Who are the narcissists?

83 Comments

1. Most citizens of the Western World today have lost all connection with the citizens of the Third World: It won’t take long for a People’s Revolution of the Poorer Societies to realise that our failing Democracy will always look like a better option than their own Autocracies and that occupation by numerical supremacy will eventually run rife.

   There are some serious questions we lazy Human cunts have yet to consider:

   Will Democracy ever overpower Autocracy and Totalitarianism?

   Will Human ignorance and willingness to Believe in Mystical Bullshit ever be revealed as Myth? And will Religious/Social Tribalism eventually run out?

   Will Nationalism ever be defeated by democratic empathy?

   Will the thinking Ape ever realise it’s insignificance in Nature’s scheme of things?

   If not, we’re all fucked!

2. Mark Shields fails to see that his use of obscenities shows that he does not have much of a point to make.

   He asks “Will Democracy ever overpower Autocracy and Totalitarianism?”
   It’s a pointless question.
   It is democracies that are causing the mayhem in Gaza.

   It is democracy that needs reform.

3. Beauty, Bert,
   Love 4 when men abuse, get forgiven by men to abuse and be re-forgiven. Surely there must be crimes that cannot be forgiven on earth????????
   Is it not strange that the god of Abraham gives words to the jews who write the bible, a couple of thousand years later, the xstian’s get his words and his son for the new testament and 600 years after that the qiran?
   Is it not suspicious that god talks through men and women are not included? Is it not ridiculous that women accept god made them defer to men?
   When are the mainstay of the god of abrahamic religions but until they control religions war, murder, rape and child abuse will continue to be the norm.
   ps
   The funniest,
   The miracle stories of the Gospels can be divided into four fairly distinct groupings:
   Healing miracles (curing of physical impairments and illnesses)
   Exorcisms (casting out demons and unclean spirits)
   Nature miracles (calming storms, feeding multitudes.)
   Restoration miracles (raising the dead, restoring to life)
   plus modern miracles like earthquakes killing thousands but saving a baby under the rubble
   Among these miracles found in the Quran, are “everything, from relativity, quantum mechanics, Big Bang theory, black holes and pulsars, genetics, embryology, modern geology, thermodynamics, even the laser and hydrogen fuel cells”.
   Their big mistake was giving the white man the key to maths.

4. NO god has ever existed outside a human mind. The fact that ours is the only species that thinks there is a ‘super-natural’ element to us being here may be the very reason for our eventual demise. We will continue to maim and destroy each other over our differing beliefs in myths and legends that still to this day cannot be proved to exist in any form.

   The “thinking ape” needs to do a hell of a lot more thinking if we ever want to evolve in to a species worthy of respect. The older I get the less I like us homo sapiens…

5. Steve:

   The words are appropriate given the subject, and if your only criterion for dismissing an opinion is the way in which it is phrased … well, let’s just say in that case I’m not surprised at your dogmatic and limited views.

   As the saying goes: If you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention.

   Yes, democracy needs reform. Autocracy doesn’t? Tyranny doesn’t? Oppression doesn’t? To repeat something I saiid in one of the earlier discussions aboiut Ukraine: one side being in the wrong on certain points does not mean that those who oppose them are always right , either overall or only on those points. It is not only possible, but common, for there to be fault on both sides. Or, rather, all sides, because there are far more than two sides to pretty well every situation.

6. Seems to me that the majority of bad things that happen around the world are all linked back to religion, that brainwashing dribble that has people believing in invisible sky fairies. And the most laughable part of religion is after bad things happen and you see all the excuses under the sun as to why their particular sky fairy allowed that to happen.
   From pedophile priests to the active protection of criminals (via confession) to the majority of conflicts through history all being linked to relgion…………it would seem to me all we have to do is just get rid of religion altogether.

7. leefe, are you dealing with impressions now also?
   As in “Yes, democracy needs reform. Autocracy doesn’t? Tyranny doesn’t? Oppression doesn’t?”

   Did I say otherwise? I did not.
   Deal with what I say, not your impression of what I say. It’s difficult enough dealing with facts, without having to deal with impressions from angry commenters.
   I did not refer to autocracy tyranny and oppression because we do not even have the general awareness to reform our own democracy, something in need of reform and that is capable of reform. I’ll put autocracy and tyranny in the too-hard basket..

   As for my dogmatic views, have you ever refuted one? Not that I can recall. So I’m happy with dogmatic.
   I’ll be even happier when you refute one.

   You’re right that if you’re not angry you’re not paying attention, but it does not follow from this that inappropriate language is effective language. Angry responses are far more likely to feature inconsistencies and oversights.
   This is what happened with Mark’s comment.
   He overlooked the fact that in Gaza it’s democracies causing all the havoc.

8. wam, Thank you for your coments, and the question you pose: Crimes that cannot be forgiven?

   That is a hard question. When we see immigrants settle in new lands, such as we have here in Australia, and maintain a peace centred life, the relocation and new life offered leads to an acceptance of forgiveness.

   In the case of the Jews, after WWII and the horrors exposed by the Nazi death camps, the holocaust, the resettlement proposed by the UN resolution to partition Palestine for the settlement of displaced Jews and holocaust survivors should have enabled a sense of forgiveness. But the trauma of centuries long discrimination is hard to overcome.

   There will not be peace in Israel/Palestine while that trauma is not dealt with, while Israelis continue to identify themselves as victims, and that allows them to conduct their own version of, dare call it a holocaust against Palestinians.

   Does victim-hood become the rationale for brutality?

   We see in every day life when people define themselves as victims, not dealing with past traumas, they carry hatred with them. We see it in family violence, we see it with racism, we see it with religions. Carry forward the disagreements, the schisms in religions, you get the troubles of Northern Ireland, you get the destruction of synagogues, mosques, burning of churches.

   Where have all the flowers gone was a Woody Guthrie sone which finishes with the line, ‘When will they ever learn?’, and while we carry hatred, while we remain victims, we will never learn.

9. I don’t bother with your arguments, Steve because, while your language is not “crude”, you employ every weasel word around, and twist what people actually say yourself — so It’s particularly amusing when you have a go at me for supposedly “making assumptions”.

   All you do is slag off the democracies and more socially liberal (please excuse me for using that word) nations and occasionaly offer disingenuous excuses and defences for the Orbans and Putins (the “why are people so down on Orban” style comments), while offering no actual practical solutions for the problems in those democratic and more socially liberal nations.
   You see problems? Give us ways to fix them. Ways, that is, that don’t make things worse for the marginalised.

10. Pete, bad things happen because if difference. It can be difference in religion, difference in language, difference in colour, difference in gender identification. different political ideology.

    It is easiest to see ourselves as being ‘right’ and therefore those who are not like us as different, and somehow less than us.

    Seeing difference as some how bad is what leads to discrimination and hatred which may flow into violence.

11. Crikey leefe, I hardly know where to start!

    First, I do not make excuses for Orban and Putin, I offer explanations for their positions, that I back up with evidence.
    If you are not happy with that, instead of whining about explanations that you cannot accept, why don’t you quote what I’ve written and refute it.

    You imply that I only “slag off” while offering no solutions.
    Not so.
    You might recall that I proposed some time back that the Reserve Bank should be forced to abide by its charter, in order to improve the lot of the unemployed. Remember that? You chose to not get involved in that discussion.
    Was that a solution that would “make things worse for the marginalised” as you put it?
    I think not.

    But I’ll give you some free advice.
    When someone, anyone, writes something you disagree with, in your response just quote the actual offending sentence or passage then refute it with evidence. It’s not good enough to accuse someone of being disingenuous, or of using weasel words as you have here. Prove it.

12. Does Democracy need reform?

    What I see happening with democracy is that while since 1770 or there abouts in the USA and a gradual embracing of democracy in other countries, modern democracy became more democratic, from initially giving the vote to land owning men aged over 25 to a gradual opening of franchise to include adult men, aged 21 years, then adult women, the age of adulthood was changed to 18, so gradually more and more citizens were entitled to vote.

    A problem with democracy is not that it needs reforming, because legally, as far as the franchise to vote is allowed, more citizens than ever are entitled to vote.

    What needs reforming is the way elections are funded,where currently the system allows politicians to be ‘bought’, with campaign contributions and an active lobby industry where vested interests gain access to political leaders, and a party system which is open to being bought, if not controlled.
    The number of security passes that had been issued to allow access to members offices under the last Liberal administration were more than to actual parliamentarians.

    True democracy is virtually unattainable, where each electorate is represented by a person committed to representing the electors of that electorate, rather than to a party. The way that could work is through require Town Hall type meeting where upcoming legislation is voted on by those interested enough to turn up and the results of that vote being the vote in the parliament or where the electorate is canvassed to gain support for or rejection of proposed legislation.

    Currently, there are too many powerful people outside of parliament controlling parliamentarians and political parties for a true democracy to flourish, so the reforms required are to close of the opportunity to buy favours and turn to a true independent form of representation. To some extent, the Teals in the Federal Parliament allow that sort of representation, a picture of what democracy could look like. (But behind the Teals is Holmes a Court, a financier, and possibly a power broker of some sort.)

