#2 It should be obvious that Russia wants a ceasefire, not a military presence in Ukraine.

Posted by: Colin Brace | Sep 7 2014 17:25 utc | 3

As expected, the Kiev junta’s using the ceasefire to regroup and rearm.. Rumors going round is that NATO’s finally decided to arm Kiev with lethal weapons..
These fools never learn.. They’ve created an European version of the Syrian FSA which eventually culminated into ISIS/Al Nusrah…

Posted by: zico | Sep 7 2014 17:42 utc | 5

NATO apparently believes that Russia is extremely weak and bound to capitulate under pressure. Some doves arguing that Russia is so weak that military efforts to contain it are unnecessary.
The idea that Russia is little more tha a third world country is an idea shared by many on both sides of hawk/dove divide.

Posted by: Vollin | Sep 7 2014 18:01 utc | 7

@6 The Novorussyans likely overextended or were close to over extending (supply lines are important, and scavenging can turn a population against freedom fighters), and the Kiev forces have lost a great deal of their core army. It isn’t a simple matter of being rearmed. Uniforms don’t turn a thug or dumb kid into a soldier.
Given the success of the NAF, the defeat of the old Ukrainian army, and the bodies and walking dead about to flood Kiev. Cripples at Christmas is particularly sad. The Ukes aren’t going to relaunch an offensive. The NAF isn’t wasting ammunition on a terror campaign, and the Uke airforce is done without NATO planes and pilots. The NAF can create artillery kill zones for the Ukes which they couldn’t do before. The MIC won’t risk a Soviet era weapon knocking down a NATO plane and a NATO pilot being a POW. Voters might ask questions.
The NAF has certainly grown, but they likely don’t trust newer, younger fighters to carry out relatively complex operations until they have been tested. Losing a bunch of new guys on a rapid offensive would have harmed morale and unity for a five month old organization.
I think Europe should be worried the Uke nazi units will push a myth of betrayal and go West as terrorists after having lost in the East.

Posted by: NotTimothyGeithner | Sep 7 2014 18:16 utc | 9

@6 Don’t worry so much anonymouse. I’m sure they considered all the possibilities.

Posted by: dh | Sep 7 2014 18:27 utc | 11

The sole answer one can get to that question is that whatever “we” do, no matter what, is right and whatever those oppose to what “we” do do is automatically wrong.
Nothing else needs to be said. This kind of thinking is embedded in human psychology and always has been. But it becomes exponentially more pronounced when the productive and destructive power of the world is concentrated in a tiny, interlinked group like the one centered in the Western world.
In addition to the dangers of the world’s power being in the hands of a small group of egotistical psychopaths, we have technological advancements in both military and media power which have amplified the danger, again exponentially. We reached the point where there is not only a small group who wield the power to destroy all life on earth in pursuit of their narrow aims, but the rest of us can be convinced it may be worth it.
The danger of nuclear weapons are obvious and have been known since their invention and use on the people of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Bikini Atoll. The dangers of advancements in media are less obvious but equally as dangerous. People are today, more than ever, pulled away from their personal interests, their personal morality, and their social relations by the power of the media. We are now in an era where concerns have moved away from the family and the neighborhood into the largely fake world presented to them by the media. More than ever their hopes and dreams are less centered on those close to them and distorted by the selfish concerns of those oligarchs who own the world and control the media. And people can now be convinced – even if it flies in the face of their own interests – to follow the interests of those in the commanding heights of the media.
Destructive power that threatens all life on the globe (save the hearty cockroach) and media power that can convince people it is worth using it. This poisonous stew is the one in which we may all well be cooked. This is the “democratic deficit” at its most pronounced. This is the danger of militarism – where even the methods of communication have been subsumed to the power of the military (the invention of a centralized internet by DARPA and subjected to constant monitoring of the NSA and social engineering by concentrated private power being the most dangerous example of this). This is why, in truly democratic countries like Ecuador and Venezuela, there have been attempts to allow more people access to the media and increase the number of opinions heard there – in the west ridiculously derided as “limits to free speech”. There are some bright spots – the availability of foreign news like TeleSur, RT, PressTV, et al, as well as blogs like this, the Saker, Penny’s place, etc… but their reach is tiny compared to those voices of the elite even still.
We face a clear choice – fight to put the destructive and productive power into the hands of the whole society and limit its use to manipulate society to the will of a tiny elite, or meet our collective doom.

