If we look at higher level, a few things stand out, and Big Serge did a great writeup on this. The Ukrainian strategy seems to be to slow down the RuAF as much as possible while at the same time switching to a strategic strike strategy of drones & missiles into Russia proper. Not to collapse Russia but to make it expensive and painful for the country as a whole to prosecute the war. Of course the other side of this is the Ru strikes happening as we speak against Ukrainian infrastructure which will send the whole country back to the 19th century and make the cities unlivable.
Meanwhile, the Europeans have truly burned the ships and are all-in. If the front line were to truly buckle, and Russia started making advances in the tens of km per day, I am all but certain that we would see troop and aircraft deployments into Ukraine. Perhaps haphazard and chaotic, but they will happen.
Few know about the enormous and almost divinely-inspired British victories at Balaklava prior to that infamous "Charge of the Light Brigade" immortalized by Tennyson.
How many know about the thin red line of Scots Highlanders that completely broke a Russian cavalry charge?
Or the astonishing exploits of the Heavy Brigade, uphill and against massed Russian cavalry?
I agree if for no other reason that I feel sorry for the hapless men being round up off the streets to be sent to their deaths in Ukraine. The euro and baltic nations who so vigorously support this conflict should send their guys too. At least own your shit, know what I mean?
There's no contradiction here. The fact that it's young Christian men (Ukrainian, Russian, Baltic, Polish, French, English, German, etc.) who get sacrificed to Baal and other demonic entities makes it a further Plus on the eyes of the jews Zelensky, Yermak, Victoria Nuland, etc. etc.
Of course. Here is a detailed review of Heath Drewell's academic work, Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel, based on its critical reception and the author's stated arguments.
---
Review: Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel by Heath D. Drewell
Publication Details: Hardcover β May 30, 2017, Oxford University Press.
Overview: A Provocative and Challenging Reassessment
Heath Drewell's Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel is a significant, if controversial, contribution to the long-standing and emotionally charged debate about the practice of child sacrifice in the ancient Levant. Moving beyond the traditional binary of "it never happened" (as later biblical writers insisted) versus "it was a common practice," Drewell presents a nuanced and meticulously argued thesis that challenges the reader to reconsider the very definitions of "sacrifice," "religion," and "Israelite identity."
This is not a book for the casual reader; it is a dense, academic work rooted in philology, detailed textual criticism, and anthropological theory. Its primary audience is scholars and advanced students of the Hebrew Bible, ancient Near Eastern history, and archaeology.
The Core Argument
Drewell's central argument can be summarized as follows:
1. Rejection of the "Tophet" Model: Drewell explicitly argues against directly applying the Carthaginian "tophet" model, with its large-scale infant cemeteries, to ancient Israel and Judah. He contends that the archaeological evidence in the Levant does not support a comparable, institutionalized practice of infant sacrifice on such a scale.
2. Child Sacrifice as a "Religious" vs. "Magical" Practice: This is the crux of his thesis. Drewell proposes that what is often labeled "child sacrifice" in the biblical texts (particularly the molek rites and the "passing through the fire" mentioned in 2 Kings, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) was not, in the minds of its practitioners, a form of religion (i.e., worship or petition to a deity like Yahweh or Molek). Instead, he classifies it as a form of "magical" ritual.
3. The "Magical" Purpose: He argues that these rituals were apotropaicβmeant to ward off imminent and catastrophic danger, especially during military sieges or periods of extreme national crisis. The sacrifice of a child was seen as the ultimate, most powerful "counter-magical" act to protect the city, king, or community from destruction. In this framework, the deity receiving the offering is almost secondary to the mechanistic, magical power of the act itself.
4. A "Civic" Ritual: Drewell further posits that this was not a private, family ritual but a "civic" one, sanctioned or performed by the royal and priestly establishment in times of extreme duress. This places the practice at the heart of official Judean society in certain periods, rather than on its heretical fringes.
Strengths of the Book
Β· Nuanced Interpretation: Drewell successfully moves the discussion beyond simplistic moral condemnations. He forces the reader to understand the practice within its own historical and cognitive context, where the logic of "the one for the many" in a life-or-death situation held a terrible power.
Β· Philological Rigor: The book offers a deep and detailed analysis of key Hebrew terms, most notably the debated molek. Drewell engages thoroughly with previous scholarship (e.g., George Heider, Paul Mosca) and provides his own careful readings of the critical biblical passages.
Β· Interdisciplinary Approach: By incorporating anthropological theories on magic versus religion and the sociology of crisis, Drewell provides a fresh analytical framework that goes beyond pure textual or archaeological analysis.
Β· Challenges Assumptions: The book effectively challenges the traditional interpretation that these rituals were always about idolatrous worship of a foreign god. His argument that it was a "Yahweh-alone" practice gone horribly wrong, or at least a desperate measure not in conflict with Yahwism in the minds of its performers, is provocative and thought-provoking.
Potential Criticisms and Points of Debate
Β· The "Magic" vs. "Religion" Dichotomy: Some critics may find Drewell's distinction between "magic" and "religion" to be overly rigid or anachronistic. The boundaries between these concepts in the ancient world were often fluid, and what one culture labels "magic," another might see as integral to its "religion."
Β· Speculative Elements: While his argument is well-supported, parts of it necessarily remain speculative. Reconstructing the precise intention and theological worldview behind a practice that was later so vehemently condemned by the biblical editors is an inherently difficult task.
Β· Archaeological Evidence: While Drewell rightly cautions against misapplying the Carthaginian evidence, some archaeologists and scholars may feel he downplays the potential significance of infant remains found in specific cultic contexts in the Levant (e.g., at sites like Carthage itself, though it's Punic, or the symbolic evidence from the Jerusalem-Hinnom Valley, Gehenna).
Β· Dense Academic Prose: As noted, this is a specialized monograph. It is written in a complex, academic style that can be challenging for non-specialists to follow.
Conclusion
Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel is a formidable and important book. Whether one fully agrees with Drewell's "magical" thesis or not, his work is essential reading for anyone seriously engaged with this dark corner of Israelite history. It reframes the debate, provides a powerful new interpretive model, and demands that scholars confront the terrifying logic that may have driven ancient societies to their most extreme acts.
Final Verdict: A highly recommended, though challenging, scholarly work that pushes the boundaries of the field. It may not provide the final word on the subject, but it unquestionably reshapes the conversation in a profound and lasting way.
Of course. Here is a detailed review of Heath Drewell's academic work, Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel, based on its critical reception and the author's stated arguments.
---
Review: Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel by Heath D. Drewell
Publication Details: Hardcover β May 30, 2017, Oxford University Press.
Overview: A Provocative and Challenging Reassessment
Heath Drewell's Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel is a significant, if controversial, contribution to the long-standing and emotionally charged debate about the practice of child sacrifice in the ancient Levant. Moving beyond the traditional binary of "it never happened" (as later biblical writers insisted) versus "it was a common practice," Drewell presents a nuanced and meticulously argued thesis that challenges the reader to reconsider the very definitions of "sacrifice," "religion," and "Israelite identity."
This is not a book for the casual reader; it is a dense, academic work rooted in philology, detailed textual criticism, and anthropological theory. Its primary audience is scholars and advanced students of the Hebrew Bible, ancient Near Eastern history, and archaeology.
The Core Argument
Drewell's central argument can be summarized as follows:
1. Rejection of the "Tophet" Model: Drewell explicitly argues against directly applying the Carthaginian "tophet" model, with its large-scale infant cemeteries, to ancient Israel and Judah. He contends that the archaeological evidence in the Levant does not support a comparable, institutionalized practice of infant sacrifice on such a scale.
2. Child Sacrifice as a "Religious" vs. "Magical" Practice: This is the crux of his thesis. Drewell proposes that what is often labeled "child sacrifice" in the biblical texts (particularly the molek rites and the "passing through the fire" mentioned in 2 Kings, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) was not, in the minds of its practitioners, a form of religion (i.e., worship or petition to a deity like Yahweh or Molek). Instead, he classifies it as a form of "magical" ritual.
3. The "Magical" Purpose: He argues that these rituals were apotropaicβmeant to ward off imminent and catastrophic danger, especially during military sieges or periods of extreme national crisis. The sacrifice of a child was seen as the ultimate, most powerful "counter-magical" act to protect the city, king, or community from destruction. In this framework, the deity receiving the offering is almost secondary to the mechanistic, magical power of the act itself.
4. A "Civic" Ritual: Drewell further posits that this was not a private, family ritual but a "civic" one, sanctioned or performed by the royal and priestly establishment in times of extreme duress. This places the practice at the heart of official Judean society in certain periods, rather than on its heretical fringes.
Strengths of the Book
Β· Nuanced Interpretation: Drewell successfully moves the discussion beyond simplistic moral condemnations. He forces the reader to understand the practice within its own historical and cognitive context, where the logic of "the one for the many" in a life-or-death situation held a terrible power.
Β· Philological Rigor: The book offers a deep and detailed analysis of key Hebrew terms, most notably the debated molek. Drewell engages thoroughly with previous scholarship (e.g., George Heider, Paul Mosca) and provides his own careful readings of the critical biblical passages.
Β· Interdisciplinary Approach: By incorporating anthropological theories on magic versus religion and the sociology of crisis, Drewell provides a fresh analytical framework that goes beyond pure textual or archaeological analysis.
Β· Challenges Assumptions: The book effectively challenges the traditional interpretation that these rituals were always about idolatrous worship of a foreign god. His argument that it was a "Yahweh-alone" practice gone horribly wrong, or at least a desperate measure not in conflict with Yahwism in the minds of its performers, is provocative and thought-provoking.
Potential Criticisms and Points of Debate
Β· The "Magic" vs. "Religion" Dichotomy: Some critics may find Drewell's distinction between "magic" and "religion" to be overly rigid or anachronistic. The boundaries between these concepts in the ancient world were often fluid, and what one culture labels "magic," another might see as integral to its "religion."
Β· Speculative Elements: While his argument is well-supported, parts of it necessarily remain speculative. Reconstructing the precise intention and theological worldview behind a practice that was later so vehemently condemned by the biblical editors is an inherently difficult task.
Β· Archaeological Evidence: While Drewell rightly cautions against misapplying the Carthaginian evidence, some archaeologists and scholars may feel he downplays the potential significance of infant remains found in specific cultic contexts in the Levant (e.g., at sites like Carthage itself, though it's Punic, or the symbolic evidence from the Jerusalem-Hinnom Valley, Gehenna).
Β· Dense Academic Prose: As noted, this is a specialized monograph. It is written in a complex, academic style that can be challenging for non-specialists to follow.
Conclusion
Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel is a formidable and important book. Whether one fully agrees with Drewell's "magical" thesis or not, his work is essential reading for anyone seriously engaged with this dark corner of Israelite history. It reframes the debate, provides a powerful new interpretive model, and demands that scholars confront the terrifying logic that may have driven ancient societies to their most extreme acts.
Final Verdict: A highly recommended, though challenging, scholarly work that pushes the boundaries of the field. It may not provide the final word on the subject, but it unquestionably reshapes the conversation in a profound and lasting way.
" ... Drewell successfully moves the discussion beyond simplistic moral condemnations ... "
This is the real danger of his work, then.
God simply stated "Thou shalt not kill" and so the prohibition against such acts was explicit - UNLESS it was specifically ordered, eg as against the original inhabitants of the Land of Canaan, who did these things to babies and children, and who therefore should be exterminated themselves.
At no time did YHVH instruct that babies or children should be offered up in sacrifice; witness His statements in the NT, eg that for anybody who harmed them "It would be better that they had never been born."
As to "warding off existential threats," then the way to do that, again, was simple, ie prayer and supplication before God, Who would then fight the enemy Himself, as in the case of Sennacherib's coming up against the city of Jerusalem, and his subsequent complete destruction, and his later murder by his own sons.
At no time did "Yahwism" ever contemplate the sacrifice of children; the apparently paradoxical case of Abraham and Isaac, being merely a non-lethal prefiguring of the sacrificing of Christ by His own Father.
Yahwism only ever stipulated the sacrificing of animals - never that of children or babies.
King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities (2004) by Francesca Stavrakopoulou is an academic monograph that argues the biblical portrayal of King Manasseh and the practice of child sacrifice are deliberate ideological distortions, and that historically, Manasseh was a successful monarch and child sacrifice was a central part of Judahite religion .
π Publication Details
Β· Author: Francesca Stavrakopoulou
Β· Publisher: Walter de Gruyter, in the series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fΓΌr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW)
Β· Release Dates: Hardcover first published on August 25, 2004; eBook reprint released on October 24, 2012
Β· Format: Hardcover, 420 pages
ποΈ Core Thesis and Argument
Stavrakopoulou's central argument is a reassessment of two key elements in the Hebrew Bible:
Β· Rehabilitation of King Manasseh: The book posits that, contrary to his biblical depiction as the most reprehensible king of Judah , the historical Manasseh was actually one of Judah's most successful monarchs .
Β· Reassessment of Child Sacrifice: It contends that child sacrifice was not a deviant or foreign practice as portrayed by biblical writers, but a central and accepted role in ancient Judahite religious practice .
The author concludes that the negative biblical accounts stem from later writers who deliberately distorted historical realities for their own ideological and theological purposes .
π Academic Context and Reception
This work is adapted from the author's D.Phil. thesis completed at Oxford under the supervision of Dr. Paul M. Joyce . It is an academic text intended for scholars, institutes, and libraries .
While the full text of reviews is not available in the search results, the book has been noted by scholars:
Β· Described as a "wonderful book" in a 2005 Book List .
Β· Recognized as an "important and innovative study" for the history of Judah's religion in the Zeitschrift fΓΌr die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft .
π‘ How to Approach This Scholarly Work
When engaging with this book's arguments, keep in mind:
Β· It represents a critical scholarly perspective that contrasts with traditional biblical narratives and some theological interpretations .
Β· The book's claims engage with ongoing academic debates, as other scholars maintain that biblical accounts of child sacrifice are historically reliable and not mere polemic .
Dont forget circumcision a truly abominable practice is also a blood sacrifice and the cause of misery for countless who have undergone
The unnecessary operation.
FOUR HUNDRED JEWISH ORGANISATIONS CLAIM ABORTION AS A FUNDAMENTAL JEWISH VALUE π―π€πππ
I *donβt* want to see young European men die pointlessly in Ukraineβ¦ for the same reason I never wanted to see Ukrainian men dying pointlessly in Ukraine.
Your anger at the sick EU and NATO leaders who created this war and needlessly prolong it is fully justified. Justice would see them in the battlefield. But ordinary citizens, especially the working class men who are the ones who always get sent to the front, are not the ones who deserve death. Most of them have no idea what is going on, and those who think they do are the victims of orchestrated government- and corporate media propaganda. Behind it all sits the United States.
I have two sons, two teenage boys. We are foreign immigrants in one of the European countries whose government is among Ukraineβs βstrongest backersβ (sick mis-users). They are still young enough, and eager enough to prove their loyalty to our adopted homeland that if conscripted, they would willingly go. My wife and I would resist, and kidnap them to prevent it, if we could. Like most parents would. But that is not a realistic option.
Save your anger and justified desire for vengence for the elites, not the ordinary people, who are always the dupes and victims of elite scheme.
The power of propaganda is so strong. My wife and I have, since the beginning been trying to explain these realities to our sons. Our 14- year old is at least interested in what we say, but even he doubts us. He wonders how itβs possible that his poor old mother and father could be right and all the respected authority figures of Europe be liars. Heβs a sweet boy, full of ideals. There are many boys like that.
Let this war end. Let there be no more death. Let those responsible for it be removed from office, disgraced, put on trial, and sent to prison for life. I am dreaming.
I am with you and hope you are strong enough to be a father who can put his foot down. It's hard to do but to keep them alive and well is a fathers duty, as I see it. Good luck and wisdom to you in regard to your boys and your wife. No mother ever should be forced to bury her children, that's the cruelest inhuman thing.
This current war is not existential and deserves no conscription of any nation's youth, including Ukraine's. Remember that 'Kiev hates the population of it's Eastern Oblasts.
It always feels different once you realize that instead of cheering on your Govt.'s elected jackals from the sidelines, you suddenly understand that YOU and your blood are going to "pay" for their stupidity and arrogance. It has taken 4 years for many Europeans to suddenly say "hey wait a minute, I did not know I was next to be cannon fodder". Can I ask simply, "What the hell did you think was going to be the conclusion?? You (not personally but as a society) watched as your leaders marched you off the cliff.
I am in the US and I know the responsibility I bear, even in the days before The Russians were forced into this conflict, I was screaming at the foolishness of what my Govt. was/is doing. I only live approx. 160 miles from DC, so I am sure I will be irradiated when the serious rockets take off. Sorry, I do not "feel" anything for Europeans who are just now waking up to the real cost of incompetent leaders.
I didnβt βsuddenly realizeβ this. Iβve been aware and vocally critical of American imperialism since the late 1980s, when I discovered Chomsky.
Yes, I am sure you were "vocal" about your hatred of America. It is NOT America but your loving leaders in Europe that is going to send your sons to die. But you go and protest America all you want.
Unfortunately this has been going on for many centuries if not millenia. It's only the losers who are out on trial and sent to prison, if they're lucky.
It's easy to call for an army to be defeated if it's not your children that make up that army. And that goes just as much for Ukraine as any other army.
But, isn't this how Europe has always been for centuries? It isn't just European elites, but the whole Europe's psyche to spill blood for as long as it takes, the same trait they've taken across the seas wherever they went? Europe has been the birthplace of mass killings for centuries and even today, it is because of the Europeans and cousins that blood has continued to flow around the globe.. It is heart-rending to read how the Boers here in South Africa mowed down Zulu warriors, using advanced weaponry and knowhow to do so.. (from Johannesburg)
South Africa was a drop in the bucket compared to the Americas, where in 150 years 70-90% of everyone on the two continents died. The Amazon was once fairly densely populated, there were large cities in the Midwest, and it was around 1970 before the population of Peru had finally recovered to the level it held under the Inca.
The Zulus shouldn't even have been there - they only arrived after the Boers set up their civilization - and when they did arrive, they massacred the local indigenous Africans.
Take a look at the genocide of Christians - mostly black - going on in Sudan at the moment, next time you feel like telling everybody how exploited and peaceful Africans are.
What you describe in the interactions with your children is testament to the difficulties ordinary people in the West face when trying to counter the relentless drip feed of poisonous, lying propaganda brainwashing the young and citizenry in general: media owners and the mercenary sacks of shit that wormtongue for them should be among the first to face the consequences for wanting other people's children to die. I dream of this also.
With the Western media completely coopted as stenographers for the Empire and arrogant Europeans thinking that they wouldnβt be susceptible to propaganda unlike the Untermenschen, the only way to change public opinion in Europe (and replace the idiotic leaders they have now) is body bags coming home. Some people will have to be the sacrificial lambs, but it is either that or complete annihilation. You canβt argue with ideologues, strength is the only language they understand. The incentives to change simply arenβt there now, this is why Russia needs to raise the stakes.
User "Guard Your Humanity" - I second your words. I have a young boy. There is precious little land in the world worth dying for. Certainly not for the financial welfare of the self-described "elites" and their puppets in office.
Do not make the same mistake then. Do not allow your son to believe all he hears in school and in the media. The best way I found of doing that, is holding serious conversations with my wife or with trusted friends where I was sure my children would be eavesdropping. Learning adult matters this way, rather than being directly instructed, works much better, especially if the child thinks he is not meant to hear.
I always point out the wounded veterans begging at the stoplights by the freeway. βThat's how much the government cares about guys that serve in the militaryβ, I tell him. I like your eavesdropping idea. I'm going to use that.
I have two observations to make. First, you have failed as a father. You allowed your sons to be made stupid, and you did nothing, or not enough. You did not mind that they came home filled with propaganda, because you thought it would make them conform into their new society better. Now it is mostly too late. And you cannot "kidnap" them without their understanding and cooperation.
Two, your sons' example shows that it is not just elites who are warmongers. Many commenters here think that the young men who will be conscripted are innocent victims, that the populace doesn't want a war. But they are not innocent. They have bought into the hate, and if you get into any social interaction with ordinary Europeans, you will hear them constantly virtue signaling by expressing hate for Russia and "Putin". They have internalized the jingoism with enthusiasm, because it makes them feel superior. The man in the street supports war, the killing of Russians. It is only when he realizes he is the one who will get killed, that second thoughts come. But it is only fear and crude self-interest speaking, not moral reflection.
@RalfB - it's harder for the immigrants. You want your kids to assimilate in your new country, give them a chance of becoming the "natives," vs. boiling in the old-country environment. It's not easy to keep balance, and having a double-standard - one thing at school, another home, raises a cynic.
But it has not been for lack of trying. We talk about this stuff over the dinner table every night. My wife and I both read a lot, and have been personally involved in opposition to US militarism for most of our lives. I started in the late 1980s, working for an organization campaigning against the nuclear arms race and US sponsorship of right-wing death squads in Latin America. We have lots of irrefutable examples to share of media lies going back to the Vietnam War.
Since the start of the SMO, Iβve been vocal in pointing out the true facts to acquaintances and colleagues here in the country where I live. Most are dismissive. Some get angry. A few have slowly come around to seeing the reality that this war was deliberately provoked by NATO as part of a mad strategy to break up Russia.
But let me be clear about one thing. Our teenage sons are not jingoistic supporters of Ukraine or of our adopted country. They are just confused boys who, I fear, would obey the law rather than resisting, if they were conscripted.
I donβt know if you have children, but what I and other parents have observed is that when theyβre little they think their parents know everything. Then they become teenagers, and suddenly itβs βmom and dad donβt know anything!β The fact that weβre immigrants who stand out like sore thumbs, who have less money and prestige than their friendsβ parents, and on top of that the fact that we espouse unpopular views surely adds fuel to the fire of normal teenage rejection of parental authority.
I hope that some of it is just an act, and that deep down they know weβre right.
Well, now that you put it this way, it's a lot better than what I originally understood. There is a good chance that they'll come around.
I'm not sure where you live, and I understand your reticence; but in most Western countries, there are a lot of health conditions that would disqualify a person from draft: certain allergies (petrol, severe hay fever), record of seizures, many others. Google them up for your location. But the key factor is to have the medical record ahead of time, and most people do not think that far ahead---there is no draft now, so why worry? Think ahead.
And yes, I do know Ukraine doesn't give a shit, and press gangs even the severely disabled; but that's Ukraine, lawless and delinquent for as long as it existed. Western countries are typically more legalistic.
Agreed. But one has to ask, what the heck are those grunts in Povrosk doing? They need to frag their officers and Azov enforcers and raise the white flag. I fully support Russia, but these Ukie soldiers are brave guy who have more than fulfilled their duty to their country. They deserve better than dying for a louse like Z and the EU swine.