13. It’s interesting that there is little discussion, these days, about Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
    A few days ago, I came across an interesting statement by Putin , from 2002.
    * Putin was comfortable with Ukraine joining NATO
    * He said it was a “matter for those partners”
    And that was after he had signed the Budapest Memorandum, which guaranteed Ukrainian sovereignty, according to existing borders.

14. AC is back to his old tricks — presenting quotes without context.

    Here’s some context he won’t be happy with.
    AC’s incorrect views on Russia’s military action have been repeatedly exposed, e.g. at “Executions, human rights foresworn and wars fought”, where AC painted himself into a corner by discussing a conversation that only took place in his head, but also at several other articles.
    But he does not moderate those views, choosing instead to trot them out again and again.
    His hatred of Putin, I believe, is based on two things — ignorance, and his susceptibility to Western (US) propaganda. Possibly others as well.

    He knows that the US justifies its ongoing program of murder and mayhem by a continuous stream of lies, yet when the US says “Putin is a monster” he says to himself, without hesitation or thought, “gee, that Putin really must be a monster.”
    He knows that Putin was once the darling of the West, until 2007 when he gave notice that Russia was no longer going to be taken for granted and exploited.
    Or perhaps it was 2011 when he stated in an interview that US actions around the world were the actions of a vampire. Suddenly in the Western news media he was portrayed as a rogue despot who was out of control, and this razor-sharp analyst said to himself, again without hesitation or thought, “gee, that Putin really must be a rogue despot who’s out of control.”
    It would be comical if not so serious.

    On March 13th, 2024, Vladimir Putin when interviewed followed up his vampire comment by saying that Western countries had been “parasitising on other peoples for centuries, 500 years. They tore apart the unfortunate peoples of Africa, they exploited Latin America, they exploited the countries of Asia, and of course no one has forgotten that. They’ve spent centuries filling their bellies with human flesh and their pockets with money. But they must realise that the vampire ball is ending.”

    Sounds like a comment that a number of us here at AIMN could have posted, or would love to have posted.
    And “the vampire ball is ending”? I love that.

    But hang on a moment. It was Putin who said it. Will that affect perceptions?
    It appears that Putin intends to put an end to 500 years of mayhem and suffering. Something that most of us here have been hoping for. If he succeeds in ridding the world of a vampire empire, will he get any credit for that? Will the perceptions change?

    I’ll put my money on a win for US propaganda. We’ll see a lot more around here about the Putin monster.

15. Steve, given the default language of this country is English, as is the case with the USA, it stands to reason that the unending stream of propaganda that issues from the bowels of that malevolent entity will dominate the discourse for the foreseeable future. Without access to the nitty gritty and possibly wildly incorrect, but I’d expect the numbers of Russian speakers in this country could comfortably be squeezed into a medium-sized hall, and that their language certainly doesn’t have any heft in terms of impact on public consciousness.

    Some years ago I watched Oliver Stone’s The Putin Interviews, … my recollection is that he was a much more impressive individual that any recent American or British leader that one might care to reference.

    De facto, my sympathies have tended to lie with him rather than his antagonists ever since.

16. A Commentator, interesting interjection but completely off topic for this discussion.
    Although I guess Putin fits under the Narcissist banner pretty well.

    The same 10 words as on the article apply to Putin and the rationalisation for the brutal attack on Ukraine and the ongoing conflict now also being fought on Russian soil.

17. Canguro, thanks for that, you’re quite right on the political competence question.

    Anyone with a bit of age about them, (that’s me and you 🙂 ) will have noticed a decline in our lifetime, in the ability the competence and the character of politicians from the West.

    This decline is so consistent across all the liberal democracies that it is almost certainly due to a flaw in the Western political culture.
    I’m not familiar enough with the Russian political system to comment on how they seem to have avoided this decline, but in China they have a system that ensures a continuing high standard from the country’s leaders.

    School leavers in China who pursue a public service career must first pass a rigorous examination over several days. The standard is so high that the failure rate is roughly 90% from memory. Keep in mind that it’s the best and brightest sitting the exam, so we see a cultural difference there immediately. We make it ever easier to pass.
    Those who pass are given career options. Those who choose leadership (politics) are sent to a poor village with a simple instruction — increase the income of the villagers. Those who excel at that are “rewarded” by being sent elsewhere with the instruction to do the same for an entire district. This ensures that those who rise to the top are competent, innovative thinkers with good people skills. And what is also significant, they have a commitment to the general good. There’s very little narcissism that survives that process.

    It’s not hard to see why the West is languishing in comparison.

18. Bert, you said ” I am not a psychologist…”

    You are correct.

19. I see you continue your habit of verbaling those you disagree with. I think that’s a very lazy approach.
    We had a exchange on another occasion when you used the same tactic.
    It took some time for you to eventually back down, on your misrepresentation of my position.
    Putin said, in May 2002-
    “I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners.”

    http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/21598?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2HqloHp06isBhw6XJDlQu22eWahRCAtUpRRE6oAEsisc8gaMxMPQXo2Vs_aem_JQYdpppJIgI0JmA4EGQRAg

    He made that statement after he had signed the Budapest Memorandum which guaranteed Ukrainian sovereignty, after a significant expansion of NATO (which was contrary to an exchange of diplomatic words under the Bush administration)
    Putin did a 180° turn on the issue.
    Meanwhile no NATO country, or Ukraine, has territorial claims on Russia.

20. Correct Steve, I am not a psychologist.

    Are you?

    I recall a time discussing university courses with a person undecided what he should study. He noted that most courses had psychology units included and so decided that is what he should study. It was effectively a deferment of a decision. Later he was undecided what he should specialise in an found at a career day at the Uni that the military offered positions which covered most of the disciplines, so he enrolled and was in the military for a number of years, effectively deferring that decision.

    He retired from the military as a Captain.

    He now is in private practice as a psychologist dealing with a number of issues, has maintained his connection with the military treating ex service people for PTSD.

    He and I still meet regularly, discuss many things, including stuff to do with mental well being, the challenges modern life brings in family setting, the pressures of work roles such as FIFO and the difficulties that poses for relationships and many other matters.

21. Thoroughly enjoyed the article and the argy-bargy.

    To quote Arte Johnson’s character “Verrrry interesting, but stupid!” (must be said one-eyed, with monocle in place). 😎

    I guess there has to be almost some narcissist in us all, after all there is surely some payoff for altruism. It’s the constant argument / rule of self-interrogation I apply – nevertheless it seems to be a continuum never resolved – so I have to take a break, and just take stuff in and put stuff out for the sake of it, since I gave up other former obsessions and diversions.

    Such is the plight of ‘democracy’. Maybe.

22. Dirty little secrets.

    Those few here who are vocal in their insistence that our response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is justified, are guilty of a serious ethical failure.

    Forget about the military and financial assistance we have given to Ukraine; those are fringe factors. The ethical failure comes from Australia taking steps to isolate Russia economically.
    Why does this expose an ethical failure on the part of a few here?
    Because the anti-Russian element here assumes that Australia can take a principled stand against one military conflict half a world away, while ignoring others.

    Our position as a nation is untenable. If Australia was genuine in its opposition to Russia we would cut all ties to the US as we have with Ukraine. Not only do we not cut those ties, we support US aggression.

    It’s not good enough for a few here to excuse their criticism of Russia by also being critical of US foreign policy.
    That’s not a principled position; it’s a cop-out. It allows them to avoid looking at the big picture and the big questions. The tough questions.

    We are allied to the most violent regime on the planet. So for those who claim to be concerned about Ukraine, their priority should be that alliance. A focus on Ukraine is merely a convenient way to avoid a tough ethical decision.

    Because it’s not just the government that approves this relationship and this alliance.
    We cannot claim to be innocent bystanders here.
    There’s a dirty little secret behind this that we do not want to think about. It is this.

    We all benefit from Australia’s relationship with the US. Every one of us. Because comparatively, collectively, we lead very comfortable lives. Not as a result of US protection, but from our participation in an economic system that is criminal in its intent, and its application.

    And what is always overlooked, ignored, possibly even denied because it’s another dirty secret, is that all of the aggression we see from the US, aggression that we support, has one purpose only — to preserve and enhance that economic system of exploitation from which we benefit.

    There is no correctness, no high moral ground, no ethical virtue in denouncing the Russian action while wallowing in a comfortable lifestyle that was fraudulently, criminally, brutally obtained by collusion and appropriation.
    Such criticism does not confer intellectual or moral superiority. Quite the opposite.

    We need to set to work to make the entire world comfortable for all. Only then, only when that goal is achieved, that victory won, will we have the right to be critical of the means by which others go about seeking their comfort and security.
    Because our path is nothing to brag about.

23. Yes SD,

    For the terms of our short lives, that power gets conferred on ownership and accumulation, and those that set the rules pertaining to ownership and accumulation appear to be the ultimate corruptors. It appears to be the basis for the first protectionism, that of pathological parenting. Notions of exclusive rights of parents rather than children. And so it seems to seep out from there. Perhaps.

    I am reminded of Robert Heinlein’s The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The former, subtitled A Comedy of Manners, in the interstellar adventures rests on a world where there is no ownership of anything, yet people are killed for ‘bad manners’. The ‘Cat’ (Pixel) can be seen as a reference to Schroedinger.

