439 Comments

"The West has not been defeated by anyone"

Except themselves.

Harden your heart, oh Putin! To the last hohol!

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Also Koreans, Vietnamese, Afghans, to be continued. A very weird statement for sure.

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Didn't Syria offer up a bunch in the early days of the SMO?

After nearly a decade of getting kicked around they might relish a bit of the shoe on the other foot.

What do they call that ISIS training base? Al Tanf?

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I highly doubt that Putin will be any more lenient with Trump in office. Remeber trump is only back for another 4 years.

Putin can't trust a single American, even if Abraham Lincoln rises from the dead to finish his second term.

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The Istanbul deal was a very bad one for Russia...Putin will face major opposition if he even thinks about doing it again....Medvedev will surely oppose it, as will the General Staff...

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It can be seen a decent enough deal at the time - would YOU tell the mothers and families of the 60,000 or so dead Russian soldiers since, that their deaths were strategically beneficial?

It is easy to cast away other people's lives casually in an online forum with no cost - or for psychopaths like Lindsy Graham, Nuland, McCain, Biden, Clinton(s), Starmer etc - but what the Kremlin originally wanted was a quick SMO that effectively put the Minsk agreements back on the table and implemented this time.

The west's "elites" however, had very different ideas. 700,000 dead Ukrainians, and 100,000 dead Russians later, NATO disarmed, a considerably stronger Russian military (AND ECONOMY), and matters are quite different now in every direction.

But at the time, a quick agreement seemed like a very good idea to a conservative and careful Russian leader.

No-one truly knows how a war is going to turn out, and they are always a gamble. A gamble that, had Russia somehow lost, would have meant the dismemberment of the country, and jackbooted Nazis fulfilling the WW2 plan.

Hindsight is not actually 20/20, it is as myopic as any other vision. And that goes for all of us.

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Oct 27Edited

>It can be seen a decent enough deal at the time - would YOU tell the mothers and families of the 60,000 or so dead Russian soldiers since, that their deaths were strategically beneficial?

There was absolutely no need for those 60,000 to die.

In fact, at this point Putin has to bear direct physical responsibility for the policies that resulted in the death of all those soldiers. And the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians on the other side (because most Ukrainians are ethnic Russians).

Had Putin used the abundant tools at his disposal to win the war quickly, all of those people would be alive, and the many more who are going to die in the future would be saved too.

But in order to do that, he had to place the interests of the Russian people first, and to sacrifice the interests of the Russian oligarchy. That he could not do because he represents the Russian oligarchy, not the Russian people.

And the Russian oligarchy was firmly against severing ties with the West and against the weakening of its own internal power, which would both be direct consequences of the application of the kind of internal mobilization and external military-technical measures that would have won the war quickly.

This is why Russia still exports commodities to the West, why it allowed itself to be bombed by NATO daily (screw the civilians in the border, and increasingly not even just the border regions), why it allowed the Donbass to be destroyed, why it allowed Ukraine to be Banderized in the first place, etc. etc. All in the name of doing a deal that will include accepting the Russian elites in the family of the world's elites while cementing the country's place in the world's system as a deindustrialized raw resource appendage.

That has been the objective all along. The war started because the West wasn't happy even with that arrangement, they wanted more. So Russian elites bluffed with the SMO, but their bluff has been called every single day since then, and now they don't have it in them to turn the table and actually try to win.

>But at the time, a quick agreement seemed like a very good idea to a conservative and careful Russian leader.

What looks like "conservative and careful" leadership to you, in Russia itself increasingly looks like treason.

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I understand your POV.

But how would it have gone had NATO used tacnukes on the large Russian formations necessary to achieve that, and then sent all the wunderwaffen all at once instead of piecemeal, following them up with the mobilised NATO armies as is still threatened?

Where we are now is that NATO is disarmed - this wasn't the case 2 years ago. Russian armed forces are now large, efficient and battle-hardened - this wasn't the case 2 years ago.

The new BRICS trading arrangements kept the Russian economy afloat - 2 years ago this was not yet certain.

Of course you can stick your queen out front and centre, and kill a lot of pawns - noobs do that a lot while learning the game. As soon as they meet serious players, they will lose both the queen and game.

Not that i think Putin is playing chess, in however many dimensions - he and Xi are 'playing' Victoria 3, and very well indeed.

As to whether or not this looks like "treason" within Russia, that is up to Russians themselves to decide - especially if the war comes to a successful conclusion, as it appears to be doing. Russia is beating the ENTIRE West, the ENTIRE NATO, all at once.

That is not something to be brushed off lightly.

And, fair to say, if Putin is indeed a "traitor" to his country, then he joins most of the rest of the World, Sir Kid Starver, BloJo, Biden, K'Mala, Nuttyahoo, the Canadian twat, to name but a few.

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Oct 27Edited

>Where we are now is that NATO is disarmed - this wasn't the case 2 years ago.

No, it isn't, quite the opposite in fact.

Ground forces are completely irrelevant to a NATO-Russia war. Aviation and missiles (and thus air defense too) are because it will be fought with nukes. What has been happening the last two years is that Russia is squandering its temporary advantage in hypersonics while the US catches up and positions strike assets in ever closer proximity, and while the VKS is suffering attrition in Ukraine.

>Russian armed forces are now large, efficient and battle-hardened - this wasn't the case 2 years ago.

Why was it not the case two years ago? It was clear a big war is coming since the early 00s the latest, and there was absolutely no doubt about it after 2014.

>The new BRICS trading arrangements kept the Russian economy afloat - 2 years ago this was not yet certain.

Again, why was that necessary? Whose job was it to have the Russian economy in a state of self-sufficiency in preparation for the big war that was clearly coming, and who had nearly a quarter of a century in power to do that job?

Remember, Stalin embarked on the largest rapid industrialization effort in human history in the late 1920s while openly and very explicitly saying "we have a decade to do what others did in a century, otherwise we will be destroyed in the coming war". In 1929 it was much less obvious that WWII was coming in just a decade than it was obvious that the Ukrainian war was coming very soon back in 2014.

>Russia is beating the ENTIRE West, the ENTIRE NATO, all at once.

Is it? This night there was another massive drone strike all over the place -- Volgograd, Voronezh, Lipetsk, Oryol, Krasnodar, Rostov, etc. Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod we don't even mention anymore.

Are there NATO forces on Russian territory? Yes.

Are there Russian forces on NATO territory? No.

Is Russia bombed every day by NATO? Yes.

Has NATO been bombed even once by Russia? No.

Who in their right mind would say that Russia is beating NATO given these objective facts on the ground?

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Again, it's not as though I can't see your POV. But Russia is not the USSR, and Putin is not Stalin. If he started executing senior officers, he wouldn't last very long.

Look at the UK, fx. What it "needs" to fight its fantasy future war with Russia is to rebuild its manufacturing base, conscript hundreds of thousands of tweenies, train and equip them, secure the essential resources from global south countries to build the weapons and aircraft, and ::waves magic stick in the air to make it all happen::.

I LOVE playing strat games, Victoria 3, Stellaris, Hearts of Iron 4 - you name it, I've probably played it at some point. They are called "God Games" for a reason, and not JUST because those who like them tend to have sky-high egos and probably borderline narcissism - they are called "God Games" because only a "god" could actually order around so many people and have things happen. In the REAL world you run into all sorts of inertia, problems, HR issues, resource shortages, and those magic sticks are largely useless.

It is easy to say what needs to be done - actually DOING it, unless you are a Stalin or Hitler, is something else altogether.

Of course Putin could have done more, and the generals, and the economic oligarchs, and the people, - this is never in doubt; especially in hindsight.

Have you ever managed a group of people? Fuckwits, mate, in general. I've been a fuckwit once or twice myself, under bad leadership. You probably have too.

Any group larger than 12 and you're guaranteed to start racking up the fuckwits, no matter how good the leadership is, in my experience.

Try running a whole goddamned country of self-interested fuckwits and see how much you get done.

ONCE the pressure is on - like, fx, you're in a war for national survival - fuckwits can face enough social opprobrium to keep some of them in check.