No they have not. The duty to their country was to desert, surrender, or frag their officers. By being sheeple, by following orders, by internalizing propaganda, they have done a lethal disservice to their country. Very bravely, yes. These brave, patriotic fighters have annihilated Ukraine, because they were brave in the service of their enemies.
I don't. The only something-to-zero exchange ratio in this war is the one of long range strikes between NATO and Russia -- NATO launches hundreds of light cruise missiles into Russia every day, Russian political leadership firmly refuses to defend the country and is sending nothing in return.
But on the ground for every group of mercenaries or sheep dipped NATO soldiers that goes to the front line some number of Russians die.
Thus from a Russian perspective there is nothing to cheer about European troops entering the war.
Because we all know that there isn't going to be a proper response to it, i.e. nuking those countries and ending this charade. There was already more than enough justification to do it, it hasn't been done, it's unlikely it will be done after this either. The children of the Russian oligarchy and even some of the very high ranking members of government are still in London after all. So this only means more Russian dead and more deep strikes, with no response or real cost to the West (nobody there cares about the people they send to die)
The real costs to the West are impoverishment of their populations, decline of life expectancy, probably civil war soon enough since they're not able to define their real enemy.
Western elites don't care about their people so that is not a real cost to who matters.
Of course, Russian elites clearly don't care about their people either, which is why they have steadfastly refused to impose any direct cost on Western elites of the kind that would make them stop
>It's not about how many missiles fly into Russia and that non fly into the West - for now.
It very much is though -- Russia will collapse under unrestricted perpetual bombing. This isn't even the USSR in terms of industrial and human potential and strategic depth is no longer a real thing in the modern world.
But the current approach ensures precisely that -- unrestricted perpetual bombing.
So it will have to change or Russia is doomed.
The obvious solution that does not involve firing missiles into NATO is to eliminate the proxy behind which the West is hiding.
But Putin firmly refuses to even do that, which gave the West time to practically already commit itself to directly fighting Russia, at which point even eliminating the proxy won't make all that much of a difference, as the whole of Europe has been lined up as the next one.
All of this could have been prevented with a few hundred missiles at the mansions of the people that truly matter and the skyscraper HQs of the key corporate players, with a firm statement accompanying those strikes that "This is payback for what you have already done, if you do not stop it immediately and fire a single shot back, you will start losing whole cities".
But you can't do that if you yourself are completely compromised, ideologically and morally.
Russia in fact has stuck a knife in the gut of the West, it's just not obvious to a lot of people. Over 2/3 of the countries on the planet, representing over 80% of Earth's population, are ignoring the sanctions. Some like India are openly giving the US the finger now.
More dangerous for the West is the collapse of the US Dollar as the unitary international medium of exchange. In 2020 over 95% of international trade was carried out in USD, last year it was 70% and this year will be lower. Over 2/3 of trade between BRICS+ countries now is carried out in other currencies, and every major petroleum producer except Canada and the US has either joined or is going to join BRICS.
"NATO launches hundreds of light cruise missiles into Russia every day, Russian political leadership firmly refuses to defend the country and is sending nothing in return."
This is straight trolling propaganda. If this is true, then the reports of Kiev authorities telling their people they may have to evacuate this winter due to no energy and no heat must be a fantasy. I think we can safely disregard GM's usual line of "oh, the Russians are doing nothing...."
AFAIK, Russia has sent only a single missile into a NATO country, and that one was a decoy filled with concrete. So the statement that you are attempting to mock is entirely correct.
"NATO launches hundreds of light cruise missiles into Russia every day, Russian political leadership firmly refuses to defend the country"
This is a bit of an exaggeration, but your point is understood. A more optimistic view might be that the Russians have thus far not bestirred themselves into a program of national air defense because the damage being inflicted is, in reality, not that great.
Widening the war, in these circumstances, where damage can be repaired more quickly than it is suffered - simply does not serve Russian interests - for now.
This might well change, especially as a successful completion of things on the battlefield come into view. When eating a hotdog maybe it's best to proceed one bite at a time.
There is no fundamental difference between OWA drones and cruise missiles. It is the same thing. What was the V-1? And we can go back even earlier to the British Larynx from the 1920s.
The reason the word "drone" is used is primarily political -- it makes it sound much less bad than it actually is.
Also, Russia has destroyed most large-scale production sites in Ukraine. Most of these drones are produced on NATO territory now. And the guidance and targeting is entirely NATO, primarily American.
For all practical purposes these are NATO attacks on Russia launched from Ukrainian territory. And not only -- Finland, the Baltics, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have also been used as launch platforms. Proven 100% for Finland and Kazakhstan, 99% for the Baltics.
The question that arises is this - would russia strike European troop deployments and shoot down euro aircraft? And if so, are Europeans willing to swallow potentially high losses or military embarrassment?
Probably not at first, owing to the standard Russian political doctrine of "what? me? a boiled frog? Nyet!"
The whole theatre is already covered in 3rd country ISR. Targeting and coordination is 3rd country. Logistics etc. Somehow "title" transfers to Ukraine at some point and we have this arms length nonsense but reality is pretty clear
What would it look like if the line was crossed? Nothing at first. Few hundred troops in the deep rear, sleeping in bunkers. Aircraft that overfly Western Ukraine and maybe engage drones and missiles. The current Ukrainian air force has kept their air frames alive for a long time and they actually launch combat missions. Anything flying over Lvov will be pretty safe I'd guess
Eventually, when its too late, yes there will be direct engagement. But always according to Frog Doctrine
A lot of NATO troops have already been died in Ukraine. The name of the base near the Polish border that the Russians destroyed in 2022 comes today mind, though the name eludes me.
If you remember, please do share. I have not heard about this at all, except maybe a training centre where the Instagrammers and the Redditors were foolish enough to share geolocated pictures.
I remember the daily briefs on Reddit and Instagram, when they arrived in that training centre, they documented everything for karma, likes and retweets. 4chan got so fed up they shared it with RuAF.
That is unlikely, or they would have attempted insertion within the cauldron, not just outside the perimeter. It makes no sense to design an extraction mission so that it has to fight through the front lines twice.
I think Russia will. If they don't, they might as well just go ahead and surrender. The Europeans still don't seem to think they will, though. Some of them might even still believe western might and right will protect them, although how any sane person could think that is beyond me.
I think theyβre well aware of the consequences, thatβs exactly why the so-called βcoalition of the stupidβ hasnβt taken that step. The more rational voices among them have warned what would really happen. It wouldnβt just be a few body bags quietly unloaded after a limited deployment , it would be hundreds, enough to topple governments. And thatβs what truly worries them.
In the UK, Starmer and his government are already deeply unpopular, and any direct escalation would spark a massive public backlash. Just last month, over a million people marched in protest against whatβs being imposed on UK citizens. I believe most people now see through this vile conflict and donβt view Russia as the enemy, despite what the corrupt mainstream media keeps trying to sell.
Maybe. But this confidence in effective backlash after three years of losing in Ukraine and active complicity in a genocide, not to mention the covid policyβ¦ WE are the ones being salami sliced here. I donβt share your confidence.
I think if the Western troops are in Ukraine, even Western Ukraine, then they will be attacked.
The Europeans have already said they will only go in if the US provides air cover and I can't see that happening.
If the Kiev govt collapses, we might occupy West Ukraine, but that might well not greatly agitate the Russians, as they don't really want a population of hostile Galicians and Poles.
"If the Kiev govt collapses, we might occupy West Ukraine, but that might well not greatly agitate the Russians, as they don't really want a population of hostile Galicians and Poles."
You're positing another huge escalation in western involvement and Russian acquiescence to it. You could very well be right, and the west may be counting on that. I think it would lose the war for Russia, though. The war, not the Ukrainian pimple.
Of course they will. They have been pretty good at enforcing officially declared red lines and, as regards the deployment of foreign forces on the territory of Ukraine, Russian authorities have officially declared more than a few times that such foreign forces would be considered as enemies and destroyed - unlike many other red lines (e.g. Tomahawks) for which they promised to take "all necessary measures".
For the life of me, I cant see why the Russians would hesitate 1 bit to fire on Nato formations that enter the Ukraine. Those forces would either be inserted without fanfare, in which case they are just more of the same. Or those forces would be entered preannounced but without much political support from the populations of the countries from which the forces might come and their being taken under fire would not seem extraordinary or provocative ?
>The Ukrainian strategy seems to be to slow down the RuAF as much as possible while at the same time switching to a strategic strike strategy of drones & missiles into Russia proper.
It's not the Ukrainian strategy, it has little agency here.
The Ukrainian army is this Frankenstein monster mixing Soviet legacy with Nazi ideology, but both the Soviets and the Nazis did plenty of organized retreating back in the days. The goals here are different though -- the US strategy is to use Ukraine as a kamikaze to destroy Russia. Everything follows and makes perfect sense from that. Who ever imagined that anyone would be allowed to launch hundreds of light cruise missiles every night into Russia, all the way to the Urals, and there would be no meaningful response? Well, the US achieved it. But for that to continue for as long as possible and to maximize the damage, no ground must be ceded without the maximum effort expended into defending it.
>If the front line were to truly buckle, and Russia started making advances in the tens of km per day, I am all but certain that we would see troop and aircraft deployments into Ukraine.
Yes, we will, and long-term all of Europe has been assigned the same kamikaze role as Ukraine.
Which means that the only way for Russia out of this is to pull out the big guns and eliminate the proxies.
as a (real life replica of a) psychological operations officer you are showing conspicuously little respect for psychological aspects of the war
Ukraine lives on donated money and weapons, the war costs about 90-100 billion dollars per year. All this money is given by elites, and definitely is missed in the budget of the respective nations.
Public has to be shown results, in order to continue to support, or not to oppose, throwing money at Ukraine.
Ukraine that loses a battle, translates into, let's not throw good money after the bad, let's end this war, and negotiate.
The strategic plan behind Western aggression is never to negotiate. Any negotiations are defeat. The strategic plan of overextending Russia is finished, the moment negotiations start.
Why?
Because it is difficult to keep western public in the state of continuous Russophobia, antiRussian frenzy, that directly destroys European well being without outright war. Any rational European approach demands good relations with Russia. Only war can give support to current European politicians in refusing to be rational.
Atacking NATO, now, would be the only possible victory path for Ukraine.
I always wonder, ask myself, how it is always you GM, that are suggesting Russian do only thing that could lead to Russian defeat and Ukrainian victory.
A very clever SBU/GUR/CIA/MI6 asset.
And as always, let's end by looking at the war from Zelensky's side.
Isn't Zelensky a greatest butcher of Ukrainian people, a man who lost 20% of territory and a million men, and is on the way to lose even more.
I was certain that Zelensky is a British asset, but somehow, every day now, I start to believe he is a Russian spy.
What he is doing in providing opportunity for Russia to achieve a final victory couldn't be replicated by anyone else.
I do still have some 1-2% hope that Zelensky is indeed a secret GRU agent, especially after the story with Roman Protasevich in Belarus, who was revealed publicly to have been an agent of the Belarusian KGB in Nexta. Maybe that is why they are not touching him.
But it is a faint hope.
Because they could have been taking out the people below him, and they aren't doing that either. Also, the other thing you say is incorrect -- you said that Zelensky "lost 20% of the territory" (to Russia).
That is fundamentally the wrong way to look at the situation -- it is not the case that Russia has somehow "won" 20% of Ukraine, what is actually happening is that it has **lost** 80% of what is core historic Russian land. Big difference.
I will say with quite alot of certainty that Syrsky is a Russian asset in Ukrainian command - this explains the lack of retreats from cauldrons and his obedience towards zelensky
"The strategic plan behind Western aggression is never to negotiate."
I dunno, remember Minsk and Minsk-2?
"...it is difficult to keep western public in the state of continuous Russophobia, antiRussian frenzy, that directly destroys European well being without outright war. Any rational European approach demands good relations with Russia. Only war can give support to current European politicians in refusing to be rational."
They seem to be doing just fine at this. Any rational european who advocates negotiations or anything other than unconditional surrender is viewed as a traitor.
As it should be. The Russians should also have a similar viewpoint - anyone advocating for negotiations or to end the war should be viewed as a traitor.
Did you see Lenin or Stalin negotiate during the Civil War when American troops where in Archangelsk? Or during the worst days in WW2?
The big US/uk fear during WWII was that the USSR might reach a negotiated settlement. With most of the German military in the East, that gave the politicians the willies.
It is a bit easier to understand it now, post festum. But if we are honest, primarily with ourselves, it was theoretically possible for German elites to try to protect essential German interests, and do more to push political strategy of European security that would have kept Ukraine neutral.
But, still, I admit you are right. Yes, it was, perhaps not obvious to a kitten, and yet it was in the air.
My personal testimony. I remember to this day, where I was, when a news came that, German foreign minister, a legend in his time, like Lavrov today, Mr Hans Dietrich Genschner, resigned.
It was a time when his chief work, Ost Politik, finally bore fruit, Soviet Union left Germany and a few months later dissolved itself.
Strong German foreign m inter resigned.
I felt that bad times are coming, and that idea on which this strategy (Ost Politik in Germany, but this strategy influenced significantly many forces in Eastern Europe and Russia) is funded has been rejected by the masters of the world, US.
And that wars will follow Ost Politik, not peace.
I felt that day, when a nobody - Joschka Fisher has been installed as a German foreign minister, that this is the end of an era, and a beginning of new era were violence will come back to Europe once again.
A generation of politicians that were capable of understanding the root causes od major European wars and have found working solutions have been removed.
Kitten knew it, I felt it then, I know now.
What can I say finally to FeralFinster? I respect you for your opinions, and that is why I offer my small contribution.
Russians have been let down by Gorbachev, a man who tried to lead by the heart. And left Russians in a deep deep hole. No wonder that this change in US/Western approach to Ostpolitik has not been properly understood until 2025.
The puppeteers unfortunately still have big guns too.
But yes, they should have been shot at with the small ones, we agree on that.
Some conventional missiles at mansions around NYC and in the hills surrounding SV would have gone much further towards persuading the US to stop what it's doing than chest puffing about Poseidons and Burevestniks.
I doubt the West have what it takes to deploy in Ukraine unless in some desperate form to start what they think will scare the RF into backing down, fearing the start of WWIII, an idea which is far-fetched in my view.. Remember they've seen what has happened to the best armed forces in Europe, the armed forces of Ukraine, according to Boris Johnson..
All these people that say that NATO will join Ukraine are silly.
There are people in NATO paying attention to what's going on, and know the EU countries have zero chance against the Russian war machine. It'd be suicide.
if they do, they should prepare for death because that is what is waiting for them. I guess sometimes you just have to beat the NATO countries over the head to make them come to their senses. Russia is all manned up for the Odessa and Kiev offenseives and nothing NATO tries will stop them. We all understand: either Russia will be in Odessa or the USA will be.
And then Europe gets the same treatment that Ukraine gets, I could live with blackouts (for a week or so) if Starmer became target no 1 along with all Europes politicians, but since that wonβt happen Iβll just be thankful for Russias infinite patience, for want of a better word?
Kiev can't live with a week of blackout in winter because much of their heating systems are centralized plants which use water to transport heat to multiple buildings. Shut off power for a day and the water gets cold. Shut it off for three days and it freezes and bursts the pipes. That's why they say the city might well become uninhabitable.
I think most of the heat in Western Europe is electric to individual homes/apartments, isn't it?
In Britain itβs still possible to have gas and electric to each house, which is more efficient for heating but of course our govt doesnβt understand such things and will be happy when we all have electric supply and thatβs it. Apparently it was only Russia proper ie incl Ukraine that had such a heating system (it even heated the pavements I believe) weβll see how much of this remains in Kiev. I doubt Z cares either way.
"Rather than preventing Russian capture of the Donbas, the west is testing how much Putin is willing to pay for it. If history is any guide, a game predicated on outlasting Russiaβs strategic endurance and willingness to fight is a very bad game to play indeed."
My own reply, which got a ridiculous number of likes, was:
"One thing we learn from history is that our leaders rarely learn from history."
- Historian Barbara Tuchman in 'The March of Folly'
The Euro babblers lack any of the requisite internal organs to put their βtroopsβ on the ground in Ukraine. They have spent the entire war avoiding this and using Ukrainians as cannon fodder. Most of these non entities will be replaced in any event by conservatives, who do not see Russia as a threat. It would also be the end of the EU gravy train, and they wonβt allow that to happen.
Are the Europeans truly all-in? Right now, itβs all talk and bluster. Iβll believe it when they have troops on the ground in Ukraine, which is something that I hope never happens.
They're just trying to pretend that what is going to happen isn't going to happen. I'm referring to the finlandization of the entire first line of European states, including the Baltics, Poland, Finland, Romania and Hungary. They're all in various stages of this already. No one in the Baltics of Finland can be under any illusions what this all means to them.
"The Euro-puppets once more chorus the same coordinated messagingβthat the war will now last βindefinitelyβ and Europe must prepare, and most ominously, that Russia may attack NATO at any moment."
Yes Europe is lost but thatβs exactly why they will go to war. The gamble is that those currently in power can use the chaos to stay in control. If they are lucky they actually expand their power and consolidate their financial dominance. They do nothing they lose, because that is the current trajectory.
Although a generation or two were brought up in the US without the benefits of substantial historical education a proper narrative still has to be served up for the masses. On November 4 BBC and Zelensky united to initiate the offensive against the US public. The blame is placed on overwhelming Russian military forces. Zelensky told BBC that Russia concentrated 170,000 Russian soldiers in the Pokrovsk area. Considering the small area and the type of warfare the parties are engaged in this must be an absurd lie.
βAlthough it has taken them months to approach the town's borders, Russian soldiers have now infiltrated it and on Friday, Zelensky said Russia had amassed 170,000 troops on its outskirts.β
BBC is becoming one of those New Age publications where exact dates are carefully avoided for the record. The βFridayβ they mention above must be the 31st of October, 2025. They published the article likely on the 4th of 5th of November, 2025, β3 days agoβ.
It has a fine line going at the moment persecuting Muslims, blacks and any other 'outsider' including in France, the Chinese. The object is to deflect public attention away from the abomination of government funding of the war in Ukraine and economic meltdown. Hating migrants is the big story. Releasing these poor people from prison and then hunting them down seems to have become a great game, along with 'undercover BBC visits' to hard working groups of incomers running corner shops or whatever, and trying to expose them as criminals. Hey, the British public (those who might otherwise bring pressure to stop this war) either love this stuff or it drives them underground? We do not know as no dissenting voice to the official narrative is ever heard. Support Palestine, for example, and you are disappeared.
Re the BBC Iβve been noticing that too and wondering about it. From having traditionally kept quiet about underground immigration theyβve suddenly sprang to life. In my eyes all theyβre doing is highlighting the chaos that is the UKβs crime and public order situation today. My reaction is that the authorities know everything about everything thatβs wrong but do nothing so as to keep the level of chaos simmering. When itβs convenient to create a distraction hey presto! Theyβve got all these media cards up their sleeve. Pathetic and infuriating.
Itβs chaotic, just think of these stabbings in the Cambridge train and what transpired about the guy and the days before. The public is kept in a state of affrighted confusion.
I do believe that happens more and more to those of us who are awake. First of all, the level of brainwashing is so great that there is no amount of evidence you can provide to change anyone's mind, even close friends and family. So we wait patiently for the truth to come out, which it eventually does, in drips, and drabs. Look at what has happened with CONvid. The truth is out there, but no one has been held to account for what they did, and they are still pushing CONvid boosters, even though the percentage of people taking them is in the basement... Chip
On the vaccines, committed purchases way into the future have to be used or the purchase loses its value and has to written off and some-one held accountable (sort of). So the system will go on pushing this stuff until the contracts expire. It is slightly different with the flu jabs that have a valuable placebo effect in winter with a hard pressed NHS. None of this stuff has any real health value that can survive any scrutiny.
But surely Ukraine has 2 million troops defending? After all, they've only lost 40,000, and conscripted around 3m.
Russia doesn't stand a chance really, any day now the AFU will invade and take Moscow within a week.
And then the 3 meter tall NATO ultra-soldiers will stroll in behind them, as Russia collapses, and beer becomes free in every Western country, and santa delivers a Ferrari to every household.
With modern tactics, ANY mass formation of this size would be obliterated on either side of the conflict. In other words, Zenlensky is full of shit as usual... Chip
The section on the October Revolution and the anniversary today was a much needed antidote to the rallying around a cause and ideology that is meaningless to the masses and the struggle for a decent life. Thanks for including that.
It also shows the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the current Russian elites, and identifies the main reason why the war was not won in 2022, why it was not started when it should have been in 2014, and why victory is not even an objective even towards the end of the fourth year of it.
And it is that the foundation of the socio-economic position of current Russian elites and the ideological justification for it is the Soviet defeat in the Cold War. Which wasn't really a defeat but a surrender without a fight, but it is important to portray it as defeat, for the exact purpose of providing that justification.
Thus we can't be fighting the GPW again, even though that is exactly the situation we find ourselves in. Worse in fact -- Hitler had most of Europe, but not all, now the modern Nazis have all of Europe, plus the UK, plus the US, plus all their colonies on their side, so it is a much much more unfavorable and critical situation for Russia. It also reveals everyone's true faces in WWII -- the UK and the US are the actual origin of Nazism, Hitler modeled his thought after the facts on the ground in the US in the first half of the 19th century and racial supermacist theories developed in the UK, and the US continued to have laws and policies not all that much different from those in Nazi Germany well into the 1960s. Which is why it allied back with the Nazis before the war had even concluded, and it did D-Day not to defeat them but to rescue them from the Soviets.
But there must be no official connection made by Russian leadership between the events of the GPW and the current ones, and no acknowledgment of the true nature of the US, because if that is done, then it automatically follows that the Perestroika was a gigantic mistake if we are to put it in the most charitable way possible (it was really the grandest act of treason in human history), from which it follows that if we are to win and survive the current war we have to do counter-Perestroika and a purge of those responsible for it.
How can that be allowed though given that those responsible for it are still in power?
And this is how you end up with Western-made drones with 100-kg warheads (i.e. light cruise missiles by all realistic definitions) hitting energy infrastructure in Kostroma, Vladimir, Tatarstan, Bashkiria, etc. every night and the Kremlin mostly refuses to even acknowledge it is happening.
Because the only way to stop it is to win, but victory threatens the internal position of those in power. And they would rather completely destroy the internal and external security of the country than jeopardize their own position...
Is Ukraine worth 20 million Russian lives? Or is it better to grind them down from a distance preserving the lives - as much as possible - of Russian men.
