TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett Audiobook

This post has 42 comments with rating of 4.6/542

• 
  caesar963
  April 27th, 2023
  

  

  This one’s good & very good.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  Mria
  April 27th, 2023
  

  There’s now a movement of decolonization of the Russian studies, because Western researchers realized that they perceived Russia and peoples colonized by it from the Moscow’s imperial point of view. This looks interesting.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  April 27th, 2023
  

  That’s intriguing. You mean the privileging of the dominant Russian perspective? So, they realised they were essentially academically compromised? The prof I had for Russian hx & culture certainly loved Russia (& really communicated this), but not any of its depressingly awful regimes.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  illodiini
  April 27th, 2023
  

  There is no history as we see it. There’s just chaos we try to rationalize. One can choose to hate or admire Russia and its “accomplishments”, but it’s really a mess.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  April 27th, 2023
  

  Ah here, everything is a profusion of “things” & events which we must perceive & interpret. This does not mean that history - or all the manifold dimensions of reality - do/does not exist. Methinks you haven’t that 1 thru, me old compadre. It’s a bit like saying: “Well, this life business, I can’t make head nor tail of it, why bother?” - or some such counsel of Scandinavian despair…

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  April 27th, 2023
  

  “you haven’t ‘Thought’ that 1 thru,” of course. It’s certainly revealing that I thoughtlessly omitted thought. Like a Freudian whatchamacallit.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  illodiini
  April 27th, 2023
  

  Of course there is History. But there’s no plan or sense in that story.
  “Well, this life business, I can’t make head nor tail of it, why bother?”
  Sounds like fun. Must try that one.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  April 27th, 2023
  

  Well, there are complex causal sequences, consequential dynamics & social trends operating. I suppose I’m not sure precisely what it is you think is lacking in the whole process? How’s the cat?

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  April 27th, 2023
  

  Hang on, are you thinking about Hegel’s Philosophy of History? (Or even Marx’s misinterpretation of Hegelianism?)

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  illodiini
  April 27th, 2023
  

  I’m not edumacated like you, good sir, but I personally think there is no such causality or dynamics to speak of. We humans plan our future and understand our past no better than ants.
  I hope we perish as a species before we destroy everything.
  Now, have wonderful weekend! Spring is here with its droughts and forest fires…

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  April 27th, 2023
  

  Your language skills are excellent, so education clearly took place. However, you really took a turn into Scandinavian-style gloom there, the standard call for imminent extinction & all that.
  The causative sequence isn’t that otherworldly or anything, it’s merely where we explore the complex causation that leads to a particular event(s), such as a war, revolution or legislative reform. These are discernible, particularly in retrospect. The dynamics are just the events & consequences, that kind of thing.
  Yeah, they’re definitely happening, I must observe. I’m not sure where your history-scepticism came from, you must’ve preferred geography in school, or somethin’.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  illodiini
  April 27th, 2023
  

  It’s that darn Finnish schooling system, one can’t entirely avoid being educated, at least enough to get in trouble.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  apnea
  April 28th, 2023
  

  Don’t read it if you are wedded to the west’s cartoon narrative of Russia (144 million people who blindly love Putin & everyone of them does exactly as he says Pfft even Stalin shared power Ffs). A thousand year history intertwined with Ukraine’s means nothing to the Putin/Russia haters. Ever see WW2 propaganda posters with brutal cartoon renderings of a Japanese solider. It looks ridiculous today. The west has depicted Putin & Russia in the same manner. The intent is to dehumanize them.

  The west’s witch hunt of cornering Russian expats & demanding they denounce Putin or else. The ones who rightly refused were fired. It was sickening & made zero difference to the conflict, but oh that heady rush of thinking that getting these regular people fired somehow would wound Putin was irresistible to them. It was totally worth destroying those people/canceling those people for that fleeting flood of self righteous dopamine squirts. A bunch of petty ugly cowards. Putin made y’all expose who is underneath the mask - hate filled petty vengeful savages. As the decline—> collapse continues the worse demons of our nature shall appear. Let adversity show us who the real HATERS are.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  illodiini
  April 28th, 2023
  

  While I think that Russia, its regime and quite a lot of its people have been nothing but a plague for its neigbors for centuries past, your outburst seems more of a strawman than anything. It would be a benefit to the world that Russia as it is now would cease to excist, but we really hope they would sort it out themselves. Hope springs eternal.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  johndunbar
  April 28th, 2023
  

  

  Awesome. Thanks for sharing.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  April 28th, 2023
  

  “Don’t read it if you are wedded to the west’s cartoon narrative, etc. etc.” - You haven’t even read the description - the upload comprises a sequence of lectures.
  “…Russia (144 m people who blindly love Putin & everyone of them does exactly as he says Pfft” - If you knew of the Russian political scene, you would realise that Putin tolerates no free opposition or free expression, and controls the State media (which you incessantly parrot, even though you must have alternatives).

  “even Stalin shared power Ffs” - Just…don’t pretend any knowledge of history. Stalin was a genocidal, totalitarian dictator. Everyone that existed in his power only lived if he allowed it. If they were even slightly suspected, they were liquidated, and the photographs were altered accordingly. To keep key personnel in line, their loved ones were held in asylums or concentration camps. Is that really how you understand the concept of “sharing power?”

  “A thousand year history intertwined with Ukraine’s” - involving brutal oppression; planned, organised famines (the Holodomor); secret police dirtbags; genocide; state slavery; concentration camps; terror; transportation, “liquidation” (you guys just love your sleazy euphemisms); brutal imperialism; wars of conquest; mass murder, atrocities & rape of civilians; societal destruction, etc. etc.

  “Ever see WW2 propaganda posters” - When you so easily fall for Putin prop, you’d fall for the old stuff just as hard.

  “It looks ridiculous today” - People who “love Putin” also look ridiculous today, eh?

  “It was totally worth destroying those people” - You even said that you looked at the images of murdered Ukrainian civilians and felt no sympathy whatsoever. “Totally worth it.”
  “The intent is to dehumanize them” - It most certainly is, just ask all the victims of Putin & Russian oppression. But then you can’t, can you?

  “A bunch of petty ugly cowards. Putin made y’all expose who is underneath the mask - hate filled petty vengeful savages. As the decline—> collapse continues the worse demons of our nature shall appear. Let adversity show us who the real HATERS are.” - The most self-revealing passage of all.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  Webby1948
  April 29th, 2023
  

  

  My previous comment awaits moderation.By which I’m to understand that while all 963’s posts are tolerated, my previous one has been deemed unsuitable for public consumption. Draw your own conclusions.
  No one can say that Russia’s history is not shot through with horror and death. But the conduct of the West particularly the US over the past sixty years dwarfs anything -anything- Russia might have done over the same period.In the modern age the greatest threat to life on this planet and the future of the human race is the USA’s refusal to accept political or economic competition from other countries. In pursuing its hegemony Washington has destroyed the lives of uncounted millions. Yet the country that doesn’t have 800 military bases all over the world is loudly condemned as the main threat to humanity. And all we read in these comments are anti Russian tropes and spluttering outrage from people whose inveterate bias rules out any objectivity.
  This book might be unbiased and objective. We’ll have to see. If it was, I doubt many on here would be praising it.
  S’pose this comment will have to be moderated as well.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  Webby1948
  April 29th, 2023
  

  Seems it wasn’t.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  April 29th, 2023
  

  

  Again, it is a series of lectures on Russia’s superlative culture, not a book. It’s necessary to actually read & understand the descriptions.
  To emphasise: the lectures concern RUSSIAN cultural history, therefore all distracting anti-American tropes & spluttering outrage from people whose inveterate bias rules out any objectivity - is entirely beside the point. Equally (& for further instruction), any any anti-Egyptian or anti-Ugandan screeds are also irrelevant.
  Thx again, mr p.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  illodiini
  April 29th, 2023
  

  If Russians weren’t such a sorry lot, they would have made much more damage and destruction to the world and to their own citizens. As Russia is sacrificing its own people like they were hay, they have only manage to take a bit of what they planned. Of course they have terror bombed and butchered unarmed civilians where ever they could. Their soldiers are trash and their weapons are garbage. Lil’putin will go down in history with Stalin as one of the worst leaders anywhere.
  If I had to choose I’d rather be a Ukrainian than a Russian any day or any place.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  Webby1948
  April 30th, 2023
  

  

  illodiini - Putting aside the difficulty of understanding your first sentence, I must take issue the rest of your comment. The USA has both directly and by funding, been responsible for more ‘terror bombing and butchery’ than any other country over the last sixty years.It used chemical weapons in Vietnam to destroy the rice crops of civilians, and so many petal bombs it is estimated that at least a thousand die or are maimed every year, still.
  The Strategic Culture Foundation mentions three million Vietnamese civilians who died at the time,and lists many others which were not caused by Russia: 2 million deaths in Korea, 157,000 in Afghanistan, 182,000 in Iraq (following 13 years of sanctions and over 2 million dead) 400,000 in Syria and 25,000 in Libya. It’s an endless parade of terror bombing and butchery and shows no sign of ending soon. Had Putin been so inclined, he could have ‘Shock and Awed’ Kiev to rubble as Bush did in Iraq, where depleted uranium was used to terrible consequence, causing birth defects that occur to this day.The poor, highly moral Ukrainian army is currently using depleted uranium missiles against the Donbass, likely resulting in radioactivity that will persist in the farming land for 150 years.Using them indeed, to the detriment of those the Western media terms ‘their own people’.
  So yeah, them Russkies , huh?

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  April 30th, 2023
  

  

  …because, of course, the subject is Russia. (And not even the endless parade of terror & butchery of the barbaric North Korean regime, its terror tactics (& war - assisted by the genocidal Chinese regime) against South Korea (in addition to its use of brutal terror against its own imprisoned population - whereas South Korea is a successful, advanced state, which people desperately try to escape to - the old genocidal ideological reality, unfortunately); or the Taliban regime (Afghanistan also invaded by Russia - like the brutal Russian wars against Chechnya & Ukraine, & attack on Georgia); Saddam Hussein’s appalling regime; or Assad’s tyrannical, human rights abusing regime in Syria - enthusiastically supported by Putin’s despotic fellow-traveller regime, naturally.)

  “The poor, highly moral Ukrainian” - Of course, no criticism whatsoever of Putin’s imperial war of aggression; terrorising of sovereign neighbours; mass murder of civilians; subjugation of all the people under his regime’s power; suppression of opposition, free press, free expression; denial of legal, political, civil, & human rights - in addition to free, democratic elections; massive corruption & profiteering around state resources, and on & on.
  Never mention those wars…

  Always the sleazy ideologue’s cant of blaming the victims - often when the victims have been murdered (why always such hatred of innocent Ukrainian civilians, who are only trying to live?).
  And of course the lectures are (inconveniently) about Russia - not America (or Uganda. Or Egypt).
  So, the mindlessly hysterical pro-Putin hatred of Americans is, as usual, irrelevant.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  April 30th, 2023
  

  

  In addition, the Putin regime’s terrorising of its sovereign neighbours is of direct interest to people like illodiini, because his country has had to seek NATO membership as a result.
  Yet the mindless Putin prop bots (as evidenced on this page & elsewhere) continue to distort such imperative realities…

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  Webby1948
  May 1st, 2023
  

  Wow. Where to start. You never put down your handbook of outraged media cliches for an instant. Still waving your recycled ‘opinions’ as though they’re flags of incontestable truth, when they are only pathetic little pennants of propaganda.
  So many questionable statements and not enough time or inclination to list and counter them all.
  So transparent too. Russia is ‘genocidal and murderous’, yet the murder and genocide of innocent civilians in Iraq, Libya and Syria deserves no similar outrage and sympathy because of, quote: ”Saddam Hussein’s appalling regime; or Assad’s tyrannical, human rights abusing regime in Syria”.
  You can’t be trusted even to be constant in your fulminations. You obviously know, cos someone’s bound to have told you, that states under attack tend to curb dissent from within. Which, of course, is interpreted as ’suppression of opposition, free press, free expression; denial of legal, political, civil, & human rights - in addition to free, democratic elections; massive corruption &’ blah blah by states in opposition to them.
  America was attacked in 2001, at a cost of 3, 000 dead. In response Bush brought out the Patriot Act with wiretapping, extraordinary rendition and indefinite jailing of immigrants, home searches without warrants or notification. And filled up Guantanamo with tortured prisoners kept without trial. Saddam Hussein’s country was under attack from all sides, unable to trade with the West because of sanctions which caused half a million children’s deaths and the deaths of 2 million others. And you mention ‘Saddam Hussein’s appalling regime’ as if they all deserved what they got. Talk about the ’sleazy ideologue’s cant of blaming the victims’. Blatant hypocrisy.
  Similarly, if you had any intent to understand instead of just repeating ad nauseam the same old tedious tropes -cos that’s the way you win and increase your ABB cred - you might consider that parts of Syria have been under occupation since 1967 and the good ole USA recognised the Golan Heights as part of Israel in 1981. Did the US not rail against the annexing of part of another sovereign country’s territory? Nah.Golan’s not Crimea.
  Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey have been backing the Syrian ‘insurgents’ against Assad And the USA is destroying its wheat and stealing its oil. That’s the same Saudis who have crucified protesters (!) and sent tanks to Bahrain to put down their ‘Arab Spring’ uprising. To absolutely no criticism from the West.And Qatar, where leaving employment without permission is a crime, millions are disenfranchised and women are second class citizens.
  Again, Ampersand Kid, your view of the world might be loud but it’s narrow and partisan.Quite mindless and ‘bot’ like.
  Russia lost 25 million fighting Hitler. Had it not been for them, you’d have been screaming your outrages in German now. Maybe you’ve forgotten that the ‘poor, highly moral Ukrainian’ people collaborated with the Nazis in the Second world war, and as recently as 2015 The Guardian was carrying articles about the Ukrainian Azov Nazis preventing peace negotiations in the Donbass (double ess).
  The Guardian’s not saying such things now of course. They’ve fallen into line. Like so many who refuse to believe there’s anything provocative or warlike about a nation that has 800 military bases around the world.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  May 1st, 2023
  

  Enough of your ranting Putin prop & power worship: as explained the lectures (again, not a book) concern RUSSIA - save the hysterical hatred for books on America, or your other favourite objects of hatred, the Jewish people.

  Predictable enough, but still fatally revealing, that you consider fundamental human rights, individual freedom, liberal democracy & the rule of law to be only so much “blah blah” & “tedious tropes” (of course, your Putin would agree!) - and that despotic regimes & genocidal ideologies incessant denial of of all this human rights “blah blah” can always be justified by being under expedient Orwellian attack. Brilliant: mindless ideological bumf as per. You’re trying to argue that prior to expediently coming “under attack” these despotic regimes were paragons of human rights & liberal democracy (vital things which you “understand” only as “blah blah”)? Places like Putin’s Russia, North Korea, China? Your unfeasible ignorance - it has to be intentional?

  And the standard, sleazy ideological qualifications as well - atrocities & human rights violations are only “interpreted as” suppression. Why are you on a book site? Are all your Hate Sites down? Because they’re “under attack?”

  “America was attacked, etc. etc.” - Oy. Once again, and for all the most braindead ideologues: the lectures concern Russia (Distract! Divert! Misdirect! - as ever, the bots’ programming - your bot programming just can’t quit, even after the nature of the upload is explained!).
  And of course, you would disagree that Hussein’s regime was appalling, no doubt denying all the murders, torture, corruption, gassing of the Kurds, and on and on. All “Fake Nooze!” to the mindless ideologue.
  And naturally trying to justify the Assad regime’s brutality. Because the upload is about Russia, presumably.

  “increase your ABB cred” - Is that all you’re about? Everyone’s identity is concealed, no one is “increasing their cred” you unutterable clown!

  “millions are disenfranchised & women are 2nd class citizens.” - This is the case throughout the entire region - & in many of the despotic regimes & genocidal ideologies which you support! Make the phcking connection at last, heinrich. Whether it’s Saudi brutality - or Assad’s, Putin’s, Iran’s, North Korea’s, China’s, or caused by Western actors - it’s all evil. Why can’t you comprehend this? But no - your erroneous view of the world is indeed loud, narrow and ludicrously partisan. Another failed ideologue of a broken, frozen ideology.

  The waste of Russian life - now, and in the past - is utterly appalling. And always the waste of their neighbours’ lives. Stalin drowned the national socialists in Russian (and other peoples under his barbaric power) blood. And stood by as the Warsaw Uprising was crushed by the Germans. Prior to the war, there was the Russian collaboration with, and supplying of, the nat socialists (and later, the joint invasion of Poland with them); there were the purges by the Soviet ideological regime, the mass murders, tortures, deportations - and the planned famine in Ukraine (& not just Ukraine). Then there was your favourite, of course - genocide denial.
  If you knew the history, you’d know that brutalised Russians & Ukrainians first welcomed German invaders as liberators from Soviet terror, only to again become victims of ideological terror.

  Although you want to dismiss and scorn the Ukrainian dead as ‘poor, highly moral Ukrainian’ people, what happens when a population have a planned ideological famine inflicted upon them? You’re willing to make excuses for every sadistic, genocidal dictator & ideology, but not Ukrainian people whose food was stolen from them, and their land cordoned off with military perimeters in order that they would starve faster & more efficiently? You don’t think that would fill people with hate and a desire for revenge? For generations? But now another Russian regime is at their throats yet again. You really ought to be very soft in what you say about “managed” famines, with your history.