Would I have wished Putin had done some things differently? Of course. It's a rare day I don't see some news from my country that leaves me tearing my hair out in frustration, and hands itching for a noose or two, too.

But lets look at the facts. Putin DID build enough capacity to avoid the HORRIFIC sanctions regime slammed into Russia. He DID build enough alliances that Russia could still keep trading - and fighting. He DID build a strong nucleus of an army that has since DEFEATED NATO. And to do so without being forced to go nuclear and end the World.

Would that my country had had such a leader in the past 25 years, instead of a bunch of cocksuckers who fellatio America when it crooks its little finger.

Am I arguing he cannot make mistakes, and has not? NO! And could he have done things better? YES! But most of all, he wanted to have peaceful relations with the West, while developing Russia into a strong, independent, developed economy and society.

This was not a terrible vision, and had Bernie and Corbyn not been denied their respective democratic victories, he could have been vindicated.

Well, instead he faced the vicious neocons. And that threw everything into the bin.

But now Russia is stronger than it has ever been, is the centre a global alliance that is angling towards replacing even the UN, has the most powerful military (And best equipment) on the planet, has disarmed the most recent Nazi military alliance (NATO), has direct alliances with some of the other most powerful nations on Earth, is seeing its economy thrive with 10x or more growth compared to G7 nations, and Russian self-confidence is through the roof - rightly so.

These are not tiny achievements, not by any stretch of the imagination. Recall that in 2000 Russia was a literal basket case being plundered left and right by hostile foreigners.

This is a dramatic turn around, and who else could have achieved it? Navalny? Even Kasparov?

https://www.livemint.com/news/world/vladimir-putin-will-be-lord-of-world-blind-mystic-baba-vanga-s-prediction-goes-viral-11648394041274.html

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To write analysis with such common sense is now a rarity. Thanks.

People living in bubbles and virtual reality rabbit holes don't necessarily talk complete gibberish but are elephant-in-the-room fatally-floored by not living in the real world for long enough. I've pasted below what ought to be obvious but no longer is in Western culture:

"Have you ever managed a group of people? Fuckwits, mate, in general. I've been a fuckwit once or twice myself, under bad leadership. You probably have too."

In many interactions with Western Men and Women who fought in WW11 in famous campaigns what I've highlighted above would be bloody obvious. I thank you again for writing it.

In today's collapsing West, we are run virtually by psychopaths, parasites and shit-stirrers of breathtaking incompetence: they are not wise, nor leaders; just a virtual feedback loop of gutless fuckwits.

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Smash! Game, set and match.

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Agree.

One should understand that changes happening today are bringing us in time before 1914, before the First World War.

Putin has had a very difficult task,

on one hand to continue improving Russian state, and society, from inside, a process that was derailed in 1917, when Tsar was overthrown.

on the other hand to do it recognising slowly, painfully that so called partners from the West are not only unwilling to help, unwilling to let Russia alone, be independent, even worse, that they were mortal enemies of Russia.

Russian population was tired of failed wars and rebelled in 1916-1917. This rebellion was aided from outside, it was Kaiser's Germany that transported Vladimir Illich Lenin from Switzerland, across half Europe and released him in Finland, and Bolshevik revolution happened a few months later.

Putin is not Stalin, he is creating Russia as a functioning state, and BRICS/Russia as an acceptable alternative in global politics.

Changes that Putin has to respond to are indeed tectonic.

First sign, almost imperceptible was the fate of Edward Snowden. Suddenly wherever you live in the world, however open, democratic media or social media you like seem to be, e.g. Substack or Twitter (now in Musk's hands) still, there is only one country in the world where Edward Snowden can live as a free man.

Only Russia.

A fact, and this fact alone makes one realise what are the enormous potentials of an alternative global order.

What does this mean? In real terms, for Russia and Russian leader.

US & Britain led world wide coalitions that defeated their mostly German opponents, pretenders on the position the most powerful in the world, in two world wars.

Putin is offering an alternative solution, it is not black or white, British or German dominance, it is unipolar vs multipolar.

Putin is not soft, weak, he understands that war Russia is fighting is only in part being fought on battlefield in Ukraine, a part significant, tragic for a human loss, but not the only one determining victory.

The other battlefields of this war are economy, relations with allies and friends, like BRICS and BRICS candidates, with global South, with public in Western countries.

Putin's approach makes it difficult to organise a coalition of the willing, inside Ukraine, in EU, in NATO, globally.

People, states are simply not willing. Alternative exists. It's slowly being born, growing, maturing, but it exists.

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Wish more people understood this “It is easy to say what needs to be done - actually DOING it, unless you are a Stalin or Hitler, is something else altogether.”

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Intriguing contretemps, one never stops learning on this site with so many intelligent and diverse opinions.👍

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"But Russia is not the USSR, and Putin is not Stalin."

That is the problem, right there.

Regardless what you may think of Stalinism or Communism, Stalin could manage people and get results.

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Judging who is winning is more complex than counting bombs dropped and casualties. Vietnam won wars against France and the US despite huge casualties and failing to bomb any of these countries. England is considered a winner in WW2 despite losing their empire.

Is Russian achieving their aims? Ukraine is in no position to join NATO.

I take your point that NATO countries will not suffer any military consequences. Their economies are weakening though.

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NATO countries are going to enjoy the influx of banderites.

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It's a clear defeat for nato.

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A divided West, listening to tedious Lies, being smothered by hordes of Foreign Cultures grouped in Ghettos, watching their industries and work evaporate, is suffering far more than accounting/economic issues.

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NATO countries have already suffered huge consequences. Their military power has been eviscerated, their position and standing in the world has been devastated. Their economies are failing. They have been shamed, and shown to be weak and to have no morals or ethics, and that no country can trust them. The entire Western World is collapsing and cannot be saved.

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The bottom line in any war is whether a country exits the war stronger or weaker than it entered it. In early American history, our wars made the country stronger by annexing large portions of land that contained huge amounts of wealth. WW2 was the last war where the US exited the war in a stronger position than it entered it. Even though it did not annex any land, it exited as the only industrial power still intact, and thus made great deals of wealth rebuilding Europe and Asia in the decades that followed. Since WW2 every war the US was involved in has been a financial disaster resulting in ever increasing debt, inflation, and lower standards of living for its citizens.

In this war in Ukraine, Russia will exit the war, stronger both financially and militarily, as well as establishing itself as a new world leader which much of the world is now lining up behind, as we just saw with the BRICS convention. Russia will exit the war with the most valuable land in Ukraine with tens of billions of resources, and the US will exit with depleted military surpluses and huge amounts of debt it cannot afford. It will also lose the support of much of the world, as it is shown to be a paper tiger, and a poor ally that cannot be trusted.

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>Is Russian achieving their aims? Ukraine is in no position to join NATO.

Ukraine is already practically in NATO, and in a worse way than if it was officially in.

What they are using it for now they could never do from the territory of an official member state.

Thus Russia is abysmally failing so far in achieving its aims.

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What you wrote is complete nonsense. It is as if you live on a planet of your own where you have lost contact with reality here on Earth.

"What has been happening the last two years is that Russia is squandering its temporary advantage in hypersonics while the US catches up and positions strike assets in ever closer proximity, and while the VKS is suffering attrition in Ukraine."

In reality, hypersonics are not something you can create overnight by snapping your fingers. The US has spent decades of effort and many billions of dollars trying to create hypersonics, a lot of snapping of fingers, and it's failed miserably.

What Russia has been doing for two years is building out a very extensive arsenal of hypersonic weapons and it has been gaining priceless experience in using them in real combat. That's not "squandering" any advantage, it is *building* an overwhelming advantage. Russia has used those two years to develop an extremely reliable, highly lethal ability to mass produce hypersonics and to use them in combat.

In contrast, the US has been moving assets within convenient striking distance for Russian weaponry of all kinds. As for attrition, the only forces getting drained are US, NATO, and, of course, Kiev's forces. Russia's forces are getting stronger, larger, and better equipped.