    The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is a sequel to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (and others – albeit there are many crossings of characters and circumstance in many of Heinlein’s ‘multiverse’ series over many years ). The Moon is a Harsh Mistress sees the moon (Luna) used as a penal colony by Earth’s government, with three million inhabitants (called “Loonies”) living in underground cities. Most Loonies are discharged criminals, political exiles and their free-born descendants; men outnumber women two to one, so polyandry and polygamy are the norm. Because it is predicted the Loonies will run out of food, and eventually (in 9 years) have to resort to cannibalism, there’s a revolution against the controlling ‘Authorities’. It succeeds and the (usually apolitical) Loonies have their own elections and form government. A government which falls to the typical wiles of all governments. The main character and his partner withdraw from politics, and he, missing his erstwhile friend, the once self-aware but now broken master computer of the colony, asks “Bog [God], is a computer one of Your creatures?”

    On The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Carl Sagan wrote that the novel had “useful suggestions for making a revolution in an oppressive computerized society.” On The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, a commentator (see Bill Stifler) wrote, “… the concept of the ‘World as Myth’ which Heinlein calls a `multiperson solipsism’ – that we create the world by our own imaginations.”

    I guess we make of it what we will.

24. Thanks for the response Clakka.

    For a while there I thought I’d been sent to Coventry for my sins! 🙂

25. Canguro:

    Some years ago I watched Oliver Stone’s The Putin Interviews, … my recollection is that he was a much more impressive individual that any recent American or British leader that one might care to reference.
    De facto, my sympathies have tended to lie with him rather than his antagonists ever since.

    I was so gobsmacked by this remark I had to wait until now to comment upon it.
    I had thought you a ratiionalist, someone reasonably immune to propaganda and facile judgments, but this …
    Yeah, sociopaths and psycopaths are often great at being charming and sounding good, it’s part of their camouflage. Ditto for any trained politician. But actually trusting what they say, or accepting that how they present themselves to you – especially when they have something gain from creating a certain impression – that’s folly on steroids.
    So the opponents who had “accidents” deserved it? Or you really think they were just remarkably convenient and entirely coincidental accidents? Or are they not really dead and it’s all a beat-up by western media?

    The kindest thing I can say is that at least you’re openly admitting to a totally illogical bias.

26. leefe, you seem to be all over this, so I have a question for you.

    Who poisoned the Skripals?

27. leefe, fact. The American killing machine has a hugely greater number of kills of the innocents on the scoresheet than Russia. The American killing machine is a malevolent entity that resists rein, whatever the cry. The American killing machine knows not how to act as a good citizen within the global community. The American killing machine loves to antagonise those with whom it takes offence, even over such matters as differences of political or religious views. The hubris of the American killing machine knows no bounds, no boundaries, and is willing to plunge the rest of the world into chaos for its own ends. The American killing machine is not committed to a better future for all global citizens, but only for its own survival, whatever the cost. The American killing machine has long mastered the dark arts of hypocrisy, illegality, criminality and malfeasance on massive scale, and is ruthless towards any who endeavour to expose and shine a light onto its rotten underbelly, as demonstrated by numerous testaments and outcomes.

    And yes, Putin compared to the likes of the Shrubs senior & junior, Clinton, Obama and Trump, is in many ways a better individual. Nothing is, or ever was, black or white, and everything needs evaluation in context and nuance. And as for western media, much of it is nothing more than paid prostitution for the masters of the universe, cocksucking whores willing to lie, lie, and lie again.

28. It’s timely to remind people-
    1/. Putin has previously said-
    “I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners.”
    2/. Putin signed the Budapest Memorandum, which guaranteed Ukrainian sovereignty according to existing borders. On this basis, Ukraine relinquished their nuclear weapons.
    3/. Instead of maintaining those commitments, Putin now uses the rape of Ukrainian women and girls as a military strategy, he oversees the bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure
    4/. Putin is now a rallying point for disaffected and delusional anti western democracy types, anti vaxers, right wing conspiracy theorists and the “useful idiot” brigade

29. AC refuses to discuss our dirty little secrets because he’s terrified of the big picture.

    I’ve pointed out previously that war is a result of failure. Look for the failure.
    That’s too big an ask for those obsessed with details.
    Who cannot see past details.
    Who cannot see the connections between details.

    There is no correctness, no high moral ground, no ethical virtue in our participation in an economic system that is criminal in its intent, and its application.

    There is no ethical virtue in AC denouncing the Russian action while wallowing in a comfortable lifestyle that was fraudulently, criminally, brutally obtained by collusion and appropriation.

    Our participation in the defence of Ukraine is a defence of a criminal economic system.
    That’s the big picture, and it ain’t pretty.

30. As well as verbaling and misrepresentation, a tactic favoured by you is to try to change the subject when the topic heads in a direction you find uncomfortable or challenging.

31. AC claims that I change the subject when challenged.

    What he’s actually saying and wanting is for us to go over and over again, old ground that was flogged to death many times before. Check out “NATO Provokes Putin, Stoltenberg comes clean.” You’ll see what I mean.

    I’m not here to bore people to death.

    I’m here to entertain leefe. 🙂

32. Well, you’re doing a lousy job, Steve.

    Canguro:

    In which ways – having political opponents assassinated (compatriots, that is)? Trump probably would, but I’m not aware of Obama or the Clintons or either of the Bushes loosing immediately politically threatening opponents to convenient accidental defenestration or the like.
    Don’t brush this off. There are shades of grey and nuance in everything, no doubt, but the statement of yours that I’m questioning rather lacked that, and you keep dodging the question of those convenient “accidents”. Acceptable? Necessary? Genuine accidents?

33. leefe, you seem particularly interested in political assassinations of the Russian variety so I’ll ask again.

    Who poisoned the Skripals?

34. Bert Hetebry attends to the question “‘Should Christians Study the Quran?’ with the emphatic answer: “Absolutely, also the Bible and the Book of Mormon and the Hindu Veda and any other religious ‘holy book’. Each should be read with an open mind, reflectively and critically in order to understand the nature of so many conflicts which have been instigated under the banner of religion.”

    Fair enough, I guess! But why stop there? Investigate Quetzalcoatl, I say. And the different moral commandments expounded by The Great Juju Of The Mountain vs. The Great Juju At The Bottom Of The Sea respectively!

    This does, however, constitute a whole lot of reading as well as protracted bouts of attendant critical reflection.

    Who has the time or energy? Considering that many of us can’t afford proper food or housing, despite working flat out at minimum wage jobs, or keeping a small business from going under.

    Just on the latter observation, it might be of great benefit also to acquaint oneself with various critical outlooks on economics. That of Karl Marx, for example.

    Speaking for myself, once I did have a grasp of dialectical materialism, Marxist style, I came to recognise that what is routinely passed off as spiritual and/or religious conflicts are in reality conflicts over resources and wealth, and fomented by mercenary types who seek to advance their own venal interests – and on that basis, I have so far resisted any temptation to get too engrossed in various religious offerings. I think Oscar Wilde was spot on with his admonition that “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”

    You want to know what has been fuelling the implacable violence in the Middle East? Google “Mossadegh” and “Anglo-Persian Oil Company”. Then realise that Condoleezza Rice’s claim, half a century later, of guiding US foreign policy according to the aims of Transformational Diplomacy is beyond risible!

    And that’s an insight that can be had without reading any holy book whatsoever!

    As for the war in Ukraine: that, too, is the result of somewhat complex and multi-layered, but nevertheless terribly shortsighted, ignorant, and indeed fairly transparent interplay of local, national and global vested interests. Hannah Ahrendt’s “Banality of Evil”, revisited.

35. Steve:
    Ahhhhh, whataboutery and deflections. And yet you got so cheesed off when someone suggested that that is how you handle questions you don’t like …

    *sits back and waits for it to be pointed out that those questions weren’t directed at Steve so he’s free to butt in with whatever he likes

    But if you insist on an answer – I don’t know. Neither do you; you may have various hypotheses, but you don’t have proof.

36. Leefe, where’s the whataboutery? Where’s the deflection?

    It was you who introduced the “accidents” and now you get catty when challenged.
    You come on hard, but don’t enjoy an equal response.

    “questions weren’t directed at Steve so he’s free to butt in with whatever he likes”
    Well, yes. This is an open forum. If you want a private conversation you should write someone a letter.

    “I don’t know.”
    There now, it wasn’t hard was it?

    “but you don’t have proof.”
    And neither do you.
    Which makes your raising of the issue of unproven allegations rather pointless.

37. Arnd, thanks for the link to Transformational Diplomacy.

    Unbelievable stuff.

38. I’d point them out, Steve, but you haven’t the honesty to admit to the tactic, so it’s just more wasted effort.

    Lack of hard proof is why I asked questions rather than making assertations. Since you insist on inserting yourself into this specific issue, I’ll ask you the same question: numerous incredibly convenient and co-incidental accidents? Or is the more likely explanation that someone who cut their teeth in a spy agency and rose to the very top of said spy agency – for a nation with a rather chequered history in such areas – would use the learnt ruthlessness and techniques to eliminate inconvenient people?
    You have no difficulty accepting the worst about peoplke in roughly similar positions within western nations, but seem to be insistant that Vlad gets the benefit of the doubt. For me, this is a case where the simplest answer seems to be the most logical: killers gonna kill. Again, there’s bad on both sides, but I prefer USAnia as it currently is to Russia as it currently is. Although I’m glad to be a long way from either.

