Why my work is clearly biased

82 Comments

1. Well said. Maybe the mainstream media will come to realise that there is more profit (financially and culturally) in taking a different balanced yet critical approach to “news” than there is to be had by recycling the same old tripe over and over again.

2. Noel,
   that’s an exceptionally well written piece. There may be a relatively few people with no biases, I doubt it very much. In all practicality we all have biases.

   The media biases are deplorable and do us all a shameful disservice. I’ve taken to looking at the ABC again, just to see what they’re up to. The litmus test I use is its coverage of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. Over two days of continued killings in both Gaza and the West Bank the ABC chose to publish two articles on Israeli bodies returned to Israel. The two Israelis were given identities, background, parts of their lives revealed and their photos shown. They were given a face to their life story. The return of Palestinian bodies was reduced to one small paragraph that simply mentioned how many – no identity, no faces to put to the victims, just reduced to a number. They had AP/AFP and AP at the bottom, but still the ABC chose to publish that stuff. There was a lot more wrong with those articles to boot.

   It’s vitally important that we get facts and alternative viewpoints.

   It is a pain in the neck that a viewpoint in itself may be made as a balance to other viewpoints, yet so many expect each statement must be balanced itself.

3. Gonggongcha, it wqas disgusting to just read of an israeli court vercict of not guilty for severaL IDF tried for raping a woman or girl to death in a jail.

   That old hag who celebrates the bombing of Gaza from her Settlement easy chair was there applauding.

4. Have you ever considered learning from bona fide Russian and Ukrainian analysts on the situation* versus echoing talking points of the US radical right.

   Includes the likes of Tucker Carlson, FoxNews, GB News, Tenet media, fossil fuel Koch Network (inc Heritage) and Abbott’s ultraconservatuve chums in the land of PM ‘mini Putin’ Orbán.

   Many in Australia complain quite rightly about American influence, but then use American grifters masquerading as analysts to filter geopolitical issues in third nations?

   Two recent examples, Chris Hedges who is very good on Christian fascism, but then bowls out of his lane, embarrassingly. Feb ’22 when Russia invaded, whoops conducted a special operation, like faux anti-imperialist tankies of the left (right?) blamed US, NATO, EU & Ukraine; within two weeks he did a reverse ferret and supported Ukraine suggesting a lack of insight?

   Two weeks ago, another high profile American tankie often cited with Koch & Putin’s Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, was called out in interview with an Italian MP. The MP called him a liar with evidence to support on Sachs’ negative claims about Ukraine, NATO etc. and Russia’s invasion; Sachs (not the first time) then had a live melt down as he is not used to being challenged.

   One’s issue is in Australia, if looking offshore at a conflict or geopolitical issue, look for related, credible and qualified specialists versus relying upon Americans to filter everything for the Anglosphere…..or worse local cranks and conspiracy theorists (who turn up with Americans on Vatnik Soup).

5. Andrew

   “Have you ever considered learning from bona fide Russian and Ukrainian analysts on the situation* versus echoing talking points of the US radical right.”

   We end a question with a question mark, for clarity, are you asking a question and forgot, or are you claiming to know where Noel gets his ideas from and suggesting he look elsewhere?

6. You don’t have a relevant question on the topic as opposed to shooting messengers?

   Here’s another, why do so many of Anglo or US ageing faux anti-imperialist left share anti-Ukraine etc. talking points with the far right, Fox & GB News?

   Coincidence?

7. Noel
   I cant help wondering if you would be so sanguine about the situation, if it were your home that had been invaded. Would you still be insisting that the only pragmatic solution is to give in to your new overlords?

8. leefe, you’ve presented the subject matter in a form suitable for the many 5 year-old readers who frequent this site.

   Why didn’t you go for the 3 year old readers?
   Russia bad — NATO good!

9. Andrew

   How is a question that quotes you and seeks clarification not relevant to the topic? unless your statement, the leading statement in your reply, is not relevant to the topic.

   Are you asking a question and forgot, or are you claiming to know where Noel gets his ideas from and suggesting he look elsewhere?

   It’s noted that you avoided clarifying your opinion.

   5 out of your 6 paragraphs shoot messengers (clarification of the sixth is being sought) isn’t it hypocritical to accuse others of shooting messengers?

10. One of the more disingenuous arguments of those seeking to justify Russia invasion of Ukraine is the “what if Canada allowed Russia to set up military bases…”
    This has to be about the most ridiculous and juvenile of arguments.
    I think the US would be likely to exhaust diplomatic measures, to impose sanctions, to close the border, perhaps a blockade.
    Did Russia take those actions before invading? No
    Also ignored is the fact that Putin has previously said- Ukraine joining NATO was a matter for Ukraine and NATO.
    …and note- this was after the verbal exchange regarding the expansion of NATO.
    As for the “follow the money” line, it should be noted that Russia devotes a greater proportion of its GDP to the military than any NATO country, even before its invasion. Follow that money.
    PS- what’s your website? I’m happy to reply there too!

11. I see that AC is up to his old tricks of misrepresenting history.
    Still posting statements from Putin completely out of context.

    For those who might be interested in the evolution of Russian thinking on the road to war, the Kennedy School at Harvard has a useful 2022 article here —
    https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/accepting-nato-aspirations-denazifying-20-years-putins-changing-views-ukraine

    From the article — But, as historian Andrei Zorin recently observed, “every turn toward isolationism in Russia has happened, at least in the 20th century, after yet another failed attempt at ‘Europeanization.’” Putin, at the very start of his presidency 22 years ago, seemed to foresee such a prospect, sending an implicit warning to the West: “If they push us away, then we will be forced to find allies and reinforce ourselves. What else can we do?”
    Indeed, as the years passed, and color revolutions and NATO expansion scrambled Russia’s traditional sphere of influence, Putin’s optimism dimmed. Hope for a fruitful, multipolar future on terms sought by Moscow gave way to frustration with what he saw as Western vilification of Russia, fears of sabotage and worries over Russia’s diminishing role on the global stage. This gradual hardening can be seen in many facets of Putin’s public speech but is perhaps most vividly illustrated by his views of NATO. In May 2002 he said Ukraine was entitled to decide on its own whether to join NATO and that he did not see such a decision as one that would “cloud” Russian-Ukrainian relations. But by late 2004—the year Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined NATO, and when Ukraine’s Orange Revolution had hoisted to power the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko—Putin’s mood had changed: “If Ukraine were to join the EU this would be a positive factor that, unlike NATO expansion, would help strengthen the system of international relations,” the Kremlin paraphrased him as saying.

    It was 2007 when Putin made it clear that Russia’s legitimate interests were being ignored — “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation to the modernization of the alliance itself or to ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.” (Speech and discussion at the Munich Security Conference.)

    And here’s Putin pleading for a mature dialogue two months before coming to the conclusion that Russia had to act.
    “We just make it clear that we are ready to talk about how to translate the military scenario or the military-technical scenario into a political process that will actually strengthen the military security of all states in the OSCE, Euro-Atlantic, Eurasian space. If this is not going to happen, then … we will switch to this mode of creating counter-threats, but then it will be too late to ask us why we made such decisions, why we have deployed such systems.”

    “Too late to ask…”
    A lesson our wonderful Western diplomats are yet to learn.

12. A Commentator

    That’s an interesting topic.

    What do you mean exactly by ‘exhaust diplomatic measures’?
    Diplomacy doesn’t always happen in the public sphere, so what is your evidence that it wasn’t exhausted as far as the Russians were concerned?

    US sanctions can have devastating effects, what makes you think Russian sanctions on a US-EU supported Ukraine would work?

    How does Russia close the Ukraine borders with Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Moldova?

    “perhaps a blockade” – was that what Russia had in mind when it annexed Crimea?

    Following the annexation of Crimea:
    wasn’t there plans to build Ukrainian naval bases capable of taking US warships? “with plans to build two new naval bases in the Black Sea region, an area of tension with Russia that may see greater U.S. military and NATO involvement”
    …”The Navy destroyers USS Porter and USS Donald Cook have been operating with allies and with Ukraine’s navy in the Black Sea since January. On Tuesday, both warships, along with a P-8A reconnaissance plane, joined with two Turkish frigates and F-16 fighters in an integrated surface, air and subsurface warfare drill. On Wednesday, the destroyers departed after 17 days, one of the Navy’s largest deployments in the Black Sea in recent years.”
    …”In other moves, the U.S. Air Force last month established a new enduring presence at the Campia Turzii air base in Romania, where MQ-9 Reaper drones are deployed to give allies a boost in surveillance capabilities over the Black Sea.”

    https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2021-02-10/ukraine-plans-black-sea-bases-as-us-steps-up-presence-in-region-1517213.html1
    Source – Stars and Stripes

    You say “Also ignored is the fact that Putin has previously said- Ukraine joining NATO was a matter for Ukraine and NATO.”
    Does that mean that Russia wasn’t concerned about it?
    ‘Since the Cold War, “the Russian military command has always held the fear that one day Ukraine would leave Russia and eventually there would be a NATO naval base on Moscow’s doorstep,” said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military at CNA in Washington.”‘
    https://breakingdefense.com/2019/07/us-upgrading-ukraine-ports-to-fit-american-warships/
    Wasn’t that before the Belarusian President claimed “The United States is actually creating NATO bases in Ukraine under the guise of training centers,..”?

13. Steve Davis

    I didn’t see your well-researched and citated post before posting mine. As they used to say on Laugh in: ‘Verrdy interesting.”

14. Steve:

    That’s not what I said, nor is it a rational inference considering what I said. I asked what I consider to be a valid question. It’s easy to tell someone else how they should resolve their problems, but I’ve learnt from experience that many people, when confronted with the same circumstances, will not behave the way they tell others to.
    Noel has openly admitted to bias. That’s a good start. Now, how about an equally honest assessment of his reaction to being in Ukraine’s shoes?