WW2 and Hitler perhaps necessitated near suicidal attacks to preserve the nation state.
Where is the necessity of mass killing of Russian troops???
We both know that western estimates Russian loses are wish fulfillment fantasies. Why give them such a victory when Ukraine will be crushed regardless.
If it takes 2 years 10 years, whatever - westernized Ukraine and its threat to Russia is being destroyed piece by piece.
>Is Ukraine worth 20 million Russian lives? Or is it better to grind them down from a distance preserving the lives - as much as possible - of Russian men.
This is false dichotomy pushed to the absolute limits of the absurd.
It reminds me of how Putin when asked about the terror bombing of Belgorod shrugged and said "What can we do? We could do the same in Kiev, but what will that change?". As if that was the only retaliatory option -- to kill civilians in Kiev. The option of, you know, killing the people responsible for the terror bombing in Belgorod, which would be the Ukronazi political and military leadership plus the Ukrainian oligarchy, so that, you know, actual deterrence is enforced, was something that either never crossed his mind or he deliberately wanted to keep out of the conversation. Now we know it is the latter, because Lukashenko spilled the beans on how detailed plans for decapitation strikes were presented to Putin for approval but it was Putin himself who vetoed them.
Do you seriously think that if Stalin had the military-technical means at the disposal of Putin, the USSR would have lost that many people?
And why do you think the only alternative option now is meat waves with high casualties against prepared defenses?
Speaking of prepared defenses, why is the war even fought in the Donbass, where the prepared defenses are, while there is this wide open spaces in Chernigov and Sumy, which is also the most direct route to Kiev, which was never seriously fortified before the war?
And which resulted in more casualties?
A) The current approach, which has killed some 150,000 already
B) What could have been, which would have resulted in Russia taking over the whole of Ukraine with 20-30K casualties max, and which would have involved:
1) Decapitation strikes on leadership (still not done, never even attempted)
2) Immediate strikes on the AFU military barracks before they could disperse, in the first hours of the war (missed window of opportunity)
3) Physical isolation of Ukraine from NATO (never even attempted)
4) Eliminating all rail transport in Ukraine internally paralyzing logistics (only being done now, belatedly).
Had that been done from the start, and Russia always had the tools to do it, how long would the war have lasted and how many casualties would Russia have suffered?
It is precisely the current approach that killed a lot more.
It has a benefit for the Russian oligarchy that Putin represents and works for though -- it stalled things out in the hope of reaching some kind of a deal. While the other approach would have meant victory, and victory is a mortal threat to the Russia oligarchy...
Fun facts about the territory called βUkraineβ
Area: 603,700 square kilometers (233,100 sq mi)
Are you seriously suggesting Russia could have performed a 5,000 miles double envelopment?
Donbass is where their army was and where the fight was. There was simply no way to βisolateβ the whole of Donbass - and Ukrainian troops there - by trying to close down the entire Dnipier river basin.
Are Russian Generals idiots? Has Russia not been methodically destroying every city and town - all the way to Lviv?
This is siege warfare. The most logical approach given the situation on the ground. Executed almost to perfection.
The west would have had multiple orgasms at the thought of Russia *and* Ukraine killing each other en masse.
Hell, the western goal now is TO KILL of all young healthy Ukrainian men so they donβt join the Russian army when the war ends.
I should add (as an edit)
The beauty and NECESSITY of Russian strategy is that Ukraine will be thoroughly destroyed with no hope of EVER resurrecting the AZOV NAZI bandara ideology ever again.
A βdecapitation strikeβ leaves the entire western structure embedded throughout Ukraine.
This way⦠a clean slate⦠is it ruthless enough for you?
Comrade Stalin I think would have agreed with option 2.
>Are you seriously suggesting Russia could have performed a 5,000 miles double envelopment?
The physical isolation would have been done with standoff weapons with the appropriate charges.
And yes, Russia did actually try to do a large-scale envelopment -- there was a now-forgotten push towards Zhytomyr (that never came closer to even Korosten), combined with the equally forgotten push towards Odessa and the PMR (that was destroyed around Voznesensk). That failed because none of the items on my list were pursued.
Germany wanting to raise up the biggest military in Europe. What could go wrong? I would hope that Russia is not reverting back to the Soviet Union for the sake of Russians. Didnβt quite understand that part. I like the idea of Russia being the outlier good guy. The pope of a new way out of the same old crap.
Maybe, the modern world is too crazy to be saved and the only new beginning is an absolute nuclear end.
That was the best part of today's installment. Look what is happening with Europe now, given the dismantling of USSR as an opposing ideology: slowly but surely, the social democracy that greated a welfare state will be dismantled.
Explain that to me further. It seems that social democracy has been destroying the US and Europe, the lack of sound government financed by debt and overwhelmed by immigration. The far right is more of the same. I lack any hope in a coherent future. I do believe in miracles.
Xavier. A functioning Social Democratic model would not have seen the huge increases in income disparity that the USA has experienced in the last 40 years.
You've had neo-Liberalism and monetarism for 45 years and it's been picking your pockets to serve the interests of the 1%. Europe has followed your lead in to the abyss.
You don't seem to realise that there was a Class War and the Rich won.
But yeah, "men in dresses", " immigrants", "single mothers", "Travellers","Muslims". It's probably all their fault.
The 1% owns everything. It is destructive but they sold the program with socialism, taxing the middle class out of existence and piling 100βs of trillions of debt on government, corporations and people.
There has always been a disparity of income, itβs called civilization, the few ruling the masses. Technology has made the process worse, people are less necessary, they are brutally controlled. My fathers were serfs and three hundred years ago they had a certain autonomy. It is now 1984. The serfs have no life. They can adhere to an active spirituality, a just, practical God that seeks justice through collective efforts of individuals without violence. That is Christ; not many follow.
The Soviets, run by the rabid workers were an abomination of Gulags. The West probably canβt be saved, itβs up to the individual, with grace, to save himself. Like a snowfall, each individual persistent flake transforms the world.
But in Britain, your characterisation is simply wrong.
The Monetarists were explicit that "there is no such thing as Society " that is the absolute antithesis of Socialism. They destroyed organised Labour, they sold off nationalised industries and utilities, again not remotely Socialist.
The National debt was increased to fund imperialism and the MIC, not on education or healthcare.
It's clear you don't like Socialism Xavier, but it's also clear you don't have a clear understanding of what it is.
If your faith gives you solace that's good, but personally I think actions speak louder than prayers.
The concept of God is universal. Elemental, the varied theologies were formed by the geographical environments and the cultural solutions to the production of necessities. Tribal communities were more cohesive and built communities by building competent, interdependence.
With civilization you got a ruling class and slavery of the masses.
The Naked Ape yearns for utopia, Paradise lost. Communism existed for millions of years, civilization 4,000.
Marxism will always have an allure.
The world is crazy. Religion is crazy. Christianity, in its many formulations is crazy. Islam might be the craziest.
I am a Christian. I follow Christ, but what did Christ really say? It is all adulterated. I believe in Christ, The Word, a philosophy that gives life, a self-help Guru that happens to be God and offers the Kingdom of God here and now. βBlessed is he that hears the word and keeps it.β
Throughout history there has been craziness. I believe I have experienced a period of profound prosperity and I am thankful for my experiences as an American.
Pretty much, and end has been prophesied. The times, enhanced by technology and a rapacious nature are perilous.
For the serfs, the average person, history has been a series of catastrophic incidents brought about by evil cabals of lustful, greedy men.
As an individual you must rise above it and create a life for yourself below the radar.Knowledge is power, insightful decisions creat a good life. Communication, with the Spirit of Christ, is all important and even if you eventually get nailed to a cross, like the good thief, that day you will be with him in Paradise, the place of all your longings.
βMy ways are not your ways, saith the Lord.
The Real Word of God has every contingency covered, in all the varied difficulties, what a myriad of individual needs.
Why do I believe in Christ because I experienced him and continue to experience him. He is a living God. I find no fault with his Word, his philosophy. Every other thing apart from the Word of God⦠is inadequate.
Chaney died. I never wanted to be the bastard living and I pity him now. There is justice, there is judgement.
I live, I work, I hope and each day I advance. Christ Kingdom is here and now. He set an example took his responsibility to the limit. βI have come to give abundant life.β We all live in our mind and our actions make all the difference. I will always believe in miracles, like Solzhenitsyn. Hopefully, even when I suffer. In the Kingdom of God, is there really suffering; a coward dies many deaths. βMy peace I give you, a peace the world cannot give.β
If Socialism was so bad why did the Empire spend the last 80 years trying to destroy it? The Chinese have shown how Socialism does work, stopping the oligarchs from herding the populous into debt servitude. Home ownership in China is about 93%. A savy Socialist government like China invests massive amounts of capital into productive pursuits. Education, housing, health, infrastructure. The US model directs capital to asset appreciation and massive amounts of the profits move offshore to tax havens. Have a look at how much money comes out of tax havens into US Treasuries. And have a look at net household debt. It's insane.
Nothing in history is linear. China is not on a straight up path into the great beyond. The US is not on a straight down path forever. Things change. Look at the changes in Russia alone since the collapse of the USSR. And in East Germany since the reunification. You are picking a point in history to say that the Chinese model is successful. Doesn't mean it is the best model or that it will always be successful... Chip
China is a wonder and the facts dictate that it is more prosperous. There is a certain morality in the excellence and effectiveness it displays. It is directed and that is necessary in a modern world. It seem to direct resources to the welfare of people.
The US, freedom and individual pursuit is dead in the US; the US is dominated by a stupid leadership that only wants to dominate. They produce chaos and brain washed people.
Prosperity is always a correlation to good just government leaders, servants of the people.
You must place your faith in something, some ideology, cult of leadership or God. Personally, after going many ways, I choose God. That foundation has made all the difference.
UK public health care, free at the point of delivery, has always been a cover for turning your people into lab rats- sick ones at that, and a vast corporatist profit centre. But sickness in various forms is now the biggest single generator of GDP in the UK.
Do you work in healthcare and have any idea of the underpinings of the system? Do you have any idea, knowledge, experience on how it was in UK prior to the introduction of the NHS? The average Brits were lab rats in the big capitalist/"liberal" experiment in which more than a million Irish died of hunger less than a century prior. You obviously have no idea what you are talking about.
And I want intimate relationships with the most beautiful girls on the planet. What could possibly go wrong? Except waking up. Poland also declares that it will have the largest army in Europe. Everyone declares it, and in the end, it will be Estonia that does, or at least its 40% Russian population.
And I want the pretty girl that loves me, called my wife. Who takes Poland seriously. War has ruined the US, they call it the Military, Congressional, Industrial, Spy Complex. It killed the economy and millions of people. It is controlled by crazy people.
The elites, called leaders, elected officials, politicians, only manage their bank accounts. The country can die as long as they continue to maintain them, and this maintenance increases with the approaching demise. These people are princely dependents, and like the common people, they don't care about tax increases; they don't pay them. We always talk about the wealthiest; it's time to talk about the political dependents, starting their careers in their twenties and ending them in their seventies. No one has ever assessed their fortunes; it's not too late. As for the beautiful woman who is your wife, it's certainly a well-deserved privilege.
Socialism and welfare state are ok, but we don't need this pathetic type of third worldism.
No need to blandish Angola as an equal partner, when you have zero vested interests in the part of Africa under the Equator, and more importantly when there are millions Africans swarming Europe, including a more than modest share in Russia and the Ukraine.
Dealing in a non-exploitive, mutually beneficial manner is gay and invites the junior partner's contempt.
Humanitarian Aid has been a money sinkhole to the West for decades, since the end of WW2. With little results to show for in Africa, while instead continually replenishing the NGOs' trough.
Japan never needed humanitarian aid to rise its standards of living.
It is also the elephant in the room that explains everything about the SMO catastrophe, but none of the Western nominally pro-Russian analysts ever dares touch.
The Kremlin is not even pursuing victory because the position of the current Russian elites is rooted in the defeat in the Cold War. That's what it boils down to in the simplest terms.
The elephant in your tiny mental room pal is the rotting carcass of Ukraine and Zelensky, the collapse of neither of whom you have uttered a single comment about, while constantly banging on about Russian βfailuresβ, even as they have advanced continuously for months.
Russians are not skilled in propaganda. The Western military-industrial-banking-oligarchs complex uses an army of pens-for-hire to repeat the βcontroled narativeβ of the βevil empireβ till people take it as a fact.
Many facts about the Russian Revolution and the USSR are not known.
On women rights: in 1922 the gender equality, no fall divorce, marrital rape and domestic violence criminal statues and access to abortion up to 14 weeks became laws in Russia. Women were recruted en mass into the colleges and universities. In 1963, the USSR sent the first women into space. The same year the Princeton University opened admissions to women. Today, proportionally, Russia has more women scientists and engineers than the US. There is a 3 years maternity leave and an affordable day care.
Have the advances in the USSR helped the womenβs rights movements around the world?
The Soviet Union supported the anti colonial movements all around the world. Among them was the National Congress in South Africa supported politically and financially. The US removed Nelson Mandela from the Terroristβs list in 2008.
Nothing ever is all good or all bad, except in propaganda.
The βrules based orderβ idea of the European/US world domination is fading away like a psychotic dream on medications. Unfortunately, the European elites and US neocons refuse treatment.
The "women's rights" narrative is obviously the precursor for the feminism which has destroyed the family unit in the west, as it was always designed to do - see Aaron Russo's conversation with Nick Rockefeller in his movie, "America, Freedom to Fascism."
All of its chief apologists either were, or are, jewish females.
"No fault divorce" enabled women to replace the father with the state, and so the state now had access to the children, as the mother would of course put her children into daycare, so she would have more time to explore her real interests, ie in witchcraft and "self-expression."
Abortion is murder, of course, and it destroys the woman who enables it - in visiting a death sentence upon herself, as all ovarian cancer stems from women who have facilitated this heinous act.
A recent viral post by a particular woman - Helen Andrews - has made the case that western wokism is entirely attributable to women getting themselves into positions of dominance in many previously male dominated spheres.
"Women's Rights" always and invariably takes no account whatsoever of women's responsibilities - and the vast majority always want the one without the other.
The SU of course was an entirely cynical entity, which only supported anticolonialism so as to replace it with bolshevik - jewish exploitation - the complete societal collapse of all those African nations freed from colonialism into complete anarchy and murderous hatred of the non-black was always the desired outcome, and the replacement of colonial governorship with terrorists of the Mandela type.
I am afraid that your dream of male domination and putting women back in βtheir placeβ in your preferred social hierarchy is fading even faster than the Western-hegemony-forever delusion.
The outline of the nature of the USSR legacy makes some good points, however I think it overemphasises the importance of a period of 70 years in a civilisational culture spanning 1000 years plus.
"however I think it overemphasises the importance of a period of 70 years in a civilisational culture spanning 1000 years plus." No. The Bolshevik revolution ushered in a time of extreme change that eliminated much of what existed before.
A useful analogy may be that it may take a thousand years to grow a mature forest but only minutes for one fool with a match to burn it down.
I am not convinced of that, much traditional culture banned under communism has re-emerged, perhaps the best example being Russian Orthodoxy. The same is true in China. To follow on from your analogy of the forest, a forest may well be utterly devastated by an intense fire, but over time plants, trees reshoot and re establish. This is a common phenomenon here in Australia, it is as if the fire purifies and re-invigorates. I think this is true of Russia, it has been devastated many times , but persists. They seem to have a unique understanding of the strength that can only be born through suffering.
The USSR legacy is one best forgotten - it was a jewish bolshevik plot which failed, and which has been replaced under Putin with a new Christian vision.
Damn you Simplicius! You forced me to open a CBC article with the insinuation that they were telling the truth. But no, just more of the same drivel that our taxes pay for.
It has been my personal opinion for a while now, years, about the state of the Occidents. The ones who created it, good or bad willed, were visionary. Those Β΄dudes and dudettesΒ΄ are long gone. I would say that we are at least at the stage of the great grand kids being in charge and one can argue it goes much deeper than that, without breaking much of a sweat. With discussion of Russian space propulsion systems creating vehicle velocities of 600 km per second, among other advancements outside of the west, in other words to the moon in roughly 19 minutes ( Russia to Montana in 20 seconds or less once the technical issues have been ironed out ), it is clear to me the occidents are now second world.
We could not have a bigger bunch of clowns running the west than we have now, with the biggest farce being the Donald. Putin is right to be cautious. Destroying is easy, building or rebuilding is arduous.
Russia is winning today precisely because it has embraced ITβS OWN conservative, innate values and spirituality over 1,000 years of history.
The Soviet Union simply collapsed because it did not inspire the people it governed. It simply terrorized them. In the end no one would bother lifting a finger to save it.
Russia has found its internal bearings and spiritually⦠and is winning and coming together. Economics is a policy - not a governing ideology. Social welfare does not equal Godlessness.
It would be a travesty if the Russian people were brainwashed into returning to some Soviet style godless, soulless terrorist regime.
βIn any conflictβ¦ both sides claim to have GOD on its side. Both sides may beβ¦ but one side MUST be wrong.β
Abraham Lincoln
Putin brought Russia back from the brink of the abyss by embracing healthy nationalism and spirituality.
Russian soldiers are merciful to civilians and those who surrender. They are on the side of angels.
The Soviet Union is dead and the Russian people are enormously better off for it.
"Russia is winning today precisely because it has adopted ITS OWN innate conservative values ββand spirituality over 1,000 years of history." No, because its men have balls, not a mussel.
And now those Napoleonic Guards and SS Troops bones line the Smolensk to Moscow highway for eternity. The West often underestimates Russia or simply misunderstands it.
I agree 100% with what you say. People who want to sugarcoat and revive Soviet communism tend to ignore the gulags and the mass graves. Or, worse still, they just don't care. It's sickening.
I don't like Western money-addicted capitalists and liberals either, but that doesn't mean that I must embrace communists, just because they are an alternative.
How about the mass graves and millions of dead thanks to the western money-addicted capitalists, in their own countries and abroad?
It's called cognitive dissonance but be my guest, have a nice life by promoting the lies of capitalists about their greatest fear - the communists, because indeed, they're the only real alternative.
Rest assured, communism will come, just not in our lifetime. That process takes a 'new kind of people' and that must develop naturally, not by pressing it into the 'good'.
Stalinism is only one of a range of options available. On the one hand undeniably brutal and if I am honest bloody terrifying, but on the other"tough times breed tough men". Given what the USSR faced in the first 20 years of its life, may be only a hard bastard could have survived?
And whilst we criticise the Soviets, let's not forget that American Prisons house far more people than the Gulags ever did and that the 1943 Indian famine was just as man-made as the Holomodor and equally deadly.
drought and dust bowl in the US was nature, just happened - but drought and subsequent lack of food in parts of the USSR (at around the same time) was caused by the evil commies?
I think there are more appropriate names for individuals like, for instance, Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin, chief executioner for the NKVD, who is reported to have personally shot and killed 7,000 of the 22,000 Polish prisoners of war who were massacred in April and May 1940. Thousands of them were later found by the German army in the Katyn forest. The evidence for this war crime is hard and substantial - which is very rare.
This is my advice to all those fine, sophisticated intellectuals who are whitewashing Soviet communism: hang a picture of Blokhin before your nose and remember that this is the kind of monsters YOU create.
Okay, now we are personify evil onto one individual?
In the 20 years after the revolution there were many Blokhin, settling private issues under the disguise of "sovjet law" in a chaotic civil war and interventions by at least 5 capitalist nations including the USA.
Monsters are in every society, to reduce a society by the people for the people to it's monsters, that is the true dishonest approach.
The killing of 22,000 Polish prisoners was not the work of a loose canon "settling a private issue under the disguise of Soviet law." It was the work of the NKVD, on explicit orders from Stalin and 5 other members of the Politburo. The relevant document, complete with signatures, has been preserved.
Monsters indeed do exist everywhere. Only, in one society they are in prison, while in another they are let loose on the people.
This whole discussion is meaningless since there is no other way for a socialist/communist system to assure it's existence.
The roll back of communism doctrine is also well documented.
The killing massacres of communists/socialistst around the world is also well documented. Be it in Indonesia after Sukarno by the dutch or elsewhere. The so called "National socialists" went after the communists and then the socialists and killed them en masse through labour or in the gas chambers with the others. Why would they do that if they are 'national socialists'? Because they lie, steal and murder, plus giving themself false labels as capitalists servants (now again in Ukraine) and when the USSR fought against those liars and killers, they were brutal. Make this shit make sense.
Ideology is a useful tool for distraction. While the Katyn massacre was happening indigenous Australians were still being shot for bounties. When was the last indigenous American shot for a bounty? Didn't 14 million die? Almost 1 million in Australia.
In the West we erect statues to our Mikhailovich Blokhins. Did the Soviets?
Yes, they did. To a leader who preserved the state and trashed the Nazis. What is hard to understand? New numbers corrected are approaching 40 million USSR fatalities during the WWII. According to Wikipedia, in Belgium there were 6000 fatalities during the WWII.
Russians and Poles have turbulent history. And do not forget that Poland signed the non-aggression pact with Nazis in 1934 and the main Nazi target was USSR. So, if Poles were not screwed over by the Nazis, they would be just another part of the coalition of the willing. Whether you hate commies or not, you must acknowledge that when the game gets existential, then all bets are off.
Also, Poland took a chunk of Czechoslovakia when Nazi went in for Sudetenland. Cutie pie lil Poland.
Litvinov was running around Europe between 1933 and 1939 trying to organize an anti-Nazi coalition, but he failed. Poland was important in sabotaging Litvinov's efforts.
So, becoming Nazi partner in 1934 and potential partner of the coalition of the willing against USSR, when it was known that they would target USSR, helping sabotage anti-Nazi coalition and even helping Nazis dismember Czechoslovakia. However, then we whine when we get spanked. Really?
It is still a war crime, but what I see is people try to understand events from 100 years ago from the perspective of 2025. Comments here often lack context.
Hadn't Nazis screwed Poles over, they would have gladly participated in the Barbarossa, like most of the peoples from all of Europe. And we know how they treated Slavs. Are you Slavic, Luis?
Yes, and the execution of the already deposed Zar's family including the medical doctor of the family, the servant and a small dog that happened to be with them.
Bloody, hateful bastards the lot of them.
Brought despair to the best of the Russians. Gumiliev shot for suspected royalist "sympathies", his son off to the gulag for years, for the crime of being his father's son, Mandelstam, a fine poet, killed in the gulag, Yesenin suicide in plain youth, Tsvietaeva, ditto.
In fact, Stalin killed more Marshalls of the URSS in peace than Hitler during the war. Purges indeed.
