EU/US overzealous effort to bring Ukraine into their camp and Putins overplay of nationalism. Ukraine should stay neutral, do biz with both, favor neither and this goes for military cooperation also. Putin is a snake in the grass, bush on steroids, so I wouldn't trust him to do whats best for anything but Putin. Same goes for the EU banksters and the US military industrial complex.

the same thing to keep an important naval base, specifically mentioning the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters base at Bahrain. (this in a July 17, 2014 broadcast). The Crimea was especially important to Russia because of its naval base there.

Yeah, sure Tom, we would have annexed Bahrain if they had been trying to kick us out. Yeah, right tom.

But hey, Russia Today (oops, RT now) pays the bills, just like ITM Trading and miracle beets.

Actually, he's my favorite progressive radio talk show host, but when it gets to matters regarding Russia (and those aggressive Georgian warmongers and the Maidan Fascists), he is laughable.

It's a Russia speaking population, with Russian roots.
Take a look at maps of ethnic splits in Ukraine, the sharp divisions.
Now read the recent history with open and unprejudiced eyes.

Oh yes, I'd better add that no, I don't want to have pooti-poot's baby. I just don't see how a way forward can be found by magnifying the hate day after day after day.

another country, then it's OK for the other country to invade and take it? Imagine if that were the norm around the world, given all the minority populations there are. We would have about 100 more wars going on worldwide. That would "magnify the hate day after day after day" more than anything.

And my one and only point was about the idiocy of Hartmann saying its OK for Russia to seize territory because it has an important naval base in that territory, and the U.S. would do the same way with Bahrain. That is absolute pure baloney.

[font color = blue] >>I just don't see how a way forward can be found by magnifying the hate day after day after day.<<[/font]

And say nothing when Russia takes whatever territory it wants? Or else we're magnifying hate? Got it. Well, Russia ought to get the fuck out of Ukraine. They did sign a treaty you know back in 1992 or whenever agreeing to the independence of Ukraine in return for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons.

[font color = blue]>>Now read the recent history with open and unprejudiced eyes. <<[/font]

Likewise you. And I don't know how commenting on the silliness of Hartmann's saying the U.S. would use military force against Bahrain to keep a naval base means I'm not reading recent history with open and unprejudiced eyes.

You wrote: "Yeah, sure Tom, we would have annexed Bahrain if they had been trying to kick us out. Yeah, right tom."
Well, Crimea didn't vote to kick Russia out, it voted *massively* to unite with Russia. That wasn't an invasion so you have your analogy backwards.

Did you look at the demographic maps of Ukraine? Did you? Did you look at Ukraine's geographical location?
Bahrain is half a world away from the USA. Bahrain isn't a border country. There is no similar historical tie.

I say again, read history with open and unprejudiced eyes. Magnifying hatred day after day, week after week, month after month, isn't a good way forward.

And, erm... just how many wars *is* the USA involved in at this moment, consolidating US economic and strategic interests? Not that two wrongs make a right, but it ought to give a USian pause.

1.5 registered voters in Crimea

How about Gallup?
http://www.bbg.gov/wp-content/media/2014/06/Ukraine-research-brief.pdf

Cr
imeans are overwhelmingly likely to view Russia’s role
in the crisis as positive (71.3%) rather than negative
(8.8%). Outside of Crimea, responses are practically
reversed (66.4% see Russia’s role as negative, 15.6%
positive).

Last edited Sat Mar 14, 2015, 01:11 AM - Edit history (1)

There are a lot of populations that want to be part of another country. But that doesn't justify one country just grabbing that population/territory away from the other. That's what we have diplomacy, negotiations, and treaties for. Just because Sudeten Germans wanted to join the German Fatherland does not give Germany the right to take that part of Czechoslovakia.

There are Russian minority populations in many of the countries bounding Russia. Does that give a right for Russia to invade, yes invade, these countries to grab those territories? (Crimea was Ukrainian territory).

And I still think Thom Hartmann was an idiot for implying we would annex Bahrain or the naval base if they tried to kick us out of our naval base, and using that as an excuse for saying its OK for Russia to annex Crimea because we'd do the same to Bahrain. Cuckoo. It was Thom Hartmann by the way that used that shitty analogy, not me, and that was the whole point of my original post (#3).



