World Politics

[blutto]

Re:

Regime change in Russia? Get real. Look outside your fishbowl once in awhile.

....well, she is stark raving nuts....and that can be easily seen even if one were, hypothetically, inside a fishbowl ( fishbowls, you see, have transparent sides, unlike the dark places that some people have their heads stuck in )...

Cheers

 

[Bustedknuckle]

Re: Re:

So you're incapable of thinking about Clinton's Russia strategy? Won't matter after the election as you'll just snap to against the "enemy".

It's great for you--and all of us--that the body breathes without being told.

....and he is also continually confusing the USSR and Russia as well as Communists and Russians....we can just write that off as a significant part of his considerable charm I suppose...

....and btw he also wants you to get off his lawn, like, right now !....

Cheers

Nope, just you.

And this from the people that brought you Clinton's idea of Russian regine change,.

http://mirrorspectrum.com/spectrum/hillary-clintons-strategic-ambition-in-a-nutshell-regime-change-in-russia-putin-is-an-obstacle

http://mirrorspectrum.com/behind-the-mirror/alien-lifeform-seen-moving-on-mars-in-new-nasa-footage

 

[Bustedknuckle]

Re:

Well you know that axiom about fascism: the most fearful are the most prone and susceptible.

yup, just ask the donald..kinda like the deplorables.

 

[djpbaltimore]

Re:

Let's hear "real".

For one, I have a lot of issues with Johnstone. Her whitewashing of the LGBT persecution in Russia does not indicate a person who is viewing these issues from a neutral position. Her big failing IMO is that she accuses the US 'War party' of demonizing other leaders to achieve their aims while she herself demonizes people like Clinton in a very black and white manner to achieve her aim. It seems like she is throwing out more hyperbole to backstop her previous book of hyperbole. She is devoid of any nuance. As for this article....

She has big ambitions, which she does not spell out for fear of frightening part of the electorate, but which are perfectly understood by her closest aides and biggest donors.

What evidence is there for these 'dog whistles'? Is she in contact with the aides or donors?

The method: a repeat of the 1979 Brezinski ploy, which consisted of luring Moscow into Afghanistan, in order to get the Russians bogged down in their “Vietnam”. As the Russians are a much more peace-loving people ( :lol: ), largely because of what they suffered in two World Wars, the Russian involvement in Afghanistan was very unpopular and can be seen as a cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

By whom? This reeks of historical revisionism. And it hints that Clinton's machiavellian plan all along was to lure Russia into Syria. Ohhhhh-kay.......

The new version of this old strategy is to use Russia’s totally legal and justifiable efforts to save Syria from destruction in order to cause enough Russian casualties to incite anti-Putin reaction in Russia leading to his overthrow. (Note State Department spokesman John Kirby’s recent warning that Russia will soon be “sending troops home in body bags”.)

To keep Assad in power would be a more honest statement.

U.S. reaction: a huge propaganda campaign condemning this normal military operation as “criminal”, while driving ISIS forces out of Mosul with attacks from the East, so that they will move westward into Syria, to fight against the Assad government.

That is quite a leap considering the makeup of the army fighting in Mosul, right?

Hillary Clinton’s ambition – made explicit by her own and her close aides’ statements about Libya in emails at the time – is to gain her place in history as victorious strategist of “regime change”, using open and covert methods (“smart power”), thus bringing recalcitrant regions under control of the “exceptional, good” nation, the United States.
This ambition is backed by possession of nuclear weapons.

Regime change in Libya is indeed a black mark against her. But the nukes are a red herring. The Russians have nukes too.

I am by no means saying that this plan will succeed. But it is very clearly the plan.

Can there any doubt with this fine 'evidence'? :lol:

The electoral circus is a distraction from such crucially serious matters.

This is much the same argument she has made about LGBT rights. Only what is important to Johnstone should be discussed in her view.

 

[rhubroma]

Re:

So you're incapable of thinking about Clinton's Russia strategy? Won't matter after the election as you'll just snap to against the "enemy".

It's great for you--and all of us--that the body breathes without being told.

President Trump will be terrible for America, President Hillary might be for the world.

 

[djpbaltimore]

More from Ms. Johnstone. AG is the interviewer (Ann Garrison) and was done last summer FYI. Look how she deftly paints the USA as an oppressor of Christians and supporter of Islam.

AG: Why were Serbians a US target? And why were Bosnian Muslims favored?

