/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>481110
>Aside from Turkey, the US is the only other nato member with a standing force big enough to oppose Russia.
If you are talking European security infrastructure, you can't just draw a line on the ground an then mass forces on either side that stare at each other menacingly. Peace is created by making all factions have a vested interest in peace, and military power is just for mitigating the residual risk.

>That being said, just because it's an incredibly risky and stupid move doesn't mean it's impossible.
I guess that's true.

So some fuckers in my tiny mountain town posted a cascade of flyers for "victims of the Russian invasion" at my local civic center, which also serves as a children's school. Hilariously most of the text on them isn't even in English, it's in Cyrillic. As if we're such great allies (Amerifat here) that we should all just presume to be able to decipher Cyrillic and understand a Slavic language now. I'm honestly gobsmacked to still be seeing propaganda of this level at this point, over twos after the proxy war began and when the Ukrainian regime is now facing imminent defeat. Most private citizens have given up their disgusting virtue signaling at this point, leaving only non-profits/NGOs left to peddle their propaganda. My question is this: who the hell is this still working on?

>>481136
I drove by a marine base building (West European country) and there was a Ukraine flag hanging outside one window

>>481198
>>481199
>>481200
>>481201
>>481204
are those thread sliding ?

>>481136
>Hilariously most of the text on them isn't even in English, it's in Cyrillic.
>we should all just presume to be able to decipher Cyrillic
>I'm honestly gobsmacked to still be seeing propaganda of this level at this point
They did this for the shill money, and don't care that it's ineffective propaganda

The story that begun with the French president floating ideas of sending Nato troops to Ukraine ended with the Russian threatening strikes on Nato countries, doing nuclear drills, and the west backing off. Italy seemed to be pushing really hard against this.

Mercouris was one of the few that covered this development, his take is that it was a failed attempt to create strategic ambiguity. He is deeply pessimistic and thinks this episode isn't really over, just postponed.

I think this isn't coming back, they would have to conscript a lot of people to deploy Nato troops in Ukraine. Arming and training all those young people, who are royally pissed because of the genocide in Gaza, that's probably not very clever.

Yesterday there was an assassination attempt on the last principled social democrat in Europe. Slovak prime minister Robert Fico is in critical condition after being shot five times. He was the only left-wing European leader, along with right-winger Victor Orban in Hungary, to stand up to NATO and its aggressive warmongering in Ukraine.

Only source I've found so far that doesn't insert a bunch of bullshit propaganda into the story:
https://www.rt.com/news/597723-assassination-attempt-fico-recap/

>>481597
<assassinating politicians
what are they trying to achieve with such a stunt ? Are they trying to convince people that pacifism means ruthlessly eliminating all the war-mongerers ?

Maybe it's just panic because the Ukrainian military is crumbling much faster than they planned for. The projections have Russia scoring a decisive win. That makes the neocon NATO expansion project look like an expensive blunder.

US politics are divesting from Ukraine, because they don't want to be left holding the flaming bag of shit. And they're not gonna convince the European population to make sacrifices in quality of life to keep this shit show going. Should have listened to Barack Obama of all people, he warned them not to escalate in Ukraine.

So it seems Ukrainian truckers have blocked the highway between Odessa and Kiev in protest against Zelensky's unconstitutional term extension and the new general conscription law. Are Ukrainians finally getting a sick of their military dictatorship?

>>481631
Sure looks like it, but who knows. It might be intrigue.

>>481631
Ukraine still has some of those fascistic armed groups that are aligned with the secret police, those might be mobilized to attack labor organizing.

If Russia is clever they will activate spies that interfere with that. If a labor movement gains political power, its much more likely to go for actual diplomacy than the Zelensky gang. The war will be over in a few months anyway, but skipping months of war is still worth it.

