Ex-defence minister Liam Fox: We must arm the Ukrainians as the credibility of the entire Nato alliance is at stake

[pepipop]

Unfortunately many people throughout the west and on this forum see the word “Russia” and it is automatically translates “bad”. If countries are in the sphere of influence of the “U.S.” or “U.K.”, they are translated as “good” Saudi Arabia is an extreme violator of many kinds of basic human rights but they are protected by the western governments for these reasons. There is economical profit from Saudi Arabia, so we turn a blind eye.

If information comes from a western media source it is “true” if it comes from a “Russian” source it is a " lie" or “falsified”. If photos come from the Ukraine it is “solid evidence”, if they come from Russia they have been “doctored” or “photo shopped”. What in the world would lead someone to believe photos or a story form Ukraine is automatically “true”? This isn’t the way the world works. There are bad people on both sides. Does Putin lie? Of course he does! Does Obama lie? You bet he does! Does Russian media falsify information? Yes. Does the media of the United States lie? Yes it does. Yet, so may people, hook, line and sinker buy in to whatever Fox News, NBC, whatever their news source as gospel. At least they do as far as anything relating to Ukraine or Russia. Protesters and those in the Ukraine who fire weapons or kill innocents are “freedom fighters” those in the east are “rebels”. Let’s at least try to see both sides and see we are probably getting false information from both, and some true from both. To do otherwise is just pure scary when people put their heads in the sand.

I consider myself a patriot and citizen and loyal to the United States but I am not buying everything that is said on their news as gospel. Nor will I believe there is not a propaganda machine in their media. The same goes for Ukraine or Russia. Falsehoods and truths come from all sources.

No one seems concerned about China or cultural cleansing of Tibet or the moving of Chinese settlers into Tibet, or other human rights violations. We trade with China, borrow money from them send our business to them at the expense of lost jobs in the west. China may prove to be a much bigger threat the well-being of the west than Russia. Everything east of the Urals will probably belong to the Chinese in time.

 

[Tbrightson]

He has restricted the distribution of homosexual materials to children.

As if that was going on . no, it just a “legal” avenue to persecute gays.

 

[Tbrightson]

boar2roar

You really cast aspersions at other posters for some reason. I’ve been on CAF for five years, and Ridgerunner has been on here longer than I have and I take him to be a great poster and Catholic. You just joined recently (relatively speaking to ridgerunner and myself) but you have pretty early attacked others who don’t share your worldview, basically stating they should or could be banned on CAF which is against Forum Rules I believe, unless you know something about being banned that we don’t.

However, looking through all your posts about evil neo-cons and Zionists and using, it seems to me, some alternative press for information on Ukraine, are you one of those anti-neocon/Zionists, etc. who believes 9/11 was an inside job? Seriously, your posts raise this question in my mind and I’d like to know: do you hold the US responsible for 9/11 or who in your mind is responsible? It’s a fair question because I find many people who defend Putin to the hilt in the West are often mixed in with the truthers and far-left or far-right conspiracy sites and this question is at least germane to understanding where you are coming from and your conception of reality and contemporary politics since you pretty easy jump onto threads on international politics.

Are you a 9/11 conspiracy theorist boar2roar?

Same reason why I asked hm about the holocaust…

 

[Path_Finder]

“elect a coup government”

How did I miss that gem!

Many of Russia’s popular conspiracy theories today involve the CIA. These are oftentimes fanned by the Russian government, which regularly attributes the democratic revolutions in neighboring states as well as the activities of liberal Russian organizations to the machinations of U.S. intelligence agencies. We’ve all heard wild conspiracy stories about the CIA, such as its supposed involvement in the 9/11 attacks. In America, these fairy tales gain no credibility, except among the kook fringes of the far-left and the far-right—or Rosie O’Donnell.

humanevents.com/2007/05/22/in-russia-conspiracy-theories-become-plausible/

This really demonstrates that the warped disinformation out there has to be avoided and those “West is bad” attitudes. We are told things like there was a coup and are suppose to be brainwashed in accepting it. The president fled the country, he is on the Interpol list, he robbed and plundered the country. He abdicated his position.