Posted by: guest77 | Sep 7 2014 18:52 utc | 13

Russia has an very important security interest in Ukraine. It is its immediate neighbor and the cradle of the Rus civilization. Several large attacks on Russia, by Napoleon as well as Hitler, used the plains of Ukraine as their concentration area and for their marches on Moscow. Many of the forces of the Ukrainian government now fighting against their Russia affine compatriots in the east are outright Nazis. 70 years ago over 20 million Russian lost their life to defeat that ideology.
This is pure Russian propaganda right out of the Kremlin playbook. The Soviet Union collapsed under its own corrupt weight in, or approximate to, 1990. It’s done. Finis. Get over it. It’s not coming back no matter how much Putin and his apologists pine for it.
And no, the Russian motivation wasn’t to “defeat that ideology.” The two ideologies, Communism and Nazism, were and are practically identical. They are twins, with Communism slaying its identical sibling so it could have the playpen all to itself.
The Soviet Story
Nazis & Communists: Ideological Bedfellows

Max Eastman, an early communist who later saw the light and rejected communism, wrote in his 1937 book The End of Socialism in Russia that the Soviet Union was “a totalitarian state not in essence different from that of Hitler and Mussolini.” Eastman later wrote in a subsequent book, Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955): “Stalin’s totalitarian police state is not an approximation to, of something like, or in some respects comparable with Hitler’s. It is the same thing, only more ruthless, more cold-blooded, more astute, more extreme in its economic policies, more explicitly committed to world conquest, and more dangerous to democracy and civilized morals.”

Posted by: Cold N. Holefield | Sep 7 2014 19:08 utc | 15

http://syncreticstudies.com/2014/09/06/eurasia-movement-interviews-boris-nad-on-novorossiya/
Everything Holefield writes is pure American imperialist propaganda right out of the
Washington playbook.
True, he has to concede at times, unipolarity has its flaws-even a few bloody ones–but not so many as to allow geopolitical vitality in Eurasia.

Posted by: truthbetold | Sep 7 2014 19:23 utc | 17

truthbetold #17:
James and I directed Cold to the recent Mearsheimer piece, which directly refutes the idea that the observation that Russia has legitimate national interests concerning the Ukraine is “pure Russian propaganda”, but he never replied.
He just repeats the same drivel over and over.

Posted by: Demian | Sep 7 2014 19:36 utc | 19

To suggest an equivalency between Ukraine and Nicaragua is quite wrong, but I believe the blogger was making a rhetorical point somewhat to the side of the actual on-the-ground facts of the two situations. (The sponsorship of terror groups in Syria is a more apt analogy). To suggest that alleged Russian activity in Ukraine is somehow worse than what occurred in Nicaragua is so flippin’ off-the-charts demented that it frankly astonishes the mind that anyone could even set this forth as a proposition. First point of contention, of many: 1. The Contras travelled to the homes and villages of their victims so as to murder them. The rebels of Ukraine are defending their homes and villages from an outside force.

Posted by: jayc | Sep 7 2014 19:50 utc | 21

To RC @ 18
Please, let’s not ban him. He’s too great a foil. Like shooting fish in a barrel. And Cold1, it’s just a figure of speech. Don’t go Unabomber on me again.
To Demian @ 19
Not to brag (excessively), as you’ll probably recall, I used a lot of electrons bulking up the earlier Ukraine thread. He never did address “annexation” or provide a bill of actual, actionable particulars for those he wanted to send to “Fletcher Memorial.”
Though I did get him to back of from murderous war crimes to just “humane” ethnic cleansing. I consider that an accomplishment.
Agreed, “He just repeats the same drivel over and over.” His crude insults are usually fresh, though.
If I can quote later King Crimson, from “Indiscipline” “I repeat myself when under stress/I repeat myself when under stress/I repeat myself when under stress/I repeat myself when under stress.” I think he’s under a little bit of it, trying to defend the indefensible and deflect the facts. I think he needs a drink. I got the next round, CDH, what you having?
BTW “Discipline,” which it’s on, is great album. Great Celtic knot cover design, black and silver on red. Saw them that tour, stayed awake for all of it.
For all of his blather about free thinking, he doesn’t seem to do much of it.