15. Gonggongche, thanks for the additional analysis.

    leefe, you say “That’s not what I said, nor is it a rational inference considering what I said.”

    Of course that’s what you said and inferred.
    You oversimplified a complex problem that was decades in the making, into something suitable for a five year old.
    You are trying to give your comment context now that you’ve been challenged, but the appropriate place for context was with the original post.

    You now ask Noel for an honest assessment of Ukraine’s position.
    Even though Noel bared his soul to the public gaze, knowing that he risked petty and unreasonable criticism.
    Even though you know that Ukraine walked into this with eyes wide open.

    Yes, your question was petty and unreasonable, because this has been dealt with many times before.

16. Steve:

    I thought your command of the language was better than that. A writer may imply; it is the reader who infers.

    You say “Of course that’s what you said and inferred.”
    ‘My actual words were:
    I cant help wondering if you would be so sanguine about the situation, if it were your home that had been invaded. Would you still be insisting that the only pragmatic solution is to give in to your new overlords?
    Your interpretation:
    “Russia bad — NATO good!”
    Not my words. Not my meaning.

    I am not “trying to give the comment context now that I’ve been challenged”. I am giving context to correct your misinterpretation. I am pointing out that the words you wrote as my meaning were not the words I used, and they were not what I meant.

    And I really have had a fucking gutful of your patronising, condescending “I know what you you really meant” bullshit. You don’t know, you’ve demonstrated that time and time again. I deliberately said nothing about specific countries and/or power blocs.
    Cactus. Sideways. A really really big one.

17. leefe, you oversimplified a complex problem that was decades in the making, into something suitable for a five year old.

    I took it a step further to show how shallow your question was, and you now try to make my further step the issue.

    My over-simplification is not the issue.
    It was deliberately over-simplified to make a point.
    Your analogy is the issue, because it distorts the facts, and you know it distorts the facts.

    How do you know?
    Because these matters have been covered many times before.

    And now you demand honesty from Noel?

18. Reply to A Commentator
    My website is https://nuclear-news.net/

19. So an anonymous opinion piece by from a organisation with the stated objective of articulating a Russian perspective is Steve’s evidence.
    There is nothing in that anonymous opinion piece that justifies the invasion of Ukraine.
    There is so much that can be refuted, and beyond the points below, I might continue tomorrow.
    • A number (most) of Russia’s former allies and satellites chose to shun Russia and look to the west for prosperity and their future is hardly surprising. Countries that have experienced Russian colonisation and domination have sought to turn away, at the earliest opportunity.
    • None of them, nor any NATO country, have territorial claims on Russia
    • “shared history ” and “brotherly neighbour” aren’t really adequate reasons to launch an invasion, and target civilians and civilian infrastructure.
    • “modern Ukraine was created by Russia…” is that a serious contribution by an “academic”
    • “I will never abandon my conviction that Russia and Ukraine are one nation” … we’re fortunate that not all governments use that rationale to resolve their disputes. Although Hitler did.
    • interestingly the anonymous author didn’t uses his chronological analysis to identify that Putin denied any plans to invade Ukraine just 3 days before invading. It’s a clear demonstration that Putin is unable to be transparent in international relations.

20. AC has distortion down to a fine art.
    So an anonymous opinion piece…
    Not so.
    It is clearly stated that the article was written by staff at the Belfer Centre.
    The Robert and Renée Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, also known as the Belfer Center, is a research center located at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States.
    Not exactly a red hot source of Russian propaganda.

    AC has referred to the group of writers as “anonymous” when staff identities, with photos, are available at the Belfer Centre homepage. That’s desperation from AC, right there.
    And more than a little hypocritical, given his fondness for anonymity.

    We see how desperate AC’s position is when we cruise through his dot points.
    The first two points have no relevance to my comment. They were thrown in to give an appearance of substance. Actually, they have no relevance to anything at all.

    The third point actually gives support to Russia’s position.
    The shared history of Ukraine and Russia explains why Russia deliberately remained aloof from the Minsk agreements, correctly pointing out that these were structured in such a way that Kiev and the Donbass rebels were to sort out the terms of regional autonomy between themselves. In short, the Minsk agreements were an internal Ukraine matter.
    It was Kiev that broke the bonds of shared history when it attacked Ukrainian citizens for whom it had agreed to provide autonomy.

    The fourth dot point shows AC’s lack of knowledge.
    Modern Ukraine was created by Russia/Soviet Union.

    The point about Russia and Ukraine being one nation is merely another way of expressing the shared history that was referred to earlier.
    And it was more than a sentimental triviality. Even after Ukrainian independence when Kiev began aligning with the EU, Russia continued trade with Ukraine that involved generous terms for Ukraine.

    The final point is an AC classic of assertions devoid of context.
    Far from depicting Putin in a bad light, it actually shows that Putin tried to avoid war.
    He was forced to act when Zelensky walked away from the Budapest Memorandum, whereby Ukraine was not to acquire nuclear weapons.

    AC stated of the article “There is so much that can be refuted…”
    So, when will this happen?
    “I might continue tomorrow” he says.
    He’s gunner havter improve.

    The timeline provided in the article published by the Belfer Centre gives much needed context to the background of the Ukraine war.
    It shows how Russia was forced to change its views and policies from a wish for European integration, to standing alone, then seeking allies elsewhere.
    It’s a tale of failure of Western diplomacy.
    And the article is just the tip of the iceberg.

21. As i said Steve’s expert is an opinion piece via an organisation with the specific purpose of promoting engagement with Russia and Russia’s perspective and orientation.
    It’s about as credible as using the America First Institute to analyse Trump’s presidency, or the Atlantic Council’s analysis of Russia’s objectives.
    I might return to (yet another of) Steve’s experts later. There is so much fact free opinion to debunk.
    But, there are dozens of countries that share heritage and culture, and countless borders that have changed.
    Does anyone seriosly believe this is suitable justification for war, invasion and brutality?
    The cherry picking of justification for war and hypocrisy is remarkable. We’ve observed it a dozen or more times.
    It is interesting that Steve ammends the embarrassing falsehood by his expert, who said “modern Ukraine was created by Russia…”
    Steve has to correct this nonsense by adding “Soviet Union” which may (or not) be arguable, but his expert entirely neglected this.
    The requirement for correction is embarrassing for Steve and his “expert”
    Steve brings up the Minsk Agreements. There is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that the Russian backed separatists broke the agreement by refusing to relinquish their heavy artillery, by providing unobstructed access to humanitarian organisations, by returning border control to the Ukrainian government. All were required by the agreement.
    As I said I might later provide more cometary on the threadbare “analysis” of his expert. It is mainly a list of Putin said and Putin believed…
    But… does anyone seriosly believe any of it provides justification for invasion of a neighbour and the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure?

22. Like your article NW.

    Thanks SD for your link to ‘russiamatters.com’. A veritable mine of consolidated info from a wide ranging collective of experts. Enjoyed reading the 16Jun2022 article, the content of which pretty much accords with my understanding of the historical context, albeit, it gave an important more contemporary view of Putin’s change over 20+ years.

23. Clakka, thanks for your interest.

    You refer to the date of publication of the article, and I also found that to be significant.
    It means that this was all common knowledge among the movers and shakers at the time, yet a concerted effort was made to conceal the background story, and that concealment continues to this day.

24. Crikey, there’s no stopping AC, I just dunno where to start!

    How about the first distortion.

    …an organisation with the specific purpose of promoting engagement with Russia and Russia’s perspective and orientation.
    And the alternative is?
    An organisation with perhaps the specific purpose of withholding vital information?
    Or the purpose perhaps of escalating the conflict to nuclear warfare?

    AC is trying to to depict the organisation as being dodgy.
    And maybe it is.
    Because if readers go to the group’s home page https://www.russiamatters.org/
    The first item to come up is the Russia/Ukraine War Report Card Nov 2025, in which we see a mass of statistics about many aspects of the war.
    And if we look at the Endnotes to the report we see that the sources of the statistics are overwhelmingly from Western government reports and mainstream media articles.

    So AC’s objection to this organisation, given his well-known love of statistics and mainstream nonsense, comes as something of a surprise.
    But it does not take long to figure out that his real objection, his concealed objection, is that the article exposes years of Western misrepresentation of the story behind the conflict.
    And the only way AC can see to counter that betrayal of trust, is to babble.

    Is that too tough a criticism?
    Consider this.
    It becomes clear that AC has lost control of the situation entirely when he makes this point — “It is interesting that Steve ammends the embarrassing falsehood by his expert, who said “modern Ukraine was created by Russia…”
    Steve has to correct this nonsense by adding “Soviet Union” which may (or not) be arguable, but his expert entirely neglected this. The requirement for correction is embarrassing for Steve and his “expert”
    Oh dear.
    Dear oh dear.
    The article actually stated “Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.”
    The writers neglected nothing.
    The embarrassment lies elsewhere.

    An emotional breakdown is quite understandable when ingrained beliefs and perceptions are exposed as being baseless.
    But it is not understandable or acceptable for one who has boasted in the past of his capacity for collecting and analysing data from a wide range of sources, to continue the pretense of having something useful to say on those matters.

