goes out to YOPJ: From COUNTERPUNCH, NEVER wrong and always a scold. (more sarcasm)

[Mark Kohut]

Very interesting on Ukraine, Russia and the US. Thanks for taking all the time to post it. Gives me lots to go to to learn more, like a good Twitter feed. I'll learn more OFFLIST. Meanwhile it is, logically, not a refutation of the " no evidence at all" overstatement. Lots of history and " evaluative estimation" or whatever, involved therein. 

It is your fine mini-essay on the above, that ends with that now-signature slam at me. 

Since I posted from and about a paragraph in COUNTERPUNCH, and since I've been schooled in judgment this morning, let me ask about this judgment: " hysteria about Russian hacking" ...
First, would you call that a judgment. Just want to agree here if we do. Second. Where, how, who? What facts --or lack of them--show " hysteria"? .....
You and many, maybe most, on this list diss " hysteria" hard and so that remark is not about this subset of folk, right? I daresay, another judgment that most Americans are hardly aware so it isn't a national hysteria, do you thing. World-wide, care to judge? 
So, I think the COUNTERPUNCH writer mostly means a limited number of supposed news junkies, a whole lot not in the fact-based community maybe, he means? 

Anyway, reality is. 


Sent from my iPad

> On Jan 12, 2017, at 4:29 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 11 Jan 2017 17:01:03 -0500
> Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This is all by way of getting to a larger point. The hysteria about Russian
>> hacking of the US election — an action which while it might have happened,
>> is by no means proven — is a meaningless diversion, because there is no
>> evidence at all that Russia is an aggressive nation.
>> Right?!!?
>> NONE AT ALL! LOL.
> 
> 
> 
> George Kennan (no fan of Russia he):
> 
> "“expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold war era”"
> 
> And:
> 
> "Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking"
> 
> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan#Osterweiterung_der_NATO
> 
> "Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasion chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire."
> 
> Zbgniew Brzezinski, "The Grand Chessboard"
> 
> 'Following a muted first reaction to Ukraine's intent to seek a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) at the Bucharest summit (ref A), Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains "an emotional and neuralgic" issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.'
> 
> https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html
> 
> It is clear as day: Russia does not want to be forced to decide whether to intervene. Of course, Victoria Nuland went ahead anyway. The result, as predicted by Russia in 2008: Violence and civil war.
> 
> Barack Obama:
> 
> "And since Mr. Putin made this decision around Crimea and Ukraine, not because of some grand strategy, but essentially because he was caught off balance by the protests in the Maidan, and Yanukovych then fleeing after we'd brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine."
> 
> http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1502/01/fzgps.01.html
> 
> Obama, too, could not have been much clearer: The US (along with Germany and the EU) supported a coup against the democratically elected President of Ukraine. Russia was caught off-guard and reacted.
> 
> Even those subscribers to the bipartisan War Party (McCain, Nuland, Clinton, Graham etc.) who think that sponsoring regime change in Ukraine was "the right thing to do", despite being a blatant breach of international law, may perhaps find themselves able to admit that Russia might not be wholly mistaken in perceiving the coup in Ukraine as an existential threat.
> 
> As these quotes, especially the quote from Obama, make clear, "Counterpunch" is obviously correct, at least as far as Ukraine is concerned: Russia does not act aggressively, it REacts against what Russia perceives and Obama has confirmed to have been a US- and EU-sponsored regime change in Ukraine. The annexation of or rather support for the secession of Crimea in accordance with the will of the majority of its population and without bloodshed was a defensive action. The continuing support for separatists/federalists in Eastern Ukraine is a defensive action.
> 
> But don't let this information distract you from believing what you want to believe.
> 
> 
> 
> 
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l