Is this worse, or more humane, than the treatment of German POWs POST-War. It is a documented historical fact that German prisoners of war (POWs) died in Allied-run camps, including those under U.S. command, after World War II, and General Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe at the time. The exact number of deaths has been a subject of controversy and historical research.
Key points regarding German POW deaths in these camps:
The DEF Status: A significant factor in the post-war situation was the Allied decision to classify the hundreds of thousands of German soldiers who SURRENDERED at the end of hostilities as Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEFs) or "surrendered personnel," rather than according them official POW status under the Geneva Convention. This allowed the Allied powers to avoid the Convention's stipulations regarding diet and other rights, leading to inadequate conditions in some camps.
Conditions in Rhineland Camps: Historical analysis confirms that the Americans underfed a large number of German prisoners in the Rhineland camps in 1945, and a notable number died as a result.
Death Toll Estimates: While official U.S. accounts were initially understated, historians generally agree that a substantial number of deaths occurred. The controversial book by James Bacque, Other Losses, alleged a much higher death toll (hundreds of thousands), but this claim has been widely disputed and largely discredited by "mainstream historians" due to flawed research and lack of evidence. More reliable historical estimates indicate a lower, but still significant, number of deaths. For instance, the mortality rate in French-run camps was around 24,000 out of a million prisoners.
Eisenhower's Role: General Eisenhower, as the overall commander, bore ultimate responsibility for the conditions in U.S.-controlled camps. The policy decisions that led to the DEF classification and the resulting conditions were made at a high Allied level, with some historians attributing them to an Allied occupation policy of severity.
>Stalinism is only one of a range of options available
It's really not.
If you move away from Stalinism, the system rots very quickly and you get a reversion to capitalism.
That was one of the key points of dispute with Trotsky -- Trotsky said that over time the bureaucracy will transform itself into a bourgeoisie and dismantle the communist system from within (therefore we have to invest everything into a world revolution that will eliminate the virus altogether), Stalin said that we will solve that problem with regular purges (therefore we can invest for the time being in our own development and not fight windmills with that world revolution fantasy). Both were correct -- Stalin did purges and was very successful. But once he was gone the purges stopped and exactly what Trotsky predicted happened.
The Chinese are so far managing to keep the party in power but it is an open question for how long, plus they have a certain unique cultural tradition that allow the system to work for much longer than it would have elsewhere. They also still are doing purges, which is not noticed when it happens, but is a very important factor.
The CPC is acting in its own interest, it's just that its own interests coincide with those of the country.
It paradoxically helps that China is not self-sufficient in raw materials, so there is no easy wealth to be generated there, you have to produce things.
Stalin was facing existential threats non stop. USSR was always targeted for destruction from the beginning. During the civil war we had coalition of the willing invading USSR (remember Americans in the far East?). US recognized USSR only in 1933, opportunistically to help them counter Japs. Then we have Nazis and WWII, then we have Cold War.
There was not much room for differences in opinion.
Also, are you comparing today's China with Stalin's USSR? How much differences in opinion where there during the Mao's period?
>People who want to sugarcoat and revive Soviet communism tend to ignore the gulags and the mass graves.
That ended after Stalin and Stalin did it out of necessity, not because he was some blood thirsty monster out to kill as many people as possible. He had to prepare for an existential war that he knew was coming, and sacrifices had to be made.
BTW, Putin also had to prepare for an existential war and what did he do? What is he doing now?
Let's talk purges and mass graves. In Stalin's times if there was the slightest suspicion that you were a traitor, you were shipped to the basement of Lubyanka and then to an unmarked mass grave somewhere in the woods. In Putin's time you have obvious traitors throughout most of the government and economic elite, such as Nabiulina, Silouanov, Kiril Dimitriev, all the bankers, all the resource extraction oligarchs, etc. etc. Putin himself included -- he would have been sentenced to death on many thousands of countrs of grand treason by Stalin, and with full justification. But nobody is touching those people today.
The result is that it took Stalin less than four years to absorb the initial Nazi attack and then take Berlin.
In the same amount of time Putin has not been able to move from Donetsk to Kramatorsk while allowing the country to be subjected to mass air raids every night without firing a single shot back.
"In Stalin's times if there was the slightest suspicion that you were a traitor, you were shipped to the basement of Lubyanka and then to an unmarked mass grave somewhere in the woods."
The purges as a whole being necessary does not in any way mean every single case was justified. Far from it.
Also, Stalin himself was in real danger of ending up in the Lubyanka basement, and it easily could have happened had the dice rolled only slightly differently.
Sacrifices had to be made? Yes, I guess you need to kill millions to become the final authority on how to live. Ironic how the gods of the earth must act like devils.
"In the same amount of time Putin has not been able to move from Donetsk to Kramatorsk while allowing the country to be subjected to mass air raids every night without firing a single shot back. "
You have to get your facts straight if you wish to argue this. Russia has been facing the largest army in Europe, supplied by NATO with arms from all its members. Further, moving the line of contact forward too far, too fast, would begin to sacrifice the nice, short supply lines that Russia has been able to rely on for this war. As for the "mass air raids", they have been of limited effectiveness because Russia has been able to shoot down most of the drones/missiles before they reach their targets. That is not "without firing a single shot back." Rather it demonstrates air defenses that are better than anything the west has.
Of course, for you, "firing back" appears to mean hitting targets in Germany, etc. That would quickly lead to nuclear war, which any sane person who has looked into it knows would escalate into mass destruction of human civilization. Thank God Putin has had sense enough to avoid that. He is faced with the task of dealing with the equivalent of a dangerous mental patient, who is on the precipice of becoming homicidal at any moment. In the presence of such a person, you must be very careful what you do and what you say, as any sudden movement could set them off, with disastrous consequences. NATO/the U.S. is very much like that--give them an excuse and major cities could be reduced to ash in an hour. Who wants that kind of legacy?
The URSS was fighting Germany together with the USA and the British Empire, all put together dwarfing the population and resources of Germany. Russia today is having to do in strategic terms with NATO and other US allies.
The comparison is useless.
Like saying that Roosevelt could destroy Germany and Japan, while Johnson could
not subdue Hanoi and Biden retired from Afghanistan.
Pete. In the end if you're feeding kids, building infrastructure, schools and hospitals and looking after all your people including the weakest, then it doesn't matter if you're doing it for God, the international Proletariat or Mother Russia.
It's still a "Good Thing". You have a SOCIETY,irrespective of it's ideology.
The problem in the West is that we keep voting for "each against all, no such thing as Society" politicians.
Theoretically you might be right, but there is something that I would call practical reasoning.
In fact, the ones pretending to be feeding kids and building infrastructure in the name of International Proletariat did their job much, much worse than anyone else, even the most egotistical of the liberal capitalists.
I lived in Moscow in Soviet times and the poverty of the masses was amazing. Nothing that one could buy in even the
poorest villages of Western Europe was available in the capital of the flamant Empire of Peasants and Workers.
In fact the system survived by brutal repression and by the admirable patriotism of Russians who thought that after all, those authorities were the Russian authorities.
Not different to the charge at Balaclava. Those idiots are most probably committing a mistake, but
my honour is not to reason why, but to follow the flag.
I could write for hours describing the points that I here make.
I insist, poverty of the masses and brutal repression. All from personal experience.
At the end, even the members of the Soviet Nomenklatura could not stand it anymore.
I once knew the General Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party and it was clear to me that he was no longer a Bolshevik in any real sense, but very similar in his moral stand to a Western European conservative.
The head of the communist party in the Moscow University, whom I knew, was equally devoid of this hate of all European tradition that marked the first Bolsheviks. A putinist before Putin.
Putin is no accident at all, but an antithesis to the Marxist-Leninist thesis in the mind of educated Russians after 70 years of practical implementation of the ideas of the "glorious" revolution.
Unfortunately, the results of this experience, did not only produce putinism on Rusdia, but hate to everything Russian in the other peoples that had to suffer the Soviet system.
Not only the Poles remembering the wanton murdering of prisoners in the forest of Katyn.
Russians and Ukrainians killing each other, after centuries of peacefully belonging to the same State without any problems is a sufficient proof of that point.
One thing I do acknowledge. It was fear of communism that made the Western "one percent" behave in a more humane
way to their subjects.
In that respect, the destruction of the URSS unleashed the worse instincts in the worse people of the remaining Superpower.
Changing the focus to another part of the world, it should be clear to any observer that the amazing success of China came together with the reforms that got rid of the Soviet system, while keeping the name of communism.
The Chinese Communist party is now officially the vanguard of peasants, workers and entrepreneurs.
That is no longer Bolshevism.
This should be a sufficient response to the Soviet happy memories of some, not to speak of the praise of Stalin that was already denounced by the communists that happily shot Beria as soon as they were able to.
ββ¦Russians and Ukrainians killing each other, after centuries of peacefully belonging to the same State without any problems is a sufficient proof of that pointβ¦β
This did not happen organically. We all know who brainwashed, and funded the brainwashing, of at least 2 generations of Ukrainians all the way to psychosis.
The CIA attached itself like a parasite and mind-fucked the entire populace.
Itβs sad that Ukraine was too weak to resist. But Russia had to doβ¦ and is now doingβ¦ what is necessary to survive against a far greater existential threat.
indeed try to poison the wells in both Russia and Ukraine. The point that I was trying to convey is precisely that this anti-Russian propaganda of Western agencies was successful to a certain degree, because of the experiences of the Ukrainians within the URSS, which they identify with Moscow and subsequently with Russia.
In fact when one speaks with Ukrainians about the present conflict, they immediately begin to produce arguments about life in the URSS, showing the roots of their desire to separate their destiny from Russia.
We in the west are not voting for anything and haven't been for a very long time. The long march through our institutions is complete. That's what is missing in this whole thread instead of discussing the benefits of communism, socialism, marxism, or capitalism. There are a certain group of people driving and controlling the west. Those people are inherently evil. So modern day comparison of forms of government around the globe are irrelevant. This is a spiritual struggle between good and evil... Chip
All those things can and did happen before the state decided to appropriate those functions. Centralized power did not work very well for most Soviet citizens.
You say that, but would a less ruthless society have been able to defeat the Nazis? And if the Soviets had lost to the Nazis, the OstPlan had a hideous fate planned for the Russians.
So arguably "centralised power" saved the Russians?
>Russia is winning today precisely because it has embraced ITβS OWN conservative, innate values and spirituality over 1,000 years of history.
No, it is losing because of that -- the position of the current elites is rooted in the defeat in the Cold War, and they are using the "conservative values" as a way to deflect from the need to do a counter-Perestroika, while refusing to even pursue victory in the current war.
And the only reason it is not losing completely is the Soviet legacy. Where do you think all those missiles and the military-industrial complex capable of producing more ammunition than NATO come from?
Practically nothing has been built since the USSR collapsed other than the Alabuga Geran factory, but a lot was destroyed -- the weapon manufacturing capabilities used to be much greater.
Even the fancy new doomsday weapons that Putin is so proud of were conceived and started to be designed in Soviet times. He himself acknowledged it the other day at that award ceremony.
Soviet economic model worked as long as Stalin was not skittish on sending to gulags anyone who was responsible for some factory or kholkhoz which did not deliver their 5-year Plan allotted quota (no matter how unrealistically determined).
As soon as later Soviet leadership became more humane, the whole economy slacked because of lack of Stalinist-style threats on one hand, and lack of private-initiative, free-market incentives on the other. Workers became lazy (the rise of 'homo sovieticus') and the system became rife with corruption. The fall of the soviet system at that point was inevitable.
Running an economy is really nothing more than a game of carrot and stick applied to the micro-management of the single economic agents.
you only close a cauldron once they have given up trying to escape though the last route you left open. Its always better to let them try the escape on your terms rather than flush them out.
π
I do believe you are getting insider info on Simlicius' posts release (-; Chip
My lips are sealed! π€
LOL... Chip
Grow up.
I can't. I've tried, but it's like I am frozen in time as a juvenile. π
Me too!
Steghorn cranky again ;)
Go play video games and pop-yer-zits.
You're back, Victor(y).
I never left, my friend.
You missed one round. We're worried...
π
If we look at higher level, a few things stand out, and Big Serge did a great writeup on this. The Ukrainian strategy seems to be to slow down the RuAF as much as possible while at the same time switching to a strategic strike strategy of drones & missiles into Russia proper. Not to collapse Russia but to make it expensive and painful for the country as a whole to prosecute the war. Of course the other side of this is the Ru strikes happening as we speak against Ukrainian infrastructure which will send the whole country back to the 19th century and make the cities unlivable.
Meanwhile, the Europeans have truly burned the ships and are all-in. If the front line were to truly buckle, and Russia started making advances in the tens of km per day, I am all but certain that we would see troop and aircraft deployments into Ukraine. Perhaps haphazard and chaotic, but they will happen.
With today's ISR, the hapless Euro deployments would be the definition of a target rich environment. You can't fix stupid.
1854 redux. Charge...
In 1854 a far more technologically advanced West beat Russia, despite it's own poor logistics.
I do not think that's the situation in 2025....
i assumed he was making a charge of the light brigade reference
I think you're right mate.
Did they? What did they win? They were there less time than the US was in Afghanistan
The Russians asked for peace.
At the Treaty of Paris, Russia lost both the Danube delta and Bessarabia. They weren't allowed to put warships in the Black Sea.
Turkey was preserved and the Czarist regime was weakened both internally and externally.
Essentially Britain and France achieved their war aims. That's usually considered winning.
Few know about the enormous and almost divinely-inspired British victories at Balaklava prior to that infamous "Charge of the Light Brigade" immortalized by Tennyson.
How many know about the thin red line of Scots Highlanders that completely broke a Russian cavalry charge?
Or the astonishing exploits of the Heavy Brigade, uphill and against massed Russian cavalry?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT1op6nLPjc
I now fully support and look forward to European troops entering the war.
I agree if for no other reason that I feel sorry for the hapless men being round up off the streets to be sent to their deaths in Ukraine. The euro and baltic nations who so vigorously support this conflict should send their guys too. At least own your shit, know what I mean?
Is it a sacrifice of young men and even middle aged men
Blood for the blood god Baal
I think you'll find most are Christians.
Thanks for the obvious dig. Baal was operating well before (a thousand years before?) Christianity.
Nothing operated before Christianity.
Proverbs 8, 23
"I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was ... "
The first word in Genesis can also be read from its component palaeohebrew letters
"The Son of God will die by His own hand upon a cross."
There's no contradiction here. The fact that it's young Christian men (Ukrainian, Russian, Baltic, Polish, French, English, German, etc.) who get sacrificed to Baal and other demonic entities makes it a further Plus on the eyes of the jews Zelensky, Yermak, Victoria Nuland, etc. etc.
I don't think there are many Christians who go to war, being a citizen of one of those countries. Anyway, there are not many Christians left here.
Of course. Here is a detailed review of Heath Drewell's academic work, Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel, based on its critical reception and the author's stated arguments.
---
Review: Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel by Heath D. Drewell
Publication Details: Hardcover β May 30, 2017, Oxford University Press.
Overview: A Provocative and Challenging Reassessment
Heath Drewell's Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel is a significant, if controversial, contribution to the long-standing and emotionally charged debate about the practice of child sacrifice in the ancient Levant. Moving beyond the traditional binary of "it never happened" (as later biblical writers insisted) versus "it was a common practice," Drewell presents a nuanced and meticulously argued thesis that challenges the reader to reconsider the very definitions of "sacrifice," "religion," and "Israelite identity."
This is not a book for the casual reader; it is a dense, academic work rooted in philology, detailed textual criticism, and anthropological theory. Its primary audience is scholars and advanced students of the Hebrew Bible, ancient Near Eastern history, and archaeology.
The Core Argument
Drewell's central argument can be summarized as follows:
1. Rejection of the "Tophet" Model: Drewell explicitly argues against directly applying the Carthaginian "tophet" model, with its large-scale infant cemeteries, to ancient Israel and Judah. He contends that the archaeological evidence in the Levant does not support a comparable, institutionalized practice of infant sacrifice on such a scale.
2. Child Sacrifice as a "Religious" vs. "Magical" Practice: This is the crux of his thesis. Drewell proposes that what is often labeled "child sacrifice" in the biblical texts (particularly the molek rites and the "passing through the fire" mentioned in 2 Kings, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) was not, in the minds of its practitioners, a form of religion (i.e., worship or petition to a deity like Yahweh or Molek). Instead, he classifies it as a form of "magical" ritual.
3. The "Magical" Purpose: He argues that these rituals were apotropaicβmeant to ward off imminent and catastrophic danger, especially during military sieges or periods of extreme national crisis. The sacrifice of a child was seen as the ultimate, most powerful "counter-magical" act to protect the city, king, or community from destruction. In this framework, the deity receiving the offering is almost secondary to the mechanistic, magical power of the act itself.
4. A "Civic" Ritual: Drewell further posits that this was not a private, family ritual but a "civic" one, sanctioned or performed by the royal and priestly establishment in times of extreme duress. This places the practice at the heart of official Judean society in certain periods, rather than on its heretical fringes.
Strengths of the Book
Β· Nuanced Interpretation: Drewell successfully moves the discussion beyond simplistic moral condemnations. He forces the reader to understand the practice within its own historical and cognitive context, where the logic of "the one for the many" in a life-or-death situation held a terrible power.
Β· Philological Rigor: The book offers a deep and detailed analysis of key Hebrew terms, most notably the debated molek. Drewell engages thoroughly with previous scholarship (e.g., George Heider, Paul Mosca) and provides his own careful readings of the critical biblical passages.
Β· Interdisciplinary Approach: By incorporating anthropological theories on magic versus religion and the sociology of crisis, Drewell provides a fresh analytical framework that goes beyond pure textual or archaeological analysis.
Β· Challenges Assumptions: The book effectively challenges the traditional interpretation that these rituals were always about idolatrous worship of a foreign god. His argument that it was a "Yahweh-alone" practice gone horribly wrong, or at least a desperate measure not in conflict with Yahwism in the minds of its performers, is provocative and thought-provoking.
Potential Criticisms and Points of Debate
Β· The "Magic" vs. "Religion" Dichotomy: Some critics may find Drewell's distinction between "magic" and "religion" to be overly rigid or anachronistic. The boundaries between these concepts in the ancient world were often fluid, and what one culture labels "magic," another might see as integral to its "religion."
Β· Speculative Elements: While his argument is well-supported, parts of it necessarily remain speculative. Reconstructing the precise intention and theological worldview behind a practice that was later so vehemently condemned by the biblical editors is an inherently difficult task.
Β· Archaeological Evidence: While Drewell rightly cautions against misapplying the Carthaginian evidence, some archaeologists and scholars may feel he downplays the potential significance of infant remains found in specific cultic contexts in the Levant (e.g., at sites like Carthage itself, though it's Punic, or the symbolic evidence from the Jerusalem-Hinnom Valley, Gehenna).
Β· Dense Academic Prose: As noted, this is a specialized monograph. It is written in a complex, academic style that can be challenging for non-specialists to follow.
Conclusion
Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel is a formidable and important book. Whether one fully agrees with Drewell's "magical" thesis or not, his work is essential reading for anyone seriously engaged with this dark corner of Israelite history. It reframes the debate, provides a powerful new interpretive model, and demands that scholars confront the terrifying logic that may have driven ancient societies to their most extreme acts.
Final Verdict: A highly recommended, though challenging, scholarly work that pushes the boundaries of the field. It may not provide the final word on the subject, but it unquestionably reshapes the conversation in a profound and lasting way.
Of course. Here is a detailed review of Heath Drewell's academic work, Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel, based on its critical reception and the author's stated arguments.
---
Review: Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel by Heath D. Drewell
Publication Details: Hardcover β May 30, 2017, Oxford University Press.
Overview: A Provocative and Challenging Reassessment
Heath Drewell's Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel is a significant, if controversial, contribution to the long-standing and emotionally charged debate about the practice of child sacrifice in the ancient Levant. Moving beyond the traditional binary of "it never happened" (as later biblical writers insisted) versus "it was a common practice," Drewell presents a nuanced and meticulously argued thesis that challenges the reader to reconsider the very definitions of "sacrifice," "religion," and "Israelite identity."
This is not a book for the casual reader; it is a dense, academic work rooted in philology, detailed textual criticism, and anthropological theory. Its primary audience is scholars and advanced students of the Hebrew Bible, ancient Near Eastern history, and archaeology.
The Core Argument
Drewell's central argument can be summarized as follows:
1. Rejection of the "Tophet" Model: Drewell explicitly argues against directly applying the Carthaginian "tophet" model, with its large-scale infant cemeteries, to ancient Israel and Judah. He contends that the archaeological evidence in the Levant does not support a comparable, institutionalized practice of infant sacrifice on such a scale.
2. Child Sacrifice as a "Religious" vs. "Magical" Practice: This is the crux of his thesis. Drewell proposes that what is often labeled "child sacrifice" in the biblical texts (particularly the molek rites and the "passing through the fire" mentioned in 2 Kings, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) was not, in the minds of its practitioners, a form of religion (i.e., worship or petition to a deity like Yahweh or Molek). Instead, he classifies it as a form of "magical" ritual.
3. The "Magical" Purpose: He argues that these rituals were apotropaicβmeant to ward off imminent and catastrophic danger, especially during military sieges or periods of extreme national crisis. The sacrifice of a child was seen as the ultimate, most powerful "counter-magical" act to protect the city, king, or community from destruction. In this framework, the deity receiving the offering is almost secondary to the mechanistic, magical power of the act itself.
4. A "Civic" Ritual: Drewell further posits that this was not a private, family ritual but a "civic" one, sanctioned or performed by the royal and priestly establishment in times of extreme duress. This places the practice at the heart of official Judean society in certain periods, rather than on its heretical fringes.
Strengths of the Book
Β· Nuanced Interpretation: Drewell successfully moves the discussion beyond simplistic moral condemnations. He forces the reader to understand the practice within its own historical and cognitive context, where the logic of "the one for the many" in a life-or-death situation held a terrible power.
Β· Philological Rigor: The book offers a deep and detailed analysis of key Hebrew terms, most notably the debated molek. Drewell engages thoroughly with previous scholarship (e.g., George Heider, Paul Mosca) and provides his own careful readings of the critical biblical passages.
Β· Interdisciplinary Approach: By incorporating anthropological theories on magic versus religion and the sociology of crisis, Drewell provides a fresh analytical framework that goes beyond pure textual or archaeological analysis.
Β· Challenges Assumptions: The book effectively challenges the traditional interpretation that these rituals were always about idolatrous worship of a foreign god. His argument that it was a "Yahweh-alone" practice gone horribly wrong, or at least a desperate measure not in conflict with Yahwism in the minds of its performers, is provocative and thought-provoking.