"Why was it not the case two years ago? "

Because two years ago there was no war like there is now. It takes real life experience in war to become battle hardened. Don't they have history books where you live?

"It was clear a big war is coming since the early 00s the latest, and there was absolutely no doubt about it after 2014."

Nonsense. Since the early 2000's sensible people had every reason to believe the US would want to avoid a war that would kill from 150 million to nearly 350 million Americans. After 2014 there was every reason to believe the US was not so delusional about its proxy prospects in Ukraine to risk being annihilated. It is only after 2021 that it has become clear the US is ruled by psychologically inadequate (to use the Russian term) people who are extremely dangerous to their own populations.

"Whose job was it to have the Russian economy in a state of self-sufficiency in preparation for the big war that was clearly coming, and who had nearly a quarter of a century in power to do that job?"

It has been the job of the Russian government's financial team, currently an all-star troika of the best central banker in the world, Elvira Nabiullina, the best minister of finance in the world, Anton Siluanov, and by far the smartest and most financially brilliant prime minister in the world, Mikhail Mishustin. They've done an absolutely outstanding job at that, ensuring Russia could defeat the US and all US vassals in an economic war, despite a mere 25 years ago Russia not even being able to feed itself. Russia's economy today is not only booming, growing faster than the US's and faster than any US vassal's, it is also extraordinarily durable. Despite a US desire to destroy Russia's economy even at the cost of destroying the economies of EU states like Germany, Russia has completely defeated the US's economic war on Russia. Doh.

"This night there was another massive drone strike all over the place " Ah, no, that's a lie, propaganda for morons. It's not a compliment to your IQ that you fell for it. A few drones exploding in insignificant ways is completely irrelevant and has absolutely zero effect on the local populations, on Russia overall, or on anything having to do with the war.

I personally know Voronezh, Rostov on the Don, and Krasnodar very well. There's absolutely zero trace of the war in those cities except for two things: a) major highways like the M4 that goes through all three of those cities have lots of brand new military vehicles on the road, on their way to wipe out nazis, and b) the navigation systems in older telephones are often off because US GPS is so often spoofed. If you have a semi-modern phone, like one made in the last ten or fifteen years after virtually all Asian phones went to multi-system navigation chips that simultaneously could use a mix of GPS, Chinese Baidu, Euro Galileo, and Glonass, you wouldn't even notice that.

Everything else is the same, increasing prosperity, good times, and booming economy like the rest of Russia. Yes, it's a hassle and a tragedy for their family when occasionally Kiev gets lucky and kills some old retired person in a village, but hey, it is a war and that sort of thing happens. But that's just one death out of thousands in a major regional setting like Rostov or Krasnodar, not touching the level of daily tragedy caused, say, by automobile accidents. It's not that people are heartless, it's just that the very tiny numbers of deaths from drones are so small there are not enough to be visible compared to, say, the number of people killed by falling trees in storms, riding into traffic with e-scooters, and so on.

As for NATO forces on Russian territory, yes, there are a few in the new regions and possibly even a few surrounded and being killed off in Kursk. That's OK, as slaughtering NATO forces in Ukraine is part of the job these days. It's almost student level work (to use another Russian expression) you give to beginners, Russia's combat effectiveness has become so high.

Are there Russian forces on NATO territory, that's a big "yes" given that the US and its vassals have anointed Ukraine with virtual NATO status. They've spent far more money and weapons in their war in Ukraine than they've put into any other NATO country. And yet those Russian forces in the "NATO" territory of Ukraine are defeating the US and its vassals.

So given the objective facts on the ground, you're not in your right mind if you don't see that Russia is kicking the shit out of NATO, and the US, in Ukraine.

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The real issue the west faces is that it is totally SYSTEMICALLY corrupt. The wests military industry cannot compete with the military industries in Russia and China because it is irreparably corrupt. The western military industrial complex is not in the business of making weapons, it is in the business of stealing trillions of tax payer dollars and bribing politicians to keep the gravy train rolling.

The purpose of any corporation is to make the most profit possible. You cannot steal the money, use part of it to bribe everyone on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon to keep the whole scam going, and still have enough left over to build mass quantities of high quality weapons. Empires fall for one reason, corruption, and we are no different.

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"Russia is beating the ENTIRE West, the ENTIRE NATO, all at once."

And most importantly, Russia is decisively defeating the US in Ukraine. That is a huge tectonic shift.

The US likes to pat itself on the back and say "we defeated the USSR in the Cold War" when in fact the USSR defeated itself in the Cold War. If there was no US militarism towards the USSR, the USSR still would have fallen. The system was based on completely fake assumptions and totally delusional ideas about human nature.

But a US loss in Ukraine will be the first time one of the superpowers has defeated another superpower in combat.

Saying it's not a defeat because only the proxies were defeated is a lie: the US invested the massive power of its military apparatus and a trillion dollars in assets in supporting those proxies with the full time participation of over 100,000 of its military personnel. That the US chose a military strategy of using proxies for the trench warfare part of the US war with Russia no more excuses the US's defeat than any other choice of military strategy, such as overweighting air combat over ground combat or vice versa, which leads to a defeat.

Russia is defeating the US in Ukraine. That's revolutionary.

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Nah…are you serious? US is getting wounded and drained of dollars that is worth…..wait a minute…..the paper with the ink.

US are not winning but they are far from defeated. Their proxy took the losses. What is remarkable is that Russia did rise from the scrapheap of history and redeemed itself. The War will eventually unite Russia (if Kremlin does not bungle it).

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Hahaha..... Most Americans just can't stop singing "Deutschland Uber Alles".

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"US are not winning but they are far from defeated. " Respectfully disagree. They're defeated, just as certainly as a player down to only his king has lost to a player who has his queen and can steadily advance a pawn to get another queen. The US cannot win *their* war in Ukraine. That Russia still has to go through the motions of cornering the rat in Ukraine doesn't make it into a draw or a win for the US.

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Not defeated? In what world? The US / EU had very clear objectives in Ukraine.

It wanted to bring Ukraine into NATO and establish nuclear missile bases on Russia's doorstep to threaten and intimidate Russia into allowing western exploitation of their resources.

It wanted to acquire Ukraine's resources including its gas and lithium reserves.

It wanted to destroy the Russian / China / Iran / N Korea alliance and the BRICKS trading alliance to ensure US / NATO world dominance going forward.

The US / EU have not only failed in their objectives, they have made the situation far worse than before the war. They have strengthened Russia, they have strengthened BRICKS, and they have strengthened the Russia / China / Iran / N Korea alliance.

They have meanwhile economically destroyed and deindustrialized Europe and the US to a large degree. Sure sounds like a loss to me.

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I liked your comment John because I agree with most of it - except the bit about "Delusional ideas about human nature". I don't like communism myself, being a diehard libtard.

But the truth is that in many situations "communism" can work. Fx, the Plains Indians in America made sure that no-one was "poor" (Ie horseless, clothesless and foodless), and their culture ran for hundreds of years on that, very successfully.

Assumptions on "human nature" are usually predicated upon our own experience.

Social systems and cultures can be consciously designed to use human foibles (such as greed and desire for power) to enhance the society instead of harm it.

See Graebers 'Dawn of Everything' for a massive and extremely well researched - and very readable - anthropological analysis of these matters.

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Thanks for mentioning David Graeber, and for those folks who don't have time to read, you can DO while listening.

https://youtu.be/b44BJEpv3Qk?si=CgzFlhSJd9RY5ikn

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"But the truth is that in many situations "communism" can work. Fx, the Plains Indians in America made sure that no-one was "poor" (Ie horseless, clothesless and foodless), and their culture ran for hundreds of years on that, very successfully."

It's good that you put "communism" in quotes, because the Plains Indians experience in the US is not a good fit to the Marxist canon. In reality, the Plains Indians experience doesn't have much to do with the Plains Indians experience either, as it is commonly idealized.

