1) unlike Russia it's still run by looter-oligarchs 2) it has no fossil fuels. Being run by their looter-oligarchs, the EU and the US are near-bankrupt themselves and therefore have no money to give to their pets in the Ukrainian government. The budding Russia-China alliance is really the coalition of the solvent.

As the economic crisis in the Ukraine deepens in the coming months and years, Russian speakers in southeastern Ukraine could rise up again.

Black Death said...

Here's an interesting article by Garry Kasparov (unfortunately behind a for-pay firewall, but I read the whole thing in my WSJ print edition)on how to respond to Putin. Kasparov suggests cutting off the access of the Russian oligarchs to all their goodies (bank accounts, mansions, yachts, visas, etc.) in the West. This wouldn't involve anything difficult like trade sanctions or military threats. It would not affect the ordinary Russian people but would hurt the oligarchs plenty.

reiner Tor said...

Kasparov suggests cutting off the access of the Russian oligarchs to all their goodies (bank accounts, mansions, yachts, visas, etc.) in the West. This wouldn't involve anything difficult like trade sanctions or military threats. It would not affect the ordinary Russian people but would hurt the oligarchs plenty.

Question is, would it also hurt Putin? Maybe it wouldn't.

First, he could retaliate by freezing Western investments in Russia.

Second, it would actually make the oligarchs less willing to pump capital out of the country every day - hey, they could get frozen abroad. But if you play nice to Putin, they couldn't in Russia. So a big incentive to keep the money in Russia - actually a good thing for Russia.

Third, making the oligarchs weaker could actually strengthen Putin's position. Weaker boyars, stronger Czar.

Anonymous said...

By the way, in his recent public appearances Putin looked relaxed and in control. I'm sure he improvised a bit during this crisis - the date of the Crimean referendum was moved twice and the exact nature of that referendum took a lot of people by surprise on Thursday. But one often has to improvise in response to new developments. You can't plan everything.

The victory of nationalists in Kiev was bad news to Russian speakers in the southeast of the Ukraine. Any patriotic Russian leader would have felt the need to help at least some of them. Due to Crimea's geography it was possible for Russia to secure it quickly and bloodlessly. Helping Russians in Kharkov, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, etc. would have been much messier. Putin decided against it.

Most people expected him to set up the Crimea in the South Ossetian/Abkhazian/Transnistria manner, but he chose de jure reunification instead. It's more honest and there will probably not be any adverse consequences to it.

Summary: even though the crisis was initiated by the Soros-neocon-Ukrainian nationalist alliance, Russia still got something (the Crimea) out of it. In tennis terms that's like scoring on the return of serve. The situation of Russian speakers in mainland Ukraine got worse for the moment, but the coming economic crisis in the Ukraine may yet give them an opportunity to come back to mama.

FirkinRidiculous said...

OT but more your territory than Ukraine: Richard Kilty has become the first white man to win a world sprint title since Alan Wipper Wells. When I typed his name into Google, one of the main suggested searches is Richard Kilty drugs.

Anonymous said...

5371:"Taking the self-interested, CYA warblings of US officials seriously is a major mistake of the NYT. Taking the NYT seriously would be a major mistake for anyone else."

Needless to say, dear boy, the same advice holds true for taking seriously the self-interested warblings of Putin and his toadies...

Anonymous said...

That'll show her.

That's not enough. You have to smack her around a bit. Then she'll listen.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"Next up will be the deepening of the economic crisis in the Ukraine. The Ukraine is economically worse off than Russia for two reasons: 1) unlike Russia it's still run by looter-oligarchs 2) it has no fossil fuels."

I rather suspect that the lack of fossil fuels is the true point of divergence, dear boy. Just try to imagine Russia without oil.....



Anonymous:" Being run by their looter-oligarchs, the EU and the US are near-bankrupt themselves and therefore have no money to give to their pets in the Ukrainian government."

Really more a case of not being willing to spend large sums, dear boy.

Anonymous:" The budding Russia-China alliance is really the coalition of the solvent."

MMMM, as a resources-extraction state, Russia's solvency seems rather dependent on the price of oil per barrel, doesn't it, dear boy? As for the "budding" Russia-China alliance, well, we'll have to see how that goes as China grows stronger and Russia grows ever weaker...

Anonymous said...

"Needless to say, dear boy, the same advice holds true for taking seriously the self-interested warblings of Putin and his toadies..."

Who is the self in "self-interest"? Putin says that he represents Russian interests and does. The necons and the NYT say that they represent US interests, but do not.

Anonymous said...

Kasparov suggests cutting off the access of the Russian oligarchs to all their goodies (bank accounts, mansions, yachts, visas, etc.) in the West. This wouldn't involve anything difficult like trade sanctions or military threats. It would not affect the ordinary Russian people but would hurt the oligarchs plenty.

One of Putin's aims is to "nationalize" the elites i.e. develop a nationally minded and oriented elite, rather than an internationalist one. This could help this aim.

Anonymous said...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/03/david-stockman/its-like-reagan-again/

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"Who is the self in "self-interest"? Putin says that he represents Russian interests and does."

Such bracing naivete.Whatever you do, dear boy, don't believe them when they tell you that there is no Santa Claus.

Anonymous:" The necons and the NYT say that they represent US interests, but do not. "

All depends on how one defines US interests, dear boy.

Anonymous said...

[S]o he barricades himself into their former beach house that is technically hers under the divorce agreement but, in his view, is rightfully his.

Um, Steve,

You've got the roles reversed here. Crimea is rightfully and technically of its inhabitants, who are Russian. If the Crimeans want to be part of Russia, then Crimea is rightfully and technically part of Russia.

It is the United States, the EU, and "Ukraine," that is behaving like an unreasonable ex-husband. Who is the U.S. and the EU to deny the Crimean people its right of self determination?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"One of Putin's aims is to "nationalize" the elites i.e. develop a nationally minded and oriented elite, rather than an internationalist one. This could help this aim."

Easiest way to get there would be for Putin to simply prohibit anyone from leaving. That would be win-win. Russia would get it's "nationally-minded" elite, and London would be blessedly free of Russians.

Anonymous said...

Here's an interesting article by Garry Kasparov (unfortunately behind a for-pay firewall, but I read the whole thing in my WSJ print edition)on how to respond to Putin.

Why does anyone, especially the United States, need to "respond to Putin"?

Anonymous said...

Question is, would it also hurt Putin? Maybe it wouldn't.

Why do you want to hurt Putin?

Anonymous said...

All depends on how one defines US interests, dear boy.

Likewise Russian interests, dear girl.

Anonymous said...

One of Putin's aims is to "nationalize" the elites i.e. develop a nationally minded and oriented elite, rather than an internationalist one.

Similar to Steve Sailer's aims. See "citizenism."

Anonymous said...

Kasparov suggests cutting off the access of the Russian oligarchs to all their goodies (bank accounts, mansions, yachts, visas, etc.) in the West.

What about the oligarchs of the Ukraine? Are you concerned about them, as well?

Anonymous said...

The Ukrainians are certain underdogs. One has to fervently hope they were not so naive as to believe the corrupt governments of the West were actually for them rather than against Russia. If they do not internalize this, the pillaging of the latter from the days of the besotted Boris Yeltsin will simply be a blueprint, rather than an object lesson. And the Ukrainian nationalists will have accomplished no more than switching alien rulers from benign to malign. In the process, their people will be further impoverished, their natural resources strip mined, and their culture enriched by diversity introduced in mass. Today’s decisions are for their children’s future. They should be quite circumspect before leaping when the West yells “fetch!”

It is difficult to argue why Crimea should not be incorporated into Russia where it existed for generations previously. Ukraine’s Russian-speaking eastern provinces could then be negotiated in good-faith with a nod to Russia’s manifest interest in their disposition.

Taken from: "About those Painful Reforms"

2Degrees said...

This is censored on all US sites, even right wing ones, but was accepted by the Guardian and DT.

Do all Americans think Putin is a dangerous psycho who has to go or is the news being spun to turn him into a monster.

On the DT, all the responses were positive. On the Guardian, a black guy called me a racist and someone else said I was a Russian. Nothing I wrote was racist or abusive, so why is it unsayable in the US.

The West has really made itself look stupid over this.

1). Instead of Solzhenitsyn, we now champion Pussy Riot. Well, public sex acts are severely punishable just about everywhere on the planet, and if Pussy Riot went into a mosque in Britain and did what they did in that church in Moscow, they would be charged with a hate crime and they would spend years in jail. Are Pussy Riot really the most credible dissidents we can find?
2). We separate Kosovo from Serbia, because that is what the Kosovars want. That logic then does not apply in the Crimea. Why not?
3). Yanukovich was a crook and the gas queen Tymoshenko wasn't. The Russians are interfering in the Ukraine and we're not. Come on!
4). The BBC, DM and other Western media outlets were desperate for the Sochi games to be a shambles and were frankly disappointed that they weren't. These people are adults?
5). We accuse the Russians of homophobia even though their record on gay rights is FAR better than anywhere in the Islamic World or Africa. Sodomy is not even illegal in Russia. We have close ties with a number of states where it carries the death penalty.
The Estonian Foreign Minister seemed to believe that the protesters in Kiev had been shot by people we were supporting. The unwillingness of the new 'government' to check these claims kind of implies that they are true.
6). In our desperation to stick it to the Russians we support Al-Qaeda over Assad. I thought Al-Qaeda blew a hole in New York a few years back? Aren't we fighting them in Afghanistan and Iraq?
The quality of the West's leadership does not inspire confidence.
The Western world are behaving like a punch of childish, racist bullies. Do we really want to be represented in Eastern Europe by foul-mouthed thugs like that Nuland woman. Why are we so determined to have a scrap with Russia. What's the point?

Anonymous said...

It is the Neocons who are thinking like an ex-husband.

Baloo said...

Coolest analogy so far. I've linked and quibcagged here:
Putin and Ukraine as a Country-Western Song

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"Likewise Russian interests, dear girl."

Of course, dear boy. Patriotism is merely self-interest under another name.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"It is the Neocons who are thinking like an ex-husband."

Well, Putin is the one who likes going around sans shirt. Rather makes him look like something out of a "domestic disturbance" scene on COPS.

Anonymous said...

"The Estonian Foreign Minister seemed to believe that the protesters in Kiev had been shot by people we were supporting."

I don't think everyone realizes how damning this is for the people who are now in power in Kiev. Estonia is no friend of Russia. It's not in Estonia's interests to advance any pro-Russian narratives. It seems that the Estonian FM said this because he really believed it was true.

"In our desperation to stick it to the Russians we support Al-Qaeda over Assad."

And self-described Banderites against the citizenist Putin. Stepan Bandera collaborated with the Nazis.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"Why does anyone, especially the United States, need to "respond to Putin"?"

It's what big countries do. Only little countries don't have responses to things.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"Similar to Steve Sailer's aims. See "citizenism."

With the no doubt minor difference that Putin's brand of citizenism entails some citizens (i.e., Putin and his cronies) benefiting more than other citizens....

Anonymous said...

Steve, no comment on the leaked EU phone call that suggests that the snipers that shot at protestors were hired by the opposition:

"Ukraine Protests: Leaked EU Phone Call Suggests Kiev Snipers Were Hired by Opposition Coalition"

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ukraine-protests-leaked-eu-phone-call-suggests-kiev-snipers-were-hired-by-opposition-coalition-1439035

"A phone conversation suggesting snipers who shot protesters in Kiev might have acted on the orders delivered by the opposition coalition - not former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich - has been leaked online.

The phone conversation features Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet telling EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton his suspicions regarding sniper attacks on protestors that took place in Kiev in February.

According to the description of the related video uploaded on YouTube, the call was taped by officers of the Ukrainian security services (SBU), loyal to Yanukovich.

Paet is heard telling Ashton that there was evidence both protesters and security forces came under sniper fire during the deadly protests in the Ukrainian capital last month.

During the conversation Paet airs the possibility that members of the opposition coalition might have had something to do with the shootings.

"What was quite disturbing, this same Olga told that, well, all the evidence shows that people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides," Paet is heard as saying.

"She also showed me some photos, she said that she is medical doctor, she can say it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it's really disturbing that the new coalition, that they don't want to investigate what exactly happened."

The woman named "Olga", cited by Paet, is believed to be head of the Maidan medical service, Olga Bogomolets.

"So there is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition," Paet says."

Anonymous said...

"With the no doubt minor difference that Putin's brand of citizenism entails some citizens (i.e., Putin and his cronies) benefiting more than other citizens...."

The cause of the neocon-Putin conflict is that Putin has taken political power away from oligarchs in Russia. If Putin had not fought corruption in Russia, the US government would be supporting him now, as it supported Yeltsin in the 1990s.

Steve Sailer said...