Potential Criticisms and Points of Debate
Β· The "Magic" vs. "Religion" Dichotomy: Some critics may find Drewell's distinction between "magic" and "religion" to be overly rigid or anachronistic. The boundaries between these concepts in the ancient world were often fluid, and what one culture labels "magic," another might see as integral to its "religion."
Β· Speculative Elements: While his argument is well-supported, parts of it necessarily remain speculative. Reconstructing the precise intention and theological worldview behind a practice that was later so vehemently condemned by the biblical editors is an inherently difficult task.
Β· Archaeological Evidence: While Drewell rightly cautions against misapplying the Carthaginian evidence, some archaeologists and scholars may feel he downplays the potential significance of infant remains found in specific cultic contexts in the Levant (e.g., at sites like Carthage itself, though it's Punic, or the symbolic evidence from the Jerusalem-Hinnom Valley, Gehenna).
Β· Dense Academic Prose: As noted, this is a specialized monograph. It is written in a complex, academic style that can be challenging for non-specialists to follow.
Conclusion
Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel is a formidable and important book. Whether one fully agrees with Drewell's "magical" thesis or not, his work is essential reading for anyone seriously engaged with this dark corner of Israelite history. It reframes the debate, provides a powerful new interpretive model, and demands that scholars confront the terrifying logic that may have driven ancient societies to their most extreme acts.
Final Verdict: A highly recommended, though challenging, scholarly work that pushes the boundaries of the field. It may not provide the final word on the subject, but it unquestionably reshapes the conversation in a profound and lasting way.
" ... Drewell successfully moves the discussion beyond simplistic moral condemnations ... "
This is the real danger of his work, then.
God simply stated "Thou shalt not kill" and so the prohibition against such acts was explicit - UNLESS it was specifically ordered, eg as against the original inhabitants of the Land of Canaan, who did these things to babies and children, and who therefore should be exterminated themselves.
At no time did YHVH instruct that babies or children should be offered up in sacrifice; witness His statements in the NT, eg that for anybody who harmed them "It would be better that they had never been born."
As to "warding off existential threats," then the way to do that, again, was simple, ie prayer and supplication before God, Who would then fight the enemy Himself, as in the case of Sennacherib's coming up against the city of Jerusalem, and his subsequent complete destruction, and his later murder by his own sons.
At no time did "Yahwism" ever contemplate the sacrifice of children; the apparently paradoxical case of Abraham and Isaac, being merely a non-lethal prefiguring of the sacrificing of Christ by His own Father.
Yahwism only ever stipulated the sacrificing of animals - never that of children or babies.
King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities (2004) by Francesca Stavrakopoulou is an academic monograph that argues the biblical portrayal of King Manasseh and the practice of child sacrifice are deliberate ideological distortions, and that historically, Manasseh was a successful monarch and child sacrifice was a central part of Judahite religion .
π Publication Details
Β· Author: Francesca Stavrakopoulou
Β· Publisher: Walter de Gruyter, in the series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fΓΌr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW)
Β· Release Dates: Hardcover first published on August 25, 2004; eBook reprint released on October 24, 2012
Β· Format: Hardcover, 420 pages
ποΈ Core Thesis and Argument
Stavrakopoulou's central argument is a reassessment of two key elements in the Hebrew Bible:
Β· Rehabilitation of King Manasseh: The book posits that, contrary to his biblical depiction as the most reprehensible king of Judah , the historical Manasseh was actually one of Judah's most successful monarchs .
Β· Reassessment of Child Sacrifice: It contends that child sacrifice was not a deviant or foreign practice as portrayed by biblical writers, but a central and accepted role in ancient Judahite religious practice .
The author concludes that the negative biblical accounts stem from later writers who deliberately distorted historical realities for their own ideological and theological purposes .
π Academic Context and Reception
This work is adapted from the author's D.Phil. thesis completed at Oxford under the supervision of Dr. Paul M. Joyce . It is an academic text intended for scholars, institutes, and libraries .
While the full text of reviews is not available in the search results, the book has been noted by scholars:
Β· Described as a "wonderful book" in a 2005 Book List .
Β· Recognized as an "important and innovative study" for the history of Judah's religion in the Zeitschrift fΓΌr die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft .
π‘ How to Approach This Scholarly Work
When engaging with this book's arguments, keep in mind:
Β· It represents a critical scholarly perspective that contrasts with traditional biblical narratives and some theological interpretations .
Β· The book's claims engage with ongoing academic debates, as other scholars maintain that biblical accounts of child sacrifice are historically reliable and not mere polemic .
Dont forget circumcision a truly abominable practice is also a blood sacrifice and the cause of misery for countless who have undergone
The unnecessary operation.
FOUR HUNDRED JEWISH ORGANISATIONS CLAIM ABORTION AS A FUNDAMENTAL JEWISH VALUE π―π€πππ
I *donβt* want to see young European men die pointlessly in Ukraineβ¦ for the same reason I never wanted to see Ukrainian men dying pointlessly in Ukraine.
Your anger at the sick EU and NATO leaders who created this war and needlessly prolong it is fully justified. Justice would see them in the battlefield. But ordinary citizens, especially the working class men who are the ones who always get sent to the front, are not the ones who deserve death. Most of them have no idea what is going on, and those who think they do are the victims of orchestrated government- and corporate media propaganda. Behind it all sits the United States.
I have two sons, two teenage boys. We are foreign immigrants in one of the European countries whose government is among Ukraineβs βstrongest backersβ (sick mis-users). They are still young enough, and eager enough to prove their loyalty to our adopted homeland that if conscripted, they would willingly go. My wife and I would resist, and kidnap them to prevent it, if we could. Like most parents would. But that is not a realistic option.
Save your anger and justified desire for vengence for the elites, not the ordinary people, who are always the dupes and victims of elite scheme.
The power of propaganda is so strong. My wife and I have, since the beginning been trying to explain these realities to our sons. Our 14- year old is at least interested in what we say, but even he doubts us. He wonders how itβs possible that his poor old mother and father could be right and all the respected authority figures of Europe be liars. Heβs a sweet boy, full of ideals. There are many boys like that.
Let this war end. Let there be no more death. Let those responsible for it be removed from office, disgraced, put on trial, and sent to prison for life. I am dreaming.
I am with you and hope you are strong enough to be a father who can put his foot down. It's hard to do but to keep them alive and well is a fathers duty, as I see it. Good luck and wisdom to you in regard to your boys and your wife. No mother ever should be forced to bury her children, that's the cruelest inhuman thing.
This current war is not existential and deserves no conscription of any nation's youth, including Ukraine's. Remember that 'Kiev hates the population of it's Eastern Oblasts.
Not Kiev.
Tribe oligarchs of Ukraine, Europe, UK, America & Israel
It always feels different once you realize that instead of cheering on your Govt.'s elected jackals from the sidelines, you suddenly understand that YOU and your blood are going to "pay" for their stupidity and arrogance. It has taken 4 years for many Europeans to suddenly say "hey wait a minute, I did not know I was next to be cannon fodder". Can I ask simply, "What the hell did you think was going to be the conclusion?? You (not personally but as a society) watched as your leaders marched you off the cliff.
I am in the US and I know the responsibility I bear, even in the days before The Russians were forced into this conflict, I was screaming at the foolishness of what my Govt. was/is doing. I only live approx. 160 miles from DC, so I am sure I will be irradiated when the serious rockets take off. Sorry, I do not "feel" anything for Europeans who are just now waking up to the real cost of incompetent leaders.
I didnβt βsuddenly realizeβ this. Iβve been aware and vocally critical of American imperialism since the late 1980s, when I discovered Chomsky.
Yes, I am sure you were "vocal" about your hatred of America. It is NOT America but your loving leaders in Europe that is going to send your sons to die. But you go and protest America all you want.
Unfortunately this has been going on for many centuries if not millenia. It's only the losers who are out on trial and sent to prison, if they're lucky.
Well bloody said.
It's easy to call for an army to be defeated if it's not your children that make up that army. And that goes just as much for Ukraine as any other army.
I fully agree with you views here.
But, isn't this how Europe has always been for centuries? It isn't just European elites, but the whole Europe's psyche to spill blood for as long as it takes, the same trait they've taken across the seas wherever they went? Europe has been the birthplace of mass killings for centuries and even today, it is because of the Europeans and cousins that blood has continued to flow around the globe.. It is heart-rending to read how the Boers here in South Africa mowed down Zulu warriors, using advanced weaponry and knowhow to do so.. (from Johannesburg)
Top! That's how it needs to be said.
Ok, all whites are bloodthirsty and evil, and all blacks are peaceful and good. Are you satisfied now?
I am satisfied that blacks didn't start two world wars and a lot of others inbetween..
South Africa was a drop in the bucket compared to the Americas, where in 150 years 70-90% of everyone on the two continents died. The Amazon was once fairly densely populated, there were large cities in the Midwest, and it was around 1970 before the population of Peru had finally recovered to the level it held under the Inca.
Where are the tens of millions of bodies ?
I would almost suspect that in 150 years 100% of everyone on the two continents died.
I also might suspect you might mean the population declined by 70-90% in 150 years....
i c the soros propaganda is strong in this 1.
The Zulus shouldn't even have been there - they only arrived after the Boers set up their civilization - and when they did arrive, they massacred the local indigenous Africans.
Take a look at the genocide of Christians - mostly black - going on in Sudan at the moment, next time you feel like telling everybody how exploited and peaceful Africans are.
Hahaha.. You must be related to Trump, if it is not him ..
Bloody well put and very moving.
What you describe in the interactions with your children is testament to the difficulties ordinary people in the West face when trying to counter the relentless drip feed of poisonous, lying propaganda brainwashing the young and citizenry in general: media owners and the mercenary sacks of shit that wormtongue for them should be among the first to face the consequences for wanting other people's children to die. I dream of this also.
With the Western media completely coopted as stenographers for the Empire and arrogant Europeans thinking that they wouldnβt be susceptible to propaganda unlike the Untermenschen, the only way to change public opinion in Europe (and replace the idiotic leaders they have now) is body bags coming home. Some people will have to be the sacrificial lambs, but it is either that or complete annihilation. You canβt argue with ideologues, strength is the only language they understand. The incentives to change simply arenβt there now, this is why Russia needs to raise the stakes.
User "Guard Your Humanity" - I second your words. I have a young boy. There is precious little land in the world worth dying for. Certainly not for the financial welfare of the self-described "elites" and their puppets in office.
Do not make the same mistake then. Do not allow your son to believe all he hears in school and in the media. The best way I found of doing that, is holding serious conversations with my wife or with trusted friends where I was sure my children would be eavesdropping. Learning adult matters this way, rather than being directly instructed, works much better, especially if the child thinks he is not meant to hear.
I always point out the wounded veterans begging at the stoplights by the freeway. βThat's how much the government cares about guys that serve in the militaryβ, I tell him. I like your eavesdropping idea. I'm going to use that.
I have two observations to make. First, you have failed as a father. You allowed your sons to be made stupid, and you did nothing, or not enough. You did not mind that they came home filled with propaganda, because you thought it would make them conform into their new society better. Now it is mostly too late. And you cannot "kidnap" them without their understanding and cooperation.
Two, your sons' example shows that it is not just elites who are warmongers. Many commenters here think that the young men who will be conscripted are innocent victims, that the populace doesn't want a war. But they are not innocent. They have bought into the hate, and if you get into any social interaction with ordinary Europeans, you will hear them constantly virtue signaling by expressing hate for Russia and "Putin". They have internalized the jingoism with enthusiasm, because it makes them feel superior. The man in the street supports war, the killing of Russians. It is only when he realizes he is the one who will get killed, that second thoughts come. But it is only fear and crude self-interest speaking, not moral reflection.
@RalfB - it's harder for the immigrants. You want your kids to assimilate in your new country, give them a chance of becoming the "natives," vs. boiling in the old-country environment. It's not easy to keep balance, and having a double-standard - one thing at school, another home, raises a cynic.
I do feel Iβve failed somehow as a father.
But it has not been for lack of trying. We talk about this stuff over the dinner table every night. My wife and I both read a lot, and have been personally involved in opposition to US militarism for most of our lives. I started in the late 1980s, working for an organization campaigning against the nuclear arms race and US sponsorship of right-wing death squads in Latin America. We have lots of irrefutable examples to share of media lies going back to the Vietnam War.
Since the start of the SMO, Iβve been vocal in pointing out the true facts to acquaintances and colleagues here in the country where I live. Most are dismissive. Some get angry. A few have slowly come around to seeing the reality that this war was deliberately provoked by NATO as part of a mad strategy to break up Russia.
But let me be clear about one thing. Our teenage sons are not jingoistic supporters of Ukraine or of our adopted country. They are just confused boys who, I fear, would obey the law rather than resisting, if they were conscripted.
I donβt know if you have children, but what I and other parents have observed is that when theyβre little they think their parents know everything. Then they become teenagers, and suddenly itβs βmom and dad donβt know anything!β The fact that weβre immigrants who stand out like sore thumbs, who have less money and prestige than their friendsβ parents, and on top of that the fact that we espouse unpopular views surely adds fuel to the fire of normal teenage rejection of parental authority.
I hope that some of it is just an act, and that deep down they know weβre right.
Well, now that you put it this way, it's a lot better than what I originally understood. There is a good chance that they'll come around.
I'm not sure where you live, and I understand your reticence; but in most Western countries, there are a lot of health conditions that would disqualify a person from draft: certain allergies (petrol, severe hay fever), record of seizures, many others. Google them up for your location. But the key factor is to have the medical record ahead of time, and most people do not think that far ahead---there is no draft now, so why worry? Think ahead.
And yes, I do know Ukraine doesn't give a shit, and press gangs even the severely disabled; but that's Ukraine, lawless and delinquent for as long as it existed. Western countries are typically more legalistic.
They will return to you shamefaced eventually.
You speak the simple truth, and eventually they will recognize that you were right all along.
Just hang in there, brother.
Wait, but not too long, and run at the first signs of gov tightening the bolts.
Humans are herd animals, as easily led as sheep or dogs.
For war one must vote with own flesh and blood or shut up.
Agreed. But one has to ask, what the heck are those grunts in Povrosk doing? They need to frag their officers and Azov enforcers and raise the white flag. I fully support Russia, but these Ukie soldiers are brave guy who have more than fulfilled their duty to their country. They deserve better than dying for a louse like Z and the EU swine.
No they have not. The duty to their country was to desert, surrender, or frag their officers. By being sheeple, by following orders, by internalizing propaganda, they have done a lethal disservice to their country. Very bravely, yes. These brave, patriotic fighters have annihilated Ukraine, because they were brave in the service of their enemies.
A lot of people here don't think they will. I think they might be crazy enough to do it. I'm not sure people will kick the maniacs out until they do.
I don't. The only something-to-zero exchange ratio in this war is the one of long range strikes between NATO and Russia -- NATO launches hundreds of light cruise missiles into Russia every day, Russian political leadership firmly refuses to defend the country and is sending nothing in return.
But on the ground for every group of mercenaries or sheep dipped NATO soldiers that goes to the front line some number of Russians die.
Thus from a Russian perspective there is nothing to cheer about European troops entering the war.
Because we all know that there isn't going to be a proper response to it, i.e. nuking those countries and ending this charade. There was already more than enough justification to do it, it hasn't been done, it's unlikely it will be done after this either. The children of the Russian oligarchy and even some of the very high ranking members of government are still in London after all. So this only means more Russian dead and more deep strikes, with no response or real cost to the West (nobody there cares about the people they send to die)
The real costs to the West are impoverishment of their populations, decline of life expectancy, probably civil war soon enough since they're not able to define their real enemy.
Western elites don't care about their people so that is not a real cost to who matters.
Of course, Russian elites clearly don't care about their people either, which is why they have steadfastly refused to impose any direct cost on Western elites of the kind that would make them stop
In this we won't agree, GM.
There is a battle and there is a war. Which one to win and how, that's the question.
With your attitude we'd win the battle but never the the war.
It's not about how many missiles fly into Russia and that non fly into the West - for now.
It's about how will the West continue to exists in it's current form? The East and South is rising, that's why the panic in the West.
>It's not about how many missiles fly into Russia and that non fly into the West - for now.
It very much is though -- Russia will collapse under unrestricted perpetual bombing. This isn't even the USSR in terms of industrial and human potential and strategic depth is no longer a real thing in the modern world.
But the current approach ensures precisely that -- unrestricted perpetual bombing.
So it will have to change or Russia is doomed.
The obvious solution that does not involve firing missiles into NATO is to eliminate the proxy behind which the West is hiding.
But Putin firmly refuses to even do that, which gave the West time to practically already commit itself to directly fighting Russia, at which point even eliminating the proxy won't make all that much of a difference, as the whole of Europe has been lined up as the next one.
All of this could have been prevented with a few hundred missiles at the mansions of the people that truly matter and the skyscraper HQs of the key corporate players, with a firm statement accompanying those strikes that "This is payback for what you have already done, if you do not stop it immediately and fire a single shot back, you will start losing whole cities".
But you can't do that if you yourself are completely compromised, ideologically and morally.
Nobody of influence and authority cares. You are just livestock to them.
Russia in fact has stuck a knife in the gut of the West, it's just not obvious to a lot of people. Over 2/3 of the countries on the planet, representing over 80% of Earth's population, are ignoring the sanctions. Some like India are openly giving the US the finger now.
More dangerous for the West is the collapse of the US Dollar as the unitary international medium of exchange. In 2020 over 95% of international trade was carried out in USD, last year it was 70% and this year will be lower. Over 2/3 of trade between BRICS+ countries now is carried out in other currencies, and every major petroleum producer except Canada and the US has either joined or is going to join BRICS.
The days of the Empire are numbered.
"NATO launches hundreds of light cruise missiles into Russia every day, Russian political leadership firmly refuses to defend the country and is sending nothing in return."
This is straight trolling propaganda. If this is true, then the reports of Kiev authorities telling their people they may have to evacuate this winter due to no energy and no heat must be a fantasy. I think we can safely disregard GM's usual line of "oh, the Russians are doing nothing...."
AFAIK, Russia has sent only a single missile into a NATO country, and that one was a decoy filled with concrete. So the statement that you are attempting to mock is entirely correct.
"NATO launches hundreds of light cruise missiles into Russia every day, Russian political leadership firmly refuses to defend the country"
This is a bit of an exaggeration, but your point is understood. A more optimistic view might be that the Russians have thus far not bestirred themselves into a program of national air defense because the damage being inflicted is, in reality, not that great.
Widening the war, in these circumstances, where damage can be repaired more quickly than it is suffered - simply does not serve Russian interests - for now.
This might well change, especially as a successful completion of things on the battlefield come into view. When eating a hotdog maybe it's best to proceed one bite at a time.
"Hundreds of NATO missiles into Russia everyday" Pure fucking bullshit.
Pretty pathetic when you open with a bold faced lie, then spend the rest of the comment spewing your delusional nonsense based on that lie.
Bullshit you say?
https://t.me/dva_majors/82530
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βͺοΈ 9 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠΎΠ»Π³ΠΎΠ³ΡΠ°Π΄ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 9 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ Π ΠΎΡΡΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 9 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΡΠ»ΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 6 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠΈΠΏΠ΅ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 5 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠΎΡΠΎΠ½Π΅ΠΆΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 3 β Π½Π°Π΄ Π°ΠΊΠ²Π°ΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠ·ΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠ³ΠΎ ΠΌΠΎΡΡ,
βͺοΈ 2 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠ΅Π»Π³ΠΎΡΠΎΠ΄ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 2 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΡΡΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 2 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ Π’ΡΠ»ΡΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ
https://t.me/dva_majors/82389
Π ΡΠ΅ΡΠ΅Π½ΠΈΠ΅ ΠΏΡΠΎΡΠ΅Π΄ΡΠ΅ΠΉ Π½ΠΎΡΠΈ Π² ΠΏΠ΅ΡΠΈΠΎΠ΄ Ρ 23.00 ΠΌΡΠΊ 30 ΠΎΠΊΡΡΠ±ΡΡ Π΄ΠΎ 8.00 ΠΌΡΠΊ 31 ΠΎΠΊΡΡΠ±ΡΡ Π΄Π΅ΠΆΡΡΠ½ΡΠΌΠΈ ΡΡΠ΅Π΄ΡΡΠ²Π°ΠΌΠΈ ΠΠΠ ΠΏΠ΅ΡΠ΅Ρ Π²Π°ΡΠ΅Π½Ρ ΠΈ ΡΠ½ΠΈΡΡΠΎΠΆΠ΅Π½Ρ 130 ΡΠΊΡΠ°ΠΈΠ½ΡΠΊΠΈΡ Π±Π΅ΡΠΏΠΈΠ»ΠΎΡΠ½ΡΡ Π»Π΅ΡΠ°ΡΠ΅Π»ΡΠ½ΡΡ Π°ΠΏΠΏΠ°ΡΠ°ΡΠΎΠ² ΡΠ°ΠΌΠΎΠ»Π΅ΡΠ½ΠΎΠ³ΠΎ ΡΠΈΠΏΠ°:
βͺοΈ 31 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΡΡΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 21 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠΎΡΠΎΠ½Π΅ΠΆΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 14 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠ΅Π»Π³ΠΎΡΠΎΠ΄ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 10 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΡΡΠ½ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 9 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΡΠ»ΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 9 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ Π’Π°ΠΌΠ±ΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 9 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ Π’ΡΠ»ΡΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 6 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠΈΠΏΠ΅ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 6 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ Π―ΡΠΎΡΠ»Π°Π²ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 5 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ Π ΠΎΡΡΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 4 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠΎΠ»Π³ΠΎΠ³ΡΠ°Π΄ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 3 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠ°Π»ΡΠΆΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 2 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ Π ΡΠ·Π°Π½ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 1 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠΎΡΠΊΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠ³ΠΎ ΡΠ΅Π³ΠΈΠΎΠ½Π°.
https://t.me/dva_majors/82297
ΠΠΈΠ½ΠΎΠ±ΠΎΡΠΎΠ½Ρ Π ΠΎΡΡΠΈΠΈ:
Π ΡΠ΅ΡΠ΅Π½ΠΈΠ΅ ΠΏΡΠΎΡΠ΅Π΄ΡΠ΅ΠΉ Π½ΠΎΡΠΈ Π΄Π΅ΠΆΡΡΠ½ΡΠΌΠΈ ΡΡΠ΅Π΄ΡΡΠ²Π°ΠΌΠΈ ΠΠΠ ΠΏΠ΅ΡΠ΅Ρ Π²Π°ΡΠ΅Π½ΠΎ ΠΈ ΡΠ½ΠΈΡΡΠΎΠΆΠ΅Π½ΠΎ 170 ΡΠΊΡΠ°ΠΈΠ½ΡΠΊΠΈΡ Π±Π΅ΡΠΏΠΈΠ»ΠΎΡΠ½ΡΡ Π»Π΅ΡΠ°ΡΠ΅Π»ΡΠ½ΡΡ Π°ΠΏΠΏΠ°ΡΠ°ΡΠΎΠ² ΡΠ°ΠΌΠΎΠ»Π΅ΡΠ½ΠΎΠ³ΠΎ ΡΠΈΠΏΠ°.
