There’s now somewhat of a lull in the Zaporozhye fighting due to the mass amounts of losses the AFU has taken in their now fully failed bid to achieve tactical breakthroughs. Putin explains: Russian forces of the 429th regiment of the 19th motor rifle division of the 58th army from the southern military district have even knocked out the Ukrainian 128th mountain assault brigade from Pyatikhatki entirely, which means on that Orekhov front Ukraine was literally pushed back to the starting line, and didn’t even achieve the minimal gains that the eastern grouping around Velyka Novosilka managed.
It is interesting that from the SMO inception people were criticizing Putin for going to slow. Paul Craig Roberts comes to mind. Russia started its attack with 150K troops, and got clobbered. Because they didn't scare the British, their war ending treaty went nowhere. So Putin pulled back, let Karkov (and LIra) go as well as Odessa. And the war has lasted a couple years now with no real results. Bakmut sure. Wrecked the city. Is that what's going to happen to Karkov and Odessa? Putin responded to red-line crossing by bombing of GRU? They should have been taken out initially. Now Putin says he will hit decision making centers in Ukraine? Why are they still there? That's where all the money comes in.
Oh. It's a SMO and not a war. So as long as Russia is on SMO footing, the West knows they can escalate and do all those things listed above.
Correct on all counts. This after Ukraine practically flew a Drone into Putin's bedroom. Putin is supposed to have removed himself from military decisions. I hope this is true.
So many aspects of Russia's actions in this war has never made sense to me. In the interest of time, I cannot possibly list them all, but I was reflecting on the attacks on Ukraine's energy grid the other day. Why did they stop????? I am told the attacks were merely
to degrade Ukraine's Air Defences which was accomplished. They were never intended to deprive Ukraine of power. Why not? Energy is what powers Ukraine's trains that delivers troops and equipment that kills Russian soldiers. Then there was the time that Russia was targeting Ukraine's oil and gas refineries. That was last summer. At one point almost all transportation was close to a standstill. Why did Russia stop? Today, Ukraine has all the fuel it needs.
I believe that ultimately Russia will win this war, but the way they have gone about it, they deserve to lose it. War is terrible thing. It should be avoided at all costs. It should be the very last measure. However, when it is fought, it has to be total or don't bother doing it at all. Half measures get your own soldiers killed.
Because the real battlefield is the entire world, Ukraine is only a small part, and now Putin has a tangible alliance with China, Iran, BRICs, etc, and the RoW is oreinted toward Russia?
I really appreciate that Putin is going slow on the retaliations. By leaving many of them off the table, he allowed himself the ability to slowly ramp up the retaliations as more and more red lines got crossed. As the lines crossed get more severe, so the retaliations. Also it makes Russia out to be the good guys. It's hard to fight fair in war. The nature of war makes the desire on the part of the soldiers and officers for revenge palpable and hard to control.
Putin lays off attacking the GRU, reserving it for when multiple red lines have been crossed. He's a good guy! He's fighting a clean, sanitary, almost humanitarian war. Putin refuses to hit decision making centers until the last red line is crossed. Nice! He's a good guy. Russia fights clean like a civilized country unlike the bestial Nazis and the morally neutered West that supports them. I think the world appreciates Russia for fighting fair while at the same time recoiling at the crimes of the Nazis and the depraved West.
And this is very important. People keep calling for Russia to go all out and fight fire with fire and carpet bomb Ukraine or even Kiev. I suppose they realize how many civilians will die in such an escalation?
The Global South already knows how Western imperialism (basically NATO and the US) and its dogs fight. Just look around. It's pure terrorism. That's how the West spreads its rule. Rightwing death squad dictatorships, genocidal dictators, Islamist headchoppers, Nazis - these are the handmaidens of the "civilized" West.
Russia gains so much goodwill by being the opposite of that. The South can look at both each parties and decide if they want Russian civilization or Western barbarism.
I think that like most westerners you are ignoring Russian history which is also the history of Ukraine to a great extent. Russian history is not taught in our schools. Russians and Ukrainians are slavic peoples racially and linguistically close. I am talking about the majority of the people there. The origin of Russia begins in the Ukraine land mass where the native slavs traded with the Baltic Vikings who came up on the rivers and made note of the Vikings organizational skills. Being slaughtered on and off by marauding nomads they asked the Vikings what they should do. Being just poor farmers they did not have the goods to pay the Vikings for protection so they asked if the Vikings could provide them with leaders who would be given land and become Kings of their tribe. The Vikings agreed and brought with them the Rus as their hereditary nobility where called. The Kievan kingdom of the Rus was born and the rest is history Russian History. Putin made it clear that he did not want to destroy the Ukrainian homeland that separated from the old Soviet Union or harm the people beyond stopping the attacks on those people who did not want to be under Ukrainian rule living in the east of the Ukraine. These people wanted to determine their own future. Feeling more Russian culturally and in Religion as well. Putin stayed out of this problem for the people of eastern Ukraine for 8 years while the Ukraine army at Kievs direction got ever more aggressive against these people by bombing and shelling their schools and homes. When word came that Ukraine would join Nato Putin had to act aggressively, the alternative was unthinkable.
Unthinkable for us folks here in the west where its always the best.... as well. Our masters whom we didn't ask for or vote for will now really turn the screws on the millions of useless eaters because they own the planet, they bought it and by law the owners have rights, you don't, schmuck. By existing you are a trespasser.
Was there a church or other major organization that offered you comfort and help in your struggle to stay out of their clutches during the owners organized fake scare pandemic
With the entire planet in their pocket here it is...
what we will have to do is the equivalent of taking a live large salt water crocodile and barehanded turn it inside out.
AAhaaa ahaahaaaa nau wayy matei ied ratheea feit tin dingooouues on a hat fleeaat roaeek.
Ok OK Trans from old Aussie. No way mate Id rather fight ten dingos on a hot flat rock.
Care to explain what Englands fat fuck finger has got to do with Ukraine or Russia. You know, things keep popping up about the British establishments callous, deceptive and vindictive actions towards friends and foes alike its hard to tell which is which. Dresden is just one example of English overkill of innocent civilians. Ghengis Khan could learn a thing or two from these bastards. I can never understand or forgive Hitler for letting the English army get ferried safely off the beach in Dunkirk. The payment for that was the illegal carpet bombing of German cities. Had they all been put up in POW camps close to the Cities in Germany perhaps the bloodlust would have been tempered by letters of condolences to the mothers in England whose sons had just died at the hands of the RAF. Thats what the Man with the real cahonees Herr Goebbels wrote in his diaries. You say the Russians didn't scare the British, well the British have no real skin in the game hiding behind the Ukrainian army, stirring up shit in the bears face and not the first time either. Here's my take, this is the lost wests last hurrah.. Germany and Russia will become closer much closer as will the rest of of the nations in Europe. Then the lizards currently still in control of Britain will have to pack up and leave, the decent and honourable ordinary people of the land can step forward and enjoy the freedoms that their heritage and courageous ancestors laid down for them.
Russia is just fine, but as usual always judged in their action or inaction by other non Russian standards. That is the number 1 mistake. Germany could have beat Russia before the Soviets started to beat the drums of patriotism and love of mother Russia, now in grave peril. The Ukrainians a serious and brave people begged the Germans for arms to drive the Communists out of Moscow. But this was to be a strictly German Victory over a powerful dangerous foe. So not a lot came of it. At each big battle the enemy although ferocious seemed weaker and the Germany must win alone view prevailed until "surprise" the Bear became stronger, while the ordinary people began to see that these Germans aren't here to free us from communist tyranny but to conquer us.
All the big Bear had to do was to hold on, in his huge territory and even bigger back yard.
The French fared no better than the Germans.
This latest confrontation with Russia by a minority special interest group will fail. History is in the making and it largely involves Russia whose time has come
USA/NATO will most certainly commit some further reckless acts out of desperation. They will be punished severely for it, and it will be their end in Ukraine. They are grossly overmatched in every conceivable way.
3 weeks to go before NATO's summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. What will they commit? Will Poland and Romania send in troops. Or will Putin deter them with a major attack before then? I expect the war will intensify this month. A lot more people are going to needlessly die.
only because America is led by an amorphous collection of power mongers, guys like Obama who all but brags about being president still, who don't actually give a damn about the USA or anybody else. It is always Numero Uno for these bastards who enrich themselves from the taxpayer-funded Military-Industrial Complex coffers.
You are correct, excepting that Obama is just the message carrier to give the current occupants plebes their marching orders. This is already a WWIII because the war actually starts long before the historians recognize it.
I refer to the Allies as Donbass and Russia and everyone with them. I refer to the Nazis and their morally defunct Western supporters as "the NATO Axis." He he.
I think we can agree this is a fork in the road for the West. What will they choose? Don't send in troops, and let Ukraine turn into the clusterfuck that was Afghanistan, or send in troops, and turn Ukraine into the clusterfuck that was Vietnam. Pick your posion kind of thing.
The West's hysterical rhetoric and their previous support of Kiev have painted them into a corner.
Because the decisionmakers in Washington face no consequences or even inconveniences for escalation, they will continue to double down. That Russia cannot do anything to them short of nuclear war, is one of Russia's biggest problems.
For sociopaths respond only to reward and punishment. If the sociopaths in the West had to annihilate 99% of life of earth, they would do it in a heartbeat, as long as they got to rule whatever is left.
how about just telling KIev to sit its ass down at the negotiating table and be prepared to pay heavily for going along with US suggestions that war was peace. How about just cutting off the funding spigot? The arms deliveries? Too hard? The fool who announces that a place that is nothing for him but a platform and means to kill his rival aand who declares this nothing place as "existential" deserves what comes to him by way of punishment.
Not with Trump. It was during Trumps administration that the Ukraine got built up for the role of attack dog, activating plans and contingencies that were considered too risky and/or too much of an escalation to use during the Obama administration.
And while Trump might personally like Putin the problem is that Trump is famously incurious and the first person presenting him facts or 'facts' will fix those facts/'facts' as truth in Trumps mind. So if a neocon or one of the cabal that Nuland is part of get to him first the war will escalate and only intervention by the Pentagon (which is already more dovish then their civilian counterparts with regards to the war in the Ukraine) would prevent this going WW3.
Trump Trump Trump I'm sick of hearing that name. He is a Judas Narcissistic A-hole with a big mouth. A trojan horse, and as he likes to call himself: The Father of the warp speed vaxx.
When will Americans ever get real. Trump is just another glitzy puffed up incompetent self selling, unfit poser for the job of leading America.
On top of that he is weak as he truly demonstrated right in front of the live Tee Vee session regarding Covid19 attended by Fauci and Birks. He capitulated and let that little bastard who was criminally responsible for many deaths in the Aids epidemic among homosexuals, have his way.
If it were not for the attention swinging to Ukraine all through the west now, I believe that thanks to people like Trump I would likely be in a refusenik camp or force vaxxed by now. Remember the plan was to have 100% of all peoples jabbed by 2025.
I say goodbye to this wailing wall kisser, I know who his real master is.
Nato has many enemies inside the West. I live in the Netherlands and i hate my own gov. and army for supporting the fascist Zelensky. I know many other Dutch people who also hate Nato. and the Dutch gov. Not just oppose..i mean hatred. Cold anger.
