The Mueller investigation.

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Quantum Quack, Feb 17, 2018.

  1. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    If I want a split in the alliance responsible for aggressive wars, namely NATO, I want war? No. All I want is a split. It weakens the most aggressive part of it, the US. That the US will start a war over such a split is improbable.
    If we are talking about the Civil War, we talk about the states which existed at that time. They had well-defined territories, and some of them were ruled by slaveowners or their supporters.

    BTW, you introduced slaveowners into the discussion. I was talking about the Civil War, which was between states, and had nothing to do with libertarian ethics.
    Nonsense. According to libertarian ethics, slavery is forbidden. Point. So, where libertarian ethics holds, there simply are no slaves. Nonexisting entities have no rights to territories.

    If the Confederacy would have become libertarian, they would have, first of all, ended slavery.

    So, the whole point I considered was only how to handle communities who do not accept libertarian ethics. If you have no problem to genocide them all away, your choice. In my approach to libertarian ethics war against them is not legitimate, except in defense against their aggression.
    So what? It does not follow that the Northern states had a right to offer them any support.
    So I assign responsibility to both parties and not to libertarians who opposed them but were defeated.
    Feel free to name some of them.
    The point being? As explained, Putin is not a libertarian and does not subscribe to my ideas about the right to separate.
    No. Multipolarity is far away from the libertarian ideal, it is simply one step closer to it than a unipolar world.
    So what? My take on Putin is different from yours so that any conflicts between your take and my ideal are irrelevant. My take on Putin is that his rule has given Russians much more nonviolence, civilization, and rule of law. This was, btw, the reason why I have changed my position about Putin, despite the fact that he is an etatist and I'm a libertarian.
    For a cognitive dissonance, I would first have to believe all that.

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    The indictment against the 13 or so Russian bots I have studied and discussed, it is nothing, and once it has not been rejected as BS which proves nothing but is part of the report, and the other part often mentioned (the DNC hack) is dubious at best too, the whole report can contain reasonable information only by accident.
    Real wars and wars according to international law are different things.
    Crimea: Does not fit because there was no war. The separation was caused by the US with the coup in Kiev.
    Golan Heights: According to Wiki, "The question of which side caused the war is one of a number of controversies relating to the conflict." and "Israel reiterated its post-1956 position that the closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping would be a cause for war (a casus belli)."
    Tibet: China was communist and not caring about international law. But the Tibetan people were, of course, suppressed by the evil rulers.
    The remaining parts are more or less related to the US, which is another power which does not care about international law. But, again, the winner is the good guy and the loser the bad one and was bad already before the war started.
    No. To unify with the already separated Crimea was fine according to international law, the support for legitimate government bodies like the separatist republics against a coup was fine given that it was supported by the legitimate power (the President). What Russia does in Syria is 100% international law.

    Russia is not ruled by libertarians so that there is no point in recognizing that it does not follow libertarian principles in its foreign policy. What Russia supports nonetheless is sovereignty by other states (even much smaller and weaker).

    While international law, with the sovereignty of states only, is far from the libertarian ideal, it is much better than the law of the jungle without any international law which is what the US is doing (and implicitly forces others to do too, either as an obligation as allies, or simply to survive as non-allies).
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    The dissonance refers to the effort required to disbelieve it. You have to find some way of disbelieving your own eyes, and you have to willfully ignore what's right in front of you. That's a lot of work. If you were doing your own thinking, it would be almost impossible.
    Lucky for you, you have a constant feed of wingnut propaganda from the US to do your "thinking" for you, and tell you what to post here about the Mueller report. (At one point you even chose to "believe" Barr's summary, and disbelieve all the other information about the report, about Barr, and about Barr's appointment and job and career record - remember?
    There is only one source for that opinion).
    Something you seem to have trouble remembering from one post to the next.
    Military aggression by Russia, in which the innocents lost and the unjustified aggressor won. Hence its presence on the list of counter-examples.
    Putin's aggressions are not "caused" by other people.
    Putin violated Ukrainian sovereignty and Kurdish sovereignty, taking advantage of their weakness with his larger military.
    Putin also abets and tolerates violations of international law in financial matters - as Mueller documents in his report on some of Trump's dealings with Russians.