39. “Where’s the deflection?”
    That is genuinely hilarious!

40. “the more likely explanation that someone who cut their teeth in a spy agency and rose to the very top of said spy agency – for a nation with a rather chequered history in such areas – would use the learnt ruthlessness and techniques to eliminate inconvenient people?”
    And that’s an argument?
    Your armchair explanation?
    You simply do not know, so raising it was pointless.

    “You have no difficulty accepting the worst about peoplke in roughly similar positions within western nations,”
    Quote please.

41. For those who might be thinking that my claim about a criminal economic system is a bit over the top, consider this from Prof. Michael Hudson in an interview just a few days ago.

    “The Federal Reserve officer said that according to my calculations, Britain couldn’t afford to borrow any more money. I agreed. It had to keep borrowing just to maintain the exchange rate of the British pound.
    The Federal Reserve man pointed out that the British had been maintaining their balance – mainly by raising interest rates to attract loans to stabilize their exchange rate. I agreed that this was what had enabled them to keep paying their debts. He pointed out that this was because U.S. creditors were lending them the money. And of course that was exactly what was keeping them afloat. He said that the same thing was true with Latin American countries. The United States was supporting them, at least as long as they were “friendly.” U.S. bankers therefore could lend them the money because U.S policy was to keep them solvent. The World Bank was showing them how to carry their debt service by privatizing their property, and the IMF giving them advice as to how to make their labor more competitive by paying it less and blocking attempts at unionization, while cutting back public social spending to “free” income to pay their creditors.
    Under these terms it was clear that Latin America could continue to pay U.S. banks for new loans, at least for the immediate future. That was the financial sector’s time frame. But I could see that the only way that banks could keep expanding their loans to Latin America and England was to arrange for them to borrow the money to make their interest and principal repayments. That’s called a Ponzi scheme. A debtor keeps solvent by borrowing the money to pay the interest and amortization falling due.”

    And that’s only one criminal aspect to an economic system that can only survive by plunder. But hey, it’s just rearranging numbers, it’s just accountancy, it’s almost civilised.
    Or so you might think as you wallow.

42. Y’know Steve, I owe you an apology. Because you certainly upped your game in the entertainment stakes with this last exchange. I’m still sniggering.

43. Leefe, you’re still sniggering?
    So I take it from this that you cannot show me “accepting the worst about people in roughly similar positions within Western nations.” In other words, you made that up.

    One of the problems I’m having here leefe, is that I’m dealing with someone who uses the blog to vent emotions.
    You do not respond to comments and ideas, you react to them.
    If a comment is at odds with your worldview, you shoot back at an emotional level.

    Just as you did here with Canguro. “Gobsmacked” was your expression.
    A reasonable person would have said “surprised” or even “very surprised”, but your emotion spilled over with “gobsmacked”.

    And the problem with these emotional reactions is that they lead to inconsistent arguments. There’s always a chance that you’ll end up looking ridiculous.
    As we saw from you here.

    In reply to Cangoro explaining his position to you, with restraint that was admirable I must say, you demanded “Don’t brush this off.” Yet you had just brushed off my quite reasonable question to you.
    And with great indignation you twice accused me of butting in when you had entered the discussion by butting in.

    Now I have nothing at all against butting in, it’s part of the to and fro that makes a forum interesting. And when you think about it, any comment to an article is a form of butting in.
    But you want to make the rules of conduct here to suit yourself. To suit your emotional state.
    It doesn’t work that way.

    When you come to a forum such as this you have to accept that you will not always get things your own way. I’ve had some momentous broadsides launched at me, but I take it on the chin and file them away in “Steve’s Greatest Hits.” A sense of humour makes life a lot easier.

    A problem arises when people on blogs use everyday language when writing comments.

    We can get away with extravagant language in conversation because it is softened by facial expressions and body language. Not so on a blog. If leefe had begun his/her diatribe with “surprised” instead of “gobsmacked” it would have set the tone for all that followed and we might have seen a more reasonable outcome.
    Instead, we saw a totally unjustifiable declaration about a person’s character and intelligence, based on two sentences.

44. Steve, when I was living offshore some ~15 years ago, a mate emailed that Bob Ellis had started up a blog, Table Talk: Bob Ellis on Film and Theatre, if I cared to take a look. I was familiar with the Ellis mob; years earlier I was silly enough to purchase a lawn-mowing business and their Palm Beach headland property was on the client list… so I was at least familiar with the name if not the context or background.

    I started to contribute my two cent’s worth into what was at that time a very dynamic online gang of contributors; Ellis himself posting headline essays on a daily basis on matters political and cultural, and we the punters responding accordingly. Table Talk it was!, in spades, enjoyable and stimulating with some highly skilled & intelligent writers in the fray.

    Bob would occasionally elevate a punter’s response to a head post and invite commentary, as a mark of his critical recognition of the worthiness of that piece; a couple of times he afforded my offerings that recognition, and further, when I wrote that I would be returning to Australia, to Sydney, he offered shelter until I found a place of my own. We met a number of times after I came back, and I can say without hesitation that I felt fierce affection and respect for this man with his firebrand intellect; sadly lost in 2015 when he passed away.

    Everything changes, nothing stays the same. I won’t name names but the measure of the man was to some extent revealed at his funeral by the numbers of profiled individuals from within political & cultural circles who attended.

    Anyway, the point being, that highly dynamic blog, if nothing else, taught that it’s possible to engage with strangers, even though the frequency of exchange might make it seem that they are familiars, with respect and courtesy, even when coming from widely differing points of view. Crankiness and being gnarly or sniping rarely got rewarded.

45. Canguro, thanks for the comment. And not only for the reminder of a top bloke.
    It could have been Bob who started me on my crusade against the illogical foundations of liberalism with this — “The Liberal Party; a collective of individualists.”
    He was contemptuous of liberals, and rightly so.

    You mention respect and courtesy, and that certainly is the key.
    There’s nothing wrong with coming here with an agenda — that’s almost a given. But to expect that an agenda will get a free ride, as some do, is just foolishness.
    And to expect that an agenda lacking respect and courtesy will succeed, well, that will only end in tears.

46. A Commentator offered this contribution a few days ago:

    4/. Putin is now a rallying point for disaffected and delusional anti western democracy types, anti vaxers, right wing conspiracy theorists and the “useful idiot” brigade

    Which could be seen as a valid observation – except that, according to my Marxist analysis, it is precisely the activities of bourgeois “western democracy types” consistently misrepresenting the interests of the working class and the people more generally which have generated, and still are busy generating, statistically significant numbers of disaffected conspiracy theorists.

    AC, please explain, if you can, how cooking up a nuclear submarine deal with a projected cost ten times that of the conventional submarine program in place at the time, and with huge military, political and economic implications for two or three generations to come, IN TOTAL SECRECY and completely outside of parliamentary, administrative and party rank-and-file participation and oversight squares with your understanding of liberal democracy.

    Because to me, it very much looks like the useful idiots congregating on the Putin-side of politics are not the only ones in town!

47. Wow, and now the “you’re hysterical” argument, couched in fancy language. Fact is, you interpret my comments as suits you; well, that’s fair enough, it’s a common failing and as I often don’t bother with couching every comment in carefully crafted verbiage, it’s even easier to fall into the trap. What isn’t fair, and what I don’t accept, is your insistence that you know the motivations (including emotional) behind my responses. You don’t.

    Yes, Steve, surprise is an emotion. “Gobsmacked” is simply a more colourful colloquialism for … hmmmm, let me think … strong surprise. I used the term because I have an extensive vocabulary and often employ some of its more idiosyncratic elements. All that means is that I’m in the mood for for a certain style of language. Again, you don’t know me or how my mind works, so it would be best to drop the arrogance and stop pretending that you do. Nor do you get to dictate the acceptable style of language people use here. I talk (and write) the way I talk (and write). It’s variable, for various reasons. Learn to live with it because it won’t change just to suit you.

    Do you know why I’m laughing? Because you reacted (yes, reacted, Steve, not a cool, logical response, but a reaction which, if I was as inclined as yourself to make assumptions and assertions about the motivations behind other people’ comments, could quite easily be classed as emotional) you reacted to some negative remarks about Putin exactly the way I expected: rushing to his defence. Calm down. He doesn’t need you and there’s nothing you can say to me that will change my opinion of him, not least because, from where I’m sitting, you’re no less biased than anyone else here.
    I didn’t make up anything. Your obvious anti-democracy leanings don’t require a map, compass and binoculars to observe.

    Instead, we saw a totally unjustifiable declaration about a person’s character and intelligence, based on two sentences.

    que?
    If you took my remark to Canguro as being a slur on his intelligence, you misread it and/or I didn’t phrase it quite as clearly as I might have. He’s smart, well-read, thoughtful … none of which prevents him from having fallen prey to the personality cult trap. He’s said it himself that his assessment of Putin – one which apparently leads him to excuse or overlook certain issues – is based on the footage of a set of curated interviews (the sort of thing the Putins of this world have no trouble preparing for in order to present themselves as suits them) and thaht watching those biased him towards Putin.
    Which reminds me, I still don’t have a clear answer to the question, from either of you. Why is it so hard to say what your actual opinion of those incidents is? Throwing it back on me isn’t an answer, it’s just another dodge, another refusal to answer.