 

[Path_Finder]

Putin’s Secret Ukraine Plan ‘Leaked’

MOSCOW — Two weeks ago the editors of Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper famous in Russia for its investigative journalism, received an email from a Kremlin insider with a Word document attached. The email said that the document contained instructions on how to break Ukraine apart, and that the Kremlin had received that document from billionaire Konstantin Malofeyev in early February, well before Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych fled to Russia to escape the revolutionary fury of protesters in Kiev’s Maidan Square.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed all along that Russia’s sympathy and support for rebels in eastern Ukraine was the result of attacks by the Ukrainian factions that came to power after Yanukovych abandoned the ship of state exactly a year ago this week.

thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/25/russia-s-great-ukraine-conspiracy-revealed.html

Plans had always been to invade Ukraine.

 

[Path_Finder]

Unfortunately many people throughout the west and on this forum see the word “Russia” and it is automatically translates “bad”. If countries are in the sphere of influence of the “U.S.” or “U.K.”, they are translated as “good” Saudi Arabia is an extreme violator of many kinds of basic human rights but they are protected by the western governments for these reasons. There is economical profit from Saudi Arabia, so we turn a blind eye.

If information comes from a western media source it is “true” if it comes from a “Russian” source it is a " lie" or “falsified”. If photos come from the Ukraine it is “solid evidence”, if they come from Russia they have been “doctored” or “photo shopped”. What in the world would lead someone to believe photos or a story form Ukraine is automatically “true”? This isn’t the way the world works. There are bad people on both sides. Does Putin lie? Of course he does! Does Obama lie? You bet he does! Does Russian media falsify information? Yes. Does the media of the United States lie? Yes it does. Yet, so may people, hook, line and sinker buy in to whatever Fox News, NBC, whatever their news source as gospel. At least they do as far as anything relating to Ukraine or Russia. Protesters and those in the Ukraine who fire weapons or kill innocents are “freedom fighters” those in the east are “rebels”. Let’s at least try to see both sides and see we are probably getting false information from both, and some true from both. To do otherwise is just pure scary when people put their heads in the sand.

I consider myself a patriot and citizen and loyal to the United States but I am not buying everything that is said on their news as gospel. Nor will I believe there is not a propaganda machine in their media. The same goes for Ukraine or Russia. Falsehoods and truths come from all sources.

No one seems concerned about China or cultural cleansing of Tibet or the moving of Chinese settlers into Tibet, or other human rights violations. We trade with China, borrow money from them send our business to them at the expense of lost jobs in the west. China may prove to be a much bigger threat the well-being of the west than Russia. Everything east of the Urals will probably belong to the Chinese in time.

No, USA and UK did try to liberate Tibet, that happened just after World War II, so here we have it, USA, UK, NATO, Saudi Arabia bad. For your information, abortion is practically illegal in all cases in Saudi Arabia, compare that to many countries in the Northern Hemisphere but we hear so often, the Islamic countries are bad. Tibet is in a very remote area of the world as well, to really get at it.

Looks like there can be a ceasefire in Ukraine that can hold. Perhaps eventually, any land taken from them can be returned or at least, the whole situation studied.

UN peacekeepers need to be on the border to make sure, no new combatants enter into the war zone.

 

[Seamus_L]

In checking online forums I’ve found that most hardline leftists are actually very anti-Putin. Most condemn both sides in the situation in Ukraine, but they are definitely not fans of Russia, in fact I’ve heard them claim that Russian Communists are now Communist in name only. It was a left wing forum where I saw the claim by a Communist MP in Ukraine who stated that joining the EU will bring us Same Sex Marriage and African panhandlers. They thought that was horrible.

 

[Darryl1958]

How so? He has restricted the distribution of homosexual materials to children.
I believe that homosexuals have a lot more rights in Russia than they do in many countries which are strong allies of America, such as Saudi Arabia. One president has kissed and held hands with the prince of Saudi Arabia, while another has bowed to the prince. America’s ally, punishes homosexuals by capital punishment, whipping/flogging, and chemical castrations. America sells weapons to Saudi Arabia including 84 Boeing F-15 fighter jets and more than 100 attack helicopters. Actually, it will be a lot more as the US will sell $60bn worth of military aircraft to Saudi Arabia, in spite of the fact that homosexuals can be whipped or even executed in Saudi Arabia.

America’s former foe, Iran, hangs people of homosexuality. Of course, Obama is trying to get cozy with Iran now, so that may not be a good example anymore of an enemy of America.
That has a lot to do with sharia actually, and Islamism, which is something that people on the left have a lot of difficulty speaking out against either, unless it somehow can be made to reflect badly on America-as per Saudi Arabia.