  However, like all ideologues, you know none of this. Given that you’re entirely ignorant of all the history, why do you assert at all?

  So, your misinformed “hate America” rant is misplaced here, on a Russia-themed upload. Your mindless rant’s been done. Listen to these lectures, and other factual works. Turn down the volume on your frozen ideological bumf; switch off the ignorant hatred & the Putin prop - and finally begin to learn something.

  Anyway, it’s a Bank Holiday here, I don’t know if you have those in your beloved Putin Troll Farm, but weather’s lovely & everything.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  Webby1948
  May 2nd, 2023
  

  The old switcheroo , huh? Hasn’t it occurred to you that these comments had already swerved towards Russophobia before I began? You seem to be swirling around in your own vortex of obfuscation as usual.Facing first one way then spun round by your own confusion to face another. Rapid fire insults with no evidence, ranging from antisemitism to genocide denial.It’s richly entertaining but like all your claims to be affronted, so false as to be morally repugnant.
  No one is fooled by your vapid simulations of outrage and compassion for the victims of war when the only deaths you choose to express your fabricated emotion for are those which by western consensus are caused by Russia or China.
  First time you’ve ever mentioned ‘Saudi brutality’. Took you some time. This is likely because the USA has propped up the regime and used it as a base for all its middle eastern invasions so far.That might be changing soon, as even the most slavish follower begins to see the rot. If the Saudis pivot elsewhere they’ll be demonised just like all the other countries that refuse to donate their resources and economy to Washington. Anyone supported by America is okay in your sycophantic world view, and any who criticise are, well, like Putin bots and jew -haters, man.
  For all your false posturings however, even you can’t deny that a great many Ukrainians revere the memory of Stepan Bandera, leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army which joined with the Nazis to kill thousands of Jews in World War 2. Some truths can’t bend even in your distorted vision.
  And it is plain,quite plain, proven time and time again, that your ego will not allow anyone else who gainsays you, to have the last word. It’s the same ego that refuses to see that America caused this current conflict. Cos if it did, it would likely self destruct. Narcissists are like that. Have a nice day, Ampersand Kid.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  May 2nd, 2023
  

  “The old switcheroo , huh?” - Indeed. When the upload concerns Russia, you desperately switch & pivot to the hated Americans, or Jews, or whatever.
  And of course I defer to your most intimate & personal familiarity with the condition of narcissism. You have my sympathies in your overgrown ego struggle.

  “Russophobia” - Critique & condemnation of Putin’s human rights-abusing, anti-democratic regime; his terrorising of sovereign neighbours; and his brutal invasions & atrocities, cannot be so expediently framed & dismissed as “Russophobia” - that’s what the propaganda of the Putin regime, Putin-controlled media, & prop bots like yourself try (& fail) to do. It’s more of your absurd misdirection. In addition to your “Rapid fire insults with no evidence.”

  “vapid simulations of outrage and compassion for the victims of war” - You actually sound precisely like a psychopath here, one who cannot even comprehend anyone disapproving murder, rape, torture, genocide; that all compassion for the victims of this or any war can only be “fabricated emotion.” That is truly disturbing. It further reveals you as a worshipper of brute power & genocidal ideology. Might is right for you; like your fellow ideologues, you believe genocide is “progress.” The Ukrainian victims, in this instance, you blame & scorn. Presumably, as with Putin, you believe they are in the way, a barrier to ideological progress. How utterly repellent.

  It’s of a piece with your revealed psychopathic reaction when reminded of all the murdered & raped Ukrainians in Putin’s imperial war. Your reflexive reaction is to immediately blame & spit scorn at the victims of murder & rape: “The poor, highly moral Ukrainian.” All to distract from Putin’s war of aggression; terrorising of sovereign neighbours; mass murder of civilians; subjugation of all the people under his regime’s power; suppression of opposition, free press, free expression; denial of legal, political, civil, & human rights - all of which you psychopathically dismiss as “blah blah.” That’s your ideological take on fundamental human rights: “blah blah.”

  And your hatred of innocent Ukrainian civilians, who are merely trying to live. They offend you so much?

  “western consensus are caused by Russia or China” - Self-refuting again! I condemned all abuses (inconvenient, isn’t it? Particularly for an ideological “side-picker” like yourself, frozen in the 1980s?)

  “genocide denial” - Okay then, here’s your chance, finally acknowledge & sincerely condemn all the genocides, wars of aggression, human rights violations & mass murders of the despotic regimes & genocidal ideologies which you slavishly support & admire. Rather than your automatic, sleazy ideological qualifications, such as - atrocities & human rights violations being only “interpreted as” suppression or genocide. Can you finally acknowledge & sincerely condemn the genocidal actions of the Chinese Communist Party, historical & current? The genocidal actions, atrocities & wars of aggression of Russian ideologues & despotic regimes, past & present? North Korea? The Syria regime? Just try, be honest for once.

  “First time you’ve ever mentioned ‘Saudi brutality’” - False. I mentioned it before, in the context of Yemen. Inconvenient, eh?
  However, in the context of atrocities & mass murders, I’m still waiting for you to mention those of Putin’s regime - also those of the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Iranians, the Syrian regime? Yet more of your sleazy, transparent evasion & misdirection in the offing, I expect?

  “even the most slavish follower begins to see the rot” - Yes indeed, given your role as such a mindless follower, when will you finally admit the atrocities of the despotic regimes & genocidal ideologies which you slavishly support?

  “Washington…America” - Once again, the upload inconveniently concerns Russia. You really ought to remember, because you spend all your bot energy trying to distract from the Russian regime’s atrocities.

  “false posturings” - Dear God, listen to yourself. As for Ukrainians and WW2 - you knew none of the history of the Holodomor - the Soviet-planned famine - the slow, bureacratised, centrally-planned famine - and its horrific generational impacts on Ukrainian human beings (we know all about that here, empire boy). You knew none of the history of the Soviet collaboration with (& supply of) the nat socialists; their joint invasion of Poland, and the atrocities committed there as well. You knew none of the history of Soviet ideological genocide, deportations, camps, purges, torture, slave states. The unimaginable waste of Russian life, and the millions of lives of others under the regime’s power. The Soviets standing by as the Warsaw Uprising was savagely crushed by the nat socialists; yes, again - the mass murders of many thousands of courageous Jewish human beings. Because, again, if you knew the history, you’d know that brutalised Russians & Ukrainians first welcomed German invaders as liberators from Soviet terror, only to again become victims of ideological terror. Not a word of any of it did you know - or could admit, even now.

  It’s necessary to acknowledge all of it, not just to expediently & tactically select events where Ukrainians committed atrocities (you really want to compare Ukraine atrocities to the Russian regime’s atrocities?). Because when you distort history in such a way, it’s only that you may further blame Ukrainian victims - then & now.

  Your obvious prop ploy: some Ukrainians murdered people - therefore the Putin regime’s mass murder of Ukrainian human beings is - you suggest - consequently justified. That’s a very old & sleazy propaganda game you play. And like all your other moves, entirely transparent. Spare us from all such extreme, ignorant ideologues as yourself.

  You ridicule Ukrainian victims - those murdered, raped & displaced people; you condemn them, but cannot admit the horror of what was done to them, and to others - then and now. However, you’re willing to make sleazy excuses for the most sadistic, genocidal dictators & ideologies.
  It’s nauseating seeing someone like you trying to talk about truth. Save it for your fellow prop bots, Wobbly1933.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  Webby1948
  May 3rd, 2023
  

  I had an idea you might return. Narcissism has such a powerful drive.
  One thing a person might grasp, reading these delightful little exchanges of ours, is how you repeat the same old tired adjectives until they lose all impact. Sleazy, brutal, ideologue, prop bots. And once you have gone through them you rinse and repeat. You should get a new dictionary. The old one must be covered in self-righteous spittle by now.

  The habit you have of accusing others - me in particular - of having opinions and prejudices which are quite clearly your own, is another revealing little narcissistic trait.
  Look at this one:’some Ukrainians murdered people - therefore the Putin regime’s mass murder of Ukrainian human beings is - you suggest - consequently justified. That’s a very old & sleazy propaganda game you play.’
  There’s that tired old ’sleazy’ again, slipped into
  that habit you have of drawing false conclusions and accusing the other of opinions and prejudices they do not have.
  But that again, is the narcissistic way. The old switcheroo. Get the other to deny sly and sleazy imputations you’ve foisted on them & (damn)they’ll be too busy defending themselves to see what a vapid pretentious ‘person’ you are.
  Your second to last sentence is a classic example of feigned outrage. And another perfectly acute instance of your own hypocrisy. Which again, and true to form, you attribute to another:’You ridicule Ukrainian victims - those murdered, raped & displaced people; you condemn them, but cannot admit the horror of what was done to them, and to others - then and now. However, you’re willing to make sleazy [Get a thesaurus for Christ’s sake] excuses for the most sadistic, genocidal dictators & ideologies.’
  I hardly know where to start pulling this apart. I almost feel embarrassed for you, a narcissist, struggling to offer emotions that just do not convince.
  You ignore the fact that Ukrainians in the Donbass were shelled constantly since 2014. That the Minsk agreement guaranteed peace for them but did not. And that Merkel admitted it was a deception to give Kiev time to arm and attack. That a coup in Maidan was engineered by Americans and accomplished by masked and murderous far right protesters who burned people alive in the Trade Union building during the rising.
  That was murder, and part of an American-funded attempt to draw Ukraine into NATO and further surround Russia with nuclear weapons. As if 800 military bases aren’t enough.
  But none of this, none of it, matters to someone like you. You prefer to ignore what America has done and place Russia solely in the front rank of genocidal regimes.
  I repeat, America has done far more to destabilise the world over the past 60 years and been responsible for more genocide and destroyed countries than either Russia or China. I have no real interest in trying to convince you of this because your ‘mind’ is made up and your ego won’t allow of any other perspective. But it should be said, and people like you with opinions like yours should be challenged. You would rather rant and rave and vituperate and pretend you are personally affronted by my insistence that the victims of America’s foreign policy in the last sixty years vastly outnumber those of Russia or China and, indeed, may include the whole world if they keep pushing.
  I find it hard to believe anybody is taken in by your faked compassion. You come over as a cross between Pecksniff and Edna Welthorpe.
  You’re a constant delight.Like my neighbour’s angry little bulldog. Does anybody take you seriously? I certainly don’t. But I find you funny.
  And I will take bets that your narcissism won’t allow you to leave it at this.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  May 3rd, 2023
  

  You continue to demonstrate isolated psychopathy. You can’t begin to comprehend condemnation of murder, rape, torture, genocide. You blame & scorn Ukrainian victims. When reminded of all the murdered & raped Ukrainians in Putin’s imperial war, your reflexive reaction is to immediately spit upon the victims of murder & rape: “The poor, highly moral Ukrainian,” you sneer. You can’t even help yourself here. It’s all just a “constant delight” for you.
  All human rights you psychopathically dismiss as “blah blah.”

  Why do you so clearly hate innocent Ukrainian civilians, who are merely trying to live?

  Yet again, I invited you to condemn all genocidal regimes & human rights violations, just as I did - and like the sleazy (call you by your name) ideologue that you are - you evaded (even left a slime trail). More of your incessant, transparent evasion & misdirection, as expected. And your genocide denial - not a mention, not even so much as a mild reservation offered of your favoured regimes of terror.

  Because any condemnation of the Holodomor, the ideological genocides, slave state, purges, invasions, human rights violations - all of this you try to expediently dismiss as “Russophobia.” Are you evil - or just recklessly stupid?
  When will you as “the most slavish follower” finally begin “to see the rot?”

  “I had an idea” - No, you really didn’t. Not a clue.
  “Narcissism has such a powerful drive” - You seem oddly compelled to share your lurid biography.
  “person might grasp, reading these exchanges” - You believe people read these? You yourself can’t even read/comprehend the description or subject. You just slip into auto-rant - “America Bad! Don’t look at Putin!”
  “same old tired adjectives until they lose all impact” - Unsurprising, given that you “think” fundamental human rights are only “blah blah.” But then you are a brute power-worshipping ideologue & Putin supporter.
  You have also yet to make a single coherent, relevant argument, or demonstrate any substantive understanding even on your own prop bot talking points.

  “Look at this one:’some Ukrainians murdered people - therefore the Putin regime’s mass murder of Ukrainian human beings is - you suggest - consequently justified. That’s a very old & sleazy propaganda game you play.’” - Yes, precisely what you tried to do. You’ve copied & pasted it, now do the work of comprehending & reflecting upon it. That’s if you can stand to look at yourself in such a way.
  “too busy defending themselves” - It would be refreshing were you actually able to do this. But your bot points always fail. Hope springs…
  “Your…feigned outrage” - There’s your psychopathy again. Right on time. Inevitable, given that’s who you truly are. At least there’s only one instance here. (Oh wait - “struggling to offer emotions that just do not convince” - there you go again. Of course, your psychopathy means you will always fail to recognise emotions.)

  This being your reliably hateful ploy, it’s certainly worth reiterating: “’You ridicule Ukrainian victims - those murdered, raped & displaced people; you condemn them, but cannot admit the horror of what was done to them, and to others - then and now. However, you’re willing to make sleazy excuses for the most sadistic, genocidal dictators & ideologies.’”

  “You ignore fact that Ukrainians” - Oy. You’re even useless as a bot - & that’s your only conceivable function. Putin’s regime invaded and annexed Crimea in February & March of 2014. The central issue: why is Putin’s regime invading & terrorising sovereign neighbours, making aggressive war & murdering so many people? Consequently forcing neighbouring countries into NATO in order to gain some measure of protection? Not too bright - your idol or his army of prop bots - merely thugs. P’haps you ought to begin questioning your prop bot handler; then interrogate your own bizarre motives. Then finally read a book, and not just have your hate-prop vids on perpetual repeat.

  “That was murder” - Let’s see you condemn ALL murder - but you can’t. Because when the despotic regimes & genocidal ideologies which you worship commit mass murder - you convince your psychopathic self that it’s always justified - while also insanely denying it. Bots sure are dangerously “stoopid.”

  “nuclear weapons” - You do realise that Putin’s regime - that dear old haven of human rights, rule of law & liberal democracy - is also a nuclear power? Who do you imagine is trying to invade & annex vast tracts of Russia? The enormous invasions demonstrably go in the opposite direction, heinrich, you utter nutter.

  “America has done” - Once again (have you been hitting your head more than usual of late?) - the upload concerns Russia. Do your bot rant on America when you get activated by an upload about America.

  “place Russia solely in the front rank of genocidal regimes” - But you’re constantly denying that they’ve even done anything wrong, you eejit! Duuurrrr! With its overwhelming death toll over the last century, you really imagine that Russia is not “in the front rank of genocidal regimes” - together with China (& Germany’s historical record)? The regime whose deserved collapse your Putin regards as the greatest “catastrophe?” Just another genocidal slave state, with the requisite planned famines. Your kind of ideological utopia, of course - devoid of irksome human rights “blah blah” for you.

  “I repeat” - You certainly do, endlessly…

  “genocide…Russia or China” - Could you, by any chance, supply the titles of the pertinent works of history you have read in this regard? Just to get some needed “perspective?”

  “won’t allow of any other perspective” - Mindless bot prop for Putin and other genocidal regimes is not, and cannot be, a legitimate perspective. But then, I’ve patiently explained this.

  “should be challenged” - No, your power-worshipping, genocidal ideological bumf shouldn’t be challenged - merely flushed, heinrich.

  “the last sixty years” - Your repeated insistence on this blatantly contrived frame is profoundly revealing. Whyever are you trying to avoid the Holodomor, the Great Leap Forward, the Great Purges, the human catastrophe of forced collectivisation, the joint, agreed invasions carried out with the nat socialists, the internal repression, starvation, genocide, torture, show trials - in addition to external aggression & exported terror? Those regimes didn’t just start murdering in May, 1963, Wobbly1933.

  “Russia or China” - Why are you constantly trying to defend genocidal regimes? Why not condemn all abuses?

  “faked compassion” - Your psychopathy’s showing again. Horrifically revealing as per. Do you not even have a family?
  My people’s history featured many of the appalling events which I’m trying to explain to you are actually deserving of condemnation. The crimes against humanity which you rush to slavishly support. It’s not a remote abstract for us - the landscape of history reminds us, and is ever present. You naturally take the side of the imperialist; you seem to regard Putin & the genocidal Chinese regime as being on some kind “civilising mission,” as they oppose hated “Western values” - unconcerned that “civilising” for such imperialists means mass murder. Precisely the same as yours.

  And no, I don’t find your psychopathic worship of such power and your thirst for blood remotely amusing. It’s nauseating, in point of fact.