    And, for the record, I’m a they/them. I don’t do gender and if I did it wouldn’t be relevant.

48. Leefe, you just can’t help yourself — you’re at it again.

    Rushing to Putin’s defence? I want the quote for that please.

    You did not make up anything?
    You made a statement about me “accepting the worst about people in roughly similar positions within Western nations” and when challenged, did not produce the quote. Unless you produce it, you made that up.

    My “anti-democracy leanings”?
    If by that you mean my “anti liberal democracy leanings” you are quite right, but all you’ve done is expose your lack of commitment to the truth, because I have gone to some trouble to explain, at length, my views on liberalism undermining society, yet you have tried here to make those views an attack on democracy itself.
    Do you actually equate liberalism and democracy? Because that’s what’s coming across.

    You ask what my opinion of those accidents is.
    My opinion is that I don’t have a clue, and when it comes down to the nitty gritty, neither do you.
    The speculation you aired earlier is just that — speculation. To which you are entitled. But to use your speculation as the basis for a personal attack is despicable.

49. leefe, re. your September 2, 2024 at 9:15 am comment/question, and specifically the bit where you pose the question… “in which ways – having political opponents assassinated (compatriots, that is)?”… you’ll note, paying careful attention to the words written, that I did not accuse any American president (among those named) of assassinating political opponents. Everything else as written is relatively accurate when details are elaborated;

    Bush senior – an oilman, de facto dodgy – a CIA director who supported Operation Condor operations and right-wing military dictatorships in Latin America, along with Gulf War I;

    Bush junior – another oilman, (de facto dodgy) – invader of Afghanistan & Iraq, authorised capture, rendition and torture of suspected al-Qaeda operatives… generally without proof of their involvement along with extended incarceration in Guantanamo Bay along with suspension of habeas corpus;

    Bill Clinton – Slick Willy – serial adulterer, blind-eyer of CIA cocaine importation via an Arkansas airport whilst governor of that state along with the use of the Arkansas State Police to gain access to women and the killing of Don Henry and Kevin Ives in 1987 that saw him and the Arkansas state authorities accused of covering up the crime – context being that the boys were murdered by drug traffickers whom Clinton was protecting. Also on Clinton’s watch – Waco, Kosovo, cruise missile attacks against Afghanistan & Sudan;

    Obama – extrajudicial assassination of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki by drone strike in Yemen, as well as his children in an additional strike, along with prolongation of military activities in Iraq & Afghanistan, increased military cooperation with Israel, and assaults against Libya & Syria, use of drone warfare increased exponentially under Obama’s tenure;

    Trump – not a warmonger or assassin but the list of malfeasances is extensive… much too much to precis here.

    Of note; all of these men claim to be Christians, and all of them, even Trump, have figurative blood on their hands, thus demonstrably indicating the hypocrisy of claiming to be adherents of the prophet of peace, love & forgiveness.

    To come to the nub of your response – how do these men rank against Putin – Hobson’s choice perhaps. No argument that Putin is a dangerous individual and possibly so in the context of his zealotry per Russia’s existential challenges, but when considered in the historical aspects of modern and earlier history, not difficult to see where he’s coming from. I’d still argue that overall, he’s made a better fist of his circumstances than the American counterparts – all extremely privileged, all abused the power they had been gifted by virtue of position.

50. It always pays to dig a little when AC thinks he has presented a killer argument.
    He has twice claimed, or appeared to claim, that Putin broke the Budapest Memorandum. And he put a cherry on top with — “Meanwhile no NATO country, or Ukraine, has territorial claims on Russia.”
    Let’s see.

    The memorandum was a progression from the Lisbon Protocol, whereby Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine agreed to adhere to the NPT as non-nuclear weapons states. There followed a history of dissension for years within Ukraine over this commitment.

    The “Budapest Memorandum” is actually three documents signed individually on 5 December 1994 by the three leaders of the ex-Soviet nations, together with the guarantor nations: United States, United Kingdom and Russia.
    Under the agreement Ukraine surrendered its Soviet era nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees.

    The first to undermine the agreement was the US.
    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 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.

    The claim by the West that after the coup Russia broke the agreement by annexing Crimea ignores the fact that Crimea had voted for independence prior to the fall of the USSR and therefore prior to Ukraine’s independence, and prior to the Budapest Memorandum.
    So Crimea’s independence from Ukraine was protected by international law.
    From the UNHCR — Jan 20 1991, A referendum is held in the Crimea on restoring autonomy to the region. Over 80% of the electorate participates, of which 93.26% supported the “restoration of the Crimean ASSR as a subject of the USSR and as a party to the Union Treaty.”
    And as stated by Jacques Baud, “Of course, Western historians ignore superbly that Crimea was separated from Ukraine by referendum in January 1991, six months before Ukrainian independence and under Soviet rule. In fact, it’s Ukraine that illegally annexed Crimea in 1995. Yet, western countries sanctioned Russia for that…”
    Messy, isn’t it.
    It gets worse.

    As the intent of the agreement was security for Ukraine, the US also undermined that security by creating tension between Ukraine and Russia. From the Wash. Post 23/10/23. — “Since 2015 the CIA has spent tens of millions of dollars to transform Ukraine’s Soviet-formed services into potent allies against Moscow, officials said.”

    Why did Ukraine go along with this risky program? Why poke the bear?
    Because they wanted to join the EU and NATO. To join NATO, they had to create the conditions for Russia to attack Ukraine and be definitively defeated.
    Sounds highly implausible. Sounds like something from a Mr Bean movie.
    But in a TV interview on March 18, 2019, Zelensky’s advisor Oleksei Arestovitch explained the plan. He stated that it would take an attack by Russia to provoke an international mobilization that would enable Ukraine to defeat Russia once and for all, with the help of Western countries and NATO.
    With astonishing precision, he described the course of the Russian attack as it would unfold three years later, between February and March 2022. Not only did he explain that this conflict was unavoidable if Ukraine was to join NATO, but he also outlined the main areas of Western aid: “In this conflict, we will be very actively supported by the West. Weapons. Equipment. Assistance. New sanctions against Russia. Most likely, the introduction of a NATO contingent. A no-fly zone, and so on. In other words, we won’t lose it.”
    Sound familiar? It’s almost a carbon copy of the RAND plan to bring Russia to its knees. Who wooda thort. Say it ain’t so.

    Such a what-could-possibly-go-wrong plan could not have been the brainchild of Ukraine alone, but ultimately, the details are of no consequence. The plan went ahead.
    So, no threat to Russia? An unprovoked invasion? Plucky Ukraine defending democracy on behalf of the global community?

    The second to undermine the agreement was the then President of Ukraine, Zelensky, who at Munich in 2022, prior to the Russian invasion, stated;
    “Since 2014, Ukraine has tried three times to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. Three times without success. Today Ukraine will do it for the fourth time. I, as President, will do this for the first time. But both Ukraine and I are doing this for the last time.”

    So he walked away from the agreement. It’s worth noting how Western sources manipulated this, as they did with the coup. The Wiki entry on Zelensky walking away from the agreement is faithful to the text, until it omits the final sentence. The most significant sentence. “But both Ukraine and I are doing this for the last time.”
    This was a deliberate omission, as the sentence was shown, but represented by dots.
    The Wiki entry did however, report what followed without revealing its significance. “If they (summit negotiations) do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.” The points in doubt included a Ukrainian commitment to non-nuclear status.
    Ukraine got no support from the US and UK.
    The summit did not take place.
    The points in doubt were now up for grabs. It takes little imagination to work out how that was interpreted in Moscow.

    The upshot is that when Russia acted a few days after the speech by Zelensky, there was no Memorandum. It no longer existed. There was no agreement to breach.

    So what has all this been about?
    It’s quite simple.
    AC has indulged his deplorable little proclivity to condense complex historical/political events that develop over decades, into one or two sentences. He did this some months back with the origins of WW2, about which entire books have been written.
    The question is — why?

51. As I pointed out earlier here, AC, when corrected, does not moderate his views, choosing instead to trot them out again and again to bore everyone silly.

    And instead of refuting the history of the Budapest Memorandum that I presented, and its breaching by the US and Ukraine, he’s done it again with his lecture to Putin (on another thread because he somehow got lost) that Putin should have implemented economic sanctions. That this was a failure of diplomacy.
    For AC, the years that Russia spent on diplomatic efforts to arrange security measures that would ensure security for all of Europe amount to nothing. They never happened. Even while they were happening they were not happening.

    AC says Russia has claimed territory in breach of the Budapest Memorandum. As usual, AC is deliberately vague, giving no details as to the alleged Russian claim.
    I assume that he refers to Crimea, so to paraphrase Jacques Baud, “Of course, AC ignores superbly that Crimea was separated from Ukraine by referendum in January 1991, six months before Ukrainian independence and under Soviet rule. In fact, it’s Ukraine that illegally annexed Crimea in 1995.”
    So Crimea’s right to self-determination is protected by international law.
    It’s worth noting (because AC is sure to wander off on a tangent and bring this up) that the right of the Donbass republics to self-determination without consultation with Ukraine is also protected by international law.