It defies belief that Marinka is considered still standing. Before Bakhmut fell, most of Marinka was in ruins. The Media weren't showing the destruction because propaganda could only handle one city at a time.
the article was published in rt news exactly 1 week ago.. it generated a lot of discussion at moon of alabama site the past week too.. i was going to share the rt link, but you've already shared an english version here.. doctorow did a bit of a take down of the article on his site a few days ago as well... simplicius is a foundation of insight and wisdom.. thanks simplicius... i recommend moa as well for anyone not familiar with the site..
i think the obvious parallel here is with the cuban missile crisis.... if the usa was so adamant about their being no nuclear weapons next to their border based in cuba, why are they incapable of recognizing how russias own security needs are being ignored here?? i think the answer is obvious.. and again their is this historical ignorance, not to mention following one of the fist commandments in the bible - do unto others, as you would have them do unto you! how is that for a wacky response with some truth in it? lol...
"The Russian military knows you either launch everything or you launch nothing, because either way USA launches everything."
That is not necessarily true - it is more of a propaganda point to my mind. If 5 or six nukes were launched, the other side would not likely throw everything back - at least not at first. Indeed, there might not even be a reprisal, for fear of such a thing being triggered. But I don't think Russia needs to do this anyway. What has not happened yet is a reprisal attack on NATO territory. This, I believe, is coming soon. Again, here is where many believe the first escalation to nukes will happen as NATO is not prepared to fight an industrial waar with Russia and many think they will go directly to nukes. I don't think so. I think if Russia plays this right, a few well-placed hits on important NATO assets will quickly send a message that real war is at hand if the West doesn't start behaving. Russia would give the West the option of war or a security agreement as proposed in 'December 2021 - those hits would emphasise that point.
But whatever the case, MAD is built upon the belief that nuclear war is unsurvivable. That belief is beginning to wear off in both the West and Russia. Soon, if not already, MAD will be relegated to an position of an 'extremist' concept as militaries and politicians on both sides abandon their fears for various reasons.
Russia's nuclear doctrine is that nuclear weapons will only be used if the very existence of the state itself is threatened. So that rules out all of these calls for baby nukes, tactical nukes, and all that.
Is not the potential of nuclear armed F-16s possibly considered a threat to their very existance. In many ways, from a Russian viewpoint, they feel their existance to be threatened.
If the implementation of Karaganov's plan to Escalate to de-Escalate creates a ramping tit-for-tat nuclear exchange, the problem of uncontrolled escalation remains and you've opened the door to using tactical nuclear weapons. Not that the problem would persist for very long, since there likely wouldn't be much time to measure an appropriate response to nuclear strikes -- it'd quickly turn into a case of use them or lose them.
Strategies that rely exclusively on exerting appropriate influence on the mind of your opponent, to make them back down whatever doctrinal commitments would need to be abandoned in the process, are not strategies but reflections of idealism. Which is why MAD won't be going anywhere -- it contains a fundamental material component that comes into play when its political wrapper of deterrent fails. Namely, using the entirety of one's arsenal of strategic weapons improves one's chances of survival, particularly against an opponent who uses strategic weapons piecemeal to achieve non-military objectives.
There are people whose response to many questions like this is simply, "Time will tell." I always thought that was a silly thing to say, but as I age, I'm starting to think they are right.
Bottom line is you can't predict the future!
A friend of mine casually said that in high school and it's one of the smartest lines I've ever heard.
Even for ourselves. Most of us say we would never commit a horrible crime but theoretically we could go psychotic or get a brain tumor and do something really bad. The best you can really say about things like that is, "I certainly HOPE I would never do such a thing. That would be against my morals."
The amount of speculation about the consequences that this generates (only look at the responses to this particular thread) should tell everybody that nuclear weapons are to never be touched maybe even not thought about. If the global south cannot win conventionally (yes China, I’m looking at you) maybe they don’t deserve to.
This article is a panicked response from another guy infected with the need to have things by yesterday, a Deliveroo response. It completely ignores the slow, careful lining up of ducks that’s happening in the world. The American empire is toast, does not matter if it happens now or in 100 years, it’s a historical necessity. It’ll be sealed when old allies finally see the light.
Sergey Karaganov's wishful thinking about the "West" somehow giving up because, a threatened strike/actual limited demonstration re: return to nuclear warfare? Is far too utopian.
Sure, they understand that nobody WINS a full on thermonuclear war, and also that holding back once that insanity begins is suicidal.
Which is why the ethnically targeted viral pathogen development labs were established all around Russia and china during the last 20 years.
Sir, I am in awe of your analysis. Matchless. Perhaps, when this is over, and Odessa is free under a Russian flag? We can meet there, and you will allow a US Army Sergeant to buy you dinner and drinks. We may even find some young lasses to listen to our war stories.
What is your sense on direct nato involvement? Inevitable? Impossinle?
I see NATO incentives as uneven. On one hand, the US is keen on a status quo sort of conflict, cause they are raking it in re: EU buying all their Russian stuff from US, and the MIC is thrilled. The British on the other hand are trying to provoke a full on war, for reasons I dont understand. The Norwegians, poles and Romanians want to drag US forces into it - as without them, Russia would roll them up in an instant. Within the US again we have factions- globalist like Blinken who is indistinguishable from Baerbock or Stoltenberg, and who would commit US ground forces if it was up to him, but then behind the scenes I'm sure tons of senior ppl at the pentagon are pushing back.
The Norwegians are stark raving nuts on this. I had no idea. I always thought Norway was this cool progressive state. In fact, I thought that about all of the West. Now I know that the West is nothing but Nazis and fascists and has been since WW2. The Norwegians are one of the biggest Nazi-lovers out there. And the Nazi infatuation that the British have has to be seen to be believed! We all know the Balts and Finns are Nazis, as are the Ukrainian Banderists and the Belarusian opposition (nationalists like Banderists, Nazi collaborators).
The Balts, Finns, and Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalists all collaborated with Nazis in WW2 and none of them are the least bit sorry for it. The Lithuanians were some of the worst Jew-killers of them all, maybe even worse than the Ukrainians. Like the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians are busy naming all their squares and streets after their Lithuanian Nazi heroes.
Bottom line is that Lithuanian, Belarusian, Estonian, and Latvian nationalism is all Nazism. All of the nationalist heroes of of these states were Nazis and Nazi collaborators. Finnish nationalism is very pro-Nazi too. The Finns had a Nazi-allied government in WW2, and they were sending goods to Germany. They refused to drop their alliance with Germany so Stain invaded. Later, Finland let the Nazis use its territory to invade Russia, and after the Soviets clawed the Germans back, there was yet another war in Finland.
I'm a Leftist. To me this is one of the great antifascist wars, like the Spanish Civil War. Which is why I'm so baffled at all these people on the so-called Left supporting these diabolical Nazis. We tried to get rid of fascism and Nazism in Europe 75 years ago, but it looks like we didn't clean out the whole place, and Nazi nits became Nazi lice that have infected Europe again. Looks like Russia is going to have to fight the Nazi beast one more time. I think we should call the Russian army the Russian Antifascist Army.
I’m starting to think you are right. It’s like there’s this thin veneer of liberalism that’s present much of the time, albeit while still supporting fascism (right wing dictatorships), right wing death squads, and murderous reactionary Islamists!
Nevertheless, the thin veneer stays on and is all we see.
But when push comes to shove, and the chips are really down, they rip off that liberal shirt like Clark Kent in a change room and go fascist in a heartbeat.
It seems like whenever there’s a choice between the Left and fascism, liberals always go fash in a New York minute!
The KPD in Germany used to call the Social Democrats “social fascists” and fought them in the streets. They called social democracy “the left wing of fascism.”
I always thought they were stupid and crazy, but now I wonder if they were onto something.
Liberalism strongly believes in the liberatory power for the Individual, through private wealth, human rights, equal Law, and mental freedom.
Both hard Right and Left would demolish such things in moments for their own goals.
The Hard Left is usually more honest and upfront about their intentions than the racists and fash hard Right. Liberals tend to find both extremes scary - with generally good cause.
As the Establishment will ALWAYS tend towards the right (Supporting its own hierarchy and privileges if nothing else), to many panicked libtards the 'status quo' would apear more to the Right.
Are "Liberals closet fash"? Not if they are REAL Liberals, no. No more than they are closet Commies like the rightards also commonly shriek and accuse.
Genuine Liberals are disturbingly rare. They are not to be confused with the far more common "Centrists", who are either Imperial neocons or mouthbreathing backbirths who believe every lying word out of the corporate media and their favourite Talking Head Centrists.
The "Hard right" is a misnomer, and I agree. a classic liberal did support the ideals you started out with. But statism is statism, weather you call, it facism communism. etc... and socialism leads directly to it. For myself I place anarchy, or no government on the far right, and pure dictatorship on the far left, including facism. (more central government left, less right)
The constitutional Republic ideals of the US founding principles, are to my perspective, the best form of a necessary evil there is, and gobernment is a necessary evil, as by necessitie it is "power over others, the basis of all crime.
"No Govt on the far-right" makes no sense whatsoever. What you are talking about is the "Dissolution of the State" in Anarchism, and that comes about because of the INDIVIDUAL LIBERATION of Anarchism - correct, yes?
As Communism is to Socialism, and Fascism is to Conservatism, Anarchism is to Liberalism.
I know, I know, right now your mind is screaming NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
But it's true. Libertarian philosophy is also based on INDIVIDUAL rights - which is Liberalism.
US Libertarians/Randroids are Liberals who don't mind/enjoy seeing other people being poor, or think that welfare handouts can create a unhealthy dependency upon the state, especially if the state designs them as such for its own interests. Well, I can certainly see the POTENTIAL for the latter, although in Skandinavia I also saw a welfare system working well, because for them poverty is a SOCIAL embarrasment, and not entirely individual.
But, you scratch many Anarchists, and they'll mostly agree that EVENTUALLY, with the weight of massive exploitation and oppression removed, state-welfare would be needed less and less.
FWIW, one thing you should intellectually realise - a Corporate Fascist Superstate, a Communist Superstate, and a normal Western Liberal Democracy, are all Statist positions.
Left, Liberal, AND RIGHT, all have their own Happy Statist versions.
This is not something you can legitimately or authentically 'project outwards' onto the other ideologies.
I know that in the US Kultur Kampfs, Randroid Libts are [correctly] seen on the hard-right. It is an extreme perversion of Libertarianism, a former key element of which was that "Liberty is impossible in poverty".
Rand's amphetamine-fueled textual rants were not strong on the emotional/compassionate element of human psychology.
Anarchist tenets are Liberal tenets. Trust me, Anarchists and Trad Conservatives do NOT tend to get on very well.
Small l liberals supported slavery, the Confederacy, arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial, torture and all the rest of the apparatus of rule by the state. John Stuart Mill (of his own free will) didn't advocate individual freedom, he criticised state repression because social pressure was more efficient.
All true. And I would also add the Enlightenment greatly dispossesed the natural world in favour of unlimited human egotism and greed, and I can even follow and agree with Anthropologists argument that the localised "Barter" economy was actually preferable in many ways to the introduction of currency! There are equally excellent arguments against "private property" itself too - and I certainly don't mean Marxists/WEFs notions.
But, as you guessed, I stil consider myself a liberal at source, as I still place Individuality about the Hierarchy (right) or the Community (left) - as much as those are still important.
I think it's important to learn and accept the natural limits to ANY ideology, although I didn't enjoy this process one little bit when applied to my OWN preferred beliefs. ROTFLMAO! :'D
If you say to me "Liberalism is deeply flawed!", I'll shake your hand - as long as the criticism IS valid, naturally.
---
BTW, ever read the 6 Dune novels? I will freely admit Herbert lead me to the best criticisms. In the later books he makes the case that 'reality' is always shifting - like a martial art position. What would hapen to a fighter that always made the SAME move? Eventually, they will encounter a defeat due to their rigidity. And a defeat in Nature means extinction.
Ideological purity follows the same pattern.