Life on the plains was not an idealized utopia. It was brutal and short and often featured ferocious and vicious wars between tribes, routine slave taking, and settlements of disputes and rivalries through violence. (Referring to them as "communists" reminds me of how people sometime idealize the Greek city states of the Periclean age as model "democracies" despite over 90% of their people having no vote because they were slaves, women, or poor - nothing says "democracy" like slavery and allowing only rich people to vote, right?)

Many of the Plains tribes weren't even "Plains Indians" - they were forest tribes that had been pushed out of the more eastern forest lands onto the great plains either by the European invasion (like the Sioux being pushed out of the Great Lakes region) or as a result of wars with other tribes (like the Lakota).

The classic "Plains Indians" of modern imagination only existed for about 160 years, from around 1730 when the Comanche, the first to realize the power of horses that had been brought by the Spanish, used horse culture to eliminate their Apache rivals. As a result, after about 1730 horse culture spread very rapidly to create what (European) Westerners think of as Plains Indians. That only lasted until the late 1800's, when the Plains tribes were systematically killed off by Americans. As General Philip Sheridan, a famous killer of Indians, is claimed to have remarked in the 1860's, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Throughout the 1800s one of the best ways to win elections in US local and national politics was to have a reputation as an Indian killer.

[The only eyewitness to that claim says Sheridan said something similar, but different: When introduced to a Comanche warrior who said "Me good injun." Sheridan replied, “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.”]

Anyway, although it is true there were plenty of examples of Indians helping other Indians who were horseless, clothesless, and foodless, a more typical example was not spending resources on those who were down on their luck. Old people, for example, were abandoned on the trail during moves to other locations or nomadic following of buffalo.

In fact, as Indian tribes acquired horse culture and used the new technology to step up from purely subsistence lifestyles to enjoying a bit of surplus, what seems to happen with all "communist" societies happened in theirs: some comrades become more equal than others. Hello, Animal Farm!

As the certified liberal lode of popular "information" (Wikipedia) puts it: "By the 19th century, Comanche and Kiowa families owned an average of 35 horses and mules each – and only six or seven were necessary for transport and war. ... Formerly egalitarian societies became more divided by wealth with a negative impact on the role of women. The richest men would have several wives and captives who would help manage their possessions, especially horses." Sounds just like what monastic Bolsheviks had transformed into after a few years of sitting on top of the social pile. It's also a classic example of Wikipedian cant, as if societies that had always kept slaves were ever "egalitarian." Note also how Wikipedia spins the matter by referring to slaves as "captives."

While I certainly agree there were some pastoral Indian societies that seem to have been egalitarian, the Plains Indians of classic modern understanding in their century and a half heyday are probably not the best example of utopian "communism" in primitive societies. I'd also be skeptical of just how egalitarian or selflessly proto-communist were in reality even those pastoral Indian societies often cited as lost utopias, like the corn cultures of Mississippian fame. The closer you look into the actual reality of such "lost utopias" the more it seems they weren't utopias but just more primitive examples of hierarchical societies where some comrades were more equal than others. If you know little about how they actually functioned it's a lot easier to convince yourself they were utopias.

But ultimately such long-gone, aboriginal societies have little to do with Marxist demon societies like the USSR which killed millions of their own people, all in the service of naked power for a few while using a lying ideology to fool the many. At the end, even the many weren't fooled anymore. They had endured too much experience of the reality of Marxism.

Thanks for the reference to Graeber. I'll look into that!

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Haha! It is seldom I like both the combatants (Frazier-Ali of course). Good write!

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Given the circumstances, Putin did the best he could. And as I have said often in other occasions: if you can do a better job, feel free to apply for his position. Once you are the president I think you will understand that the world is way more complex than you ever had imagined. You are casting doubt when you talk about treason. You really think things will go better if you start dividing people and steer up unrest? The west will be very very happy with your effort and maybe even assist to speed up the process even more so at the end they are victorious and Russia will be nothing more than a cheap supplier of raw materials. You have to unite now and afterwards you can discuss how it should have been done differently. This is not the time.

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Well put.

"Once you are the president I think you will understand that the world is way more complex than you ever had imagined."

Western culture is now so dominated by relentless reductive and infantile fairy stories their imaginations are limited to the insidious virtual fantasies of advertising and public relations culture, bolstered by the hyperbolic, poison-rush of media lies.

When the West collapses all these fuckers should have to face the real consequences of what they have wrought.

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Agree. It is no use denounce Putin as a moroon. He is a great Statesman with some limitations (as is often the case).

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Oct 28Edited

I am not denouncing him as a moron, he is certainly not that.

And I am not even denouncing the person. It is the collective Putin, i.e. the system he is the representative of, that is the problem.

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Don't make excuses.

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"That he could not do because he represents the Russian oligarchy, not the Russian people." Abject nonsense, along with the rest of the drivel in your post.

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I would like see where General moron gets his misinformation from. Or does he make it up?

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Oct 28Edited

Has it ever occurred to your that what this blog, The Duran, Scott Ritter, Martyanov, etc. are feeding you is second- and third-hand information, laundered and filtered through all their biases and twisted incentives to serve you narratives that make you feel good so that you keep clicking and generate revenue for them?

And that this isn't 1954, but 2024, so you too could get an idea almost directly form the source about the real situation in Russia, if you made the effort, even without being there?

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«Had Putin used the abundant tools at his disposal to win the war quickly, all of those people would be alive, and the many more who are going to die in the future would be saved too.»

The outcome would likely have been very different had the Russians prevailed at Holstomel.

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ten fobs at holstomel would have probably saved tens of thousands of lives.

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We're not talking about Hostomel, we're talking about logistics and NATO meddling.

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You can’t still be this naive after 3 years of war and all the information Simplicius has put out.

If Russia hadn’t invaded how many Ukrainians in the Donbas would still be alive today? Remember Ukraine was getting ready to massively attack the Donbas. Do you think things would be better if Putin had allowed that to happen? If so I just don’t know what to say….

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First, that Ukraine was getting ready to do that was already a gigantic failing on Putin's part. It is the consequence of the Maidan and then not reacting to it properly

Second, that the Maidan itself happened is another gigantic Putin failure. Russia had the tools to stop it, but at the time he was more interested in vanity projects like the Olympics and in trying to play a servant of the West, agreeing even to things like the destruction of Libya and lots of other directly detrimental to Russian interests actions.

Third, the gradual Banderization of Ukraine that resulted in the Maidan is yet another catastrophic failure of Putin. This all happens during his long reign, remember that.

The actions you are praising him for are always late reactions to the West's pro-active offensive moves. Desperate attempts to salvage the situation. But because even those desperate attempts were never what the situation required, things of course only became worse and worse.

The Maidan happened. What was required? Russia marches to Kiev, takes over the whole country, installs a friendly Lukashenko-type regime, which then proceeds to clean up the fascists and to integrate Ukraine into the Union State with Belarus and Russia, with a long-term trend towards full re-unification. At the time that would have been easy -- the AFU was almost non-existent as a force after a quarter century of post-Soviet decay. Certainly much easier than in 2022, let alone now. What did we get? Crimea was recovered, the DNR and LNR were partially saved through a direct Russian intervention, but that was it.

End result? A much bigger, much worse war was baked in. Something that even Putin acknowledges publicly now. What he does not acknowledge is that he did not prepare for it either.

Which brings us to the second such case. What was needed in 2022? Going in hard with the proper force generation, and with no political restrictions on targeting, to make sure the AFU is finished off immediately and to make sure NATO does not meddle. What did we get? A symbolic show of force which did none of those things, the result being the current tragedy, which will quite likely be resolved through nuclear strikes.

Massive success from the great wise statesman...

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First rate comment. Thanks!

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The "jackbooted nazis" never existed.

They were Wehrmacht and SS National Socialists - a different breed altogether from the monstrous creatures you have been taught to believe in, and to which in your shame, you have succumbed.

The whole point of Barbarossa was that it was launched as a desperate attempt to defang the massive invasion army which Stalin had assembled on his western border, to take cynical advantage of the European situation.

I can assure you, that one million trained paratroopers, against Germany's 4000, were never designed to be used in defensive operations.