What would you want America’s role to be with Saudi Arabia, since it has become a theme now with many of your posts?

 

[Ridgerunner]

It is strange how the leftists have turned full circle against the principles that normally motivate them. It wasn’t all that long ago that it was Tibet that was being taken over by an imperialist China, and it was the left back then that led the charge against really what was the same kind of imperialism and ethnic cleansing that was taking place in Tibet as is now happening in the Ukraine…

There are similarities between the far left and the far right. Both have a fundamentally totalitarian mindset. Both are rigidly doctrinnaire. Both are alienated from the society of which they are a part. The rest is just detail. It is not difficult for a person on one side of it to become one of the other side, because the central bases for being one are the same as being the other.

Was Stalin a leftist or a rightist? Did he start out on the left and end up on the right? Were the National Socialists left or right? Were they what we think of as “socialist” or were they what we think of as “fascist”.

Truth is, there’s so little difference between the two that the question is almost meaningless. The mindset, and not the peculiarities of policy, are what make them the way they are.

Certainly there are gradations. Are the members of the known American left totalitarians who hate their own society and thus idealize any simplistic “curative” concept that comes along? Well, they’re awfully intolerant of other views and (as we have seen) they are capable of saying things like “America is a mean country” (despite privilege therein), harking back a thousand years to find ways to condemn western society or Christianity.

The truly far right is similar, but there are gradations to that as well. Do the ultra-right also claim their own country is evil, despite the goodness of the great majority and of many of its institutions? Yes, but only in different ways.

Life is messy. Free societies are messy. Humans are flawed. Truth is objective, but it is not self-executing. It is largely the quest for simplicity that drives totalitarian thought processes in all but the dictators themselves. And since human life stubbornly refuses to conform to the simplicty they desire, they mentally (at least mentally) resort to force as the methodology.

And so, it is not surprising that many on the western left could admire Putin while many on the right do as well. He is the enemy of their societies. His messaging is simplistic. His methodology is force. It’s no wonder the fringes admire the man.

 

[Seamus_L]

Radical leftists hate Putin for being nationalistic, Christian and homophobic. In fact they now often use the very misleading term “National Boshevik” to describe some of his supporters.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Radical leftists hate Putin for being nationalistic, Christian and homophobic. In fact they now often use the very misleading term “National Boshevik” to describe some of his supporters.

While Bolshevism meant something to the “true believers”, it was never really held by those who had actual power. The reality of the Soviet Union was actually Leninism; a means of taking and holding power. As is often the case with totalitarian movements, the “true believers” are used while they’re useful, then oftentimes they’re shot when they’re not. In that respect there was not a dime’s worth of difference between Leninism and Nazism.

 

[Path_Finder]

Radical leftists hate Putin for being nationalistic, Christian and homophobic. In fact they now often use the very misleading term “National Boshevik” to describe some of his supporters.

Litvenenko describes him as a Pedophile? news.com.au/world/europe/former-russian-spy-accused-putin-of-being-kremlin-paedophile-before-his-death/story-fnh81p7g-1227205915682

That is your projection on how you describe him, Putin is doing well at what the Soviets have always done, aid shady regimes, aid criminal invasions.

 

[Seamus_L]

Google the name of just about any public figure in the world today and put Gay in quotes next to it, and chances are you’ll get alot of matches.

 

[Path_Finder]

Putin has had a very good image in the West, especially with relations with Bush. The only drawback people see has been the invasion.

Mainly the gay rights crowd was weary of him before.

Few people judge him as Christian or not, we can’t really know.

 

[Seamus_L]

I wouldn’t even want to take a guess at percentages, but among my fellow Traditional Catholics, I know of several who are in varying degrees sympathetic towards Russia. The basis for this is the Fatima prayers for the conversion of Russia. I don’t know anyone who believes Russia has been converted, but those who are sympathetic see Russia moving in a positive direction, while America and the West goes the other way.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I wouldn’t even want to take a guess at percentages, but among my fellow Traditional Catholics, I know of several who are in varying degrees sympathetic towards Russia. The basis for this is the Fatima prayers for the conversion of Russia. I don’t know anyone who believes Russia has been converted, but those who are sympathetic see Russia moving in a positive direction, while America and the West goes the other way.

Moving in a positive direction when their army is killing Christians in Ukraine in order to subject them to a Russian rule they don’t want?