  Why are you so obsessed with your “last word?” If you could finally say something even mildly critical of your favoured genocidal regimes & ideologies, then that would be a decent last word. But you never will, because you can’t.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  Webby1948
  May 4th, 2023
  

  Well here you are again. As predicted. Your boundless ego is matched only by your infinite capacity for deception. You keep proving time and time and time again that you are obsessed with having the last word. And true to the character of your disorder, you accuse me - and anyone else you might argue with - of having the faults you so unwittingly display yourself.You cannot bear to leave the last word to someone else. I double dog dare you.
  And repeat: your proclamations of outrage and compassion are spurious at best and outright devious for the most part.
  So manipulative too.The following quote is not only a blatant untruth (you lie so often I thought I’d show you a different way of saying it) it’s another self-deception: ‘Yet again, I invited you to condemn all genocidal regimes & human rights violations, just as I did’
  No you did not.I seem to recall you came out with some guff about your condemning all human rights abuses, and that your condemnation was a ’seamless garment’ or some such phrase that in your ‘mind’ sufficed for all, without actually naming them.
  It wasn’t specific enough to be convincing. You’re no empath. In point of fact,the only countries you criticise are the ones without military bases scattered all over the world. The ones not destroying lives thousands of miles distant.
  NATO is just a synonym for the USA, which has dominated and brutalised humans for decades. No condemnation from your ready made store of moralistic cliches for all the deaths, torture and destruction suffered by citizens bombed back to the Stone Age by successive wars waged by America and nations including my own. So until you name America, its NATO acolytes and client states among your perpetrators and show some sympathy for the people of Iraq,Libya, Palestine,Syria,Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Chile, Nicaragua, Grenada and so many other countries I haven’t time to name , then your loud proclamations of disgust for China and Russia will continue to sound empty and artificial. Do you know they hold slave markets in Libya, where once health and education was free and newlyweds were given places to live completely without charge? Nah , you care not about that. Or that Iraq is now owned by American corporations and Syria…but why repeat oneself. You can’t convince anybody who doesn’t want to know. America dropped 11 (Eleven) daisy cutter bombs on Iraq during the Gulf War, and practically exterminated an army of recruits on retreat. They called it a Turkey Shoot.Iraq was no competition for the might of Washington. And all that was followed up by murderous sanctions that turned Iraq into Hell, causing the deaths of two million at least.Before ‘Shock and Awe’ killed thousands more.
  A high estimate of people killed by the slave trade is 150 million. That number dwarfs Stalin, Hitler and Mao.Such figures inevitably leave an horrific race memory and while one can express sorrow and compassion for the terror within such lives, we are now living in the present, faced with the extermination of mankind. Russia, China , America Germany , France , England, Italy and many other countries have infamous deeds in their history.
  How far do you want to go back? Stalin and Mao and Hitler are dead. Their countries are not now what they were then. Stop pretending they are. All is pretense with you.
  Here’s a few quotes from you:
  “Your…feigned outrage” - There’s your psychopathy again. Right on time. Inevitable, given that’s who you truly are. At least there’s only one instance here. (Oh wait - “struggling to offer emotions that just do not convince” - there you go again. Of course, your psychopathy means you will always fail to recognise emotions.)
  Well, your ‘outrage’ is as I’ve said before, entirely unconvincing. It reads like a second rate politician, a paper demagogue saying just what the people want to hear and meaning none of it. You’re a fraud.
  And this:
  ‘Once again (have you been hitting your head more than usual of late?) - the upload concerns Russia.’
  You are pivoting again. Others before me have widened the parameters of this argument.You can’t just revert to the original as if you haven’t done your bit to expand it.
  Look at this one:’some Ukrainians murdered people - therefore the Putin regime’s mass murder of Ukrainian human beings is - you suggest - consequently justified. That’s a very old & sleazy propaganda game you play.’” - Yes, precisely what you tried to do. You’ve copied & pasted it, now do the work of comprehending & reflecting upon it. That’s if you can stand to look at yourself in such a way.’
  Almost your best yet , though I suspect that’s to come. It makes no sense at all. You’ve accused me of copying and pasting your own words as if I’m claiming them for my own. Where’s your head at? Don’t you read your own stuff?
  And finally, enough. Most people would leave it at this, but you aren’t normal. Arguing with you is like trying to stuff a particularly voluble ventriloquist’s dummy back into its case.
  Your criticism suits me fine. But how far can you go? You’ve already hit the roof and now you’re drilling through the ceiling.
  Will your fake outrage reach the stratosphere?

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  May 4th, 2023
  

  Another clownish effort, heinrich. You’re asking dishonest questions & telling preposterous lies - and then you faint like a Victorian matron at any response. Oy.

  “you accuse me of having the faults you so unwittingly display yourself” - That makes less sense than your other repetitive bumf - I don’t support Putin, the other tyrannical despots or genocidal ideology. I accuse you of doing so because you do.

  “proclamations of outrage” - A psychopath finding it impossible that people disapprove of rape & murder. Stop press.

  “you lie so often” - The bot projector on overdrive.

  “self-deception” - the extreme ideologue’s charter.

  “‘Yet again, I invited you to condemn all genocidal regimes & human rights violations, just as I did’” - Precisely. Now’s your chance. At the very least, stop slavishly cheerleading mass murderers - past & present.

  “destroying lives thousands of miles distant” - So then - condemn Putin & the Chinese regime et al. You never once have.

  Russia’s sovereign neighbours are indeed anxious to join NATO in order to gain a measure of protection. Ask yourself why that should be?

  “dominated and brutalised humans for decades” - But I don’t see you even slightly criticise your human rights abusing heroes for this. Why does Putin et al brutalise people like this? And why do you support him for it?

  When I remind you of the necessity of fundamental human rights & liberties, you respond hysterically - “moralistic cliches” & “blah blah.” Yet this is what successful societies are built upon. Why do you imagine that human rights & liberal democracy represent such an ideological threat?

  “all the deaths, torture and destruction bombed back to Stone Age by successive wars” - Then stop supporting genocidal ideologies & despotic regimes. Support the right to life in all circumstances. Stop sneering at Ukrainians who have been murdered & raped. You seriously believe people deserve that? Would you like it to happen to the people you know? (I won’t say “love” - that’s decidedly not your dept.)

  While I have condemned all war as a supposed solution to problems, you have hysterically cheerled brutal invasions & genocidal ideological regimes. So there is no equivalence in that. I invited you to condemn these torturing, murderous regimes and you refused & deflected. That’s where we stand. You are a dishonest, hateful, deceitful actor.
  In your list, not only do you not name Ukraine as one of the victims, you have actually sneered at and spat upon Ukrainians who have been murdered & raped. You’ve taken sheer delight in their suffering.
  Britain has indeed been a force for evil in the world, in common with the unimaginable suffering caused by Russia, China, & North Korea for the “best” part of a century; and the Iraqis suffered terribly under such a regime, in common with the Libyans; along with the human rights situation in Vietnam (for decades) which is one of the worst in the world; Palestinians suffer under an appalling admin of terror (women, gays & opposition are particularly targeted), as with the Syrian people under the brutal Assad, with Russia also testing their weapons & troops against them, using Syrian human beings for target practice; the condition of Afghan people is appalling, particularly Afghan women, they have suffered atrociously, included in their plight was the brutal Russian invasion, which gave rise to so much terror; Venezuela & the other parts of South & Central America have indeed been similarly riven by extreme, toxic ideologies, which caused such economic failure & societal collapse elsewhere (evidenced by the anti-democratic regimes which imprisoned their populations throughout the last century).

  “I haven’t time to name” - Well, I certainly don’t believe that.

  As usual, what you omit is far more revealing. In addition to refusing to mention Ukrainian human beings - whose suffering you actually scorn - you ignore & deceitfully deflect from the ongoing genocide of the Uyghur people, the horrifying regimes people have suffered under in North Korea, Tibet, Hong Kong, Zimbabwe, Angola, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Cuba, Eastern Europe, Iran, Chechnya, the internal victims of Chinese, Russian & other regimes - and on & on.
  Such lack of appropriate condemnation does indeed make you “sound empty & artificial.

  And I already mentioned the Libyan slave markets here in recent times; they were in abeyance and have now returned after a century. The mistake people make is that “conventional” slavery ever disappeared. It exists everywhere, in spite of some states outlawing it (& don’t give me that old shyte of your bally empire banning it, wot wot - I’m weary of having to explain that as well).

  But hang on, Wobbly1933, now you’re even eulogising the Gaddafi regime? Throughout Gaddafi’s rule, international NGOs (HRW, Amnesty) routinely condemned Libya’s human rights regime, citing systematic abuses such as human rights violations concerning cases of enforced disappearances, torture, political repression, restrictions on political freedoms and civil liberties, and arbitrary imprisonment; Gaddafi also publicly bragged about sending hit squads to assassinate exiled dissidents, and Libyan state media openly announced bounties on the heads of political opponents. There was also the Gaddafi regime’s 1996 Abu Salim prison massacre. Internal Security Agency members implicated in human rights violations continued to operate with impunity under the regime.
  But of course you don’t care about any of that. Torture chambers were ideal “places to live” according to your psychopathic perspective - “given completely without charge.” Indeed.
  “You can’t convince anybody who doesn’t want to know” - Well now you’ve said it. Your entire ranting record proves that.

  Is this the kind of garbage that you & the other tankie bots actually drone on about? How great the Gaddafi & Stalin regimes were; and if only Saddam & Hitler were given more time? And of course, Hitler liked dogs - p’haps Pol Pot was a nifty golfer? You need help, heinrich.
  (Oh, you were going to reference those works of history you rely upon in relation to Russia & China? Hmmmm?)

  Yes, yes, on you go - every aspect of existence in Iraq is controlled by “the Amerigrrrr!”

  The gassed Kurds were no competition for the might of Saddam. Nor were all the tortured prisoners. Spare a thought for all the victims that you typically sneer & spit at.

  “A high est of people killed by slave trade is 150 million. That number dwarfs Stalin, Hitler & Mao.” - As explained, people are still dying in, and as a result of, slavery; with the added factor that slavery has always existed. It is also reasonable to consider the ideological slave states of the last century. However, it is not reasonable to consider the death tolls of those three ideologues, and the regimes they controlled, as being “dwarfed” by the 150 million total. Hitler’s total, from death camps, special actions, forced marches, and other methods, is reckoned to be in excess of 17 million (noncombatants, prisoners). The high estimate for Stalin is 60 million - in planned famines, planned genocide, deportations, incarceration in camps, deaths from slave labour, also the consequences of disastrously failed policies, forced collectivisation, etc. In addition, disease spreading as a result of planned starvation.
  Mao has the “greatest” number of murders by a regime. The highest estimate is 70 million human beings. The Great Leap Famine, the Cultural Revolution, and again various genocidal policies, deportations, incarceration in camps, detention, torture, slave labour, catastrophically failed policies, forced collectivisation, and unimaginably violent repression.
  These high estimates bring us close to 150 million people. Even if we round it down to a possible 120 million human beings, appropriately imputing the cause of the war in Europe to Hitler’s belligerence brings us close to 200 million people. Including combatant deaths, deaths due to war-related famine & disease, bombing of civilians.
  Essentially, they all declared a condition of perpetual war on their own populations, and on others. The last century was an ideological dark age.

  “Such figures inevitably leave an horrific race memory” - That was my point about the Ukrainian people and the Holodomor - which you disregarded. And all such events. Particularly your “managed” famines.

  “while one can express sorrow and compassion for the terror within such lives” - Can you? Honestly? Because you certainly haven’t.
  “we are now living in the present” - You can never - ever - conveniently section off the past, and pretend that the present moment is expediently discrete. That is indeed a toxic and dangerous pretense. One of Putin’s many problems is that he’s trying to live an imagined, glorified past of Russian/Soviet imperium.
  “How far do you want to go back?” - The last century is the reasonable timeframe I cited. 60 yrs was an “odd,” tactical, self-serving choice.

  “Stalin Mao Hitler are dead. Their countries are not what they were” - The Chinese regime had to abandon the disastrously failed, ideological economics. Other than that there remains an invasive apparatus of tyrannical population control in place (it never departed) - further facilitated by ubiquitous technology; there is an ongoing genocide, there is the repression in Hong Kong, there are bellicose threats to neighbouring countries, there are no human rights, no rule of law. The list goes depressingly on.
  And do you volunteer to go & tell Putin it’s all over? His “dream” of 20th century domination & control - everyone else’s nightmare.

  As for your psychopathic reaction: you can’t seem to believe that anyone would truly disapprove of murder, rape, torture or genocide. This is because you cannot empathise with such victims. You actually pour scorn upon them. You seem to be a callous ideologue who sneers at people’s suffering.
  “Of course, your psychopathy means you will always fail to recognise emotions.” - This does go some way to encapsulate your consistent reaction here. FFS, heinrich, you don’t even believe in fundamental human rights. Enough of your tired shyte now.

  And this one’s on point as well: ‘Once again (have you been hitting your head more than usual of late?) - the upload concerns Russia.’ - Yes, as I’ve consistently said since the beginning, it actually does concern Russia - and is not a book. But you want to pivot to an anti-American rant - every single time. Inadmissible, once again.
  You always want to “widen the parameters” - right back to your bizarrely narrow obsession - and to desperately pivot away from Putin’s regime. The lectures are about a superlative culture - expand your horizons in that more healthy, less dysfunctionally obsessive, direction.

  This does epitomise your tired, inhuman ploy: “some Ukrainians murdered people - therefore the Putin regime’s mass murder of Ukrainian human beings is - you suggest - consequently justified. That’s a very old & sleazy propaganda game you play.’” - Yes, precisely what you tried to do. You’ve copied & pasted it, now do the work of comprehending & reflecting upon it. That’s if you can stand to look at yourself in such a way.’

  “accused me of copying & pasting ur words as if I’m claiming them for my own” - Uh, you copied & pasted a line from me, heinrich. That’s all. Do try to remain tolerably calm.

  “people would leave it at this” - Self-awareness, Wobbly1933? You ought to remember that the rest of us were discussing the upload & its subject, when you blundered in, failed to understand the subject, said that the lectures were a “book” - and then proceeded to unleash your standard copy & paste “I Hate America” rant, trying to distract from Putin’s murderous regime, when the lectures concern RUSSIA. What an utter tankie plank…

  “you aren’t normal” - Do tell that to the Ukrainian victims who you sneer at.

  “Your criticism suits me fine” - Well, it is damned accurate!

  “Look at all those people at that child’s funeral, with their fake, political grief!” angrily exclaimed the psychopathic, imperialist ideologue.
  Endeavour to acknowledge people’s humanity. Just because you’re incapable of ever sharing it, does not indicate its non-existence.
  And brutal war & mass murder of civilians are really not the solutions you imagine them to be, in your liquid, power-worshipping dreams…

  How about we close on an agreed formula of words - historically accurate & ethically fair = Big, evil, imperialist bastards ought not invade, exploit, murder, starve, enslave, deculturate, indoctrinate, poison, deport, violate, dispossess, torture, or otherwise terrorise their neighbours. And if they do, we ought never support them, or expediently deflect from their manifest crimes & abuses.

  That’s the best way to settle these things, based on historical experience. Although your conditioned culture is to actually commit everything on the sorry list, as we know.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  Webby1948
  May 8th, 2023
  

  So. Again.
  This round of comment and counter-comment began when I responded to illodini’s ill - odini-judged rant in which (and I paraphrase) he said Russia should be broken up and the world would be better off if it were. I countered. You jumped in and sent the water high into the air.
  I repeat this so that even you with your bad faith agenda should abandon the canard that I alone turned this comments page from its pertinent subject to the one it has become.

  The self-aggrandisement in every utterance you make is revealingly exemplified by your choice of username. That’s where I’ll start.

  In view of the following quote from you, your nom de clavier is more than a tad hypocritical.
  Quote: ‘At the very least, stop slavishly cheerleading mass murderers - past & present.’ Unquote.
  Well, Julius Caesar was a tyrant. A mass murderer of women and children. An enthusiastic blinder and hand amputater. Yet you ’slavishly’ adore him.

  What I find equally revealing, is how your comments, tedious, hysterical and very long have certain other predictable characteristics. One is your use of confirmation bias and logical fallacies. While arguing against another’s point of view, you deliberately draw conclusions for which there is no evidence, and then attempt to berate your adversary for not denying your conclusion.
  In intent, it is no different from the question ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’ And you try it on every time. Only your trick question is ‘When will you stop supporting Hitler, Stalin and Mao?
  It’s an act of bad faith, and having laughed at many such from you, old hat by now. Many people lie, but yours are always malicious, at the high end, and can be refuted easily by anyone who has the sense to check the evidence.
  Quote:‘The last century is the reasonable timeframe I cited. 60 yrs was an “odd,” tactical, self-serving choice.’
  So you don’t deny it proves my point. I chose 60 years because it coincides within a couple years with the greater emergence of the American military-industrial complex, the assassination of Kennedy, the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the subsequent genocide of a peasant people all in the name of pursuing a western neo-conservative ideology.
  You chose the entire 20th century because it allows you to include what are undoubtedly its greatest horrors into your ‘reasonable timeframe.’ But ignoring what is inexpedient.
  Your ‘timeframe’ is a cynical exploitation of past events. And merely serves to show how bad things used to be, not what they are now. A ‘tactical, self serving choice’ indeed.
  The history of the past sixty years is replete with similar hypocrisy and ignorance, and ‘slavish cheerleading’ of western wars against the east only helps to perpetuate the slaughter and hate. Only a fool or a propaganda permeated prawn doesn’t know when he’s being ‘cheerled’ up the garden path.

  China doesn’t want to take over the world. Nor does Russia. But pushing either into conflict with neighbouring countries deliberately destabilized and armed to the teeth for that very purpose, risks nuclear annihilation.
  China is so repressive towards its people, only two million Chinese visit London every year. And only 800 million have been lifted out of poverty. Oh , we’ve had all this out before. Just ignore it and it won’t go away.
  America, on the other hand, that great bastion of democracy and freedom, kills 2, 000 of its citizens yearly in the process of police enforcement. And 5.5 million are imprisoned. So far this year there’ve been over 200 mass shootings. And we’re not halfway through yet. How many are tortured in Guantanamo? Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Which is the police state?