If "magnifying hate" is not being Neville Chamberlain and meekly acquiescing in territorial grabbing, than so be it.

no one's going to listen to you

You posted from RT! A pox on you.

and analytical perspective that Wolff is applying.

He is not disagreeing with much of what you say, and I don't think he is advocating for a violent revolution but rather looking at a historical pattern in which a situation like that in Ukraine has led to a violent revolution. I don't think he is advocating for or predicting a violent revolution but he is predicting frustration and change.

And he is probably right about the fact that capitalism is abandoning the US or at least parts of the US and some of Western Europe. New production of new products is not being done that much in the US anymore.

The situation in the Ukraine and in Greece and a few other countries is pretty depressing.

A lot of American don't realize how bad it really is. And there is a resurgence of a lot of extreme right-wing naitionalism and racial and/or ethnic intolerance rising in Europe. I'm sorry to say that, but some right-wing parties have been gaining support in elections in various places. We don't hear that much about it here, but it is a fact.

So, I understand your concern because the conversation sounds exaggerated but I don't think that either Hartmann or Wolff are particularly positive about Russia. I don't think they are positive about the economy anywhere in Europe or the US.

And frankly, why should they be? If our economy were doing as well as we are encouraged to believe, interest rates would be higher. When they start gong up and continue to rise, then you know that the economy is heating up. Until them, a touch of gloom and concern about what the international reaction and in particular the reaction in countries with particularly troubled or vulnerable economies like Greece, maybe Spain, Ukraine, etc. is in order. It is appropriate. It's like a tea kettle that rises to a boil. Has happened regularly in history. The most obvious and well known examples of this kind of reaction in history are France at the time of their revolution overthrowing a right-wing, conservative regime and NAZI Germany, overthrowing a fledgling democratic regime that was not steady on its feet. But there are lots of other examples.

We hold elections every four years. And some of our elections have brought about abrupt changes in our economic structure. We have kind of a safety valve that, when it works, and it has so far, relieves us of the tendency to violent revolution to respond to an economic or social cul de sac. We shall see what happens in Ukraine and Greece.

Greece is most definitely in an economic cul de sac. The European Market will have to restructure itself if it is to survive the pressure on it. I agree on that. Germany is extremely successful economically. But much of Europe is having a rough time.

And yes, oligarchy is a big problem across the globe in my opinion. The reason our economy is not really warming up is that the middle class and the poor don't have enough of the money. It isn't a matter of the greedy rich and the inept rest of us. It is a matter of the fact that there has to be a certain balance in the distribution of purchasing power and investment ability in order to have an economy that runs efficiently. If you have too much investment power and too little purchasing power spread out among consumers, you have too little demand and deflation. It's like trying to run a car on gas that is too rich. If you have too much purchasing power and too little investment and therefore too few products, you have inflation, and it's like trying to climb a steep hill with too little horse power.

So the key to economic health is like the key to personal health -- a balanced economy. A balanced life. The exact balance, the perfect balance is, I believe not yet been figured out. So we are bound to have some periods in which we have to restructure or rebalance a bit. It isn't a matter of bad guys and good guys. It is a matter of finding the right balance.

That is my understanding of what is being said in that discussion.

Combining him with Professor Wolff is like Nirvana.

They do not equate the old soviet dictatorship with Ukraine's economic problems. They merely point out how both economic systems were devastating to the country. Neither system worked for them.

The country may have other freedoms now, but what is freedom when you can't buy a loaf of bread? They then go on to bash the EU's austerity plans. It deserves bashing. It has led to the uber rich getting richer while the rest of us tighten our belts. Austerity is a failed system as is shown by the results in Greece.

So you think the greedy and corrupt will rule forever? Do you believe there is a tipping point that the mass of people will rise up and claim their fair share or will the masses continue to be abused and controlled by the corporate capitalist? History shows us there are tipping points such as France and the American colonies in the late 1700s, Russia's overthrow of the Czar, the wave of liberalism that had FDR voted in over and over again. There have been many tipping points through out history. For Thom and Professor Wolff to theorize and discuss them is merely a natural intellectual exercise. It provides hope for some of us who are being crushed under the US form of austerity.

except Hartmann and Wolff give a pass to Putin's Russia while talking about Ukraine. How they can work up a lather about the EU while never condemning the human rights nightmare that is an expansionist fascist Russia is just disgraceful. So I believe their message is the old Trojan Horse tactic--by spouting truisms while ignoring other glaring realities, they create an anti-West scenario in service to Putin's fascism. This is, after all, an RT video.