    So clear is this evidence that admiration of Putin perforce leads the gullible into denial of the content of Mueller's report - admitting Trump's apparent guilt as documented automatically implicates Putin as well, and admitting Putin's role in Russian dealings with Trump automatically implicates Trump in treasonous and criminal behavior. This is apparently beyond the realm of acceptable reality for some.

    There's no way to fit the Mueller report into the Republican Party media feed bubble, no compromise or half measures that work. It has to be denied, rejected whole, stonewalled.
     
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  5. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    And what does this have to do with the Mueller report? I have read that nonsense about the Russian bots, there was zero necessity to disbelieve something. I simply do not expect something different, what you have said about it is also nothing.
    Again, return to lies, what I have written was the following: "What matters is, in fact, only if the claims made in that summary are lies or not. If not, Russiagate has failed."
    This is far from believing him. Seems, I have made an error continuing the discussion with you.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    It took work to transform the account of the Russian troll operation into "nonsense about Russian bots", and further work to dismiss all the other information about the report into "nothing", and work to conjure up the misrepresentations you posted of this report you did not read, like this:
    Which is of course ridiculous - "Russiagate" is wingnut vocabulary (you keep denying your source, but post it verbatim), the Mueller report could not "fail" regardless of Barr's ability to avoid flat out lying, nothing as you describe it "matters", and so forth. That took mental effort - even just cribbing it from the Republican media feed took a certain amount of effort, to exclude the reality you needed to avoid.
    Not really.
    It is giving him credence as a source, as if what he said mattered, as if whether he was flat out lying or not was important. That is believing in him, mistaking his role as informative. The word "if", and the misrepresentation as lies or not lies, assume paying attention to him, believing him to be a possible source of information - the hypnotic frame.

    You believed Barr to be a source of information. You tried to impose that frame on the discussion, in that post.

    And that is not all you wrote. You also wrote that Barr was a source of information about the report, (the "only source we had"), and made other such posts involving beliefs about Barr and the report that are without support in physical reality.

    And this reality denial - the simple rejection of the simple facts of what the Mueller report contains - is the most important factor in the Republican Party line in general: Republican Party beliefs are not ready for contact with physical reality. The hurricane will come, the financial crash will happen, the war will erupt, the climate will change, whether they are denied or not. Fascism is eventually self, as well as other, destructive.

    Fascists are fuckups. There are many legitimate reasons for removing Trump from office, including embarrassment, but that is the most serious. And the Mueller report hands us the means.
     
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  8. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Ok, iceaura fell completely back into the "you are stupid" mode and into intentionally misinterpreting what I write, to continue makes no sense.

    My mode remains unchanged, if iceaura has something to say about the content, I will answer, but refuting the many lies, distortions and defamation against me makes no sense.
     
  9. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Instead of answering iceaura's fantasies about my projections of whatever, or my having to work hard to 'transform the account of the Russian troll operation into "nonsense about Russian bots"', I think it is better to consider the psychopathology of Russiagate as done here:

    Following this, I would recommend you to think about your own problems with accepting that in the Exceptional American Nation such an idiot could win the elections.

    Ok, once I have quoted it, a short description of the hard work of reading the indictment: The only work was reading the text of the indictment, not hard at all for me because I like to read, and waiting for the interesting accusations. I was reading about opening fake bank accounts using stolen US identities, a quite serious crime in itself, but nothing from a political point of view, but then came the joke where I started to laugh - the explanation why they did this, namely to receive money from Americans who used the bot accounts for advertising. To use such a dubious commercial activity to prove "Russian interference" is a really good joke, so I don't regret to have spent time reading the indictment. Sorry, but a law system where this goes through even only as an indictment is nothing I can accept as serious rule of law. Throw all the political things out of it, with the purely criminal parts remaining, acknowledge from the start that it is a less serious case of this sort of criminal behavior because nobody was really harmed (the advertisers thought that these guys were American, a lie, ok, but they got their advertising as promised, and it had the same effect because the public also thought that these guys were American - instead, fake bank accounts are usually used to steal money) and it would be fine. But the indictment as it is is on the level of a Banana republic.