  As if that were not enough, it’s economic suicide for a near bankrupt nation such as the US to squander its dwindling resources on the continuation of a war it cannot win and could have stopped fifty thousand deaths ago. But its military industrial complex dictates to Washington and Wall Street. The intent is to destroy economies that won’t give up their resources for American exploitation. Like Iraq. Like Libya. Like Syria.
  America destroyed South Vietnam in order to save it from the commie hordes. Destroyed Iraq and Libya. And despite the recent devastating earthquakes, has voted 414 to 2 against withdrawing sanctions from Syria. While simultaneously ‘protecting’ its oilfields and wheatfields from its people.
  Such humanitarianism! With these mindsets in control, how could anybody believe their actions are for the benefit of mankind?

  Anybody who believes what the media tells them. And has their identity tied to an unshakeable belief that they know what’s really going on. That’s who.

  But the US has been canny is certain respects. It has got the populations of every European country paying for Ukraine in increased energy prices and tanked economies.
  While ‘slavishly cheering’ onward to destruction.

  If Russia is such a threat, why are European countries giving all their weapons away? Won’t they need em when Putin decides to roll into Germany?
  Ah yes, Germany. Why aren’t you including Germany in your ‘reasonable time frame’ of dangerous countries? It’s because Germany is now sending weapons to Ukraine and is therefore one of the ‘good guys’. But according to your previous determination, any country that was a threat last century, still is. As usual, the knickers of your reasoning have gotten into a twist again. You plainly haven’t taken your own diktat to heart, quote: ‘You can never - ever - conveniently section off the past, and pretend that the present moment is expediently discrete.’?
  Can’t you? That’s exactly what’s happened with Russia. 26 million died fighting Germany and they’ve all been ‘conveniently sectioned off’, with many graves desecrated and monuments to the dead pulled down.
  ‘Yes, yes, on you go - every aspect of existence in Iraq is controlled by “the Amerigrrrr!”

  In actual fact it probably still is, after Washington sold off that nation’s resources and its national industries to foreign, ie Wall Street interests.
  BTW : In tapping out the word ‘Amerigrrrr’ you had to hit the ‘r’ key four times! Who does that? What was on your mind? Did you just hold the key down, random like, or tap it four times, after judicious forethought? Thinking, erm what, exactly? This’ll be good?
  Quote: ‘p’haps Pol Pot was a nifty golfer? You need help, heinrich.’ If I were in eejit 963 mode I might feign outrage, and write What a flippant aside to make on the subject of a genocidal maniac! And call your smug little addendum ‘more bot projection.’ Which, I should add, is C963 terminology for ‘No I’m not. You are’. You excel yourself with infantile insults like those. So characteristic of a narcissist.

  ‘You always want to “widen the parameters” - right back to your bizarrely narrow obsession.’
  Another lie, and one which in refutation again I would refer back to the illodini comment. As for ‘you always want to’ that’s just another tiresome example of your childish and transparent predilection for accusing others of that which you doeth yoursen.
  Quote: ‘accused me of copying & pasting ur words as if I’m claiming them for my own” - Uh, you copied & pasted a line from me, heinrich. That’s all. Do try to remain tolerably calm. ‘
  It’s eminently clear who’s the hysteric here. Your posts on this page alone show an out of control hair tearing loon. Who should take his own advice and seek help.
  Quote:’You ought to remember that the rest of us were discussing the upload & its subject, when you blundered in, failed to understand the subject, said that the lectures were a “book” - and then proceeded to unleash your standard copy & paste “I Hate America” rant, trying to distract from Putin’s murderous regime,
  Read what I’ve already said about this. Plainly you’ve got a bee in your bonnet and it’s preventing you from reading my previous comments.

  And in which atom splitting alternate version of reality are you living? My ‘standard copy and paste’? You are utterly ridiculous. Besides being a blatant plagiarist.

  I’ve put these two following quotes close together. There are plenty similar ones. They highlight again, as if more proof were necessary, the inept, immature manner in which you attribute entirely fabricated attitudes and opinions to those who challenge your egotistical blusterings:

  Quote: ‘you have actually sneered at and spat upon Ukrainians who have been murdered & raped. You’ve taken sheer delight in their suffering.
  “Look at all those people at that child’s funeral, with their fake, political grief!” angrily exclaimed the psychopathic, imperialist ideologue.

  The blusto/lying meter hits eleven out of ten with this one. Did I actually do that? Say any of that? Actually? Really? Truly? Nah. Nor did I say Torture chambers are nice places to live either. It’s just your twisted sense of what is permissible exaggeration for effect.
  You exist in a state of contemptible moral and intellectual ignorance.
  Tell me, though if it comes from you there’s no way in hell I’ll believe it: Do you know what ‘actually’ means? Whether you do, it doesn’t detract from the fact that you are a lying, deceitful troll of a narcissist with an incredibly high blown and undeserved opinion of yourself.

  Quote: ‘How about we close on an agreed formula of words - historically accurate & ethically fair = Big, evil, imperialist bastards ought not invade, exploit, murder, starve, enslave, deculturate, indoctrinate, poison, deport, violate, dispossess, torture, or otherwise terrorise their neighbours.’

  Works for me. But I did wonder, reading this with utter disbelief, if it occurred to you that here you are describing not China, not Russia, but some mother actor? That it perfectly (to the very last word, ‘cept praps ‘neighbour’s) describes exactly what was done to Iraq? Poison? That’ll be Vietnam too, surely. Parts of which Agent Orange has rendered poisonous for over a hundred years. Ukraine, (perhaps ironically, because you lack any kind of self awareness of the meaning of your own words). Throwing depleted uranium at countrymen they claim to be ‘liberating’ on land they claim to be recovering. Torture? Guantanamo Bay and all points east west, north and south of that God forsaken torture hole.
  And protesters at the murder of George Floyd were attacked with chemical weapons, viz pepper spray and tear gas, at many a demonstration. Chemical weapons are commonplace over there. And Police Brutality? You only have to go online to see vivid images of heads being busted by police in riot gear. The New York Times lists 100 cities where tear gas was used against protesters. But at least they’re free to be chemically assaulted.

  In common with the established strategy of western media towards its perceived enemies, you yourself have no compunction in libelling your gainsayers with accusations that could be disproved by anybody reading what was ‘actually’ written.

  Nowhere have I sneered at civilian victims of war. They, on both sides, are caught in a proxy war between Russia and the West. But I am skeptical of the widespread image in the western press which portrays the vicious Nazi Azovs who mutilate and torture POWs, as heroic freedom fighters guided by unshakeable moral codes while they are desecrating Russian World War 2 graves.

  Your paragraph on Gaddafi’s Libya is too long to be quoted and criticised in its entirety. But here are a few morsels: Quotes from you: ‘ You’re even eulogising the Gaddafi regime?… ‘international NGOs routinely condemned Libya’s human rights regime’ - [some confusion there. Did you mean to write Gadaffi actually had a human rights regime?]
  And this: Quote: ‘cases of enforced disappearances, torture, political repression, restrictions on political freedoms and civil liberties, and arbitrary imprisonment.’
  And, quote: ‘bounties on the heads of political opponents …hit squads to assassinate exiled dissidents,…..1996 Abu Salim prison massacre.’
  Quite a catalogue. You’re hot as mustard on human rights, aren’tcher?
  Well what do you think to this, on how much better things in Libya are right now?
  Thirteen days ago the UN released a report on Libya’s current situation. It cited cases of (and I quote): arbitrary detention, murder, rape, enslavement, sexual slavery, extrajudicial killing and enforced disappearance.’
  Don’t you find the contiguity of those words ‘enforced’ and ‘disappearance’ rather coincidental? Suggests to me your up to your old tricks of passing others’ words off as your own. Without attribution. The ploy of one who wants to seem brighter than he really is. Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?
  In at least one previous exchange between us, you blatantly copied a large section from an article in the Jewish Chronicle and pasted it as your own comment. Shameless theft you wished to get praise for. And you are so thick-skinned that when I pointed it out you didn’t even have the moral gumption to own you’d been caught out.
  How can anybody take your seriously? You’re a buffoon.
  Back to Libya for a bit: The aforementioned report stated that the EU was ‘funnelling funds’ to the Libyan Coast Guard to curb immigration. An amount The Brookings Institution claims had reached $455 million by 2021. That money ‘pays for everything from transport buses to prisons and body bags’. Libya’s Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration ‘received 30 specially modified Toyota Cruisers to intercept migrants in the desert.’ And that the captured migrants are bought and sold like cattle.
  So the EU is indirectly funding human rights abuses on a massive scale. Libya that was once a prosperous nation nobody had to pay to curb migrants, which numbered at the time of the UN investigation at 670,000.
  Quote from you again: ‘Gaddafi also publicly bragged about sending hit squads to assassinate exiled dissidents.’
  You’re being deliberately disingenuous. It’s a narcissist’s trademark.
  No country in the world kills more opponents than the USA. None. But lately they’re getting competition from Ukraine: Ukrainian car bomb assassinations in Moscow have claimed the lives of two Russians and killed a third recently in separate incidents regarded by Washington as ‘legitimate’. Litvinenko was allegedly a victim on Putin’s orders, and his poisoning received worldwide publicity. Two others, the Skripals survived a ‘deadly’ poison, also with maximum media coverage. Sergei Skripal, it transpired, was a double agent whose information resulted in the betrayal of 300 Russian spies. Who knows what fate befell them? Little wonder the Russians wanted revenge. Name me a nation that would not. And Mike Pompeo was prevented at the last minute from sending someone out to assassinate Julian Assange. There has been an untold amount of assassinations by America over the years, though they have received next to no publicity from the compliant western media.

  So yeah, bright boy. Libya was a paradise compared to what it is now.
  But I, according to you, (quote) ‘drone on about..how great the Gaddafi & Stalin regimes were.’
  Do I? Quote the line, baby. I’m keen on seeing it.
  You deliberately misrepresent me again, conflating Stalin and Gadaffi in the same sentence. You would not scruple to tag any lie to an adversary and then accuse them of it as if it were truth. And there are so many examples of this, in your last diatribe alone. Stalin would have been so proud. Himmler too, you self-deluding’person’ you.

  You are not only wrong, but the worst kind of wrong. One who cannot see his hypocrisy and can only revile those who have arrived at the conclusion that international circumstances are entirely different from the version dropped into the doggy bowl for his consumption. There are darker shades about than you have the wit to see.

  One last thing. Your writing ‘style’. It’s irritating. From its quasi-Tourrettic interjections like ‘oy’ and ‘drrrr’ (always with the four ‘r’s, Moriarty) to its use of an ampersand as if you’re in such a hurry those extra letters would slow you down. Do you chew gum when you tap it out?

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  May 11th, 2023
  

  More incoherent nonsense! And I even gave you an out - which you again predictably failed to understand.

  In common with many of the d!rtbags who support these tyrannical sadists & genocidal ideologues, you seem to be a masochist, so you keep coming back for a well-aimed slap. I don’t share any of your pathological obsessions, but I have no problem pointing out what a power-worshipping bottom feeder you are - indeed, happy to oblige, Wobbly.

  As explained, the Putin regime’s terrorising of its sovereign neighbours is not remotely abstract for people like illodiini, but of direct interest, because his country has had to seek NATO membership as a result. Yet mindless Putin prop bots (as evidenced on this page & elsewhere) continue to distort such imperative realities with their bad faith agenda.
  You “countered” this with your standard cut & paste hate rant against Americans, & your claim that it was a book, not lectures, in addition to failing to understand the subject again. Thus you “turned this comments page from its pertinent subject to the one it has become.”

  illodini’s understandable frustration with neighbouring, aggressive imperialists, such as Putin & his online bot supporters, is something with which I entirely empathise.

  “Caesar was a tyrant” - (Oh no! The really thick guy’s going after the name!) You’ve never seen Planet of the Apes? The new ones are particularly fine.
  So, of course you ought to stop slavishly & hypocritically cheerleading mass murderers - past & present, whom you manifestly adore.

  More tired projection: “tedious, hysterical…use of confirmation bias (ooh, someone must’ve used that one on your beloved Hate Site) & logical fallacies…draw conclusions for which there is no evidence”

  And your malicious lies emptily continue.
  Indeed, the last century is a reasonable timeframe. Your expediently contrived, transparent selection of 60 yrs was to specifically avoid some of the very worst, extreme ideological atrocities; including the Great Leap Famine, the joint invasion of Poland with the nat socialists, the ravaging of Eastern Europe, the invasion of Tibet, the enormous “transportations” of peoples & destruction of cultures, the vast system of concentration camps, the effective ideological enslavement of a third of the world’s population, the “genocide of a peasant people” in the Holodomor - all in the name of pursuing a failed & broken ideological agenda. Now whyever would you wish to avoid all of that, Wobbly1933? “Ignoring what is inexpedient,” again? Finally give some truth here.

  However, you do simply reveal yourself with your “I chose 60 years because” - America! Brilliant.
  “You chose the entire 20th century” - Wrong again: the last 100 yrs constitutes only about three quarters of the 20th century. Elementary mathematics as well?! Although, that would go some way towards the failures at basic economic comprehension. A century is standard - 60 yrs is just too obvious a ploy. “A cynical exploitation of past events.” A century tellingly encompasses the horrific attacks on Ukraine - past & present, making it more pertinent for the present (& within living memory). Which is what you tried to slither out of, with your 60 yr ruse. Nice try, heinrich. More “malicious” deception.

  “merely serves to show how bad things used to be, not what they are now.” - Uh, all historiography necessarily reflects on the past (& hopefully helps to instruct those of us paying attention) - how we arrived at this place. And as for “how bad things used to be, not…now?” - With an ongoing genocide in China? North Korean repression? Assad? Iran? And try telling the Ukrainians how “they’ve never had it so good!”

  But if only all the inconvenient historical facts were safely just over 60 yrs ago! Or 61 yrs ago, and you were entirely free to ignore them all! Oy…

  “cheerleading of western wars” - These wars can be commented upon & critiqued. Try telling the truth in Russia about any of Putin’s wars of aggression; or the truth of the brutal Syrian, Iranian, Cuban, Nth Korean regimes, in those imprisoned lands. Or try to report the genocide in China, or any of the regime’s horrific violations of human rights.

  “Only a fool or a propaganda permeated prawn doesn’t know when he’s being ‘cheerled’ up the garden path.” - Your epitomising epitaph.

  “China doesn’t want to take over the world.” - Too obvious a red herring. China has no economic or territorial ambitions whatsoever?
  “Nor does Russia.” - Again, tell Russia’s sovereign neighbours, who desperately desire NATO membership as protection.
  “pushing either into conflict” - You suggest that these powerful, aggressive, despotic regimes have no agency of their own? Fatuous, deceitful nonsense.
  “neighbouring countries deliberately destabilized” - from being terrorised by the “big beasts” of Russia & China, yes.
  “risks nuclear annihilation.” - So, best not to invade sovereign, neighbouring states & murder their people then. As Ukrainians have often said in our media, “the ‘next’ war has already been forced upon us.”

  “China is so repressive towards its people, only two million Chinese visit London” - More of your disgusting deflection. Can the victims of genocide visit you “every year?” You continuously shill for these disgusting, genocidal regimes & pretend to faint when you’re called out for it (trying to build up your “Social Credits,” so that you’ll be “allowed” to travel? So free, like the Uyghur people, the people (”inmates”) of Hong Kong, those whose organs have been harvested, those who have been “disappeared,” those who have been helped away for “re-education,” all who are silenced, etc. etc.). And only 150 million Chinese people still subsist in the direst poverty - to the point of adversely impacting their natural growth, healthy development & life expectancy. Oh, we’ve had all this out before - with the same result. But remember, “just ignore it and it won’t go away.”

  “America, on the other hand” - Again, you’ve slithered off topic. Or you’re again trying to “widen the parameters” right back to your narrowest obsession & distraction manoeuvre. Noted.

  “Which is the police state?” - You’re actually trying to ignorantly suggest that Putin’s Russia, China, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Iran - and all the other dystopias - are not police states? Just how utterly stup!d are you, heinrich? What are the “parameters” of your id!ocy?

  “economic suicide for a near bankrupt nation such as (Russia) to squander its dwindling resources on the continuation of a war it cannot win and could have stopped fifty thousand deaths ago.” - Tell your Vlad (the worst-performing country on the IMF’s list). Also, the total death toll is vastly higher than your underestimate - and depressingly growing all the time. A horrifying fact of ongoing conflict which you celebrate & gloat over, with your id!otic ass-ertions such as, “America’s met its match now!”
  Indeed, the intent is to destroy populations, economies & sovereign neighbours; to savagely intimidate all who attempt their own foreign policies; who wish to join, or refrain from joining, international entities, such as the EU or NATO - in order to gain protection from Russia, to escape its attempt at 20th century extension of imperium (an era which you try to clumsily frame as being not relevant, of course).

  “Iraq. Libya. Syria.” - Three more of your utopias? The more repression, genocide, torture, & gassing, the more utopic in your ideological vision.

  Syrian “oilfields and wheatfields from its people” - The despotic Assad trying to benefit the “people” now, eh?

  “Such humanitarianism! With these mindsets in control, how could anybody believe their actions are for the benefit of mankind?” - Indeed (see above).

  “Anybody who believes what media tells them. And has their identity tied to unshakeable belief they know what’s really going on. That’s who.” - Absolutely, only unquestioningly believe Putin-controlled state media; internet con theories; frozen, failed ideological bumf; & whatever regimes like those in China tell you. This is how you end up ingenuously trusting & slavishly defending genocidal regimes (again, see above). That’s some serious unshakeable certainty you’re again arrogantly demonstrating, incidentally.