We must learn to shift between the ideological perspectives, and be able to criticise ALL of them. Even if we prefer one or the other, or other, personally.
We can find there are more Archaic ideas behind them, ideas the constant shouting about irrelevant diferences usually hide.
FX, the classic. Worker-Ownership.
Is it left, right, or liberal? Is it Communism (communally-owned), or Capitalism (Privately-owned, every worker a share-owner Capitalist!)?
Does it matter which ideology the idea falls into? After all, it works for everyone. There's no better incentive to work hard than your own best interest BECAUSE YOU BENEFIT DIRECTLY. Lol.
Somehow, the neoliberals have missed this one, I wonder why... ;) ^_^
Today's liberals are finger-wagging moralists so dour, priggish and humorless that they make The Church Lady look like G. G. Allin by comparison.
Meanwhile, the pranksters, the subversives, the tellers of Forbidden Truths are largely found on the Alt-Right, and to a lesser extent on the Dirtbag Left.
This is not because of any inherent subversiveness on the part of conservatives or any natural censoriousness on the part of liberals, but is a product of their present relationships with power.
Thank you. Your comment is so perfect! I've been saying this for a long time now but it seemed no one was listening.
I especially like that last paragraph. It goes to show that there is nothing "inherent" about the present Zeitgeist; instead, as the Marxists have always said, this bizarre configuration is instead a result of "the social, economic, and political forces in this particular state at this particular time."
Which means I guess we should stop looking for the inherent puritanism of the modern Church Lady Left, who after all, used to be the "let's do it in the streets" liberals in the 60's. Liberals are neither freedom-loving chaos disrupters nor the reincarnations of Dante ranting out of his window. They can be either one or anything in between depending on the particular social-political constellation at this moment in time and space.
Since when is the Right subversive? I suppose when the Left became ruler-waving nuns, the Right did the opposite and became the supporters of free living, parties, unrestricted fun, and sexual freedom at least for straight people.
The SPD allied with the Freikorps to kill the Spartacists in 1919. The friends of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg didn't forget them in the early 30s.
Nazism is an IDEOLOGY - since when do ideas respect national borders? One cannot "defeat an Idea" by bombing a region of ground.
There were - and are - Nazis-ideology believers at every level of Western European/American society, in every Western European nation and America.
Essentially, the twin prongs are a desire for a strong Hierarchy, and usually some pseudonotions regarding genetics, so the Fash normal low IQ, stunted bodies and emotional ineptitude are still magically "better" than whoever their targets are.
Obvious connection as Mussolini pointed out to Corporatism - financial/econonomic control hierarchies.
These people weren't just in the Baltics, Germany, Spain, Italy and Japan. They also ruled Britain, France, America. The proofing of this is the answer to a simple question:
German Weimar was bankrupt. Within a few years Germany had re-armed to great-power peer level. So where did all that money come from? Which countries had the spare resources to throw money at Germany? If Britain today wished to recreate the Royal Navy of its heyday with 400+ naval ships, up from the current 6 or so, it would need to BORROW. If you're borrowing, SOMEONE needs to be "lending". Who was "lending" Hitler's Germany all that wonga to re-arm?
It's a great question, never saw it in any Establishment 'History' books, oddly.
But the obvious answer also points to the wider pic.
I think singling out these places for their "special" nazism may be a mistake. Churchill's supposedly famed "Liberalism" was barely indistinguishable from overt Nazism for non-whites in the BE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtBKDMN2U4s
These idiots want "global hegemony", no matter the cost to others. I blame the English upper class 'elite' schools for almost the entirety of this.
Thanks for your analysis comrade. You expand your fascist membership far beyond mine. Trotsky felt that fascism was a last ditch effort to save capitalism when faced with a threat from the Left.
More recent analyses have described fascism as a popular dictatorship against the Left. It has a strong populist flavor to it and is typically ultranationalist and even expansionist.
It often tries to reunite all of the ethnic group in the nation including those in neighboring lands. It despises democracy, which it equates with chaos, and it hates liberalism and the “degenerate” art and culture it is said to produce.
It has extreme hatred for communism, socialism, and organized labor, which it regards as the same thing.
It is “palengetic” like the Phoenix that rises from the dead in flames. In this way it seeks to escape degenerate modernism and go back to an older order. There is a lot of talk about the history of the land and restoring a glorious state or empire of the past.
Fascists are social conservatives. They are sexist and want women in traditional roles. They typically hate homosexuals. They despise all weakness and there are constant references to strength, honor, duty, etc. regarding the state.
There is often a sanctification of violence and a belief in its cleansing power. It is often warlike and belligerent. It is always militarist.
It hates and scapegoats minorities but typically will accept them if they drop their culture, language, and ethnic identification and assimilate to those of the nation.
The nation consists of one language, one culture, one religion, and one ethnicity. It is often but not always racist. Mussolini was not particularly racist.
I would describe Nazism or National Socialism as racist fascism. There’s much more emphasis on the genetic and biological aspects of ethnicity and race. It engages in ethnic cleansing and is often remarkably violent, with the violence often having a gruesome or terroristic character.
I believe National Socialism can unfold in any society. Conceivably there could be a Jewish National Socialism, hence National Socialism or Nazism need not be antisemitic.
As the Conservative is drawn to a hierarchy they know their place in, the Fascist wishes to use that hierarchy to kick downwards for their own projected out weaknesses.
And this goes all the way up, too. Not just your shaven-headed street-thugs in whom its hard to detect whether they lack more memes or genes.
The Queen ascribed her lifelong socialism to "Working alongside and with normal working people during WWII" - and do you know what she learned? That she was as good as they were. The Queen was never afraid to get stuck in, and because of that, the Queen never "loathed" normal people, because of her own fears of inadequacy.
Needless to say, I find the Left equally annoying in different ways, lol. All that Legalistic moralising!! >_< "We don't approve, so we'll pass a Law, and that will be fine!". >_< Left & bloody Right are just the same on this.
And the Left are all like "Ohh, after our Raptur..." [cough], "Revolution, EVERYONE will be so WONDERFUL!!". Ffs. :facepalm:
"Left & Right" if you ask me are just the two halves of Mainstream Christianity.
"I believe National Socialism can unfold in any society. Conceivably there could be a Jewish National Socialism, hence National Socialism or Nazism need not be antisemitic."
This is SO OBVIOUS, and yet the eggshells walked shows ...what? That Ben-Gvir looks too cuddly to be a baddy?
When laws passed to protect a weak minority from kicking downwards on them, are misused to protect a privileged minority from just criticism; the People note.
I do fear the inevitable backlash, because its never those privileged ones who face it.
I thought it was Hungary. Only 5% survived. And Polish Jews were almost completely eradicated with quite a bit of help from the Poles I might add.
Actually, German Jews got off pretty easy. Somehow they only killed half of them! There were 400,000 at the start of the war and there were 200,000 at the end of the war. I don't understand it except maybe a lot of the survivors were mischlings who the Nazis didn't really care about. I also think the Nazis figured they killed all the Jews in Germany and that the Jewish problem was in the rest of Europe. Also, German Jews were extremely assimilated and this enabled them to fit in.
Many believe the political spectrum is a linear endeavor, when actuality it is a circle. The fascist of the U.S. today is stridently liberal, with the Democrat party as their leaders.
The British state has nothing to do with the British people and in this war the state is trying to be American Caesar's chief jackal, a rival to the zionist antisemites in occupied Palestine.
I wish I could agree with the previous two respondents, but I cannot. Neither Britain nor America are authoritarian states. Representatives are chosen through popular elections. It isn't possible to separate the actions of these governments from the people who granted power to them. The public is equally to blame.
Truth in this world is messy. Not only is election fairness properly disputed, but the current yahoos have lied through every smile, and the "March through the Institutions" has been very sucessful. Most US voters that did vote in these GEBs (Greedy evil bastards) have no idea what they voted for, or how they have been lied to. Take the issue of "Global Warming" , as an example...https://open.substack.com/pub/anderdaa7/p/global-warming?r=slvym&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Under a thin veneer of "representative democracy" for appearances & patriotic PR, both USA and Britain are QUITE authoritarian. Try to oppose the foreign policy consensus of USA "blob" and see for yourself.
We can vote for any candidate the MIC/intelligence/financial ownership power structure pre selects as acceptably tractable/already compromised/controlable.
Yep. We can make excuses for why some things suck so badly, but the place to start is to look at the man in the mirror. Over the years, as the American government committed so many atrocities overseas, were the mass of people standing up and saying, "Enough!"? When true anti-war and anti-intervention candidates pop up in American primaries (as they regularly do), why do they never gain traction? When our politicians stand up for bloodshed, do they get heckled or get healthy doses of applause? We all know the answers. Denying our own natures means that we have no chance of changing anything. Joe Biden got over 80 million votes in the last election. Are all these people being manipulated? Is the government to blame if people can't think for themselves? What a sad excuse!
The UK always seeks to stir up and escalate trouble, so that they can demonstrate to their American master what loyal lackeys they are. Sort of like that little yappy dog that follows Spike the Bulldog around in Looney Tunes cartoons.
Take away the United States and the UK is a quaint, flavor-deprived backwater where the cops wear funny hats.
Britain is facing a life or death situation, or its elites are. Roughly 80% of all laundered/dark money goes through British territory or British-controlled territory (Caymans, Bermuda, Guernsey, et al).
Russia is certainly not interested in becoming some kind of hub for dirty money, but the emerging truth is that a combination of solid Russian regulations on crypto (on convertibility to fiat) and interoperability with Chinese yuan markets (which means access to places like the UAE, among others) means that billions in "gray" money are already being diverted away from British-controlled channels.
Basically, every oligarch "in the know" is already avoiding UK intermediaries (Chinese national accounts in Swiss banks are rapidly approaching ZERO). It's only a matter of time before even dingbat drug lords figure it out as well. Britain's only hope at this point is a complete capitulation of Russia and the ability to monitor/control its capital inflows. Otherwise, the British empire is truly good and dead.
It often sounds "conspiratorial" to talk about money laundering and "elites" etc, but the total volume of illicit flow (through all channels) is mind-boggling. The public-facing economy is now just a shadow of the dark one.
Basically, it goes like this. If you steal 100 bucks, you hide it under your mattress. If you steal $1 million, you open a shell company in Britain and wire your money to a British (or British-controlled) bank, and from there, you can move it anywhere you like.
Now, the procedure is this: convert your million to crypto (still tricky to do in some places), flip your crypto in Russia to yuan, and then move it pretty much anywhere you like, and now it's free from pesky Western sanctions or oversight.
For around two weeks I wondered how purposefully those Kremlin $bns had been stored within Western reach at the start of the SMO.
It took that long to hear it was deliberate, and a stunningly clever Russian move. In one stroke, the UK's offshored banking empire was undermined, and all for assets worth much less than Russia seized in retaliation anyway.
I mean, I'm the same generation as the current UK 'leadership', and they are as totally clueless as I recall student unions being 30+ years ago.
They haven't the fucking foggiest about ANYTHING - except getting good Murdoch headlies. That's their only required skill set these days.
I wish I could have seen the smile when Putin read the communique the morons had taken the bait. I also wish it was another country they were destroying so adroitly than my own. :/
I suppose everyone has their favorite place in Ukraine which they wait to switch sides to Russians. Mine is N 48.83559 E 37.46359, a bend in the road outside Slavyansk where it all began. I *might* be mistaken, but I think that's the spot. There was a road block set up by residents (civilians, notionally) of Slavyansk. And then one day Ukrainian government came up to them with a vehicle convoy and... opened fire? Or just rammed it? I'm not completely sure, it's been almost ten years. Anyway, over the next few days things slowly escalated until a week or two later there was an Ukrainian Mi-8 playing peekaboo with Igla-armed (?) Russians around some hill south of Slavyansk with a radio tower. And then a few days later some "special forces" of Ukraine managed to take the radio tower. And then later that day (?) Russians withdrew from Slavyansk and made their way to Donetsk where later on fierce fighting developed, especially for the airport.