>>481597
>Assassination Attempt on Slovak PM Highlights Dangers of Constant EU Demonization of Project Ukraine Opponents and Hypocrisy of ‘Misinformation’ Crackdown

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05/wheres-the-uproar-over-corporate-medias-history-of-spreading-hate-and-misinformation-about-slovak-pm-who-just-survived-assassination-attempt.html

>It’s interesting that the EU censorship-industrial complex doesn’t appear inclined to take a deeper look at this considering it’s been hellbent on rooting out what they label misinformation in recent years. Consider that while the shooter is being described as a lone wolf, he was motivated – at least in part – by the Fico government’s opposition to Project Ukraine. Here’s CNN:

<He said that the suspect told law enforcement officers that he disagreed with Fico’s policies and that he decided to act after the recent presidential election, which saw a Fico ally – Pellegrini – emerge as the winner.

<“The reasons (the suspect gave) were the decision to abolish the special prosecutor’s office, the decision to stop supplying military assistance to Ukraine, the reform of public service broadcaster and the dismissal of the judicial council head,” Šutaj Eštok said.

>That means European officials and media who have been relentlessly hyping the Russian threat while simultaneously labeling Fico as pro-Russia, created an environment where Fico’s opposition to supplying military assistance to Ukraine is treated as some unholy act and apparent motivation for the assassination attempt. Even the other issues that allegedly the shooter gave almost certainly received outsize negative media attention largely due to Fico’s opposition to Project Ukraine.

So the Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico got shot because he opposed policies like sending weapons to Ukraine. The EU neocon collaborators are trying to use this incident to advertise more industrial censorship complex bullshit, that is supposed to silence their critics. When in reality the person that committed the assassination attempt was agreeing with them.

First we have to do a sanity check, the fact that some guy who happened to have pro-neocon opinions did a horrible crime, doesn't mean the neocons are responsible, and that includes their propaganda machine, you can't try to murder people because the news told you they are bad.

However what is ringing the alarm bells is that they are now trying to link this guy's crime to influence from neocon critical news.
These people have a pattern, when they do something bad, they don't just try to memory-hole it, they always try to pin it on their political opponents. If there was some spook agency operation that nudged some mentally unstable guy to go shoot the Slovakian Prime Minister, this type of hyper-hypocritical propaganda messaging would be exactly what they would do.

Maybe this was just some guy who had a screw loose, but the suspicious messaging from the neocon propaganda machine, has me spooked out, that they might have degenerated to doing hard political violence.

>>481669
vaguely related
https://swentr.site/news/598129-georgia-slovakia-pm/

<Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has claimed that a European commissioner told him he could end up suffering the same fate as Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt last week.

<In a Facebook post on Thursday, Kobakhidze said that the unnamed commissioner warned him during a recent phone call that the West would take “a number of measures” against him if his government pressed ahead with a law requiring foreign NGOs in Georgia to disclose their funding.

<“While listing these measures, he mentioned: ‘you see what happened to Fico, and you should be very careful’,” he wrote.


This might be rumor mill or just plain bullshit to stir political drama since Georgia has lots of people protesting in the streets and stuff. He could be claiming this just to look extra courageous.

There are other possibilities, passing fake death-threats to the Georgian Prime Minister might be a psy-op to spook him into doing a massive political purge, that destabilizes his country.

What makes me think that there could be some truth to it is because a few years ago Lukashenko was threatened along similar lines. He banned all foreign NGOs from Belarus. After that he went on national television and threatened them with firing squats.

is the ukrop anon from canada still alive? you there buddy?

>>481814
You think the leafs shipped him to the meat-grinder ? He's probably just too embarrassed to post, with the Russians winning and all.

Although it has a surreal quality of existential horror to ponder the possibility that he might be lying dead in a artillery crater somewhere in the ukranian mud.

>>481708
>Kobakhidze
pronounced kobasice

So i have watched Ukraine "recruitment" efforts.

It went like this, half a dozen dudes jump out of a van, and try to nab some guy. The guy latches on to a lamp post and a protracted struggle ensues. The dudes eventually manage to peal the guy off the lamp post and drag him into the van kicking and screaming.