  “European country paying for Ukraine” - We’re also trying to give appropriate sanctuary to all the desperate Ukrainian refugees, the innocent women & children who would risk being raped & murdered by invading forces were they to remain in their own sovereign country. These are the people - victims & refugees - whom you sneer & spit at as “The poor, highly moral Ukrainian.” Such scorn is a “constant delight” for you. Because if your paragon of human rights, Putin, got away with this brutalisation of Ukrainian people (as he has with the other people under his control) - which neighbouring people would be next?
  While you slavishly cheer those human beings’ destruction, rape & murder. Honestly look to yourself for once.

  “If Russia is such a threat” - Ask Ukrainian victims “if” Russia is a threat. Ask the sovereign neighbours who wish to join NATO.

  “Why aren’t you including Germany in your ‘reasonable time frame’ of dangerous countries?” - Because, of course, I actually did. (Both innumerate And illiterate, heinrich?) In the above post dated: May 3rd, 2023, paragraph beginning: “place Russia solely in the front rank of genocidal regimes” - But you’re constantly denying that they’ve even done anything wrong, you eejit! Duuurrrr! With its overwhelming death toll over the last century, you really imagine that Russia is not “in the front rank of genocidal regimes” - together with China (& Germany’s historical record)? The regime whose deserved collapse your Putin regards as the greatest “catastrophe?” Just another genocidal slave state, with the requisite planned famines. Your kind of ideological utopia, of course - devoid of irksome human rights “blah blah” for you.

  That’s right.

  “Germ is now send weapons to Ukr & is therefore one of ‘good guys’” - Yeah, I would reckon that if my country was being attacked by, oh, say, a large, neighbouring, imperialist ideological thug like yourself, & we were assisted by the current liberal democratic state of Germany, that would be a good thing, yes.

  “But accord to your previous determination, any country that was a threat last century, still is.” - And wrong again (bizarrely): any country that remains repressive, genocidal & threatening/invading sovereign neighbours is still a dire threat to peace & human rights. Germany was such a state until 1945, then reformed itself, necessarily learned from its history, and is now a successful liberal democratic state, respectful of human rights, the rule of law & the rights-based international legal order. Russia & China are none of these things - also reflecting their history over the last century. I wish they were otherwise - as do their neighbours. Or do you think that the nat socialist party still dominates the German political scene & govt? I certainly knew you were ignorant, but…
  ‘You can never - ever - conveniently section off the past, and pretend that the present moment is expediently discrete.’ - Precisely. We must learn from the horrors of the past & endeavour not to (endlessly) perpetuate them. You clearly don’t agree.

  “That’s exactly what’s happ w Russia. 26 million died fight Germ & they’ve all been ‘conveniently sectioned off’ - As I observed above, after the Soviets had supplied the nat socialists for war (every other state had observed the embargo), concluded their pact & jointly invaded Poland with the nat socialists - after the head of the Russian army had been cut off in the Great Purge by the Soviets (90% of senior officers murdered, in one single example) - the devastated & unprepared Russian army was attacked by the nat socialists, and millions upon millions of Russian lives were unnecessarily wasted by stup!d, mindless ideology. They ultimately drowned the Germans in Russian blood. I said this above, and these appalling facts ought never be forgotten. Every fatuous ideologue should be ceaselessly reminded of them. And as the unimaginably courageous fighters (civilians) in the Warsaw Uprising fought the Germans, in anticipation of aid, the Soviet order was for the Russian army to stand by as the nat socialists brutally crushed the people of the Uprising. Never, ever forget that, tankie. They didn’t just contemptuously waste the lives of the people under their direct, ideological power. That kind of cruelty is not new.

  ‘Yes, yes, on you go - every aspect of existence in Iraq is controlled by “the Amerigrrrr!” “In actual fact it probably still is” - The “convenient” thing about con theories, they’re so serpentine, nebulous & mobile that they can never be effectively disproven. The febrile con theorist just keeps slithering away. And always at the root of the con theory - the hated Jews, Americans - the image of the “rootless, international financier” - the Elders of Zion, of course.

  ‘Amerigrrrr’ - ‘r’ key four times! Who does that?” - Your growl of irrational hatred, graphically represented. Such as your undoubted “Grrrr! Elders of Zion!” or “Grrrr! Human rights blah blah!” or your incomparable, “Grrrr! Raped and murdered Ukrainian women and children! How highly moral they pretend to be! But Putin is so strong and powerful!” - and the like mental sludge.

  “I might feign outrage” - You would have to, being a psychopath.
  “a flippant aside to make on the subject of a genocidal maniac!” - But you deny all ideological genocide, and only ever try to pivot & deflect to America. That’s not flippant, it’s psychopathic, inhuman indifference. You worship all of these genocidal, ideological despots - the only characters you come near to empathising with - and everyone else laughs disgustedly at you lot & your obsession with uniformed little dictators with moustaches. Grow the phck up, tankie.
  “‘No I’m not. You are’” - Ah, the real Wobbly1933, out from under his rock.
  “You excel yourself with infantile insults like those. So characteristic of a narcissist.” - Obviously, you’re completely oblivious to your own ironic contradiction here. Brilliant. You’re a veritable manufactory of vacuous malignancy & hateful hypocrisy. Do go on. And on…

  You don’t try to turn everything awkward back to your hated Americans?! Indeed you always do want to “widen the parameters” - right back to your bizarrely narrow obsession, evidenced again & again. But you must want to airbrush this out of your record, like your Soviet photographers? More lies for your own little Ministry of Truth?

  “seek help” - Please do, Wobbly, everyone’s rootin’ for ya.

  “the rest of us were discussing the upload & its subject, when you blundered in, failed to understand the subject, said that the lectures were a “book” - & then proceeded to unleash your standard copy/paste “I Hate America” rant, trying to distract from Putin’s murderous regime.” - Crystalline accuracy. (After your paranoid, con theorist’s - I’m being blocked! - You followed with: “But conduct of West partic US over past sixty years” (that expediently contrived “60 yrs” again!) - and the ignorant “This book might be” etc. etc.)
  You’re not still trying to convince yourself that it’s about “America!” and that it’s “a book!” are you? Admit the truth: all you drone on about, all you can revert back to is how much you hate America, your Great Satan. It’s like you had a massive brain injury during the Cold War (1980s, p’haps), with consequent cognitive impairment, so you’re still fixed in frozen, failed ideology, incessantly reproducing Cold War prop talking points. Ad. Bloody. Nauseam. Turn it off, tankie. Turn your tankie tanker around. You actually seem hysterically angry that many of your favourite 1980s-era tyrants are no longer around - Gaddafi, Saddam, Mugabe, Ayatollah Khomeini, Jaruzelski, Ceaușescu, Honecker (”The Wall will be standing in 50 and even in 100 years”) - the whole bloodstained crew - really, anyone else who also hates Americans & Jews. KGB Putin’s still there to keep you warm (in your frozen state).

  “a blatant plagiarist.” - Wobbly, virtually each time you see a word of more than two syllables, you repeat it in your next inane rant. So turn off your Soviet-era projector. In common with all their/your output, it clearly doesn’t work.

  “I’ve put these two following quotes close together.” - Yeah, spectacularly impressive, you’re doing a heckuva job there, Brown-noser. And for your next transparent deception…?

  “you have actually sneered at and spat upon Ukrainians who have been murdered & raped. You’ve taken sheer delight in their suffering.” - You slavishly support the war-mongering Putin regime which is the cause of Ukrainian people’s suffering, having invaded a sovereign country. Rather than sympathising with innocent Ukainian victims of rape and murder, you sneer at them as “The poor, highly moral Ukrainian.” There you are again - blaming the victims, and siding with the perpetrators. Seemingly the only point upon which you can be consistent. Such scorn is a “constant delight” for you. In this clearly appalling context, I’ve called on you to condemn these acts, Putin’s entire brutal invasion, and you have repeatedly refused to do so. You manifestly support his regime and its barbaric actions. You also refuse to acknowledge or condemn acts of genocide, and constantly try to deceitfully pivot to America, in a transparent effort at distraction, which always fails. I call upon you to condemn the actions of the Putin regime against innocent Ukrainian victims of rape and murder, and to condemn all of the ideological acts of genocide - past and present. Finally grow a pair, and do the right thing. (But you won’t, because you can’t.)

  ““Look at all those people at that child’s funeral, with their fake, political grief!” angrily exclaimed the psychopathic, imperialist ideologue.” - When you throw your laughable hissy fits at any objection towards your slavish support of Putin & associated atrocities, you will be criticised and condemned. And it will be Swiftian, if necessary (never mind). In your psychopathic, hateful condition, you automatically & expediently dismiss all condemnation of murderous regimes & genocidal ideologies as fake - clearly failing to comprehend any normal, human emotions. I can only assume that you’ve never had a child, or even if you had, you’ve never loved anybody, not being apparently capable of such feeling - as you can demonstrate no such comprehension. Consequently, you will not be able to understand normal concern for other people, for any who suffer. Those who feel deeply for their loved ones are able to extend that outwards in an imaginative effort, in order to feel for others, and what it is like for others to grieve, as we have grieved. All of this for you is uniformly “fake and political.” This allows you to ignorantly & callously mock & blame the innocent victims, and support the powerful perpetrators. We know you evil, ideological imperialists of old, and the generational harm you do.

  You want to divorce yourself from the ethical & logical consequences of your support of genocidal ideologies & despotic regimes. No, you must own it.

  “Nor did I say Torture chambers are nice places to live either.” - You praised the torturing Libyan regime, with its notorious human rights record! Such regimes are torture chambers, you id!ot. You said they’d give you a free place to live - just try not to notice all the disappearances & torture chambers, during the process. And it was all “given completely without charge.” Here you ignorantly demonstrate your ethical stup!dity again. To imagine you can live in such a way! There is always a moral price to pay when you support & participate in these torturing, murdering regimes. The transaction is never “completely without charge.” But you “think” it’s possible to remain remote from all moral consequences & considerations. You are - and I use the term advisedly here - an utter f00l.

  “You exist in a state of contemptible moral and intellectual ignorance.” - This is your condition (see: well, everything you’ve discharged thus far), and you are ultimately more to be pitied than scorned.
  A psychopathic, “lying, deceitful troll of a narcissist” with only a malfunctioning projector to dissemble his mendacity.

  “‘How about we close on an agreed formula of words - historically accurate & ethically fair = Big, evil, imperialist bastards ought not invade, exploit, murder, starve, enslave, deculturate, indoctrinate, poison, deport, violate, dispossess, torture, or otherwise terrorise their neighbours.’”
  “Works for me.” - No, because like everything else, you failed to understand it.

  So, if you expediently change the words, it can mean something else? And this is your earth-shattering insight, is it? Wobbly1933 - why in hell are you on a book site? Seriously? You haven’t read any history on the subjects which you ignorantly presume to speak on. I asked you - and silence ensued. Or, rather than blessed silence, a putrid stream of your mindless garbage. Again - again! - desperately trying to pivot away from your cherished, ideological, genocidal empires.

  The formula does indeed describe genocidal imperialists such as China, Russia, Britain. Captures them perfectly - even in your very own “nutshell.”
  “some mother actor???” WTF? Are you writing - as well as “thinking” - with your arse? “‘cept praps ‘neighbour’s” - Oy vey. Or are you having some kind of a tankie bot seizure again?

  Iraq? Poisoning of the Kurds, torture of civilians (but you just can’t mention, admit, or morally condemn that either, of course. No, Saddam was another of your “good” despots. Great man for an acid bath). Vietnam too - re-education” camps, no human rights, multiple political executions, consequent state slavery, yes. “poisonous for over a hundred years” - I thought your expedient ideological limit was a contrived 60 yrs - any other “wider parameter” was verboten, heinrich?! Unless we can widen to the hated America again?
  Ukraine, several times over the last century - but that’s no good unless you can blame the Americans or the Jews again. The Soviets claimed Ukrainians as their brothers & sisters - but ruthlessly planned the starvation of millions. But for you, that’s just fine. No normal, human emotions - your sort of ideologues. And Ukrainians have no right to their sovereign territory, eh? Only “land they claim to be recovering?!” If the Russians didn’t want people to fight - then don’t invade their country. Or, here’s a thought: the Russians could withdraw, taking all of their depleted uranium tank rounds & their bunker-buster bombs (used knowingly upon civilians) with them when they go. (Incidentally, the bunker buster bombs in question were identified as “KAB-1500Lpr,” a variation of an advanced laser-guided bomb that can penetrate at a depth of 20 meters. Russia’s Aerospace Forces have used the 1,500-kilogram bombs in airstrikes against Syrian people since 2015.
  So, precisely as you like it - ideally no humans left alive - reduce those pesky witnesses. Or just murder & maim - favoured policies of “people” like you & Vlad.)
  Torture? Russia, China, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Iran - all your beloved utopias. No human rights; anything goes. Why don’t you go, incidentally? The ol’ courage of your convictions lacking? It’s not as if these regimes could actually castrate you, Wobbly heinrich, in your, uh, depleted condition.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  May 11th, 2023
  

  “Chemical weapons are commonplace…And Police Brutality” - You’re (apparently obliviously again) describing your Utopias. Why not join the dots & condemn it? Because you approve of it, that’s why. Simple, really.
  “free to be chemically assaulted.” - And it can be reported & protested. Don’t like that, do you?

  “established strategy of western media towards its perceived enemies” - Do you have any problem or critique whatsoever (even mild reservation) of “non-western” media? How Russian, Chinese, Iranian or North Korean media behave towards their “perceived enemies?” (Don’t really expect an answer to any of these, just love watchin’ ya squirm away from all the “ideologically awkward” questions, at this stage. You can’t even criticise the worst, most inhuman tyrants or ideologies! Unbelievable.)

  “libelling your gainsayers w accusations that could be disproved by anybody read ‘actually’ written.” - So, now you don’t support Putin’s atrocities, human rights abuses, control of the media (the only media you believe), is it? You don’t deny genocide, or support genocidal regimes & ideologies; their atrocities & denial of human rights? Because I gave you the opportunity to condemn them, but you then doubled down, praising the Chinese regime (great tourism, apparently - so distracting!), Putin, Gaddafi, Assad et al. All of them tyrannical & human rights-abusing, of course. However, that only seems to recommend them to you further. And you have nothing but criticism & blame for Ukrainian victims.
  So, this would prima facie fail the test for libel.

  “Nowhere have I sneered at civilian victims of war.” - More contemptible, and contemptuous, lies. I cite innocent Ukrainian victims of rape and murder - you respond with your sneering, “The poor, highly moral Ukrainian.” This is your human sympathy, is it? Spare me your bot humanity. You slavishly support the regime which is the cause of Ukrainian people’s suffering. Anyone who blames victims, and sides with perpetrators can phck off.

  “both sides, are caught in a proxy war betw Russia and the West” - Garbage - don’t invade sovereign countries. That’s it. You want to stop people joining NATO - now they have to join NATO. No more imperialist Soviet bullshyte. It failed, it’s gone.

  “But I am skeptical of the widespread image in the western press” - And yet you’re not remotely sceptical of Putin-controlled state media, its obvious propaganda, or internet con theories. Odd that. Sceptical me arse, heinie.

  “portrays the vicious Nazi Azovs who mutilate and torture POWs, as heroic freedom fighters guided by unshakeable moral codes” - Yet more blaming of the victims; yet more support for the perpetrators. The entire Putin propaganda effort has been this fake “Russia vows to crush ‘neo-nazism’ in Ukraine!” And you ignorantly & offensively spin it out here. The Putin regime cultivated its own homegrown Nazis, remember. The Ukrainian state has protected minorities like Crimean Tatars & LGBTQ+ people, who are subject to brutal persecution in Russia. Less attention, however, has been paid over the years to neo-nazi Russian militias fighting on behalf of Russia, not just in Ukraine but also in Syria. While these fighters are believed to have also joined the ranks of Russian private mercenary companies - Wagner is the best known - an unknown number of fighters joined, & trained under, Rusich, as well as the Russian Imperial Movement & its paramilitary unit, the Russian Imperial Legion.
  Milchakov, a former paratrooper, and avowed Nazi, has been identified as the co-leader of Rusich, along with another Russian named Yan Petrovsky. Experts observe that the group is explicitly affiliated with Vagner.
  Both Milchakov and Petrovsky fought against Ukraine as volunteers in the Donbas in 2014 and 2015 and have openly displayed patches awarded to them as part of the “Union of Donbas Volunteers.” At the time, however, Russia repeatedly denied its forces were fighting in the Donbas, asserting, while straining credulity, that the local forces battling Ukrainian troops were merely local partisans.
  In September 2014, near the Luhansk Oblast village of Shchastya, Rusich militants battled Ukrainians. Ukrainian news reports said dozens of Ukrainian soldiers were killed. Afterward, images of mutilated and burnt bodies circulated online, and Milchakov later openly bragged about photographing the bodies.

  “desecrating graves!” - What’s happening to actual Ukrainian bodies in this invasion - not just graves - under constant Russian bombardment? Don’t care, do you?