Well, I'm still waiting for them to go back to Slavyansk. :) And take back that road block.
Even Oryx's infamously inflated list has Russian tank losses around 2000 so 4000 is definitely out of the question. I don't even think Russia has 4000 total *active* tanks let alone destroyed ones. If you're good with numbers and want to see a deep dive (though it's a couple months old now) using Oryx's numbers here's a good thread: https://twitter.com/partizan_oleg/status/1644532444341891073
As I've outlined many times before though, 'tank losses' (whether it's Oryx's numbers or someone else's) counts all armor on the 'Russian side', most of which was lost by LDPR. So it really depends what one means by RUssian losses, if they mean all allied losses that's one thing. If they mean losses of tanks by the armed forces and tank armies of the Russian Army proper only, then Russia has likely lost 400-700 tanks with the remainder being lost by various PMCs, paramilitaries, LDPR, etc.
There were some genuine braindead idiots on reddit saying how Russia has literally zero tanks left and that Ukraine converted their anti-tank mines into anti personnel mines due to anti tanks mines not having a target. That is definitely 100% wrong.
The Unknown War documentary of about 10 episodes, with Burt Lancaster as the speaker is the best I have seen about the Eastern Front. The Russians have provided tons of materials and original footage:
Amazing what you put together every 24 hours. I really don't know how you do it, and no, I don't think you are AI. 😁 What do you do for fun, (besides write and research)?
A coup in Belarus is right up America's alley. Getting nutty proxies Poland and the Baltics to make a mess--pretty standard stuff. Subversion and proxies are America's weapons of choice. But is Lukashenko really vulnerable? Russia ain't never gonna let it happen. Direct involvement of the US and NATO not likely. Frankly don't see the F-16 thing as anything but another empty gesture. It's extremely unlikely the US would allow combat sorties to be launched from NATO facilities supported by USAF personnel. Also, the "they're all so stupid and delusional" mantra relative to The Empire has never been convincing. They know China is going to eat their lunch if allowed to continue down their current path. Unfortunately for them, they're a day late and a dollar short--but they'll keep trying with what they do best--lies, propaganda, bribery and terror. The most dangerous arm of US domination is not the Pentagon, but the NED and it's gaggle of supporting NGOs. Now a radioactive hole at ZNPP seems like a good bet. Russia gets blamed and makes southern Ukraine into a huge, expensive, catastrophe. Perfect. Allen Dulles would approve.
You could speculate that NATO actually thought the Russians might collpase, but if not and to rescue something from this debacle, the port of Odessa could be rescued by UN[?] peacekeepers following a FF at the ZNPP. Putin is stupid that way, he is bound to blow up his own power station. Mad Bad Vlad.
I'm not so sure that the ZNPP is more than a propaganda threat. Are not these facilities built to withstand most anything up to a nuke? I doubt that Ukraine has anything strong enough to do that kind of damage. (Naturally, I might be wrong about that - I would really appreciate the opinion of someone who is familiar with suc NPPs) Of course they could be destroyed from within, but I suspect Russia takes security matters very seriously and plans against such attacks.
The reactor vessels are strong enough to handle anything the Ukrainians have to throw at them, and I think most are in cold shutdown so a meltdown is unlikely. They could still make a goddawful mess by attacking the spent fuel storage and that just happens to be what robo-Budanov claimed the Russians had already wired to blow.
Obviously they haven't, they've closed down the reactors. But the spent fuel will still be at the site, and I think AFAIR two reactors were still online too. You would have to be absolutely desperate to try to remove nuclear fuel waste in the middle of a war-zone. NATO would be tracking it every step, fingers on missiles for a good spot.
The Russians are not dealing with long-term thinking rational people here.
I'm with you, I don't see any grand new strategy from the political west. Like with the armour and western trained units, the aim is to be able to insert mufti nato and mercs into their own kit to keep the war going. Ditto F16...why F16? because many 2nd tier nations use them and their merc pilots are cheaper to buy and use as disposables than white anglo types. This could be supplemented with actual nato branded aircraft, for the classic shock and awe air superiority attempt (yawn) while maintaining plausible deniability. Similarly I don't think RU has any goals of a large counteroffensive - it has time and industrial capacity on it's side. Let nato+ bring whatever they like to the kill zone and deal with it there. RU does not use 'send a message' strategy - when they respond to an action or provocation, the target will have military value.
But wouldn't the globalist 'land owners', like Monsanto and Blackrock which have bought up swathes of Ukrainian land, be severely out of pocket were the Ukraine create such a 'radioactive hole'? Wouldn't they therefore tell the real string-pullers in Washington to leave well alone since they do need to see returns on their 'Ukrainian investments'?
BlackRock is using tax payer money and money they didn't earn to invest in both Ukraine's victory and its defeat. They will profit either way. One way they profit from Ukraine's loss is by investing in wheat and commodities that are produced in large quantities in the country. When Ukraine loses, prices go up. BlackRock profits. If NATO successfully pulls out a victory, BlackRock owns land that the EU and the US have pledged to restore using tax payer dollars. BlackRock profits and tax payers pay.
Ukraine is a drop in the bucket for them. They certainly aren't using their own money. And whoever is the Ultimate Bagholder will just turn to Uncle Sam to be made whole.
Seems to me only real trump card Zelensky and his marry band of maniacs have is blowing the NPP so...Why is IAEA allowed there? All Western orgs need to be banned from Russia environs since they are all infiltrated with enemy intelligence agents. Why is there not a huge contingent around NPP making any assault impossible? Furthermore, in mean time, why isnt Russia decommissioning the plant and removing all nuclear fuel and waste?
Regarding nuke usage I think this is remote and dumb. Good way to turn world against Russia , the global realignment she is winning not to mention Russia hasn't even started real war yet like leveling cities with civilians in them conventionally or taking out USA ISR etc. Russia has much more escalation tricks up it's sleeve before having to use a nuke.
I'll see you that and raise you, a legion of Thunder Warriors, since they were specifically created to be expendable, and were, as soon as the Astartes, their successors, were created. I'll let you draw the parallels here.
Am I the only old SOB that gets frustrated with the names of Ukrainian towns? They're in Russian & Ukrainian, old & new names, written in Cyrillic & English. English names are almost never on the maps. It's like solving a logic puzzle when placenames in text don't correspond to maps. If you really want to get confused, try using old soviet maps, entire cities don't exist.
Alexander Mercouris explained on a recent The Duran video, I think the one with Larry Johnson, that a lot of the names in the area actually have Greek names. Greeks never lived there but they were named to honour Greece or its leader or someone, a long time ago.
There was an active trading port there before the Russians made it a modern city.
Also interesting is that the City of Donetsk was founded by a Welsh miner and industrialist John Hughes. The city was originally named Hughesovka (Yuzovka) in his honor...
The majority religion in Ukraine is Greek Orthodox. There's a lot of conflict going on within the church right now, but the Eastern Rite has been prevalent there for centuries.
That is not really even Greek Orthodox. It's more like "Greek Catholic," and that's different. That is an ostensibly Orthodox grouping that looks to Rome rather than Constantinople. They're very Wests-oriented and in Ukraine, they really despise the Orthodox East and even see themselves as Aryan Westerners as opposed to "contaminated" Hunnish Russians.
Not only did Greeks live there, but the very last town to survive from the "Byzantine" (Greek-speaking Rome) Empire was in Crimea. Greeks also had colonies all over the Black Sea, ranging from what is now Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, and Russia.
That being said, most of the Greek names were "revived" or else "spiffed up" during the reign of Ekaterina II (aka "Catherine the Great" in English).
Give War a Chance!
https://i0.wp.com/russiatruth.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Fuayfo1WIAcexDi.png?w=640&ssl=1
It is interesting that from the SMO inception people were criticizing Putin for going to slow. Paul Craig Roberts comes to mind. Russia started its attack with 150K troops, and got clobbered. Because they didn't scare the British, their war ending treaty went nowhere. So Putin pulled back, let Karkov (and LIra) go as well as Odessa. And the war has lasted a couple years now with no real results. Bakmut sure. Wrecked the city. Is that what's going to happen to Karkov and Odessa? Putin responded to red-line crossing by bombing of GRU? They should have been taken out initially. Now Putin says he will hit decision making centers in Ukraine? Why are they still there? That's where all the money comes in.
Oh. It's a SMO and not a war. So as long as Russia is on SMO footing, the West knows they can escalate and do all those things listed above.
Correct on all counts. This after Ukraine practically flew a Drone into Putin's bedroom. Putin is supposed to have removed himself from military decisions. I hope this is true.
So many aspects of Russia's actions in this war has never made sense to me. In the interest of time, I cannot possibly list them all, but I was reflecting on the attacks on Ukraine's energy grid the other day. Why did they stop????? I am told the attacks were merely
to degrade Ukraine's Air Defences which was accomplished. They were never intended to deprive Ukraine of power. Why not? Energy is what powers Ukraine's trains that delivers troops and equipment that kills Russian soldiers. Then there was the time that Russia was targeting Ukraine's oil and gas refineries. That was last summer. At one point almost all transportation was close to a standstill. Why did Russia stop? Today, Ukraine has all the fuel it needs.
I believe that ultimately Russia will win this war, but the way they have gone about it, they deserve to lose it. War is terrible thing. It should be avoided at all costs. It should be the very last measure. However, when it is fought, it has to be total or don't bother doing it at all. Half measures get your own soldiers killed.
Because the real battlefield is the entire world, Ukraine is only a small part, and now Putin has a tangible alliance with China, Iran, BRICs, etc, and the RoW is oreinted toward Russia?
I really appreciate that Putin is going slow on the retaliations. By leaving many of them off the table, he allowed himself the ability to slowly ramp up the retaliations as more and more red lines got crossed. As the lines crossed get more severe, so the retaliations. Also it makes Russia out to be the good guys. It's hard to fight fair in war. The nature of war makes the desire on the part of the soldiers and officers for revenge palpable and hard to control.
Putin lays off attacking the GRU, reserving it for when multiple red lines have been crossed. He's a good guy! He's fighting a clean, sanitary, almost humanitarian war. Putin refuses to hit decision making centers until the last red line is crossed. Nice! He's a good guy. Russia fights clean like a civilized country unlike the bestial Nazis and the morally neutered West that supports them. I think the world appreciates Russia for fighting fair while at the same time recoiling at the crimes of the Nazis and the depraved West.
And this is very important. People keep calling for Russia to go all out and fight fire with fire and carpet bomb Ukraine or even Kiev. I suppose they realize how many civilians will die in such an escalation?
The Global South already knows how Western imperialism (basically NATO and the US) and its dogs fight. Just look around. It's pure terrorism. That's how the West spreads its rule. Rightwing death squad dictatorships, genocidal dictators, Islamist headchoppers, Nazis - these are the handmaidens of the "civilized" West.
Russia gains so much goodwill by being the opposite of that. The South can look at both each parties and decide if they want Russian civilization or Western barbarism.
The Dusk of the Western Empires: Oct 12, 1492 - Feb 24, 2022.
All roads led to Rome!
All roads led to Amsterdam!
All roads led to Lisbon!
All roads led to Madrid!
All roads led to Paris!
All roads led to London!
All roads led to Brussels!
All roads led to Berlin!
All roads led to D.C!