I would say the direction is not that positive.

And I don’t know that you can equate all things American to all things western or compare them adversely to Russia. America has a vastly lower abortion rate than Russia, a much higher birth rate, and a vastly higher regular church attendance rate.

Having said that, I’ll agree that nearly all people need conversion.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Putin has had a very good image in the West, especially with relations with Bush. The only drawback people see has been the invasion.

Mainly the gay rights crowd was weary of him before.

Few people judge him as Christian or not, we can’t really know.

Let me disagree at least a little with the first sentence. Putin’s KGB background and rank made a lot of people distrustful of him. Bush, it seems, was fooled. Possibly Bush didn’t know the level of criminality it took to be in the Soviet KGB at all, let alone attain high rank within it. If so, there was a serious gap in Bush’s background knowledge of the KGB.

 

[FollowChrist34]

It is strange how the leftists have turned full circle against the principles that normally motivate them. It wasn’t all that long ago that it was Tibet that was being taken over by an imperialist China, and it was the left back then that led the charge against really what was the same kind of imperialism and ethnic cleansing that was taking place in Tibet as is now happening in the Ukraine…

That is more activism from the left than the right, and few if any people questioned the higher moral ground that the left was leading the activism from.

That is why it is so strange that it is the left, along with the far right too, that is standing behind Putin and the ethnic Russian supremacism that he is appealing to with his imperialist actions. This is not typically a leftist cause to back what is so obviously the aggressor in this battle, and support the larger nation taking over the territory of a smaller people.

It is a conspiracy theory to the extreme to think that America or the EU is somehow the aggressor here either, because everybody knows that in the best case scenario for the West, it will be the status quo where the Ukraine will remain the independent homeland of the Ukrainians. The more likely scenario at this point is that Russia will take over that country, in whole or in part, and, if in part, leaving what remains a dysfunctional shell of a country that will be too weak to thrive and prosper.

It is understandable enough that the far right religious zealots would support Putin, for he is really socks it to the gays and makes a big show out of his Orthodox faith. And if he has fascist, nationalist tendencies, that is really what the far right has always been about anyways.
It is the way that leftists here rally to that racist cause though that is a little perplexing. It seems as if the left has been supporting so many right quite evil causes across the globe for so long out of liberal white guilt or whatever, that a high degree of moral rot has set in, to where they no longer recognize that basic leftist principle of supporting the victim over the oppressor.

Great post. My personal theory is that imperialism that opposes the USA/West is OK to many on the left, self-justifying, no further explanation needed, if you will. I don’t think there is much attention given to the ugly, bloody past of these kinds of tyrannical governments. Franky the left is just as much about ideology as the right, if not more. This is not new. My sense is that we have not really seen the incredible suffering from totalitarianism or communism for, what 50 years now? New generation; the reality of this kind of tyranny is just not on their radar.

 

[Path_Finder]

Not his wife. Maybe his family is concerned about their own wellbeing.

 

[esieffe]

I don’t like Putin, and I really am not very wild about the Russians either, however Ukraine is not a member of NATO.

We simply cannot jump back into another cold war chess game against Russia, unless we are absolutely forced to, and at this point we are not. I don’t see where inaction by NATO undermines them as a deterrent.

American and for that matter English interests are not at stake, as far as I can tell, maybe I am wrong. What I do know is that we have a terrible homeless problem,

“On a single night in January 2013, 610,042 people were experiencing homelessness in the US.”
endhomelessness.org/library/entry/the-state-of-homelessness-2014

The UK also has a serious homeless problem. Everyone has heard the stats for the US DOD budget figures are. If that is not a deterrence, I don’t know what is. I am sick to death of the US spending our tax dollars on proxy wars when so many homeless families and mentally ill people sleep in the streets or live in filth and poverty. We need jobs not more wars that in the long run accomplishes little other than killing people. Iraq was enough.

The price of the Iraq and Afghan wars cost in excess of 4 trillion dollars to the US taxpayers.
washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/study-iraq-afghan-war-costs-to-top-4-trillion/2013/03/28/b82a5dce-97ed-11e2-814b-063623d80a60_story.html

The number of Iraqis killed in the Iraq war in the first four years is up to half a million.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

Finally, Ukraine support for NATO membership has always been horrible, that is until they found themselves in hot water with the Russians. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations

Enough is enough.