DJ: Well, for one thing, the Clinton Administration and subsequent administrations have had a policy of allying with Muslims all around the world. Partly in a long term anti-Russian strategy which goes back to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s policy of supporting Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. The notion that the soft foolsjohnstoneunderbelly of the Russian Empire is Muslim and that they can be used against Orthodox Christians – that’s a long term US strategy going back to Brzezinski’s role in the 1970s.

AG: In the Carter Administration?

DJ: Yes, and so Serbia was seen as a potential Russian ally in the region, as the Serbs are Orthodox Christians, and so that was the reason it was targeted. The story was that Orthodox Christians are the bad guys and the Muslims are the good guys. And that’s been a constant US strategy for the last several decades.

By all means, read more about her views on the genocide at this terrific link. At one point her argument is that men and boys of military age die during war, so what is the big deal? (paraphrasing). Then later claims that the massacre might've been a false flag set up by the Muslims themselves to bring the USA and NATO into the war. Yikes.... http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/16/denying-the-srebrenica-genocide-because-its-not-true-an-interview-with-diana-johnstone/

 

[BullsFan22]

Clinton has really gone into overdrive with her "Russian Aggression" tactic in the past week or so. Irrespective of what we think of it, it's dangerous. The thing is that Americans are falling for it and instead of rationally thinking about it, they are blinded by this rhetoric.

And of course, no 'rhetoric' coming from the trumpistas..of course not. No americans are 'falling' for trump's bloviation, as it changes day to day. Of course not..maybe only the white angry types?

Why do you and folks like Baltimore continuously label people as Trump supporters when someone is against Clinton's foreign policy? Just because I am strongly against Clinton's war mongering, doesn't mean I am a 'Trumpista.' Unless you were indirectly putting someone else in that group, but was merely replying to me. Still, the point stands. I've stated my position on both of the 'major' candidates on more than one occasion here. It's quite telling though, when if you don't support Clinton, you are automatically a Republican, or Trumpista or whatever words or phrases you use to label those with different views, and at the same time, someone that doesn't fall for Trump, they are automatically a Clintonite.

You need to broaden your horizons if that's your outlook.

 

[djpbaltimore]

I think you should try reading that again. It is pretty clearly not pointed at posters. Have I ever accused you of being a Trump supporter?

Along the same lines, did you have any issue with blutto and others who are continuously insinuating that I and others who admit to voting for Clinton are 'on the payroll', or that I am in league with ISIS, or that I don't care about anybody outside of the USA. If you have none, you are operating with double standards IMO.

 

[aphronesis]

@dj, come on. you don't need to read johnstone to think clinton's going somewhere with the russia angle. you think she just has bad memories of hiding under the desk with knuckle in the 50s?

sorry not seeing the overlap of foreign policy and LGBT rights.

Are you saying Afghanistan was popular and propped up the Republic?

Are you saying Clinton is not working in the interests of her donors? Are you morphing into Velo and the clinic doubters? You want a confession and box of chocolates.

 

[aphronesis]

Re: Re:

So you're incapable of thinking about Clinton's Russia strategy? Won't matter after the election as you'll just snap to against the "enemy".

It's great for you--and all of us--that the body breathes without being told.

President Trump will be terrible for America, President Hillary might be for the world.

Any vetted candidate will be bad for the US. Word seems slow getting out at home.

 

[djpbaltimore]

I would most definitely accept a box of chocolates. (Unless they were one of those Whitman sampler (AKA crimes against humanity) ones that you get around the holidays.)

Where she is going with this Russia angle IMO is mostly tough-talk rhetoric to drum up more votes. I know you did not watch the debate, but Clinton answered the question of the Wikileaks by pivoting to Russia, Russia, Russia. There are still a lot of people in the USA that will resonate with. And the demographic who are probably the most susceptible to that tactic are the demographic who vote the most (i.e 60+). Neither candidate has offered much in terms of Russia policy. Suggesting a "regime change" plan of action by reading the tea leaves like she is doing is the height of folly. YMMV...

Johnstone has suggested in The Queen of Chaos that the dems have used the LGBT persecution in Russia to demonize them in the eyes of the USA public in preparation for the WAR. To her, it is 'identity politics' and is not important.

I'm saying that Afghanistan had little to do with the fall of the USSR. Or, to put it another way, much less than she implied with that sentence.