The Conquistador era is over….
The Fourth Turning is upon us…
The ‘periphery’ can manage on its own. The ‘Center’ can go to hell.
Make Russia Great Again!
Dr. Robert Fastiggi.
I think that like most westerners you are ignoring Russian history which is also the history of Ukraine to a great extent. Russian history is not taught in our schools. Russians and Ukrainians are slavic peoples racially and linguistically close. I am talking about the majority of the people there. The origin of Russia begins in the Ukraine land mass where the native slavs traded with the Baltic Vikings who came up on the rivers and made note of the Vikings organizational skills. Being slaughtered on and off by marauding nomads they asked the Vikings what they should do. Being just poor farmers they did not have the goods to pay the Vikings for protection so they asked if the Vikings could provide them with leaders who would be given land and become Kings of their tribe. The Vikings agreed and brought with them the Rus as their hereditary nobility where called. The Kievan kingdom of the Rus was born and the rest is history Russian History. Putin made it clear that he did not want to destroy the Ukrainian homeland that separated from the old Soviet Union or harm the people beyond stopping the attacks on those people who did not want to be under Ukrainian rule living in the east of the Ukraine. These people wanted to determine their own future. Feeling more Russian culturally and in Religion as well. Putin stayed out of this problem for the people of eastern Ukraine for 8 years while the Ukraine army at Kievs direction got ever more aggressive against these people by bombing and shelling their schools and homes. When word came that Ukraine would join Nato Putin had to act aggressively, the alternative was unthinkable.
Unthinkable for us folks here in the west where its always the best.... as well. Our masters whom we didn't ask for or vote for will now really turn the screws on the millions of useless eaters because they own the planet, they bought it and by law the owners have rights, you don't, schmuck. By existing you are a trespasser.
Was there a church or other major organization that offered you comfort and help in your struggle to stay out of their clutches during the owners organized fake scare pandemic
With the entire planet in their pocket here it is...
what we will have to do is the equivalent of taking a live large salt water crocodile and barehanded turn it inside out.
AAhaaa ahaahaaaa nau wayy matei ied ratheea feit tin dingooouues on a hat fleeaat roaeek.
Ok OK Trans from old Aussie. No way mate Id rather fight ten dingos on a hot flat rock.
WBJ.
Jim McGilbrith
Care to explain what Englands fat fuck finger has got to do with Ukraine or Russia. You know, things keep popping up about the British establishments callous, deceptive and vindictive actions towards friends and foes alike its hard to tell which is which. Dresden is just one example of English overkill of innocent civilians. Ghengis Khan could learn a thing or two from these bastards. I can never understand or forgive Hitler for letting the English army get ferried safely off the beach in Dunkirk. The payment for that was the illegal carpet bombing of German cities. Had they all been put up in POW camps close to the Cities in Germany perhaps the bloodlust would have been tempered by letters of condolences to the mothers in England whose sons had just died at the hands of the RAF. Thats what the Man with the real cahonees Herr Goebbels wrote in his diaries. You say the Russians didn't scare the British, well the British have no real skin in the game hiding behind the Ukrainian army, stirring up shit in the bears face and not the first time either. Here's my take, this is the lost wests last hurrah.. Germany and Russia will become closer much closer as will the rest of of the nations in Europe. Then the lizards currently still in control of Britain will have to pack up and leave, the decent and honourable ordinary people of the land can step forward and enjoy the freedoms that their heritage and courageous ancestors laid down for them.
Russia is just fine, but as usual always judged in their action or inaction by other non Russian standards. That is the number 1 mistake. Germany could have beat Russia before the Soviets started to beat the drums of patriotism and love of mother Russia, now in grave peril. The Ukrainians a serious and brave people begged the Germans for arms to drive the Communists out of Moscow. But this was to be a strictly German Victory over a powerful dangerous foe. So not a lot came of it. At each big battle the enemy although ferocious seemed weaker and the Germany must win alone view prevailed until "surprise" the Bear became stronger, while the ordinary people began to see that these Germans aren't here to free us from communist tyranny but to conquer us.
All the big Bear had to do was to hold on, in his huge territory and even bigger back yard.
The French fared no better than the Germans.
This latest confrontation with Russia by a minority special interest group will fail. History is in the making and it largely involves Russia whose time has come
WBJ
Goodunn
WBJ
USA/NATO will most certainly commit some further reckless acts out of desperation. They will be punished severely for it, and it will be their end in Ukraine. They are grossly overmatched in every conceivable way.
3 weeks to go before NATO's summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. What will they commit? Will Poland and Romania send in troops. Or will Putin deter them with a major attack before then? I expect the war will intensify this month. A lot more people are going to needlessly die.
NATO is a nest of vipers, a den of thieves, a cabal of murderers.
They have a Nazi mindset. It was inculcated by the surviving German European Nazis in 1945.
Quite agree, the war is as existential for the US empire as it is for the Allies and the Allies are winning.
only because America is led by an amorphous collection of power mongers, guys like Obama who all but brags about being president still, who don't actually give a damn about the USA or anybody else. It is always Numero Uno for these bastards who enrich themselves from the taxpayer-funded Military-Industrial Complex coffers.
You are correct, excepting that Obama is just the message carrier to give the current occupants plebes their marching orders. This is already a WWIII because the war actually starts long before the historians recognize it.
Which Allies are you referring to? If you refer to the USA and it's NATO Vassals, you're a delusional propagandized dupe.
The Allies are the Donbas Republics and the RF. Are you an American?
Thanks for clarifying. I'm with you. Yes, I am an American disgusted with my Neocon Nazi Warmonger and war profiteering government.
I'm English and in the same boat with the shower that runs this country for the shower that runs your country. ;O)
We're still an English vassal! ;D
4th of July is coming up. It would be a good time for Australia to declare independence and tell the USA to sod off!
The Aussies should apply for BRICS+ and the SCO.
Otherwise Australia will end up a Shithole like the USA and UK.
I refer to the Allies as Donbass and Russia and everyone with them. I refer to the Nazis and their morally defunct Western supporters as "the NATO Axis." He he.
I think we can agree this is a fork in the road for the West. What will they choose? Don't send in troops, and let Ukraine turn into the clusterfuck that was Afghanistan, or send in troops, and turn Ukraine into the clusterfuck that was Vietnam. Pick your posion kind of thing.
The West's hysterical rhetoric and their previous support of Kiev have painted them into a corner.
Because the decisionmakers in Washington face no consequences or even inconveniences for escalation, they will continue to double down. That Russia cannot do anything to them short of nuclear war, is one of Russia's biggest problems.
For sociopaths respond only to reward and punishment. If the sociopaths in the West had to annihilate 99% of life of earth, they would do it in a heartbeat, as long as they got to rule whatever is left.
To be completely honest, part of me hopes the sociopaths get their way, and drive the hegemonic empire into the ground, so the US can be born anew.
You can't kill them, because they fight back. You can only let them kill themselves.
The problem is that the sociopaths have enough power to end things for all of us, and they are ruthless enough to do so.
They are crazy enough to do so.
how about just telling KIev to sit its ass down at the negotiating table and be prepared to pay heavily for going along with US suggestions that war was peace. How about just cutting off the funding spigot? The arms deliveries? Too hard? The fool who announces that a place that is nothing for him but a platform and means to kill his rival aand who declares this nothing place as "existential" deserves what comes to him by way of punishment.
Who will tell Ukraine that?
The earliest we have any hope of that happening is 2025, if either Trump or Kennedy wins the presidency. Until then, it's escalation all the way.
Not with Trump. It was during Trumps administration that the Ukraine got built up for the role of attack dog, activating plans and contingencies that were considered too risky and/or too much of an escalation to use during the Obama administration.
And while Trump might personally like Putin the problem is that Trump is famously incurious and the first person presenting him facts or 'facts' will fix those facts/'facts' as truth in Trumps mind. So if a neocon or one of the cabal that Nuland is part of get to him first the war will escalate and only intervention by the Pentagon (which is already more dovish then their civilian counterparts with regards to the war in the Ukraine) would prevent this going WW3.
Who cares
Trump Trump Trump I'm sick of hearing that name. He is a Judas Narcissistic A-hole with a big mouth. A trojan horse, and as he likes to call himself: The Father of the warp speed vaxx.
When will Americans ever get real. Trump is just another glitzy puffed up incompetent self selling, unfit poser for the job of leading America.
On top of that he is weak as he truly demonstrated right in front of the live Tee Vee session regarding Covid19 attended by Fauci and Birks. He capitulated and let that little bastard who was criminally responsible for many deaths in the Aids epidemic among homosexuals, have his way.
If it were not for the attention swinging to Ukraine all through the west now, I believe that thanks to people like Trump I would likely be in a refusenik camp or force vaxxed by now. Remember the plan was to have 100% of all peoples jabbed by 2025.
I say goodbye to this wailing wall kisser, I know who his real master is.
WBJ.
Nato has many enemies inside the West. I live in the Netherlands and i hate my own gov. and army for supporting the fascist Zelensky. I know many other Dutch people who also hate Nato. and the Dutch gov. Not just oppose..i mean hatred. Cold anger.
Or to quote Abraham Lincoln.
"A house divide against itself, cannot stand"...
Go Russia! Go!
Sergey Karaganov's pro-nuclear attack article was frightening because he argued well. It can be viewed in English at https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/a-difficult-but-necessary-decision/
It defies belief that Marinka is considered still standing. Before Bakhmut fell, most of Marinka was in ruins. The Media weren't showing the destruction because propaganda could only handle one city at a time.
Thank you for the English. Sure wish I could read/speak Russian. Some powerful stuff in that op-ed.
the article was published in rt news exactly 1 week ago.. it generated a lot of discussion at moon of alabama site the past week too.. i was going to share the rt link, but you've already shared an english version here.. doctorow did a bit of a take down of the article on his site a few days ago as well... simplicius is a foundation of insight and wisdom.. thanks simplicius... i recommend moa as well for anyone not familiar with the site..
i think the obvious parallel here is with the cuban missile crisis.... if the usa was so adamant about their being no nuclear weapons next to their border based in cuba, why are they incapable of recognizing how russias own security needs are being ignored here?? i think the answer is obvious.. and again their is this historical ignorance, not to mention following one of the fist commandments in the bible - do unto others, as you would have them do unto you! how is that for a wacky response with some truth in it? lol...
He doesn't really understand the nuclear deterance ladder. His plan would guarantee a Russian loss in nuclear war.
The Russian military knows you either launch everything or you launch nothing, because either way USA launches everything.
Nobody is backing down because Russia used a nuke "for show" in their own backyard of all places.
Despite the authors convincing rhetoric, he is an amateur in regards to his knowledge on how nuclear deterrence works.
"The Russian military knows you either launch everything or you launch nothing, because either way USA launches everything."
That is not necessarily true - it is more of a propaganda point to my mind. If 5 or six nukes were launched, the other side would not likely throw everything back - at least not at first. Indeed, there might not even be a reprisal, for fear of such a thing being triggered. But I don't think Russia needs to do this anyway. What has not happened yet is a reprisal attack on NATO territory. This, I believe, is coming soon. Again, here is where many believe the first escalation to nukes will happen as NATO is not prepared to fight an industrial waar with Russia and many think they will go directly to nukes. I don't think so. I think if Russia plays this right, a few well-placed hits on important NATO assets will quickly send a message that real war is at hand if the West doesn't start behaving. Russia would give the West the option of war or a security agreement as proposed in 'December 2021 - those hits would emphasise that point.
But whatever the case, MAD is built upon the belief that nuclear war is unsurvivable. That belief is beginning to wear off in both the West and Russia. Soon, if not already, MAD will be relegated to an position of an 'extremist' concept as militaries and politicians on both sides abandon their fears for various reasons.