https://t.me/dva_majors/82245
Π ΡΠ΅ΡΠ΅Π½ΠΈΠ΅ ΠΏΡΠΎΡΠ΅Π΄ΡΠ΅ΠΉ Π½ΠΎΡΠΈ Π΄Π΅ΠΆΡΡΠ½ΡΠΌΠΈ ΡΡΠ΅Π΄ΡΡΠ²Π°ΠΌΠΈ ΠΠΠ ΠΏΠ΅ΡΠ΅Ρ Π²Π°ΡΠ΅Π½Ρ ΠΈ ΡΠ½ΠΈΡΡΠΎΠΆΠ΅Π½Ρ 100 ΡΠΊΡΠ°ΠΈΠ½ΡΠΊΠΈΡ Π±Π΅ΡΠΏΠΈΠ»ΠΎΡΠ½ΡΡ Π»Π΅ΡΠ°ΡΠ΅Π»ΡΠ½ΡΡ Π°ΠΏΠΏΠ°ΡΠ°ΡΠΎΠ² ΡΠ°ΠΌΠΎΠ»Π΅ΡΠ½ΠΎΠ³ΠΎ ΡΠΈΠΏΠ°:
βͺοΈ 46 ΠΠΠΠ β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΡΡΠ½ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 12 ΠΠΠΠ β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠ°Π»ΡΠΆΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 8 ΠΠΠΠ β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠ΅Π»Π³ΠΎΡΠΎΠ΄ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 7 ΠΠΠΠ β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΡΠ°ΡΠ½ΠΎΠ΄Π°ΡΡΠΊΠΎΠ³ΠΎ ΠΊΡΠ°Ρ,
βͺοΈ 6 ΠΠΠΠ β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠΎΡΠΊΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠ³ΠΎ ΡΠ΅Π³ΠΈΠΎΠ½Π°, Π² ΡΠΎΠΌ ΡΠΈΡΠ»Π΅ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΡΠ΅ Π»Π΅ΡΠ΅Π²ΡΠΈΡ Π½Π° ΠΠΎΡΠΊΠ²Ρ,
βͺοΈ 6 ΠΠΠΠ β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΡΠ»ΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 4 ΠΠΠΠ β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ Π£Π»ΡΡΠ½ΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ ΠΠΎ 3 ΠΠΠΠ β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΡΠΌΠΈ Π Π΅ΡΠΏΡΠ±Π»ΠΈΠΊΠΈ ΠΡΡΠΌ ΠΈ Π Π΅ΡΠΏΡΠ±Π»ΠΈΠΊΠΈ ΠΠ°ΡΠΈΠΉ ΠΠ»,
βͺοΈ 2 ΠΠΠΠ β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ Π‘ΡΠ°Π²ΡΠΎΠΏΠΎΠ»ΡΡΠΊΠΎΠ³ΠΎ ΠΊΡΠ°Ρ,
βͺοΈ ΠΠΎ 1 ΠΠΠΠ β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΡΠΌΠΈ ΠΡΡΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ, Π‘ΠΌΠΎΠ»Π΅Π½ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΈ Π’ΡΠ»ΡΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠ΅ΠΉ.
https://t.me/dva_majors/82116
ΠΠ°ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΠ²Π°Π½Π½ΡΠΉ Π½Π°Π»ΡΡ Π½ΠΎΡΡΡ. ΠΠΈΠ½ΠΎΠ±ΠΎΡΠΎΠ½Ρ Π ΠΎΡΡΠΈΠΈ:
Π ΡΠ΅ΡΠ΅Π½ΠΈΠ΅ ΠΏΡΠΎΡΠ΅Π΄ΡΠ΅ΠΉ Π½ΠΎΡΠΈ Π΄Π΅ΠΆΡΡΠ½ΡΠΌΠΈ ΡΡΠ΅Π΄ΡΡΠ²Π°ΠΌΠΈ ΠΠΠ ΠΏΠ΅ΡΠ΅Ρ Π²Π°ΡΠ΅Π½ΠΎ ΠΈ ΡΠ½ΠΈΡΡΠΎΠΆΠ΅Π½ΠΎ 193 ΡΠΊΡΠ°ΠΈΠ½ΡΠΊΠΈΡ Π±Π΅ΡΠΏΠΈΠ»ΠΎΡΠ½ΡΡ Π»Π΅ΡΠ°ΡΠ΅Π»ΡΠ½ΡΡ Π°ΠΏΠΏΠ°ΡΠ°ΡΠ° ΡΠ°ΠΌΠΎΠ»Π΅ΡΠ½ΠΎΠ³ΠΎ ΡΠΈΠΏΠ°:
βͺοΈ 47 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΡΡΠ½ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 42 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠ°Π»ΡΠΆΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 40 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠΎΡΠΊΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠ³ΠΎ ΡΠ΅Π³ΠΈΠΎΠ½Π°, Π² ΡΠΎΠΌ ΡΠΈΡΠ»Π΅ 34 ΠΠΠΠ, Π»Π΅ΡΠ΅Π²ΡΠΈΡ Π½Π° ΠΠΎΡΠΊΠ²Ρ,
βͺοΈ 32 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ Π’ΡΠ»ΡΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 10 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΡΡΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 7 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΡΠ»ΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 4 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ Π ΠΎΡΡΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 4 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠΎΡΠΎΠ½Π΅ΠΆΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 2 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΡΠ΅Π½Π±ΡΡΠ³ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 2 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ Π’Π°ΠΌΠ±ΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 1 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠ΅Π»Π³ΠΎΡΠΎΠ΄ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 1 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ ΠΠΈΠΏΠ΅ΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ,
βͺοΈ 1 β Π½Π°Π΄ ΡΠ΅ΡΡΠΈΡΠΎΡΠΈΠ΅ΠΉ Π‘Π°ΠΌΠ°ΡΡΠΊΠΎΠΉ ΠΎΠ±Π»Π°ΡΡΠΈ
So now UAVs are known as light cruise missiles.
Ukraine is sending hundreds of drones towards Russia and Russia is shooting down most, is another way to say it.
And aren't those things an Ukrainian design?
There is no fundamental difference between OWA drones and cruise missiles. It is the same thing. What was the V-1? And we can go back even earlier to the British Larynx from the 1920s.
The reason the word "drone" is used is primarily political -- it makes it sound much less bad than it actually is.
Also, Russia has destroyed most large-scale production sites in Ukraine. Most of these drones are produced on NATO territory now. And the guidance and targeting is entirely NATO, primarily American.
For all practical purposes these are NATO attacks on Russia launched from Ukrainian territory. And not only -- Finland, the Baltics, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have also been used as launch platforms. Proven 100% for Finland and Kazakhstan, 99% for the Baltics.
Yep. And for the icing on the cake, the zionists taking on Iran and Trump attacking Venezuela.
Insanity springs eternal.
Logistics to be provided by Maybelline and Chanel.
These people are a complete joke.
Nobody expects europeans to accomplish anything on their own.
The plan is for the Americans to have to ride to their rescue.
The question that arises is this - would russia strike European troop deployments and shoot down euro aircraft? And if so, are Europeans willing to swallow potentially high losses or military embarrassment?
Probably not at first, owing to the standard Russian political doctrine of "what? me? a boiled frog? Nyet!"
The whole theatre is already covered in 3rd country ISR. Targeting and coordination is 3rd country. Logistics etc. Somehow "title" transfers to Ukraine at some point and we have this arms length nonsense but reality is pretty clear
What would it look like if the line was crossed? Nothing at first. Few hundred troops in the deep rear, sleeping in bunkers. Aircraft that overfly Western Ukraine and maybe engage drones and missiles. The current Ukrainian air force has kept their air frames alive for a long time and they actually launch combat missions. Anything flying over Lvov will be pretty safe I'd guess
Eventually, when its too late, yes there will be direct engagement. But always according to Frog Doctrine
A lot of NATO troops have already been died in Ukraine. The name of the base near the Polish border that the Russians destroyed in 2022 comes today mind, though the name eludes me.
If you remember, please do share. I have not heard about this at all, except maybe a training centre where the Instagrammers and the Redditors were foolish enough to share geolocated pictures.
Here it is:
https://globalsentinelng.com/over-35-killed-more-than-100-injured-in-russian-airstrikes-at-ukraine-base-near-nato-facility/
I remember this episode. Just didn't remember that it was so early in the SMO.
Ha, thanks for this. Must be the one.
I remember the daily briefs on Reddit and Instagram, when they arrived in that training centre, they documented everything for karma, likes and retweets. 4chan got so fed up they shared it with RuAF.
There is also a rumor that the botched UKR special forces mission was to rescue NATO advisors from the cauldron.
Let's hope those NATO guy pay the ultimate price.
I think I am getting old. I just want peace. I don't want anyone else to die. Even Zelensky.
There's been enough killing.
Other guesses include executing NATO advisors so they couldn't be captured and put on display.
That wouldn't have needed landing special forces. The Ukies already inside the cauldron would have enthusiastically carried out such an order.
That is unlikely, or they would have attempted insertion within the cauldron, not just outside the perimeter. It makes no sense to design an extraction mission so that it has to fight through the front lines twice.
History Legends has done a video on why he considered
them to be reinforcements enabling/securing a retreat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYj3QiHlUcA&t=477s
I think Russia will. If they don't, they might as well just go ahead and surrender. The Europeans still don't seem to think they will, though. Some of them might even still believe western might and right will protect them, although how any sane person could think that is beyond me.
I think theyβre well aware of the consequences, thatβs exactly why the so-called βcoalition of the stupidβ hasnβt taken that step. The more rational voices among them have warned what would really happen. It wouldnβt just be a few body bags quietly unloaded after a limited deployment , it would be hundreds, enough to topple governments. And thatβs what truly worries them.
In the UK, Starmer and his government are already deeply unpopular, and any direct escalation would spark a massive public backlash. Just last month, over a million people marched in protest against whatβs being imposed on UK citizens. I believe most people now see through this vile conflict and donβt view Russia as the enemy, despite what the corrupt mainstream media keeps trying to sell.
When Europe see the Jew problem the problem will be solved and we will have a chance at world peace.
I'm sure you'll find someone else to blame.
all of history suggests otherwise
Like these gentlemen ?
https://www.bitchute.com/video/6sJXYqrSvBM8/
Maybe. But this confidence in effective backlash after three years of losing in Ukraine and active complicity in a genocide, not to mention the covid policyβ¦ WE are the ones being salami sliced here. I donβt share your confidence.
I think if the Western troops are in Ukraine, even Western Ukraine, then they will be attacked.
The Europeans have already said they will only go in if the US provides air cover and I can't see that happening.
If the Kiev govt collapses, we might occupy West Ukraine, but that might well not greatly agitate the Russians, as they don't really want a population of hostile Galicians and Poles.
"If the Kiev govt collapses, we might occupy West Ukraine, but that might well not greatly agitate the Russians, as they don't really want a population of hostile Galicians and Poles."
You're positing another huge escalation in western involvement and Russian acquiescence to it. You could very well be right, and the west may be counting on that. I think it would lose the war for Russia, though. The war, not the Ukrainian pimple.
Of course they will. They have been pretty good at enforcing officially declared red lines and, as regards the deployment of foreign forces on the territory of Ukraine, Russian authorities have officially declared more than a few times that such foreign forces would be considered as enemies and destroyed - unlike many other red lines (e.g. Tomahawks) for which they promised to take "all necessary measures".
The CIA bases in Ukraine have still not been touched as far as we know.
Let that sink...
...as far as we know.
Begs the question: What do you really know?
That's an argument from ignorance. Just because we don't have any evidence that Lavrov is in fact Mickey Mouse just means we didn't look hard enough!
Where are those bases exactly? The rumour goes; twelve, at Russian border.
Answered, yes, Russia would strike all European military inside Ukraine and shoot down aircraft.
For the life of me, I cant see why the Russians would hesitate 1 bit to fire on Nato formations that enter the Ukraine. Those forces would either be inserted without fanfare, in which case they are just more of the same. Or those forces would be entered preannounced but without much political support from the populations of the countries from which the forces might come and their being taken under fire would not seem extraordinary or provocative ?
The plan, the real plan ever always only was for the Americans to have to ride to the rescue again.
What a bunch of shit.
>The Ukrainian strategy seems to be to slow down the RuAF as much as possible while at the same time switching to a strategic strike strategy of drones & missiles into Russia proper.
It's not the Ukrainian strategy, it has little agency here.
The Ukrainian army is this Frankenstein monster mixing Soviet legacy with Nazi ideology, but both the Soviets and the Nazis did plenty of organized retreating back in the days. The goals here are different though -- the US strategy is to use Ukraine as a kamikaze to destroy Russia. Everything follows and makes perfect sense from that. Who ever imagined that anyone would be allowed to launch hundreds of light cruise missiles every night into Russia, all the way to the Urals, and there would be no meaningful response? Well, the US achieved it. But for that to continue for as long as possible and to maximize the damage, no ground must be ceded without the maximum effort expended into defending it.
>If the front line were to truly buckle, and Russia started making advances in the tens of km per day, I am all but certain that we would see troop and aircraft deployments into Ukraine.
Yes, we will, and long-term all of Europe has been assigned the same kamikaze role as Ukraine.
Which means that the only way for Russia out of this is to pull out the big guns and eliminate the proxies.
GM
as a (real life replica of a) psychological operations officer you are showing conspicuously little respect for psychological aspects of the war
Ukraine lives on donated money and weapons, the war costs about 90-100 billion dollars per year. All this money is given by elites, and definitely is missed in the budget of the respective nations.
Public has to be shown results, in order to continue to support, or not to oppose, throwing money at Ukraine.
Ukraine that loses a battle, translates into, let's not throw good money after the bad, let's end this war, and negotiate.
The strategic plan behind Western aggression is never to negotiate. Any negotiations are defeat. The strategic plan of overextending Russia is finished, the moment negotiations start.
Why?
Because it is difficult to keep western public in the state of continuous Russophobia, antiRussian frenzy, that directly destroys European well being without outright war. Any rational European approach demands good relations with Russia. Only war can give support to current European politicians in refusing to be rational.
Atacking NATO, now, would be the only possible victory path for Ukraine.
I always wonder, ask myself, how it is always you GM, that are suggesting Russian do only thing that could lead to Russian defeat and Ukrainian victory.
A very clever SBU/GUR/CIA/MI6 asset.
And as always, let's end by looking at the war from Zelensky's side.
Isn't Zelensky a greatest butcher of Ukrainian people, a man who lost 20% of territory and a million men, and is on the way to lose even more.
I was certain that Zelensky is a British asset, but somehow, every day now, I start to believe he is a Russian spy.
What he is doing in providing opportunity for Russia to achieve a final victory couldn't be replicated by anyone else.
I do still have some 1-2% hope that Zelensky is indeed a secret GRU agent, especially after the story with Roman Protasevich in Belarus, who was revealed publicly to have been an agent of the Belarusian KGB in Nexta. Maybe that is why they are not touching him.
But it is a faint hope.
Because they could have been taking out the people below him, and they aren't doing that either. Also, the other thing you say is incorrect -- you said that Zelensky "lost 20% of the territory" (to Russia).
That is fundamentally the wrong way to look at the situation -- it is not the case that Russia has somehow "won" 20% of Ukraine, what is actually happening is that it has **lost** 80% of what is core historic Russian land. Big difference.
I will say with quite alot of certainty that Syrsky is a Russian asset in Ukrainian command - this explains the lack of retreats from cauldrons and his obedience towards zelensky
"The strategic plan behind Western aggression is never to negotiate."
I dunno, remember Minsk and Minsk-2?
"...it is difficult to keep western public in the state of continuous Russophobia, antiRussian frenzy, that directly destroys European well being without outright war. Any rational European approach demands good relations with Russia. Only war can give support to current European politicians in refusing to be rational."
They seem to be doing just fine at this. Any rational european who advocates negotiations or anything other than unconditional surrender is viewed as a traitor.
As it should be. The Russians should also have a similar viewpoint - anyone advocating for negotiations or to end the war should be viewed as a traitor.
Did you see Lenin or Stalin negotiate during the Civil War when American troops where in Archangelsk? Or during the worst days in WW2?
There can be no negotiations
The big US/uk fear during WWII was that the USSR might reach a negotiated settlement. With most of the German military in the East, that gave the politicians the willies.
It was not based on reality.
My impression was that the US feared the Soviets reaching the English Channel and controlling Europe, cutting out US from European markets
FF
as we heard from Mrs Merkel and Mr Sarkozy Minsk I and Minsk II, were never (intended) to be respected.
a deliberate plan to lie to Russia, to make Russia wait and not respond, while US arms Ukraine,
it was not a failure of Russian leadership
Germans, France, UN Security Council... on planet Earth these are respectable institutions
a deliberate lie
In retrospect, it is obvious that US already in 2014-2022. knew the unipolar world order is gone, finished
It was obvious to anyone with as much sense as God gave a kitten that Minsk and Minsk-2 were shams, that the europeans were lying. Again.
It is a bit easier to understand it now, post festum. But if we are honest, primarily with ourselves, it was theoretically possible for German elites to try to protect essential German interests, and do more to push political strategy of European security that would have kept Ukraine neutral.
But, still, I admit you are right. Yes, it was, perhaps not obvious to a kitten, and yet it was in the air.
My personal testimony. I remember to this day, where I was, when a news came that, German foreign minister, a legend in his time, like Lavrov today, Mr Hans Dietrich Genschner, resigned.
It was a time when his chief work, Ost Politik, finally bore fruit, Soviet Union left Germany and a few months later dissolved itself.
Strong German foreign m inter resigned.
I felt that bad times are coming, and that idea on which this strategy (Ost Politik in Germany, but this strategy influenced significantly many forces in Eastern Europe and Russia) is funded has been rejected by the masters of the world, US.
And that wars will follow Ost Politik, not peace.
I felt that day, when a nobody - Joschka Fisher has been installed as a German foreign minister, that this is the end of an era, and a beginning of new era were violence will come back to Europe once again.
A generation of politicians that were capable of understanding the root causes od major European wars and have found working solutions have been removed.
Kitten knew it, I felt it then, I know now.
What can I say finally to FeralFinster? I respect you for your opinions, and that is why I offer my small contribution.
Russians have been let down by Gorbachev, a man who tried to lead by the heart. And left Russians in a deep deep hole. No wonder that this change in US/Western approach to Ostpolitik has not been properly understood until 2025.
I agree with all this except the last sentence. When will Russia stop shooting the puppets and go after the puppeteer, that's what I want to know.
The puppeteers unfortunately still have big guns too.
But yes, they should have been shot at with the small ones, we agree on that.
Some conventional missiles at mansions around NYC and in the hills surrounding SV would have gone much further towards persuading the US to stop what it's doing than chest puffing about Poseidons and Burevestniks.
We also have bases all over the world. That wouldnβt be going after the real puppeteers, but it would be a lot closer to home.
I doubt the West have what it takes to deploy in Ukraine unless in some desperate form to start what they think will scare the RF into backing down, fearing the start of WWIII, an idea which is far-fetched in my view.. Remember they've seen what has happened to the best armed forces in Europe, the armed forces of Ukraine, according to Boris Johnson..
100%
All these people that say that NATO will join Ukraine are silly.
There are people in NATO paying attention to what's going on, and know the EU countries have zero chance against the Russian war machine. It'd be suicide.
The EU (other than Poland perhaps) has no troops to deploy.
if they do, they should prepare for death because that is what is waiting for them. I guess sometimes you just have to beat the NATO countries over the head to make them come to their senses. Russia is all manned up for the Odessa and Kiev offenseives and nothing NATO tries will stop them. We all understand: either Russia will be in Odessa or the USA will be.
Like a new Korean War situation. Possible. Not probable, not likely.
There is no force like Chinese million volunteers in Europe.
Only TΓΌrkiye could provide soldiers. And only if it were admitted into the EU.
WWIII will be shambolic
And then Europe gets the same treatment that Ukraine gets, I could live with blackouts (for a week or so) if Starmer became target no 1 along with all Europes politicians, but since that wonβt happen Iβll just be thankful for Russias infinite patience, for want of a better word?
Kiev can't live with a week of blackout in winter because much of their heating systems are centralized plants which use water to transport heat to multiple buildings. Shut off power for a day and the water gets cold. Shut it off for three days and it freezes and bursts the pipes. That's why they say the city might well become uninhabitable.
I think most of the heat in Western Europe is electric to individual homes/apartments, isn't it?
In Britain itβs still possible to have gas and electric to each house, which is more efficient for heating but of course our govt doesnβt understand such things and will be happy when we all have electric supply and thatβs it. Apparently it was only Russia proper ie incl Ukraine that had such a heating system (it even heated the pavements I believe) weβll see how much of this remains in Kiev. I doubt Z cares either way.
And they will be killed
The closing of Big Serge's article says it all:
"Rather than preventing Russian capture of the Donbas, the west is testing how much Putin is willing to pay for it. If history is any guide, a game predicated on outlasting Russiaβs strategic endurance and willingness to fight is a very bad game to play indeed."
My own reply, which got a ridiculous number of likes, was:
"One thing we learn from history is that our leaders rarely learn from history."
- Historian Barbara Tuchman in 'The March of Folly'
Thumbs up for a Tuchman reference...her book on the War in China and Stillwell was superb and made a huge impression on me.
If NATO nations are foolenough to send in their troops then they will suffer the terrible consequences!
The Euro babblers lack any of the requisite internal organs to put their βtroopsβ on the ground in Ukraine. They have spent the entire war avoiding this and using Ukrainians as cannon fodder. Most of these non entities will be replaced in any event by conservatives, who do not see Russia as a threat. It would also be the end of the EU gravy train, and they wonβt allow that to happen.
Are the Europeans truly all-in? Right now, itβs all talk and bluster. Iβll believe it when they have troops on the ground in Ukraine, which is something that I hope never happens.
They're just trying to pretend that what is going to happen isn't going to happen. I'm referring to the finlandization of the entire first line of European states, including the Baltics, Poland, Finland, Romania and Hungary. They're all in various stages of this already. No one in the Baltics of Finland can be under any illusions what this all means to them.