Posted by: rufus magister | Sep 7 2014 20:19 utc | 23

And Berlin was right to blackball Deutscher from teaching Soviet history at Sussex.
The Hedgehog and the Hedgehog: Isaiah Berlin and Isaac Deutscher

The faults, in Deutscher’s case, were massive, and they stemmed from his embrace of Communism at its most oppressive. Deutscher claimed to see a compassionate side in Bolshevism, but this led him into even worse moral confusion, seeing a humane side to totalitarian violence: notoriously, he said about Trotsky, “in his most ruthless deeds and most severe words there still glowed a warm humanity.” But even if their politics are repugnant, Deutscher’s books still remain enthralling. His acclaimed biographies of Stalin and Trotsky are masterful, gripping works: vividly written narratives by an author who spoke only a little English when he left Warsaw for Britain in 1939, at age 32. As Neal Ascherson writes, “the power and excitement of his prose knock the reader down”; Deutscher’s style, Ascherson adds, has a “majestic urgency” that sweeps all before it. Deutscher’s books were esteemed even by his political opponents, who saw them as definitive accounts of Soviet Russia (as Caute reveals, Deutscher was a surprisingly popular speaker at Tory gatherings; like Berlin, he was eminently clubbable). But Deutscher’s writings are also examples of ardent special pleading on behalf of the Soviet system; even when Deutscher criticizes Stalin he remains what Berlin called him, an “anti-Stalinist Stalinist.” He sees the brutal collectivization of the Soviet Union as a harsh but necessary effort to transform society for the better; he defends the Hitler-Stalin pact (as did Trotsky); he says that Stalin relied on anti-Semitism only because Soviet Jews were too pro-American. Worst of all, in his biography of Stalin he mentions the prison camp system that terrorized millions only in passing, as if it were a minor, though regrettable, detail of history. Deutscher was a dangerous, dyed in the wool anti-democrat. As Caute writes, he believed that:
Firm, even ruthless leadership is indispensable. [. . .] the Party must rule over the masses in a dire emergency (but there is always a dire emergency). Government must be top-down.
Deutscher only balked when Stalin directed his terror against the Party itself; he had no objections to terror as such.
Was Deutscher, as Berlin alleged, a “falsifier”? Caute hedges on this one. But Berlin’s allegation stands up. Deutscher certainly misrepresented the facts about Stalin’s rule, facts that he himself knew very well. On Berlin’s own principles of intellectual honesty, he was right to bar Deutscher from the teaching job at Sussex. As Berlin was careful to explain, he would have had no objection to Deutscher teaching Marxism; but Deutscher teaching Soviet history, which he had systematically falsified, could not be tolerated. There was a crucial difference, as Berlin saw it, between writing history and making propaganda for an enemy state, especially for the Soviet Union, the state that Berlin loathed beyond all others.

Posted by: Cold N. Holefield | Sep 7 2014 20:30 utc | 25

CDH @ 24 —
Bullshit, More shit, Piled high and deep.
You don’t even know who Deutscher is, do you? And you don’t give a rat’s ass, clearly. I could rap about Eastman and his buddy James Burnham of the top of my head (I won’t bore everyone with that), ’cause I’m not some young smartass still wet behind the ears. Take 30 secs. out of your busy day, and Google him OK.

Posted by: rufus magister | Sep 7 2014 20:35 utc | 27

Adding to the ridiculous “Russia and Ukraine are one nation” argument I would like to remind that in 1991 there was a referendum in Ukraine about leaving USSR and 90% Ukrainians voted for independence. They had full right to do so and it’s none of Russia’s business with revisionists stories about Novorossiya, an idea that actually came to life by end of 2013.
Russia may have its interests in Ukraine as any other country, but in civilised world these interests are done via diplomacy under international law and not with GRU units posing as local “self defense”.
Inability to understand that by Russia is the main reason why it’s now facing sanctions and is generally considered a rogue country. Even Lukashenko is now reconfiguring his border with Russia (order 433 from 4 Sep), probably to keep his neighbor’s “little green men” away…

Posted by: BRest | Sep 7 2014 21:10 utc | 29

I remember being taught, during the Cold War, that totalitarianism was particularly dangerous, because it could only be overthrown by intervention from abroad, that it was too strong to be overthrown domestically. Well, the overthrow of Stalinism proved that that was not true.

Posted by: lysias | Sep 7 2014 21:16 utc | 31

Well, the overthrow of Stalinism proved that that was not true.
It wasn’t overthrown, it collapsed under the weight of its corruption and ineptitude. Not to worry, tyranny has a way of reconfiguring itself when it collapses in one of its many manifest forms. Putin’s Russia is a fine example of that maxim.
It’s also the problem with Cold Wars versus Hot Wars. With a Hot War you can accomplish something more akin to Total Defeat, but not so with Cold War — thus the rise of the megalomaniac Putin and Russian Oligarchs with nukes. There was no defeat let alone Total Defeat of the Soviet Union by The West as The West likes to allege and believe. Without that Total Defeat or semblance thereof, the Phoenix of Tyranny has flown from the collapsed lungs and failed hardened heart of the former Soviet Union and here we are — again.