Russia's nuclear doctrine is that nuclear weapons will only be used if the very existence of the state itself is threatened. So that rules out all of these calls for baby nukes, tactical nukes, and all that.
Is not the potential of nuclear armed F-16s possibly considered a threat to their very existance. In many ways, from a Russian viewpoint, they feel their existance to be threatened.
The state has be on the verge of literally falling is what I have heard.
Which is why they gave nukes to be used by Belarus. (Only to be used when that state itself is threatened...)
If the implementation of Karaganov's plan to Escalate to de-Escalate creates a ramping tit-for-tat nuclear exchange, the problem of uncontrolled escalation remains and you've opened the door to using tactical nuclear weapons. Not that the problem would persist for very long, since there likely wouldn't be much time to measure an appropriate response to nuclear strikes -- it'd quickly turn into a case of use them or lose them.
Strategies that rely exclusively on exerting appropriate influence on the mind of your opponent, to make them back down whatever doctrinal commitments would need to be abandoned in the process, are not strategies but reflections of idealism. Which is why MAD won't be going anywhere -- it contains a fundamental material component that comes into play when its political wrapper of deterrent fails. Namely, using the entirety of one's arsenal of strategic weapons improves one's chances of survival, particularly against an opponent who uses strategic weapons piecemeal to achieve non-military objectives.
So you think that the US would sacrifice Boston for Poznan? I'm not so sure about that.
Me too.
I'm not a god. Human nature doesn't always do what we expect it to do. We'd only have a definitive answer if it happened.
There are people whose response to many questions like this is simply, "Time will tell." I always thought that was a silly thing to say, but as I age, I'm starting to think they are right.
Bottom line is you can't predict the future!
A friend of mine casually said that in high school and it's one of the smartest lines I've ever heard.
Even for ourselves. Most of us say we would never commit a horrible crime but theoretically we could go psychotic or get a brain tumor and do something really bad. The best you can really say about things like that is, "I certainly HOPE I would never do such a thing. That would be against my morals."
Absolutely, Robert. I also hope I don't get brain cancer and become a serial killer of sociopaths :)
The amount of speculation about the consequences that this generates (only look at the responses to this particular thread) should tell everybody that nuclear weapons are to never be touched maybe even not thought about. If the global south cannot win conventionally (yes China, I’m looking at you) maybe they don’t deserve to.
This article is a panicked response from another guy infected with the need to have things by yesterday, a Deliveroo response. It completely ignores the slow, careful lining up of ducks that’s happening in the world. The American empire is toast, does not matter if it happens now or in 100 years, it’s a historical necessity. It’ll be sealed when old allies finally see the light.
Moscow metro bunkers are over 150 feet deep. What about NY ones ?
Does not matter. Because neither are set up for years to decades of full occupancy use. "The survivors would envy the dead".
Sergey Karaganov's wishful thinking about the "West" somehow giving up because, a threatened strike/actual limited demonstration re: return to nuclear warfare? Is far too utopian.
Sure, they understand that nobody WINS a full on thermonuclear war, and also that holding back once that insanity begins is suicidal.
Which is why the ethnically targeted viral pathogen development labs were established all around Russia and china during the last 20 years.
Sir, I am in awe of your analysis. Matchless. Perhaps, when this is over, and Odessa is free under a Russian flag? We can meet there, and you will allow a US Army Sergeant to buy you dinner and drinks. We may even find some young lasses to listen to our war stories.
Why is none using the G6 platform?
What is that?
Perhaps he meant South African G6 SPG.
The answer is self-explanatory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4s6H4ku6ZY
?
What is your sense on direct nato involvement? Inevitable? Impossinle?
I see NATO incentives as uneven. On one hand, the US is keen on a status quo sort of conflict, cause they are raking it in re: EU buying all their Russian stuff from US, and the MIC is thrilled. The British on the other hand are trying to provoke a full on war, for reasons I dont understand. The Norwegians, poles and Romanians want to drag US forces into it - as without them, Russia would roll them up in an instant. Within the US again we have factions- globalist like Blinken who is indistinguishable from Baerbock or Stoltenberg, and who would commit US ground forces if it was up to him, but then behind the scenes I'm sure tons of senior ppl at the pentagon are pushing back.
The Norwegians are stark raving nuts on this. I had no idea. I always thought Norway was this cool progressive state. In fact, I thought that about all of the West. Now I know that the West is nothing but Nazis and fascists and has been since WW2. The Norwegians are one of the biggest Nazi-lovers out there. And the Nazi infatuation that the British have has to be seen to be believed! We all know the Balts and Finns are Nazis, as are the Ukrainian Banderists and the Belarusian opposition (nationalists like Banderists, Nazi collaborators).
The Balts, Finns, and Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalists all collaborated with Nazis in WW2 and none of them are the least bit sorry for it. The Lithuanians were some of the worst Jew-killers of them all, maybe even worse than the Ukrainians. Like the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians are busy naming all their squares and streets after their Lithuanian Nazi heroes.
Bottom line is that Lithuanian, Belarusian, Estonian, and Latvian nationalism is all Nazism. All of the nationalist heroes of of these states were Nazis and Nazi collaborators. Finnish nationalism is very pro-Nazi too. The Finns had a Nazi-allied government in WW2, and they were sending goods to Germany. They refused to drop their alliance with Germany so Stain invaded. Later, Finland let the Nazis use its territory to invade Russia, and after the Soviets clawed the Germans back, there was yet another war in Finland.
I'm a Leftist. To me this is one of the great antifascist wars, like the Spanish Civil War. Which is why I'm so baffled at all these people on the so-called Left supporting these diabolical Nazis. We tried to get rid of fascism and Nazism in Europe 75 years ago, but it looks like we didn't clean out the whole place, and Nazi nits became Nazi lice that have infected Europe again. Looks like Russia is going to have to fight the Nazi beast one more time. I think we should call the Russian army the Russian Antifascist Army.
It goes to show that liberals are fascists in cardigans. C19th liberalism had three bastard children, nazism, Stalinism and bourgeois liberalism.
I’m starting to think you are right. It’s like there’s this thin veneer of liberalism that’s present much of the time, albeit while still supporting fascism (right wing dictatorships), right wing death squads, and murderous reactionary Islamists!
Nevertheless, the thin veneer stays on and is all we see.
But when push comes to shove, and the chips are really down, they rip off that liberal shirt like Clark Kent in a change room and go fascist in a heartbeat.
It seems like whenever there’s a choice between the Left and fascism, liberals always go fash in a New York minute!
The KPD in Germany used to call the Social Democrats “social fascists” and fought them in the streets. They called social democracy “the left wing of fascism.”
I always thought they were stupid and crazy, but now I wonder if they were onto something.
Liberalism strongly believes in the liberatory power for the Individual, through private wealth, human rights, equal Law, and mental freedom.
Both hard Right and Left would demolish such things in moments for their own goals.
The Hard Left is usually more honest and upfront about their intentions than the racists and fash hard Right. Liberals tend to find both extremes scary - with generally good cause.
As the Establishment will ALWAYS tend towards the right (Supporting its own hierarchy and privileges if nothing else), to many panicked libtards the 'status quo' would apear more to the Right.
Are "Liberals closet fash"? Not if they are REAL Liberals, no. No more than they are closet Commies like the rightards also commonly shriek and accuse.
Genuine Liberals are disturbingly rare. They are not to be confused with the far more common "Centrists", who are either Imperial neocons or mouthbreathing backbirths who believe every lying word out of the corporate media and their favourite Talking Head Centrists.
The "Hard right" is a misnomer, and I agree. a classic liberal did support the ideals you started out with. But statism is statism, weather you call, it facism communism. etc... and socialism leads directly to it. For myself I place anarchy, or no government on the far right, and pure dictatorship on the far left, including facism. (more central government left, less right)
The constitutional Republic ideals of the US founding principles, are to my perspective, the best form of a necessary evil there is, and gobernment is a necessary evil, as by necessitie it is "power over others, the basis of all crime.
"No Govt on the far-right" makes no sense whatsoever. What you are talking about is the "Dissolution of the State" in Anarchism, and that comes about because of the INDIVIDUAL LIBERATION of Anarchism - correct, yes?
As Communism is to Socialism, and Fascism is to Conservatism, Anarchism is to Liberalism.
I know, I know, right now your mind is screaming NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
But it's true. Libertarian philosophy is also based on INDIVIDUAL rights - which is Liberalism.
US Libertarians/Randroids are Liberals who don't mind/enjoy seeing other people being poor, or think that welfare handouts can create a unhealthy dependency upon the state, especially if the state designs them as such for its own interests. Well, I can certainly see the POTENTIAL for the latter, although in Skandinavia I also saw a welfare system working well, because for them poverty is a SOCIAL embarrasment, and not entirely individual.
But, you scratch many Anarchists, and they'll mostly agree that EVENTUALLY, with the weight of massive exploitation and oppression removed, state-welfare would be needed less and less.
FWIW, one thing you should intellectually realise - a Corporate Fascist Superstate, a Communist Superstate, and a normal Western Liberal Democracy, are all Statist positions.
Left, Liberal, AND RIGHT, all have their own Happy Statist versions.
This is not something you can legitimately or authentically 'project outwards' onto the other ideologies.
I know that in the US Kultur Kampfs, Randroid Libts are [correctly] seen on the hard-right. It is an extreme perversion of Libertarianism, a former key element of which was that "Liberty is impossible in poverty".
Rand's amphetamine-fueled textual rants were not strong on the emotional/compassionate element of human psychology.
Anarchist tenets are Liberal tenets. Trust me, Anarchists and Trad Conservatives do NOT tend to get on very well.
Small l liberals supported slavery, the Confederacy, arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial, torture and all the rest of the apparatus of rule by the state. John Stuart Mill (of his own free will) didn't advocate individual freedom, he criticised state repression because social pressure was more efficient.
All true. And I would also add the Enlightenment greatly dispossesed the natural world in favour of unlimited human egotism and greed, and I can even follow and agree with Anthropologists argument that the localised "Barter" economy was actually preferable in many ways to the introduction of currency! There are equally excellent arguments against "private property" itself too - and I certainly don't mean Marxists/WEFs notions.
But, as you guessed, I stil consider myself a liberal at source, as I still place Individuality about the Hierarchy (right) or the Community (left) - as much as those are still important.
I think it's important to learn and accept the natural limits to ANY ideology, although I didn't enjoy this process one little bit when applied to my OWN preferred beliefs. ROTFLMAO! :'D
If you say to me "Liberalism is deeply flawed!", I'll shake your hand - as long as the criticism IS valid, naturally.
---
BTW, ever read the 6 Dune novels? I will freely admit Herbert lead me to the best criticisms. In the later books he makes the case that 'reality' is always shifting - like a martial art position. What would hapen to a fighter that always made the SAME move? Eventually, they will encounter a defeat due to their rigidity. And a defeat in Nature means extinction.
Ideological purity follows the same pattern.
We must learn to shift between the ideological perspectives, and be able to criticise ALL of them. Even if we prefer one or the other, or other, personally.
We can find there are more Archaic ideas behind them, ideas the constant shouting about irrelevant diferences usually hide.
FX, the classic. Worker-Ownership.
Is it left, right, or liberal? Is it Communism (communally-owned), or Capitalism (Privately-owned, every worker a share-owner Capitalist!)?
Does it matter which ideology the idea falls into? After all, it works for everyone. There's no better incentive to work hard than your own best interest BECAUSE YOU BENEFIT DIRECTLY. Lol.