Here's my question, what possible use can this guy be for their war effort ? It's not like they can hand him a weapon, the first thing he'd do is shoot his kidnappers in the face and run away. If they just ditch him on the battle field, he'll just run off or surrender in case he bumps into Russian forces.

>>481944
They're nothing but blood sacrifices at this point. As you know, Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe, Zelensky himself has millions in off-shore holdings, the large majority of weapons supplied to Ukraine just goes straight into the black market, etc. These people are being sacrificed to enrich Ukraine's psychopathic oligarchs, nothing more. Anything to keep the gravy train rolling and ensure continued protection by the benefactors of Ukraine's ruling class.

Ukrainian government bans World Socialist Web Site

On Monday, June 3, the Ukrainian government banned the World Socialist Web Site across the country, issuing an order commanding all internet service providers to block access to the WSWS indefinitely.

The order was issued by the Ukrainian State Special Communications Service (SSSCIP), a wing of the country’s military-intelligence apparatus. It instructs “providers of electronic communication networks and/or services to implement access restriction (block access) on own recursive DNS servers to domain name (as well as its subdomains) wsws.org.”

The order has no end date and will last “until the termination or abolition of martial law in Ukraine.” The SSSCIP claims the ban is justified under President Vladimir Zelensky’s February 24, 2022 declaration of martial law, which suspended democratic rights across the country.

The order banning access to the World Socialist Web Site exposes as lies all claims that the US-led war in Ukraine is being waged in the name of “democracy.” Yesterday, US President Joe Biden spoke at a commemoration of D-Day in Normandy and presented the war as “a struggle between dictatorship and freedom.” The reality is Ukraine is a dictatorship where the government is politically dependent on fascists who idolize the Holocaust. The government brutally persecutes opponents of its war and blatantly suppresses free speech.

The decision to ban the WSWS is a response to the outpouring of support within Ukraine and internationally for Bogdan Syrotiuk, a 25-year-old socialist internationalist who was arrested by the Zelensky regime on April 25 on trumped up charges of “high treason” for writing articles for the WSWS, which SBU prosecutors (Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency) deceitfully claim is “Russian propaganda.” Syrotiuk and the organization to which he belongs, the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL), are Trotskyists and irreconcilable opponents of the US-NATO war against Russia as well as the capitalist government of Vladimir Putin.

There is compelling evidence that the Ukrainian government’s decision to ban the WSWS was made in consultation with the Biden administration.

The Ukrainian State Special Communications Service—the institution from which the order to ban the WSWS derived—is a long-term partner of the United States government. In July 2022, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA, a component of the Department of Homeland Security) signed an agreement with SSSCIP “to strengthen collaboration on shared cybersecurity priorities,” which “expands upon CISA’s existing relationship with the government of Ukraine.”

CISA Director Jen Easterly said the agreement “allowed us to really focus on how do we effectively share information, best practices, exercise together, train together, figure out how to hunt for adversary activity.”

In documents outlining the bogus charges against Syrotiuk, the Ukrainian government references an “investigation” of the WSWS conducted by the Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), a wing of the Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. According to the prosecuting documents, the CCD conducted an “analysis of publications posted on the WSWS.org resource … according to which the essence of the damage caused by [Syrotiuk] to the information security of Ukraine was established.”

There is not a shred of evidence to support the claim that Syrotiuk or the WSWS are supporters of the Russian government. On the contrary, the prosecuting documents rely entirely on articles by Syrotiuk and the WSWS denouncing the US-NATO war, exposing the role of fascists in the Ukrainian government, warning of the danger of nuclear escalation and calling for the unity of the Russian and Ukrainian working class against both governments. Included among the “evidence” cited by the Ukrainian authorities as proof of Syrotiuk’s guilt is literature found in his apartment authored by Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and WSWS International Editorial Board Chairperson David North.

read more:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/06/07/disc-j07.html

>>481977
>It instructs “providers of electronic communication networks and/or services to implement access restriction (block access) on own recursive DNS servers to domain name (as well as its subdomains) wsws.org.”
Nah this is just infrastructure terrorism.