Posted by: Cold N. Holefield | Sep 7 2014 21:31 utc | 33

My apologies to you, Cold1, you posted your dodge @ 25 while I was writing. Will respond more fully soonest. It doesn’t address the issue of false moral equivalency, though, it’s just a big ad hominem vs. Deutscher, isn’t it?

Posted by: rufus magister | Sep 7 2014 21:34 utc | 35

Our resident troll seems unaware that Putin’s government is more genuinely Christian than most of the governments currently ruling Western countries. Godless Communism, against which we fought the Cold War, is no more (at least in Russia).

Posted by: lysias | Sep 7 2014 22:06 utc | 37

@29: ….” I would like to remind that in 1991 there was a referendum in Ukraine about leaving USSR and 90% Ukrainians voted for independence.”….
Hmmmmm, so the logic appears to be this: if a smaller part of the larger whole votes to split off and go its own way then it is perfectly entitled to do so.
You do know what that means to the legitimacy of the citizens of the Crimea voting to secede from Ukraine, right?
You do realize that you have just legitimized the votes taken by the citizens of the eastern portion of Ukraine to spit away from Ukraine and form the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, correct?
Because you can’t “remind” everyone that the Ukraine was entitled to do that without also conceding that what the Ukraine can do must also be capable of being done unto it by its own constituent parts.
Correct?

Posted by: Johnboy | Sep 7 2014 22:11 utc | 39

So according to the Hole, the founder of the first anti-Stalinist faction in the Polish Communist Party was a Stalin apologetist. Ho Hum.
On a more substantial level, would the Hole care to list the false claims, with supporting evidence, of Mr Deutscher? While I’m quite ignorant of the man, if the Hole attacks him, chances are he must have been a touch too honest.
Of course, it is standard issue USA party line that other countries, in distinction to the US conduct terror to enforce their rule. Presumably, mass rape (Haiti, both in the 30s and more recently), mass bombing and the like don’t constitute terror. Much less, on a more deliberate and personal level, dropping a C4 bomb onto a neighbourhood from a police helicopter.
Perhaps, while the Hole is at it, he could also quote from one of those “genocidal” Milosevic speeches.

Posted by: Johan Meyer | Sep 7 2014 22:49 utc | 41

when will europeans organise their own maidans and march on brussels to shut down their regimes support for Kiev?

Posted by: brian | Sep 7 2014 23:16 utc | 43

‘Posted by: lysias | Sep 7, 2014 6:06:10 PM | 36
youd love ISIS

Posted by: brian | Sep 7 2014 23:17 utc | 45

The US has been doing what it does, seize power by installing puppet corrupt elites in the name of Democracy, steal resources and murder/slaughter ‘brown’ people (Others) since it’s inception, not just since FDR or 1945 … Native American Genocides, Mexico, Phillipines (Civilize ’em with a Krag), Puerto Rico, Haiti, Texas, Mexican-American war, Cuba, South America, etc.
International Law and precedents mean only what the Empire wishes them to mean and only when convenient. Only from a detached legal perspective could there be any equivalence drawn between the horrors brought upon Nicaruaga, and EVERY other single country in South America for more than a century … again and again and the plausably deniable assistance the Russian people and to a lesser extent the Russian government are giving their familial intermeshed centuries old historical brethren in Eastern Ukraine.
Rudolph Hearst and ‘yellow Journalism’ trumpeted the clarion calls for Empire in the 19th century with ‘Remember the Maine’ with fact-free jingoistic propaganda … what we endure today is simply more ‘sophisticated’ (barf) co-ordinated on a global and governmental level and virtually all pervasive …
The Empire will not risk open confrontation with a first world power such as Russia and certainly not on its doorstep/border against interior lines of communication ans supply. Not foreseeable. NATO is nothing more than a means to bully the EU countries and suborn their militaries, etc. Given the NATO summit effectively shunned Poroshenko and Ukraine, this is playing out quite similarly to the events in Georgia in 2008.
The Ukrainian Junta is on its own. No Joining NATO. No direct NATO involvement. Very limited financial and military support. Lots of rhetorical support from the likes of Biden and McCain and ‘limited’ sanctions support. Just like the Georgians, the Junta has to do it on its own. Given the Juntas situation they likely cant last more than a few months re materiel, finances, ‘Gas’, sufficient popular support, maybe less.
The Empire doesn’t care if the Junta collapses and fails. You don’t miss something that wasn’t yours in the first place. The overall objective appears to be create and build upon a meme of events (many artificial) and sustained co-ordinated propaganda for a new Cold War 2.0. To hold the geopolitical barricades and attempt to revitalize and re-invigorate the Wests vassals, especially Europe/EU (against their own interests ?) in support of the Empires financial, political and military spheres against the evil Putler running the rogue Russia and ‘ahem’, the rise of the BRICS and the other 90% of the world.
From a holistic geopolitical strategic perspective, the Empire is not on the front foot, rather conducting a rear guard action. It is the West this time which wishes to cut itself off from Eurasia, with its own Iron Curtain/Westwall. Russia and China have demonstrated a few times recently that they have very ‘Real’ Red-lines, and on each occasion the Empire has blinked or looked the other way. This is encouraging and indicates only a truly exceptional event/miscalculation may risk armageddon, which is an ‘all-lose’ proposition.
The ordinary people of the East Ukraine are defending their homes and families and in the process clubbing the illegitimate proxies of the Empire. More power to them.
Peace. Salaam. Shalom.