Like I've said, there is a huge amount of cellphone video posted online of the climactic battle. If this agent provocateur / false flag theory is true, proponents ought to be able to find persuasive evidence in all the video available.

It's not like there's only one Zapruder film and it wasn't pointing at the Grassy Knoll so it's hard to rule out that the CIA wasn't shooting from the Grassy Knoll at JFK. These days, somebody would have had taken video of the Grassy Knoll, so if you want to argue that, well, go find the Youtube footage.

ATBOTL said...

This article appears to be an attempt by the establishment to portray Putin differently than the widespread perception so far. We all know how badly the official narrative has been received by the informed public.

"Who is the self in "self-interest"? Putin says that he represents Russian interests and does. The necons and the NYT say that they represent US interests, but do not."

That's the crux of the matter. Our leaders are actively working against our interests, now they are shocked that the people aren't with them.

Neocons and other establishment types are in a frenzy because they see confrontation with Russia as a way to focus people's anger on an external enemy rather that the political class and economic elites who have come under increasing criticism as of late. Neocons in particular think this issue will reverse their fortunes and other vested interests, like oil and gas companies that want US export restrictions lifted, are chiming in.

It's not working.

BTW, has anyone noticed an influx of neocons into online discussions and constant accusations that everyone who rejects the official narrative(the large majority) are Russian agents? I've been accused of using clumsy, KGB taught English and told to go back to Russia simply for correcting the claim that the new gov't in Ukraine was elected. It's pretty funny to imagine that these paranoid neocons believe that we're all Soviet apparatchiks sitting in front of primitive, green screened terminals in some dimly lit KGB basement in Moscow, typing letter for letter from Putin-scripted memos that we can't actually read.

Anonymous said...

Nonsense article. Every single move Putin has made could be predicted in advance.

EUSUK have been trying to destabilize Ukraine for years. Does the NYT not realise the Russians will have wargamed all this beforehand?

But then it's intended as propaganda not analysis so to be expected.

Anonymous said...

Steve when you've got a badly analogy, doubling down on it doesn't make you more correct.

Anonymous said...

*This is censored on all US sites*

Don't flatter yourself. The automated moderators sometimes filters by keyword. Example: "Pussy".

Anonymous said...

"It is the Neocons who are thinking like an ex-husband."

Yes. Russia was THEIRS and they want it back.

2Degrees said...

Anonymous said...
*This is censored on all US sites*

Don't flatter yourself. The automated moderators sometimes filters by keyword. Example: "Pussy".

You are correct, and I'm a nobody, but why is it not being cut from British sites? Pussy used to mean little cat in Britain, but the influence of America on the language is such that it no longer means that and Brits who want to get past the software call each other knob-jockeys and wankers, because they're words Americans don't use.

Anonymous said...

"BTW, has anyone noticed an influx of neocons into online discussions and constant accusations that everyone who rejects the official narrative(the large majority) are Russian agents?"

Yes it's absolutely massive - and on both sides too - lots of Russians as well. I think it's a response to what happened with Syria.

Anonymous said...

Yes. Russia was THEIRS and they want it back.

Palestine not enough, apparently.

Anonymous said...

Putin is a Citizenist. Is there another Western leader who is actually a national leader--rather than a "world leader."

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"Why does anyone, especially the United States, need to "respond to Putin"?"

It's what big countries do. Only little countries don't have responses to things.


China, India, and Brazil don't seem particularly discomfited about Crimea.

Try again.

Steve Sailer said...

Here's an analysis using images of a possible false flag attack during a protest in Istanbul last year:

http://postwoman.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/the-image-as-evidence-taksim-protesters-provocateurs-and-a-potential-false-flag/

If you are interested in investigating the theory of agent provocateurs in Kiev, look for similar analyses that have been done of similar allegations and see what you can shake out. To help your Google searches, be aware that Taksim Square in Istanbul has been ground zero for complicated rumors about false flag attacks during demonstrations since the 1977 massacre there.

My prejudice is that I'm not going to get too excited over rumors of false flag operations unless they come with a lot of well-organized evidence, which ought to be easier to obtain these days with all the cellphone photos and videos posted online. It's easy to make up a false flag theory, so the burden of proof should be on the advocates of the the theory.

Anonymous said...

"Pussy used to mean little cat in Britain, but the influence of America on the language is such that it no longer means that..."

Judging by Are You Being Served, more specifically by Mrs. Slocombe's constant references to her cat, the anatomical sense of that word was already current in Britain in the 70s.

Anonymous said...

"You are correct, and I'm a nobody, but why is it not being cut from British sites?"

Try it with "Possay Riot" and see. Simplest explanation first.

Baloo said...

IDF in Ukraine. Long post, so scroll down:

Vulture of Critique

Anonymous said...

Of course, dear boy. Patriotism is merely self-interest under another name.

Exactly dear girl. Everyone knows white nations are not supposed to have such vulgar things as self-interests.

Anonymous said...

My prejudice is that I'm not going to get too excited over rumors of false flag operations unless they come with a lot of well-organized evidence, which ought to be easier to obtain these days with all the cellphone photos and videos posted online. It's easy to make up a false flag theory, so the burden of proof should be on the advocates of the the theory.

Does this mean you've already viewed the youtube video showing the shots coming from behind the protesters and concluded it was not adequate proof?

2Degrees said...

Hi Steve and all Sailerites!

I have enjoyed Steve’s website for several years now and I can say it has changed my life for the better. Accepting HBD does not make you a ‘fascist’ or a bad person. It makes you accepting of the world as it really is.

Most of you seem like nice guys – too few gals – and the quality of the articles and the comments is usually high. I have always been struck by the fact that most participants question what they see and try to think their way to a plausible explanation of the world they see around them. It has been nice to be free from the “point-and-sputter” crowd who have drowned out debate at the many universities I have worked at. There are exceptions, but generally Sailerites are more capable of a reasoned debate than most.

Thanks, Steve, for your comments on HBD and the real estate market. They have been really useful and I always enjoy your film reviews. Sometimes I get a bit lost when you talk about baseball and American football.

However, my maths degree requires the mental energy that I currently devote to bog-reading and internet rants and so I bid you all a fond farewell. May you all lead long, happy and prosperous lives.

Be nice to Whiskey. I really don’t think he deserves the opprobrium that is occasionally heaped upon him. Also, Steve, you often produce your best work when you are less productive as a blogger. Sometimes more is less.

Adieux

22pp22 (DT/Takimag) 2Degrees (isteve.blogspot.com)

Anonymous said...

"The Estonian Foreign Minister seemed to believe that the protesters in Kiev had been shot by people we were supporting."

It's an interesting point. Is anyone ever going to be arrested for those killings? If you were a desperate and brutal leader threatened with being overthrown, you might want your men to kill a few protesters, just in order to disperse the whole crowd and defuse the threat. If the crowd stands their ground, though, why would you continue to shoot random protesters. All you will do is provoke them and poison any chances of coming to terms with their leaders.

A rational leader, however brutal, wouldn't do. Well, maybe the leader isn't rational. Or, maybe he entrusted the dirty to psychopathic types who aren't rational. It's entirely plausible.

On the other hand, maybe someone else was involved, someone who wanted to provoke the crowd and destroy any chances of a negotiated resolution.

So, let's see if they find one of the killers. In the meantime, let's set ourselves an easier research topic. How did so many West Ukrainian protester get to Kiev? Bused? Who paid for the buses? I've heard it claimed that the Maidan crowds were being directed by orange-coated marshalls, and that this can be seen in some of the video. Any truth to this? If so, who was behind this. I'm a great believer in spontaneous organization, but we should still check.

Hunsdon said...

Anonydroid at 4:23 PM said: Well, Putin is the one who likes going around sans shirt. Rather makes him look like something out of a "domestic disturbance" scene on COPS.

Hunsdon said: I'll be accused of having a crush on him, but Putin looks better shirtless than most of the people I've seen on COPS. (No homo, bro!)

Hunsdon said...

Anonydroid at 4:44 PM said: Stepan Bandera collaborated with the Nazis.

Hunsdon said: Sometimes in a really tough neighborhood, you end up with really tough choices. Sometimes you don't even get to choose.

It's easy to forget just how blessed we have been in the US.

Hunsdon said...

Anonydroid at 4:55 PM said: With the no doubt minor difference that Putin's brand of citizenism entails some citizens (i.e., Putin and his cronies) benefiting more than other citizens....

Hunsdon said: Unlike in the leveling, world is flat, all citizens are the same United States, of course.

jody said...

video of richard kilty race:

60 meter World Championship Final

6.49 is an extremely fast time. only about 25 guys have ever run that fast. almost all of them have run 100 meters in 9 seconds, so kilty may do that this summer.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"Why does anyone, especially the United States, need to "respond to Putin"?"

It's what big countries do. Only little countries don't have responses to things.


So spoke the neocon. What is China's response, BTW? Brazil's?
Australia's? India's?

Anonymous said...

The Ukraine is economically worse off than Russia for two reasons: 1) unlike Russia it's still run by looter-oligarchs 2) it has no fossil fuels.

Ukraine has enormous amounts of coal. What do you think coal is, genius?

Conatus said...

From a 2009 NYT article, by Mary Elise Sarotte, Enlarging Nato, Expanding Confusion, discussing the 'gentleman's agreement' that Gorbachev understood as meaning no NATO expansion, applying to his agreeing to German reunification.

"Did the United States betray Russia at the dawn of the post-cold war era? The short answer is no. Nothing legally binding emerged from the negotiations over German unification. In fact, in September 1990, an embattled Mr. Gorbachev signed the accords that allowed NATO to extend itself over the former East Germany in exchange for financial assistance from Bonn to Moscow. A longer answer, however, shows that there were mixed messages and diplomatic ambiguities.

By acknowledging that there might be some substance to Russian grievances, the Obama administration would strengthen our relations with Moscow. Given that NATO enlargement has already taken place (and efforts for further expansion are stalled), little would be lost with such an acknowledgment but much could be gained."

C'mon the US is a land of litigious slick lawyers, the Russians aren't. Our Elite go to law school to learn to lie. Basically the Russians mistakenly think when a person gives their word it means something. How gauche and old fashioned! So we lie and lie to the Russkies about Nato Expansion and German reunification and also our brand of capitalism(ask Anne Williamson-say....where is that book?) and so of course the Russians resent us. We occupy Mount Moral High Ground on false pretenses of doing good while all we really want is power. Why else do we spend 7 times more money on war material than that badass, the Russian bear.
See Wikipedia 'List of Countries by Military Spending"

Perhaps we are being lied to about the Russian's intentions? Did the spokesperson attend an American law school?

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

Putin is as cool as a cucumber and is consistently making the US establishment look like fools.

He's clearly rattled the West.

To use Steve's analogy, Putin is behaving like an ex-husband whose ex-wife knows he has incriminating photos of her and is waiting for just the right time to release them, so she lets him stay at the beach house.

T.A.WILSON said...

I luv ya Sailer, but it seems like you're just trolling on this Ukraine business.

5371 said...

Needless to say, dear boy, the same advice holds true for taking seriously the self-interested warblings of Putin and his toadies...


3/8/14, 3:07 PM

Scoreboard.

HA said...

We separate Kosovo from Serbia, because that is what the Kosovars want. That logic then does not apply in the Crimea. Why not?

There are no well-publicized memoranda written by Ukrainian intellectuals detailing an expulsion of ethnic Russians from Crimea, and state-sanctioned policies towards that end (given that the OUN were too busy murdering people elsewhere). The same cannot be said of Serbian behavior regarding Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians. I would not go so far as to say that Kosovo's independence was ever a good idea, but comparing that situation to Crimea is ridiculous.


… Yanukovich was a crook and the gas queen Tymoshenko wasn't.

Whoever said Tymoshenko wasn’t a crook? Yes, she was selectively convicted in a transparent effort to get her out of Yanukovich’s way, but that is not to claim that she was actually innocent. Was there ever a mass "free Yuliya" movement within or without Ukraine?

Anonymous said...

In a sane world, America would have a sane foreign policy. One that actually benefited ordinary Americans, instead of a certain ethnic group, neocons, who also largely hail from the same ethnic group, and the military-industrial complex.

A sane foreign policy would recognize this as a problem for Russia and Ukraine to resolve and be as significant to America as it is to Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, etc, other large nations in the western hemisphere.

Whiskey said...

The guy really getting hissy is Obama. I admit, Putin is a fascinating guy and the only non eunuch among Western leaders. And yesh Russia is part of the West. Like Italy? No. But God help us Putin is the only Western leader with balls and brains.

National Enquirer had a headline about Putin starts WWIII, Obama makes war on conservative actors like Willis in Hollywood. Plus "How Putin made Obama look like fool!"