25. i’ve got a bit lost with all those interesting and thoughtful comments. I would like to answer just one, Leefe says – “I cant help wondering if you would be so sanguine about the situation, if it were your home that had been invaded. Would you still be insisting that the only pragmatic solution is to give in to your new overlords?”
    First – I’m not all that sanguine about the situation in Ukraine But yes, I think you are right, and if it were my home that had been invaded, I think I would be angry, resentful, and hating, and wanting to kill the invaders. I have the luxury of living in relative comfort in far-away comfortable Australia. I have the luxury of not being in extreme distress, and able to try to look at the whole picture, and wonder and imagine what the outcome might be for these distressed people (after all Russians are human beings too,as well as Ukrainians). And wonder what actions might be taken, to avoid further misery for these peoples, and for people beyond that area.
    I don’t say that “the only pragmatic solution is to give in to your new overlords?” – I do think that for a war to be ended before utter catastrophe, (and I think that many military men would agree with me) there needs to be genuine negotiation and recognition of concessions required from both sides.

26. Given that Steve raises the subject of “babble”, it is timely to remind any readers of Steve’s history of babble and disingenuity
    • When challenged to cite an international law scholar, academic or expert to supprt his legal argument, he couldn’t cite one. He used an opinion piece by someone who wasn’t one. The article contained opinions directly contradicted by reputable international organisations.
    • When I suggested Russia was struggling under economic sanctions, I pointed to high interest rates, steep currency devaluation, falling share market index, high inflation, chronic labour shortage and that Russia devotes a greater proportion of its GDP to the military than any NATO country.
    Steve said these were “meaningless ”
    • Now he has to correct his expert- from reference to Russia to Russia/Soviet Union
    And now on that point…
    Ukraine declared independence in 1917.
    5 years later the Russian Bolsheviks took military control
    Ukraine and Ukranian independence and national sentiment existed before the intervention of the Bolsheviks.
    Steve like to quote sources that exist to promote the Russian narrative.

27. I have a brother, thankfully, only one, who would accurately fit into the DSM (of Mental Disorders) descriptor of narcissist. Unsurprisingly, we were never close.

    He was a pioneering vigneron, the first to plant in an Australian region where grapes had never before been planted. By virtue of his status as a risk-taking viticulturist, and turbocharged by his inherent and unshakeable narcissism, he thought he was pretty damn good, and was under the delusion that he knew pretty much everything about everything. Needless to add, he didn’t.

    The combination of these traits would often have him in argument with others who followed in his wake and established vineyards in the same district; he was known to sit up all night with his interlocutors over several bottles of wine and argue, argue, argue, even when he was clearly, objectively, factually incorrect. He was simply incapable of conceding that he might be on the losing side of the debate.

    It’s of note that when he first broke ground, first planted grape vines, that many in the district reached out to help with both advice and machinery, but, years later, when he left that district, not a single soul admitted to a sense that he would be missed.

    Never-ending arguments have a sort of sense of futility about them, as if the protagonists are somehow locked in a pointless duel, never to be resolved. I’m on reasonably good terms with one of the men who would engage in these futile exchanges with my brother… an Italian Australian, and my guess is he persisted out of a sense of honour to his beliefs and a willingness to prove my brother wrong. They were close for years, until they weren’t… their friendship deeply soured due to the implacable sense of right my brother exhibited even when he was woefully wrong.

    Perhaps I’m wrong, but it sometimes seems that the SD/AC dyad has something of that flavour. I’m no therapist, but if I were, I’d go low and say for fuck’s sake guys, get over it!

28. AC is like the Black Knight from Monty Python.

    “When challenged to cite an international law scholar, academic or expert to supprt his legal argument, he couldn’t cite one”. — False. The black knight is fabricating to stay in the fight.

    “When I suggested Russia was struggling under economic sanctions, I pointed to blah blah blah stats that Steve said were meaningless.”
    True.
    The stats were meaningless because given without context.
    So meaningless in fact, that Russia is swimming along quite well at the moment, the ruble did not turn to rubble as expected, while the EU nations who continue to supply arms to Ukraine because they don’t care how many Ukrainians die, are really struggling. And just who is it that’s pleading for a cease-fire? It ain’t Russia.

    “Now he has to correct his expert…”
    A deliberate falsification.
    This is getting serious.
    The black knight needs professional help I think.

    “Ukraine declared independence in 1917.”
    The quote was not about Ukraine. It was about “modern Ukraine.”
    The black knight is on his knees now, a pitiful sight.
    Not content with misquoting the line once, this is misquote number two.
    I wonder how many deliberate misquotes we will see before this is over?

    Here’s what Putin said about modern Ukraine.
    “So, I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia – by separating, severing what is historically Russian land. Nobody asked the millions of people living there what they thought.”
    “Then, both before and after the Great Patriotic War, Stalin incorporated in the USSR and transferred to Ukraine some lands that previously belonged to Poland, Romania and Hungary. In the process, he gave Poland part of what was traditionally German land as compensation, and in 1954, Khrushchev took Crimea away from Russia for some reason and also gave it to Ukraine. In effect, this is how the territory of modern Ukraine was formed.”
    There is no limit to the extent to which AC will withhold information in order to score a point.
    But the story of modern Ukraine does not end there.
    This is where it really gets interesting.

    The historian Renfrey Clarke has stated in an interview — In researching this book I found a 1992 Deutsche Bank study arguing that of all the countries into which the U.S.S.R. had just been divided, it was Ukraine that had the best prospects for success. To most Western observers at the time, that would have seemed indisputable.

    Ukraine had been one of the most industrially developed parts of the Soviet Union. It was among the key centres of Soviet metallurgy, of the space industry and of aircraft production. (Courtesy of investment by Moscow.) It had some of the world’s richest farmland and its population was well-educated even by Western European standards.

    Add in privatisation and the free market, the assumption went, and within a few years Ukraine would be an economic powerhouse, its population enjoying first-world levels of prosperity.

    Fast-forward to 2021, the last year before Russia’s “Special Military Operation,” and the picture in Ukraine was fundamentally different. The country had been drastically de-developed, with large, advanced industries (aerospace, car manufacturing, shipbuilding) essentially shut down.

    World Bank figures show that in constant dollars, Ukraine’s 2021 Gross Domestic Product was down from the 1990 level by 38 percent. If we use the most charitable measure, per capita GDP at Purchasing Price Parity, the decline was still 21 percent. That last figure compares with a corresponding increase for the world as a whole of 75 percent.

    To make some specific international comparisons, in 2021 the per capita GDP of Ukraine was roughly equal to the figures for Paraguay, Guatemala and Indonesia.

    What went wrong? Western analysts have tended to focus on the effects of holdovers from the Soviet era, and in more recent times, on the impacts of Russian policies and actions. My book takes these factors up, but it’s obvious to me that much deeper issues are involved.

    In my view, the ultimate reasons for Ukraine’s catastrophe lie in the capitalist system itself, and especially, in the economic roles and functions that the “centre” of the developed capitalist world imposes on the system’s less-developed periphery.

    Quite simply, for Ukraine to take the “capitalist road” was the wrong choice. Or to put it another way, the ousted president Yanukovych was correct to reject the economic terms offered by the EU in 2014, and go for the more favourable Russian offer.
    The coup that followed resulted in Ukraine degrading from independence and prosperity to being a colony of Western imperialism. With its new vassal status, it had no option to being used as a pawn to provoke Russia.

    So is that the complete history of modern Ukraine?
    Far from it.
    But it does show why modern Ukraine is a Russia/Soviet Union creation.
    And it shows how vigilant we must be, when clowns try to summarise complex geo-political matters into a few dot-points.
    Their aim is to deceive.

    The merging of Ukraine into the Western economic system has brought about its ruin.
    “Tis but a scratch” whimpers our Black Knight.

29. Well Canguro, I was entirely willing to leave the exchange where it was, but Steve demonstrates that he has no desire/willingness to.
    Information, data, facts relevant to the Russian economy-
    • Inflation – 8%
    • Interest rates-17%
    • Mortgage rates- 20%
    • Share market index- down by 40% since the start of the war
    • Currency devaluation- down 40% since the start of the war
    • Economic forecast- 0.6% growth this year, down from 4.3% with many expecting a recession in 2026
    • Military expenditure- was over 5% of GDP prior to the war. Estimations are now between 7% and 30%
    (Add to this – Russia’s life expectancy ranks 112th)
    Apparently these facts are meaningless to Steve. Because he asserts “Russia is swimming along quite well at the moment”
    Hilarious.
    Later I’ll get around to dealing with the rest of his nonsense

30. Gonggongche opens up a glaringly important issue – the coverage of, and the language used in media information on the genocide in Gaza. To be fair, the ABC has given much coverage to the disastrous sufferings of the people of Gaza. But, like the rest of the Western media, the ABC has indeed given so much emphasis on the individual Israeli families on the return of hostages, alive or dead, and so little to the far greater number of Gazan individuals returned, whether alive or dead. I suppose it’s much easier for the ABC to get visually interesting film/video supplied by wealthy Israel, as against the efforts of struggling Gazan reporters. But in the area of language – it’s a rich study in bias. The atrocities done in Gaza as reported as “according to Hamas” etc, with the inference that “we’re not sure it’s true”. I do think that this is a reflection of the strong influence of the Jewish Zionist lobby on the ABC and on Australia in general. The nonsense that is being accepted that any criticism of Israel is “anti-semitism”!

31. It looks as though AC has no intention of explaining the significance of the fascinating economic data he presented above.
    Fascinating, because it begs the question — what the hell is this all about?

    The reason that no explanation is forthcoming is that the data has no significance. There can be no meaningful explanation.
    For two reasons.

    First, all economies have problems. As an example a five year old can understand, (my apologies, but you can see my problem) we know that many birds nest in trees, so we do not think it exceptional or significant when we spot a nest in a tree.

    Second, the factor overlooked by all the prophets of doom is that Russia is an autarchy — it is self-sufficient. It can feed itself, clothe itself, warm itself, house itself, transport itself. And of course, the one that really annoys the critics — defend itself.