Posted by: Outraged | Sep 7 2014 23:36 utc | 47

@ruralito #43:
Not surprised in the least by this. It’s been my opinion from the beginning that the NSA Vacuum was 70% industrial espionage and 30% blackmail.
One example: Germany as a target? You bet! Siemens makes superconducting ship motors.
As my wife is oft heard to comment, the USA only makes guns and plastic forks.

Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | Sep 7 2014 23:47 utc | 49

“completely reply later.” I’ll get the hang of this whole english lang. thing eventually.

Posted by: rufus magister | Sep 8 2014 0:01 utc | 51

Dr. Wellington Yueh | Sep 7, 2014 7:47:21 PM | 48

(C//REL) BRIC’s*Bust-Up:
As the United States struggles to maintain its world standing amidst competing and insular blocs, the IC is predominantly focused on economics and commercial science and technology (S&T) missions.

ref: qicr-final-report-2009.

Posted by: Outraged | Sep 8 2014 0:04 utc | 53

cold holder whoever he is wouldn’t know deutscher….
Posted by: remembererringgiap | Sep 7, 2014 6:55:22 PM | 41
Is there anything to know beyond his words? The fact he lauds Stalin with eloquent prose is enough to tell me the man was half-cocked or madly in love. Some consider both of those characterizations one and the same and I think they may be right.
Do you know Deutscher? What does that even mean? Did you sleep with him? Did you fantasize about sleeping with him? How else do you “know” Deutscher if you’ve never had the opportunity to know him intimately?
He’s only his words, and from what little rueful quoted of Deutscher, it pretty much says it all. The man was delusional and an apologist for tyranny like many of you commenting here.
Anyway, I’ll have a blog post up tomorrow entitled Putintown comparing and contrasting the Putin Cult to the Jim Jones Cult. There are striking similarities.

Posted by: Cold N. Holefield | Sep 8 2014 0:16 utc | 55

@48
It’s military, industrial, blackmail … whatever pays. They’ve built themselves … NSA/CIA/FBI/ETC … what they regard as an invulnerable position within the bureaucratic fortress in the USA and they are literally lording it over everyone from there.
But their fortress is all air. Pull the plug and it’ll come crashing down. The lords of the bits will bite the dust.
Al Capone thought he was untouchable too.
Then … sometime … the rest of us are just going to have to bend over and pick up the tools of self-government ourselves and literally reconstitute the USA, precinct by precinct. All 175,000 of them.
The topic of this thread was not only ‘whatever I do is right, whatever you do is wrong’, but also the ‘ceasefire’ …
Current events report from the DPR Ministry of Defense
Ukraine Truce Falters

Posted by: john francis lee | Sep 8 2014 0:17 utc | 57

While Kiev amasses what they can scrounge and import in neat impressive convoys in preparation for return to hostilities, they forget that they have lost air power. It also has not occurred to them that Russia aside from being very low key in support thus far has yet to use its air power against what would be sitting or waddling ducks of Uke heavy equipment.
As nonsense as the 12 points may be, Russia is a signatory to what will appear as a broken promise to ceasefire, which will then allow the participants to justify previously unexpected escalation. NATO does not come into it as they are just sabre rattling thinking it is some sort of a game of chicken. Their newly formed thing being more a counter insurgency type of force than one that would withstand full all out bombing from the air, and by the time they’re deployed the war would be over.
For things to get that far assumes that Kiev will hold together in some politically viable form. If the capital goes into chaos the military will either turn the vehicles around or walk.