    In regard to the vote to remove Yanukovych that AC has raised, (yep, another killer argument) the constitutional guidelines in force at the time called for a review of the case by Ukraine’s Constitutional Court and a three-fourths majority vote by the Verkhovna Rada — i.e., 338 lawmakers. The vote to remove was 328.
    The vote failed.
    The ousting was unconstitutional.
    Yanukovych had fled the country the day before the vote in fear for his life and that of his family.
    The very definition of a coup.

    No? Not coup-ish enough?
    How about when an armed mob storms the Ukraine parliament forcing government members to flee? Does that sound like democracy in action? Or does it sound like a coup.
    Might that violent mob have had something to do with the 328 – 0 vote, with even Yanukovych’s own party members too afraid to vote freely?
    And to think that the day before the vote, Yanukovych had agreed to new elections.
    That was the last thing the coup-master wanted.
    AC will defend the indefensible. Because this was orchestrated by the US, as he does not even attempt to deny. And as the BBC reported in regard to the leaked telephone conversation, the US does not attempt to deny.

52. As part of Ukraine, Crimea voted (by a substantial majority) for independence from the Soviet Union. Had they wished to remain within Russia’s orbit, they would not have voted this way.

    The Ukraine Rada didn’t vote for impeachment, the decision was factual – Yanukovych had abandoned his office. The Rada took responsibility.

    He lost control of the apparatus of government because the police and military declined to comply with his (illegal) directions to shoot civilians.

    Russia claims Crimea and Donbas. It has annexed those regions, despite providing a written commitment to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty, according to existing borders.

53. By the way, you have also previously claimed that the uprising/mass protests were manipulated by Nazis.
    How many of the millions of people protesting against Yanukovych were Nazis?

54. AC has made a statement about the referendum in Crimea without giving any details.
    Deliberate vagueness is his stock-in-trade.
    To make things worse, he ignores superbly this from the UNHCR — Jan 20 1991, A referendum is held in the Crimea on restoring autonomy to the region. Over 80% of the electorate participates, of which 93.26% supported the “restoration of the Crimean ASSR as a subject of the USSR and as a party to the Union Treaty.”
    It could not be clearer, but AC states otherwise.
    AC calls that “independence from the Soviet Union.” He is confused.

    After the coup, a referendum on Crimea’s future was held. The official result was a 97 percent vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation, with an 83 percent voter turnout, and from Sevastopol there was also a 97 percent vote for integration with Russia, with an 89 percent voter turnout.
    There was an immediate outcry from the West in unison, that the referendum result was a result of coercion, but Gallup conducted an immediate post-referendum survey of Ukraine and Crimea and published their results in April 2014. Gallup reported that, among the population of Crimea, 93.6% of ethnic Russians and 68.4% of ethnic Ukrainians believed the referendum result accurately represented the will of the Crimean people.

    He says Russia claims Donbass. Not only is AC confused again, he deliberately refuses to un-confuse himself. The path of the Donbass republics to independence was protected by international law. Furthermore, Russia refused to be a part of the implementation of the Minsk accords, the failure of which led to independence, stating that this was an internal matter within Ukraine. There never was a Russian claim.

    AC says in regard to the coup, that the Rada took responsibility. Indeed it did, and they ignored the constitution because it provided for a different process to that preferred by the puppet master.

    And still he claims relevance of the Budapest Memorandum, despite the evidence I’ve provided showing the US and Ukraine walking away from the agreement prior to the Russian action.
    My apologies to readers because this is getting tiresome. Although I should thank AC, because my knowledge of the issue has increased greatly since this started. But I must plough on.

    With AC’s follow-up comment about nazis, in line with his small-picture view of the world, he wants us to salivate over every detail of the protests while ignoring the puppet master behind the protests.

    But to answer his question.
    As I recall, the number of nazis protesting was 23,743, although Ima Nazich, the Town Hall janitor, betrayed his comrades by hiding in a broom cupboard, so that reduced the impact considerably. (sarc/off)

    But why is AC asking about the Ukrainian neo-nazis?
    Perhaps his curiosity was tickled by an incident in May 2019, on the Ukrainian media Obozrevatel, where Dmytro Yarosh, head of the “Pravy Sektor” militia and adviser to the Army Commander in Chief, openly threatened Zelensky with death, if he came to an agreement with Russia. See how ridiculous this line of discussion is?

    But at least this needless discussion shows that to focus on details instead of connecting the details, leads to the trivialising of tragedies.

    We need to focus on the failures that lead to tragedies.

55. 1/. In 1991, as part of Ukraine, Crimea voted for independence from the Soviet Union.
    2/. In 2002 Putin said Ukraine’s relationship with NATO was a matter for Ukraine and NATO. That was after he signed the Budapest Memorandum (guaranteeing Ukrainian sovereignty) and after NATO had significantly expanded (contrary to a diplomatic exchange of words)
    3/. In 2014 the Ukraine Parliament voted unanimously to remove Viktor Yanukovych, as he had abandoned his office.
    4/. In February 2022 Putin invaded Ukraine, despite repeatedly saying he had no plans to do so. The last occasion was just 3 days before Russia invaded Ukraine. This was in breach of his own words and in breach of his signed undertaking.
    5/. The volume of words doesn’t change these facts

56. What part of “93.26% supported the restoration of the Crimean ASSR as a subject of the USSR and as a party to the Union Treaty” does AC not understand?

    When I get a coherent answer instead of the repetition of a falsehood, we can continue.

57. The vote you refer to was in January 1991. The vote for independence was about a year after that, in December 1991, and the vote in Crimea was 54% in favour of independence.
    * Independence from the Soviet Union, as part of Ukraine.
    * And isn’t it inconvenient for you that 11 years after this, Putin said the relationship between Ukraine and NATO is a matter for Ukraine and NATO

58. The December 1991 vote in Crimea is irrelevant due to the larger political situation at that time.

    AC says of the Dec vote, “As part of Ukraine, Crimea voted (by a substantial majority) for independence from the Soviet Union. Had they wished to remain within Russia’s orbit, they would not have voted this way.” That’s a deliberate misrepresentation.
    AC never lets context get in the way of a good story.
    The Soviet Union was breaking up at that time, so of course Crimea would vote for Ukrainian independence, after all they enjoyed autonomy within Ukraine, the country had not yet been taken over by nationalist extremists, so it was a logical step. Crimea almost immediately after began steps towards independence. But notice how AC keeps it deliberately vague, not giving details that would provide context.

    By keeping it vague, AC is able to make an issue out of a non-issue. He thinks he has a killer argument with his repeated “11 years after this, Putin said the relationship between Ukraine and NATO is a matter for Ukraine and NATO.”
    Eleven years later it was 2002. Russia was still trying to establish a working relationship with Europe at that time, without success. Russia’s diplomatic efforts were rebuffed.
    It was not until 2007 that a frustrated Russia gave notice that the honeymoon was over.
    But that’s all context, and AC doesn’t do context.

    A couple of things to note are that AC now has no interest in Ukrainian nazis, because they turned out to be an embarrassment for him. And he still has a continued interest in the Budapest Memorandum even though it was the US and Ukraine that destroyed it.

    But true to habit, AC has shown us that he can reduce a complex matter that took decades to develop, into 3 or 4 dot points. An amazing skill.

59. I’ve been busy for a few days, but I’m unwilling to allow the above comment to stand unanswered.

    You find the following inconvenient or irrelevant.
    1/. Putin said Ukraine’s relationship with NATO was a matter for Ukraine and NATO.
    2/. That was after the significant expansion of NATO
    3/. You dismiss a vote for independence, when Crimea was a legal part of Ukraine
    4/. You can’t logically address the fact that Putin guaranteed Ukrainian sovereignty, then broke his written commitment
    5/. You don’t deal with the fact that there was a mass public uprising in Ukraine, against a closer relationship with Russia, and that Yanukovych abandoned his office, after losing control of the apparatus of government. This was due to his own arrogance, hubris and poor decisions.
    6/. Regardless of the political complexion of the Ukrainian population, Russia Russia does not have the right to impose its regime on Ukraine
    7/. Ukraine seeks no more than to join its neighbours, the former Warsaw Pact countries, in developing a prosperous democratic nation. It has no claims on Russia

60. After being criticised for reducing a complex matter that took decades to develop into 3 or 4 dot points, AC has upped his game, has seen the light, has turned over a new leaf, is filled with remorse, is determined to better, and so has reduced a complex matter that developed over decades into 7 dot points. I’ve taken on a mighty task here, and I have to say, progress is…incremental.

    Let’s take a look at these points. Most of which have already been given context that is of no interest to AC.

    Putin was indeed happy to cooperate with NATO until 2007 when Russia realised they were being treated with contempt. And Russia continued to have a cooperative arrangement with Ukraine over control of Crimea until 2014.

    AC has said that Putin’s NATO/Ukraine statement was after significant expansion of NATO, as if that has significance.
    Actually it does. It’s evidence for the lengths that Russia was prepared to go to in establishing a working relationship with NATO.

    Putin’s guarantee of Ukrainian sovereignty was rendered pointless after the US and Ukraine breached the Budapest Memo.

    There was indeed public protests in Ukraine, after the US pumped $5 billion into arming extreme nationalist militias and other democracy enhancing projects.
    And the protests were not across the country as AC implies. Yanukovych lost control of the government after an armed mob stormed the parliament. Why does AC never mention that?