I'm saying that there is no way that Johnstone can know what other people are thinking or there ambitions if she has not talked to them. Donors, aids, Clinton herself, etc....Or that her donors have some monolithic consensus over something like Russia. This is mostly an exercise in confirmation bias by her.

 

[blutto]

Re:

I would most definitely accept a box of chocolates. (Unless they were one of those Whitman sampler (AKA crimes against humanity) ones that you get around the holidays.)

Where she is going with this Russia angle IMO is mostly tough-talk rhetoric to drum up more votes. I know you did not watch the debate, but Clinton answered the question of the Wikileaks by pivoting to Russia, Russia, Russia. There are still a lot of people in the USA that will resonate with. And the demographic who are probably the most susceptible to that tactic are the demographic who vote the most (i.e 60+). Neither candidate has offered much in terms of Russia policy. Suggesting a "regime change" plan of action by reading the tea leaves like she is doing is the height of folly. YMMV...

Johnstone has suggested in The Queen of Chaos that the dems have used the LGBT persecution in Russia to demonize them in the eyes of the USA public in preparation for the WAR. To her, it is 'identity politics' and is not important.

I'm saying that Afghanistan had little to do with the fall of the USSR. Or, to put it another way, much less than she implied with that sentence.

I'm saying that there is no way that Johnstone can know what other people are thinking or there ambitions if she has not talked to them. Donors, aids, Clinton herself, etc....Or that her donors have some monolithic consensus over something like Russia. This is mostly an exercise in confirmation bias by her.

....and frankly you really have absolutely no idea what you are talking about....but by all means carry on...we all know its just in good fun...

Cheers

 

[aphronesis]

I didn't watch the last debate. I had elsewhere's to be.

Sabre rattling for votes is one thing. How about the Ukraine? You think this is going away.

It is identity politics. And they are subordinate to capital and political calculus.

No one is suggesting a monolithic agenda. At the same time the cheerleaders act as if these things happen in a sunny void with pretty clouds.

I think you read that sentence too hard. And it was significant., maybe not decisive, but there's a raft of literature and as Blutto might say, this topic may not be your wheelhouse. Prove me wrong.

I don't eat candy, but organic and artisinal would be where it's at.

Again, why are you stuck arguing with Counterpunch?

 

[blutto]

Re:

More from Ms. Johnstone. AG is the interviewer (Ann Garrison) and was done last summer FYI. Look how she deftly paints the USA as an oppressor of Christians and supporter of Islam.

AG: Why were Serbians a US target? And why were Bosnian Muslims favored?

DJ: Well, for one thing, the Clinton Administration and subsequent administrations have had a policy of allying with Muslims all around the world. Partly in a long term anti-Russian strategy which goes back to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s policy of supporting Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. The notion that the soft foolsjohnstoneunderbelly of the Russian Empire is Muslim and that they can be used against Orthodox Christians – that’s a long term US strategy going back to Brzezinski’s role in the 1970s.

AG: In the Carter Administration?

DJ: Yes, and so Serbia was seen as a potential Russian ally in the region, as the Serbs are Orthodox Christians, and so that was the reason it was targeted. The story was that Orthodox Christians are the bad guys and the Muslims are the good guys. And that’s been a constant US strategy for the last several decades.

By all means, read more about her views on the genocide at this terrific link. At one point her argument is that men and boys of military age die during war, so what is the big deal? (paraphrasing). Then later claims that the massacre might've been a false flag set up by the Muslims themselves to bring the USA and NATO into the war. Yikes.... http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/16/denying-the-srebrenica-genocide-because-its-not-true-an-interview-with-diana-johnstone/

....gawd even by your low standards this a real low standard effort....and you consider yourself one of "the smart guys in the room"...

....paraphrasing eh....well there is paraphrasing and there is also its evil twin, bs.....could you please show the line that you paraphrased....you know, so we can see whether is it reasonably paraphrased or just self-serving crap....

Cheers

.....

 

[aphronesis]

@dj, you don't think the use of the word genocide in the 90s was overdetermined by the long shadow of the Shoah?

 

[djpbaltimore]

Her argument was that the anti-war movement among the Russians as a result of the Afghanistan invasion led to the toppling of the USSR. I think that is revisionist history. What evidence is there to support her notion? I think the USSR falls even without Afghanistan based on greater economic drivers. But I will concede that the experience was a factor, just not in the way that she suggested.

How is Ukraine going to lead to 'regime change'? Is this another lure?