Interesting. People like the strong horse and not the weak.

People scared are the Balts and Poles. FT had a story Hungary's prime minister, conservative, attacked by socialists for keeping quiet about Ukrsine to keep a sweetheart gss deal. 1956 and all that.

Anonymous said...

OT: Steve, any thoughts on this immigration piece:
link

Are these juvenile border-jumpers actually a novel trend or is it really just the same old story? Seems as if, at a minimum, we have yet another round of the age-old policy conflict b/w do-gooder-humanitarianism and incentivizing moral hazard.

Anonymous said...

Putin may have some experience in dealing with troublesome women. He used to beat his wife:

"Vladimir Putin 'a wife beater and philanderer', documents allege"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8865545/Vladimir-Putin-a-wife-beater-and-philanderer-documents-allege.html

" The documents from the archive of the BND, Germany's spy agency, paint a dark picture of the Russian prime minister, who plans to return to the presidency next year.

Gathering information through the work of an agent posing as an interpreter for Ludmilla Putina, Mr Putin's wife, the BND heard that the then youthful 33-year-old spy chief was a "wife beater and a philanderer" during his stint in the German city from 1985 to 1990."

irishman said...

" The Ukraine is economically worse off than Russia for two reasons: 1) unlike Russia it's still run by looter-oligarchs 2) it has no fossil fuels."

Nonsense. The Ukraine is resource rich with a the world's 7th largest coal reserves and some of the world's best farmland.

The problem is that Ukraine is that is run by useless crooks. One country that isn't run by an idiot or a traitor is Belarus.

GDP per capita PPP

Belarus $ 16,100

Russia $18,100

Ukraine $7,400

Latvia $ 19,100

Lithuania $ 22,600

Estonia $ 22,400

Russia has oil and gas. The Baltic states have lashings of EU money(which accounts to 5.33% of Lithuania's GDP) boosting their numbers.

Belarus has a few forests and Chernobyl. And it's independence. Of the lot I'd place my bets on Belarus being the pick of the bunch 20 years from now.


Putin is far over-rated by people on the dissident right. In reality he is a small man. Part Ferdinand Marcos part Slobodan Milosevic. Like an idiot he threw away Russia's energy weapon by using it when he didn't need to thus sending the rest of the world searching for alternatives. Like an idiot he went all in for the Sochi games and the World Cup not realising that this meant he was putting his balls in a vice grip and like an idiot he has tried to strong arm his neighbours into alliance rather than to seduce them in doing so he has driven them into the arms of his enemies. In this respect he resembles Kaiser Wilhelm.

irishman said...

My stats come from here:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html

Bert said...

I wouldn't be surprised if Lukashenko makes an agreement to cede Belarus to Russia in exchange for a plum position in the Kremlin.

Anonymous said...

The same cannot be said of Serbian behavior regarding Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians. I would not go so far as to say that Kosovo's independence was ever a good idea, but comparing that situation to Crimea is ridiculous.

Ok, instead of Crimea let's compare Kosovo to North Kosovo. Clearly the Albanians have ethnically cleansed over 150K Serbs from Kosovo since the Nato bombing in 1999, as well as gypsies and others. Most of the remaining Serbs in Kosovo are in North Kosovo, which conveniently borders Serbia, and they want to secede from Kosovo to rejoin Serbia. But the US and others won't allow that to happen.

That is hypocrisy.

Anonymous said...

http://m.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ukraine-tony-abbott-tells-russia-to-back-off-20140302-33tiy.html

Aussie PM Tony Abbott speaks on Ukraine: but who is listening?

Australia is insignificant in this dispute. More so than Brazil and India.

Steve Sailer said...

No, Australia is significant as a marker. Australia is a friend of the U.S. that frequently sends troops to American adventures such as Iraq, as thanks for the Battle of the Coral Sea, Guadalcanal, and New Guinea back in 1942.

If Australia was against the U.S. stand on the Crimea, that would be a signal that it's in big trouble.

The U.S. expects lack of enthusiasm from Canada because they have to put up with us dominating North America. And despite the Special Relationship, Britain is a Power with its own interests. But if the U.S. can't get Australia on board with it's foreign policy, then it's in big trouble.

Mr Drab said...

"I wouldn't be surprised if Lukashenko makes an agreement to cede Belarus to Russia in exchange for a plum position in the Kremlin."

According to some commentators, Lukashenko had ambitions to land himself the top job in the Kremlin during the Yeltsin years. Hence Lukashenko's strong support for a new union between Belarus and Russia. Putin's ascendancy appears to have dashed Lukashenko's dreams, though, with "Europe's last dictator" taking a slightly more independent and nationalistic line course these days.

ErisGuy said...

So exactly how is it that the NYT acquires reports about Putin’s inner emotional state, and from whom?

The NYT isn’t even good propaganda anymore.

ErisGuy said...

The neocons of the Obama administration are behind anti-…, wait, what? Neocons? In the Obama administration?

Anonymous said...

Putin was always playing the long game.
Basically, Ukraine is economically unviable as a nation - the break up of the USSR left it with a bad hand, a lot of hot-headed nationalists, but precious few exportable products to give the hot heads the standard of living they think is their right. So since 1991 or so, that state has been more or less bankrupt and bumping along the bottom - going nowhere, doing nothing demographically declining, and the main export seems to be a bunch of shameless blond haired broads staffing the brothels of Germany and Israel.

As the 21st century progressed, Russia found itself - due to the Chinese economic miracle - possessed of a truly enormous fortune. Hydrocarbons, minerals and other natural resources mainly.
Putin, a man with ever an eye to the main chance, saw a struggling Ukraine, whose indepenence he never ever accepted, as indeed most Russians do not, and a chance to get back into the fold with the offer of one thing they will need - cash - cold hard cash.
It is interesting that all that the EU and Washington has to offer Ukraine is more pauperization or 'structural adjustment or whatever they call it.
Yanukovych, being a rational man, accepted the cash offer, but the hot heads were outraged, preferring EU led poverty. So Putin's gambit failed. In other words a considerable number of Ukrainians would rather live as paupers than ally themselves with Russia. It's an interesting one to call. Since in the short term EU backed 'austerity' will only make the Ukrainians even poorer, and in the medium to long term you can bet your boots that the EU will only continue to stagnate, well perhaps Ukrainians will see the folly of their actions. If Russia goes for further trade integration with China, she'll only grow richer and richer.

RWF said...

" BTW, has anyone noticed an influx of neocons into online discussions and constant accusations that everyone who rejects the official narrative(the large majority) are Russian agents?"

A lot of them are. See here for example:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/russias-online-comment-propaganda-army/280432/

It has been obvious for years that this is the case. That there are people willing to do for free what others a paid to doesn't change that.

5371 said...

Anonymous RWF said...
" BTW, has anyone noticed an influx of neocons into online discussions and constant accusations that everyone who rejects the official narrative(the large majority) are Russian agents?"

A lot of them are. See here for example:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/russias-online-comment-propaganda-army/280432/

It has been obvious for years that this is the case. That there are people willing to do for free what others a paid to doesn't change that.

3/9/14, 3:22 AM

I take comments like these as tacit admissions by the hasbara brigade of their own actions and motivations.

reiner Tor said...

Why do you want to hurt Putin?

I don't, but I guess Kasparov does. And I was reacting to his proposal.

reiner Tor said...

A lot of them are. See here for example:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/russias-online-comment-propaganda-army/280432/


Just like there is an online hasbara commando, which also has a lot of unpaid agents.

reiner Tor said...

Stepan Bandera collaborated with the Nazis.

That's a bit of an oversimplification. He spent something like nearly three years in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Although he was provided with all the luxuries available in a KZ, it was still probably much worse than St. Mandela's luxury prison island.

He did have some uneasy collaboration with the Germans prior to 1941 and after fall 1944, though, but it was never a warm friendship.

ATBOTL said...

"The U.S. expects lack of enthusiasm from Canada because they have to put up with us dominating North America.?"

Canada is now run by ultra-globalists who tend to take a very neconish view of things.

Canada will probably be the last Western country to have a nationalist/populist movement. The English speaking part that is.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"If Russia goes for further trade integration with China, she'll only grow richer and richer."

Not to mention growing politically weaker and weaker; as China waxes, Russia wanes.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"As the 21st century progressed, Russia found itself - due to the Chinese economic miracle - possessed of a truly enormous fortune. Hydrocarbons, minerals and other natural resources mainly."

China's economy is hardy an "economic miracle" dear boy; it is merely the inevitable outcome of the Chinese genius for capitalism.

As for Russia, it has found its niche as a resource extraction state, a Eurasian Saudi Arabia or Nigeria, a place whose welfare depends on what it can dig out of the ground.

Dan said...

Let me state this again, it isn't Putin you gotta worry about. It's the guy who comes after.

You are "concerned" about the equivalent of Hindenberg or Stressemann. Concern noted.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"Exactly dear girl."

MMMM, is that an invitation to swish it up, dear boy? I'm game if you are.


Anonymous:" Everyone knows white nations are not supposed to have such vulgar things as self-interests."

Oh yes, the "oppressed White people violin" number.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"China, India, and Brazil don't seem particularly discomfited about Crimea.

Try again."

Really, dear boy. India and Brazil are not great powers; they just occupy a lot of space on the map. As for China, they see a confrontation between East and West over Crimea as serving their interests.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:"The cause of the neocon-Putin conflict is that Putin has taken political power away from oligarchs in Russia."

Conflict with Putin was inevitable, dear boy.Don't be one of those silly billies who thought that the Cold War was about communism vs capitalism. It was a duel between rival hegemons. Under Yeltsin, Russia was supine. Under Putin, it is semi-erect, like a drunk staggering to its feet. Hence, the need to slap it down again.


Anonymous:" If Putin had not fought corruption in Russia,"

Corruption is still rampant in Russia, dear boy; only the faces of the players have changed. The game remains the same.



Anonymous said...

RWF:"A lot of them are. See here for example:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/russias-online-comment-propaganda-army/280432/

It has been obvious for years that this is the case. That there are people willing to do for free what others a paid to doesn't change that."

Another point in common between Putin's Russia and Israel. Maybe Steve's idea about a coming alliance is not so far-fetched. After all, Israel was pretty chummy with South Africa in the '70s.

Art Deco said...

Basically, Ukraine is economically unviable as a nation

It has a population of 45 million, 8 substantial cities, a domestic product of $176 billion, a life expectancy of over 70 years, universal literacy, a circumscribed public sector debt (27% of domestic product), a circumscribed external debt (at 24% of domestic product), and manufactures account for over 60% of their merchandise exports.

It's a poor country which needs better policies, not a 'non-viable' one.

Art Deco said...

BTW, has anyone noticed an influx of neocons into online discussions and constant accusations that everyone who rejects the official narrative(the large majority) are Russian agents?"

Quit alternating between taking a pose that nothing in this world should be of interest to the United States government and taking an intense interest into political conflict abroad; quit folding, splindling, an mutilating what you read in the papers while advocating for Russian diplomatic stances.

You stop doing strange things and people will refrain from suggesting you strange people.

Anonymous said...

Ukraine needs its own Putin.

But can Putin handle that?

HA said...

Most of the remaining Serbs in Kosovo are in North Kosovo, which conveniently borders Serbia, and they want to secede from Kosovo to rejoin Serbia. But the US and others won't allow that to happen.

I suspect that kind of solution is still in the cards, but awaits a more comprehensive reshuffling, that includes chunks of Bosnia. (I believe that's what a lot of Serbs think, anyway -- they assume that the Bosnian government must cede land in order to compensate them for Kosovo, though I'm not sure the Bosnian government will readily agree, and like Serbia, they too have some assistance from points eastward.) Also, Serbia's view that the Serbs are by and large the only victims of Yugoslav ethnic cleansing, and that everything bad that happened to them over the last couple of decades is the fault of those outside its borders, is not going to win a lot of the international support it needs, except with those who think that crossing yourself with three fingers renders you morally infallible, and with those whose only reason for complaining about Serbia is their hatred of the EU and the neocons, and the rhymes-with-you-know-who's.

But you are correct in observing that a massive, nuclearly-equipped quondam superpower is, in general, going to be able to get away with shenanigans that a small, non-strategic (and now-landlocked) belligerent backwater might have extreme difficulty pulling off.

Svigor said...

C'mon the US is a land of litigious slick lawyers, the Russians aren't. Our Elite go to law school to learn to lie. Basically the Russians mistakenly think when a person gives their word it means something. How gauche and old fashioned!

To this casual observer, the thing about the US breaking a "gentleman's agreement" not to expand NATO into the USSR's former territory doesn't wash. As a radical ethnopatriot I'm sympathetic to the Russians, but you don't make "gentleman's agreements" over something like that. That's what treaties are for.

Anonymous said...