    So I think iceaura had a much harder work to make out of this joke a serious proof of Russian interference into the elections so that it is the claim above which looks like a classic case of a projection.
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    The slaveowners had no right to oppose the secession of the slaves, or try to control the slave's territory by violence - you have posted to that effect many times.
    The slaves had every right to obtain outside help in asserting their rights against violent oppression - you have posted that also, many times.
    The fact that a guy like Trump can easily win elections in the US - that if something wasn't done about the Republican Party's fascism a guy like Trump was almost inevitable - has been common knowledge among folks like me for many, many years. It's been taken for granted, has been my entire life. It's the major US political issue of the late 20th and early 21st centuries - guys like Reagan, W, and Trump will be governing the country if the Republican Party is not somehow curbed in its slide into fascism.

    So where did you find such a ridiculous misrepresentation of ordinary US political reality, projected unto me in flat contradiction of my posting?
    In sources like that silly ass video about the psychology of some imaginary "Russiagate", apparently. It goes right along with the other videos you posted - such videos being standard media feeds from the wingnut sources you deny.

    They don't come with transcripts - there's a reason for that. The reason is made obvious in the first couple of minutes, where the host of the program makes two or three flatly false claims using misleading framing rhetoric about the Mueller report (that the important aspect of the Mueller report is that it contains a "verdict" about "Trump/Russia conspiracy", for example). Apparently I'm supposed to watch an analysis of the supposed psychology of some people who supposedly believe that, and are deeply shocked or disappointed by this supposed state of affairs?

    You keep denying your sources, and then posting them - over and over and over.
    You haven't.
    Evidence isn't your thing.
    Throw all the political harm done out of the discussion, include only the aspects of the crimes that had nothing to do with election interference, ignore the rest of the report, and there is no election interference documented. Got it.
    So you honestly have no idea why Mueller indicted those Russian trolls, or you are just spamming this forum with willful maintained ignorance again. Doesn't really matter which.
    I didn't. (Didn't bother - the Russian interference, though widespread and obvious long before Mueller released his report, was and is for me a side aspect of Republican Party election fraud and rigging.)
    Mueller did that.
    Read the report.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2019
  11. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Indeed, in libertarian ethics. Unfortunately, real states do not care about libertarian ethics at all. All of them. What we can do in this case?

    1.) They are all evil. Fine, but so what?
    2.) They are all evil, but some of them are eviler and others less evil. What makes the difference is if the resulting world is closer to libertarian ideals.

    I use the second option. And I consider very big states as much eviler than small states. So I support separatism. Even if in some other aspects small states may be much more repressive than big ones - the increase in the number of places one can use for emigration is more important for freedom.
    There was no harm done by the 13 bots, there were no other crimes done by these 13 bots than those I have mentioned, except, of course, thought crimes using freedom of speech which no longer exists in the US. And I have said I read the indictment against the 13 bots. Not the report.

    For the report, the recommendation would be another one: Throw out the nonsense about the 13 Russian bots, then I could start to consider it worth reading.

    Ups. I was obviously wrong pressing the reply button after reading the begin of this posting.
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    You would have to have a base in reality for predicting the resulting world.

    But instead, we have this from you:
    You don't support separatism. You support Putin's expansion of big State Russian authority, and US slaveowners violent defense of their tyranny by attempting to create their own big State, and China's big State oppression of their separatists.
    You don't support the small against the large. You support the expansion of large and centralized State influence whenever the large State is not the US. You call that "multipolarity".

    And this:
    Says the guy who claims expertise in evaluating propaganda campaigns.
    Americans following the matter were impressed by the effort being put into attempting harm via those and the many other bots from day one - before there was an investigation, or they had been sourced, or their harms had been identified. Their operations were visible, and worrisome, during the campaign.
    They also know that attempting harm is a crime.
    Then you should know better than to claim "no harm" from the Russian troll farm operations.
    You should know better than to claim that successfully accomplished "harm" was even the central issue.
    You should know that you are ignorant, in that matter.

    And if you are really interested in finding out what you've been posting here, and where it came from, and why: you should know that your deflections and assertions and attempted reframings and displays of willful ignorance are found exactly - right down to specific terms and marketing approaches - in the US Republican Party line regarding the Mueller report.

    Especially: the claim that there's no need to read it to know what's in it. The Republican effort to keep people - anyone - from reading the Mueller report has been remarkable.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2019
  13. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    6,460
    Facebook and Twitter have publicly announced the ongoing closure of thousands of Russian bot accounts on numerous occasions. Are you trying to imply that this stuff isn't happening? Is it ok to create fake identities and use them to publish disinformation you know to be factually incorrect, with the purpose of harming a public's ability to make informed democratic choices?
     