Posted by: YY | Sep 8 2014 0:30 utc | 59

Merkel has every reason to be a peacemaker here. Why isn’t she pushing back against the US neo-cons? Does anyone on this site have any fact based information?

Posted by: simjam | Sep 8 2014 0:35 utc | 61

Money Mastery

(S//REL) “White/Grey/Black” Literature Exploitation.
Overtly, the IC would monitor open markets in stocks, commodities, and currencies. To acquire
non-public but unprotected data such as proprietary business information, it would use two-way
information sharing with trusted and cooperative corporations and foreign governments. Clandestinely, the IC would use human and technical means, including sophisticated tracking software, to access closely held market, financial, and business data, be it inside corporations, foreign governments, or other institutions.

ref: qicr-final-report-2009.

Posted by: Outraged | Sep 8 2014 0:39 utc | 63

whoa ! what!?!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/11080133/Dalai-Lama-attacks-self-centred-Vladimir-Putin.html
how dooers Putn become ‘selfcentered’?
‘The Dalai Lama, in an interview with a German newspaper, pointed out that Mr Putin had served as Russian president, then prime minister and then president again.
“That’s a bit too much,” he told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. “This is very self-centred.” “His attitude is: ‘I, I, I’,” Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader explained……..
well lets think about this: how long has he been dalai Lama? supreme leader of tibet and tibetan buddhism? since 1950! > 60 years! thats a bit long!

Posted by: brian | Sep 8 2014 1:01 utc | 65

from poster Haralambos @ Sic Semper Tyrranis

“My country right or wrong,” as a slogan comes to mind, but I think the origin is much misunderstood: Carl Shulz. It seems to be: “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.“

Posted by: Outraged | Sep 8 2014 1:04 utc | 67

brian | Sep 7, 2014 9:01:16 PM | 63
An astounding insight fail and own goal from the Dalai Lama … priceless. Thanks, needed the LOL.

Posted by: Outraged | Sep 8 2014 1:09 utc | 69

@brian #63:
During his appearance in front of social science students which I quoted from before, Lavrov was asked why Russia does not let the Dalai Lama enter Russia. Lavrov replied that the position of Russia is that the Lama should stay out of politics. (Not wanting to piss of China may also have something to do with it.)

Posted by: Demian | Sep 8 2014 1:26 utc | 71

I happen to believe that al-Assad is one of the finest men alive. Standing tall against the politicization of religion. If he’s a tyrant, he’s the one Syria needs.

Posted by: ruralito | Sep 8 2014 2:32 utc | 73

Well cold you should probably not comment on that which you do not know. And it is clear you have no idea who Isaac Deutscher is.
Posted by: ToivoS | Sep 7, 2014 8:24:15 PM | 57
Apparently a few of you don’t know his history either, and you also don’t understand irony since you’re rather up to your chin in it.
He was kicked out of the Communist party in 1933 for being too harsh on Nazism and denouncing it. I find it hysterical roobus would quote from him as a rebuttal to what I had deposited about Communism and Nazism.
By the way, did you also know his biography of Stalin contains no footnotes? None. It was a polemic and not a historical accounting since none of it can be independently verified.
Many believe he was “light” on Stalin, although their “light” is what I consider treating Stalin graciously rather than as the monster he was, as an overcompensating effort to be fair and neutral considering he was kicked out of the Communist Party and the fact he obviously adored Trotsky, but I believe it is because of his hatred of The West and his love of Marxism that he wouldn’t give The West the benefit of the doubt in treating Stalin with the harsh repudiation he so rightfully deserved.

Posted by: Cold N. Holefield | Sep 8 2014 2:50 utc | 75

Mold E. Bullshit is the ultimate liar – he admits so on his blog.
Of course it wasn’t the Soviet Union that subsumed Naziism – but the United States who brought in far more than its rocket scientists, but also its social scientists and its blood-soaked intelligence units.
And this – “What Russia is doing in Ukraine is similar to what Reagan’s America did in Nicaragua — only worse because Putin’s Russia is devoting many more Russian soldiers to the cause.” This doesn’t even pass the laugh test.
Come to think of it, neither does Cold Troll.