John Wear tells all in his masterful epic "Germany's War," available for free download on the Ron Unz w/s.

What your problem is seems to be a lack of eyes, rather than simply myopic ones.

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Yeah sure, Stalin 'liquidated' most of his officer corps just before a planned invasion by Russia. John Wear is a nutball.

Hitler was a UK agent, picked up when he visited his brother in the UK for a holiday.

The UK helped him, funded him, armed him, and not for the benefit of the German people, but to invade the USSR and 'destroy communism'.

Hess flew to London to check the secret pact was still on, and Hitler let the BEF escape Dunkirk.

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As I am now beginning to understand, Hitler also laid the groundwork for OnlyFans, and provided the financing for the hotel at Davos where the world's elite meet.

Not to mention that he only had one testicle, and was a sexual degenerate.

But Hess, you will remember, never flew to London.

He flew to Scotland.

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Ahh, you only get your information from deranged racists and Nazi-apologists, colour me surprised.

Shouldn't you be out in Kursk with your fellow travellors?

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Certainly, with respect to Hess, I think my sources are considerably more historically accurate than yours.

You probably never noticed, but all these Ukrainian units in Kursk are western-funded and trained - the British seem to be largely responsible for the incursion, so maybe they are the nazis - who by the way, I would do my best to eliminate if I were anywhere near the area in question.

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Oct 27Edited

John Wear apparently needs to consult some primary sources. That is NOT what happened. It is true that Zhukov prepared a plan for such an invasion of Eastern Europe, but it was neither properly resourced or approved because Stalin saw no angle in it. To the very last moment of peace, Stalin was transporting mass quantities of critical materials like chromium and petroleum to the Nazi regime.

Barbarossa was launched to crush the Soviet Union precisely as described in Mein Kampf. The Germans had numerical superiority all through the summer of 1941 along the front. It was only when attrition reduced the invading units to shells of their original MTOE did the Soviets regain numerical superiority.

Note: I only respond to reality-based posters.

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And you need to stop consulting tea leaves.

As far as I can make out, John Wear relies for much of what he says on primary sources, plus of course what the soviet insider "Viktor Suvorov" states in his mould-breaking works, eg "The Chief Culprit," who of course was Stalin.

The SU was by no means unprepared for war, and had spent the previous 15 years preparing for it, in line with the comintern philosophy, however, Stalin's problem was that he was all ready for an offensive war, and Hitler pre empted him, and either destroyed his assembled forces or captured the major ammo and materiel dumps - I have already mentioned the paratroops he had ready to go, whose clear mission would have been to land on the German airfields, and thus prevent the Luftwaffe from attacking the legions of fast wheeled tanks which he had built, not for defending the SU on its dirt track road system, but for rapidly advancing into the Reich via Hitler's new autobahns.

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I agree that Putin's motivations for the agreement were good...he hates war..But the problem was that, as he confessed in his Tucker interview, he was naive about America's aims and honesty...The agreement would inevitably have been trashed by NATO, with Ukraine much stronger, and a much bigger threat to Russia....

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Oct 27Edited

I'd expect protest but not opposition rising to the level of having serious political consequences. Also probably a moot point- crystal clear that US/NATO hawks firmly in charge want it to keep going. Eg to drag it out until the next election, indefinitely. Or until the proxies are totally exhausted. Events elsewhere in the world divert support from Kiev and it's clear to even full time consumers of US propaganda that Zelensky regime is fighting in vain, but that doesn't change the willingness to have someone else die trying.

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I gotta believe these fuckwits believe they can win by losing.

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Agreed. I understand why he tried the March-April, 2022, deal. He was concerned about the impact on the Russian economy, the Russian population, the Global South, and possible NATO over-reaction. Since then, he's admitted he was played by the West and that the West is agreement-incapable.

So he's not going to try for another "Minsk III plus territory". Objective Russian security interests demand he take Ukraine off the board entirely for the West, and especially counter the Aegis Ashore installations in Poland and Romania, which will require putting a Millitary District in western Ukraine opposite them with all requisite air defenses, and enough armor and troops to insure the West never again assaults Russia on the ground from the West.

If he doesn't do that, he will have lost the war, whatever territories he gains, and he will have to fight it again in six months or six years. In that case, he deserves to be removed from office.

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Oct 27Edited

>First, he states that Russia is ready to negotiate based on current realities. Translation: this means the currently controlled territories are non-negotiable.

Re-translation: they are not even going to get Kherson and Zaporozhye and will do a deal along the current line of contact. Forget about Kiev, Odessa and ending Ukrainian statehood. Forget even about Kharkov and Sumy.

Which are the absolute minimum conditions that will not make this a gigantic strategic defeat for Russia.

Because the comprador traitors are still in power in Moscow...

>Recall that Russia is under some pressure—even if it may not be genuine—by allies to seek peace at all times

Then those are not real allies.

>It is simply unimaginable that there exists a political process in the Ukrainian state that would somehow realistically allow such an unprecedented concession.

But it does exist in Russia with the opposite sign -- willing to concede those cities.

Remember what happened with Kherson? It was surrendered without a fight. But how did that happen exactly? A regional center of the Russian Federation (according to the constitution) was just ceded to the enemy without any resistance, who then proceeded to slaughter countless people suspected in pro-Russian loyalties who didn't listen and did not evacuate to the left bank. You would think that the supreme commander and head of state would address the nation on such a monumental occasion to provide an explanation, and to also pledge that Kherson will be returned ASAP, this being simply a necessary but temporary compromise. Because if Kherson was hard to supply through pontoons and had to be surrendered without a fight, but in the same time the nukes were not going to come out to prevent its capture by the Ukro-NATO-Nazis, then the same applies to places like Kaliningrad too. Are those going to also be surrendered one day?

But the supreme commander did nothing of the sort, he pushed Surovikin and Shoigu to the front stage to take the PR hit, he himself hid somewhere, as he usually does in such situations, and never ever mentioned Kherson city again, with the sole exception of early June this year when he came out with yet another proposal that amounted to conceding total strategic defeat. And the topic is taboo in official Russian circles - there was an inquiry filed by the KPRF on the matter in the days after Kherson was surrendered, it was blocked by United Russia, and that was it, the matter was closed.

So the question here isn't whether the Ukrainians are going to concede those cities, the question is why there is no serious intention on the Russian side to take them being evident to this day. Forget about the rest of Ukraine...

Which brings us to this:

>Unfortunately no details are given. It’s said on the heels of the election there, Maia Sandu will feel emboldened to begin provocations against Russia and Transnistria as per the bidding of her masters.

How is Russia going to defend the PMR if it was not willing to defend Kherson just across the river? The only conceivable way is to finally strategically nuke Romania and end this unsalvageable shithole's existence once and for all (which should have been done a long time ago -- the Romanians have proven to be completely irredeemable Nazis one time too many now) and present everyone else who might be willing to meddle with an ultimatum to stand back or be next on the menu. But with the current cowards and traitors in the Kremlin that will never happen. So who and what is to prevent the Bandera thugs from entering the PMR and killing everyone?

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Kherson was taken with a flying force with the view that the negotiations would end swiftly, and successfully. As indeed they WERE - until clown BloJo flew in, and ordered green-t-shirt hitler to nix it. That left Kherson lightly defended, facing a very large NATO-equipped army bearing down on them. The organised retreat from Kherson DESTROYED that army - the first Ukrainian army to be destroyed, as it left the NATO air-cover to assault.

Perhaps for you "Throwing a nuke or two around" is nothing important, a footnote perhaps, that probably no one would notice anyway. It's not like Western media would scream from now until eternity about it, after all. And any clean-up of what was now RUSSIAN territory could probably be done with some old bloke with a broom.

Armchair gung-hoers are rarely in positions of actual responsibility, I cannot imagine why.

Of course the Kremlin can and has made mistakes, this isn't a save-scum video game, it's the real world. What happens in the real world has CONSEQUENCES.