  The day that Russia launched its invasion, the head of the Russian Imperial Movement, Denis Gariyev, posted a message on his Telegram channel saying: “Without a doubt, we are in favor of the liquidation of the separatist entity Ukraine.” (Singing your song.)
  The group has provided paramilitary-style training to white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Europe & actively works to rally these types of groups into a common front against their perceived enemies. The movement has two training facilities in St. Petersburg, which are likely being used for woodland and urban assault, tactical weapons, and hand-to-hand combat training.
  A few weeks after Gariyev’s Telegram post, the organisation’s combat training centre near St. Petersburg, called Partizan, announced the recruitment of volunteers to fight in Ukraine.
  Gariyev has also created a related organization called Reserve Squad, which, according to German intelligence reports, has received multimillion-dollar orders from the Interior Ministry, the Federal Security Service, & the Federal Protective Service, which is the government agency charged with providing bodyguard protection to top Kremlin officials.

  Do you really want to open your pro-Putin neo-nazi can of worms?

  “here are a few morsels”
  ‘You’re even eulogising the Gaddafi regime?… ‘international NGOs routinely condemned Libya’s human rights regime’ - [some confusion there. Did you mean to write Gadaffi actually had a human rights regime?” - Well, your further confusion here could again have been dispelled by consulting a dictionary! “Regime” can mean a government, especially an authoritarian one - such as “the Gaddafi regime” as cited; or a system or ordered way of doing things - such as “Libya’s human rights regime,” which was consistently condemned.

  “And this:…” — Woah there, Wobbly1933! Hang on, you mean to say that that was one of your “few morsels?”

  Your confusion & failure to understand the meaning of a straightforward word like “regime” in different contexts - that was a morsel? Something that you were to “criticise?”
  Seriously, was that supposed to be a “zinger?” Or one of your British tabloid “Gotchas?!”

  Okay, heinrich, I’ll go through the rest of your effort, but FFS, it’s truly appalling & dishonest.

  “Quote: ‘cases of enforced disappearances, torture, political repression, restrictions on political freedoms and civil liberties, and arbitrary imprisonment.’
  And, quote: ‘bounties on the heads of political opponents …hit squads to assassinate exiled dissidents,…..1996 Abu Salim prison massacre.’ Quite a catalogue. You’re hot as mustard on human rights, aren’tcher?” — Uh, heinrich…was that meant to be another zinger - ridiculing the known & brutal human rights abuses of one of your favoured despotisms? You honestly didn’t know anything about this established record - of one of the most infamous regimes?
  And not knowing anything about this record, upon finding out about it, your immediate reaction is to ridicule the reality of the human rights abuses, rather than to reasonably condemn them? “aren’tcher” even sounds like a subliterate borrowing from your tabloids.
  That would reflect your earlier high esteem for human rights: “human rights blah blah” - you even sound like one of your beloved dictators there (not actually a compliment, heinrich).

  “Thirteen days ago UN released a report Libya’s current sit. It cited cases of: arbit detention, murder, rape, enslavement, sexual slavery, extrajudicial killing & enforced disappearance.’ Don’t you find contiguity words ‘enforced’ and ‘disappearance’ rather coincidental?” - Not really, because if you were conversant (or even interested) in the area of human rights, this is one of the regular scheduled offences in human rights legislation & cases. Your tyrannical regimes are always breaking these laws & violating these rights. There is nothing new under that sun. You’ll discover that conjunction of words regularly in emergency reports on all the regimes which you so unquestioningly support - although you found the “contiguity” to be so eldritch on this occasion.
  If you weren’t so selective, you would see that what I originally said was, “Throughout Gaddafi’s rule, international NGOs (HRW, Amnesty) routinely condemned Libya’s human rights regime” - and what I was referring to (in the public domain) was the Amnesty Report from 2010 on Libya - I can give you a link - although I notice you didn’t provide a link for the UN report. When I observed that “NGOs (HRW, Amnesty) routinely condemned Libya’s hr” - you must’ve automatically assumed that I, Caesar had carried out said report & condemned the tyrant’s brutality.
  No, believe it or not, we don’t conduct international studies & reports ourselves before posting comments - you clearly don’t even go to the trouble of thinking, or reading the upload descriptions beforehand! Best not to assume posters here are international agencies, Wobbly.

  “Suggests to me your up to your old tricks of passing others’ words off as your own” - As I said - “Throughout Gaddafi’s rule, international NGOs (HRW, Amnesty) routinely condemned Libya’s hr regime” - don’t ass-ume too much, heinrich. (Sorry, was that another failed “Zinger?”)
  Anyway, aren’t you the one repeatedly reproducing the effluvium of Putin-controlled media, Russia Today, & internet con theories as “phact” hereabouts?

  “blatantly copied large section fr article in Jewish Chronicle & pasted it as own. Shameless theft you wished to get praise. And you are thick-skinned when I pointed out you didn’t have the moral gumption to own you’d been caught out.” - Could you provide a link to this fabulous, legendary event? Because if it’s anything like your “report Gotcha,” it’ll be as vacuous as all your other claims. But I’ll wait to see until you give me the actual link, than I’ll probably have to explain something quite elementary to you again (y’know, like the definition of “Regime,” or what human rights are, etc.) - but, as usual, my hopes aren’t high for your empty boasts. Because, as you inadvertently say of yourself: “How can anybody take your (sic, very sic) seriously? You’re a buffoon.” - Your disturbing inner voice, p’haps?

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  May 11th, 2023
  

  “Back to Libya for a bit” - Whatever I can help you by explaining, Wobbly. (I’ll try not to “sound too clever for yer, innit!” Keep my syllable count low as low as poss, almost to align with your brain cells. - “But yer must stop yer thievin’ - from ver dictionary!” No, as I explained, public domain stuff - like the language - is fair enough.)

  You see, the Libyan Coast Guard situation is a genuinely serious point (surprised that you, of all people, are even mentioning it by name). Although, the history is even more grim than you know.
  “Libya that was once a prosperous nation nobody had to pay to curb migrants” - You just make all this stuff up, knowing damn all about the established record! (Prosperous - with well-appointed torture chambers.)
  “nobody had to pay to curb migrants!” - Under your hero, Gaddafi, Libya worked to harshly stem the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean, in order to procure lucrative deals from Europe.

  Gaddafi wanted to use immigration as a wedge to improve his own standing. In 2004, he began making deals with Mediterranean states to control the tide of migrants. In Aug 2010, on a visit to Italy, Gaddafi said Europe would turn “black” without his help.
  “Tomorrow Europe might no longer be European, & even black, as there are millions who want to come in,” Gaddafi said. “What will be the reaction of Europeans faced with this influx of starving & ignorant Africans…we don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions.”
  He offered to shut down his country & its coastal waters to the job seekers in exchange for €5 billion a year. He pointed to his work w Italy as proof he could get the job done. In June 2009, he signed a “friendship” agreement with Italy that involved joint naval patrols against migrants and Italy handing over migrants captured en route to Europe to Libya, no questions asked. The number of Africans caught trying to illegally enter Italy fell by more than 75% that year.
  By the end of the yr Gaddafi had struck a more modest €50 million deal. Internment camps were built & watchtowers built on the beaches (your kind of Utopia again). There were frequent reports of rape and theft by Libyan security services.
  “Libya was a paradise” - Yeah, yeah, heinrich, sure it was…

  “But I, according to you, (quote) ‘drone on about..how great the Gaddafi & Stalin regimes were.’ Do I? Quote the line, baby. I’m keen on seeing it.” - About how “Libya was a paradise” & “Libya, where once health and education was free and newlyweds were given places to live completely without charge?” Oh, those quotes must be around here someplace! All that droning nostalgia about “Libya” being “a paradise!” You colossal plank. Your Stalin angle is the more politically correct line of “no admissions of ideological errors” because to admit that the genocide of Ukrainians was wrong back then (in just one instance of the regime’s record) - might be to cast doubt on KGB Putin’s mass murder policy in the present. And you probably don’t want to get “allegedly” poisoned with something “deadly.” (When they even have you self-censoring like that, then you know your testicles are a distant memory!) And wasn’t the Holodomor “over 60 yrs ago?” Oh, please let it be inadmissible! Like Stalin & Lenin!

  Of course, your Brexit Britain calls these desperate, drowning human beings who are forced to migrate “c0ckr0aches” - like you used to call my people “rats” & then starve/murder us. It’s ingrained in ye. There is a deep contempt for unfortunate, suffering human beings & fundamental human rights (or as you call them “blah blah”).
  In an eerie echo of your contempt for any who dare to condemn human rights abuses, or express sympathy for victims, your journalists make the same disgusting noises: “Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don’t care.” Own it, heinrich, it’s the same.
  The callousness is ugly in Libya as well as with you lot, where local gangs prey on migrants, & racism against darker-skinned Africans is common.

  “‘Gaddafi also publicly bragged about sending hit squads to assassinate exiled dissidents.’ You’re being deliberately disingenuous.” - What are you waffling about now? That is your dear Colonel’s record of pride.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  May 11th, 2023
  

  “Ukr car bomb” - Immediately, back to blaming victims of invasion. You really can’t help yourself. There are more Ukr bombings of Ru than there are Ru bombings of Ukr, are there? That’s another “fact,” is it? Do you even have a functioning brain? Would the brutal Ru invasion be a factor here at all? You prize t***. All you say is proven egregiously false, yet on you go. Thick skins, is it?

  “Litvin was allegedly a victim” - Allegedly! You’re the most unimaginably thick ****.
  “Two others, the Skrips survived a ‘deadly’ poison” - As for your dubious “deadly,” do you not recall, heinrich, or care to recall, that this Soviet-era nerve agent was actually fatal for one human being? In addition to both Skrips being poisoned, a British officer, Nick Bailey, was also taken into intensive care after attending the incident; and there was a similar poisoning of two British nationals involving the same nerve agent. Charlie Rowley survived, but Dawn Sturgess died. A direct result of the reckless manner in which the nerve agent was disposed of following the poisoning in Salisbury.
  Of course, Ru then accused Britain of the poisoning of Ru targets, using the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent - a claim for which you have no doubt completely fallen. They could do anything to a useful id!ot like you, and you would doubtless lick their hand afterwards, eh?

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  May 11th, 2023
  

  “the compliant western media” - Do you honestly believe that the media is uncritical of the US? Or govts & institutions generally? You must only subsist on a diet of Russia Today. Oh, & pure, unadulterated hatred.

  “deliberately misrep me again, conflating Stalin & Gadaffi” - Oh, sure, they were all sweethearts. You boring old tankie fume.
  “You would not scruple to tag any lie to adversary” - Ah here, wouldn’t that be just more of your Utopian nostalgia? Your “good auld daze” of “liquidation” & Great Purges?

  “You are not only wrong…hypocrisy” - Tell me again how it’s all the fault of murdered/raped Ukrainians, heinrich, you old nat socialist tale spinner! “international circumstances are entirely diff from the version” - I know, I know - Russia Today & your con theories. Keep your tin foil hat on.
  “There are darker shades about than you have the wit to see.” - Keep watching the skies! The Jewish Moon is hollow, I tellz ya!

  “One last thing.” - Ok, Columbo. “Your writing ‘style’” - Ah now, heinrich, the only readable parts of your drivel were my quotes! (As you already knew - consume your cardiac.)
  “From its quasi-Tourrettic (sic)” - What were you saying again about writing ability?
  “‘oy’” - What a Jew hater you are.
  ‘drrrr’ - no, that’s “Durrr!” - ironically enough, it’s to indicate how stup!d you are & how you always get everything wrong. Who knew?
  “Do you chew gum when you tap it out?” - I tap dance on failed, genocidal ideologues. No offence, Wobbly1933!

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  Webby1948
  May 15th, 2023
  

  Swapping insults with a narcissist is time-consuming and unproductive. Plainly Narcaesar has all the time in the world. It took him three days and a series of diatribes totalling in excess of six thousand seven hundred words to upload his answer to my previous comment.
  This is how Narcaesar works. It is a classic example of unrestrained narcissism in argument. Using deliberate misspellings (ph’ck)(d!rtbag) to evade detection by the mods.
  The sheer amount of vitriol on display here is no doubt intended to overwhelm, maybe even to discourage an answer. After all, to even begin answering, one has to wade through a series of documents which include abusive terms such as the following, excerpted from just the first (the first!) of five tirades.
  Or maybe it was four. You can lose track, scrolling through bullsh!t:
  Quotes: ‘ In common with many of the d!rtbags who support these tyrannical sadists & genocidal ideologues, you seem to be a masochist’. ‘what a power-worshipping bottom feeder you are’.’ mindless Putin prop bots.’ ‘ More tired projection’.’ your malicious l’ies emptily continue.’ ’someone must’ve used that one on your beloved Hate Site” Nice try, heinrich.’ More “malicious” deception.’ ‘Fatuous, deceitful nonsense’ ‘More of your disgusting deflection’ ‘You continuously shill for these disgusting, genocidal regimes & pretend to faint when you’re called out for it’ ‘how utterly stup!d are you, heinrich? What are the “parameters” of your id!ocy?’ A horrifying fact of ongoing conflict which you celebrate & gloat over, with your id!otic ass-ertions’ ‘The more repression, genocide, torture, & gassing, the more utopic in your ideological vision.’ ‘That’s some serious unshakeable certainty you’re again arrogantly demonstrating, incidentally’. ‘These are the people - victims & refugees - whom you sneer & spit at’ ‘you slavishly cheer those human beings’ destruction, rape & murder’ ‘innumerate And illiterate, heinrich?’ ‘you’re constantly denying that they’ve even done anything wrong, you eejit’ ‘a large, neighbouring, imperialist ideological thug like yourself’ ‘I certainly knew you were ignorant, but’ ‘Never, ever forget that, tankie.’ ‘febrile con theorist just keeps slithering’ ‘Your growl of irrational hatred’ ‘your undoubted “Grrrr! Elders of Zion!” or “Grrrr! Human rights blah blah!” or your incomparable, “Grrrr! Raped and murdered Ukrainian women and children!’ ‘and the like mental sludge.’ ‘You….being a psychopath’ ‘psychopathic, inhuman indifference. You worship all of these genocidal, ideological despots - the only characters you come near to empathising with - and everyone else laughs disgustedly at you lot & your obsession with uniformed little dictators with moustaches. Grow the phck up, tankie.’ ‘must want to airbrush this out of your record, like your Soviet photographers? More lies for your own little Ministry of Truth?’ ‘all you can revert back to is how much you hate America’ ‘you had a massive brain injury” turn off your Soviet-era projector’ ‘doing a heckuva job there, Brown-noser’ ‘You also refuse to acknowledge or condemn acts of genocide’ ‘ you to ignorantly & callously mock & blame the innocent victims, ‘laughable hissy fits’ ‘you evil, ideological imperialists’
  ‘you id!ot.’ ‘your ethical stup!dity’ ‘You are - and I use the term advisedly here - an utter f00l.”only a malfunctioning projector to dissemble his mendacity.’ ‘Wobbly1933 - why in hell are you on a book site?’ ‘Are you writing - as well as “thinking” - with your arse?’ ‘you having some kind of a tankie bot seizure again?’ ‘the starvation of millions…. for you, that’s just fine.’ ‘It’s not as if these regimes could actually castrate you, Wobbly heinrich, in your, uh, depleted condition.’

  And so on. Ad bladdy nauseam. Repetitive tirade and repetitive tirade, replete with insults and allegations and fantasies. Who spends time on such explosions of wind (from between the legs or the ears. It’s all the same)?
  The Narcaesar. That’s who.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  Webby1948
  May 15th, 2023
  

  I have little expectation this will abate any time soon. Even though my opponent is a master abater.
  @ Narcaesar: [I cannot forebear responding to you with this cognomen. It is a small retort compared to your endless round of narcissistic abuse.]
  ‘I even gave you an out’. How kind. Did it come with conditions? Course it did! An ‘out’ providing I conceded the argument to you.
  You have accused me of many failings, most of which – true to your disorder - apply to yourself. But surely one of the most glaringly self-deceiving is when you accuse another of an obsession with ‘having the last word’. You display that trait time and time again. It’s intrinsic to the character of the narcissist.
  ‘Illodini’s.. country has had to seek NATO membership as a result.’
  Here’s you admitting I did not widen the parameters of the comment. Illodini did. Directly contradicting your previous lie. And on that subject,
  ‘Had to?’ That country was not compelled to do so. It was not under any threat. And hasn’t been attacked since 1945. It’s attacked Afghanistan though, standing beside its bigger ‘friend’. And it wasn’t in danger then, either. When, shockingly,it helped invade a sovereign country. Okay that, though. Washington said so. And Bush signed the American Service members Protection Act in 2002. Which authorizes an attack on The Hague if any American serviceman (or woman) is arrested by the ICC. The International Criminal Court that is, which currently has a warrant out for Putin and to which Washington has recently donated large sums, after refusing to comply with it for long enough. War crimes? America? What war crimes? What torture?
  You and your ‘Amerigrrrr. (That enough ‘r’s for you?)It’s a wonder you haven’t turned yourself inside out.
  I’m always criticising the USA , aren’t I? And you’re always criticising Russia and China. And whereas the fulminating outbursts you call ‘opinion’ have the full backing of every major western medium (so you’re in with the crowd there,bright boy) I aver that the version presented by the US and endorsed by its slavish(your word) acolytes is nowhere near the truth, and I’m a Russian bot.
  Nice to be on the big boy side of the argument, huh? Ever spoken out when you weren’t? No,not when I’ve been on here.
  In common with all those who offer their wholehearted support to the narrative consensus, you believe everything you’re fed. Do you think it’s just another conspiracy theory that two of the 9/11 hijackers have recently been revealed as CIA assets?
  Course you do. Just like you ‘think’ no Russian-speaking Ukranians have been raped and murdered by Ukrainian right wing troops. That all the atrocities are perpetrated by Russian troops alone.
  I have no interest in convincing you. Just advancing another point of view.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  Webby1948
  May 15th, 2023
  

  You and your mate write about Russia as though Stalin is still alive and the events he engineered are about to be repeated. You cling on to your 100-year ‘timeframe’ by your fingernails because more recent years have exposed more ‘clear and present’ danger. And it’s not from Russia or China.
  You harp on about my referring to the upload as a ‘book’ as though it is of fundamental importance. This is an audiobook site. In whatever form they are presented, it’s legitimate to call them ‘books’. Your refusal to let that go is, how can I put it, typical again of your narcissism. Tiresome, repetitive, and rather pathetic.
  You scorn any suggestion that NATO is a dangerous organisation. Yet NATO, either under its own name or that of its guiding member America, has been involved in the destruction of far more countries than any other this century.
  Your ego drives you to use any transparent ploy.You altered my comment that, compared to now, Libya was a paradise before its destruction by the west. You altered it to ‘Libya was a paradise’ without the qualifying clause and once again, attributed to your opponent’s words an inflection that was not in the original.
  Talking of originals, you sidestepped the plagiarism again. Accusing me of it instead. Breathtaking. Is it because I mentioned the Jewish Chronicle that you accused me of anti-Semitism?
  ‘Too obvious a red herring. China has no economic or territorial ambitions whatsoever?’ You leave this unanswered. Don’t you know? We all know that America, or rather Washington, certainly has territorial ambitions. And not only on its own continent.