Posted by: guest77 | Sep 8 2014 3:11 utc | 77

WHAAA.. BRREst – YOU LIAR.
The 1991 referendum 70% of Ukrainians voted to PRESERVE THE SOVIET UNION. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_referendum,_1991

Do you consider necessary the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics

@29: ….” I would like to remind that in 1991 there was a referendum in Ukraine about leaving USSR and 90% Ukrainians voted for independence.”….
You dog, you absolute LYING DOG.

Posted by: guest77 | Sep 8 2014 3:19 utc | 79

@75 – hilarious and true too! good one guest77!!

Posted by: james | Sep 8 2014 3:26 utc | 81

Outraged @ 46: “The ordinary people of the East Ukraine are defending their homes and families and in the process clubbing the illegitimate proxies of the Empire. More power to them.”
I’ll second this comment.

Posted by: ben | Sep 8 2014 3:41 utc | 83

Hey Cold1 @ 72 —
I’ve been busier that I thought, wife has me on a “honey do” list. That I should have such problems. So I’ve not delivered my promise to engage your post from David Mikics’ review of Caute’s “Isaac & Isaiah: The Covert Punishment of a Cold War Heretic.” Let me just say, I checked up on your reviewer a bit, he seems like your kinda guy.
Anyway, I can see plenty of other folks have been trying to educate on Deutscher. I hope to be able to dissect your cut and paste job soon.
Ooooh, no footnotes! Where’d you lift that from? ‘Cause I KNOW you didn’t actually see the book. Let alone read it. I have my copy to hand, if you look at just p. 568, which I cited, he has a footnote and within it quotes Hjalmar Schacht “Absechnung mit Hitler,” p. 41. Other footnotes all over the place. His bibliography is 6 pp. Plenty of info. to verify his sources.
So, where did you get your misinformation about Deutscher’s scholarship from?
Your review notes, Berlin nixed him for his politics, not his sloppy scholarship. Would his critics admired him, if it were? You don’t even pay close attention to what you’re hacking up.
And apropos your crack at 54 to rememberinggiap — get your mind out of the gutter. “Did you sleep with him.” Let me explain — have you seriously studied him, not just skimmed whatever you can google and then mindlessly regurgitate?
Finally, to james @ 71
I would disagree, not a waste of time. Cold1 aka the Hole, aka Our Resident Troll, serves a function. A post waaay back early in the last thread on the Ukaine pointed out, he coughs up the current line, so we stay informed. And “b” finds him amusing. I do, too; like a so-bad-its-good “B” movie.
Sometimes he’ll see the light. Got him to back down from genocide to just ethnic cleansing on that last thread on the Ukraine. Sure, if he sees the light, it’s only to illuminate the way to some even more novel contortion.
And if he doesn’t see the light, perhaps others will be persuaded. It’s good exercise, too. He’s a clever little sod, keeps you on your toes.
And who doesn’t like a nice clean game of whack-a-troll?

Posted by: rufus magister | Sep 8 2014 4:01 utc | 85

@82 rm – we see it differently. multipolar world, lol..

Posted by: james | Sep 8 2014 4:03 utc | 87

Shout out to guest77 @ 74, 75 & 82 —
Mold E. Troll & Cold Troll — pretty good, esp. the first.
“He’s been coming back as the Dalai Lama lifetime after lifetime!”
Like outraged at 77 – RAOTFLMAO!
Finally, seriously, good stuff about Yeltsin. The Soviet Union did not fall, it was pushed. IMF, Aslund, other Western advisers sabotaged the econ. while Yeltsin fronted the political dirty work for DC.
Putin’s “imperialism” seems boil down to, “He’s not a slavish as Yeltsin.” Frankly, when Yeltsin pulled up from the mid-ranks of Russian politics, I thought, “Well, Yeltsin’s just put a puppet in charge.” I’m sure that’s what Yeltsin thought. But he broke those oligarchs who wouldn’t come to heel, that made him popular with the street, and he’s moved on from there.