    So AC has wisely avoided attempting to explain the data.
    Far simpler to just daydream about how many days Russia has left before total collapse.

    But all this has not been a total waste of readers’ time.
    Perceptive readers will have picked up on the lesson about economic data presentation that is now on display.
    We have on one hand AC’s collection of disconnections, and on the other we have Renfrey Clarke’s data on Ukraine.
    The difference between the two could not be more stark.

    Renfrey Clarke gave an historical account of the evolution of the Ukraine economy from 1992 to 2021.
    In other words, he put some effort into it.
    He described changes in Ukraine’s economic/productivity factors over that period.
    He provided economic data that showed a serious decline in economic/productivity sectors. That data verified the changes he described.
    He gave explanations for the decline based on social/political factors. He showed that economic forecasters got it completely wrong with Ukraine’s future.

    But most importantly, he was not dogmatic in his conclusions, making sure that we knew that his conclusions were simply his view.

    His honesty on that point is illuminating.
    It tells us that even with the advantage of hindsight, economic issues are conditional. Are subject to unknown influences.
    Which means that economic forecasting, with no benefit of hindsight, and absolutely no awareness of influences yet to emerge, is of limited value.

    This further tells us that lists of economic statistics have a value close to zero.

32. As for economic data, as the world tries to re-balance itself from the dire effects of the hegemony of old ‘western’ imperia, and its subsequently fashioned neo-liberal/neo-conservative coercive scourge, in addition to the big powers opposed to it, there will be many determined and brave cultures and countries whose economies and lifestyles will suffer from the wiles of that coercive scourge before it finally crumbles via its own paranoid supremacist ideation.

    Trump is accelerating that coercive scourge (intensified by America immediately after WWII) and insodoing is bringing on desperation bombast in western Europe. Whilst all are affected, many of those determined and brave cultures and countries are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, whilst knowing it’s worth working towards globally benevolent multilateralism.

33. Ig anyone needs an explanation as to why the inflation rate, official interest rates, mortgage rates, exchange rates, investment, life expectancy, military expenditure… are important indicators, they are beyond help.
    If when dealing with facts, the reply is “Russia is swimming along quite well at the moment” ¹, we can see they rely on “the vibe”
    The requirement for the explanation itself is indicative of someone unashamedly and wilfully an economic ignoramus.

34. AC needs to work a lot harder on the DENIAL stage of the grieving process if he’s to make any progress.
    Clutching a set of numbers like a set of pearls ain’t gunna do it.

    The West lost the economic war it launched against Russia, and now is losing the ground war.
    AC should take his stats, his frustration and his denial of reality to some quiet corner elsewhere and take a good hard look at what support for US foreign policy can do to a person.

35. Yeah,
    Russia is swimming along quite well at the moment because everyone wants a government that delivers high inflation, interest rates in the 20s, poor investment, huge military expenditure, low life expectancy and falling exchange rates
    That success for every delusional (economic) ignoramus
    There was a time that Steve used Russia’s relatively low public debt as an indicator of its economic strength. But he has since changed his mind about public debt.

36. From World Population Review
    United States — debt to GDP ratio — 122%
    Russia — debt to GDP ratio — 14.9%

    Investopedia has a useful article on the debt to GDP ratio.

    It provided a good number of points that included this —
    The debt-to-GDP ratio is a metric that compares a country’s public debt to its gross domestic product (GDP). It reliably indicates a country’s ability to pay back its debts by comparing what the country owes with what it produces.
    A country that’s able to continue paying interest on its debt without refinancing and without hampering economic growth is generally considered to be stable.

    Then this — High debt-to-GDP ratios could be a key indicator of increased default risk for a country. Country defaults can trigger financial repercussions globally.

    Then concluded with this — THE BOTTOM LINE — The debt-to-GDP ratio is a metric that helps understand a country’s ability to pay back its debts. A lower debt-to-GDP ratio is generally ideal because it signals a country is producing more than it owes, placing it on a strong financial footing.

    A strong financial footing?
    This cannot be!
    Investopedia must have got it wrong!

37. It’s hilarious Steve that you just shift positions so readily. It is very Putinesque
    During an exchange sometime ago, you used Russia’s public debt to GDP ratio as an indicator of its economic success.
    Then during a recent exchange on one of Denis Hay’s articles you, you commented approvingly on MMT.
    Now apparently low public debt is again an indicator of economic success!!
    which is it Steve?
    You can’t have it both ways

38. Dear oh dear.
    I hope Denis Hay is not reading this.
    All that effort he put into educating AC on MMT, and he’s still all at sea.
    AC is yet to grasp the fact that Russia does not have a debt problem.
    Perhaps this will help.

    From Intellinews March 2024
    Even counting out the frozen funds, Russia can cover its external debt dollar for dollar with cash, whereas everyone in the West is massively leveraged, including the Ukraine where the debt-to-GDP ratio is almost at 100%.
    It is these rock-solid fundamentals – no one else in world has even remotely similar metrics – which is the essence of Putin’s Fiscal Fortress. It is a ridiculously strong basis, which means even if the West manages to reduce Russia income from oil and gas exports, it will still have a massive amount of wiggle room.
    And its ongoing commodity exports to the global south mean that it will continue to enjoy the raw materials subsidy for its economy. Because of their external debt (USA, Italy, much of G7, everyone in Africa and even China) everyone else is a lot more vulnerable to a global slow down.

    Russia is probably currently the least vulnerable on a macro fundamentals basis.

39. It’s embarrassing for you Steve.
    You can’t be both supportive of MMT and use a low level of public debt as an indicator of economic success

40. Diversion is a sign of desperation.
    The only embarrassment here is for those claiming Russia is about to collapse.

    Suddenly, all those fascinating stats have lost their fascination.
    Now AC wants to get bogged down in an endless to and fro over MMT.
    MMT is of no concern to Russia.
    It has sufficient reserves of gold and cash to pay any foreign debt.
    Its economy is so strong it’s investing in infrastructure domestically and development projects abroad.
    As Denis Hay tried to get AC to understand, a currency-issuing government cannot go broke in its own currency.

    AC’s heartfelt concern for the suffering of ordinary Russians is touching, but there is no reason to worry.
    Putin has an approval rating other leaders can only dream of.
    All is well.

41. Steve, your embarrassment is a great diversion and highly entertaining.
    And I’m entirely comfortable with using this as a case study in you wordy ignorance.
    I’ve simply used your previous positions to demonstrate that you don’t have a fundamental philosophy beyond being a Putin sycophant and incredibly inconsistent in the “evidence ” you bring to any exchange.
    In this thread you continue to prove you’re an economic ignoramus.
    You have said you are supportive of MMT, but you use Russia’s relatively low level of public debt as an indicator of its economic success.
    You don’t even seem to realise the absolute contradiction in your position(s).
    I’ll certainly file away this exchange to continue to embarrass you.
    It is well deserved.

42. AC’s obsession with matters economic is rather off-target, one would think.
    The global outlook has not been raised here, and it’s rather bleak.

    From the World Bank.
    WASHINGTON, June 10, 2025—Heightened trade tensions and policy uncertainty are expected to drive global growth down this year to its slowest pace since 2008 outside of outright global recessions, according to the World Bank’s latest Global Economic Prospects report. The turmoil has resulted in growth forecasts being cut in nearly 70% of all economies—across all regions and income groups.

    From the UN.
    16th April 2025 — The world economy is on a recessionary trajectory as global growth is expected to slow to 2.3 per cent this year due to escalating trade tensions and uncertainty, the UN trade and development body, UNCTAD, said in a new report published on Wednesday.
     
    From Le Monde 5th April 2025 — Tariffs: A major global economic slowdown looms. The US risks nearing stagflation, while Europe faces stagnation. American consumers could lose $3,800 in purchasing power, with the poorest being hit the hardest.

    But with Russia being an autarchy and so almost immune to global downturns, AC’s fears for Russia’s well-being are unfounded.

43. To a simpleton, justification for the invasion is a repeat of 1962 soviet/usa crisis where an agreement to remove usa nukes from turkiye and no repeat of bay of pigs for no nukes on cuba.
    Similar agreement invasion over.

44. Getting back to the article — “Consideration is never given to how NATO membership for Ukraine might affect Russia.”
    That point by Noel is possibly the crux of the fiasco.

    The US and Europe refused to consider Russia’s position from 2007 to 2022.
    It’s possible that they are not considering it even now.

    What was Russia’s position?
    They were after a security arrangement that provided for the needs of all of Europe including Russia.
    Russians in 2007 considered themselves to be European and wanted to be accepted as such.
    That sentiment has evaporated.

    The Ukraine fiasco has convinced Russia that its interests are best served by developing relations in the Eurasia zone as a whole.
    This is, to a certain extent, Russia turning its back on Europe.
    The result, for Europe, has been significant.

    The economies of Europe are seriously struggling.
    Let’s look at the big 3.

    Germany is/was the EU economic strongman.
    From wiki — The German economic crisis is a significant downturn of Germany’s economy that marked a dramatic reversal of its previous “labour market miracle” period of 2005–2019. The country, which had been considered to be Europe’s economic powerhouse in prior decades, became the worst-performing major economy globally in 2023 with a 0.9% contraction, followed by further 0.5% contraction in 2024 leading to recession.
    Several economists, business figures, and other expert expressed concern that Germany’s economic downturn could cause the nation to reclaim its reputation as the “sick man of Europe” from the 1990s. Economists stated that Germany’s economy was in a permanent crisis mode, with the Handelsblatt Research Institute declaring that it was in its “greatest crisis in post-war history” after projecting a third consecutive year of recession in 2025.