  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    It seems to me we have had a few already. Of course they don't last very long, because here they are questioned about facts and dismissed when they lack verifiable facts........poof!
     
  15. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    If the Chechens split with the Wahabis and chose to rejoin Russia voluntarily, then why was it necessary to bomb Grozny to dust? Clearly there is a massive separatist population in Chechnya and you must admit that your rules would require Russia to relinquish significant territory to them, if not all of Chechnya.

    Lenin didn't invent the Ukrainian language or culture anymore than Czar Peter invented Russia, your attempt to dismiss its existence is irrelevant. Stalin confiscated Ukrainian grain and forcefully starved 3 million citizens to death while sending their produce to Russia. I'm not aware of any Russians starving because their goods were confiscated and sent to Ukraine. The 3 million dead Ukrainians were then replaced with Russian settlers whose descendants now claim the right to independence in Crimea and the Donbass. Furthermore as you partly acknowledge, after WWII Stalin forcefully shifted the borders of Europe westward and annexed territories to the USSR and Russia in violation of your own proclaimed philosophy, which means if anything Russia actually owes territorial compensation to several countries, not the other way around. Do you not agree that a continual trend of Russian territorial expansion shouldn't be tolerated?

    Since when do free, fair democratic elections constitute submitting to US rule? Why can't we have open elections in these countries where Russia, China, the EU, US and all other interested parties are all allowed to jointly monitor and verify that there's no cheating and ballot stuffing, and none of the major candidates are banned from running? Since such elections have yet to be held in either country, how can you possibly know what exactly it is that the people want?

    How can you call the US more aggressive when the first four countries you list have all been involved in a greater number of violent combat and repression deaths over the last 10 years?
     
  16. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Yet this is somehow part of why you support the Confederacy that started a war to preserve and protect slavery.

    There are days when the problem is that one cannot follow his own posts, but this isn't an example of that. This is just an example of what it takes to push whatever it is you think you're selling.

    Then again, as to that other:

    To circle back↑ to the reason we would consider that other poster, is the idea that someone who isn't making certain arguments—¡whoopsie!—just can't help but accidentally hit the stage marks. Of course, it is not clear↑ that you understood; or, more appropriately, it's kind of clear you didn't.

    And you keep on, in the same manner:

    Okay, look: You're so fucking afraid of the Mueller investigation and report that you've tried justifying the Confederacy along the way to hoping for a distraction, and, really, the thing about being smart enough to justify the Confederacy is that you simply aren't. Nobody has yet pulled it off, and some of who tried, unlike you, even had half a clue what they were on about.

    So, like I said: It doesn't really matter who brings it. In all the Universe, maybe there is a logical argument for something, but here we have a something for which that argument has not yet been found, and rehashing it in pretentious ignorance just isn't going to help.

    Seriously, this is your latest distraction from the thread topic.

    Actually, the organization of informational elements according to a pretense of scientific method, but without regard to the validity of said elements is pretty much the manner in which your botchery can be called scientific.

    If you find descriptions of your behavior insulting, perhaps the problem is your behavior: You purported to justify the Confederacy, and brought nothing; then complained of personal attacks because, apparently, you wish to bring white supremacist platitudes about the Civil War but need everyone to pretend, what, that you're somehow being original, that nobody ever thought of that before? Think of it this way: If I ask whether you really do have trouble distinguishing between person and argument, it isn't just some random barb; your posts at #512↑ and #519↑ leave that to question. To wit: Yes, you are just the next person who happens to be making a particular argument. If we're discussing common behavior from one person to the next (#505↑, 516↑), quite clearly we are focusing more on the behavior—i.e., argument—than the individual. Similarly, if I make the point that you seem to be using ad hominem wrongly, it's not just a hit; rather, the point of observably faulty assessments upon which you base your argument is relevant to the reliability of your assessments and argument.

    The idiot-simple version: You did something stupid, and then complain that people note the stupidity.

    Speaking of which—

    —your articles of faith are what they are, but do not change the fact that blithe appeals to "[your] libertarian ethical system" depend on ignorance. Now, before you cry about ad hominem, again, consider that you are overlooking, in your application of this latest ad hoc whatnot, the effect of what it means in application; your argument only works according to a lack of information affecting its meaning. So, yes, ignorance is the word.