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/03/07/obama-comes-self-determination-paul-craig-roberts/

Anonymous said...

@baloo

"IDF in Ukraine. Long post, so scroll down:"

Taking out the Russian naval base in Crimea would make it harder for Russia to continue supporting Assad.

.

@ErisGuy

"The NYT isn’t even good propaganda anymore."

It's like the bitchy teen girl version of propaganda.

.

@anon

"Basically, Ukraine is economically unviable as a nation"

Er no, it has a lot going for it. Ukraine's problem has been the same for about 300 years - looter oligarchs under a variety of different names.

"the main export seems to be a bunch of shameless blond haired broads staffing the brothels of Germany and Israel."

Part of the looting.

Anonymous said...

@irishman

"Putin is far over-rated by people on the dissident right."

Nope Putin is well above average but it's the other side being hugely over-rated that makes him look better.

Basically the other side are very good at getting themselves into certain positions but very bad at maintaining those positions once achieved.

.

"Like an idiot he threw away Russia's energy weapon by using it when he didn't need to thus sending the rest of the world searching for alternatives."

He's using it right now.

.

"Like an idiot he went all in for the Sochi games and the World Cup not realising that this meant he was putting his balls in a vice grip"

Huh? World War Gay is hurting Russia and helping the US?

.

"and like an idiot he has tried to strong arm his neighbours into alliance rather than to seduce them in doing so he has driven them into the arms of his enemies."

He successfully seduced them which is why EUSUK was forced into using strong-arm tactics i.e. staging a coup.

Simon in London said...

This fits my feeling - the neocons know they've finally got one over on him, and they're chortling.
My wife said his big mistake was to release Pussy Riot ahead of the Olympics - Putin's enemies saw it as a conciliatory gesture, which to them means weakness, so they geared up and struck when he was distracted.

Simon in London said...

ATBOTL:
>>BTW, has anyone noticed an influx of neocons into online discussions and constant accusations that everyone who rejects the official narrative(the large majority) are Russian agents? I've been accused of using clumsy, KGB taught English and told to go back to Russia simply for correcting the claim that the new gov't in Ukraine was elected. <<

It's not just neocons; mainstrea left-liberals and conservatives are behaving the same way, even people I know. After the heartening widespread resistance to us attacking Syria, it's disappointing. I think it's a Huntington 'Civilisational Rallying' effect - everyone wants to support 'our boys', ie the Ukrainean Nationalists, the same way we were dragged into the Great War over 'plucky little Belgium'. Whereas with Syria we were being told to support Al Qaedists against a secular Westernised regime led by a London opthamologist, and after Afghanistan etc we know now how that turns out. W
ith the Ukraine 'our boys' are at least arguably Western, part of our Civilisational sphere. So, it's wrongheaded, but it's understandable.

Simon in London said...

Steve:
"The U.S. expects lack of enthusiasm from Canada because they have to put up with us dominating North America. And despite the Special Relationship, Britain is a Power with its own interests. But if the U.S. can't get Australia on board with it's foreign policy, then it's in big trouble."

Good little Anglopheria analysis. :) I'd add New Zealand, I believe you've mentioned before: it tends to be less friendly to US than Australia, because it's so far from anywhere that it doesn't feel threatened. Whereas Australia is at risk from any major east-Asian power that gets hungry - Japan and China especially; also Indonesia (but with US resupply could probably defeat an Indonesian attempt at conquest w/out needing US military intervention, like Israel/Egypt); in theory India too, but an Indian grab for domination of the SE Pacific is very unlikely given India's particular history and culture. The Australian Left talks a lot of multiculti crap about being an Asian country, but nobody else in the neighbourhood thinks so; without the US shield, what's left of white Australia is very vulnerable.

Anonymous said...

Putin discovers mistress is a lesbian.

http://www.chicagonow.com/daily-beefing/2014/02/desperate-for-u-s-support-ukrainians-claim-they-are-gay/

tanabear said...

OT:

Steve, I noticed that your named was mentioned by Ann Coulter at C-PAC.

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0xfjM_9z2o

At the 19:15 mark.

p.s. In regards to littering.

Mr. Anon said...

"RWF said...

A lot of them are. See here for example:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/russias-online-comment-propaganda-army/280432/

It has been obvious for years that this is the case. That there are people willing to do for free what others a paid to doesn't change that."

Our government of course would never do such a thing.

Anonymous said...

"Since in the short term EU backed 'austerity' will only make the Ukrainians even poorer"

It'll also make the working people of the existing EU poorer, as Ukrainians arrive in their workforces (and anyone objecting is a racist).

Anonymous said...

Here's an interesting article by Garry Kasparov (unfortunately behind a for-pay firewall, but I read the whole thing in my WSJ print edition)...

Just FYI, if anyone wants to read the whole article for free online, just Google the title or first sentence of the article. Like a number of sites, the WSJ lets you through the paywall if you find an article through a Google search.

Anonymous said...

Gathering information through the work of an agent posing as an interpreter for Ludmilla Putina, Mr Putin's wife, the BND heard that the then youthful 33-year-old spy chief was a "wife beater and a philanderer" during his stint in the German city from 1985 to 1990."

I used be cruel to my woman: I'd beat her, and kept her apart from the things that she loved. Man, I was mean, but I'm changing my scene, and I'm doing the best that I can.

Anonymous said...

GDP per capita PPP

Belarus $ 16,100

Russia $18,100

Ukraine $7,400

Latvia $ 19,100

Lithuania $ 22,600

Estonia $ 22,400


That's interesting. Off the top of my head (meaning, based on my not very attentive reading the Western media), I'd have assumed that Belarus was a basket case.

Anonymous said...

Steve, you mentioned baseball bats being sold in Europe without gloves or baseballs being sold.

Here's a pic of pro-Russian activists in Sevastopol beating a pro-Ukrainian activist. One of them is using a baseball bat:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/03/09/article-2576814-1C26269300000578-13_634x427.jpg

From this article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576814/Fresh-clashes-Ukraine-Thousands-pro-Russian-activists-flooded-Lenin-Square-rally-Crimean-capital-Simferopol-today-Ukrainian-Prime-Minister-vows-land.html

Anonymous said...

If you are interested in investigating the theory of agent provocateurs in Kiev, look for similar analyses that have been done of similar allegations and see what you can shake out.

"Has Blackwater been deployed to Ukraine? Notorious U.S. mercenaries 'seen on the streets of flashpoint city' as Russia claims 300 hired guns have arrived in country"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576490/Are-Blackwater-active-Ukraine-Videos-spark-talk-U-S-mercenary-outfit-deployed-Donetsk.html

"Speculation was growing last night that American mercenaries had been deployed to Donetsk after videos emerged of unidentified armed men in the streets of the eastern Ukrainian city.

At least two videos published on YouTube earlier this week show burly, heavily armed soldiers with no insignia in the city, which has been gripped by pro-Moscow protests.

In one of the videos onlookers can be heard shouting 'Blackwater! Blackwater!' as the armed men, who wear no insignia, jog through the streets."

Anonymous said...

Olga Bogomolets, the doctor who the Urmas Paet mentions, was interviewed and said the following:

" "Myself I saw only protesters. I do not know the type of wounds suffered by military people," she told The Telegraph. "I have no access to those people."

But she said she had asked for a full forensic criminal investigation into the deaths that occurred in the Maidan. "No one who just sees the wounds when treating the victims can make a determination about the type of weapons. I hope international experts and Ukrainian investigators will make a determination of what type of weapons, who was involved in the killings and how it was done. I have no data to prove anything.

"I was a doctor helping to save people on the square. There were 15 people killed on the first day by snipers. They were shot directly to the heart, brain and arteries. There were more than 40 the next day, 12 of them died in my arms.

"Our nation has to ask the question who were the killers, who asked them to come to Ukraine. We need good answers on the basis of expertise."

Mr Paet's assertion that an opposition figure was behind the Maidan massacre was not one she could share.

"I think you can only say something like this on the basis of fact," she said. "Its not correct and its not good to do this. It should be based on fact."

She said the new government in Kiev had assured her a criminal investigation had begun but that she had not direct contact with it so far.

"They told me they have begun a criminal process and if they say that I believe them. The police have not given me any information on it." "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10677370/Ukraine-Russia-crisis-live.html

The notion that just looking at bullet wounds can be enough to know that the weapons were the same caliber or make of firearm does seem silly. With the naked eye can one tell the difference between a 300, 303, 30-06, or 308.
?

Anonymous said...

It has been obvious for years that this is the case. That there are people willing to do for free what others a paid to doesn't change that.

Take KGB "nuclear winter" shill Carl Sagan for example.

Anonymous said...

"Take KGB "nuclear winter" shill Carl Sagan for example."

Are you saying that the long-term effects of a full-scale nuclear war were overstated? I guess I can buy that. I mean, a lot of people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with no ill effects to speak of. And it is funny how "climate change" is the big baddie now a days, and you don't here nary a peep about the threat of nuclear annihilation, even though there are more than enough nukes around to cause concern. And common sense says that the threat of nukes will always trump "global warming" in the fear department.

Peter the Shark said...

We hear a lot about EU or US covert or overt support for the Ukraine "opposition." It is funny that there is so little discussion of the role the Ukrainian diaspora might be playing - I know a number of Canadians and Americans with Ukrainian ancestry. They are all very nationalistic, hate Russians, hate Yanukovych, and many of them are fairly wealthy. I'm sure added together, the Ukrainian diaspora has a lot of clout. I would be surprised if they are not heavily involved in what is going on in Ukraine today. Yet, this is never discussed. Anyone know why?

Anonymous said...

Are you saying that the long-term effects of a full-scale nuclear war were overstated? I guess I can buy that. I mean, a lot of people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with no ill effects to speak of. And it is funny how "climate change" is the big baddie now a days, and you don't here nary a peep about the threat of nuclear annihilation, even though there are more than enough nukes around to cause concern.

According to Soviet spymaster Sergei Tretyakov, the whole "nuclear winter" scenario was complete and utter nonsense, made up whole cloth by KGB propagandists and fed to eagerly gullible Western environmentalists like Sagan.

Anonymous said...

With the Ukraine 'our boys' are at least arguably Western, part of our Civilisational sphere. So, it's wrongheaded, but it's understandable.

I don't think this is true. Most Westerners don't regard Ukraine as "Western" in the same sense as they regard themselves.

There is a "civilizational rallying effect", but it's not because Ukraine is regarded as Western, but because Russia is involved in an oppositional sense.

Anonymous said...

"Take KGB "nuclear winter" shill Carl Sagan for example."

"Are you saying that the long-term effects of a full-scale nuclear war were overstated?"

No, the issue is that Sagan suggested that Reagan wanted to set off WWIII by trying to win the Cold War.

Sean said...

The US did encourage the Ukrainian protesters, so the unwritten law for husbands is a more appropriate analogy than an ex-husband's pique.

Remaining passive in those circumstances could never be an option for any leader of Russia any more than Reagan or any US pres could have remained passive with a commie Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. They counted on Russia to be passive, they counted wrong. Hence the pique directed at Putin.

Anonymous said...

Anon @ 1:13p

The notion that just looking at bullet wounds can be enough to know that the weapons were the same caliber or make of firearm does seem silly. With the naked eye can one tell the difference between a 300, 303, 30-06, or 308.

I don't believe that is what was meant, and you are right that would be difficult. But you can tell if wounds are from a shotgun, rifle, pistol, and gross difference in different types of ammunition can also be determined (small v. large caliber, armor piercing, etc.). And of course, if multiple bullets are retrieved from bodies it would be elmentary to determine the caliber and note their type and notice patterns (like all the bullets being identical).

Ms. Bogomolets has been furiously backtracking in media interviews ever since the Estonian tape was exposed.

The wildest theory now being bandied about comes from the new Ukrainian government and asserts that Russia brought in snipers to Kiev and then shot both protestors and police so as to discredit the pro-Russian government of Yanukovich so that he would flee from power and give Russia the opportunity to seize the Crimea. That seems so improbable as to be laughable.

Anonymous said...

Art Deco:

It's a poor country which needs better policies, not a 'non-viable' one.

Well, actually, the biggest "problem" is that the Ukrainian economic assets and natural resources are concentrated in the Russian speaking south and east around Donetsk, Dnieperopetrovsk, Kharkov, and Odessa. This is also the fertile black earth region.

In the remainder of the Ukraine, the only area with any economic viability is Kiev. The L'viv area is an economic basketcase, and the territory between L'viv and Kiev is a rural backwater with little going for it.

When you consider this from a migratory and political economy perspective, what you have is western Ukrainians moving to places like Kiev if they want to be successful, and eastern Ukrainians feeling exploited by the government trying to spread their wealth around and lessen their trading ties to Russia. The western Ukrainians feel resentful that they have to leave their home to earn a living.