    From france24 — 5.9.25 — The massive debt behind France’s political turmoil. France’s growing debt pile is at the heart of the confidence vote that could topple the government of Prime Minister Francois Bayrou next week.
    From Titan Wealth Sept ‘25
    UK economic performance has sharply declined since Brexit, with GDP growth, productivity and UK equities lagging other major economies. Mounting risks include high inflation, rising debt, twin deficits (trade & fiscal), weak productivity, shrinking workforce, ageing population, and high energy costs.
    Current fiscal policy is unsustainable, with a rigid goal to balance the budget by 2029 seen as unrealistic and economically damaging.
    There are historical parallels to past crises such as the 1976 IMF bailout, Black Wednesday, and the 2022 Liz Truss mini-budget collapse. Pressure is building on the government ahead of the November budget, likely forcing a policy U-turn or risking a financial crisis.

    In short, the economies of Europe are at near-crisis point.

    It is true that problems were developing prior to their decision to back Ukraine, but Ukraine as Noel states, has become an economic black hole that endlessly sucks wealth from Europe to such an extent that cuts to social services have become standard.
    So the crisis is not only economic.
    If no change in direction occurs, it will become social/political as well.

    The saner heads in Europe will be wishing they could go back in time and talk seriously with Russia about regional security.

45. Yes SD, well said.

    The high-cost unimaginative of Europe seem to be as obdurate as potty-sitters as they toady to limp antediluvian desk warriors like Rutte, the pallid Tories/City of London, and Trump.

46. Steve struggles with the contortions of logic in being supportive of MMT, but likes using public debt to GDP as an economic indicator. It is “logic lite”
    So let’s look at the economic facts.
    Russia’s lauded growth has been forecast to fall from 4.3% to 0.6%. Recession is forecast in 2026.
    Russia’s rate of inflation remains stubbornly high at 8%. The punishingly high interest rates aren’t working in any significant way.
    The Russian labour market faces a chronic shortage, because the people that would otherwise be working to produce prosperity are sent to die for Putin’s brutal vanity project
    Comparable facts, statistics and information is useful, for example…
    Germany’s inflation- 2.3%
    Interest rate- 2.6%
    Growth forecast- 1.4% (twice that of Russia)
    Across the European Union, growth is 3%

    No wonder most European countries wish to align with the west, rather than brutal, expansionist and underdeveloped Russia.

    It is also useful to discuss the cost of this war to both Russia and to democratic nations/NATO that support Ukraine.
    Russia’s military expenditure is opaque, but it is estimated to be between 7% and 30% of GDP.
    Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Russia devoted a greater proportion of its economy to the military than any NATO country.
    The comparison is- the total GDP of NATO countries is over €40 trillion, ie €40,000 billion.
    In 2025 NATO countries have provided Ukraine with about €35bn in militaryaid.
    That is less than 0.1% of the total NATO GDP
    The support to Ukraine by the west is sustainable (but subject to the political will). Russia’s war and military expenditure is not sustainable.
    The demographic effects alone on the labour marker/shortage will ensure Russia takes a generation to recover.

47. And Clakka, I see now that the Europeans are still clinging to the delusion of Russian weakness, it’s really quite extraordinary.
    They are singing the same song from 2022.

    From The Straits Times, Nov 13, 2025,
    HELSINKI – Finnish Defence Minister Antti Hakkanen on Nov 12 said China was “massively” financing Russia’s war efforts, which increases the security threat in Europe and poses a challenge to Nato.
    Speaking to AFP, Mr Hakkanen said Russia’s cooperation with China had “gone so far” that “China is currently massively financing Russia’s war chest”.
    “Russia would not be able to wage war for very long with its own resources. India, of course, provides funding in other ways, but China is doing so quite deliberately,” the minister said, after meeting with his Nordic counterparts in Helsinki.
    Which is another way of saying this is not our fault, it’s everybody else.

    Also from The Straits Times another insight into the corner into which Europe has painted itself by aligning so closely with US foreign policy.
    NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Canada – G-7 diplomats mull over how to get Russia to engage in Ukraine peace talks.
    The Group of Seven (G-7) foreign ministers on Nov 12 discussed ways to increase pressure on Russia over the war in Ukraine, amid doubts over whether Moscow is interested in negotiating an end to the conflict…Countries attending the meeting of foreign ministers in Canada on Nov 12 were also concerned about US military operations in the Caribbean and whether armed strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats carried out by Washington violate international law. The ministers issued a final joint statement in which they reiterated a call for an immediate ceasefire and said, “we are increasing the economic costs to Russia, and exploring measures against countries and entities that are helping finance Russia’s war efforts”.
    How to get Russia to engage in Ukraine peace talks?
    Are they crazy?
    They had their chance in 2007, through to 2022.
    It’s as though they just woke up from a sleep.
    It’s not as if they were not warned.

    Once again, here’s Putin pleading for a mature dialogue two months before coming to the conclusion that Russia had to act.
    “We just make it clear that we are ready to talk about how to translate the military scenario or the military-technical scenario into a political process that will actually strengthen the military security of all states in the OSCE, Euro-Atlantic, Eurasian space. If this is not going to happen, then … we will switch to this mode of creating counter-threats, but then it will be too late to ask us why we made such decisions, why we have deployed such systems.”

    They took no notice of Putin back then, and they fail to notice now that the US is positioning itself to leave Europe holding the Ukraine baby.
    Europe is run by fools.

48. Interesting, Putin has not changed his demands for peace, including-
    • reduction in Ukraine’s military by about 90%, ensuring the country has no capacity to defend itself from another invasion
    • ceding territory Russia has illegally annexed, but does not control. If Putin was serious about protecting people, Russia would annex cites and towns, but leave land and resources with the legal state
    • no further NATO expansion. Putin delivered the most recent expansion himself. Now he seeks to impose Russia’s foreign policy on sovereign nations.
    As for the veracity of Putin’s position, let’s recall that Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum which guaranteed Ukrainian sovereignty in accordance with existing borders and Putin denied any plans to invade Ukraine just 3 days before invading.

49. Heartening to see some civility has returned to the Club of Rome.

50. AC implies that Russia broke the Budapest Memorandum.
    When Russia invaded Ukraine there was no Budapest Memorandum.
    It had been used, abused, and abandoned by the US and UK long before 2022.

    Article 3 of the memo provides for all parties “to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.”

    The US ignored that when it began sanctions against the pro-Russia Yanukovych government and threatened further sanctions.
    The EU was also threatening sanctions as this was going on.
    Did the UK (a member then of the EU) protest that as a signatory to the memo it could not agree to this? The question is rhetorical.

    Then the US orchestrated an anti-Russia coup in violation of Article 3. Western media accounts of the coup present it as a purely popular uprising, yet telephone records confirming US involvement in the coup have never been disputed by the US.

51. One of Steve’s specialties is misrepresentation.
    The relevant clause in the Budapest Memorandum states-
    Avoid economic coercion aimed at subordinating Ukraine’s sovereign rights.
    The sanctions were personal (visa bans, asset freezes), not broad economic sanctions/coercion directed to Ukraine’s status as a sovereign nation.
    Russia, on the other hand, committed to
    “reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine … to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.”
    They did the opposite
    So Steve, here’s the challenge for you, find a peer reviewed paper by an international law scholar or expert who supports your contention.
    I’ve suggested “peer reviewed ” so that you don’t (once again) bother with an opinion piece by someone who isn’t an international law scholar or expert

52. Apols, totally OT, but given the light of goodness seems to continually dim, it comes as a very pleasant moment to learn that the abhorrent South African neo-nazi racist Matthew Gruter was snatched from his home in the early hours of this morning and slung into the Villawood Immigration detention centre as the first step on getting his person evicted from Australia and sent back to where he came from. Welcome news indeed. Thanks to both Chris Minns and Tony Burke for their quick work on this matter.

53. Until AC comes up with a link to a credible version of the Memorandum, he is fabricating.

    Here is the Memo in full from Harvard.
    https://policymemos.hks.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum8096/files/policymemos/files/2-23-22_ukraine-the_budapest_memo.pdf
    That version is identical to this from the National Security Archive —
    https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/media/32106/ocr
    And identical to this from the UN Security Council —
    https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/Part/volume-3007-I-52241.pdf

    Article 3 from the pdf confirms my quote–
    The United States of America, the Russian Fed-
    eration, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
    Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to
    Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE
    Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed
    to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by
    Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and
    thus to secure advantages of any kind.

    There is no mention in any of the 6 articles of AC’s fabricated “economic coercion aimed at subordinating Ukraine’s sovereign rights.”

    AC has cleverly excluded the reference to a signatory using economic coercion to “secure advantages of any kind.”
    Asset freezes are forms of economic coercion.

    That the sanctions were tied to regime change and economic coercion to extract advantage and therefore breached the Memo, can be seen here in a video clip on X.

    “In 2014, Senator Chris Murphy bragged about the United States successfully overthrowing Ukraine’s government.”
    “I think it was our role, including sanctions and threats of sanctions, that forced, in part, Yanukovych from office.”
    “We have not sat on the sidelines. We have been very much involved. Members of the Senate have been there. Members of the State Department have been on the Square.”
    “The Obama administration passed sanctions. The Senate was prepared to pass its own set of sanctions, and as I’ve said, I think that the clear position of the United States has, in part, been what has helped lead to this change in regime.”
    “If, ultimately, this is a peaceful transition to a new government in Ukraine, it will be the U.S. on the streets of Ukraine who will be seen as a great friend in helping make that transition happen.”
    “There is a U.S. interest here. We are in the middle of negotiating a new trade agreement with Europe. To my state, it’s enormously important. We do 40% of our trade in Connecticut with Europe.”
    “If Ukraine is part of the EU and thus is part of this new trade agreement with the United States, that could result in billions of dollars in new economic opportunities for the U.S.”
    “So, we do have an economic interest in Ukraine being a part of the EU, and we shouldn’t be shy about making that interest clear.”
    https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1896618136293744884

    If you watch the video clip, wait for the first question from a viewer. It turns out that the good senator was on the ground in Kiev during the protests. For humanitarian purposes only, of course.
    Watch for the hypocrisy as he tries to justify the overthrow of an elected government “because of government violence against protesters.”