    You insistently post offensive tropes, and apparently from ignorance; if you wish to bawl about the white supremacist tropes you post being called white supremacist, remember that if you find descriptions of your behavior insulting, perhaps the problem is your behavior. There are, of course, days when that line doesn't work, but when regurgitating debunked excrement you're not capable of explaining, the probem is your behavior, that is, the content of your argument.

    Ordinarily, I use a line that runs, this probably makes sense to you. However, given the history of your behavior and the content of your arguments, that might not be true.

    This isn't necessarily invested in ignorance, despite the fact of details you're not accounting for because you probably don't know, or wouldn't know how to account for. Rather, it gets filed under, Any Excuse Will Do. More particularly: The missing information is what all gets cut off if the society accepts every arbitrary secession. The underlying principle creates, at best, an unstable checkerboard or patchwork effect as subgroups dissent and assert other paths. Antisocial ouroboros theses are, by definition, antisocial, and thereby no proper course for a society.

    In the American context, if "the point is simply that the separation can be done" also requires, in addition to acceptance by the larger state, the termination of rights, contracts, and other conventions, associated with the larger. The separations are not so simple. Modern American secession would be a disaster; the Civil War would start when Texas announced its secession and Congress responded that's fine as long as they take Florida with them. Trust me, though, we would build a border wall.

    But your justification of the prior secession, by the Confederacy, is offered under circumstances that the Confederacy owes secession (even to re-join the Union) if that's what a local government wants, and thus would fall apart as soon as the slaves had their say. That is, the principle devours itself. (See also #505: "Libertarian anarchism" is, by function, perpetual instability. One of the things that happens with anarchism is that any social contract must be established anew with each participant.)

    So quit wasting your time, and everyone else's, with this petulant stupidity. And, please recognize, there's a point to which we get it, that someone from overseas doesn't necessarily understand how common and lowly his stroke of wannabe gutter genius really is, but there also comes a point at which he might insist so strongly we can only shrug and take his self-consuming antisociality at face value.
     
  17. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    I do not support it, but I accept it as less evil in comparison with a US-ruled unipolar world. China and Russia are less evil than the US because they try to establish a multipolar world instead of a unipolar. This is separatism on the largest scale. To become a pole in the world order, you have to be powerful enough to stand up, as with the military, as with economic force, against the US. Luxembourg has, therefore, no chance to become a pole. And if all the world except the US would be of Luxembourgh sized states, the unipolar order would be established for sure, and the further development toward a totalitarian world government predictable.

    So, is the suppression of separatist opposition of Uigurs, Tibetans, citizens of Hong Kong and the aggressive aims toward Taiwan, similarly Russian suppression of Chechen separatism, evil? Yes. But in comparison with the evil following from a unipolar world, it is clearly a minor one.

    After this, iceaura falls back into the usual personal attack mode. Just the most obvious defamation, because the answer allows making an important point:

    I'm quoted with "There was no harm done by the 13 bots," omitting the continuation "except, of course, thought crimes using freedom of speech".
    Of course, propaganda harms, but it is part of freedom of speech, thus, you have to live with this or to give up even the pretense of some freedom of speech.

    This is a general problem of those who accept the 13 Russian bots as being something evil to be persecuted (beyond the criminal stolen identities and faked bank accounts). They have to accept that freedom of speech is not among their values and that in their opinion other people should be criminally persecuted for proposing ideas they don't like.
     
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Not only offer, but deliver. You made that perfectly clear in your arguments favoring Putin's annexation of part of Ukraine.
    Enslavement is aggression.
    So is military assault on forts, etc.
    But since your response to the aggression of the Confederacy was to deny it - on theoretical grounds, no less - such observations are not expected to have much effect.
    The result remains - you supported the slaveowners of the Confederacy in their attempt to preserve chattel slavery by violence, and deny their slaves any right of secession by launching war. You likewise defended Putin's assaults on the Syrian separatists, and his annexation of part of Ukraine by force of arms.
    So we mark the spot: propaganda harms. The Russian troll farm harmed the American citizenry.

    Meanwhile, it is not part of freedom of speech.
    Fraud and lies for the purpose of injury or profit are not part of freedom of speech. They are crimes. So is arranging for them, so as to take advantage of the harms they do.

    Read the report.
     