Somehow, the neoliberals have missed this one, I wonder why... ;) ^_^
It is called "statism" or Tyranny, and any and every strong central authortarian government can and inevitably will go in that direction...
https://open.substack.com/pub/anderdaa7/p/does-absolute-power-corrupt?r=slvym&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Today's liberals are finger-wagging moralists so dour, priggish and humorless that they make The Church Lady look like G. G. Allin by comparison.
Meanwhile, the pranksters, the subversives, the tellers of Forbidden Truths are largely found on the Alt-Right, and to a lesser extent on the Dirtbag Left.
This is not because of any inherent subversiveness on the part of conservatives or any natural censoriousness on the part of liberals, but is a product of their present relationships with power.
Thank you. Your comment is so perfect! I've been saying this for a long time now but it seemed no one was listening.
I especially like that last paragraph. It goes to show that there is nothing "inherent" about the present Zeitgeist; instead, as the Marxists have always said, this bizarre configuration is instead a result of "the social, economic, and political forces in this particular state at this particular time."
Which means I guess we should stop looking for the inherent puritanism of the modern Church Lady Left, who after all, used to be the "let's do it in the streets" liberals in the 60's. Liberals are neither freedom-loving chaos disrupters nor the reincarnations of Dante ranting out of his window. They can be either one or anything in between depending on the particular social-political constellation at this moment in time and space.
Since when is the Right subversive? I suppose when the Left became ruler-waving nuns, the Right did the opposite and became the supporters of free living, parties, unrestricted fun, and sexual freedom at least for straight people.
I am sort of amused by how many people don't know who G. G. Allin was.
Anyway, was it not written that, "If you want to know who a human really is, give him power."?
The SPD allied with the Freikorps to kill the Spartacists in 1919. The friends of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg didn't forget them in the early 30s.
Robert, expand your analysis.
Nazism is an IDEOLOGY - since when do ideas respect national borders? One cannot "defeat an Idea" by bombing a region of ground.
There were - and are - Nazis-ideology believers at every level of Western European/American society, in every Western European nation and America.
Essentially, the twin prongs are a desire for a strong Hierarchy, and usually some pseudonotions regarding genetics, so the Fash normal low IQ, stunted bodies and emotional ineptitude are still magically "better" than whoever their targets are.
Obvious connection as Mussolini pointed out to Corporatism - financial/econonomic control hierarchies.
These people weren't just in the Baltics, Germany, Spain, Italy and Japan. They also ruled Britain, France, America. The proofing of this is the answer to a simple question:
German Weimar was bankrupt. Within a few years Germany had re-armed to great-power peer level. So where did all that money come from? Which countries had the spare resources to throw money at Germany? If Britain today wished to recreate the Royal Navy of its heyday with 400+ naval ships, up from the current 6 or so, it would need to BORROW. If you're borrowing, SOMEONE needs to be "lending". Who was "lending" Hitler's Germany all that wonga to re-arm?
It's a great question, never saw it in any Establishment 'History' books, oddly.
But the obvious answer also points to the wider pic.
I think singling out these places for their "special" nazism may be a mistake. Churchill's supposedly famed "Liberalism" was barely indistinguishable from overt Nazism for non-whites in the BE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtBKDMN2U4s
These idiots want "global hegemony", no matter the cost to others. I blame the English upper class 'elite' schools for almost the entirety of this.
Thanks for your analysis comrade. You expand your fascist membership far beyond mine. Trotsky felt that fascism was a last ditch effort to save capitalism when faced with a threat from the Left.
More recent analyses have described fascism as a popular dictatorship against the Left. It has a strong populist flavor to it and is typically ultranationalist and even expansionist.
It often tries to reunite all of the ethnic group in the nation including those in neighboring lands. It despises democracy, which it equates with chaos, and it hates liberalism and the “degenerate” art and culture it is said to produce.
It has extreme hatred for communism, socialism, and organized labor, which it regards as the same thing.
It is “palengetic” like the Phoenix that rises from the dead in flames. In this way it seeks to escape degenerate modernism and go back to an older order. There is a lot of talk about the history of the land and restoring a glorious state or empire of the past.
Fascists are social conservatives. They are sexist and want women in traditional roles. They typically hate homosexuals. They despise all weakness and there are constant references to strength, honor, duty, etc. regarding the state.
There is often a sanctification of violence and a belief in its cleansing power. It is often warlike and belligerent. It is always militarist.
It hates and scapegoats minorities but typically will accept them if they drop their culture, language, and ethnic identification and assimilate to those of the nation.
The nation consists of one language, one culture, one religion, and one ethnicity. It is often but not always racist. Mussolini was not particularly racist.
I would describe Nazism or National Socialism as racist fascism. There’s much more emphasis on the genetic and biological aspects of ethnicity and race. It engages in ethnic cleansing and is often remarkably violent, with the violence often having a gruesome or terroristic character.
I believe National Socialism can unfold in any society. Conceivably there could be a Jewish National Socialism, hence National Socialism or Nazism need not be antisemitic.
As the Conservative is drawn to a hierarchy they know their place in, the Fascist wishes to use that hierarchy to kick downwards for their own projected out weaknesses.
And this goes all the way up, too. Not just your shaven-headed street-thugs in whom its hard to detect whether they lack more memes or genes.
The Queen ascribed her lifelong socialism to "Working alongside and with normal working people during WWII" - and do you know what she learned? That she was as good as they were. The Queen was never afraid to get stuck in, and because of that, the Queen never "loathed" normal people, because of her own fears of inadequacy.
Needless to say, I find the Left equally annoying in different ways, lol. All that Legalistic moralising!! >_< "We don't approve, so we'll pass a Law, and that will be fine!". >_< Left & bloody Right are just the same on this.
And the Left are all like "Ohh, after our Raptur..." [cough], "Revolution, EVERYONE will be so WONDERFUL!!". Ffs. :facepalm:
"Left & Right" if you ask me are just the two halves of Mainstream Christianity.
"I believe National Socialism can unfold in any society. Conceivably there could be a Jewish National Socialism, hence National Socialism or Nazism need not be antisemitic."
This is SO OBVIOUS, and yet the eggshells walked shows ...what? That Ben-Gvir looks too cuddly to be a baddy?
When laws passed to protect a weak minority from kicking downwards on them, are misused to protect a privileged minority from just criticism; the People note.
I do fear the inevitable backlash, because its never those privileged ones who face it.
For the record, only Estonia was declared "Judenfrei" in WW2. They literally murdered or shipped out every single last Jew in the entire country.
That being said, the nation that murdered the MOST Jews (after Germany, of course) was Romania.
I thought it was Hungary. Only 5% survived. And Polish Jews were almost completely eradicated with quite a bit of help from the Poles I might add.
Actually, German Jews got off pretty easy. Somehow they only killed half of them! There were 400,000 at the start of the war and there were 200,000 at the end of the war. I don't understand it except maybe a lot of the survivors were mischlings who the Nazis didn't really care about. I also think the Nazis figured they killed all the Jews in Germany and that the Jewish problem was in the rest of Europe. Also, German Jews were extremely assimilated and this enabled them to fit in.
Many believe the political spectrum is a linear endeavor, when actuality it is a circle. The fascist of the U.S. today is stridently liberal, with the Democrat party as their leaders.
The British state has nothing to do with the British people and in this war the state is trying to be American Caesar's chief jackal, a rival to the zionist antisemites in occupied Palestine.
The US state has nothing to do with the US people, and those that would rule the world, have aquired their grand prize.
I wish I could agree with the previous two respondents, but I cannot. Neither Britain nor America are authoritarian states. Representatives are chosen through popular elections. It isn't possible to separate the actions of these governments from the people who granted power to them. The public is equally to blame.
I partially agree with you Alex.
Truth in this world is messy. Not only is election fairness properly disputed, but the current yahoos have lied through every smile, and the "March through the Institutions" has been very sucessful. Most US voters that did vote in these GEBs (Greedy evil bastards) have no idea what they voted for, or how they have been lied to. Take the issue of "Global Warming" , as an example...https://open.substack.com/pub/anderdaa7/p/global-warming?r=slvym&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Recall Gõring's words on how one starts a war. "It works the same in every country."
Pretty much any political and economic system can be made to work tolerably well, if and to the extent that it is not ruled by sociopaths.
Under a thin veneer of "representative democracy" for appearances & patriotic PR, both USA and Britain are QUITE authoritarian. Try to oppose the foreign policy consensus of USA "blob" and see for yourself.
We can vote for any candidate the MIC/intelligence/financial ownership power structure pre selects as acceptably tractable/already compromised/controlable.
I agree with you. There are no lousy governments. There are only lousy people. Obviously lousy governments were put into power by lousy people.
I'd also add that there are no lousy cultures. There are lousy people and they create lousy cultures.
Yep. We can make excuses for why some things suck so badly, but the place to start is to look at the man in the mirror. Over the years, as the American government committed so many atrocities overseas, were the mass of people standing up and saying, "Enough!"? When true anti-war and anti-intervention candidates pop up in American primaries (as they regularly do), why do they never gain traction? When our politicians stand up for bloodshed, do they get heckled or get healthy doses of applause? We all know the answers. Denying our own natures means that we have no chance of changing anything. Joe Biden got over 80 million votes in the last election. Are all these people being manipulated? Is the government to blame if people can't think for themselves? What a sad excuse!
Indeed, without the U.S. NATO doesn't have a chance. Countries with a drop of sovereignty, like France or Turkey, will find a way to stay out of it.
The UK always seeks to stir up and escalate trouble, so that they can demonstrate to their American master what loyal lackeys they are. Sort of like that little yappy dog that follows Spike the Bulldog around in Looney Tunes cartoons.
Take away the United States and the UK is a quaint, flavor-deprived backwater where the cops wear funny hats.
Britain is facing a life or death situation, or its elites are. Roughly 80% of all laundered/dark money goes through British territory or British-controlled territory (Caymans, Bermuda, Guernsey, et al).
Russia is certainly not interested in becoming some kind of hub for dirty money, but the emerging truth is that a combination of solid Russian regulations on crypto (on convertibility to fiat) and interoperability with Chinese yuan markets (which means access to places like the UAE, among others) means that billions in "gray" money are already being diverted away from British-controlled channels.
Basically, every oligarch "in the know" is already avoiding UK intermediaries (Chinese national accounts in Swiss banks are rapidly approaching ZERO). It's only a matter of time before even dingbat drug lords figure it out as well. Britain's only hope at this point is a complete capitulation of Russia and the ability to monitor/control its capital inflows. Otherwise, the British empire is truly good and dead.
It often sounds "conspiratorial" to talk about money laundering and "elites" etc, but the total volume of illicit flow (through all channels) is mind-boggling. The public-facing economy is now just a shadow of the dark one.
Basically, it goes like this. If you steal 100 bucks, you hide it under your mattress. If you steal $1 million, you open a shell company in Britain and wire your money to a British (or British-controlled) bank, and from there, you can move it anywhere you like.
Now, the procedure is this: convert your million to crypto (still tricky to do in some places), flip your crypto in Russia to yuan, and then move it pretty much anywhere you like, and now it's free from pesky Western sanctions or oversight.
And if you steal a trillion bucks you get to do Ted Talks and go to Epstein's Island.
For around two weeks I wondered how purposefully those Kremlin $bns had been stored within Western reach at the start of the SMO.
It took that long to hear it was deliberate, and a stunningly clever Russian move. In one stroke, the UK's offshored banking empire was undermined, and all for assets worth much less than Russia seized in retaliation anyway.
I mean, I'm the same generation as the current UK 'leadership', and they are as totally clueless as I recall student unions being 30+ years ago.