The Eastern Ukrainians make a storng-monolithic voting block giving 65-85% of their vote to the Party of Regions and their allies, the Communists to try to protect themselves from exploitation by the slightly more numerous western Ukrainians (about 1 million more people live in the west than the east). Hence the division in the country along those lines in most elections. The saving grace so far for the east has been that they are fairly unified politically, while the west has been divided between multiple political parties. This has allowed the eastern parties and candidates to win most of the elections even while polling less than a majority of the votes. In the 2012 elections, for example, the Party of Regions and Communists took 8 million votes to 10 million for the Fatherland, UDAR, and Freedom parties in the west, but Regions and Communists got an absolute majority of seats in parliament.

On the other hand, this very success electorally breeds resentment in the west and cries of fraud after every election. The west Ukrainians feel rightfully that they are the real Ukraine and the majority of Ukraine, yet they continuously lose elections because of their internal divisions. Their only political success in the past decade has been overthrowing the Yanukovich government twice - in 2004 and now in 2014.

This also feeds into the fears and resentment in Crimea and the east - they see the Ukrainian west trying to dominate them by any means necessary, including lawsuits and coups, and to strip them not only of their livelihoods in the name of "fairness" and "development", but to also take away their very identity as Russians by forcing out their language and culture and making them take up another nationality.

Anonymous said...

"That's interesting. Off the top of my head (meaning, based on my not very attentive reading the Western media), I'd have assumed that Belarus was a basket case."

Western media lies a lot. Would-be oligarchs would like to loot Belarus. Lukashenko isn't letting them. Hence the mouthpieces of thievery (the NYT, etc.) describe him as a dictator and his country as a basket case. He was duly elected by the people of Belarus and, compared to its neighbors, Belarus is doing fine. I know this because I grew up in the former USSR and still follow events there. I didn't need GDP stats to tell me this.

On issues that I don't know well I always assume that the truth is the opposite of what Western mainstream media says it is. For example, I know next to nothing about Burma/Myanmar, but since Western media calls its government a junta and a dictatorship, I've been assuming for a long time that that government must be doing SOMETHING right by its people. Otherwise, why the hate?

The NYT has more resources to research things than I do. On all the issues that I know something about it's on the side of thievery, ugliness and cruelty. It would be stupid not to generalize from that.

Anonymous said...

"Ukraine needs its own Putin.

But can Putin handle that?"


Belarus has its own Putin, and Putin couldn't be happier about that. The two countries are allies. Belarus is one of the founding members of the Eurasian Union.

Anonymous said...

5371 said...
"I take comments like these as tacit admissions by the hasbara brigade of their own actions and motivations."

That's the interesting part. There's been another side for years and whether paid or volunteer they were definitely acting as a team. They were very noticeable during the attempt to start a war in Syria. The big difference this time is there is a definite pro-Russian team as well.

But yes the accusations are basically a complaint because the bad guys are getting their ass kicked.

.

"China's economy is hardy an "economic miracle" dear boy; it is merely the inevitable outcome of the Chinese genius for capitalism."

The Chinese didn't start their economic miracle. It was started by the Western oligarchs looting the Western economy.

(Although it has a life of its own now.)

.

"This fits my feeling - the neocons know they've finally got one over on him, and they're chortling."

EUSUK have been destabilizing Ukraine for years. The Russians will have wargamed this. Everything Putin has done so far makes perfect sense.

The only thing I wonder about is whether stressing the Fascist angle rather than the oligarch angle in their propaganda against the Kiev coup is the best option but that takes local knowledge.

.

"Has Blackwater been deployed to Ukraine?"

Oligarchs with their own mercenaries - back to the middle ages. What a waste of the last 400 years.

.

"The notion that just looking at bullet wounds can be enough to know that the weapons were the same caliber or make of firearm does seem silly. With the naked eye can one tell the difference between a 300, 303, 30-06, or 308?"

The original thought was she was some kind of coroner but maybe not - or maybe she's scared now.

Anonymous said...

http://rt.com/news/popular-uprising-eastern-ukraine-314/

I don't think Putin has any intention of giving up Southern and Eastern Ukraine. If circumstances make him, sure, but I don't think he'd pass up the chance to take over its industrial and agricultural power.

The Western media is correct that Putin doesn't plan ahead of time in the way they'd expect a major international leader to. That's not a fault; that's pragmatism. Liberalism fundamentally relies on master planning, and going full speed ahead when the master plans turn out to be bullshit. Putin taking what comes his way is what makes him strong.

5371 said...

Shouldn't concerns about a strange decision-making process focus on those who have actually made odd and counterproductive decisions? Like Obama, for example? Not on those, like Putin, whose decisions are readily comprehensible and are working out to their advantage.

Anonymous said...

There is a "civilizational rallying effect", but it's not because Ukraine is regarded as Western, but because Russia is involved in an oppositional sense.

I agree with this. I have a friend who is incensed at Putin and blames him for this whole mess. He thinks Putin whats to recreate the Soviet Union, and take over Europe. I tried to discuss this with him and explained the Russian point of view in regards to historical invasions and their paranoia and such.

Finally he just admitted to me that he can never like Russians. As a Vietnam vet he blames the Russians for supplying the NVA and causing all those US deaths. He blames the Russians for doing the same in Korea.

He told me he probably will always feel this way towards Russia, much like his father's generation hated the Japanese and refused to buy Japanese cars till the end of their lives.

So yes, a lot of this is based on the animosity developed during the Cold War.

Anonymous said...

5371:"The Chinese didn't start their economic miracle. It was started by the Western oligarchs looting the Western economy.

(Although it has a life of its own now.)"

Dream on, dear boy, dream on.

Anonymous said...

OT part 2: To FirkinRidiculous

http://cache2.asset-cache.net/gc/1060094-sep-2000-konstantinos-kenteris-of-greece-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=OCUJ5gVf7YdJQI2Xhkc2QLsSKYI0RduKfa2bta1KzcuuOG%2f7Y0Qz4Kh8%2fTzJzhyuGDCEWXaTWQbQFATo0PqIGg%3d%3d

What does the guy in the middle look like to you?

Art Deco said...

Well, actually, the biggest "problem" is that the Ukrainian economic assets and natural resources are concentrated in the Russian speaking south and east around Donetsk, Dnieperopetrovsk, Kharkov, and Odessa. This is also the fertile black earth region.

Your principal resource is invariably human capital, which is spread all over the country.

Art Deco said...

Western media lies a lot. Would-be oligarchs would like to loot Belarus. Lukashenko isn't letting them. Hence the mouthpieces of thievery (the NYT, etc.) describe him as a dictator and his country as a basket case. He was duly elected by the people of Belarus and, compared to its neighbors, Belarus is doing fine. I know this because I grew up in the former USSR and still follow events there. I didn't need GDP stats to tell me this.

He's called a repressive autocrat because that's what he is. See the reports of Freedom House on this issue.

Bill said...


Anonymous said...
Nonsense article. Every single move Putin has made could be predicted in advance.

EUSUK have been trying to destabilize Ukraine for years. Does the NYT not realise the Russians will have wargamed all this beforehand?


You don't think Putin was surprised that the US/EU instantly went back on the February 21 agreement? That seemed to have wrong-footed him for a few days at least.

Do you also think he is following a well-thought-out plan for Southern and Eastern Ukraine? If he gets Crimea and only Crimea, he will be left with a significantly more anti-Russian and still potentially strong Ukraine.

More generally, I'm wondering who the audience is for his performance. He could just roll across the border and take the South and East of Ukraine. Why doesn't he? Presumably, this business with referendums and such is a way to seek legitimacy.

But with whom? Not with the EU/US. They are not going to recognize an annexation. Is it with his own people? With his hoped-for partners in the Eurasian Union project?

Anonymous said...

"The decision to invade Crimea, the officials and analysts said, was made not by the national security council but in secret among a smaller and shrinking circle of Mr. Putin’s closest and most trusted aides".

Really? I wonder how 'they' came across this wondrous bit of knowledge?

Anonymous said...

Ukraine needs its own Putin.

Ukraine needs its own Saakashvili.

Anonymous said...

So yes, a lot of this is based on the animosity developed during the Cold War.

Did Russia/FSU completely de-communize and de-imperialize after the Cold War? Did Russia leave Chechnya alone in the 1990s? Were there mass executions of communist officials under an international court, for crimes against humanity?

Anonymous said...

“ ‘You will have anarchy,’ ” Mr. Putin said he told him. “ ‘There will be chaos in the capital. Have pity on the people.’

MASTER PUTIN really meant, "There will be eeeevul capitalism in the capital. Have pity on the working class about to be horsewhipped by bourgeois Nazis."

Anonymous said...

"Ukraine needs its own Saakashvili."

Ukraine has a Saakashvili. Yatsenuk is the US state department's candidate.

.

"Dream on"

The Chinese economic miracle was started by western, especially US companies off-shoring.

It has developed a life of its own since as the Chinese aren't dumb.

.

@Bill

"You don't think Putin was surprised that..."

Something was going to happen during Socchi. I was expecting a terrorist attack so there may be an element of surprise there but this coup didn't come out of the blue. EUSUK have been ramping up the pressure for a long time so I assume Russia would have wargamed their response.

.

"Do you also think he is following a well-thought-out plan for Southern and Eastern Ukraine?"

Yes

.

"More generally, I'm wondering who the audience is for his performance."

Good question. I don't know the answer but that doesn't change the key point; it's obviously a performance.

Dr. Seattle said...

To Anonymous who constantly calls others "dear boy":

Is addressing people whom you don't know with "dear boy" part of requirement for NAMBLA membership? Simple yes or no will suffice.

Anonymous said...

"If he gets Crimea and only Crimea, he will be left with a significantly more anti-Russian and still potentially strong Ukraine."

Anti-Russian yes, strong no. The new Kiev government has been appointing billionaire oligarchs as governors in the east. More looting can only lead to more weakness at the national level.

"He could just roll across the border and take the South and East of Ukraine. Why doesn't he? Presumably, this business with referendums and such is a way to seek legitimacy."

If the Kharkov, Donetsk, Lugansk, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa regions held referendums, they'd vote for Russia. The margin wouldn't be as lopsided as in the Crimea next Sunday, but it would still be comfortable. But the current Kiev government will do everything it can to prevent such referendums from occurring. Really, the only way make these referendums possible would be for Russia to invade and chase the armed forces loyal to Kiev out of the southeast first.

That would be quite bloody. Maybe Putin doesn't want that on his conscience. He's neither a pacifist nor a nihilist.

The economic prospects of the Ukraine are grim. If austerity leads to chaos, the country might disintegrate by itself with the southeast rejoining Russia.

Anonymous said...

You lost all credibility the minute you noted the NY Times as your source.

The NY Times doesn't know Russia and it doesn't get Putin.

In fact it doesn't get much outside of Manhattan Island and what Carlos tells it to print about immigration.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
"Needless to say, dear boy, the same advice holds true for taking seriously the self-interested warblings of Putin and his toadies..."

Who is the self in "self-interest"? Putin says that he represents Russian interests and does. The necons and the NYT say that they represent US interests, but do not.

TOUCHE!

Dan said...

AKA a war cabinet.

In a war you get two peaceniks and two martinets and yourself, and you discuss policy, hammering out a decision.

Every democracy does this.

Next disingenuous MSM wordsmith, please.

Anonymous said...

Putin is not thinking like an ex-husband. He thinks like an ex-slave-owner.

Dr. Seattle said...

Reading the comments, it seems that many commenters have a dog in this fight, or at least act that way. Some seem to want Putin to lose, some to win, but those who want Putting to lose just seem more malicious.

To the latter: unless you're a dissatisfied Russian, what difference does it make to you who rules Russia? Don't give me the "democracy" BS excuse; nobody who posts here is that stupid. It's Russians' business who rules Russia, Putin's approval ratings are higher than our President's, and Russia is, by many objective statistics (GDP, mortality, debt, etc.), better off today than 10 or 20 years ago. Good for them. I'm not sure we in the U.S. can say the same, for reasons that have been discussed extensively on this site.

I don't have a dog in this fight. I am neither Russian nor Ukrainian, nor from any of the neighboring countries. I sympathize with both R and U, and would rather see them get along well, as both are fairly large, white, predominantly Christian societies.

As far as the legality of Russia getting Crimea, it's not like the Soviets had referendum asking Russia and Crimea if they wished to be separated. So you could make an argument Russia is taking back what was hers. They did it pretty much without a shot fired, so I'd say good for them.