  19. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    It is not ok, but it is part of freedom of speech, thus, it should be allowed. So, I do not object at all against the use of pseudonyms like CptBork, and I restrict myself to showing that what is proposed under this label is wrong, instead of asking the administration to ban that guy for publishing disinformation known to be factually incorrect, with the purpose of harming a public's ability to make informed democratic choices.

    And the "thousands of Russian bot accounts" are simply thousands of accounts which do not support the anti-Russian hate campaigns of the globalists.
    Not "the Chechens" with "the Wahabis". "Chechen" is an ethnicity, "Wahabi" a particular variant of Islam with origin in Saudi Arabia. The split was among the Chechens, the Wahabi faction of the Chechens was quite strong, and, given the support from Saudi Arabia and the West, they probably would have won a purely civil war against the traditional Sufi Chechens without Russian support.
    My proposal has also justifications for war, namely defensive wars after aggression. The Chechen Wahabis have attacked Dagestan, a neighbor republic which is part of the Russian Federation, so that Russia had the right to fight them, as according to international law, as according to libertarian ideas.
    The part that was formerly known as "Ukraine" was a much smaller part, the Western part, of Ukraine today. It did not contain Novorossia.
    Stalin confiscated Russian grain too, in the same forceful way, and starved a lot of Russian peasants to death. The grain was mainly used for export, to get income necessary for industrialization.
    Novorussia (which contains Donbass and Crimea) was never Ukrainian before Lenin, and the people there have been Russians (or Crimean Tatars) already in tsarist Russia. Most of them did not even understand the local idiom used in some irrelevant villages of Western Ukraine which is now "Ukrainian language".
    First, the idea of compensation for what happened long ago in history is nonsense. Then, there is no continual trend. The expansion at Stalin time was based on communist ideology, which aimed to rule the whole world, independent of any nations, and anti-nationalist (internationalist). Instead, Russia today is much smaller than the USSR, and the main reason for this was a peaceful split. All the military conflicts appeared because of the resulting republics, which became independent states, did not accept further separatism.
    What constitutes submitting to US rule is that you do whatever is necessary to make the US propaganda machine describe your elections as "free, fair democratic elections". This is something very different. The Russian elections are now sufficiently free and fair, Navalny was with less than 3% estimated support never a "major candidate" and that he was banned was prescribed by law (he is a convicted criminal).
    I can do this because your claim is a lie. None of these countries has started an illegal war. Regarding internal repression, they all have smaller GULAGs than the US, absolute as well as relative (possible exception NK). Participation in combat against terrorists without violation of international law, like the Russian one in Syria, does not make a state aggressive. What counts as aggressive are the use of the military against other states (with the exception of defense after aggression from the other side) and support for terrorist organizations in their fight with the legitimate government with weapons, money, instructions, and cooperation (in reconnaissance) in other states.
     
  20. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Cheap propaganda techniques to suggest that I support slavery. You transform "less evil" into "support", then you present as an accepted (even by me) fact what you know I disagree with. I have accepted only that slavery played some role, not a "started a war to preserve and protect slavery".
    It does not matter if I understood that point or not - I reject it anyway, because it is at best ad hominem against the arguments proposed by this person, so not really worth to be evaluated (except out of psychopathological interest).
    ROTFL, YMMD.

    BTW, I have given explanations why I post off-topic things - they are answers to off-topic things posted by other users. Feel free to present counterevidence. To suggest a "hope for a distraction" is a strange fantasy which is completely off, and simply defamation.

    And what could be the reason to be afraid of some report which uncritically repeats known nonsense about 13 Russian bots and Russian DNC hack conspiracy and does not even claim to have more what is interesting for foreigners?

    I have to dispose of a lot of defamation, the only place I would like to comment is the following one:
    Perhaps. To distinguish such cases from those where the attacker is guilty, I used to present evidence in all the cases where I have made such objections. Clarifying what I really think (instead of what is attributed to me), requests for evidence for the defamations (which was never presented) and so on.

    Given that this has not helped, I had to give up such discussions. I simply name them and dispose of them.
    This is a thesis that the right of secession is an antisocial ouroboros one.
    Note that Cechia and Slovakia managed to split peacefully. The same can be said for the Soviet Union. Note that all the civil wars which were part of the post-communist world were caused by the fact that the former Soviet republics did not accept a subsequent secession of some of its parts. All of them: Nagorny Karabach wanted to separate from Azerbaidshan, South Ossetia and Abkhasia from Georgia, Crimea from Ukraine, Pridnestrowje from Moldavia.