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yes, when I hear Putin criticized like that - I mean just look at how strong Russia is and how happy the people seem to be. The grocery stories compared with where I shop now and I think to myself...' could you Mr Critic have done that ? We'll never really know about that Kherson thing. Progzhin got it ready so he said, at great cost to many young soldiers fighting for him - remember that video of all those bodies where he was screaming about not enough ammo ? And then the switch over which perhaps happened faster than what the Russians had been planning - didn't Prigozhin pull out within a week or something ?

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>The grocery stories compared with where I shop now and I think to myself...' could you Mr Critic have done that

If someone's definition of good rule is the availability of consumer goods at a Western level, that person has some very severe cognitive issues.

Look at the big picture -- Russia traded half its population and a third of its territory, including some of the most critically strategically important for its defense regions, in exchange for having shiny trinkets in stores, a massive deindustrialization, and a catastrophic reduction in the real power of the Russian state. Is that a success?

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Do you ever wake up and smile at the sunrise? I think not.

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The thing to understand about our GM is that he is basically the pro-Russian version of the Kagan clan or the Atlantic Council. He wants to reduce the world's population by 90%, and he is very angry if anyone does anything to prevent nuclear war. Peddle to the meddle... let's get the nukes flying. He is sort of the Russian Dr. Strangelove.

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"Peddle to the meddle" Not sure that isn't a double typo/spellchecker thing, but I really like it as-is. Nice. Subtle.

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that wasn't Puitin

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Yes. GM has over-cooked. Some of his earlier critic was sane and had some bearings. But nowadays he is most in a state of rage.

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I recall liking a lot of his comments in the near past, but you're right, recently...

"Overcooked" rotflmao.

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Oct 27Edited

There is plenty to be outraged about - do you see any intention in the Kremlin to actually win this war? No. But this is the last chance to do it - the rerun next time will be from a much more unfavorable position.

And if you understood the reason why the Kremlin has no intention to win the war, and you also cared about Russia, you would be absolutely seething. Because there is a direct line between the traitors who dissolved the USSR and the current traitors in power whose representative Putin is. Not much has changed, certainly nowhere near enough to truly change policy. This time there might not be a next time. Remember, Russia cannot be defeated from the outside, only from within. Even when it had German emperors for such a long time, they were acting in the interests of the state. But for the last half a century it has been ethnic Russians in power and they are actively destroying the country. They aready managed to give up a third of its territory and half its population, a good portion of which is now actively fighting them, and they are now positioning things so that the rest is finished off too.

Here is a dirty little secret -- most people here do not at all care about Russia and its people. For them this is either some kind of a sports game in which they are rooting for one side, or Putin is the crowned by themselves leader of their weird cargo cult which places on him their hopes of defeating globohomo or whatever it is that they think they are fighting against. But either way, the people dying in the trenches and being bombed daily are of no concern.

This is why it is so easy for them to praise Putin's "restraint" and wisdom, and so hard for them to open their eyes and see the truth.

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Now the old GM is talking! Yes, people dont care about either ukrainians or russians. That is sad. Both people (most are the same slavics) deserve a better fate. And prolonging the war is sure as hell to doom more people to death and despair. I just dont believe Putin/Kreml are doing bad by purpose. It is more an inabilty to manage this War which grow to gigantic scale. And on top of that massive sanctions and all work with gearing up the military industry. Russia has adapted in a ”fantastic” way. And as we all know, this War is extremely lethal and the destruction of material is second to none.

It cannot be ruled out that a cabal rules Russia without caring about its population. We all know what "siloviki" means and that even Russia has a Deep State. However, Russia is possibly based on different values ​​than what we now see rampant in the West - where freedom of norms, relativism, nihilism and degeneration have become a religion that everyone must profess.

The question I am asking is what the Russian leadership feels compelled to do versus what they can choose to do. Then I agree that many strange things are allowed to pass in this forum without criticism being directed at Russia. Always a problem as people form in a black and white world.

Keep up the writing GM.

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You are wrong on a vital point: Russia is only going to get stronger, and the West is only going to get weaker. Russia has all the natural resources it needs, and the space for its population. It has a solid financial system, little debt, and a highly educated population.

The West will face another '2008' within 12 months at the furthest, is losing its global influence (control), cannot recruit people to fight in its neverending overseas wars, is resource-poor, and is weakening day by day.

Time is most definitely on Russia's side.

As for whether this is seen as a "game", you too are doing that, you are projecting. Do x, do y, big battles to end it quickly, throw nukes around... it is the nature of the human brain to conceptualise, and conceptualising is game-playing.

It is right to see it in others, but also see it in yourself.

NO-ONE can conceive of 100,000s of thousands of brutal deaths, they become numbers, statistics - that beast Stalin was correct about that.

As it happens, personally I wish Putin was more accommodating to Gay Rights, and was less patriarchal and conservative. As much as "globohomo" is thrust down our throats falsely by neoliberals pretending to be liberal, I am a liberal, and believe very strongly in equal rights for all. There is much about Putin and current Russia that i personally have problems with - but I also appreciate the challenges he faced, and the challenges he overcome, which include not least the facade of Western NGOs that use such issues to promote colour revolutions/regime change in favour of US corporation domination. ("Democracy" be damned).

Note however the key difference in our positions - I can see WHY Putin immediately started negotiations - that very nearly succeeded - at the launch of the SMO, and why the battle plans were drawn up with that in mind. Had his plan worked, then all of those lives would have been saved.

"Shit is what happens while you are making other plans" etc etc.

Putin has to take into account this is a CIVILISATIONAL struggle - it is not just a war between Russia and little Ukraine which doesn't have nukes. Of COURSE Russia could have steamrolled Ukraine - alone. But it was not just fighting Ukraine, and the potentials from NATO and the West had to be taken into account. If the West could have defeated Russia, imposed its own new regime, and stripped the country bare to pay off its own bottomless debts by throwing a nuke or two to kill Slavs, we'd have more footage of nukes being used today.

And lying justifications along the lines of "We saved our soldiers lives by their use", etc etc.

Of course there are dangers, and costs - to put it mildly - of going slowly and using attritional warfare, but you also protect your rear in case of black swan events.

I heartily wish the West had never couped Ukraine and started this entire war in 2014, a whole bunch of people would still be alive today who had no pressing reason to die horribly and in agony.

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Oct 27Edited

>The West will face another '2008' within 12 months at the furthest,

How is that going to remove the nukes the US is about to, or already has situated in Finland and Ukraine from their launch positions?

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We'll just have to see what kind of deal President Trump makes, and whether that will include a new European Security Architecture.

What's your alternative - invade Finland too?

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No nukes in Finland.

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LOL, I guess whatever school you attended did not value teaching the finer points of math. The West would love to be back in 2008 when the national debt was $9 trillion and the debt service was $450 billion. Today those figures are $36 trillion and over a $1 trillion in debt service.

The US is for all intent and purpose, bankrupt. This will not be another 2008, this will be closer to another 1929.

There are no nukes in Ukraine, and Finland will soon be kissing Russia's backside, along with the rest of Europe as they fall into economic crisis because their energy costs are unsustainable. And all that dirt cheap wheat and grain they used to get from East Ukraine, that will all be going to China, N Korea, and Iran, to help their economies....

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And what are "As it happens, personally I wish Putin was more accommodating to Gay Rights"?

Homosexuality is not a crime in Russia. They have all the same rights as any citizen.

But the pillow biting shirt lifters don't have the right to have transsexuals sexualising children, and they do not have the right to adopt children.

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And can they get married to whom they love?

So they DON'T have equal rights. Were you in that minority, you might understand the difference.

BTW, figures at least from the UK indicate that kid raised by gays have LESS abuse than hetero families - and considerably less than by Christian hetero families.

Nor did Christianity invent "marriage", so they most certainly shouldn't have a stranglehold on the ceremony.

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Well said!

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Go to the West and pick a city in the US or UK, France etc. and x what you wrote above by ten. The globalist traitors that started all this crap 40 years ago have turned those cities into even worse cesspits.

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Yep. The US - my country - is becoming one big incohesive ghetto. Russia is clearly trending in the opposite direction.