Crimea is not our (U.S.) backyard, we don't owe Ukrainians anything, Putin doesn't owe us anything, so I don't see what the fuss is about. Last time I checked, we've invaded a lot more countries since WWII than the Soviets/Russians did, so it's not like we have the moral high ground. If we at least had something to show for all those invasions it wouldn't be half bad; but all we do is lose people and goodwill, and piss away money that we don't have, while at the same time our country is being invaded by the unassimilables.

So, anti-Putinites, cui bono?

Anonymous said...

To develop this further, a Russian-Ukrainian war would be far more fratricidal than the Russian-Chechen war was. I'm just guessing here, but maybe Putin isn't emotionally comfortable with being the first to cross that line. If Ukrainian nationalists cross it first by massively clamping down on Russian speakers in the east, with lots of corpses, then yes, Putin would probably invade to chase them out.

The Crimea was the only part of the Ukraine that Putin could get bloodlessly.

Anonymous said...

Putin says that he represents Russian interests and does.

In the same way that Stalin represented Russian interests, and Hitler represented German interests.

Anonymous said...

To the latter: unless you're a dissatisfied Russian, what difference does it make to you who rules Russia?

In theory, yes. In practice, we are talking about a nation with a long history of ideological imperialism, that really needs to have it beaten out of them. (Remember Germany and Japan, anyone?)

Don't give me the "democracy" BS excuse; nobody who posts here is that stupid. It's Russians' business who rules Russia,

To an extent. If Russia elects another Stalin who murders millions of Russian "capitalists" and "wreckers", that is their own business. If this neo-Stalin insists on causing trouble for the rest of the world, then its the world's business. Russia isn't exactly Iran or North Korea here. No, I'll rephrase. Russia is potentially another Iran or North Korea, but with ICBM nukes, submarines, aircraft carriers, and other means to project power globally.

Putin's approval ratings are higher than our President's, and Russia is, by many objective statistics (GDP, mortality, debt, etc.), better off today than 10 or 20 years ago. Good for them.

That is not the point.

Crimea is not our (U.S.) backyard, we don't owe Ukrainians anything, Putin doesn't owe us anything, so I don't see what the fuss is about. Last time I checked, we've invaded a lot more countries since WWII than the Soviets/Russians did, so it's not like we have the moral high ground.

This is really not a moral issue, but one of survival. Suppose that Putin, or someone worse, goose-stepped into Poland, then Portugal, then Britain, then Mexico. Do you think he would stop there?

The Ghost of Bulgakov said...

Rhymes with cui bono!

Dr. Seattle said...

To Anonymous at 3/10/14, 4:38 PM:

So you are seriously afraid that Russia is going to invade Europe, and then the world? All I can say is, wow. Better check under your bed tonight, maybe there's a mons..., I mean Russian, there.

Re: a nation with a long history of ideological imperialism, you mean like WWG/WWT we're currently waging?

But hey, don't worry. By the time Russia is done invading Britain, and then Mexico, we'll be so thoroughly invaded by Guatemalans, Somalis, Pakistanis, and the like, we may end up greeting the Russians as liberators. I just don't think they (the Russians) would even bother.

Anonymous said...

"To an extent. If Russia elects another Stalin who murders millions of Russian "capitalists" and "wreckers"

That's the key passage. In real life Russian courts sentenced one billionaire looter-murderer to a jail term from which he has since been released. Another one fled to London to escape the law.

But in that guy's imagination those two have been reclassified into "capitalists" and have swelled in ranks to millions. And the fate of those two crooks, in that commenter's imagination at least, justifies another Cold War.

Anonymous said...

"If the Kharkov, Donetsk, Lugansk, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa regions held referendums, they'd vote for Russia. The margin wouldn't be as lopsided as in the Crimea next Sunday, but it would still be comfortable. But the current Kiev government will do everything it can to prevent such referendums from occurring. Really, the only way make these referendums possible would be for Russia to invade and chase the armed forces loyal to Kiev out of the southeast first."

Ah, I think there's a second way.

Anonymous said...

Art Deco:

Your principal resource is invariably human capital, which is spread all over the country.

Wrong again. Three extreme pro-Russian provinces - Donetsk, Lukhansk, and Crimea/Sevastopol have 20% of the Ukrainian population on 13% of the land. Since this is the more industrialized area of the country, I suspect it is the part with higher human capital value.

In all, the Novorossiya area of southern and eastern Ukraine has 42% of the land, 47% of the people, 49% of the economic output, most of the industrial base and most of the black earth agricultural area. Except for K'yiv (6% of the people, 17% of economic output) and a lot of extremely beautfiul blonde women, there is little of real value in the rest of the country.

Anonymous said...

"To an extent. If Russia elects another Stalin who murders millions of Russian "capitalists" and "wreckers"

That's the key passage


No it isn't. The point is that of a hypothetical Russian strongman murdering millions of his own people for whatever reason. An ideological witch hunt, or sheer paranoid bigotry. It happened before. It can happen again.

In real life Russian courts sentenced one billionaire looter-murderer to a jail term from which he has since been released. Another one fled to London to escape the law.

That may be true, but has nothing to do with communist revanchism. Read some history. You're comparing Denis Denisovich and millions like him, to Bernie Madoff.

But in that guy's imagination those two have been reclassified into "capitalists" and have swelled in ranks to millions.

I wasn't even thinking of Those Two, or even HEARD about them at all until you mentioned them. I was thinking of the tens of millions of victims - "capitalists", "wreckers", "kulaks", "deviationists" - of Stalin's (and Lenin's) genocides, 1917-1953. Nearly all of these people were desperately poor, and rightfully more concerned with their own survival, and that of their families, than some Great People's Leader in Moscow.

Anonymous said...

Anon @ 2:52p

f the Kharkov, Donetsk, Lugansk, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa regions held referendums, they'd vote for Russia. The margin wouldn't be as lopsided as in the Crimea next Sunday, but it would still be comfortable.

If things go as I would expect, the Crimea is going to vote in the neighborhood of 70% for Russia.

However, while many of the areas you list have a strong Russian-speaking identity, they have much more of a sense of Ukrainian nationality. They are opposed to L'viv much more than they are for Moscow. Its likely that if a referendum were held right now, only a majority in Donetsk and Lughansk would vote to secede. Once passions calm down, even that is probably much less likely. Instead of a 55% vote for Russia, they might only deliver 30-40%. In the rest of Novorossiya from Kharkov to Odessa, such a measure would probably be lucky to get 20-30% of the vote. Pro-western parties regularly get 30-40% of the vote in those regions, and at least half of the voters of the Party of Regions are Ukrainian patriots who hold to a view of pluralism and regionalism as opposed to the nationalistic bombast coming out of Galicia and K'yiv.

HA said...

"By the way, in his recent public appearances Putin looked relaxed and in control."

That's not the general consensus among those who aren't on Putin's payroll. But I guess it'd cost him too much to hire flaks who are capable of posting stuff that's actually believable.

Anonymous said...

HA:

That's not the general consensus among those who aren't on Putin's payroll. But I guess it'd cost him too much to hire flaks who are capable of posting stuff that's actually believable.

Well, we in the US have a president who insisted that the authorities currently running Ukraine were "democratically elected". As I recall, the people currently running the Ukrainian government lost the 2012 parliamentary election, the 2010 presidential election, and the 2006 parliamentary election. They also already had a shot at running the country after their last coup in 2004 (seems to be their preferred method of coming to power, as opposed to winning elections), and blew that spectacularly.

We also live in a country that won its independence by force of arms and conquest, and has previously supported referenda and popular revolt as justification for secession by dissafected people and the reunion of seperated ethnic minorities into nation states. And we've actually fought wars to put these principles into affect in Herzegovina, and Kosovo and Darfur. But now we insist none of these principles are permissible with respect to Crimea and Russia (or Abkhazia, Transnistria, South Ossetia, and other disaffected pro-Russian areas). Just like they were not permissible in Krajina and Bosnia and North Kosovo for the Serbs, or Nagorano-Karabakh for the Armenians. So borders are sacred until we say they aren't. Words mean exactly what I say they mean. People have a right to self-determination unless they are Russians or Armenians or Serbs.

Who then is living in a dream world down a rabbit hole?

Anonymous said...

I never thought I'd see the day when iSteve posters would defend Stalin and communism so vigorously.

Dr. Seattle said...

To Anonymous at 3/10/14, 6:00 PM:

Sorry, I can't take your argument seriously. You claim to be concerned, at the same time, about Russians killing their own (= Russia weaker) and Russians invading Europe (= Russia stronger). You're picking arguments on a whim as it suits you any given moment.

Let me spell this out for you: during the Cold War, at the height of its power, USSR did not invade any countries in our sphere of influence, even though spreading worldwide revolution was their explicit policy. Ditto other way round. Balance of nuclear power kept US and USSR from doing stupid things to each other directly.

And now your argument is, a considerably weaker Russia, without expansionist foreign policy, is going to invade the world? (No, I don't consider their meddling in their "near abroad" expansionist foreign policy. They aren't invading Vancouver.)

Your argument "it happened before, it can happen again" is so meaningless it can apply to anything. Sure, maybe someone is going to revive the slave trade, and perhaps we'll have another Civil War over slavery in this country. I mean, it happened before, you never know, right?

You are being alarmist about future events with extremely low probability of happening. Even if Russia had plans to take back the countries of the former USSR, what do you suggest we DO? I haven't seen you address that. Or are you volunteering to man Estonia's anti-tank units? Be my guest.

Dr. Seattle said...

To Anonymous at 3/10/14, 6:00 PM, lest I forget:

"I wasn't even thinking of Those Two, or even HEARD about them at all until you mentioned them."

Oh, so you've never heard of Khodorkovsky and Berezovsky? You don't know much about world events, do you? Or you just forget when it suits you?

donna death said...

Let me spell this out for you: during the Cold War, at the height of its power, USSR did not invade any countries in our sphere of influence,

Cuba, Nicaragua, arguably China, North Korea, and Vietnam.

even though spreading worldwide revolution was their explicit policy. Ditto other way round. Balance of nuclear power kept US and USSR from doing stupid things to each other directly.

The Cold War was a war. Never forget that. It was a very limited war, in which both sides refrained from "doing stupid things to each other directly", but it was not a surrender-fest either.

Never forget what communism was like, either. (Though too many young people have, or never were taught. Educators never fail to drill them about the evils of European fascism, though.) Communism was beyond evil, beyond any sort of human error or failing.

Dr. Seattle said...

To donna death:

I said: USSR did not INVADE any countries in our sphere of influence. You listed Cuba, Nicaragua, arguably China, North Korea and Vietnam.

Are we down to falsifying history now? If USSR invaded Cuba, Nicaragua, and Vietnam, I'd like to read about it. Please post the list of books. USSR invaded Manchuria in 1945 per the Yalta agreement, and then pulled out of N. Korea in 1948 (we stayed till 1949). But that was the outcome of WWII so it doesn't really count. Plus it's a lot closer to them than to us, so I'd put that one in their sphere of influence anyway.

I hope you understand the difference between stating historical records accurately, which I did, and being an apologist for a social order, which I did not do. For the record, I hate Communism. I don't really need you to remind me what it was like.

reiner Tor said...

Russian strongman murdering millions of his own people for whatever reason. An ideological witch hunt, or sheer paranoid bigotry. It happened before.

Those strongmen were not very Russian to begin with. Of Lenin's four grandparents, one was a Russian serf, one was a Kalmyk, one a Jew, and one Swedish-German. Of Stalin's four grandparents, all four were probably Georgian, although one was possibly Ossetian.

Bill said...


Anonymous said . . .
This is really not a moral issue, but one of survival. Suppose that Putin, or someone worse, goose-stepped into Poland, then Portugal, then Britain, then Mexico. Do you think he would stop there?

Setting aside the lunatic premise that Putin wishes to do any of these things, what is your claim, exactly? That those countries would be worse-ruled by Putin than by their current American puppets? What evidence is there of this? Russia is certainly better ruled by Putin than it was by its American puppets.


I said . . .
"He could just roll across the border and take the South and East of Ukraine. Why doesn't he? Presumably, this business with referendums and such is a way to seek legitimacy."

Anonymous replied . . .
If the Kharkov, Donetsk, Lugansk, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa regions held referendums, they'd vote for Russia. The margin wouldn't be as lopsided as in the Crimea next Sunday, but it would still be comfortable. But the current Kiev government will do everything it can to prevent such referendums from occurring. Really, the only way make these referendums possible would be for Russia to invade and chase the armed forces loyal to Kiev out of the southeast first.

That would be quite bloody. Maybe Putin doesn't want that on his conscience. He's neither a pacifist nor a nihilist.


This seems wrong twice. Right now, it looks to me like Putin's strategy is to give Kiev a choice between permitting the referenda and engaging in a bloody crack-down: a crack-down which would likely be carried out by a combination of Blackwater/Academi types and Nazis. Either way, he gets his pretext. In support of this theory, watch his recent press conference and how emphatic he is about an invasion in the case that Kiev engages in violence against ethnic/linguistic Russians.