I'll take 'Loser Strategies" for $1000, Alex.
"The Euro-puppets once more chorus the same coordinated messagingβthat the war will now last βindefinitelyβ and Europe must prepare, and most ominously, that Russia may attack NATO at any moment."
What is a self fulfilling prophecy?
Congratulations! You are today's winner!
Yes Europe is lost but thatβs exactly why they will go to war. The gamble is that those currently in power can use the chaos to stay in control. If they are lucky they actually expand their power and consolidate their financial dominance. They do nothing they lose, because that is the current trajectory.
Although a generation or two were brought up in the US without the benefits of substantial historical education a proper narrative still has to be served up for the masses. On November 4 BBC and Zelensky united to initiate the offensive against the US public. The blame is placed on overwhelming Russian military forces. Zelensky told BBC that Russia concentrated 170,000 Russian soldiers in the Pokrovsk area. Considering the small area and the type of warfare the parties are engaged in this must be an absurd lie.
βAlthough it has taken them months to approach the town's borders, Russian soldiers have now infiltrated it and on Friday, Zelensky said Russia had amassed 170,000 troops on its outskirts.β
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0mxk9yw3n4o
BBC is becoming one of those New Age publications where exact dates are carefully avoided for the record. The βFridayβ they mention above must be the 31st of October, 2025. They published the article likely on the 4th of 5th of November, 2025, β3 days agoβ.
BBC News has been a completely lost cause for may be 20 years.
I know very few people who listen to it nowadays.
It has a fine line going at the moment persecuting Muslims, blacks and any other 'outsider' including in France, the Chinese. The object is to deflect public attention away from the abomination of government funding of the war in Ukraine and economic meltdown. Hating migrants is the big story. Releasing these poor people from prison and then hunting them down seems to have become a great game, along with 'undercover BBC visits' to hard working groups of incomers running corner shops or whatever, and trying to expose them as criminals. Hey, the British public (those who might otherwise bring pressure to stop this war) either love this stuff or it drives them underground? We do not know as no dissenting voice to the official narrative is ever heard. Support Palestine, for example, and you are disappeared.
Re the BBC Iβve been noticing that too and wondering about it. From having traditionally kept quiet about underground immigration theyβve suddenly sprang to life. In my eyes all theyβre doing is highlighting the chaos that is the UKβs crime and public order situation today. My reaction is that the authorities know everything about everything thatβs wrong but do nothing so as to keep the level of chaos simmering. When itβs convenient to create a distraction hey presto! Theyβve got all these media cards up their sleeve. Pathetic and infuriating.
Itβs chaotic, just think of these stabbings in the Cambridge train and what transpired about the guy and the days before. The public is kept in a state of affrighted confusion.
In march this year there allegedly was a training event by the British Transport Police that was rather similar.
https://news.sky.com/story/police-rehearsed-a-knife-attack-scenario-on-a-train-line-in-march-heres-what-went-differently-this-time-13462585
"...or it drives them underground..."
I do believe that happens more and more to those of us who are awake. First of all, the level of brainwashing is so great that there is no amount of evidence you can provide to change anyone's mind, even close friends and family. So we wait patiently for the truth to come out, which it eventually does, in drips, and drabs. Look at what has happened with CONvid. The truth is out there, but no one has been held to account for what they did, and they are still pushing CONvid boosters, even though the percentage of people taking them is in the basement... Chip
On the vaccines, committed purchases way into the future have to be used or the purchase loses its value and has to written off and some-one held accountable (sort of). So the system will go on pushing this stuff until the contracts expire. It is slightly different with the flu jabs that have a valuable placebo effect in winter with a hard pressed NHS. None of this stuff has any real health value that can survive any scrutiny.
Also known as "The Strategy Of Tension".
A famous example is the Libya anti-Khaddafi faction migrants in the UK
who were funded, trained, and allowed to travel to the Libya hot zones
where they were of use.
And after Khadaffi was done & dusted and Libya was turned into a failed state, one of the jihadi fighters was accused of the Manchester Bombing.
(plus a "Don't Look Back In Anger" psyop spectacle during a public mourning event soon thereafter)
The pain and the suffering caused by the free fall of Pokrovsk is like a giant tsunami, slowly spreading in the US media. ABC News was already hit by the waves: https://abcnews.go.com/International/russia-carries-massive-strike-ukraine-killing-4-injuring/story?id=127328692
That's impossible. Russian forces are almost entirely exhausted and ripe for defeat.
I guess they were asking for it....
Ahahahahahaha! You funny boy... (0; Chip
But surely Ukraine has 2 million troops defending? After all, they've only lost 40,000, and conscripted around 3m.
Russia doesn't stand a chance really, any day now the AFU will invade and take Moscow within a week.
And then the 3 meter tall NATO ultra-soldiers will stroll in behind them, as Russia collapses, and beer becomes free in every Western country, and santa delivers a Ferrari to every household.
That sounds ridiculous. Surely it will be an AMG Mercedes.
Surely it will be an AMG Mercedes.... just not after the Chinese have bought the bankrupt remnants of Mercedes and VW ;-)
ROFLMAO!!!!! Great Sarcasm, Gnuneo! Love it!
With modern tactics, ANY mass formation of this size would be obliterated on either side of the conflict. In other words, Zenlensky is full of shit as usual... Chip
Yeah, at some point it was 187k or sth like that. But now he is talking about 314 Rus in pokrovsk. Go figure what is going on in his retarded mind.
https://youtu.be/VXkpu4VDl9c?list=RDVXkpu4VDl9c
Forever wars or burying forever body bags?
The section on the October Revolution and the anniversary today was a much needed antidote to the rallying around a cause and ideology that is meaningless to the masses and the struggle for a decent life. Thanks for including that.
It also shows the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the current Russian elites, and identifies the main reason why the war was not won in 2022, why it was not started when it should have been in 2014, and why victory is not even an objective even towards the end of the fourth year of it.
And it is that the foundation of the socio-economic position of current Russian elites and the ideological justification for it is the Soviet defeat in the Cold War. Which wasn't really a defeat but a surrender without a fight, but it is important to portray it as defeat, for the exact purpose of providing that justification.
Thus we can't be fighting the GPW again, even though that is exactly the situation we find ourselves in. Worse in fact -- Hitler had most of Europe, but not all, now the modern Nazis have all of Europe, plus the UK, plus the US, plus all their colonies on their side, so it is a much much more unfavorable and critical situation for Russia. It also reveals everyone's true faces in WWII -- the UK and the US are the actual origin of Nazism, Hitler modeled his thought after the facts on the ground in the US in the first half of the 19th century and racial supermacist theories developed in the UK, and the US continued to have laws and policies not all that much different from those in Nazi Germany well into the 1960s. Which is why it allied back with the Nazis before the war had even concluded, and it did D-Day not to defeat them but to rescue them from the Soviets.
But there must be no official connection made by Russian leadership between the events of the GPW and the current ones, and no acknowledgment of the true nature of the US, because if that is done, then it automatically follows that the Perestroika was a gigantic mistake if we are to put it in the most charitable way possible (it was really the grandest act of treason in human history), from which it follows that if we are to win and survive the current war we have to do counter-Perestroika and a purge of those responsible for it.
How can that be allowed though given that those responsible for it are still in power?
And this is how you end up with Western-made drones with 100-kg warheads (i.e. light cruise missiles by all realistic definitions) hitting energy infrastructure in Kostroma, Vladimir, Tatarstan, Bashkiria, etc. every night and the Kremlin mostly refuses to even acknowledge it is happening.
Because the only way to stop it is to win, but victory threatens the internal position of those in power. And they would rather completely destroy the internal and external security of the country than jeopardize their own position...
Is Ukraine worth 20 million Russian lives? Or is it better to grind them down from a distance preserving the lives - as much as possible - of Russian men.
WW2 and Hitler perhaps necessitated near suicidal attacks to preserve the nation state.
Where is the necessity of mass killing of Russian troops???
We both know that western estimates Russian loses are wish fulfillment fantasies. Why give them such a victory when Ukraine will be crushed regardless.
If it takes 2 years 10 years, whatever - westernized Ukraine and its threat to Russia is being destroyed piece by piece.
>Is Ukraine worth 20 million Russian lives? Or is it better to grind them down from a distance preserving the lives - as much as possible - of Russian men.
This is false dichotomy pushed to the absolute limits of the absurd.
It reminds me of how Putin when asked about the terror bombing of Belgorod shrugged and said "What can we do? We could do the same in Kiev, but what will that change?". As if that was the only retaliatory option -- to kill civilians in Kiev. The option of, you know, killing the people responsible for the terror bombing in Belgorod, which would be the Ukronazi political and military leadership plus the Ukrainian oligarchy, so that, you know, actual deterrence is enforced, was something that either never crossed his mind or he deliberately wanted to keep out of the conversation. Now we know it is the latter, because Lukashenko spilled the beans on how detailed plans for decapitation strikes were presented to Putin for approval but it was Putin himself who vetoed them.
Do you seriously think that if Stalin had the military-technical means at the disposal of Putin, the USSR would have lost that many people?
And why do you think the only alternative option now is meat waves with high casualties against prepared defenses?
Speaking of prepared defenses, why is the war even fought in the Donbass, where the prepared defenses are, while there is this wide open spaces in Chernigov and Sumy, which is also the most direct route to Kiev, which was never seriously fortified before the war?
And which resulted in more casualties?
A) The current approach, which has killed some 150,000 already
B) What could have been, which would have resulted in Russia taking over the whole of Ukraine with 20-30K casualties max, and which would have involved:
1) Decapitation strikes on leadership (still not done, never even attempted)
2) Immediate strikes on the AFU military barracks before they could disperse, in the first hours of the war (missed window of opportunity)
3) Physical isolation of Ukraine from NATO (never even attempted)
4) Eliminating all rail transport in Ukraine internally paralyzing logistics (only being done now, belatedly).
Had that been done from the start, and Russia always had the tools to do it, how long would the war have lasted and how many casualties would Russia have suffered?
It is precisely the current approach that killed a lot more.
It has a benefit for the Russian oligarchy that Putin represents and works for though -- it stalled things out in the hope of reaching some kind of a deal. While the other approach would have meant victory, and victory is a mortal threat to the Russia oligarchy...
Fun facts about the territory called βUkraineβ
Area: 603,700 square kilometers (233,100 sq mi)
Are you seriously suggesting Russia could have performed a 5,000 miles double envelopment?
Donbass is where their army was and where the fight was. There was simply no way to βisolateβ the whole of Donbass - and Ukrainian troops there - by trying to close down the entire Dnipier river basin.
Are Russian Generals idiots? Has Russia not been methodically destroying every city and town - all the way to Lviv?
This is siege warfare. The most logical approach given the situation on the ground. Executed almost to perfection.
The west would have had multiple orgasms at the thought of Russia *and* Ukraine killing each other en masse.
Hell, the western goal now is TO KILL of all young healthy Ukrainian men so they donβt join the Russian army when the war ends.
I should add (as an edit)
The beauty and NECESSITY of Russian strategy is that Ukraine will be thoroughly destroyed with no hope of EVER resurrecting the AZOV NAZI bandara ideology ever again.
A βdecapitation strikeβ leaves the entire western structure embedded throughout Ukraine.
This way⦠a clean slate⦠is it ruthless enough for you?
Comrade Stalin I think would have agreed with option 2.
>Are you seriously suggesting Russia could have performed a 5,000 miles double envelopment?
The physical isolation would have been done with standoff weapons with the appropriate charges.
And yes, Russia did actually try to do a large-scale envelopment -- there was a now-forgotten push towards Zhytomyr (that never came closer to even Korosten), combined with the equally forgotten push towards Odessa and the PMR (that was destroyed around Voznesensk). That failed because none of the items on my list were pursued.
Brilliant. 5 stars to you, GM.
Don't expect the indoctrinated to get it, though.
Why even bother to explain it? lol
Germany wanting to raise up the biggest military in Europe. What could go wrong? I would hope that Russia is not reverting back to the Soviet Union for the sake of Russians. Didnβt quite understand that part. I like the idea of Russia being the outlier good guy. The pope of a new way out of the same old crap.
Maybe, the modern world is too crazy to be saved and the only new beginning is an absolute nuclear end.
A new beginning, or let's just end it all?
That was the best part of today's installment. Look what is happening with Europe now, given the dismantling of USSR as an opposing ideology: slowly but surely, the social democracy that greated a welfare state will be dismantled.
Explain that to me further. It seems that social democracy has been destroying the US and Europe, the lack of sound government financed by debt and overwhelmed by immigration. The far right is more of the same. I lack any hope in a coherent future. I do believe in miracles.
Xavier. A functioning Social Democratic model would not have seen the huge increases in income disparity that the USA has experienced in the last 40 years.
You've had neo-Liberalism and monetarism for 45 years and it's been picking your pockets to serve the interests of the 1%. Europe has followed your lead in to the abyss.
You don't seem to realise that there was a Class War and the Rich won.
But yeah, "men in dresses", " immigrants", "single mothers", "Travellers","Muslims". It's probably all their fault.
Honestly, I don't think the West can be saved.
The 1% owns everything. It is destructive but they sold the program with socialism, taxing the middle class out of existence and piling 100βs of trillions of debt on government, corporations and people.
There has always been a disparity of income, itβs called civilization, the few ruling the masses. Technology has made the process worse, people are less necessary, they are brutally controlled. My fathers were serfs and three hundred years ago they had a certain autonomy. It is now 1984. The serfs have no life. They can adhere to an active spirituality, a just, practical God that seeks justice through collective efforts of individuals without violence. That is Christ; not many follow.
The Soviets, run by the rabid workers were an abomination of Gulags. The West probably canβt be saved, itβs up to the individual, with grace, to save himself. Like a snowfall, each individual persistent flake transforms the world.
Xavier. I can't speak for the USA.
But in Britain, your characterisation is simply wrong.
The Monetarists were explicit that "there is no such thing as Society " that is the absolute antithesis of Socialism. They destroyed organised Labour, they sold off nationalised industries and utilities, again not remotely Socialist.
The National debt was increased to fund imperialism and the MIC, not on education or healthcare.
It's clear you don't like Socialism Xavier, but it's also clear you don't have a clear understanding of what it is.
If your faith gives you solace that's good, but personally I think actions speak louder than prayers.
The concept of God is universal. Elemental, the varied theologies were formed by the geographical environments and the cultural solutions to the production of necessities. Tribal communities were more cohesive and built communities by building competent, interdependence.
With civilization you got a ruling class and slavery of the masses.
The Naked Ape yearns for utopia, Paradise lost. Communism existed for millions of years, civilization 4,000.
Marxism will always have an allure.
The world is crazy. Religion is crazy. Christianity, in its many formulations is crazy. Islam might be the craziest.
I am a Christian. I follow Christ, but what did Christ really say? It is all adulterated. I believe in Christ, The Word, a philosophy that gives life, a self-help Guru that happens to be God and offers the Kingdom of God here and now. βBlessed is he that hears the word and keeps it.β
Throughout history there has been craziness. I believe I have experienced a period of profound prosperity and I am thankful for my experiences as an American.
Pretty much, and end has been prophesied. The times, enhanced by technology and a rapacious nature are perilous.
For the serfs, the average person, history has been a series of catastrophic incidents brought about by evil cabals of lustful, greedy men.
As an individual you must rise above it and create a life for yourself below the radar.Knowledge is power, insightful decisions creat a good life. Communication, with the Spirit of Christ, is all important and even if you eventually get nailed to a cross, like the good thief, that day you will be with him in Paradise, the place of all your longings.
βMy ways are not your ways, saith the Lord.
The Real Word of God has every contingency covered, in all the varied difficulties, what a myriad of individual needs.
Why do I believe in Christ because I experienced him and continue to experience him. He is a living God. I find no fault with his Word, his philosophy. Every other thing apart from the Word of God⦠is inadequate.
Chaney died. I never wanted to be the bastard living and I pity him now. There is justice, there is judgement.
He's just as wrong about the US, of course. Purely a product of propaganda.
John, thank you for your patience and fairness.
Well said, John.
Good.
I believe in miracles. In that case, wait for the return of Christ, the only one capable of performing miracles.
I live, I work, I hope and each day I advance. Christ Kingdom is here and now. He set an example took his responsibility to the limit. βI have come to give abundant life.β We all live in our mind and our actions make all the difference. I will always believe in miracles, like Solzhenitsyn. Hopefully, even when I suffer. In the Kingdom of God, is there really suffering; a coward dies many deaths. βMy peace I give you, a peace the world cannot give.β
If Socialism was so bad why did the Empire spend the last 80 years trying to destroy it? The Chinese have shown how Socialism does work, stopping the oligarchs from herding the populous into debt servitude. Home ownership in China is about 93%. A savy Socialist government like China invests massive amounts of capital into productive pursuits. Education, housing, health, infrastructure. The US model directs capital to asset appreciation and massive amounts of the profits move offshore to tax havens. Have a look at how much money comes out of tax havens into US Treasuries. And have a look at net household debt. It's insane.
Nothing in history is linear. China is not on a straight up path into the great beyond. The US is not on a straight down path forever. Things change. Look at the changes in Russia alone since the collapse of the USSR. And in East Germany since the reunification. You are picking a point in history to say that the Chinese model is successful. Doesn't mean it is the best model or that it will always be successful... Chip
China is a wonder and the facts dictate that it is more prosperous. There is a certain morality in the excellence and effectiveness it displays. It is directed and that is necessary in a modern world. It seem to direct resources to the welfare of people.
The US, freedom and individual pursuit is dead in the US; the US is dominated by a stupid leadership that only wants to dominate. They produce chaos and brain washed people.
Prosperity is always a correlation to good just government leaders, servants of the people.
You must place your faith in something, some ideology, cult of leadership or God. Personally, after going many ways, I choose God. That foundation has made all the difference.
People can not own the property their house sits on in China. Current land use rights in China is 70 years.
Don't confuse snakes with snakes; some are venomous, others are not. And besides, Italian cuisine is different from UK cuisine.
Solzhenitsyn could only hope for a miracle to escape the Siberian camp. Otherwise, I agree.
LOL
UK public health care, free at the point of delivery, has always been a cover for turning your people into lab rats- sick ones at that, and a vast corporatist profit centre. But sickness in various forms is now the biggest single generator of GDP in the UK.
Do you work in healthcare and have any idea of the underpinings of the system? Do you have any idea, knowledge, experience on how it was in UK prior to the introduction of the NHS? The average Brits were lab rats in the big capitalist/"liberal" experiment in which more than a million Irish died of hunger less than a century prior. You obviously have no idea what you are talking about.
A cover for the pharmaceutical industrial complex to milk the state.
And I want intimate relationships with the most beautiful girls on the planet. What could possibly go wrong? Except waking up. Poland also declares that it will have the largest army in Europe. Everyone declares it, and in the end, it will be Estonia that does, or at least its 40% Russian population.
And I want the pretty girl that loves me, called my wife. Who takes Poland seriously. War has ruined the US, they call it the Military, Congressional, Industrial, Spy Complex. It killed the economy and millions of people. It is controlled by crazy people.
The elites, called leaders, elected officials, politicians, only manage their bank accounts. The country can die as long as they continue to maintain them, and this maintenance increases with the approaching demise. These people are princely dependents, and like the common people, they don't care about tax increases; they don't pay them. We always talk about the wealthiest; it's time to talk about the political dependents, starting their careers in their twenties and ending them in their seventies. No one has ever assessed their fortunes; it's not too late. As for the beautiful woman who is your wife, it's certainly a well-deserved privilege.
You refer to the "Professional Managerial Class": the well-rewarded co-dependent enablers of the capitalist elites.
masterful
...except the red october celebratory excerpt.
Socialism and welfare state are ok, but we don't need this pathetic type of third worldism.
No need to blandish Angola as an equal partner, when you have zero vested interests in the part of Africa under the Equator, and more importantly when there are millions Africans swarming Europe, including a more than modest share in Russia and the Ukraine.
Dealing in a non-exploitive, mutually beneficial manner necessarily implies not creating a dependency to your own detriment.
Dealing in a non-exploitive, mutually beneficial manner is gay and invites the junior partner's contempt.
Humanitarian Aid has been a money sinkhole to the West for decades, since the end of WW2. With little results to show for in Africa, while instead continually replenishing the NGOs' trough.
Japan never needed humanitarian aid to rise its standards of living.
I don't wanna be gay by aiding humanity !
The reflection on USSR legacy is very important and profound. I am glad they are discussing it, hopefully more and more.
Yes, indeed.
It is also the elephant in the room that explains everything about the SMO catastrophe, but none of the Western nominally pro-Russian analysts ever dares touch.
The Kremlin is not even pursuing victory because the position of the current Russian elites is rooted in the defeat in the Cold War. That's what it boils down to in the simplest terms.
The elephant in your tiny mental room pal is the rotting carcass of Ukraine and Zelensky, the collapse of neither of whom you have uttered a single comment about, while constantly banging on about Russian βfailuresβ, even as they have advanced continuously for months.
Flatulent oaf
The Kremlin is pursuing victory relentlessly and single mindedly, and it is closer today than it has ever been.
Defeat in the cold war? The cold war was a posturing stalemate.
Russians are not skilled in propaganda. The Western military-industrial-banking-oligarchs complex uses an army of pens-for-hire to repeat the βcontroled narativeβ of the βevil empireβ till people take it as a fact.
Many facts about the Russian Revolution and the USSR are not known.
On women rights: in 1922 the gender equality, no fall divorce, marrital rape and domestic violence criminal statues and access to abortion up to 14 weeks became laws in Russia. Women were recruted en mass into the colleges and universities. In 1963, the USSR sent the first women into space. The same year the Princeton University opened admissions to women. Today, proportionally, Russia has more women scientists and engineers than the US. There is a 3 years maternity leave and an affordable day care.
Have the advances in the USSR helped the womenβs rights movements around the world?
The Soviet Union supported the anti colonial movements all around the world. Among them was the National Congress in South Africa supported politically and financially. The US removed Nelson Mandela from the Terroristβs list in 2008.
Nothing ever is all good or all bad, except in propaganda.
The βrules based orderβ idea of the European/US world domination is fading away like a psychotic dream on medications. Unfortunately, the European elites and US neocons refuse treatment.
The "women's rights" narrative is obviously the precursor for the feminism which has destroyed the family unit in the west, as it was always designed to do - see Aaron Russo's conversation with Nick Rockefeller in his movie, "America, Freedom to Fascism."
All of its chief apologists either were, or are, jewish females.
"No fault divorce" enabled women to replace the father with the state, and so the state now had access to the children, as the mother would of course put her children into daycare, so she would have more time to explore her real interests, ie in witchcraft and "self-expression."