Posted by: rufus magister | Sep 8 2014 4:16 utc | 89

oops, those damn refs again, sorry guest77 @ 81
and to james at, hold on, let me get this right, eighty four —
LOL — “Let a hundred flowers bloom…” I’m no Maoist, but sometimes the guy had a way with words. What are the odds the Cold1 has a conniption about that quote.
And quickly, on the substance of yours at 71
I don’t think the ceasefire will hold. (Gramsci, “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”)with Washington’s announced moves (rapid reaction, more bases, support for the Balts), we are in Cold War 2. Or is it Cold War 1.5? I don’t think it will be quite as serious, there is no real, serious ideological antagonism. We can support dictators – IF that’s what Putin is, that’s another discussion – provided they do our bidding. See the post-coup regime in Honduras.
Issues domestically in the Ukraine are as you outline, oligarchs vs. real democracy. Not unique to the Ukraine, but worse there than many, probably most, places. And of course, what will Wash. deign to permit.

Posted by: rufus magister | Sep 8 2014 4:30 utc | 91

There’s a particularly rosy reading of the Novorossian rebel’s decision to enter into a ceasefire over at the Saker (Not by the Saker himself):
Novorussia – Surrender or victory?

the achievement of the ceasefire agreement between the junta and the representatives of Novorossia in Minsk is a major victory for Russia, because it didn’t allow the United States to sever relations between Russia and Europe and gave Europe the necessary arguments for the rejection and blocking both in Brussels and in Newport, of the decisions that the US was prepared to launch against Russia. It is a big joint victory for Russia and the EU today. …
after the bursting of the abscess in Kiev or another scenario the two regions of Novorossia will be joined by the other five that were handed over to Ukraine by the Bolsheviks. And that will be the end of Ukraine in its present form.

This essay is partly a response to Alexander Dugin’s fear mongering to the effect that Putin has “given up” Novorossia. An example can be found here (in Russian).

Posted by: Demian | Sep 8 2014 5:15 utc | 93

from ask.com, short article, highly recommend:
Inverted totalitarianism and managed democracy
Sheldon Wolin believes that the United States has been increasingly taking on totalitarian tendencies as a result of the transformations that it underwent during the military mobilization required to fight the Axis powers in the 1940s, and during the subsequent campaign to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War:[2]
He refers to the U.S. using the proper noun “Superpower”, to emphasize the current position of the United States as the only global superpower. While the versions of totalitarianism represented by Nazism and Fascism consolidated power by suppressing liberal political practices that had sunk only shallow cultural roots, Superpower represents a drive towards totality that draws from the setting where liberalism and democracy have been established for more than two centuries. It is Nazism turned upside-down, “inverted totalitarianism.” While it is a system that aspires to totality, it is driven by an ideology of the cost-effective rather than of a “master race” (Herrenvolk), by the material rather than the “ideal.”[6]
According to Wolin, there are three main ways in which inverted totalitarianism is the inverted form of classical totalitarianism.
Whereas in Nazi Germany the state dominated economic actors, in inverted totalitarianism, corporations through political contributions and lobbying, dominate the United States, with the government acting as the servant of large corporations. This is considered “normal” rather than corrupt.[7]
While the Nazi regime aimed at the constant political mobilization of the population, with its Nuremberg rallies, Hitler Youth, and so on, inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the population to be in a persistent state of political apathy. The only type of political activity expected or desired from the citizenry is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication that the bulk of the population has given up hope that the government will ever help them.[8]
While the Nazis openly mocked democracy, the United States maintains the conceit that it is the model of democracy for the whole world.[9] Wolin writes:
Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.[10]
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism?o=2801&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com

Posted by: okie farmer | Sep 8 2014 6:37 utc | 95

The fall of the USSR was a counter revolt by Russian Party Elites who want it all. It ushered in the Era of the Oligarchs. It was privatization run amok. The American Empire is going through a similar counter revolt against the people and government privatization; only much more slowly and hidden by corporate media.
The future is not clear. But if follows the path of the last decade, our offspring will be debt slaves and/or cannon fodder for this or that group of Plutocrats struggling over dwindling energy resources. That is unless the Bourgeoisie take another go at the Aristocracy like their ancestors did in France and Russia before them. Or, perhaps warriors of the True God will impose his rule across the world. But, most likely, a losing group Oligarchs will fire their last working remnants of the nuclear arsenal at the other winning group of Plutocrats fulfilling the End of Times prophecy.

Posted by: VietnamVet | Sep 8 2014 6:58 utc | 97

@38 Referendums in Ukraine in 1991 and in 2014 were significantly different. The first one was organized in democratic way and with international observers. Those in Crimea and Donbass were parodies of referendums with Russian troops on the ground. There is enough evidence to suggest that the Donbass one was completely fake.

Posted by: BRest | Sep 8 2014 7:40 utc | 99