Bigotry effects people just as much as War does. Her whitewashing of that point is troubling to me. And her framing the greater middle east political quagmire mostly in terms of the US/ Russia dynamic ignores a pretty substantial elephant in the room.

blutto tried posting authoritatively about Biology in the LeMond thread even though he wasn't being factual. Never did I resort to telling him that it wasn't in his 'wheelhouse'. I just posted evidence why he was wrong.

Because people who post articles from there treat the missives like the commandments coming down from Mt Sinai. I will add that the article you posted was interesting in a good way, so that is not a blanket statement. And it should be noted that the Johnstone piece was posted in many venues.

 

[djpbaltimore]

Re: Re:

....gawd even by your low standards this a real low standard effort....and you consider yourself one of "the smart guys in the room"...

....paraphrasing eh....well there is paraphrasing and there is also its evil twin, bs.....could you please show the line that you paraphrased....you know, so we can see whether is it reasonably paraphrased or just self-serving crap....

Cheers

.....

Well there is a link that you can go to and read for yourself.

And also, the fact that since it was men and boys of military age, this cannot be genocide. This is the sort of massacre that happens in wars.

 

[djpbaltimore]

Re:

@dj, you don't think the use of the word genocide in the 90s was overdetermined by the long shadow of the Shoah?

I tend to agree with you on this point. Particular words have more power than others to raise the fighting spirit. And I do agree with the notion that the call to arms because we have to intercede beforehand to prevent future genocide from happening is a slippery slope.

 

[blutto]

Re: Re:

....gawd even by your low standards this a real low standard effort....and you consider yourself one of "the smart guys in the room"...

....paraphrasing eh....well there is paraphrasing and there is also its evil twin, bs.....could you please show the line that you paraphrased....you know, so we can see whether is it reasonably paraphrased or just self-serving crap....

Cheers

.....

Well there is a link that you can go to and read for yourself.

And also, the fact that since it was men and boys of military age, this cannot be genocide. This is the sort of massacre that happens in wars.

....just to put a foundation to that cherry picked quote....

Men get killed because of what they are; they’re on the other side. That’s what it’s all about. And of course it happened on both sides. This was a war; it wasn’t just Serbs killing Muslims. Muslims were killing Serbs. I mean this was a civil war with two sides fighting.

....and yeah read that article and you had to twist things pretty darn hard to get what you wanted out of them...and frankly your interpretation was self-serving crap....hope your lab work is not that shoddy....

Cheers

 

[aphronesis]

Re:

Her argument was that the anti-war movement among the Russians as a result of the Afghanistan invasion led to the toppling of the USSR. I think that is revisionist history. What evidence is there to support her notion? I think the USSR falls even without Afghanistan based on greater economic drivers. But I will concede that the experience was a factor, just not in the way that she suggested.

How is Ukraine going to lead to 'regime change'? Is this another lure?

Bigotry effects people just as much as War does. Her whitewashing of that point is troubling to me. And her framing the greater middle east political quagmire mostly in terms of the US/ Russia dynamic ignores a pretty substantial elephant in the room.

blutto tried posting authoritatively about Biology in the LeMond thread even though he wasn't being factual. Never did I resort to telling him that it wasn't in his 'wheelhouse'. I just posted evidence why he was wrong.

Because people who post articles from there treat the missives like the commandments coming down from Mt Sinai. I will add that the article you posted was interesting in a good way, so that is not a blanket statement. And it should be noted that the Johnstone piece was posted in many venues.

Well, if the US turns the Ukraine into another crippled state (sorry: ally) then that further reduces Russia's reach. Trick question?

What she said is not what you quoted. Yes, postmodern economics broke the Republic, and, so, the modernist Afghan campaign figured heavily in that.

Bigotry doesn't just effect people; bigotry is built, but treating niche lifestyle options as a universal entitlement is missing the bigger picture.

CP provides an alternative to the formatted narratives. It's written on the fly and publishes free near daily. Your resistance is from its resistance. Take what's useful and move on.

 

[djpbaltimore]

No, I am curious what you think the endgame in Ukraine is for Clinton if she is interested in regime change in Russia. The Zbig method would suggest letting them in. That does not appear to be her strategy AFAIK.

What she quoted was that the peace loving Russians orchestrated the dissolution when it actually arose from outside Russia proper. And due to the fact that it showed structural weakness, not due to it being unpopular. Those are her words. If she meant something else, she should've edited it to have more clarity.