    In regard to Russia having the right to impose its regime on Ukraine, the stated aim of the intervention was to demilitarise and denazify. Regime change was not mentioned.

    As for Ukraine seeking no more than to join its neighbours, AC is creating more fiction.
    As I stated previously, in 2019 Oleksei Arestovitch stated in a TV interview (that I’ve seen) that in order for Ukraine to join NATO, (and ultimately the EU I assume, as that was also an objective) Ukraine was told that NATO entry was conditional on Ukraine defeating Russia, and that assistance for this would be provided by NATO. The proposed timeline for the conflict 3 years later was followed almost to the day. Then in February 2023, Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of Ukraine’s Defense and National Security Council, declared in The Kyiv Independent that Ukraine’s objective was the disintegration of Russia. So AC’s picture of a poor, honest Ukraine minding its own business is a fake.

    So, 3 dot points or 7 dot points, it makes no difference. We still get the same lack of context, the same vagueness with a lack of verifiable dates, the same pointless to and fro.

61. 1/. It’s odd that the point repeatedly made by the Putin apologist is that I set out my reply in numbered paragraphs. I often find this a useful way of setting out orderly points. So I’m not surprised that verbose, self important, blinked, closed minded “useful idiots” would object.
    2/. Were sanctions applied to the Ukraine economy, or to individuals within the Yanukovych regime?
    3/. It is false equivalence to justify the illegal seizure and annexation of foreign territory (after guaranteeing sovereignty) on the basis of economic limitations placed on individual members of a government that was killing citizens that opposed it.
    4/. Estimates of the number of people participating in the Maidan protests is between -over half a million, to a million. It was one of the most widely supported protest movements in contemporary Europe. You’ve previously claimed this was Nazi manipulation. How many were Nazis?
    5/. Ukraine has sought no more than to join its neighbours in a prosperous and democratic way of life, free from the brutality that is the hallmark of the Putin regime. It makes no claim on Russian territory
    6/.You excuse seek to excuse or minimise this brutality. You excuse in Putin what you condemn in others. That’s know as hypocrisy.

62. Steve, you still refuse to believe Putins game plan. Create a false dissension on the border and then invade to free his people. Its copy book russian play. Crimea, Georgia, Azerbajian…. the list does go on. All this other shit you bring up is a smoke screen, plausable deniability writ large.

    “Then in February 2023, Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of Ukraine’s Defense and National Security Council, declared in The Kyiv Independent that Ukraine’s objective was the disintegration of Russia.” talk about MISPLACED context. By this stage Russia was all in on this war, Ukraine has every right to want to smash this regime by this stage of the war.

    What i read was that Ukraine couldnt join NATO because the disputed territories russia annexed created a conflict that NATO was trying to avoid. Stop looking for excuses, stop with the russian propaganda.

63. Steve, your statement “93.26% supported the “restoration of the Crimean ASSR as a subject of the USSR and as a party to the Union Treaty.” just shows how out of touch with reality your argument is willing to go. No place on earth with free elections will ever get you 93.26% on ANYTHING. Let alone a rigged vote and a coerced population……I am willing to put money on that.

    So much utter crap, i wont delve too much more into it, its just too entrenched in your mind. to even consider Putin is the war criminal here.

64. “verbose, self important, blinked, closed minded, useful idiot, Putin apologist.”

    Another entry for “Steve’s Greatest Hits.” The frustration is taking its toll.

    Readers will note that yet again AC is deliberately vague.
    There is an allegation as to something I’ve said without giving details about where and when, so there’s no way I can dispute it. There’s no attempt at rebutting significant points I’ve made, and there’s repetition of a falsehood.

    This is not exactly high level debating. I think “shrill” would be an appropriate description of the latest response from AC.
    There must be a reason for that.
    One possible explanation is that he’s slowly coming to the realisation that Ukraine was conned into this.
    That Ukraine is doing US dirty work.
    That would hurt.

65. “I’ve been busy for a few days”

    Where were the waves, AC?

66. Dirty work? Try this, as a start…
    1/. Putin changed with child abduction
    2/. The High Commission for Human Rights documents and reports on the rape of Ukrainian women and girls aged between 8 and 84, by the Russian military.
    3/. Putin has given military commendations to the commanders of the rapists
    4/. Does any of that qualify as “dirty work”?

    Are you now going to deny your claim that the million (or so) people protesting were manipulated by Nazis?

    Losing the plot is trying to start an argument about paragraph numbering

67. Hello Michael!
    Yes, retirement could be worse. The coast is very pleasant this time of year, and there are few young folk in the water.
    That’s fortunate for them, I’m not as nimble as I once was.
    I probably need a barge rather than a board.

68. Just how low does AC intend to go?
    We’re way past shrill now.
    Next he’ll have Putin throwing babies out of humidicribs.
    Oh, that’s right, they’ve already used that one in Iraq. Time to think of something else.
    For every tale of Russian atrocities I’m quite sure I could find a tale about Ukraine.

    AC is forced to go low because his argument has died a natural death. He is attempting to divert attention away from the fact that Ukraine planned a conflict with Russia years in advance. That one really hurts.

69. What nonsense.
    You tried (repeatedly) to make a ridiculous (and particularly juvenile) point about paragraph numbering. How embarrassing for you that you found yourself stooping to that.
    Previously you’ve used misrepresentation and verbaling as tactics. More embarrassment, for you.
    You dismiss inconvenient facts as irrelevant.
    You don’t deal with the nonsensical claims you make, the current example is your claim that the Maidan protests were manipulated by Nazis.
    There were around a million people involved. How many were Nazis?
    You exaggerate, obfuscate, misrepresent statements and facts.
    …but you can’t face up to the fact that Putin has been charged with war crime, and the High Commission for Human Rights has extensively documented the rape of Ukrainian women and girls by the Russian military, as well as the commendation of their commanders by Putin.

70. “…paragraph numbering. How embarrassing for you that you found yourself stooping to that.”
    Is AC dreaming?

    In regard to the charge against Putin, the ICC’s warrant was inspired by a US State Department-funded report produced by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), that contained no field reporting, no concrete evidence of war crimes, and no proof that Russia was actually targeting Ukrainian youth with a massive deportation campaign.

    Yale HRL’s work was funded and guided by the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, an entity the Biden administration established in May 2022 to advance the prosecution of Russian officials.
    Well, who woulda thought. A report funded by the US.
    And, it turns out, the children were all from the pro-Russian Donbass and were there with their parents’ permission.
    What a beat-up.

    In regard to the High Commission for Human Rights, as far as I can make out, no such body exists.

71. It turns out that the Human Rights Council replaced the former United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

    In regard to the HRC having a body of evidence that Russia has used rape as a military strategy, I have read 2 reports, and they consist of allegations.
    Allegations are not evidence.

    It sounds strangely similar to the allegations of child abduction.

72. 1/. You earlier referred to a (decades old) report by the UNHCR , yet now claim the extensive documentation complied by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights on the rape of Ukrainian women and girls by the Russian military can be dismissed as “allegations”
    Have you read the harrowing contemporaneous accounts of the rapes?
    2/. You don’t address the fact that Putin commended the officers who commanded the rapists.
    3/. You also dismiss the charging of Putin as an “allegation”, and claim this isn’t evidence.
    4/. Have you also reviewed that evidence? Bland repartition of Putin’s talking points doesn’t cut it, because Putin was concerned enough about efforts to arrest him that he backed out of the BRICS summit last August.
    5/. You have also claimed the independence of Donbas is protected by international law. Was its annexation protected by international law? Which countries recognised this independence and subsequent annexation?
    6/. If this is protected by law, why did the United Nations General Assembly vote 143 to 5 to condemn Russia’s actions?
    7/. And how were the million (or so) Ukrainian people involved in mass protests, manipulated by Nazis?
    8/. I’m not willing to overlook your clear history of verbaling and misrepresentation

73. Time for an intermission in this quest to determine who are the narcissists. With currently seventy-three shots for the lead amongst the field of thirteen; the rankings stand at Steve Davis on 29, A Commentator a close second at 15, leefe in third place with 8, then the rest struggling to maintain pace & place; Bert & Canguro on 5, Arnd, andyfiftysix & Clakka all on 2, and stragglers at the rear, John C, Mark Shields, Michael Taylor, Pete Petrass & wam all on 1.

    The smart money’s on Steve Davis to be first past the post. Well done, and finely contested!

74. Ahh, Canguro, it’s hard to beat a bit of humour.

    But back to business.
    I mean, this is terrible. I’m being painted into a corner from which there is no escape!
    I’m going to have to follow AC’s dot points. I’ll never live this down. The man is a master manipulator.

    1.The extensive documentation compiled by the United Nations on the rape of Ukrainian women and girls are indeed allegations as I correctly pointed out. A 21st Oct NYT article on the report confirmed that the evidence was “victim testimonies”. The US ABC actually used the word “allegedly”. The UN investigators refer to “reports of”.

    2.As for Putin commending officers, that’s about as weak an argument as one could dream up. There is no evidence of rape, so there is no evidence of officers ordering rapes or condoning rapes or covering up rapes. So why are we talking about it?