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You have a very distorted view of reality. Russia is winning the war, but it is true it is not in a hurry to do it. The reason for that is that the war has been far more successful than Russia could ever imagine when it begun.

Russia began the war reluctantly, fearful of facing NATO and its ability to damage Russia both militarily and financially. Little did Russia realize that the Western Alliance was far weaker both economically and militarily than it had ever imagined. Both the US and EU are failing empires that are a shadow of what they were in the 1990's. They have been looted and deindustrialized by the multi national corporations, and special interests that have diminished them industrially and economically. This war began as an existential survival issue for Russia who was facing NATO spreading into Ukraine and establishing nuclear bases 300 miles from Moscow. What the war has evolved into is the unmasking of the West as a paper tiger, incapable of fighting a peer power, and losing its support and standing in the world community. It has convinced the majority of the world to now give the US and Europe the middle finger and to join BRICKS and create a world trading system free from the bullying and threats of the US and Europe. Like all failing empires, the West will now be looted of whatever wealth it still possesses by the same traitors that have deindustrialized it and undermined its basic principals and ethics. Russia entered this war to save itself, and will end the war having set the US and EU on the path of their own destruction, as the rest of the world now clearly sees.

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>the war has been far more successful than Russia could ever imagine when it begun

Only a real cargo cult adherent could say such a thing.

NATO invaded Russia and is terror bombing a dozen major Russian cities daily. And Russia ate half a dozen tactical nukes on its pre-war territory too. But is too afraid to respond.

That is a success?

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You must get your world news from comic books. From the real information I viewed this morning, the Ukraine front is collapsing and what little is left of the Ukraine army is in full retreat.

The idiotic incursion into the Kursk region made the rate of current collapse of the front line possible. The few thousand fools now trapped in the Kursk region, are going to be used for practice for the N Koreans to see what it is like to slaughter NATO troops, as there are plenty of special forces from Europe and the US there to be killed. The N Koreans are eager to get their chance to get some real life experience defeating NATO forces, and to use that training in the future. There have been no nukes used, and you only embarrass yourself by saying such a ignorant statement, but then, I suppose you do not have much to be proud of to begin with...

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You have to consider that probably most of us readers are sitting in Western countries. The 'Leader' in my country, fx, prides himself on wearing clownish socks, taking his 17 year old son to the 'Barbie' movie and destroying India and Canada relations. So the Russian leader has become sort of a wishful figurehead to me.

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Mostly, AFAICT, it's fanbois making excuses for their hero's underperformance.

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We see that you've gone full retard again.

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He is clearly demonstrating that hate is closer to love than indifference.

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Sadly, I think GM echoes some of the critics within Russia, the ones often referred to as the "sixth column", IOW the Strelkov crowd.

I agree with you that things seem very different when one is not in the hot seat. Especially when the complainers appear to understand next to nothing about where Russia was back in 2022 and what a gamble the SMO was.

Some day the book will be written about just what a poker game this was for Russia, as only the insiders likely knew they did not have a full flush at hand but had to play as if they did.

PS sorry to move from the lofty chess to the lowly poker table....

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I like the switch from previously common Russian chess clichés to US or even Texan poker clichés

The measure of diminishing understanding of events

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Everything Strelkov said in the first weeks and months after the SMO started turned out to be correct.

Why should I care about who you think is "sixth column" or not?

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No reason you should care at all. I wouldn't expect you to.

Enjoy your side of the table (chess or poker - you pick).

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"Armchair gung-hoers are rarely in positions of actual responsibility, I cannot imagine why.

Of course the Kremlin can and has made mistakes, this isn't a save-scum video game, it's the real world. What happens in the real world has CONSEQUENCES."

Spot-on.

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Yep. I read stuff down this line from Rurik Skywalker as he calls himself now, I think. Always thought of him as a hysterical youth. But it begins to get through to me. Most recently what about all the best generals that actually did something being demoted even imprisoned and twerps put in their place? Big news, to me, that the 'Surovikin' line actually has nothing to do with Surovikin but another guy, a good guy, who was promptly side lined after the line stopped the summer offensive.

And what was Prigozhin on about? He wasn't just frothing at the mouth for the hell of it.

And who knew that Donbas was famous for corruption? Yes, I knew 'Ukraine' was but unconsciously thought that applied only to Kiev Ukraine. How naive. It was/is "ukraine' of the 40 million that was corrupt. It's a way of life for all of them.

And now we see the kind of hardball the Jews play. And how everyone goes along with them. Everyone! Everyone!

So it doesn't look so far fetched now that 'everything is about money' and it a war between oligarchs or cabals of oligarchs and the least of it is the agonies and deaths on the battlefield.

The oil pipeline runs through Ukraine unharmed by either side. It benefits Russia, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine ! How to disentangle the rights and wrongs there?

You can't. But you can clearly see you're into considering the concerns of oligarchs. That kind of arrangement is entirely their fief.

We are all being played for fools I think.

We are watching a puppet show and never get a look at who is manipulating the strings. None of our commentators, msm or alt media illuminate the darkness from which those strings descend. Well christ, we don't even see the strings. All discussion is entirely about the puppetry.

It is a farce. Incredible farce. Who could believe Germany would commit suicide? But it did and still does. Why, how?

We need to get our eyes off the platonic shadow wall and turn around and see who the players are.

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Oct 27Edited

>So it doesn't look so far fetched now that 'everything is about money' and it a war between oligarchs or cabals of oligarchs and the least of it is the agonies and deaths on the battlefield.

The most simple summary I can provide is the following:

Russian oligarchs operated in subservient mode to Western oligarchs -- they funnel Russia's real riches West for a fraction of their real worth, in exchange they get a percentage, which they convert into yachst, mansions and limousines, and a little bit also trickles down to the Rusisan middle class (the top 20% mostly urban population).

But then, as often happens in the mafia world, the big boss decided to cut the percentage of those underneath, or those underneath decided they deserved more, either way, the Russian oligarchy decided to take more for itself than the West was willing to give it.

Thus the conflict.

But here is the catch -- the Russian oligarchy has to balance two competing objectives. One is winning that conflict, but the other is maintaining its internal position, and things like total mobilization and nuclear strikes in response to NATO aggression will erase its internal power, because that means a return to Stalinism, and the oligarchs would have to be totally subservient to the state.

Thus their optimization problem is to see how far they can push the conflict with the West to extract some kind of concessions while making sure they do not lose everything (which total war would result in).

The other side has no such issue -- it is playing to win because winning the war means preserving its internal power.

The two objectives align for the West, they are in opposition in Russia.

A fundamental asymmetry and weakness that the West has been exploiting at every step.

There is another asymmetry -- the US is relying on proxies, Russia is fighting on its own, and the US will never sacrifice itself if Russia destroys the proxies. And I don't mean Ukraine here -- that is Russian land -- I mean the NATO countries in Europe. The NATO bluff can safely be called too. But Russian elites refuse to exploit that weakness because see the point above.

Putin is clearly not the man to fix things, he holds the system together. Which is why him having 80% popularity is a huge problem, not a plus for Russia...

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Agree about 90%. But Putin is the man to hold the system together. Without him Russia would have been lost to the Tribe years ago. He is doing a balancing act worthy Phillipe Petit (walking between WTC towers 50 years ago).

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I like it but I can't go along with it all because I don't understand it. The balancing competing objectives stretches my head too far. The oligarchy is not a monopole thing, is it ? Not a coherent single entity with 'self government'. It is a loose collection of pirates surely?

And the point is that the collection of pirates in Russia is closely associated with the collection in Kiev Ukraine (and worth mentioning in light of what Rurik recently revealed to me, the collection in Donbas, too) and they together overlap and mix with the collection in the USA (which of course includes the Bidens and Clintons with their well known Ukraine associations ) AND then, ALL of those have connections with the Israeli oligarchs and THEY seem to virtually rule the world.

We need some real revelations but we don't get any.