As the Russians are a much more peace-loving people, largely because of what they suffered in two World Wars, the Russian involvement in Afghanistan was very unpopular and can be seen as a cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Seeing the minority's fight for equal rights and treatment as political theater is also missing the point by a large margin and might indicate that she can't empathize with that kind of situation. If she could just condemn the Russians for that legislation mindset and not use it as yet another cudgel to beat the War party with, I could overlook this point easier.

 

[aphronesis]

You're saying that what she says about Russia is the measure of her intent?

I thiught you read the Urie piece.

 

[djpbaltimore]

Re: Re:

....just to put a foundation to that cherry picked quote....

Men get killed because of what they are; they’re on the other side. That’s what it’s all about. And of course it happened on both sides. This was a war; it wasn’t just Serbs killing Muslims. Muslims were killing Serbs. I mean this was a civil war with two sides fighting.

....and yeah read that article and you had to twist things pretty darn hard to get what you wanted out of them...and frankly your interpretation was self-serving crap....hope your lab work is not that shoddy....

Cheers

As always, your replies are vindictive and lacking any intellectual merit. But it is like the sun coming up in the east. Something I have gotten used to on a daily basis. I am shocked that you have been awarded a PhD. I don't think I have seen a more close-minded and negative person with a doctorate in my career in academia. Even the negative people occasionally try to argue things on merit.

Lost amid this hoopla is the deeply flawed research done by Johnstone about the massacre.

http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=6494

The quality of Johnstone’s ‘scholarship’ may be gauged from some of the Serb-nationalist falsehoods she repeats uncritically, such as the claim that the Serb Nazi-collaborationist leader Draza Mihailovic formed ‘the first armed guerrilla resistance to Nazi occupation in all of Europe’ (p. 291) - a myth long since exploded by serious historians (see for example Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945: The Chetniks, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1975, pp. 124, 137). Or Johnstone’s claim that Croatia in 1990 ‘rapidly restored the symbols of the dread 1941 [Nazi-puppet] state - notably the red and white checkerboard flag, which to Serbs was the equivalent of the Nazi swastika’ (p. 23) - a falsehood that can be refuted by a glance at any complete version of the Yugoslav constitution, which clearly shows that the Croatian chequerboard - far from being a fascist symbol equivalent to the swastika - was an official symbol of state in Titoist Yugoslavia (see, for example the 1950 edition of the Yugoslav constitution, published by Sluzbeni list, Belgrade, which shows the Croatian chequerboard as a Yugoslav symbol of state on p. 115; or the 1974 edition published by Prosveta, Belgrade, which shows the Croatian chequerboard - in full colour - at the start of the text). It would require an entire article to list and refute all the numerous errors and falsehoods in Johnstone's book; Chomsky praises it because he sympathises with her political views, not because it has any scholarly merit.

Were the victims soldiers or civilians. Or is any man or boy of military age a soldier by definition?

To sum up Johnstone’s position on Srebrenica: she blames everything that happened there on the Muslims; claims they provoked the Serb offensive in the first place; then deliberately engineered their own killing; and then exaggerated their own death-toll. She denies that thousands of Muslims were massacred; suggesting there is no evidence for a number higher than 199 - less than 2.5% of the accepted figure of eight thousand. And she eschews the word 'massacre' in favour of 'execution' - as if it were a question of criminals on Death Row, not of innocent civilians. It is as if she were to claim that less than 150,000 Jews, rather than six million, had died in the Holocaust; that the Jews had provoked and engineered the Nazi killings; that these killings had been 'executions'; and that the Jews had then exaggerated their death toll. She is ready to excuse the Srebrenica killings as retaliation for Oric’s earlier killings of Serb civilians - but does not mention that Oric’s crimes took place long after the war had already begun and Serb forces had begun slaughtering Muslims all over Bosnia. She does not mention how Srebrenica became an ‘enclave’ in the first place: through Serb aggression against, and conquest of, East Bosnia in 1992, and the killing and expulsion of the Muslim population that this involved - against which the Srebrenica Muslims were temporarily able to hold out as an 'enclave'. All in all, this can reasonably be called denial; insofar as it is not complete denial - she recognises less than 2.5% of the massacre - it is an apologia for the Serb forces.

 

[djpbaltimore]

I meant the cockburn article. The Urie piece turned me off at Frankenstein and Eichmann. I can't speak to the rest.

 

[aphronesis]

Eichmann is highly relevant these days.