    3.The charging of Putin refers to the child abduction charge that was based on a report funded by the US. AC’s insistence on this point is comical. And yet, sad at the same time.

    4.“Bland repartition (sic) of Putin’s talking points…” Sorry, do not recall. More fiction perhaps?
    “Putin was concerned enough about efforts to arrest him that he backed out of the BRICS summit last August.” And yet he went to Mongolia a few days ago in defiance of the charge, and sent the Western media into a spin. This is all pointless trivia, so I apologise to readers.

    5.Yes, the independence of the Donbass republics is protected by international law.
    But why has AC suddenly inserted this into the discussion? Because he’s obsessed with diversionary trivia. And he’s running out of ammo. Here’s some trivia that will not please him.
    The recognition of independence by other countries is of no consequence under the law. From the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1934), since incorporated into international law,
    “Article 3, The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states. Even before recognition the state has the right to defend its integrity and independence, to provide for its conservation and prosperity, and consequently to organize itself as it sees fit, to legislate upon its interests, administer its services, and to define the jurisdiction and competence of its courts. …” Well, well.
    And if my memory serves me correctly, there was no requirement for the annexation to be protected by law. The republics appealed to Russia for help due to shelling by Ukraine. No problem under the law. They applied for union with Russia. No problem under the law. Except for the West that is, who now saw that international law was putting up barriers to their geo-political ambitions, and so came up with an alternative — the “rules based order”, a fictional concept. A walking away from the law. Coincidence? Hardly.

    6.“If this is protected by law, why did the United Nations General Assembly vote 143 to 5 to condemn Russia’s actions?” That is an excellent question. And my excellent response is that ignorance of the law is widespread. I’ve even seen commentators sympathetic to Russia express doubts as to the legality.
    Article 2.4 of the UN Charter states — “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” So, as Ukraine was illegally using force against the republics, Russia’s right to protect was and is protected by law. Article 2.4 clearly applies to “any state”.

    7.Trivial nonsense of no consequence. A waste of everyone’s time.
    8.More trivial nonsense.

75. 1/. I’ve just re familiarised myself with the charges against Putin, which effectively amount to genocide/ethnic cleansing.
    Rather than dismiss them on the basis of some (notional) connection to the US, how about you critique the charges themselves. Explain why the charges aren’t legitimate.
    And how about you explain how ICC Prosecutor
    Karim Ahmad Khan was manipulated into laying the charges
    2/. Your routine tactic is to dismiss inconvenient facts, because of the source, rather than dealing with the issue.
    But I seem to recall that you have previously used “experts” such as Scott Ritter and Douglas McGregor.
    It’s hilarious, but typically you don’t bother to reflect on your hypocrisy, or the credibility of the sources you use.
    3/. Also typically, your self importance is such that you dismiss the vote of 143 to 5 against Russia as ignorant. It seems your arrogance is such that you claim 143 nations are wrong, and you and a few autocratic regimes are right.
    4/. You have used the article 51 right of Russia in the past, no credible legal authority supports this.
    5/. The claim that Russia’s use of force is justified under Article 51 of the UN Charter has no support in fact or law. Article 51 provides that “nothing in the present charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations.” Ukraine did not even threaten to attack Russia. Even if Russia could show that Ukraine had committed or planned to commit attacks on Russians in the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, Article 51 would not permit an action in collective self-defense, because Donetsk and Luhansk are not UN member states.
    6/. Article 2(4) of the UN charter requires UN member states to refrain from the “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
    Putin’s invasion is contrary to international law.

76. This is just cruel and unusual punishment. I’m trapped again, forced to follow AC’s dot points.

    1.The charges against Putin are not legitimate because they are based only on allegations. Criminal proceedings also require evidence. AC’s introduction of the ICC Prosecutor is an attempt to derail the discussion.

    2.Once again AC has made an allegation that is impossible for me to deny. This has become a routine tactic.
    I refrain from using pro-Russian sources, because it provides an opportunity for the discussion to degenerate into name-calling. As we have already seen here even in the absence of pro-Russian sources. So I seriously doubt that I would have referred to Ritter and McGregor. AC should put up or shut up.

    3.There is no arrogance in alleging ignorance of the law. I explained the allegation, with evidence, and that has not been refuted.

    4.I doubt very much that I have referred to Article 51 in the past because even I have doubts as to its application in this particular case. So again, it’s put up or shut up.

    5.There is however, an interpretation of Article 51 that supports its relevance. Just to be clear, this is not my opinion.
    “The problem is that neither DPR nor LPR is a “Member of the United Nations” (although an armed attack on the Donbass was clearly occurring). However, this does not mean the Article does not apply. A number of decisions have been reached under Article 51 by the UN Security Council or General Assembly related to the State of Palestine which is not a Member of the UN, and involving the right of collective self-defense, and no party made the argument that a Member does not have the right of self-defense with a State which is not a Member of the United Nations.”

    6.AC states “Article 2(4) of the UN charter requires UN member states to refrain from the ‘use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.’ Putin’s invasion is contrary to international law.”
    Wow. I mean, wow. AC has turned the law on it’s head. Or turned international law into a bunfight. Or something. This is primary school level debating.
    Not only was Ukraine’s attack on the Donbass a breach of article 2.4, NATO’s assistance in this illegal action is also a breach of international law. Russia’s right to come to the defence of the Donbass is protected by the Responsibility to Protect, which was unanimously adopted by all members of the United Nations General Assembly at the 2005 World Summit.

77. 1/. I can specifically advise you that you have referred to Article 51, during an earlier exchange. Perhaps the pain of being proven wrong has has caused you to suffer a memory lapse
    2/. Civil wars are not subject to Article 2.4, it applies to the actions of member states. And you identify that Donbas and Luhansk are not member states. Your speculation that Article 51 might apply is… speculation and without evidence or a reputable source.
    3/. There was a civil war in Donbas, and I have previously provided you with the details of fatalities reported by the United Nations. It demonstrated the falsity of your contention then, and again now
    4/. Blaming NATO? You ignore the fact that Russia has promoted and supported the separatists . Russia supplied the missiles used to shoot down a civilian aircraft, killing 300 civilians. Please don’t embarrass yourself by denying this, unless you have reviewed the evidence used to convict Russian operatives.

78. You can specifically advise me?
    Sorry, coming from one as unreliable as you, that’s not good enough.

    You have developed the unattractive habit of manufacturing porkies.

    I want the details of me referring to Ritter and McGregor.
    I want the details of me using Article 51.

    Until you give those details, the discussion is over.

    Until you give those details, you are a demonstrated fabricator.

79. Are you saying you haven’t? Because I’m certain you have.
    I think this is why you claim you don’t remember – dissociative amnesia is when you can’t remember important information about yourself. These memories are often distressing or upsetting events.
    It is associated with trauma.
    It occurred because you embarrassed yourself by being 100% wrong.

80. So there we have it.

    AC is a demonstrated fabricator.

    It’s not hard to say, gee, I overstepped the mark there.

    But he cannot.

    He is a demonstrated fabricator.

81. AC has defended his use of dot points in discussions, but this format has a serious flaw.

    The dot point or numbered point format is an impediment to presenting a mixture of facts and opinion in a connected, coherent manner.

    It prevents the development of a solid argument because it encourages the presentation of isolated facts that are not supported by context, and so are irrelevant or misleading. Presenting a fact is not an argument. Facts must have context to have meaning.
    In regard to context, dot points encourage a brevity so acute, or pronounced, that context is excluded altogether.

    It has the appearance of orderly thinking, but in reality it encourages a scattergun approach that is the opposite of orderly.
    It encourages the inclusion of isolated thoughts that pop into the head. Because sudden thoughts can be the result of untested assumptions and faulty memory, the dot point format encourages the inclusion of errors.

    But most importantly, because dot points have a false appearance of order and coherence, they discourage reflection and review of draft texts, and so we see comments posted that are highly emotional, or have obvious errors that would be corrected in a review.

    This is not to say that the dot point format is not useful, but the points should lead to a conclusion. A list of unconnected dot points should be questioned. Are the unconnected points a ploy to evade the substantive argument?

    To use dot points habitually prevents the development of logical thought, and discourages the ultimate aim of discussion and debate — seeing the connections between facts that lead to greater understanding and appreciation.

82. Oh dear, I thought you had decided that we weren’t on speaking terms which was ok with me.
    Have you looked up the definition of obsessive compulsive?
    Personally, I think you’ve lost the plot if you seek to debate styles and format of expression, rather than substantive issues.
    But let’s just have a quick recap, here are just some of your most recent fabrications-
    * Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is legal
    * A million Ukrainians (who seek only prosperity and democracy) are either Nazis or are manipulated by Nazis
    * 143 nations are wrong about international law, while Steve Davis, Belarus, Iran and Nicaragua know what’s right
    * There is penty more too

83. “There is penty (sic) more too”

    I had hoped that a comment free of emotion would encourage some reflection, and a considered response.
    Instead, AC has confirmed my argument that dot points encourage errors, exclude context, and that unconnected points evade the principal argument.

    To avoid an allegation of being too general with that summary, I should refute the first three points, all of which are dodgy. But until AC justifies allegations he made about me, I will not deal with a demonstrated fabricator.

    If an interested reader asks for a refutation of those three points, I will happily give one.