    And, yes, separations, which establish borders where there have been none before, are harmful. But mainly because state borders are harmful in general, by preventing cooperation in many forms, by trade, tourism, exchange of opinions and so on. Only a small part of this harm would be really necessary to protect the interests of the citizens.
    No. The US would have been peaceful instead of having a horrible Civil War. The slaves would have been liberated later in a peaceful way (like for example in Brasilia). If after this the Confederacy would have split, so what? This later split would not have murdered a single victim of the Civil War.
     
  21. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Iceaura is again in the primitive attack mode, but this particular point seems worth to be answered:
    The question when it becomes acceptable to support some faction in a civil war is a difficult one. There is no easy yes-no answer for a simple reason: It can be misused (like seen in many actual examples, Syria, Libya) to create "separatists" out of nothing, support them with weapons and money and use them as mercenaries. If support for separatists would be allowed without very severe restrictions, it would de facto legalize aggression, because to create such a separatist cover is a triviality.
    The other radical solution is to forbid it completely. This is the solution of traditional international law. Here the result becomes absurd in the other direction: Separatist movements which have de facto created their own independent states, been able to secure their borders and to rule their territory, thus, fulfill all the conditions of statehood, will not be accepted as independent states.

    What I propose for a libertarian society is the following:

    First of all, the issue is a problem only if the state where the civil war happens is not accepting in itself libertarian principle. Else there would be peaceful separation instead of a civil war. So, libertarian principles already minimize the problem by reducing it to societies which do not accept libertarian principles. The analogy in international law would be a failed state which is not even a UN member. In this case, classical international law imposes no restrictions at all. The libertarian principles would, instead, impose some restrictions. In particular, it would forbid aggression.

    What you are allowed to do? You can on your territory what you like (that's your own territorial sovereignty) to support whatever side you want to support.

    Your citizens can travel to this country and do whatever they like to do - but at their own risk. Even if they will be murdered there, this gives no right to retaliate or so with your military. This is part of the sovereignty over their territory and not a justification for war. (This is necessary, else it would be far too easy to fake a justification for war.)

    If some faction controls some part of the border between their territory and your own territory, you can trade whatever you like through this border. (This is also necessary, there would be no base to restrict this right simply because of some group of people not accepted by that faction as legitimate rulers would want to forbid this.)

    What is not allowed is to use own military forces on foreign territory, or to use it for attacks against the foreign territory.

    As one can easily see, this does not provide sufficient protection against US regime change operations. But it makes such protection nonetheless much easier - actually, everybody who objects to US rule has to be aware that the US is ready to use, finally, the military to fight you if all less violent options fail. The hope of the terrorists or "rebels" for such a military option and the fear of this on the other side do a lot for the success of such operations on a less violent level.

    Better protection probably cannot be given by libertarian principles taken alone.
    Omitting the most relevant parts: Propaganda harms but is in most parts legitimate free speech. And that the Russian troll farm has harmed is an implausible thesis. Note: The bots have posted whatever was already popular in a given community to increase the number of followers. Thus, it was essentially only a repetition of the established propaganda of that particular group. How this harms, except in principle in pure theory?
     
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    In this case it's not legitimate free speech - so the harms are crimes.
    It is a documented fact that they attempted harm (the Mueller report, and various other reports), and a statistical near-certainty that they succeeded to some extent (various election analyses).
    Not when the faction is - uniquely - plantation slaveowners fighting for their ownership of slaves. That's a no-brainer - for a libertarian, anyway.
    So you are capable of making the connection. Interesting. That suggests your support of the Confederacy was conscious - that you were aware of what your favored side was fighting for, and why they started that War.
    Interesting question. Because you are - by all appearances - rigidly committed to never finding out what is in the Mueller report, or even acknowledging its contents as described by others. You are avoiding it, in other words - in a thread devoted to the topic.
    The simplest explanation is that you know a lot more about the Mueller report than you let on, and it threatens you.
    That's the standard explanation for the Republican Party line, anyway, and you seem to be in thrall to that media feed still.

    The amount of effort the Republicans have put into concealing and withholding factual information about this President and his administration is remarkable.
     
    Write4U likes this.
  23. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    In England there is one member of royalty who is locked away and kept hidden from publicty.
    In the US we have a person who should be locked away, as president. Go figure.
     

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