I'll leave out the parallel between the Tatars' and our First Nations' circumstances, because I trust you would not be hypocritical at all.

So, this Saturday you take the opportunity to drop another of these essays trying to paint c99ers as Putinists, eh? Mmmm, the paintbrush is wielded sloppily this morning.

First, there is no one viewpoint at this site, but many. The general distaste for the ramping up of the Cold War again is just that -- an objection to being stampeded into ill-considered, poorly-reasoned hatreds of the kind that you, tapu dali, have brought here.

Do c99ers love them some Putin? Pretty much no, from my observations. But we also can see when certain people with another agenda try to bamboozle or stampede us.

there were 106 comments in your last essay that touched on this same topic, none of those 106 comments were yours. If you like to poke sticks at c99p members at least have the courage and decency to respond to folks that take the time to read your piece and add commentary.

If there's one thing that gets under my skin it's when someone uses a public restroom and doesn't flush.

The drumbeat for escalating a new cold and possibly even a hot war with Russia has absolutely zero to do with Russia's so called annexation of Crimea. The reported results of the election showed that Crimea voted to join Russia.

Crimea was originally the homeland of the Crimean Tatars, who during WWII were forcibly expelled and deported from their ancestral homeland by J.V. Stalin and replaced by ethnic Russians. Expulsion of autochthounous peoples and their replacement by "others" is a recognized war crime. Stalin did this repeatedly in the Baltic, in the Caucasus, and even in the Russian hinterland (e.g., the Mari, the Tannu-Tuva, and the Yukagirs). None of these Soviet-era war crimes have ever been prosecuted.

What was done to the Tatars decades ago is very much akin to what the white people did to the native Americans here in the United States. So is it up to the United States to prosecute Russia for war crimes from WWII? What about our own war crimes and ethnic cleansing? It is pretty hard for the United States to self righteously throw stones at Russia when we are still practicing ethnic cleansing here in the United States. Look no further than the horrific treatment of the water protectors by our own government in favor of a private corporation DAPL.

The bottom line for me is no more wars, cold or otherwise!!! So why is the United States aggressively going after Russia and trying to start another war? I am no lover of Putin, but this is none of our freaking business unless we are still expanding empire, which is exactly what this appears to be.

The defense budget of the United States is greater than the next seven nations combined. Over 1/3 of the money spent on defense worldwide is spent by the United States. No matter how bad Russia may be, no other nation has been aggressively attacking other countries than the United States. The United States is currently illegally bombing in seven countries right now, none of which we have declared war upon.

We're already bombing seven countries. We identified seven countries lately bombed by the U.S.: Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Libya.

Like many Americans, I am war weary and angry that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will end up costing us somewhere near $5 trillion thus far, not to mention the most conservative estimate of at least one half million civilians killed in Iraq alone.

We need to clean our own very dirty and toxic laundry before we accuse anyone else of theirs. Reaching out is always preferable to military action. You cannot bomb your way to peace.

Edited to add link.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qygr2YCvq8 width:500 height:300]

So I have to ask: are you honestly interested in hearing a differing opinion? Or do you just want to lecture us like we are hard of hearing?

It is without doubt that Russian troo[ps and its surrogates have been conducting cross-border campaigns all across the Eastern European borders: Ukraine, Poland, and especially the Baltics.

If it's 'without a doubt' then I'm sure you won't mind providing a piffle of support?

There haven't been Russian troops in Poland or the Baltics for twenty five years. By surrogates I assume you mean the Russian speaking people in the Ukraine who actually live there?

It is without doubt that Russian troo[ps and its surrogates have been conducting cross-border campaigns all across the Eastern European borders: Ukraine, Poland, and especially the Baltics.

It's true in Ukraine, but that is without a shadow of a doubt a lie in Poland and the Baltics.

the replacement of the deportees by Russian-speakers who, for the most part, have never bothered to learn the native languages or to apply for national citizenship. Many of them are "agitators" sent in by the Russian government just to stir up trouble.

More bullsh*t.

why has this place (caucus99pc) over the last year become so rabidly (and I'm not exaggerating) pro-Putin and pro-Russian?

And finally, slander.