Abortion is murder, of course, and it destroys the woman who enables it - in visiting a death sentence upon herself, as all ovarian cancer stems from women who have facilitated this heinous act.
A recent viral post by a particular woman - Helen Andrews - has made the case that western wokism is entirely attributable to women getting themselves into positions of dominance in many previously male dominated spheres.
"Women's Rights" always and invariably takes no account whatsoever of women's responsibilities - and the vast majority always want the one without the other.
The SU of course was an entirely cynical entity, which only supported anticolonialism so as to replace it with bolshevik - jewish exploitation - the complete societal collapse of all those African nations freed from colonialism into complete anarchy and murderous hatred of the non-black was always the desired outcome, and the replacement of colonial governorship with terrorists of the Mandela type.
HAHA! Was that "The Imperial Incel Abrahamist Manifesto"?
I am afraid that your dream of male domination and putting women back in βtheir placeβ in your preferred social hierarchy is fading even faster than the Western-hegemony-forever delusion.
The outline of the nature of the USSR legacy makes some good points, however I think it overemphasises the importance of a period of 70 years in a civilisational culture spanning 1000 years plus.
Slavic/Russian village organization was quite communal, egalitarian and fair in the way access to land was organized.
"however I think it overemphasises the importance of a period of 70 years in a civilisational culture spanning 1000 years plus." No. The Bolshevik revolution ushered in a time of extreme change that eliminated much of what existed before.
A useful analogy may be that it may take a thousand years to grow a mature forest but only minutes for one fool with a match to burn it down.
Bad analogy. A useful analogy is the 2 fathered & mothered current Rusia.
I am not convinced of that, much traditional culture banned under communism has re-emerged, perhaps the best example being Russian Orthodoxy. The same is true in China. To follow on from your analogy of the forest, a forest may well be utterly devastated by an intense fire, but over time plants, trees reshoot and re establish. This is a common phenomenon here in Australia, it is as if the fire purifies and re-invigorates. I think this is true of Russia, it has been devastated many times , but persists. They seem to have a unique understanding of the strength that can only be born through suffering.
Not "banned".
The USSR legacy is one best forgotten - it was a jewish bolshevik plot which failed, and which has been replaced under Putin with a new Christian vision.
Wrong.
Damn you Simplicius! You forced me to open a CBC article with the insinuation that they were telling the truth. But no, just more of the same drivel that our taxes pay for.
I wish a good morning to all.
It has been my personal opinion for a while now, years, about the state of the Occidents. The ones who created it, good or bad willed, were visionary. Those Β΄dudes and dudettesΒ΄ are long gone. I would say that we are at least at the stage of the great grand kids being in charge and one can argue it goes much deeper than that, without breaking much of a sweat. With discussion of Russian space propulsion systems creating vehicle velocities of 600 km per second, among other advancements outside of the west, in other words to the moon in roughly 19 minutes ( Russia to Montana in 20 seconds or less once the technical issues have been ironed out ), it is clear to me the occidents are now second world.
We could not have a bigger bunch of clowns running the west than we have now, with the biggest farce being the Donald. Putin is right to be cautious. Destroying is easy, building or rebuilding is arduous.
Thank you Simplicius for your time and effort.
Russia is winning today precisely because it has embraced ITβS OWN conservative, innate values and spirituality over 1,000 years of history.
The Soviet Union simply collapsed because it did not inspire the people it governed. It simply terrorized them. In the end no one would bother lifting a finger to save it.
Russia has found its internal bearings and spiritually⦠and is winning and coming together. Economics is a policy - not a governing ideology. Social welfare does not equal Godlessness.
It would be a travesty if the Russian people were brainwashed into returning to some Soviet style godless, soulless terrorist regime.
βIn any conflictβ¦ both sides claim to have GOD on its side. Both sides may beβ¦ but one side MUST be wrong.β
Abraham Lincoln
Putin brought Russia back from the brink of the abyss by embracing healthy nationalism and spirituality.
Russian soldiers are merciful to civilians and those who surrender. They are on the side of angels.
The Soviet Union is dead and the Russian people are enormously better off for it.
"Russia is winning today precisely because it has adopted ITS OWN innate conservative values ββand spirituality over 1,000 years of history." No, because its men have balls, not a mussel.
The Russian men indeed have balls, but that's not enough. Napoleon's Imperial Guardsmen had balls too, and so had the soldiers of the Waffen SS.
And now those Napoleonic Guards and SS Troops bones line the Smolensk to Moscow highway for eternity. The West often underestimates Russia or simply misunderstands it.
I agree 100% with what you say. People who want to sugarcoat and revive Soviet communism tend to ignore the gulags and the mass graves. Or, worse still, they just don't care. It's sickening.
I don't like Western money-addicted capitalists and liberals either, but that doesn't mean that I must embrace communists, just because they are an alternative.
How about the mass graves and millions of dead thanks to the western money-addicted capitalists, in their own countries and abroad?
It's called cognitive dissonance but be my guest, have a nice life by promoting the lies of capitalists about their greatest fear - the communists, because indeed, they're the only real alternative.
Rest assured, communism will come, just not in our lifetime. That process takes a 'new kind of people' and that must develop naturally, not by pressing it into the 'good'.
Stalinism is only one of a range of options available. On the one hand undeniably brutal and if I am honest bloody terrifying, but on the other"tough times breed tough men". Given what the USSR faced in the first 20 years of its life, may be only a hard bastard could have survived?
And whilst we criticise the Soviets, let's not forget that American Prisons house far more people than the Gulags ever did and that the 1943 Indian famine was just as man-made as the Holomodor and equally deadly.
drought and dust bowl in the US was nature, just happened - but drought and subsequent lack of food in parts of the USSR (at around the same time) was caused by the evil commies?
"tough men" you call them...
I think there are more appropriate names for individuals like, for instance, Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin, chief executioner for the NKVD, who is reported to have personally shot and killed 7,000 of the 22,000 Polish prisoners of war who were massacred in April and May 1940. Thousands of them were later found by the German army in the Katyn forest. The evidence for this war crime is hard and substantial - which is very rare.
This is my advice to all those fine, sophisticated intellectuals who are whitewashing Soviet communism: hang a picture of Blokhin before your nose and remember that this is the kind of monsters YOU create.
Okay, now we are personify evil onto one individual?
In the 20 years after the revolution there were many Blokhin, settling private issues under the disguise of "sovjet law" in a chaotic civil war and interventions by at least 5 capitalist nations including the USA.
Monsters are in every society, to reduce a society by the people for the people to it's monsters, that is the true dishonest approach.
The killing of 22,000 Polish prisoners was not the work of a loose canon "settling a private issue under the disguise of Soviet law." It was the work of the NKVD, on explicit orders from Stalin and 5 other members of the Politburo. The relevant document, complete with signatures, has been preserved.
Monsters indeed do exist everywhere. Only, in one society they are in prison, while in another they are let loose on the people.
This whole discussion is meaningless since there is no other way for a socialist/communist system to assure it's existence.
The roll back of communism doctrine is also well documented.
The killing massacres of communists/socialistst around the world is also well documented. Be it in Indonesia after Sukarno by the dutch or elsewhere. The so called "National socialists" went after the communists and then the socialists and killed them en masse through labour or in the gas chambers with the others. Why would they do that if they are 'national socialists'? Because they lie, steal and murder, plus giving themself false labels as capitalists servants (now again in Ukraine) and when the USSR fought against those liars and killers, they were brutal. Make this shit make sense.
Which is the society that puts its monsters in prison?
I'm looking at the pigs and the farmers, and like the other animals, I can't tell the difference.
Ideology is a useful tool for distraction. While the Katyn massacre was happening indigenous Australians were still being shot for bounties. When was the last indigenous American shot for a bounty? Didn't 14 million die? Almost 1 million in Australia.
In the West we erect statues to our Mikhailovich Blokhins. Did the Soviets?
"In the West we erect statues to our Mikhailovich Blokhins. Did the Soviets?"
Yes, they did - to Stalin, the man who gave the Blokhins the orders.
Yes, they did. To a leader who preserved the state and trashed the Nazis. What is hard to understand? New numbers corrected are approaching 40 million USSR fatalities during the WWII. According to Wikipedia, in Belgium there were 6000 fatalities during the WWII.
Russians and Poles have turbulent history. And do not forget that Poland signed the non-aggression pact with Nazis in 1934 and the main Nazi target was USSR. So, if Poles were not screwed over by the Nazis, they would be just another part of the coalition of the willing. Whether you hate commies or not, you must acknowledge that when the game gets existential, then all bets are off.
Also, Poland took a chunk of Czechoslovakia when Nazi went in for Sudetenland. Cutie pie lil Poland.
I have still to see a monument for anyone shooting Australians for bounties.
One thing to keep in mind.
Litvinov was running around Europe between 1933 and 1939 trying to organize an anti-Nazi coalition, but he failed. Poland was important in sabotaging Litvinov's efforts.
So, becoming Nazi partner in 1934 and potential partner of the coalition of the willing against USSR, when it was known that they would target USSR, helping sabotage anti-Nazi coalition and even helping Nazis dismember Czechoslovakia. However, then we whine when we get spanked. Really?
And that is why one starts shooting prisoners.
Fine argument.
It is still a war crime, but what I see is people try to understand events from 100 years ago from the perspective of 2025. Comments here often lack context.
Hadn't Nazis screwed Poles over, they would have gladly participated in the Barbarossa, like most of the peoples from all of Europe. And we know how they treated Slavs. Are you Slavic, Luis?
Yes, and the execution of the already deposed Zar's family including the medical doctor of the family, the servant and a small dog that happened to be with them.
Bloody, hateful bastards the lot of them.
Brought despair to the best of the Russians. Gumiliev shot for suspected royalist "sympathies", his son off to the gulag for years, for the crime of being his father's son, Mandelstam, a fine poet, killed in the gulag, Yesenin suicide in plain youth, Tsvietaeva, ditto.
In fact, Stalin killed more Marshalls of the URSS in peace than Hitler during the war. Purges indeed.
Is this worse, or more humane, than the treatment of German POWs POST-War. It is a documented historical fact that German prisoners of war (POWs) died in Allied-run camps, including those under U.S. command, after World War II, and General Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe at the time. The exact number of deaths has been a subject of controversy and historical research.
Key points regarding German POW deaths in these camps:
The DEF Status: A significant factor in the post-war situation was the Allied decision to classify the hundreds of thousands of German soldiers who SURRENDERED at the end of hostilities as Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEFs) or "surrendered personnel," rather than according them official POW status under the Geneva Convention. This allowed the Allied powers to avoid the Convention's stipulations regarding diet and other rights, leading to inadequate conditions in some camps.
Conditions in Rhineland Camps: Historical analysis confirms that the Americans underfed a large number of German prisoners in the Rhineland camps in 1945, and a notable number died as a result.
Death Toll Estimates: While official U.S. accounts were initially understated, historians generally agree that a substantial number of deaths occurred. The controversial book by James Bacque, Other Losses, alleged a much higher death toll (hundreds of thousands), but this claim has been widely disputed and largely discredited by "mainstream historians" due to flawed research and lack of evidence. More reliable historical estimates indicate a lower, but still significant, number of deaths. For instance, the mortality rate in French-run camps was around 24,000 out of a million prisoners.
Eisenhower's Role: General Eisenhower, as the overall commander, bore ultimate responsibility for the conditions in U.S.-controlled camps. The policy decisions that led to the DEF classification and the resulting conditions were made at a high Allied level, with some historians attributing them to an Allied occupation policy of severity.
>Stalinism is only one of a range of options available
It's really not.
If you move away from Stalinism, the system rots very quickly and you get a reversion to capitalism.
That was one of the key points of dispute with Trotsky -- Trotsky said that over time the bureaucracy will transform itself into a bourgeoisie and dismantle the communist system from within (therefore we have to invest everything into a world revolution that will eliminate the virus altogether), Stalin said that we will solve that problem with regular purges (therefore we can invest for the time being in our own development and not fight windmills with that world revolution fantasy). Both were correct -- Stalin did purges and was very successful. But once he was gone the purges stopped and exactly what Trotsky predicted happened.
The Chinese are so far managing to keep the party in power but it is an open question for how long, plus they have a certain unique cultural tradition that allow the system to work for much longer than it would have elsewhere. They also still are doing purges, which is not noticed when it happens, but is a very important factor.
I am not convinced GM.
I think there's a huge danger that the party does what all bureaucracies do and starts to rule in its own interests.
Both the Catholic Church and CPSU can be accused of that. It's what Orwell warned against in 1984.
Where China seems to differ is that there are quite wide differences of opinion in the CPC. Under Stalin, not so much.
The CPC is acting in its own interest, it's just that its own interests coincide with those of the country.
It paradoxically helps that China is not self-sufficient in raw materials, so there is no easy wealth to be generated there, you have to produce things.
Stalin was facing existential threats non stop. USSR was always targeted for destruction from the beginning. During the civil war we had coalition of the willing invading USSR (remember Americans in the far East?). US recognized USSR only in 1933, opportunistically to help them counter Japs. Then we have Nazis and WWII, then we have Cold War.
There was not much room for differences in opinion.
Also, are you comparing today's China with Stalin's USSR? How much differences in opinion where there during the Mao's period?
You are making assertions not backed by evidence. Ideology isnβt history
Can you expand on your opinion please?
>People who want to sugarcoat and revive Soviet communism tend to ignore the gulags and the mass graves.
That ended after Stalin and Stalin did it out of necessity, not because he was some blood thirsty monster out to kill as many people as possible. He had to prepare for an existential war that he knew was coming, and sacrifices had to be made.
BTW, Putin also had to prepare for an existential war and what did he do? What is he doing now?
Let's talk purges and mass graves. In Stalin's times if there was the slightest suspicion that you were a traitor, you were shipped to the basement of Lubyanka and then to an unmarked mass grave somewhere in the woods. In Putin's time you have obvious traitors throughout most of the government and economic elite, such as Nabiulina, Silouanov, Kiril Dimitriev, all the bankers, all the resource extraction oligarchs, etc. etc. Putin himself included -- he would have been sentenced to death on many thousands of countrs of grand treason by Stalin, and with full justification. But nobody is touching those people today.
The result is that it took Stalin less than four years to absorb the initial Nazi attack and then take Berlin.
In the same amount of time Putin has not been able to move from Donetsk to Kramatorsk while allowing the country to be subjected to mass air raids every night without firing a single shot back.
What more is there to say...
"In Stalin's times if there was the slightest suspicion that you were a traitor, you were shipped to the basement of Lubyanka and then to an unmarked mass grave somewhere in the woods."
You really like that, don't you?
GM, my friend, you'll struggle to convince me that kicking out Konstantin Rokossovski's teeth was in the best interests of the Soviet Union.
The purges as a whole being necessary does not in any way mean every single case was justified. Far from it.
Also, Stalin himself was in real danger of ending up in the Lubyanka basement, and it easily could have happened had the dice rolled only slightly differently.
GM, if you're punishing people you have a huge moral responsibility to make sure you only punish those who deserve it.
I don't think that's negotiable.
How much direct and personal control do you think Stalin had over every single case?
Sacrifices had to be made? Yes, I guess you need to kill millions to become the final authority on how to live. Ironic how the gods of the earth must act like devils.
"In the same amount of time Putin has not been able to move from Donetsk to Kramatorsk while allowing the country to be subjected to mass air raids every night without firing a single shot back. "
You have to get your facts straight if you wish to argue this. Russia has been facing the largest army in Europe, supplied by NATO with arms from all its members. Further, moving the line of contact forward too far, too fast, would begin to sacrifice the nice, short supply lines that Russia has been able to rely on for this war. As for the "mass air raids", they have been of limited effectiveness because Russia has been able to shoot down most of the drones/missiles before they reach their targets. That is not "without firing a single shot back." Rather it demonstrates air defenses that are better than anything the west has.
Of course, for you, "firing back" appears to mean hitting targets in Germany, etc. That would quickly lead to nuclear war, which any sane person who has looked into it knows would escalate into mass destruction of human civilization. Thank God Putin has had sense enough to avoid that. He is faced with the task of dealing with the equivalent of a dangerous mental patient, who is on the precipice of becoming homicidal at any moment. In the presence of such a person, you must be very careful what you do and what you say, as any sudden movement could set them off, with disastrous consequences. NATO/the U.S. is very much like that--give them an excuse and major cities could be reduced to ash in an hour. Who wants that kind of legacy?
For all the information you put out, you should start your own Substack, GM.
The URSS was fighting Germany together with the USA and the British Empire, all put together dwarfing the population and resources of Germany. Russia today is having to do in strategic terms with NATO and other US allies.
The comparison is useless.
Like saying that Roosevelt could destroy Germany and Japan, while Johnson could
not subdue Hanoi and Biden retired from Afghanistan.
Those were all completely different situations.
Pete. In the end if you're feeding kids, building infrastructure, schools and hospitals and looking after all your people including the weakest, then it doesn't matter if you're doing it for God, the international Proletariat or Mother Russia.
It's still a "Good Thing". You have a SOCIETY,irrespective of it's ideology.
The problem in the West is that we keep voting for "each against all, no such thing as Society" politicians.
Theoretically you might be right, but there is something that I would call practical reasoning.
In fact, the ones pretending to be feeding kids and building infrastructure in the name of International Proletariat did their job much, much worse than anyone else, even the most egotistical of the liberal capitalists.
I lived in Moscow in Soviet times and the poverty of the masses was amazing. Nothing that one could buy in even the
poorest villages of Western Europe was available in the capital of the flamant Empire of Peasants and Workers.
In fact the system survived by brutal repression and by the admirable patriotism of Russians who thought that after all, those authorities were the Russian authorities.
Not different to the charge at Balaclava. Those idiots are most probably committing a mistake, but
my honour is not to reason why, but to follow the flag.
I could write for hours describing the points that I here make.
I insist, poverty of the masses and brutal repression. All from personal experience.
At the end, even the members of the Soviet Nomenklatura could not stand it anymore.
I once knew the General Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party and it was clear to me that he was no longer a Bolshevik in any real sense, but very similar in his moral stand to a Western European conservative.
The head of the communist party in the Moscow University, whom I knew, was equally devoid of this hate of all European tradition that marked the first Bolsheviks. A putinist before Putin.
Putin is no accident at all, but an antithesis to the Marxist-Leninist thesis in the mind of educated Russians after 70 years of practical implementation of the ideas of the "glorious" revolution.
Unfortunately, the results of this experience, did not only produce putinism on Rusdia, but hate to everything Russian in the other peoples that had to suffer the Soviet system.
Not only the Poles remembering the wanton murdering of prisoners in the forest of Katyn.
Russians and Ukrainians killing each other, after centuries of peacefully belonging to the same State without any problems is a sufficient proof of that point.
One thing I do acknowledge. It was fear of communism that made the Western "one percent" behave in a more humane
way to their subjects.
In that respect, the destruction of the URSS unleashed the worse instincts in the worse people of the remaining Superpower.
Changing the focus to another part of the world, it should be clear to any observer that the amazing success of China came together with the reforms that got rid of the Soviet system, while keeping the name of communism.
The Chinese Communist party is now officially the vanguard of peasants, workers and entrepreneurs.
That is no longer Bolshevism.
This should be a sufficient response to the Soviet happy memories of some, not to speak of the praise of Stalin that was already denounced by the communists that happily shot Beria as soon as they were able to.
Very interesting post, food for thought.
ββ¦Russians and Ukrainians killing each other, after centuries of peacefully belonging to the same State without any problems is a sufficient proof of that pointβ¦β
This did not happen organically. We all know who brainwashed, and funded the brainwashing, of at least 2 generations of Ukrainians all the way to psychosis.
The CIA attached itself like a parasite and mind-fucked the entire populace.
Itβs sad that Ukraine was too weak to resist. But Russia had to doβ¦ and is now doingβ¦ what is necessary to survive against a far greater existential threat.
My opinion is that a certain Western cabal did
indeed try to poison the wells in both Russia and Ukraine. The point that I was trying to convey is precisely that this anti-Russian propaganda of Western agencies was successful to a certain degree, because of the experiences of the Ukrainians within the URSS, which they identify with Moscow and subsequently with Russia.
In fact when one speaks with Ukrainians about the present conflict, they immediately begin to produce arguments about life in the URSS, showing the roots of their desire to separate their destiny from Russia.
You have society when the focus is blood and soil.
We in the west are not voting for anything and haven't been for a very long time. The long march through our institutions is complete. That's what is missing in this whole thread instead of discussing the benefits of communism, socialism, marxism, or capitalism. There are a certain group of people driving and controlling the west. Those people are inherently evil. So modern day comparison of forms of government around the globe are irrelevant. This is a spiritual struggle between good and evil... Chip
All those things can and did happen before the state decided to appropriate those functions. Centralized power did not work very well for most Soviet citizens.
You say that, but would a less ruthless society have been able to defeat the Nazis? And if the Soviets had lost to the Nazis, the OstPlan had a hideous fate planned for the Russians.
So arguably "centralised power" saved the Russians?
>Russia is winning today precisely because it has embraced ITβS OWN conservative, innate values and spirituality over 1,000 years of history.
No, it is losing because of that -- the position of the current elites is rooted in the defeat in the Cold War, and they are using the "conservative values" as a way to deflect from the need to do a counter-Perestroika, while refusing to even pursue victory in the current war.
And the only reason it is not losing completely is the Soviet legacy. Where do you think all those missiles and the military-industrial complex capable of producing more ammunition than NATO come from?
Practically nothing has been built since the USSR collapsed other than the Alabuga Geran factory, but a lot was destroyed -- the weapon manufacturing capabilities used to be much greater.
Even the fancy new doomsday weapons that Putin is so proud of were conceived and started to be designed in Soviet times. He himself acknowledged it the other day at that award ceremony.
Napoleon Bonaparte: "In war, the moral is to the physical as three is to one"
Soviet economic model worked as long as Stalin was not skittish on sending to gulags anyone who was responsible for some factory or kholkhoz which did not deliver their 5-year Plan allotted quota (no matter how unrealistically determined).
As soon as later Soviet leadership became more humane, the whole economy slacked because of lack of Stalinist-style threats on one hand, and lack of private-initiative, free-market incentives on the other. Workers became lazy (the rise of 'homo sovieticus') and the system became rife with corruption. The fall of the soviet system at that point was inevitable.
Running an economy is really nothing more than a game of carrot and stick applied to the micro-management of the single economic agents.
Those Russians with the heightened gawwdliness are the babooshkas, and those as useful as such. The muslims are another kettle of fish.
you only close a cauldron once they have given up trying to escape though the last route you left open. Its always better to let them try the escape on your terms rather than flush them out.