Despite having a media entity in the US (which we allowed, encouraged and made money off of) Russia has a really bad reputation and many people, especially RepubliCONS, want to start another war with them.

If the US had helped out Russia when it had thrown out its dictatorship, we would have room to criticize. But we let them flounder and suffer and encouraged corporate capitalism to use them for fun and profit. Since we chose not to help them when they came asking, it was almost inevitable something like Putin would raise it's ugly head.

I suspect Thom and Professor Wolff felt that kicking a dead horse is kind of useless.

...especially given the kleptocracy Putin has perfected. Check out this PBS video, it's incredible: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/putins-way/

Putin possibly has $2 Billion in the bank. There are more billions in his cronies' bank accounts. That's a more direct source of Russia's economic problems.

And Obama gave a very sincere "reset button" to Putin--which he promptly rejected and started down the Stalin path. Not the USA's fault either.

You ascribe very kind motives to Hartmann and Wolff. That's possible but unlikely to me. We both know who is paying Hartmann's rent at RT.

And then we have Ferguson and similar situations. So we all have something to work on. Putin's Russia has far more to work on than we do when it comes to human rights.

The US led by Wilson at the peace negotiations in Paris in 1919 argued for attempting to define nations as much as possible by ethnic adherence. It did not work well, not least because no one at the conference had the means to identify or measure ethnic concentrations in various parts of Europe in order to set national boundaries defined by them.

So we are partly responsible for the idea that people of a certain ethnicity should belong to a country that is in the majority of that ethnicity. It was never a rule, just a guideline that was used during the post-WWI negotiations leading to the Treaty of Versailles.

See the book, Paris, 1919, Six Months That Changed the World. I read it recently and loved it. If you know Europe, you will enjoy it, I think. Many of our problems today arose from mistakes made at that time -- mistakes due to the fact that they just did not have the knowledge of the world that we now have. It was not so much, in my opinion, a matter of moral failing, but rather of the lack of the technology that helps learn about the world.

Thanks for that book recommend. It kills me how much of our current problems come from that era.

I'm aware that many of the seeds of later evils started in the USA. Eugenics, for example. & Ferguson reveals a nightmare that the country is now starting to wake up to and deal with. But the US has come a long way and has the moral arc that MLK referred to. Putin's arc is going in the other direction, and he's not keeping it inside the borders of Russia.

Look at the corruption scores
http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-report-2014-2015/economies/#economy=UKR

The system of government is so bad it needs to be overhauled, everything is centrally governed the courts, law enforcement, everything which the size of the country compounds the problem even more. Croatia, they have a good system of government. Ukraine doesn't, early elections?

Is an example for good governance.... At least not historically. But That nothing to do with the subject at hand. Russia is just as a corrupt, or more. Where did Putin's billions come from? Lots of corruption to go around.

I think no real governmental reform can happen while they are struggling to maintain their sovereignty.

Russia is #2.

Same problems took place in both countries, right wing oligarchs took power. The constitutional crisis in Russia seems to be resolved, Ukraine is obviously still in. How many Constitutions do they have? Which one is the current one?

My reply addresses parts of the OP so that was the subject of my reply. There is a lot of Putin bashing so mentioning the issues in Ukraine, maintaining its sovereignty -- the problems are coming from the industrial East. The 1776 revolution here at home was pretty violent but say if Eastern Ukraine won self-rule or Independence. It would be difficult to come up with a more corrupt country but it would be more representative to their own interests which isn't the case of the large Ukraine which everything is centrally governed, a regional states like in the US would be more helpful.

Real governmental reform can't happen if they don't address why they are struggling to maintain their sovereignty, I agree Putin isn't helpful but he is far from the root cause.

since the days of bashing Randi Rhodes threads. Whose next? Rachel Maddow? If you are really concerned about this, why not take it to Thom, himself about it and call into his show to discuss it with him. Maybe you will find his insight is deeper than you give him credit for.

btw Thom is a DUer.