OK, so because Stalin was bad to people who lived in Crimea in the 30s and 40s, the neo-Nazis in western Ukraine should be able to dictate to the people who live in Crimea NOW, and those people shouldn't be able to vote to join Russia.

He was ever so right when he said that "jaw-jaw is better than war-war".

If BOTH sides have sane leaders who are willing to listen to each other - and every indication so far is that Putin is willing to listen, and even make some small concessions - then it doesn't have to come to "war-war".

Unfortunately I am not certain at all that the leaders of the US are sane.

(You sound much the same as an Irishman who is still terrified of/furious with Great Britain because of the dreadful things the Brits did to the Irish as recently as the 20th century. Yes there still are some, even though "Evil Great Britain" is essentially a boogeyman these days.)

Added to avoid stupid comments: I don't like Putin, and certainly wouldn't vote for him if there were any possibility at all of his running for President of the US (which there isn't) - but you don't have to like someone to respect their geopolitical savvy. So far it seems as though he's got more of that in his littlest toenail than can be found in the entire US government.

Ugly business. Sure, let's turn Crimea over to them.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_W0darIeDFs
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8-RyOaFwcEw

approach your accusations of people, who are not enough anti-Putin in your opinion, with some kind of understanding, imagining your anchestry and may be life-time experiences of your parents or some such.

Now, I am telling you why I am not that anti-Putin. He looks great with his bare chest on a horse! Yeah. And I have seen him cuddling little kids. Cute man with some feelings! And I read he protected the girl he made a baby with from unnecessary bullshit main stream media press exposure. All good. So far he hasn't attacked a EU country with bombs and tanks. Good.

I hope that settles it. It's a very simple answer to your very simple question. I hope you don't mind.

It is without doubt that Russian troops and its surrogates have been conducting cross-border campaigns all across the Eastern European borders: Ukraine, Poland, and especially the Baltics.

Perhaps you could actually show some evidence of this. Some actual border crossings would be nice. Otherwise one might think you're a neocon nutjob.

after delivering a lecture on the dangers of Russian aggression, has declined to respond to any of the rebuttals to his thesis. Perhaps he considers them to be unworthy of his attention? Or maybe he's just very busy trying to elect more and better Democrats, so they can help to defend us from the Rooskis.

You are up against the rift between labor and democracy vs forced labor and tyranny. This rift existed within the United States government during WWII. Roosevelt disappointed his Wall Street backers by bringing the United States into the war on the side of the Allies, on the side of Britain, the democracies, and the Soviet Union, rather than on the side of Germany and Fascism, which was favored and supported by our industrial elite.

Your question may be over how anyone could side with Russia, as the United States did in WWII, when there was tyranny and forced labor in Russia. The answer is that Fascism was worse. In Ukraine now, the Nazi Fascist military and political force inflicted on the people of Ukraine by Victoria Nuland of my government is worse than the Russian Federation. Clearly worse.

I am an American who believes the Russian people deserved a democratic socialist government in 1917 when they voted for the Bolsheviks, but I believe the Bolsheviks were forced by the circumstances of czarist war, famine, revolution, and civil war, into making a pact with the devil, U.S. industrial plunderers, in order to survive invasion by the United States in 1918. As a result, the dictatorship of the proletariat, which was meant to lead to a labor democracy, became a capitalist death machine, which replaced Trotsky with Stalin.

I believe it was the struggle by the proletariat, the workforce of the Soviet Union, even during the Stalinist period, and the struggle and gains made by organized labor in Europe, that moved capitalist forces to inflict Hitler and Fascism upon the world.

I will always be for labor and democracy against forced labor and tyranny. I will always see Russia as a focal point in this struggle. And when my government forces me into a choice between Hitler worshippers and Russia, I will side with Russia. This has been a dichotomy established in my childhood as a person born during WWII. I grew up in a blessed paradise of peace, freedom and free college education, and the war was far, far away. But if I had grown up in Ukraine or in Crimea, I would have much more powerful, permanent, and personal reasons for preferring Russia.

You can point to atrocities by the Soviet Union. You can point to atrocities by Syria. But you cannot get me to agree to replace them with Fascism in Ukraine and Salafism in Syria. I refuse to agree to replace them with something worse.