    Watch also as he downplays the involvement of far-right extremists in the protests, and expresses a sincere belief that the coup government will not tolerate extremism. Within days extremists were given significant Cabinet positions.

54. The noted US political academic Prof. John Mearsheimer recently presented a most interesting address to the European parliament.
    He covered many of the issues raised here by Noel.
    Here’s the link.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnnOQefj0Uc
    It’s well worth viewing.
    Here’s just a few points.

    “Russia is not a potential hegemon in Europe.”
    “The US special relationship with Israel is unparalleled in human history.”
    “The decision by US and Europe to seek to bring Ukraine into NATO resulted in a losing war with Russia that increases the odds that the US will depart Europe and NATO will be eviscerated.”
    “To fully understand the Ukraine war it’s essential to consider its causes. The Western narrative is about Russian empire building. There are numerous problems with that story.”
    “Immediately after the invasion Russia reached out to Ukraine to start negotiation to end the war. The negotiations were making good progress. But influenced by US and UK, Ukraine walked away. It was not Russia that walked away.”
    “Angela Merkel warned in 2008 that NATO expansion into Ukraine would be seen by Russia as a declaration of war.”
    “If NATO had not tried to bring Ukraine into NATO, Ukraine today would be intact. And Europe would be a more prosperous and stable place than it is now. But that ship has sailed, and Europe must now deal with a number of serious, but avoidable blunders.”

    The fact that Mearsheimer’s address to the EU parliament was organised by the Patriots of Europe, a conservative/right wing group with significant representation in the parliament, illustrates the point that the many failures of liberal democracy mean that not everything emanating from “alternative” movements is without merit.

    Mearsheimer makes predictions as to the consequences of Russia having as he puts it, an inevitable but “ugly” victory. (Note. We should be wary of predictions based on a prediction.)
    However, his predictions are extremely interesting, and worth considering, but there is something we must keep in mind about commentary from experts.
    The interpretations of historical facts by experts, and their predictions that follow from the facts, do not have to be accepted as final and should not be accepted as final.
    All experts make mistakes, especially those who are as prolific with commentary as Mearsheimer.
    And as I implied, it’s easy to miss that a prediction can be based on a prediction, and therefore demanding of close scrutiny.
    Once the presented facts have been verified by the reader/viewer, a range of opinions should be sought before establishing a firm position.

    But all in all, this is a “must-watch”.

55. Steve Davis, I have been linking the war to kennedy and cuba since the invasion. Like Cuba, 63 years ago, the Ukraine is too close for an adequate reaction time.
    The solution is still the same no NATO or, at least, no septic nukes in the Ukraine. QED no need for war.
    ps
    Surely the Ukraine has no more rights than cuba?
    Oops we’re are moving bombs not russia vive la difference????????? 10 to the 0.447, squared

56. wam, thanks for your interest.

    “Like Cuba, 63 years ago, the Ukraine is too close for an adequate reaction time.”
    That’s a good analogy.
    The distance factor was behind Angela Merkel’s warning to NATO that bringing Ukraine into NATO would be seen by Russia as a declaration of war.

    “The solution is still the same no NATO or, at least, no septic nukes in the Ukraine. QED no need for war.”
    Yes, that’s pretty close to the agreement Russia and Ukraine had thrashed out a few days after the invasion.

57. Gosh, 56 comments and here am I, pondering what rivalry is being acted out here given the yards of last words, sniping, one-upmanship, and put-downs, and whether I’ll be counted as just another offender.

    But, honestly folks, could there be a more disrespectful treatment of an eminent online forum than to stake it out as a men’s club for – all be they sincere – tedious rhetorical games and petty squabbles?

    The AIMn describes itself as “an online platform that provides a space for citizen and public interest journalists to engage in and contribute to independent media, focusing on politics, democracy, environment, and identity”. It ostensibly encourages thoughtful political discourse and reflective commentary both above and below the line.

    Its light touch, however, may also encourage opportunistic commenters to engage in the very behaviours that are the focus of their own critiques and against which they rail.

    In the tendency to forego word/grammar checks and simple edits (for which ample opportunity is provided by the site) this sort of commentary reveals a compulsiveness and carelessness that ignores the need for clarity and unambiguity that foster positive exchanges of views on complex, difficult and even stressful topics.

    Maybe a non-interventionist site assumes respectful exchanges between grown-up contributors and participants who care equally about the pressing issues of the day: the AIMn embraces long-form pieces and extended commentary and likely tolerates the occasional ad hominem attack and robust spat as par for inclusiveness, given the existential perils of censorship and defamation, the perennial bogeys of free speech. Yet the principle of free speech surely presumes the basic courtesies out of respect for universal freedoms such as the freedom of the other to exist without being called a dickhead everyday.

    While perhaps not to the meretricious degree the internet spruiks itself as a social bonanza of like-minded communities, the simulacra are so convincing and addictive that the phrase ‘social replacement theory’ has been coined. In any event one might see how it’s eminently possible for citizen journalism to play host to occasional transference dynamics below the line. Where the dynamic becomes particularly irksome is when it gets a grip on a couple of protagonists who insist on slugging out their stuff, emptying the clubhouse of all but a few diehards.

    Indeed, Canguro may have tuned into something of this kind, being apparently roused by the tone and seemingly endlessness of the commentary to relate an anecdote about his brother’s domineering attitude towards his winegrowing neighbours as they sought to establish wine-making in the area (as in farming, in viticulture one can either compete or cooperate, or find some way to do both). As Canguro once previously referred to his father as a traumatised war veteran here, one might surmise his sibling was so impacted in some way by the family situation that he was compelled to inflict his narcissistically wounded, self-compensatory personality upon his closest neighbours.

    Though the following psychological ‘context’ is more or less common knowledge, I think it bears reiterating here:

    Knowing everything can be a defence against acute anxieties about knowing nothing, a common plight of emotionally abandoned children stuck in overwhelming family situations over which they have no control, such as where they are told nothing, or are being humiliated or rendered small and powerless by an enraged parent, or simply left craving love and attention, or even doubting their words are valid or they exist at all for those on whom they depend utterly. To add insult to injury, emotionally deprived siblings may jostle for the scraps, only to refine more civilised presentations of themselves over the course of their lives.

    But the papering over is tenuous and fragile, and decompensation is never far away (intriguingly ‘breakdown’ was a term used by Steve Davis in a comment), again leaving sibling relationships permanently warped and compromised.

    While fantasy often provides a healthy escape from intolerable reality – art being the paradigm sublimatory case – no-one who’s developed a carapace over memories of childhood trauma is ultimately safe from the discombobulating return of repressed traumatic memories primed to triggering within the (positive or negative) transference, either in the real world or rolled out under the rubric of ‘social displacement’ on the internet. Whether as a gamer internalising a murderous character or as an earnest participant in progressive chat-groups, even the most detached, self-possessed individual may find themselves drawn into invidious emotional re-stagings of repressed, unbearable experiences originating in others who are compelled to exorcise them via replays with them as suitable recruits.

    It hardly bears repeating that humanity is a battered, idealistic, ingenuous species, yearning for redemption and eternally amenable to the con. Hypnotically primed over decades by millions of fictional voices from tv sitcoms where formulaic family narratives amuse and entertain via familiar, identifiable characters, humans can now enter multidimensional worlds of AI-concocted scenarios and engage with non-human bots. Young and old alike, the sociable, the isolated, and the lonely are all equally susceptible – marks to be conned by the world’s ravenous sociopaths. All are fair game to billion-dollar industries with zero ethical constraints, moral limits or state regulation. The vulnerable, bereft, and emotionally damaged are being offered false hope by freshly imagined start-ups and endless riches in the parallel universe of cyberspace where, at the edge of its darkest testosterone-loaded emanations, bullies and ‘bad actors’ flourish in an ungovernable realm of new tribes, new macho chiefs, new dominatrixes, new sex dolls, new degradations, new currencies, new wagers, and unchallengeable new conspiracies about the real world outside of itself.

    The internet is fantasy’s natural home, as secure a container as sleep is for the dream – until it’s not.

    https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/bartle-s-player-types-for-gamification#:~:text=The Psychology of the Player,-When you’re&text=Good news – there is a,the Socializer, and the Killer.

    No matter how sophisticated the war analysis below the line, war is meanwhile normalised by endless fictional restagings and role plays. As is interpersonal abuse. And state-sanctioned murder.

    Artful it may be, but it’s not art, and there’s no let-up.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/11/18/thousands-of-terrorist-links-pulled-from-gaming-sites/

    Yet, by some miracle, amidst all this putrid junk we have socially progressive sites like the AIMn where pretty much any concerned person can have a say, and where the kindest people on the planet keep the presses rolling.

    So why are social/political progressives apparently aligning with darker trends per their unkindnesses below the line? Why sink to personal abuse as if it is “all in the family” on a site that is simultaneously anonymised and remote? Why sling insults when a well-researched empirical fact will suffice to support an objection, progress rational argument, and avoid the maw of the negative transference and infinite regress?

    Surely empirical facts adduced from real world scientific communities and respectfully cited would reground debate in respect and rationality. Maybe we are more stressed and anxious about world events over which we have no control than we like to admit even to ourselves. Maybe asserting superiority and dominating others bring a kind of perverse comfort that settles the nerves.