The Epstein thing is kinda illustrative, to my mind. We never got the story did we? Still have not. See? That is an indication, an illustration of the lack of depth of all the 'investigative' or 'insider' reporting we get.

Might as well be none.

We get fobbed of with fantasy, trivia. Scare mongering. News 'stories' like Blackrock is buying land in West Ukraine. Turns out to be 600 ha. Perhaps that sounds like a lot to dumb city folk. It's not even a decent farm in many places.

So given the possibility of it being as I say then who can control warring gangs of pirates?

Which leaves men like Putin needing to see that layer of reality of the war and all the other layers. And he/they have to do the best they can where they can to make the best of their abilities to influence events in each of these 'layers'.

Whilst sitting in a palace doubtless full of agents of the enemy!

I don't think much of empire building and by the same token even of 'nation' building. Jingoism is the handiest tool for leeches, thieves, manipulators and lunatics to control the unfortunate masses. Make them work against their own interests via supposedly working in the interests of the State. the Supreme State.

Disgusts and distresses me really and we all see that right now Russia is going full bore jingoistic.

Just as this was all started by Kiev Ukraine going full bore jingoistic and attacking a part of itself on ethnic grounds.

So it is not what I like, what they are doing, what Putin is doing.

But it might be the only way right now.

And Putin's jingoism is a far better brand than Kiev's.

And it is clear that the intent of someone, some mass of oligarch bandits, some something somewhere as yet undiscovered, identified, is after nothing less than the total destruction of the Russian State and not for the benefit of the people.

America, we see clearly, makes no attempt to benefit its people. It doesn't know what it means.

So I accept Putin's way for the moment and support him as I think everyone should.

I don't think there is another man in the world could play out this hand better than he does.

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Your critical analysis on Russia is often spot-on but you don't seem to factor in how fucked the West is. While to a Western outsider, Putin and co seem to have redeemed Russia from the Western vortex/cesspit, to a Western insider a global cabal of parasites, psychopaths and ghouls have taken over their countries and are destroying them.

Your existential point about the West is correct and maybe those maniacs will nuke all in the end if they really are going to fall. One can only hope the populations get to them first and string them up in public.

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In your opinion, who in the current political system, would be the better leader and accomplish all or most of the set out goals for the benefit of the Russian people? Thanks.

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Oct 28Edited

That ship has sailed, unfortunately.

Putin has worked very hard all this time to make sure that there is no alternative.

So there is no clear alternative, i.e. someone who is sufficiently popular and with a clear patriotic agenda that differs from the current turn-the-other-cheek-and-keep-taking-hit-after-hit.

It is also a much worse situation than 1917. There are a lot of parallels with 1917 - degenerate capitalist socio-economic system, lots of unresolved internal contradictions due to outrageous social inequality and total corruption everywhere, weak indecisive leadership throwing men into the slaughter in a pointless war, primarily concerned with its own geopolitical games, not with the well-being of the Russian people, etc. etc.

Note that the current war is not pointless. WWI was. But this one is existential. The problem is that the way it is fought makes for pointless slaughter that simply did not need to happen, because considerations other than winning the war and having absolutely nothing to do with saving Russian lives or the vital interests of the country are constraining the Russian army and forcing it into wasting many thousnads of lives for no reason.

Nicholas II got what he deserved for what he did and didn't do, and the country was put back together by the Bolsheviks, but only barely and not quite fully (the seeds of the current mess were sown exactly at that time). But the Bolsheviks were there as a coherent well-organized stringently disciplined entity that could accomplish the task of fixing the immediate catastrophe and resolving those contradictions. Right now there is no such alternative. Again, because Putin worked very hard to make sure there is no alternative. In fact he worked much, much harder on that than he worked on things like making sure Ukraine did not fall in NATO hands...

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Well thank you kindly for your time and explanation on the subject.

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It is inexplainable how Germans could walk right in to the trap set up by the Brits. They were the most reluctant at the beginning but then uncle Biden twisted some arms (You all know that NSA has compromat on every European politician…). Scholz has done what he could. Behind him there are even more suicidals longing for a Götterdämmerung. Those who cheered when Leopard tanks rolled into Kursk Oblast.

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Oh yes, who could forget Hitler's penchant for everything 'Wagner'. Excellent point.

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Well put.

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Very low credibility analysis.

I think you should rename yourself: Strelkov Junior.

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That would be a demotion, he is a General after all, General Moron. And now with nukes to fling at Poland. Westmoreland would be envious.

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are u fucking for real accusing a whole people of nazism and asking their extermination? who`s the real nazi here?

as a romanian fuck u and ur 'concerns'.

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Calm down lest your secret police will arrest you.....Instead of ranting here why not go into the streets and do something?

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time has come to get shit out of the fire with your own hands boy, say hello to the fucking russians :)))

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Ha ha

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In the UK the secret police will arrest you for both activities. I believe that's the case in the US too.

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I hope he is just shooting his mouth off, and these aren't popular opinions even in Russia.

Still, 60-70,000 unnecessary bodybags coming home can really piss a lot of people off.

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idk man from my experience if you scratch a bit a former empire u`ll find this stuff regardless of the former empire name.

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Yeah, in general I wouldn't disagree, it's almost built into "empire", especially since the shit-eating Romans genocided the Dacians, Celts, and Druids - along with other civilisations probably lost to history.

There are some grey zones though, some "Not quite so bad".

This is the third of a 4 part documentary by someone you'll probably recognise from more humorous films - but this is serious. The other parts are just as good, and the accompanying book is even better. I hope you can find the <hr to watch it. :)

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x72r71r

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thx for the recommandation, i saw it :)

u`re mostly right but i would say that the "Not quite so bad" part is just the period when the empire it at its peak; when things get tight the knee jerk reflex is to go for oppression/fascism.

my position is that imperialism/capitalism is the worst thing that happened to humanity but unfortunately this incarnation of the russian empire is, as we say around here, 'same Mary but with a different hat'.

and while i`m mostly ok with what brics proposes i`m 100% convinced that the seeds of discontent are already planted i.e. what i think it will become religious fundamentalism; unfortunately the soulution they found to unite against the west is a form of identity politics but based on religion instead of sexuality.

marxism is dead and with it a hope for a new dawn of humanity; all that remains for the foreseeable future is a dog eat dog world based on religion and nationalism.

we fucked up again.

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Yeah, when times get bad, the wealthy/powerful tend to desire to keep their own privileges, than downsize to help the rest of the publics who are struggling more. As the publics aren't usually fond of that idea... badged thugs with large sticks come into play.

As a true follower of Adam Smith - yup, THAT'S a minority position, Marxists! - I'm actually in favour of Capitalism, albeit a very different flavour than what we have now. As I see it, to fulfill proper capitalism, the workers must BECOME the capitalists... in short, private cooperatives. Half of the Left cheer, the other half get very, VERY angry; either because their brains explode at the idea that someone dares hold a different definition of "capitalism" than what their Prophet Marx did, and the other half because they fantasise about controlling EVERYTHING "After the Revolution", and those smelly worker types need their "Elite Vanguard" control to get things done right.

I can't personally see BRICS moving in a religious direction - in fact, it's the first I've ever heard of a criticism in that direction, which indicates you might know something I'm completely unaware of. It would seem to me that the top countries in it have very different religious position from the get-go - Orthodox Xianity (Russia), secular Atheism (China), Protestantism (SA?), Catholicism (Brazil), Shia Islam (Iran), Sunni Islam (KSA, UAE), Pagan Hinduism (India, albeit now under an attack on its basic polytheism by the current Modi regime), and whatever the hell DPRK follow too. While most may agree there's a "single god", and that religion should be plural and free (cough), I can't see a single common religious element of all of them - personally. What have I missed in this?

I'm of the opinion that "communism" works well enough in highly motivated societies of equals, but personally I'd strongly prefer a capitalist cooperative economy backed by a well-funded socialist welfare state... yes, hardcore social democrat in such matters.

:swiftly dodges all the rotten fruit and eggs thrown at the stage from every direction:

As a loose kind of Anarchist, such a vision ticks every box for me.

An article you might like?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/12