They haven't the fucking foggiest about ANYTHING - except getting good Murdoch headlies. That's their only required skill set these days.
I wish I could have seen the smile when Putin read the communique the morons had taken the bait. I also wish it was another country they were destroying so adroitly than my own. :/
I suppose everyone has their favorite place in Ukraine which they wait to switch sides to Russians. Mine is N 48.83559 E 37.46359, a bend in the road outside Slavyansk where it all began. I *might* be mistaken, but I think that's the spot. There was a road block set up by residents (civilians, notionally) of Slavyansk. And then one day Ukrainian government came up to them with a vehicle convoy and... opened fire? Or just rammed it? I'm not completely sure, it's been almost ten years. Anyway, over the next few days things slowly escalated until a week or two later there was an Ukrainian Mi-8 playing peekaboo with Igla-armed (?) Russians around some hill south of Slavyansk with a radio tower. And then a few days later some "special forces" of Ukraine managed to take the radio tower. And then later that day (?) Russians withdrew from Slavyansk and made their way to Donetsk where later on fierce fighting developed, especially for the airport.
Well, I'm still waiting for them to go back to Slavyansk. :) And take back that road block.
It seems the Ukranian MOD is butthurt over the Leopard debacle they've started tweeting about how "4000" Russian tanks have been destroyed so far.
Is this actually possible? It seems inflated, and no context given if the tanks were recovered.
Even Oryx's infamously inflated list has Russian tank losses around 2000 so 4000 is definitely out of the question. I don't even think Russia has 4000 total *active* tanks let alone destroyed ones. If you're good with numbers and want to see a deep dive (though it's a couple months old now) using Oryx's numbers here's a good thread: https://twitter.com/partizan_oleg/status/1644532444341891073
As I've outlined many times before though, 'tank losses' (whether it's Oryx's numbers or someone else's) counts all armor on the 'Russian side', most of which was lost by LDPR. So it really depends what one means by RUssian losses, if they mean all allied losses that's one thing. If they mean losses of tanks by the armed forces and tank armies of the Russian Army proper only, then Russia has likely lost 400-700 tanks with the remainder being lost by various PMCs, paramilitaries, LDPR, etc.
There were some genuine braindead idiots on reddit saying how Russia has literally zero tanks left and that Ukraine converted their anti-tank mines into anti personnel mines due to anti tanks mines not having a target. That is definitely 100% wrong.
Reddit is a wasteland of delusion and ideology. It's not worth spending any time there.
Where are the battle maps you show with the front lines?
That headline can be memed just as hard as Budyanov was.
"The use of nuclear weapons can save humanity from a global catastrophe."
"The use of abortion can save a country from population implosion."
"The use of ice baths is an effective protection against winter."
The Unknown War documentary of about 10 episodes, with Burt Lancaster as the speaker is the best I have seen about the Eastern Front. The Russians have provided tons of materials and original footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuuthpJmAig
Thanks.
It an artillery piece developed by Gerald Bull the Canadian for the South Africa military during the bush war in Angola. He was assassinated by Mossad(that's the rumor) while working on a super cannon for Saddam Hussain shortly there after. I saw it being showed off to Israeli and Taiwanese military visitors in Oshivelo a South African base in Namibia in 1985. Max range 70 km produced by Denel I believe the UAE bought some. It's really a great piece of gear, I am surprised at the limited distance conventional 155mm equipment in the Ukraine is delivering ordinance to. I hate to use Wikipedia but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G6_howitzer use that as a starting point if you interested. By the way all the armoured vehicles troop transport trucks the Samels were all mine resistant fyi the US grabbed the concept in Iraq https://www.google.com/search?q=Samel+mine+rsistant+military+truck+South+Africa&rlz=1C1GCEA_enCA843CA843&sxsrf=APwXEdfIQcKLtybzX3CtdbQahu7Lq9DvzQ%3A1687407708961&ei=XMyTZPOsOp264-EP_r-LwAw&ved=0ahUKEwjzytXIg9b_AhUd3TgGHf7fAsgQ4dUDCA8&oq=Samel+mine+rsistant+military+truck+South+Africa&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQDDIFCAAQogQyBQgAEKIEMgUIABCiBDoKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzoKCCEQoAEQwwQQCjoECCEQCkoECEEYAFCUClihPGCsTmgBcAF4AIAB8AKIAYwkkgEEMy0xNJgBAKABAcABAcgBCA&sclient=gws-wiz-serp
"South African" - isn't this really the obvious explanation?
Amazing what you put together every 24 hours. I really don't know how you do it, and no, I don't think you are AI. 😁 What do you do for fun, (besides write and research)?
A coup in Belarus is right up America's alley. Getting nutty proxies Poland and the Baltics to make a mess--pretty standard stuff. Subversion and proxies are America's weapons of choice. But is Lukashenko really vulnerable? Russia ain't never gonna let it happen. Direct involvement of the US and NATO not likely. Frankly don't see the F-16 thing as anything but another empty gesture. It's extremely unlikely the US would allow combat sorties to be launched from NATO facilities supported by USAF personnel. Also, the "they're all so stupid and delusional" mantra relative to The Empire has never been convincing. They know China is going to eat their lunch if allowed to continue down their current path. Unfortunately for them, they're a day late and a dollar short--but they'll keep trying with what they do best--lies, propaganda, bribery and terror. The most dangerous arm of US domination is not the Pentagon, but the NED and it's gaggle of supporting NGOs. Now a radioactive hole at ZNPP seems like a good bet. Russia gets blamed and makes southern Ukraine into a huge, expensive, catastrophe. Perfect. Allen Dulles would approve.
You could speculate that NATO actually thought the Russians might collpase, but if not and to rescue something from this debacle, the port of Odessa could be rescued by UN[?] peacekeepers following a FF at the ZNPP. Putin is stupid that way, he is bound to blow up his own power station. Mad Bad Vlad.
I'm not so sure that the ZNPP is more than a propaganda threat. Are not these facilities built to withstand most anything up to a nuke? I doubt that Ukraine has anything strong enough to do that kind of damage. (Naturally, I might be wrong about that - I would really appreciate the opinion of someone who is familiar with suc NPPs) Of course they could be destroyed from within, but I suspect Russia takes security matters very seriously and plans against such attacks.
The reactor vessels are strong enough to handle anything the Ukrainians have to throw at them, and I think most are in cold shutdown so a meltdown is unlikely. They could still make a goddawful mess by attacking the spent fuel storage and that just happens to be what robo-Budanov claimed the Russians had already wired to blow.
I doubt that the Russians have sat still at the ZNPP.
Obviously they haven't, they've closed down the reactors. But the spent fuel will still be at the site, and I think AFAIR two reactors were still online too. You would have to be absolutely desperate to try to remove nuclear fuel waste in the middle of a war-zone. NATO would be tracking it every step, fingers on missiles for a good spot.
The Russians are not dealing with long-term thinking rational people here.
I'm with you, I don't see any grand new strategy from the political west. Like with the armour and western trained units, the aim is to be able to insert mufti nato and mercs into their own kit to keep the war going. Ditto F16...why F16? because many 2nd tier nations use them and their merc pilots are cheaper to buy and use as disposables than white anglo types. This could be supplemented with actual nato branded aircraft, for the classic shock and awe air superiority attempt (yawn) while maintaining plausible deniability. Similarly I don't think RU has any goals of a large counteroffensive - it has time and industrial capacity on it's side. Let nato+ bring whatever they like to the kill zone and deal with it there. RU does not use 'send a message' strategy - when they respond to an action or provocation, the target will have military value.
But wouldn't the globalist 'land owners', like Monsanto and Blackrock which have bought up swathes of Ukrainian land, be severely out of pocket were the Ukraine create such a 'radioactive hole'? Wouldn't they therefore tell the real string-pullers in Washington to leave well alone since they do need to see returns on their 'Ukrainian investments'?
BlackRock is using tax payer money and money they didn't earn to invest in both Ukraine's victory and its defeat. They will profit either way. One way they profit from Ukraine's loss is by investing in wheat and commodities that are produced in large quantities in the country. When Ukraine loses, prices go up. BlackRock profits. If NATO successfully pulls out a victory, BlackRock owns land that the EU and the US have pledged to restore using tax payer dollars. BlackRock profits and tax payers pay.
Ukraine is a drop in the bucket for them. They certainly aren't using their own money. And whoever is the Ultimate Bagholder will just turn to Uncle Sam to be made whole.
Seems to me only real trump card Zelensky and his marry band of maniacs have is blowing the NPP so...Why is IAEA allowed there? All Western orgs need to be banned from Russia environs since they are all infiltrated with enemy intelligence agents. Why is there not a huge contingent around NPP making any assault impossible? Furthermore, in mean time, why isnt Russia decommissioning the plant and removing all nuclear fuel and waste?
Regarding nuke usage I think this is remote and dumb. Good way to turn world against Russia , the global realignment she is winning not to mention Russia hasn't even started real war yet like leveling cities with civilians in them conventionally or taking out USA ISR etc. Russia has much more escalation tricks up it's sleeve before having to use a nuke.
I believe they ( 5 reactors) ? have been cold storage- and it's been said twenty thousand Russian troops defend the Nuclear reactor.
Ukraine can still rush them with 50 ATACMS
And a division of space marines
Surely, you mean "Chapter"? :D
Since we're discussing completely fictional scenarios let's make it a Legion.
Let's add an imperial star destroyer while we're at it
I'll see you that and raise you, a legion of Thunder Warriors, since they were specifically created to be expendable, and were, as soon as the Astartes, their successors, were created. I'll let you draw the parallels here.
I have a Chinese Weather Balloon! HAH!!!
It's OK, your Legions can come out of hiding, I haven't set it off yet! :o
Am I the only old SOB that gets frustrated with the names of Ukrainian towns? They're in Russian & Ukrainian, old & new names, written in Cyrillic & English. English names are almost never on the maps. It's like solving a logic puzzle when placenames in text don't correspond to maps. If you really want to get confused, try using old soviet maps, entire cities don't exist.
Alexander Mercouris explained on a recent The Duran video, I think the one with Larry Johnson, that a lot of the names in the area actually have Greek names. Greeks never lived there but they were named to honour Greece or its leader or someone, a long time ago.
Crimea itself, and other towns on the coast such as Odessa has had Greek communities since the Hellenic times.
Agreed, now that you say it. I mispoke and I'm not sure why I thought they never lived there.
Odessa was founded by Ekaterina II.
There was an active trading port there before the Russians made it a modern city.
Also interesting is that the City of Donetsk was founded by a Welsh miner and industrialist John Hughes. The city was originally named Hughesovka (Yuzovka) in his honor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hughes_(businessman)
Apparently relations between the British Crown and their Russian cousins were a little better in those days.
I see a typo in your comment. I believe you meant "the British Clown"
The majority religion in Ukraine is Greek Orthodox. There's a lot of conflict going on within the church right now, but the Eastern Rite has been prevalent there for centuries.
That is not really even Greek Orthodox. It's more like "Greek Catholic," and that's different. That is an ostensibly Orthodox grouping that looks to Rome rather than Constantinople. They're very Wests-oriented and in Ukraine, they really despise the Orthodox East and even see themselves as Aryan Westerners as opposed to "contaminated" Hunnish Russians.
Not only did Greeks live there, but the very last town to survive from the "Byzantine" (Greek-speaking Rome) Empire was in Crimea. Greeks also had colonies all over the Black Sea, ranging from what is now Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, and Russia.
That being said, most of the Greek names were "revived" or else "spiffed up" during the reign of Ekaterina II (aka "Catherine the Great" in English).
Thanks for the info!