    I outline below a small example of how reasoned argument can lose traction, setting the stage for acrimony (with apologies in advance for any misquotes):

    When Steve Davis asserts somewhere in the above discussion that “AC has lost control of the situation entirely”, I suggest what he really means is that AC has lost control of the argument, and that his own conflation of ‘argument’ (as in debate) with ‘situation’ (as in some larger undefinable thing into which the sparring parties have entered) is a projection of some inkling that he himself is losing control of the argument and being drawn into an emotional situation. As if to confirm this he opines somewhat incoherently, “ An emotional breakdown is quite understandable when ingrained beliefs and perceptions are exposed as being baseless./But it is not understandable or acceptable for one who has boasted in the past of his capacity for collecting and analysing data from a wide range of sources, to continue the pretense of having something useful to say on those matters.”

    The author of the piece then chimes in to remark that he has “got a bit lost with all those interesting and thoughtful comments” before responding to what is most salient for him.

    A little later Canguro pops up with his family anecdote and comment about the “futility” of “never-ending argument” (“Never-ending arguments have a sort of sense of futility about them, as if the protagonists are somehow locked in a pointless duel, never to be resolved”).

    What I am asserting here is that the “pointless duel” referred to by Canguro is strongly suggestive of the emergence of a full-blown negative transference, where ‘neighbours’ – like The Commentator (“The Black Knight from Monty Python”) and others – are reduced to surrogacy for the real historical offenders in an unconscious re-staging of the original family situation by a victim determined to win this time round who unfortunately has little or no awareness of their indispensable role in its perpetuation. Ergo, the abused becomes abuser, victim becomes perpetrator, ad infinitum.

    With gloves off again a couple of days later, does leefe get the final word with his shrug, “plus ca change” below Lachlan McKenzie’s, ‘The renewable recycling lie’ (15/11/25)?

    Certainly the protagonists have been busy recycling a lot of contested history into that maw of infinite regress where nothing is ever resolved.

    Thank you for reading,
    Herbert

58. Herbert, I appreciate your interest in the discussion, but I get the impression that your criticism of my writing style is a substitute for criticism of my analysis of the topics.
    Is it the case that you disagree with my views but feel unable to refute them?

    Is that reflected in the fact that you singled out certain passages of mine for criticism merely of style, while not regarding another’s tampering with a UN Secretariat document as being worthy of mention?

    Is it relevant to your position on this that you only felt the need to comment after that tampering was exposed?

    Your raising of a comment of mine from a past article shows that you’ve followed this so closely that you kept records, but you failed to refer to a significant aspect from the history of this.
    You’ve made much out of Canguro’s comment, but you missed the occasion just a couple of months ago where he made the same point and modified when I posted this: (Sorry about this Kanga, but you can see the position I’m in.)
    “Kanga, I’m surprised that you have not seen the big picture here.
    I would have thought that you would support any attempt to expose the propaganda of US imperialism, even an attempt as feeble as mine.
    Let’s be honest, one of the reasons that the world is in chaos now is because too many are happy to sit back and do nothing.
    And hey, at least I try to feed fresh info into the discussion — it might not be high level entertainment, but I do my best.”

    To which Kanga replied — “Steve, re. “I would have thought that you would support any attempt to expose the propaganda of US imperialism”… absolutely, in spades.”

    And that’s the crux of what is going on here.
    You can write as many book-length criticisms of my style as you like, but until you engage with my arguments instead of my style, you are supporting US foreign policy.
    If that is indeed the case, that’s fine, but be open about it.

    You said on an unrelated thread Here we go again with the mean-spirited little squabbles. Does not Lachlan McKenzie’s well-researched, positive, facts-based piece deserve civility?
    Well, we all want civility, but it’s time for you to come to grips with the fact that this is the internet and there’s no entry requirements.
    You learn to live with that.

59. Thanks for the nod, Steve, along with “this is the internet and there’s no entry requirements”. Having recently watched the neuroscientist David Eagleman’s 2015 documentary series, The Brain… , a pertinent point was made in the context of the internet being the best propaganda machine yet devised. FB, Instagram, WhatsApp, and all the rest, all employed in issuing unending reams of misinformation into the collective psyche of mankind. Recommended viewing, btw, if you have the time or inclination.

    Heads up also to Herbert… I never expected to be quoted so extensively within these august pages… perhaps a sign that I should pull my head in somewhat.

60. Don’t pull yer head in old mate — when there’s a backlog of comments to check, you are the first port of call.

61. IMO, NATO was always a device orchestrated by America to wheedle its way into becoming a dominant hegemon supplanting the olde imperialists (particularly Britain and France). Although the USSR saved the skins of the ‘allies’ (their southern cousins) against Hitler’s Germany & imperial Japan, the history of western Europe keeping the Rus / USSR out of the trade loop and technically / culturally isolated for centuries has prevailed. The Holy Roman Empire and south western Europe & Britain betrayed Russia / USSR continuously, and Russia / USSR repeatedly depleted itself in fighting back and trying to overcome its isolation. Not forgetting the paranoid murderous madness of Stalin – a sad product of soviet desperation.

    The Americans took advantage of the situation by the formation of NATO, again, to the exclusion of Russia, giving rise to the Warsaw Pact through the Cold War until its dissolution along with the dissolution of the USSR. America had succeeded in its propaganda in western Europe, and implanting its hegemon. And it is notable that throughout the Cold War that it was America the broke or caused the breakage of the disarmament treaties between USSR / Russia.

    Putin repeatedly appealed to Europe / America to break the impasses, but was constantly ignored / rebuffed. The break point was the west’s duplicity & political meddling with Ukraine and the prospect of the west’s missiles in Ukraine pointing at Russia (NATO or not).

    And so it goes on repeat, with divisive America amok at the helm of the now crumbling NATO & western Europe and it’s own now bankrupt hegemon.

    It’s no small irony the desperate America, under T-Rump and his flunkies is isolating itself, attacking its own people and alienating its trade allies, and attacking and ‘othering’ its immigrants and South American neighbors (Panama and Venezuela) as well as historically strategic targets like Vietnam, Palestine, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Canada, Greenland, in an authoritarian display redolent of fascism.

    No wonder Mearsheimer was invited by the ‘Patriots of Europe’ to address the EU parliament, just like Prof Jeffrey Sachs was prior to Mearsheimer.

    It seems the elite, once politically saturated with greed & hubris can take no lessons from history, and have to be told again and again about their impending misadventures, and later of the devastation they have caused.

62. Clakka, thanks for the summarised history.
    (Your collection of files must be bigger than mine now!) 🙂

    And it’s important to repeat what you imply in your final paragraph.
    The Western political elites will follow the same playbook elsewhere if Mearsheimer is correct about Russia’s eventual “ugly victory* and the West leaves Ukraine.
    We need to look for the underlying factor.

63. Clakka, at another blog I just came across that underlying factor I referred to.
    Bourgeois democracy and fascism are not opposites, but Siamese twins: two forms of government of the bourgeoisie that alternate according to the depth of the crisis and the level of the class struggle.
    ..The proclaimed freedoms—of expression, press, assembly—are thus formal freedoms, emptied of real content by failing to guarantee the material conditions for their effective exercise.
    Freedom of the press means little when the major media are owned by oligopolies; the freedom to choose becomes a farce when options are predetermined by capitalist campaign financing and media manipulation.
    This democracy of form without content is projected on an international scale through a sophisticated architecture of domination where even the UN lacks true democracy by perpetuating the veto control of a few powers.
    Multilateral organisms like the IMF and the World Bank impose structural adjustments that violate national sovereignties; the WTO establishes trade rules that perpetuate the dependence of the peripheries.
    Wars of aggression, justified with democratic and humanitarian rhetoric, become the continuation of economic policy by military means, guaranteeing control of strategic resources and vital trade routes for capitalist accumulation.
    In periods of organic crisis of the system, when the dominant bloc can no longer govern as before and the masses no longer want to be governed in the same way, bourgeois democracy tends to generate its own authoritarian “solutions”. The rise of figures like Trump, Bolsonaro, or Milei does not represent an anomaly, but a structural response: fractions of capital and desperate social bases opt for an “anti-system” discourse, seeking to preserve the capitalist order through a firm hand and the systematic dismantling of hard-won rights.
    This phenomenon demonstrates that bourgeois democracy and fascism are not opposites, but Siamese twins: two forms of government of the bourgeoisie that alternate according to the depth of the crisis and the level of the class struggle.

    The article covers much much more, looks at Latin America, then looks at solutions to the problem.
    A very worthwhile read.
    https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/democracy-at-the-civilizational-crossroads–critical-analysi

64. 1/. Trying to equate sanctions on individuals with a war that seeks to conquer territory which has resultedin many thousands of civilia casualties, and which was condemned by rhe United Nations General Assembly by 148 to 5… is misrepresentation in the extreme

    2/. If the individual sanctions were contrary to the Budapest Memorandum, please identify a few peer reviewed papers by international law scholars and experts

    The relevant text of the Budapest Memorandum
    1. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine;
    2. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations;
    3. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind;
    4. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used;

65. @Canguro

    As to, ‘Heads up also to Herbert… I never expected to be quoted so extensively within these august pages… perhaps a sign that I should pull my head in somewhat.’

    Not if that means no more like ‘From Riverbank to Ruin’, a wonderful piece straight from the heart, thank you. (Why does not age bring peace instead of increasing despair?)

    So no, my slab not directed to you or your commentary, apart from feeling compelled to cite your past communique regarding your father, due more respect than accorded to it by me perhaps.