  ‘The despotic Assad trying to benefit the “people” now, eh?’
  And you accuse me of sneering, you hy-po – krite.
  Why don’t you condemn the occupation of Syria’s resources, the prevention of its ability to feed its population, or build revenue while refusing to lift sanctions? Is that the conduct of a country upholding human rights? Is yours the manner of one who condemns abuse whenever he sees it, as you say so often in your virtue signaling breast-beating?
  What’s so blameworthy about Syria’s responding militarily to hardline Islamist insurgents trying to take over the country, but so praiseworthy about USA’s employing foreign policies which result in the overthrow of democratically elected governments and preparing them for war?
  It’s always the same with you, the same tired old clownspeak. Assad is trying to defend his country as Gadaffi did, but Syria’s been on the wrong side of NATO and on Washington’s hit list for sixty years.Damn. There goes that 60 again. All this while Israel keeps an entire population under imprisonment on the Gaza strip, occupies the Golan Heights belonging to Syria, and conducts what, had it been any other country, would be termed genocide against the Palestinians.
  Genocide. Your preferred term only when it comes to describing countries out of favour with America. And you can’t even see the double standards there.
  You prefer to ignore modern atrocities like Libya, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and likely now Sudan, and demand that I condemn the Stalinist Russia of 90 years back, which I never once claimed to praise. Not that that stopped you saying I did. Lies with no substance are your forte, Narcaesar.
  You’ve been called a ‘bad faith actor’. You certainly are.
  Over the past sixty years the West has been responsible for more war crimes - committed either by NATO or by America all over the world. This places them squarely in the front rank of aggressive, bullying states. Whether openly or by underhand means, America has played a part in every major foreign war since Eisenhower made his speech about the military industrial complex.
  ‘Try telling the truth in Russia about any of Putin’s wars of aggression’ .’ the truth of the brutal Syrian, Iranian, Cuban, Nth Korean regimes, in those imprisoned lands. Or try to report the genocide in China, or any of the regime’s horrific violations of human rights.’
  No mention of America again! But you get ‘genocide’ in there.What’s wrong with you?
  Truth is a strange concept for you to advance. Equal apportionment of blame even more so.
  Are you claiming the civilian populace of Eastern Ukraine hasn’t been shelled regularly since 2014, on the grounds they were ’separatists’ who wanted to align with the country of their mother tongue while their language was outlawed by Kiev? No mention of their human rights? The words have a flexible meaning for you. Why do you ‘think’ Kiev, an illegal regime installed by coup, was right in killing 14,000 despite a peace agreement, yet Assad is wrong in defending his country against Islamic militants funded by the Saudis, Israelis and America ? Why is it okay for Israel to murder Palestinians and for the west to supply arms against the Yemenis? And why is it fine by you that Iraq lost two million in murderous, genocidal sanctions before being bombed indiscriminately, killing 7, 000 civilians in three weeks and causing over a million deaths since. Admittedly, 7, 000 whose colour is not to your preference.
  All of your comments were as usual interspersed with your ‘quasi-Tourettic’ outbursts I see. Good of you to pick me up on that extra ‘r’.
  I thought you were big on ‘r’s. Specially as you write out of your own so vehemently.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  Webby1948
  May 15th, 2023
  

  It seems further comments of mine are ‘awaiting moderation’.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett
• 
  caesar963
  May 21st, 2023
  

  “further comments of mine are ‘awaiting moderation’” - Now, this represents a grave loss to civilisation! It could be your “Dark Forces!” at work again. You could synopsise ‘em, but I’m sure they don’t differ from the rest of your bigoted, hysterically hateful discharges. You might first try removing all your expletives, such as “^^^^^^^ Ukrainian victims! American *****! Jewish ^^^^!”

  Oy. What is all this anyway, your extended, delayed nervous breakdown? Get better.
  “Swapping insults with a narcissist is time-consuming & unproductive” - Sheesh, tell me about it, Wobbly1933!

  “all time in world It took him 3 days” - Hey, you’re counting words now - that’s how busy you are! It takes a lot of words to correct your incoherent falsehoods, remember. And of course I was responding to your 2,654 words then, & your 2000 words now, taking you 4 days. And your 4 (4!) tirades, this time, with yet more threatened (further are ‘awaiting moderation’). Word counts necessarily reproduce contextual quotations (from your own ordure, as well).
  (Why does everything always have to be explained, heinrich? Too many blows to the head from your bot controllers?)
  But, in all seriousness, all the stuff you typed there can’t possibly be the result & product of 4 days of mature adult contemplation? Seriously?

  “classic example of” - Yes, yes, a classic example of your internet trolling, I know.
  “Using delib misspellings to evade detection by the mods” - Uh, you’re the one always whining about having your shrill screeds blocked, & those sinister “Dark Forces!” out to get you. Yet more explanations necessary…

  “sheer amount of vitriol on display here is intended overwhelm” - Well then, just edit your vitriol down.
  “to discourage an answer” - No chance of that, you’re determined to “last word” it, for some bizarre “reason.”
  “You can lose track, scrolling through bullsh!t” - You said it, baby.
  “l’ies” - this, no doubt intended to evade mod? Your manifest lies, such as “Why don’t you mention Germany?” - immediately after I had cited Germany. And: “Why can’t we only talk about the events of the last 60 yrs, as an expedient, contrived frame?” Moreover, Gaddafi reigned over “paradise!” (compared to, etc.) you sobbed uncontrollably, never soliciting money to brutally suppress migration. Lies & more lies, you never take a breath.

  All the quotations you use (all of which, in context, remain wholly irrefutable, of course - as you continuously demonstrate) - you characterise as insulting - this you then deplore. Yet you immediately precede & follow them with your own insults - your tactic from the outset. Why do you guys always fail to display any self-awareness whatsoever? With everything having to be ceaselessly explained?

  You’ve even been working hard on your insults, in an effort to make them sound slightly intelligent.
  However, “forebear & cognomen?” You’re verily trying too hard, Dr. Johnson. Too effortful, in all sooth, milord. (You’re probably being inspired by that coronation, which is doubtless on an imperial loop in your narrow head.)

  “An ‘out’ providing I conceded the argument to you.” - You have an “argument?” No. You have yet to present any rationally coherent contentions, and I have to correct each one of your vacuous bot assertions. That, Wobbly, is not an argument. All you can do is falsify, transparently pivot & share your historical illiteracy (see your above, er, “commentary”). The lectures (not book) concern Russia (not America), but all you have is “WhatAboutAmerica?!” Thus “widening the parameters” right back to your narrow obsession - again & again. Clearly, even you don’t believe that your cherished genocidal ideologies & despotic regimes can be vindicated on their own terms. So deflect, divert, distract. It never works, of course, but the desperation is evident in that it’s all you’ve got.

  So, of course I gave you an out, as I generously proposed: “How about we close on an agreed formula of words - historically accurate & ethically fair = Big, evil, imperialist bastards ought not invade, exploit, murder, starve, enslave, deculturate, indoctrinate, poison, deport, violate, dispossess, torture, or otherwise terrorise their neighbours. And if they do, we ought never support them, or expediently deflect from their manifest crimes & abuses.
  That’s the best way to settle these things, based on historical experience. Although your conditioned culture is to actually commit everything on the sorry list, as we know.” - All true & reasonable. You were, however, frustrated, because it justly condemns all of the brutal imperialisms & genocidal ideologies which you slavishly support (your own included!). This you demonstrably concede, offering nothing in response. Not even a few cogged big boy syllables.

  “You have accused me of many failings, most of which” - All of which successfully stand, of course, rather than “most.”
  “accuse another of obsession with ‘having last word’” - Self-awareness, Wobbly?
  “It’s intrinsic to character of narcissist” - So, own it then.

  “‘Illodini’s..country had seek NATO membership as result.’ Here’s you admit I did not widen parameters of comment.” - False again, I was specifically responding to your false assertions. (Again, tankie?!)
  Established proof, once more, that Putin’s regime belligerently terrorises its sovereign neighbours.
  Finland “not under any threat” - So, you’re ignorant of that history as well? Repeatedly attacked - and colonised as well, by Russia! Are you a neighbour of Putin’s bellicose regime? Yet, you can confidently enter into the heads of these others, and stupidly assert that they’re under no threat? Of course, why would any of Putin’s sovereign neighbours feel under any threat, with their history of being invaded & colonised? Repeatedly? Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, the Baltic States, Finland - the barbaric wars on Chechnya, the Syrian people, and naturally - “It’s attacked Afghanistan” - but why is it always “okay” when Russia does it? Again & again? Isn’t that, in accord your own condition, psychopathic? (But none of this must ever be talked about! Where’s that rug?)

  “War crimes? …torture?” - Yes, this concerns Russia. Why not ever admit them? The ongoing war crimes, in particular? Or don’t these human lives matter? But no, it’s always “America?”
  Your endless “WhatAboutAmerica?!” (”Amerigrrrr!”)
  The lectures concern Russia. I know you hysterically hate that as well, but much like Russian genocidal history & their brutal present, you cannot change it. You might continue to deny all of it though, but that remains a personal, psychopathic concern for you.
  “I’m always criticising the USA , aren’t I?” - This can’t be news to you, Wobbly?
  “you’re always criticising Russia China” - Well, why not condemn ongoing genocide & brutal despotism? Although, you seem to support them. Different strokes…

  “the full backing of every major western medium” - America is never criticised in the West? What planet are you on? It could only appear so to “I’m a Russian bot.” - Er…
  “every major western medium” - Well, you’d know more about the prevalent opinion amongst mediums - east & west - & all those other mind readers, fortune tellers & assorted charlatans, like yourself. You’re up on all the “Dark Forces!” & necromancers, after all.

  “so you’re in with the crowd there,bright boy” - I know, why can’t I bring myself to support Putin’s brutal invasion of another sovereign country? All of those rapes & murders of innocent Ukrainian human beings? How fortunate for you that you’re “bright” enough to slavishly cheerlead for such mindless atrocities & sadistic cruelty? How very individualistic & edgy of you. It’s all of that secret media you unquestioningly consume. It must be like ethical spinach for you - all of the rational, compassionate “flab” just falls off you, leaving you stronger, superior & even more worshipful of brute power.

  “I aver” - ooh, how do you do? “that the version presented by US & endorsed by its slavish(your word) acolytes is nowhere near truth” - Again, would you care to present the source of your definitive, truthful, alternative facts? Is your source independent & credible? Does it have any connection whatsoever to Russian state-controlled (unbiased!) media, or Russian money? Or endorsed by its slavish (my word) acolytes? If they’re so true, why do you always fear to disclose your sources? Expose them to the light of scrutiny, or risk being forever dismissed. Don’t be shy, finally be truthful.
  Otherwise, you’re merely ass-erting again, as I explained.

  “Nice to be on big boy side of argument, huh?” - You mean, “Putin, big & powerful like Bull?” No thanks, I’ll pass.
  “spoken out when u weren’t? No,not when I’ve been on here.” - This is bizarre. Any evidence to support? Of course not. You really intend: why don’t I support human rights abuses, genocidal ideologies, & brutal regimes, like alterna-fact, historically-illiterate types such as yourself. Well, why do you support them, Wobbly1933? Is it just hatred that fuels you in this?

  “the narrative consensus” - Your “Dark Forces?”

  “you believe everything you’re fed” - By Putin-controlled media? Not really.

  “another conspiracy theory” - You’ve got more?!
  “two of the 9/11 hijackers have recently been revealed as CIA assets?” - Did you never learn (in all your vast reading of history) that people involved in terror & espionage can have multiple, often expedient, allegiances (Stalin also received pay as a police informer, while actually acting as a revolutionary, for inst). Double agents, triple agents. So, in your preferred 9/11 narrative, what do you think the two actual suicide hijackers were up to? Any endless, unfalsifiable theories to offer? Or do you even believe it happened at all?

  But here’s the thing: are you actually unquestioningly copying your stuff from Max Blumenthal’s “The Grayzone” - and is that why you have been consistently afraid to identify your source (given multiple opportunities)? Your con theories consistently, slavishly mirror those promoted by that site, so it cannot be mere coincidence.
  Max Blumenthal is a regular contributor to Russian news sites, RT and Sputnik. The Grayzone reflects his political biases. He is a strong supporter of the Venezuelan regime.
  According to Radio Free Asia, The Grayzone content is frequently shared by the Chinese Communist Party media outlets, “CCP propaganda is also increasingly laundered through Western influencers & denialist fringe media outlets like The Grayzone.” Between Dec 2019 & Feb 2021, The Grayzone was cited at least 313 times in Chinese state media.
  Max Blumenthal & The Grayzone promote an extreme, far-left, biased perspective, con theories & pro-Russian/Chinese propaganda.

  Blumenthal left Lebanon’s Al Akhbar newspaper in June 2012 in protest at its coverage of the Syrian Civil War, he considered the newspaper to have a pro-Assad editorial line followed by such individuals as Amal Saad-Ghorayeb. He wrote that he had ultimately tired of “jousting with Assad apologists”. He added: “In the end, Assad will be remembered as an authoritarian tyrant.”

  Blumenthal has contributed to broadcasts on RT (formerly known as Russia Today!) on many occasions. In Dec 2015, during a visit to Moscow presumed by multiple sources to have been paid for by the Kremlin, Blumenthal was a guest at RT’s 10 Years On Air anniversary party attended by President Vladimir Putin. After Blumenthal’s visit to Moscow he began to promote views supportive of Bashar al Assad and the Syrian govt’s position.

  He has contributed on multiple occasions to Sputnik radio, as well as to Iran’s Press TV & China’s CGTN. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone website within a month after his visit to Moscow. In an Oct 2019 article for New Politics magazine, Gilbert Achcar wrote that Blumenthal’s Grayzone, along with the World Socialist Web Site, has “the habit of demonizing all left-wing critics of Putin and the likes of Assad by describing them as ‘agents of imperialism’ or some equivalent”.

  Wobbly1933, you repeatedly attack & abuse those whom Max Blumenthal & The Grayzone attack & abuse; you defend those they defend, no matter how appalling.

  “That all the atrocities are perpetrated by Russian troops alone.” - Atrocities are perpetrated when sovereign countries are invaded. The invader commits the vast number of atrocities, with all of their brutal actions succeeding on their initial atrocity - that of the invasion itself. Or are you suggesting that the invasion of a sovereign country is to be supported? Of course you are.

  “Just advancing another point of view.” - That’s just it: whose “point of view” are you unthinkingly “advancing?” To the Max?

  “as though Stalin is still alive and the events he engineered are about to be repeated” - Invasions, war, brutal human rights abuses, tyranny, terrorising of neighbours, suppression of fundamental rights for the captive people under his control? No, perish the thought. Nothing of the like.

  And you cling on to your 60-year (?) ‘timeframe’ by your fingernails because the last 100 yrs exposes the full, contextual spectrum of your favoured genocidal ideologies & despotic regimes - especially the horrors perpetrated upon Ukrainians over the last century.

  “And it’s not from Russia or China.” - Just tell their sovereign neighbours that. You could tell the captive populations of Russia & China, were it not for the censorship, social controls & denial of fundamental human rights (or “human rights blah blah” as you “think” of them).

  “my referring to upload as ‘book’ as though it of fundamental import” - It again epitomises your “fact-free” nature. Proof that you did not read the description; or that, having read it, you failed to understand it. Reinforced by your demented parachuting in of your “America!” obsession - on multiple occasions, thus far.

  “This is an audiobook site.” - Yes! Glad you finally noticed. The question remains: what attracted you to it, of all things?

  “In whatever form they are presented, it’s legitimate to call them ‘bks’” - Again, no, there are many designations; radio productions, lectures, podcasts, plays & theater - books are discrete & additional to these designations. (Yet more elementary explanations…)

  “Your refusal to let that go, how can I put, typical your narcissism.” - Just like your old reliable: “WhatAboutAmerica?!”