His conscience? You are supposing not only that Putin is, in fact, in the wrong here, but that he, himself, perceives it that way. Both assumptions are ridiculous. The US side is not even making arguments that Putin is in the wrong at this point: our propaganda descended some time ago to incoherent blabbering.

HA said...

But now we insist none of these principles are permissible with respect to Crimea and Russia (or Abkhazia, Transnistria, South Ossetia, and other disaffected pro-Russian areas).

Do we indeed? What your post has to do with my remark about paid pro-Putin stooges is anyone's guess, but since you posted it as a kind of preamble, you apparently see some connection. I'm guessing the toll booth operator got tired of hearing about Kosovo and South Ossetia every time you rolled up, and so you had to find another venue to vent. As for Russia, its views on self-determination are also a bit selective, in that the principle only seems to matter for Russians, and for those outside Russia's borders. Also, anyone who thinks that recognizing Putin for the low-life thug that he is amounts to an endorsement of the clowns in Washington is piteously limited in mental capacity. Suffice it to say that a world in which Obama keeps his attention focused on what is happening with America's borders will likely require Putin and his paid goons to do the same. (That being said, situations like Darfur and Kosovo, where Serbs or Janjaweed are doing things we all were supposed to swear would never again happen, allowances might be made, though in both cases, I would assert that carving independent states out of the wreckage was or would be a mistake.)

HA said...

"Those strongmen were not very Russian to begin with..."

If I ever hear any logic to that whole Jew/quarter-Jew argument, it will be the first time. And that goes double for any Russian apologist whining about Communism being a Western imposition, since there's no consistency or logic to that claim either. You ever hear of the Kievan Rus -- you know, that Western, Viking incursion? No, the apologists tell us, those guys were somehow all Russian. Or what about Catherine the Great, that German Lutheran black widow who possibly murdered her Russian husband? No problem there, either. Tchaikovsky's Francophilia, which makes him more musically French than Chopin in some critics' eyes, and which caused him much heckling from the local chauvinists? They'll let that one slide, too. On and on.

The thing is, if you take their logic to its consistent conclusion, the Russian state is itself a grand Western imposition that therefore has no historical validity to begin with. Which is probably why they're so defensively spinning tales about how Ukraine and Gallicians are themselves historical non-entities.

In the end, it's all about that need to spread. The Soviets definitely had it, but it didn't originate there. Rather, it was just a continuation of Tsarist-era insistence that Russia was the pan-Slavic messiah of nations and the 3rd and final Rome. And where did all that lead? To the gulags. But it turns out that doesn't count, because it was all the doing of Jews and quarter-Jews and Georgians and whatever. Yet *this* time around, we're supposed to believe that it's all going to be different, because Putin hates the gays and NATO and whatnot. And if doesn't turn out well, I guess a new round of apologists will be able to say that all those oligarch Jews and quarter-Jews somehow got the upper hand again, so Russia isn't really to blame. I have no love for anyone who has fond thoughts of the OUN. But when it comes to not wanting to be part of that great cycle of selectively blaming others for the mistakes that somehow just keep happening, I certainly sympathize.

Anonymous said...

"If I ever hear any logic to that whole Jew/quarter-Jew argument, it will be the first time."

Think of it like the mafia.

Anonymous said...

Bolshevism initially was more a coalition of ethnic minorities against the majority population than anything else - although it changed over time.

Initially it was more of an ethnic holocaust.

It started to change in the late 30s onwards because the threat of war meant the alliance of ethnic minorities in charge of the Soviet concentration camps needed soldiers to fight the Germans.

Bill said...


HA said...
If I ever hear any logic to that whole Jew/quarter-Jew argument, it will be the first time.

That sentence would be a lot stronger without the torrent of illogic which follows it.

Anonymous said...

If things go as I would expect, the Crimea is going to vote in the neighborhood of 70% for Russia.

According to a poll referenced here, 77% in the Crimea plan to vote for rejoining Russia. 8% plan to vote for autonomy within the Ukraine. Presumably the rest are undecided. It's not clear from the article if those are the figures for the entire peninsula or for Crimea minus Sevastopol. In Sevastopol 85% are for rejoining Russia and 6% are for the other option.

...at least half of the voters of the Party of Regions are Ukrainian patriots who hold to a view of pluralism and regionalism as opposed to the nationalistic bombast coming out of Galicia and K'yiv.

Well, who looks more predisposed to pluralism and regionalism right now, Moscow or Kiev? On top of that, this crisis has led to polarization. I'm sure that the number of moderates has gone down. We can add to that bleak economic prospects of the Ukraine, compared to Russia. All of that must have raised pro-secessionsist sentiments.

Anonymous said...

Bill,

I think that Putin is in the right at this point and that he knows it. He is helping the people of the Crimea finally realize their wish of rejoining Russia, and he's doing it bloodlessly. And it was right for him to threaten the use of force in the rest of the Ukraine if large numbers of Russians there are killed by the Kiev government, mercenaries or West Ukrainian irregulars.

Up to this point the crackdown in eastern Ukraine hasn't been very violent. It's possible that Putin doesn't want to be the guy who escalates the violence, that he doesn't want southeastern Ukraine at the price of a war.

Is one's response commensurate to the other side's offenses? I think that's a moral question, not just a practical one. Yes, he fought a war in Chechnya, but Chechens had blown up huge apartment buildings in Moscow and done other savage things.

Also, in spite of all the prattle by West Ukrainians about how special, Western and different they are, everyone, including Putin will see any fighting as essentially a civil war. Ukrainians are a thousand times closer to Russians than Chechens, and that might give him pause before escalating, before spilling any of their blood.

Anyway, these are just guesses. I'm starting with the assumption that he sees US/EU sanctions as a joke, finds any NATO involvement utterly improbable, and asking myself the question "what else could be restraining him?"

Bill said...

I asked . . .
"More generally, I'm wondering who the audience is for his performance."

Anonymous replied . . .
Good question. I don't know the answer but that doesn't change the key point; it's obviously a performance.

I had dismissed this idea, but Paul Craiq Roberts (who looks less and less like a cook to me every day), theorizes that Putin is performing for the EU. That he is saying, essentially, "The Americans are lunatics. I am not. It would be wise to stop supporting them before they commit an insanity that we all will regret."

I don't know whether I find this plausible or not. Can the EU possibly be pried out of US hands? They seem very far gone.

reiner Tor said...

If I ever hear any logic to that whole Jew/quarter-Jew argument, it will be the first time.

Lenin didn't like Russians very much, and was well aware that he wasn't really one of them - he knew he was something like a mixture of a number of different ethnicities, and he considered himself above the Russians. In fact, he hated Russian culture.

This is much rarer among full-blooded Russians, because hating Russians is not something you can easily pick up from Russian parents and grandparents.

We know for example the attitudes of Jews in Russia: in general they hated or at least intensely disliked Russia, the Russian political order, Russian elite, etc. (They might be understood in that, but that's besides the point.) They also liked Jews: like all normal people, they did like themselves. This was exactly the opposite of Russian attitudes: Russians in general liked themselves (i.e. Russians) and hated Jews. Since Lenin had very similar attitudes to Jews and quite unlike those of Russians (he liked Jews but disliked Russians), I think it is not very far-fetched to assume that for all we know he could have picked up those attitudes from his mom, who in turn might have picked them up from Lenin's Jewish grandfather. Even if the grandfather in question didn't once mention to his family that he was himself Jewish, I rather doubt he never once let his negative attitudes on Russians (and his positive attitudes on Jews) slip his mouth.

If there are lessons to be learned from the holocaust, then there should be some lessons to be learned from the Red Terror (and the 1990s Rape of Russia) as well. (Red Terror coincidentally stopped and became a moderate dictatorship after leadership went into mostly pure Russian hands.) Those lessons are as follows: never ever let ethnic minorities rule over your country, even the worst dictatorship by your co-ethnics is better than any kind of ethnic minority rule.

As to the Vikings, they are totally, completely irrelevant to this. First, as all elites, they must have contributed a lot to the present-day Russian gene pool. As you must be aware, present-day Western populations are to a large extent descendants of Medieval elites and rich peasants, so present-day Russians must be to a large extent descendants of those Vikings. Present-day Russians are a mix of then Vikings and then-Slavic elites. (Plus anybody else who has assimilated.) OTOH I have no doubt that Viking rule in Rus was very good for Vikings, and in general less good for Slavs. I have little doubt that a Slavic elite might have been more beneficial for those Slavs - but military realities were just different.

Tchaikovsky's music... first, it doesn't sound very French to me. Second, I cannot see how it is relevant here.

Catherine the Great... Well, she was German, and also Czar of all Russians. What's your point?

reiner Tor said...

I forgot this one:

it's all about that need to spread

It's also irrelevant to the topic of a "Russian strongman murdering millions of his own people for whatever reason", to which I was responding.

The need to spread is geopolitical, since Russia has no easily defensible boundaries, it needs to conquer ever vaster space to provide itself with the safety the English had already before they started to build an empire. This won't change whoever is in charge, except if Russia is weak, or if it could be convinced that it is in no danger whatsoever. Moving the military of the US on Russia's borders all the while attacking countries around the world for no reason (like Iraq, Libya, etc.) is not the best strategy to convince them. It might be a good strategy to make them weaker.

Anonymous said...

Reiner Tor:"If there are lessons to be learned from the holocaust, then there should be some lessons to be learned from the Red Terror (and the 1990s Rape of Russia) as well. (Red Terror coincidentally stopped and became a moderate dictatorship after leadership went into mostly pure Russian hands.) Those lessons are as follows: never ever let ethnic minorities rule over your country, even the worst dictatorship by your co-ethnics is better than any kind of ethnic minority rule."

How does this wisdom apply to cases like Mao's China of Pol Pot's Cambodia?

reiner Tor said...

How does this wisdom apply to cases like Mao's China of Pol Pot's Cambodia?

Well, there must be exceptions to all rules. :)

Nevertheless, there must also be some exceptions to the rules derived from "the lessons of the Holocaust", don't you think?

Anonymous said...

HA:

As for Russia, its views on self-determination are also a bit selective, in that the principle only seems to matter for Russians, and for those outside Russia's borders

But what really is self-determination but the will to fight for freedom until victory or death? Independence is won and guaranteed through force of arms from those who would deny it. From this view, no one within Russia who wants to get out (Dagestan, Chehnya) has any sort of a valid claim on independence as they lost their own struggle and they have no outside parties willing to back them to victory. On the other hand, those who are without who apparently would like in do have a valid claim, since Georgia and Moldova and Azerbaijan are unable to do anything about their de facto secession and decisively lost the armed struggle to reconquer these regions from their inhabitatns.. Same goes for Crimea.

Serbians had won their self-determination in Bosnia and Krajina to hold their country together until the US and Germany decided to arm their Croat and Bosnian opponents and then militarily intervene on their behalf when they couldn't handle the Serbs themselves.

Anonymous said...

HA:

If I ever hear any logic to that whole Jew/quarter-Jew argument, it will be the first time. And that goes double for any Russian apologist whining about You ever hear of the Kievan Rus -- you know, that Western, Viking incursion? No, the apologists tell us, those guys were somehow all Russian.

Well, more to the point, very few Russians have any sort of I1 Y-chromosomal legacy. So the Viking contribution to the identity of the Russian people was de minimis. What the Vikings did was organize a medieval state on the lands of the East Slavs via conquest. Mini-states probably similar to the Cossack entities of later times already existed, else Rurik could not have been elected King in Novgorod, as there would have been nothing to be elected to and nowhere for the election to have occurred.

Which is probably why they're so defensively spinning tales about how Ukraine and Gallicians are themselves historical non-entities.

Its not a tale. Just look up Ukraine and read up on its non-history. It didn't exist as a separate entity before 1918, and there was nothing called Ukraine before that time, just a bunch of people calling themselves Russians in various dialects - Rusyns, Rossiyans, etc.

Anonymous said...

@Bill

I don't know who the performance is for - the EU is plausible - but it's plainly a performance for somebody - at least it has been so far.

Once Crimea is settled we'll see if he wants to separate the south and east.

Anonymous said...

Anon:

West Ukrainians about how special, Western and different they are, everyone, including Putin will see any fighting as essentially a civil war. Ukrainians are a thousand times closer to Russians than Chechens, and that might give him pause before escalating, before spilling any of their blood.

Putin is already on record saying that Ukraine is nothing but another part of Russia, and that Russians and Ukrainians are brothers and will not fight each other. I highly doubt he would ever be the one to initiate a fratricidal intra-slavic war.