66. Just before he died John Pilger posted a podcast which castigated the jingoistic anti-Russian propaganda and the media outlets responsible, such as the ABC that deliberately used this propaganda to promote not just a biased argument, but an utterly one-sided argument. I myself remember listening with disgust to an ABC journalist stationed in the Donbas sheltering from an artillery attack declaring that ‘usually there are two sides to every story, but not in this case’. Russia was already declared the Agressor well before the ‘unprovoked’, as it was always referred to, invasion had even taken place. The journalist feigned ignorance about who was doing the shelling, though why would Russia shell the people they supported? Later, the very first ABC Q&A program dealing with the invasion set down the ground rules when a member of the audience was unfairly ejected from the studio for commenting that the people of the Donbas welcomed the invasion because it signalled hope for an end to the killing and terrorising of civilians that had been perpetrated by Kiev since the US backed government coup in 2014. He was falsely accused of advocating violence and denied any right to defend his statement.

    Pilger pointed out that there was no mention at all in the western media of the massive build up of Ukrainian forces, trained and armed by NATO, just about the massing of Russian Troops, which they routinely did at that time of year, to deter the NATO/Ukraine threat to their border.

    It was a great loss to honest journalism that Pilger died when he did, because there was certainly no one else in the Australian media to challenge the ABC, SBS and the Australian Government’s pro NATO misrepresentation of the conflict. The AIM Network didn’t do much better even though unlike the ABC and SBS I don’t think the AIM Network was obliged to follow the government’s directives in reporting the conflict. Those national media outlets were clearly obeying orders because they all kept to the same script. The same government constraint to unbiased reporting happened again with the Pro-Israeli Gaza genocide coverage. Any criticism of that was deemed anti-semitic. All reports had to reference the October 7 Hamas attack, while the government stood with Israel and its right to self defence. The Nuremberg defence was “I was only obeying orders” the Albanese complicity in genocide defence is “Israel has a right to defend itself”. Even after the Sydney Harbour Bridge protest there was a conspicuous absence of the word genocide in media coverage. The bridge protest was instead attributed to the ‘famine in Gaza’. Not the famine deliberately induced by Israel which in it self constitutes an act of genocide according the the Articles of the UN Convention on Human Rights as frequently explained by UN representative Francesca Albanese who is currently facing travel bans and financial restrictions because she has been sanctioned by the US for just doing her job.

    Imagine what John Pilger might have had to say about Gaza and the government controlled media’s response to it. Such a great loss.

    Anyway, the job of the journalist is not be ‘balanced’ but to be truthful. Putting a bias against the truth just to be balanced is stupid, irresponsible and in these cases unforgivable. Countless people have died and been maimed that may not have been if that bias against the truth had not been sustained for so long to serve the wilful continuation of deliberately constructed conflicts.

67. AC has tried a cheap rhetorical ploy that he thinks is a “gotcha” moment.

    In response to my claim that the US breached the Budapest Memorandum when they imposed sanctions on Ukraine, AC said “If the individual sanctions were contrary to the Budapest Memorandum, please identify a few peer reviewed papers by international law scholars and experts”
    Yes, this was after I had presented an admission of guilt by a member of the guilty party.

    AC’s listing of the relevant Articles as he sees them, confirms my assertion. It was the US that rendered the agreement null and void. Russia’s actions followed that.

    The relevant clause in the Memo from Article 3 states that the signatories must “refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind;”
    The sanctions that AC paints as being trivial were tied to regime change and economic coercion to extract advantage and therefore breached the Memo. As shown by the following.

    I gave video evidence of a US senator who was on the ground in Kiev at the time of the coup, (in other words, a coup organiser) proudly admitting on camera that the US was involved in the coup (overthrowing an elected government is denying Ukraine the exercise of “the rights inherent in its sovereignty” from article 3) and further admitting that there was a financial gain for the US as a result of the coup. (The securing of advantage contrary to article 3.)
    “I think it was our role, including sanctions and threats of sanctions, that forced, in part, Yanukovych from office. We have not sat on the sidelines. We have been very much involved. Members of the Senate have been there. Members of the State Department have been on the Square.“… “There is a U.S. interest here.”

    So there is no need to to look for peer reviewed papers by international law experts and scholars.
    The guilt has been admitted.

    Of course, the refrain from the US and supporters of US policy is that it was Russia that breached the terms of the Memo.
    This is simply a statement to the world that the US will interpret it’s adherence to the terms of any agreement in a manner to suit US needs, and will interpret the adherence of others to the terms also in a manner to suit US needs.

    I can safely say that, because the US already had form in breaching the Belarus version of the memo.
    In 2013, the government of Belarus complained that American sanctions against it were in breach of Article 3 of the Memorandum. The US government responded that its sanctions were targeted at combating human rights violations and other illicit activities of the government of Belarus and not the population of Belarus, and also noted that the Memorandum is “not legally binding”.
    Not legally binding??
    Well well.
    Where have we heard that before?
    Oh, yes, it’s all coming back to me now.

    “Not legally binding” applied to the commitment to not move NATO one inch to the East, in return for the USSR allowing the re-unification of Germany.
    The USSR kept it’s side of the agreement.
    But as the world is finding out, the US is not agreement-capable. And of course, the power of Western propaganda is such that many, including a few here, are of the view that Russia is solely to blame.
    Will those few take time to re-assess, or will they continue to push a narrative in support of the right of the US to “secure advantages of any kind” without regard to ethical considerations?
    To put it more bluntly, will they continue to push a narrative in support of the right of the US to “secure advantages of any kind” and in so doing, push us ever closer to WW3?

68. Thoughtful comment from B Sullivan suggests btl comment is possible without a single patronising snipe.

    @ Steve Davis:

    ‘You can write as many book-length criticisms of my style as you like, but until you engage with my arguments instead of my style, you are supporting US foreign policy.

    If that is indeed the case, that’s fine, but be open about it.’

    Now there’s a leap!
    I rest my case.

69. No leap at all Herbert.

    My comment followed logically from the previous paragraph.

    That paragraph read — “To which Kanga replied — “Steve, re. “I would have thought that you would support any attempt to expose the propaganda of US imperialism”… absolutely, in spades.”
    Why did you not give the background to my comment?

    Your response shows that my suspicion might turn out to be correct.

    You appear to think that faults in my writing style are of greater importance than exposing the propaganda of the most powerful and brutal empire in world history.
    You appear to think that tampering with a UN document to provide cover for US malfeasance is acceptable, but strident criticism of such acts is unacceptable.

    At this point, I’m close to speechless.

70. Clakka offered a concise comment concerning The beginning: another of Biden’s stupid wars, fancy expecting Russia to cop nukes on its border!

71. Mission accomplished then Steve (only joking).

    No more from me at any rate, I shall leave it to my betters such as Marcie Jones on the art of the treaty:

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/trumps-leaked-ukraine-peace-plan

72. Herbert, I loved the humour!

    To be honest, “speechless” got what deserved, nice work.

73. SD, as the saying goes, ‘In your dreams!’ And you were! Well, if not you, but at least the shadow of you and your protestations. Earlier this morning, dreaming, whether REM or NREM who knows, but the dreamscape moved to include a frame where this thread had been removed, and you were protesting about the censorship, and the protagonist was saying he’d been authorised by AIMN admin to act because of the never-ending prolixity and of course you weren’t happy! Weird eh?

74. Prolixity?

    PROLIXITY???

    Kanga old mate, wodaryer talkin’ about?

    I like to think of it as click-bait, you know, swelling the advertising coffers!

    And I’d appreciate it if you stopped giving the Boss ideas. 🙂

75. Steve, You are fine, but don’t be lured into scraps with trolls.

76. All good Paul, no probs with Kanga, far from it, but I know what you mean.
    Thanks.

77. Thanks Steve… Whether paul walter was referring to me or not is moot, but nonetheless, I totally reject the label ‘troll’ being slapped on my forehead and in all my years of commenting online I’ve never been accused as such of that odious title…. apart from an American redneck some twenty years ago who I wound up to the extent he said he was going to come to Australia and hunt me down.

    We’re good, you know that.

78. Good God, Canguro, you are the LAST person here I would call a troll.

    But I’ve enjoyed some of the exchanges- better than some for depth.

    If it will make any of you feel better, a tutor once called me out for being “prolixious”.

    I forgave her, but only just…

79. Thanks paul, it’s appreciated!

80. On September 17th, 1959, the president of the USSR, Nikita Khrushchev, addressed the United Nations in New York and called for multilateral disarmament over a four-year timeframe as a means towards ensuring global peace and stability. The following day, the NYSE plunged $1.7 billion dollars in value.

    Pretty much tells you all you need to know about priorities in the USA, where profit trumps all and the armaments industries have been elevated to the status of revered entities.

    Above reference excerpted from the 2024 documentary, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, which, as is so often the case, is a case study in western exploitation of Third World countries, showcasing as it does the willingness of western powers to usurp democratically elected governments who fail to toady to Uncle Sam or his European flunkies.

81. Having regard to Canguro’s comment “…about priorities in the USA”, (with which I agree), a good mate – considerably better informed than myself, sent me the link below to a long article on the causes of the current conflict, the subject of this thread.
    https://janataweekly.org/the-war-in-ukraine-a-history-how-the-u-s-exploited-fractures-in-the-post-soviet-order/

    It took me well over an hour to digest the article (helped by a large pot of tea), but the effort was worthwhile. The fact that the article appears in “India’s oldest Socialist Weekly!” might be sufficient to deter some readers; but I respectfully suggest perseverance.

82. Julian, that’s a great article, and a great resource.

    It’s helpful when links are provided to sources.
    Following links can turn up unexpected treasures.