  “Tiresome, repetitive, & rather pathetic.” - Your sad epitaph…

  “You scorn suggestion that NATO is dangerous organ.” - I didn’t scorn anything of the sort. Military alliances & organisations tend to be ipso facto “dangerous” - the clue for you would be all those guns, bullets, tanks, etc. A pertinent question is why do sovereign states feel compelled to join such a protective alliance? What are the other “dangerous” regimes on the scene from which protection is sought? (I just know you don’t know any answers to those, because to answer would be to “concede the argument” again.)

  NATO’s been involved in the destruction of far more countries than any other this century - really? NATO’s literally destroyed lots of countries - “far more countries?” In 2005-06, we had “dangerous NATO” earthquake relief in Pakistan - NATO accepted a request from the govt for assistance & in total 3,500 tons of relief supplies were delivered to Pakistan whilst also sending medical teams & engineers.
  From Aug 2009 to Dec 2016, we have NATO protection of ships from piracy in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Indian Ocean.

  From Mar 2011 to Oct 2011, we have the NATO-mandated no-fly zone over Libya, because by Mar 2011, the Arab Spring had spread to Libya, with opposition to the dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, being brutally crushed. Libyan Air Force pilots had been ordered to bomb the protesters; two pilots refused to carry out this order & defected, landing their fighter jets in Malta. UN SC Resolution 1973 gave NATO a mandate to enforce a no-fly zone using “all necessary measures” to protect civilians.
  And from Dec 2012, Turkey asked for NATO support to protect itself from Syrian Missiles.

  I dunno. What do Max & co. say about it - anything “new” at all? Or remotely different?

  “Your ego drives you to use any transparent ploy” - When have you not done this, heinrich?

  “You altered my comment that, compared to now, Libya was a paradise before its destruction by the west. You altered it to ‘Libya was a paradise’” - Hang on a second, Wobbly, you want to equivocate - even on your use of the word “Paradise,” as a description of a tyrannical hellhole, run by a despot? You lauded that period of dictatorship - describing its great benefits - and when I pointed out a brief list of the human rights abuses of that disgusting regime, you again ridiculed the notion of human rights: “Quite a catalogue. You’re hot as mustard on human rights, aren’tcher?”
  A tyrannical torture chamber of a country was “a paradise” (but that’s a “qualified” paradise, now) - if only the catalogue of human rights violations can be ignored.
  Maybe stay away from the word “paradise” altogether, when trying to conjure your beloved, barbaric dictatorships?

  And let’s not forget, or expediently pivot away from, “Libya that was once a prosperous nation nobody had to pay to curb migrants” - where under your hero, Gaddafi, Libya worked to harshly stem the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean, in order to procure lucrative deals from Europe. In order to prevent, as your heroic Gaddafi said, Europe turning “black” with an “influx” of “ignorant Africans.” So he built internment camps & watchtowers on the beaches, with frequent reports of rape and theft by Libyan security services.
  You sure know how to pick your heroes, heinrich.

  But then your failure to understand the word “regime” - was that an effort to distract from all your other falsehoods & errors, of incomparable fatuity?

  “you sidestepped the plagiarism again” - Plagiarism? Would that be your incessant copy & paste jobs from The Grayzone? “Breathtaking” without a doubt. Certainly time to focus on your plagiarism, Max.
  And where is the evidence to support your vacuous assertion? Yet more of your lies & empty air. P’haps you’ll have to put “plagiarism” in the same pile as “regime” & “human rights” as another of those terms you can never hope to master.
  And the killer clanger - “Thirteen days ago UN released a report” with “enforced disappearance” in it! The shocking “contiguity” of two words which appear as - a standard human rights offence! I know you have zero interest in human rights (aside from worshipping those who violate them) - but you’re stupidity here is truly phenomenal. “Don’t you find the contiguity of words ‘enforced’ & ‘disappearance’ rather coincidental?” Jesus wept. (Quick, Wobbly1933, somebody just used the words “death” & “penalty” together! It’s an “open” & “shut” case of something they’re calling “play-jar-jism” or something! Time to get both yer outraged brain cells on the case!)
  Everything you assert is false. Yet on you go. Thick skins..?

  “Is it because I mentioned the Jewish Chronicle” - Exactly why did you mention the Jewish Chronicle, heinrich? Where’s all this “Jewish Chronicle” stuff? More bullshyte? And it would have to be the Jeeewz! again, wouldn’t it? Of all the newspaper titles for you to use. That peculiar bigotry is too deep in you to ever remove now. Like Vlad’s murderous member.
  You demonstrate no substance whatsoever, nothing but the standard toxic tankie fumes. Your genocidal gas.

  “‘Too obvious a red herring. China has no economic or territorial ambitions whatsoever?’ You leave this unanswered. Don’t you know?” - Yes, that’s very distracting, but why your obvious red herring?
  As to your question (which I’ll actually answer, just to demonstrate to you that it can be done, and that you ought finally to try it yourself, instead of always pivoting & prevaricating) - you don’t know? Taiwan? Almost certainly. Their conduct in Tibet has been a truly brutal & ongoing commission of atrocious crimes, ever since their invasion. Along with internal repression - the ongoing genocide, and Hong Kong. It’s not all about the standard “hegemony” they seek in the region, of course. There are also the people whose organs have been harvested; those who have been “disappeared;” those who have been helped away for “re-education;” all who are cruelly silenced; the incessant ideological war upon their own people.
  I know you promote the “tourism” defence against all this tyranny - your “killer” argument. But then, genocide denial doesn’t get any stupider than that. Honestly & truly - do you really deny any of these appalling crimes are taking place? Just because the regime says so? Extraordinary.

  “America” (again) - The South Koreans are certainly glad that the Americans have intervened abroad. As are the people of Taiwan & Kosovo. The people of Ireland are also, without a doubt; and those of Western Europe generally (remember Berlin? Never mind). But it extends to Eastern Europe as well, recall the imprisoned people of Poland - and all the other Eastern European nations which, having finally achieved freedom, desired closer links with the US & the West generally (including EU & NATO membership, where possible). And, most critically, the suffering people of Ukraine are glad that they are not wholly abandoned to the barbarism of the Putin regime. Together with all of the great people, from all around the world, who have moved to America & made it their home. (Similar to how Russian people so often desire to live in the west, when they get the chance! Especially if they’re gay people, or from another of your despised minorities.) We always have to factor these elements in as well. If we didn’t do that, we’d merely be copying & pasting from The Grayzone. All the time. And there’d be nothing “grey” about that.

  “‘The despotic Assad trying to benefit the “people” now, eh?’ And you accuse me of sneering” - Uh, yes. You refuse to see the sick irony of your Assad trying to benefit the “people” - after savagely tyrannising & murdering them? You’re suggesting that he’s changed his ways? Or you’re just being the same old hypocrite again? Clearly, you couldn’t give a phck about the Syrian victims, but you reserve your greatest effort at bot sneering for Ukrainian victims of rape & murder.

  “Why don’t you condemn the occupation of Syria’s resources” - And why don’t you condemn the despotic Assad regime’s tyranny & murder of its own people? And the Putin regime using Syrian people as target practice? You now “think” Assad wants to benefit the people?
  You really are a useful id!ot. Well, p’haps not so useful.
  “Is that the conduct of a country upholding human rights?” - Assad & Putin have no intention of ever doing so.
  “virtue signaling breast-beating?” - Any mention of the necessity of fundamental human rights always brings out your full, psychopathic rage (”human rights blah blah!”). Your obvious tell.

  “What’s blameworthy abt Syria’s respond militarily to hardline Islamist insurgents trying to take over country” - Again, as with Ukrainian victims, you try to deceitfully blame & demonise one group, while denying & deflecting from the human rights abuses of the other. So, everyone in Syria’s Arab Spring is falsely reduced to “hardline Islamist insurgents trying to take over country,” and that’s it, is it? The people who rose up were only extreme Muslims - and therefore legitimate targets, tankie?

  Syria is a one-party state where independent parties are outlawed; with a powerful secret police monitoring the civil society. Since the 1963 seizure of power by it’s Military Committee, the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party has governed Syria as a totalitarian police state - dominated by the Al-Assad family. An end to Assad’s authoritarian powers under a long-standing state of emergency was a key demand of the uprising. Then protests calling for Assad’s removal were violently suppressed.
  Those opposed to the brutal Assad regime include an alliance of pro-democratic, nationalist opposition groups (with Syrian National Army & the Free Syrian Army). And the Syrian Salvation Govt, a coalition of Sunni rebel groups; mixed Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
  And those with Assad’s war-criminal consortium? Uh, Hezbollah, Iran & Putin support the Assad regime militarily! Not exactly the people’s liberal democratic front freedom fighters you would expediently like people to believe, is it?

  “Assad is trying to defend his country as Gadaffi did” - Wow. Both your heroes, present & incorrect. Despotic, mass murderers of civilians both. Was Syria also an authoritarian, torturing paradise? For its Secret Police & ruling dynasty - certainly.

  “There goes that 60 again.” - ??? Are you just looking for attention? Is that what this is about? And you can’t even form coherent arguments in the first inst, which is why you don’t have any?

  “Israel” - Here you go again. The Lectures concern Russia, but now you’ve fully roped in your Most Hated Race. The people who can never do right.

  “genocide against the Palestinians.” - Substantiate that. Internet nazis are always saying this. Justify what you said there.
  Meanwhile, back in the real world, Hamas, the controlling political force amongst the Palestinians, is an Islamic fundamentalist, militant, nationalist organisation. Hamas also denies the Holocaust, but has expressed a fervent desire for a genocide of the Jewish people. Hamas legislator & imam, Sheik Yunus al-Astal said that “suffering by fire is the Jews’ destiny in this world and the next.” And, “Therefore we are sure that the Holocaust is still to come upon the Jews.”

  They also enthusiastically promote the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (possibly the only publication you’ve ever read) & the Blood Libel myth. In an interview on Lebanese tv on Jul 28, 2014, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan repeated the blood libel myth: “We all remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians, in order to mix their blood in their holy matzos… It happened everywhere.”
  The regime persecutes gays & women; the opposition; any who dare to be different.
  In Jun 2011, the Independent Commission for Human Rights based in Ramallah published a report whose findings included that the Palestinians in the West Bank & the Gaza Strip were subjected to an “almost systematic campaign” of human rights abuses by the Palestinian Authority & Hamas, with the security forces belonging to the PA & Hamas being responsible for torture, arrests and arbitrary detentions.

  In terms of Hamas using children as combatants, children in Gaza & the West Bank were conditioned by Hamas with Islamic & military values. Kindergarten children have attended ceremonies where they wore emblematic uniforms & bore mock rifles. Some were dressed up as suicide bombers, whose readiness to die for the cause was held up as a model to be imitated. The preschoolers would swear an oath ‘to pursue jihad, resistance & intifada.’ At summer camps, alongside qur’anic studies & familiarization with computers, courses were given that included military training.
  Hamas’ use of child labour to build weapons tunnels has also been criticised, with at least 160 children killed in this manner in the tunnels as of 2012.

  “democratically elected governments” - Woah, tankie: Assad’s Syria? Saddam’s Iraq? You seriously don’t know what democracy is? Why then do you hate it so much? You certainly can’t be getting misty-eyed over representative govt, as a fanatical Putin bot, Assad supporter, and worshipper of the genocidal Chinese regime.

  “Genocide. Your preferred term” - So, you deny genocide committed by the regimes you support? The use of the term in its proper context clearly offends you - much like “human rights blah blah.” Now, why should that be, heinrich?

  “only when comes describing countries out favour w Amer” - Any regime committing genocide is barbaric & evil. Why is that so difficult for you to understand? Why can’t you also condemn these regimes, instead of supporting them all the more? Your barbaric criterion seems to be that genocide is wholly acceptable as long as the regime is “out of favour with America.” Your own bizarre words.

  “You prefer ignore mod atrocities like Libya, Iraq, Syria, Palestine” - On multiple occasions I’ve condemned the atrocities of the regimes in Libya, Iraq, Syria - & Palestine now. Why can’t you also condemn these atrocious regimes?

  “demand that I condemn the Stalinist Russia” - Believe it or no, it’s incumbent upon all of us to condemn genocide, brutal invasions of neighbours & human rights violations. The fact that you instead choose to slavishly support them is your own affair, and on your own “conscience.” And yes, even supporting them by carefully avoiding any condemnation (the Chinese regime?).

  “no substance” - Yes, where is your substantial condemnation of despotic regimes & genocidal ideologies? It verily screams its expedient absence.

  You’ve been called a ‘tankie’ & “power worshipper” - & you most certainly are.

  “Over the past sixty years” - More risible desperation! Sleazily & transparently seeking to avoid so many of your favourite ideological genocides. You’re an open book, Wobbly - a sub-standard one, at that.

  “the front rank of aggressive, bullying states.” - Step forward, Vlad. Indeed, let’s hear from the sovereign, neighbouring states - of Russia, China, North Korea.

  ‘Try telling truth in Russia abt any of Putin’s wars of aggression’ truth of brutal Syrian, Iranian, Cuban, Nth Korean regimes, in those imprisoned lands. Or try report genocide in China, or any of the regime’s horrific violations of human rights.’
  “No mention America again! But you get ‘genocide’ in there.What’s wrong with you?” - Uh, and why can’t people express themselves under these regimes which you support? You avoided that one again, tankie. “‘genocide’ in there.What’s wrong with you?” - You’re seriously denying genocide - again?!

  “Truth is a strange concept” - Indeed. At no point have you once expressed the truth - and I’ve given you multiple opportunities. You have even denied genocide. What more to say?

  “East Ukraine hasn’t been shelled regularly since 2014″ - Why did Putin’s regime invade any part of another sovereign country (and why do you unthinkingly support him)? Why does he use mercenaries & neo-nazi paramilitaries in order to destabilise regions within other sovereign states - seeking to deploy the “Sudetenlander” technique & the counterfeit imprimatur of artificial plebiscites (never mind, tankie)?
  Putin’s regime invaded & annexed Crimea; armed Russian-backed separatists; seized Ukrainian government buildings & declared the Donetsk & Luhansk republics (DPR & LPR) as independent states, leading to conflict with Ukrainian govt forces. And you’re just upset that Putin’s Ukrainian puppet was ousted in a coup?

  Since 2014, Russia has made false accusations against Ukraine of genocide in the Donbas region. Russian propaganda has claimed that Ukrainian authorities have undertaken measures in the war in Donbas that amount to genocide against the Russian speakers of Ukraine. They were used by Putin as part of the pretext for his invasion of Ukraine.

  Following the invasion, Ukraine brought a case before the ICJ concerning Russia’s military activities in Ukraine. The ICJ found no evidence to support the Russian accusation, & subsequently ordered Russia to “immediately suspend the military operations” of the invasion. Further reports by 30 legal & genocide scholars warned that Russian accusations against Ukraine are part of the “accusation in a mirror” technique (hey, that’s where you learned it, heinrich), ultimately revealing the Russian incitement to commit genocide against Ukrainians.

  Before Putin began his full-scale invasion of sovereign Ukraine in 2022, the intensity of the hostilities in the Donbas had been steadily declining since the signing of the Minsk agreements in Feb 2015.

  During the ongoing conflict, Russian forces & their separatist proxies have committed numerous war crimes, including the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the intentional targeting of civilians by Russia in Mariupol, the shelling of civilians in Kramatorsk, attacks on civilian busses in Volnovakha, among others. The pro-Russian forces have also run secret torture prisons in the region. (Doubtless another reason for your unquestioning, servile support.)

  The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has been monitoring the conflict in Ukraine since 2014, said it had not found any evidence to support Russia’s allegations.

  “The words have a flexible meaning for you” - ‘Human rights’ have absolutely no meaning for you! Unless it’s your “human rights blah blah,” of course.

  “Kiev, an illegal regime” - Uh, you slavishly support the Putin autocracy, the Assad & Iranian despotisms, the genocidal Chinese regime, etc. etc. Your record on the issue of legitimate government is not exactly stratospheric. So, naturally you cannot recognise the legitimacy of the Ukrainian govt, and its being endorsed by the sovereign Ukrainian people.

  “Kiev” - I note your revealing use of a name associated with Soviet imperialism. Another brilliant own goal there.

  “yet Assad is wrong in defending his country against Islamic militants” - You really do believe it’s just “his country,” don’t you, Wobbly? And that’s it? He’d certainly agree with you. The “absolute right of tyrants” is as sophisticated as your political comprehension gets.
  There are other people there, you know - or at least there were, until Assad’s war-criminal consortium got to work on them. Remember, Hezbollah, Iran & Putin support the Assad regime militarily. Your kind of freedom fighters.

  Why is it okay for Hamas to murder so many Palestinians? So many children? Torturing & abusing the people under their control?
  Why are all of Putin’s murders okay by you? And Assad’s? And North Korea’s? And the Chinese genocide? I know you hate Jews & deny genocide, but do you also hate the Palestinians? And Saddam’s victims? Gaddafi’s? Does your racism encompass all of these peoples as well? Is it a colour thing again? You just like seeing all those tortured, murdered bodies - satisfying your colour obsession. Your insane hatred.

  “pick me up on that extra ‘r’” - Oh, it’s not your illiteracy that’s the problem, Wobbly.

  Your stupidity can be forgiven; your intentional cruelty & grotesque victim-blaming cannot.

  TGC - Understanding Russia: A Cultural History - Lynne Ann Hartnett

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