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| Re: Empire [message #98736 is a reply to message #98735] |
Sat, 28 June 2025 09:27   |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18943
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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Dude, Rusty! You're a smart guy! So how in the world do you not get this?!!
Don't listen to anyone else right now. Just look at the facts, without anyone else's opinions - including mine - and especially without having the nonsense spouted by pro-Putin (or anti-West) bloggers in your head. Just look at the facts:
1. Ukraine is an independent sovereign nation and has been since 1991.
2. It has (actually had) good relationships with both Russia and Western nations in Europe and the U.S.A. Still does have good relations with most of the world but most (probably should say all) Ukrainians now hate their former brothers in Russia. That's a big deal - and a huge mistake on Putin's part - because while the Ukrainian people want independence from Russia, until Putin bombed the hell out of them, they felt a great kinship with Russia. They now feel betrayed by their former countrymen and absolutely hate them. That's actually a side-point, albeit an important one. The main point is that Ukraine had good relations with Russia and the West. It is solely and completely Putin's fault that the Russian relationship is now poisoned.
3. Ukraine has its own freely elected government, which tended to swing left and right, just like ours. But by "left and right" here, I mean pro-Russian or pro-Western.
4. We can assume there was meddling from outside nations. I say "assume" here 'cause both you and I would say we "knew" there was meddling, and we would probably tend to blame one side or the other more. So let's just say we "assume" there was meddling.
5. Now here's the big one: Putin sent in troops. Russia is killing people in Ukraine. They are bombing the hell out of cities, and they are hitting population centers, homes, businesses and energy producers.
6. And to add to that, Putin claims that he has the right to take all of Ukraine. The world could see that he felt that way by his actions. But he actually admitted it, declaring that at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum last week.
That says everything. So I reiterate:
Russia's war on Ukraine is an egomaniac's attempt to steal the state. Putin is a horrible leader for Russia, having turned the whole world against him. He is an irresponsible aggressor, and I think the only reason nations are slow to act against him is a genuine and reasonable concern about Russian nuclear stockpiles. Otherwise, I think Moscow would be bombed into dust, and rightly so.
It's all just too easy to see. Nothing difficult about it. No need to read between the lines. Putin invaded Ukraine because he wanted to steal the nation and call it his own. No motive other than that. None needed. Putin's motive is pure and simple. He wants Ukraine. Nobody "pushed" him into it. He is the one that has always been the pusher.
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| Re: Empire [message #98746 is a reply to message #98745] |
Wed, 02 July 2025 10:53 |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18943
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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Yeah, I definitely agree with you, Bruce. If Rusty and I hadn't exchanged hugs, so to speak, this discussion would be too much. I usually don't discuss stuff like this in public anyway. Not in public places, and not in public internet sites. I don't even participate in social media for this reason.
I generally agree with Rusty about the main thrust of his views in this thread, which is that there are those that would try to take control of world events and that they shouldn't. There's even math that expresses this, and it's called "power distribution law." When that emerges in sociology, economics and other places, it's called a "scale free network," and there we have too much control in too few hands. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely. At least, that's my opinion.
That idea that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" doesn't die when it hits the American border though. In fact, I would argue that as bad as things can get here, some of the worst stuff I see happens beyond our borders. Not giving us a pass here in America - we're an entitled bunch - but just sayin'.
I think we'd all agree that those who seek to manipulate and control almost always use various forms of media spin and propaganda to create a narrative. That's why I often suggest on this matter of Putin's Russia to look at the facts one can easily see. Those facts actually show everything one needs to know. Even just one fact says it all:
Putin invaded Ukraine.
He stopped his meddling campaign ('cause it wasn't working) and actually started killing people in an independent sovereign country.
There are other places in the world where nefarious "empire building" is going on. Rusty has spoken about those. But this one is Putin's fault. He's the aggressor and his nation's actions are as guilty as anyone else mentioned in this "Empire" thread.
I'd argue that Russia is worse than anyone else right now, 'cause Ukraine is entirely innocent. They didn't plot schemes against Russia, and they didn't send terrorists to kill people in Moscow. They didn't play economic games. They did nothing bad to Russia and even considered themselves to be brothers until Putin started escalating his egomaniacal efforts to control Ukraine and ultimately to take it by force.
So my hope is that if this discussion continues, it will do so with no further mention of Ukraine.
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| Re: Empire [message #98747 is a reply to message #98746] |
Thu, 03 July 2025 10:17 |
Rusty
Messages: 1389
Registered: May 2018
Location: Kansas City Missouri
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Illuminati (3rd Degree) |
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Well I'll give a glimpse of the thrust of mine is in this thread through my mentors which is with the notion of ideological entitlement. Our country has been the thrust of financial sanctioning to sovereign nations for a good long time. It's been described as our "free lunch", and "weaponization of the dollar". As the astute economist Michael Hudson and other progressive economists have pointed out that the world currency of the dollar has allowed for and perpetuates a means for the United States to run its now enormous trade deficit. Simply by issuing bonds and bills for IOU's in goods exported to our shores.
Which also has helped pay for our overblown military complex and seeding the world with military bases all over the world. Why would we do such expenditure? Based on the wars we have committed to with boots on the ground and by proxy it points towards a means of sustaining our financial imperialism. Our foreign policy has been likened to the tactics of the Mafia. Do what we want or we'll invade you, bomb you, topple your government subversively and replace your duly elected officials with a dictatorship. Someone more malleable to our thinking.
It's taken decades and the buildup of one country, China, to put cracks in the fortress of our hegemony of world financial domination. But China now is THE largest economy and it has formed with other countries a hedge against our mighty weaponized dollar. Our sanctioning and threatening and absconding by freezing accounts and taking gold from sovereign nations that used our banking as a depository have wised up.
And the one ace in the deck we thought we could use to keep countries in line with was the SWIFT banking clearing portal for trade balancing. We could deny countries from using it. China and the other BRICS countries have developed a superior method for this that bypasses our weaponized dollar dominance. CIPS, (Cross-boarded Interbank Payment System).
And this is what is spurring our country's mad desire to try and subvert.
Looking at the fees is telling for what our banking free lunch is all about. This new system is all around superior to the SWIFT system is and far less expensive to use. This is our crusade against China, Russia and the rest of the BRICS systems amounts to. Finance capitalism's desperate attempt to maintain its hold on the world.
We have only diminished ourselves more by all this. We are de-industrialized, in debt to our eyeballs and throwing out aggression to the world with our latest insult, the trade war with everyone.
The Empire is a hoax. As is the belief that one country in eastern Europe and it's leader is the main provocateur of conflict. What is implied as obvious to the public, but is the cover for the plausible deniability used all the time by the empire for its devious doings under the radar of truth.
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