However, the people who view themselves as an other and special are the Galicians, with their western outlook, their lack of common history with Russia, and their Catholic religion and the messianic quality leant to it by Fatima and the prediction of world salvation from conversion of Russia (to Catholicism). The Galicians view themselves as the hand of God in this matter, as they are the Russians who have already come to the Catholic Church, and they view it as incumbent upon them to bring all the rest of the Russians (Ukranians, Belarussians, and Great Russians) over to their point of view to bring about the fruits of this prediciton.

And of course those not willing to see that truth are fair game for a fight, as by struggling against God's Church, they make themselves a tool of satan and an opressor of the people. Without understanding this, it is difficult to understand the Galician viewpoint expressed most clearly by Svoboda and Pravy Sektor and why they continue to publicly honor their Waffen SS Division and its fight against Soviet Russia.

If you are looking for someone to start a fight among slavs, one needn't look any further than those who publicly honor the people who already did so on the side of Hitler and Himmler in their most elite military organization.

Anonymous said...

Putin is already on record saying that Ukraine is nothing but another part of Russia, and that Russians and Ukrainians are brothers and will not fight each other

Just like the Filipinos were William Taft's "little brown brothers?"

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact said...

If you are looking for someone to start a fight among slavs, one needn't look any further than those who publicly honor the people who already did so on the side of Hitler and Himmler in their most elite military organization.

Few of them, even in the Galicia Division, fought for Hitler and Himmler. They fought for Ukraine, against the cosmic horror of Bolshevism. Many of them honestly thought that Stalin would engineer a second Holodomor after he swallowed central Europe. If Stalin lived longer, it may well have happened.

HA said...

Lenin didn't like Russians very much...

Lenin didn’t like Russians, you say? So what? Lenin famously disliked lots of things. That didn’t stop the party he created from promoting Russian composers, playwrights, novelists and filmmakers, and from appropriating Tsarist notions of expansionist Russian exceptionalism. Catherine the Great was not always too keen on Russians either, given her failed and frustrating attempts to cram Voltaire and the Enlightenment down her people’s throats. So what? For better or for worse, Russia will most likely continue to be ruled by people who are similarly divided when it comes to what Russians are, and what they should become. So the Russian apologists would do well to stop invoking the quarter-Jew/Georgian blame game when it comes to owning up to what Russia has done to the rest of the world over the past century, good and bad. If they want to continue be a multi-ethnic state, then the Jews and quarter-Jews and Georgians and Kalmyks are likely going to continue to be a factor. If, instead, they want a Russia exclusively for the Russians, then their more likely future is a retraction into a rump state (a la Serbia) crying over what everyone else did to them.

And likewise, they might want to stop posting about how other people or nations are non-entities because people from the West were instrumental in their creation. If that disqualifies a people from being a real nation, then the Scandinavian Rus are fair game and the Russians likewise have no place in history. I’m sure the whole Ukrainians-don’t-exist argument goes over well when you’re slamming down infused vodkas with the rest of the parens, but really, it’s just polemicism masquerading as scholarship.

Anonymous said...

"Lenin didn’t like Russians, you say? So what? Lenin famously disliked lots of things."

Well, he liked the Jews. A lot. "Anti-Semitism is counterrevolution" was one of his most famous slogans. Here he is railing about the evils of anti-Semitism in person, as recorded by a phonograph. He produced a lot of verbiage on that topic, all in that vein.

Anonymous said...

"So the Russian apologists would do well to stop invoking the quarter-Jew/Georgian blame game when it comes to owning up to what Russia has done to the rest of the world over the past century, good and bad."

Apologists everywhere might do the same.

Anonymous said...

Lenin was a mutt. He spent a lot of time and effort praising and defending the Jews. Nothing whatsoever about the Kalmyk or Swedish parts of his heritage. He hated Russia and seemed more or less indifferent to Germany.

For whatever reason, the Jewish part of his heritage was more important to him than others. Not in the religious sense of course, but still.

Molotov-Rippentrop Pact said...

I was browsing an old iSteve thread about Irish-Americans and came across a word that applies just as well to Western Ukrainians:

Recalcitrant

Western Ukrainians are recalcitrant: stubborn, unyielding, going their own way, never mind the advice of their "betters". The history of the L'viv region, the L'viv to K'yiv corridor, Halychnia*, and Bukovina, is one of stubborn, Balkan-like mountain people preferring their own way to being anyone's junior partners. Perhaps the mountainous terrain and relative isolation of Western Ukraine breeds its recalcitrance. Perhaps the oriental god-king rule of Moscow works best on flatlands, plains, and steppes.

* The correct name is Halychnia, not Galicia. Galicia is a part of Spain. And Bukovina is a largely Orthodox region of Western Ukraine also strongly committed to independence from Moscow.

Anonymous said...

"Well, more to the point, very few Russians have any sort of I1 Y-chromosomal legacy. So the Viking contribution to the identity of the Russian people was de minimis."

Rurik was N1c1. Usually that's Finnic, but from what I've read, his particular sub-group of it is only seen among Swedes. Apparently Leo Tolstoy was I1 though. But yes, the most common Russian haplogroup is the typically Slavic R1a.

Anonymous said...

Molotov Ribbentrop Pact:

Few of them, even in the Galicia Division, fought for Hitler and Himmler. They fought for Ukraine, against the cosmic horror of Bolshevism

Do you have any idea what you are saying?

Russians and Ukrainians who wanted to fight the Bolsheviks volunteered to be Hilfswilligers (Hiwis) in the Wehrmacht. There were hundreds of thousands of them.

The Waffen SS was the personal army of the Nazi Party. It was directly under control of Heinrich Himmler, and pleged to blind loyalty and obedience to Adolf Hitler. The Galician SS Division was made up of Ukrainians who believed in these ideals.

And if you are looking for cosmic horror, what do you suppose we should call the cauldron of human death which was unleashed first on September 1, 1939, then again on June 22, 1941 and those who loosed the dogs of war and those who volunteered to fight for them?

HA said...

Well, he liked the Jews. A lot.

Yeah, well again, so what? Peter the Great obviously liked the Italians (or Venetians), given whom he hired to design St Petersburg. The aforementioned Catherine the Great and Tchaikovsky were very fond of the French as were a large number of Tsarist-era Russian intellectuals. Sure, you can try carving up individual Russians into their ethnic preferences or backgrounds (or chromosonal, profiles as one above poster did), but it's only going to make an impact if you're preaching to the choir.

Anonymous said...

Anon:

Rurik was N1c1. Usually that's Finnic, but from what I've read, his particular sub-group of it is only seen among Swedes. Apparently Leo Tolstoy was I1 though. But yes, the most common Russian haplogroup is the typically Slavic R1a.

Or more to the point, it tells you that Rurik was ultimately Finn who had been Varangicized, whether by himself or later history I do not know. But he was not a Swede, since the Nordics are quite distinct amongst Europeans by their I1 Y chromosome.

Maybe that is why he decided to go adventuring amongst the neighbors of his blood brothers to the east in Novgorod. Everyone north and east of Novgorod when Rurik showed up was Finnic, and remained so up until the founding of St. Petersburg, which pushed the Finns back to Viipuri and Narva.

Anonymous said...

"Perhaps the mountainous terrain and relative isolation of Western Ukraine breeds its recalcitrance."

That seems like a likely general rule.

Anonymous said...

Ukraine relief map

http://cimsec.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ukraine7.jpg

Anonymous said...

And if you are looking for cosmic horror, what do you suppose we should call the cauldron of human death which was unleashed first on September 1, 1939, then again on June 22, 1941 and those who loosed the dogs of war and those who volunteered to fight for them?

Chairman Mao
The Great Leap Forward
The Cultural Revolution
Pol Pot and the Killing Fields
Ceausescu the Great Conductor

Communism - one BILLION deaths
Fascism - 25-50 million, tops

Anonymous said...

"Or more to the point, it tells you that Rurik was ultimately Finn who had been Varangicized"

I forgot where I read this, but I remember reading that Rurik's particular subgroup of N1c1 is now, in the 21st century, only seen among Swedes.

Anonymous said...

Do you have any idea what you are saying?

Have you?

Russians and Ukrainians who wanted to fight the Bolsheviks volunteered to be Hilfswilligers (Hiwis) in the Wehrmacht. There were hundreds of thousands of them.

It doesn't mean they were all Nazis, anymore than the ones in the Red Army were all communists.

The Waffen SS was the personal army of the Nazi Party. It was directly under control of Heinrich Himmler, and pleged to blind loyalty and obedience to Adolf Hitler.

So far, so good...

The Galician SS Division was made up of Ukrainians who believed in these ideals.

No, or at least, not all of them. First of all the 14th SS Galizien division had a very different pledge. They were to fight for Ukraine ONLY. The volunteers who made up that division insisted on that from the very beginning. That division was the only SS foreign legion not oath-bound to Hitler. Second of all, the Galizien Division had an unusual amount of autonomy. The Ukrainian volunteers bargained with the Nazis that the division was not to be shipped outside Ukraine, and somehow the Nazis kept their end of the bargain. Third, they have been cleared of all war crimes accusations in not one but many investigations.

If you're going to damn the 14th SS, you might as well damn the Finnish Army as well.

reiner Tor said...

Lenin didn’t like Russians, you say? So what? Lenin famously disliked lots of things.

Russians featured prominently on the list, and Jews were conspicuously absent from it.

So the Russian apologists would do well to stop invoking the quarter-Jew/Georgian blame game when it comes to owning up to what Russia has done to the rest of the world over the past century

Sorry, we were talking about what the Russians did to themselves, not to the rest of the world. The original statement to which I responded was a "Russian strongman murdering millions of his own people". Let's just stick to that topic. Once we've figured that out, we can move onto the topic of what the Russians did to others.

Anonymous said...

I remember reading that Rurik's particular subgroup of N1c1 is now, in the 21st century, only seen among Swedes.

Not so much among Swedes as along the coast of Finland, where many Swedish speakers are present. Speaking Swedish doesn't necessarily make you a Swede - see Ireland and English language.

Bill said...

HA said...

[Anonymous said . . .]
Well, he liked the Jews. A lot.

Yeah, well again, so what? . . . Sure, you can try carving up individual Russians into their ethnic preferences or backgrounds (or chromosonal, profiles as one above poster did), but it's only going to make an impact if you're preaching to the choir.


I agree with HA. The only people you are going to convince with facts, logic, and history are people susceptible to being convinced by facts, logic, and history.

HA said...

"Its not a tale. Just look up Ukraine and read up on its non-history...just a bunch of people calling themselves Russians in various dialects..."


You keep on telling yourself that. And I guess the Kurds are just "mountain Turks", right? In fact, there were people in the general area who clearly resisted being lumped in with other Russians - but also resisted Germanization, Magyarization and Policization (not sure if that last one is a word, but you know what I mean) – for centuries. No, they did not call themselves Ukrainians, but so what? Just because Czechs and Slovaks were once called Moravians and Bohemians and whatever does not mean they suddenly materialized out of thin air after WWI. Ditto for the pre-unification Italians and any number of other nations.

Anonymous said...

Wasn't this started in NYC by the sainted LaGuardia (or his diabolical aide Marcantonio). At least there was no citizenship issue since the Puerto Ricans were citizens, even if there were 47 PR families to a room.

Anonymous said...

Galicia is a part of Spain
There is a Galicia in Spain and a Galicia in Eastern Europe/
There even is an Iberia in North central ME(western Turkey) as well as the penisula hosting Spain and Portugal. Look it up!

donna death said...

Galicia is a part of Spain
There is a Galicia in Spain and a Galicia in Eastern Europe/


The point was that the "Galicia" in Eastern Europe is more properly known by its natives as Halychnia. You want to call it Galicia, fine, but don't complain if someone thinks you're talking about Spain. Similarly the "Georgia" in the Eastern Hemisphere is actual Sakartvelo. Not as convenient as "Georgia", though, but not as confusing. Even the Russian name "Gruzia" would be better.

There even is an Iberia in North central ME(western Turkey) as well as the penisula hosting Spain and Portugal. Look it up!

The geographical region now known as Azerbaijan used to be Iberia, and before then, Caucasian Albania. That was long before there was a Balkan Albania.

reiner Tor said...

I guess the Kurds are just "mountain Turks"

I think they are quite different (Kurds having nothing to do with Turks, whereas Ukrainians are clearly closely related to Russians.

However, you clearly do have a point, that Ukrainians are indeed an existing people, and they clearly have existed for centuries, although I think that before the 20th centuries even they themselves weren't sure just how different they were from other Russians. By the 21st century all such confusion's cleared up, they are clearly a separate people, but in Eastern and maybe Southern Ukraine among city-dwellers they don't feel very separate. (But Eastern and probably Central Ukrainians do feel quite different, at least as different as Czechs from Poles, or sometimes more.)

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