>President Vladimir Zelensky’s February 24, 2022 declaration of martial law, which suspended democratic rights across the country.
What are they smoking, you can't suspend democratic rights, he merely suspended the legitimacy of his government.

>>481477
In a rational world you'd have a point, but just because a plan is deeply stupid, ill-advised, impractical, and unworkable, that doesn't mean the bourgeoisie won't do it. Otherwise this war wouldn't have happened in the first place.

>>481944
>Here's my question, what possible use can this guy be for their war effort ?

At this point nato's "plan" seems to be to just keep the war going as long as possible and hope that somewhere along the line Russia just gives up. These people are just temporarily warm bodies to give the Russians something to shoot at.

Hopefully the rumors about a new Sumy front are true and the new Leningrad army will drive straight into Kiev and soon the war will be over.

>>481995
Attempting to force-conscript young westerns to fight in Ukraine:

90% chance of overwhelming political backlash
10% chance of creating an armed force that channels their pent up frustration about being powerless bystanders to a genocide by pledging loyalty to the ICJ/ICC. Rounding up Zionist war-crime facilitators, dragging them to the Hague, the very moment they get empowered with weapons.

If the latter comes to pass, we will have to update physics textbooks on fundamental forces:
Gravity
Electromagnetism
Nuclear strong force
Nuclear weak force
Irony

>>481996
>At this point nato's "plan" seems to be to just keep the war going as long as possible
I don't see the rational for doing that, the Russians only care about frustrating NATO-expansion, they don't care about conquering shit. If they really wanted that the could have done that already, they clearly want a buffer zone. They've been digging trenches for defense through east Ukraine, they're not building logistics hubs for expansion.
It would be rational to cut the losses and sign a peace deal with the Russians. Granting the Russians concessions might feel dramatic for egomaniac neocons with a reality-distortion, however objectively it's not that big of a loss, western controle over Ukraine via hard-power was always in illusion. There's only influence via soft-power.

Politically the masses in the west don't really care about who wins or loses wars, people care about lowering their energy bill and having good social services instead of a big military budget.

>>482012
>I don't see the rational for doing that,
Chiming in to say… Money + embarrassing Russia, reducing Russian hegemony. But money especially, yeah. It sells arms.

>the Russians only care about frustrating NATO-expansion
Ehhhhh… that's not what the only motivation Putin gives in his big essays about how Ukraine didn't used to exist when he was a kid.

Whether or not Russia could delude itself into thinking it could hold Ukraine forever were it to take the entire country (and it already has a sizable chunk, and not everybody within that portion is a Russian loyalist), their motives don't end with NATO. There were serious miscalculations made from the getgo by Russia, and now there are serious miscalculations being made by the US and Zelenskyy gov't - Russia greatly underestimated Ukrainian resistance to begin with, and now the US either overestimates it or simply doesn't care. Maybe both.

>>482047
On the money note, just stumbled on this:
https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/1799884272158880206
The clip is fucking insane.

>>482049
The homosexual Lindsey is one of the most nakedly imperialistic people in the US government and that's saying a lot.

>>482047
>Chiming in to say… Money
>It sells arms.
Only a small faction of the capitalist class made gains from the neocon's Ukraine shit-fest. Like you already eluded to: the weapons industry. But also a few others like the LNG ex/import industry. Most capitalists suffered some losses especially because of the economic sanctions war backfiring on the west. The hole saga about seizing Russian assets likely has damaged the reputation of western finance. I'm still perplexed as to why those many capitalists just rolled over and took the L.

>embarrassing Russia
sentimental nonsense, countries are abstract entities that don't feel embarrassment

>reducing Russian hegemony.
There can be only one hegemony and it's without a doubt the US. It's hegemonic reach has arguably suffered somewhat because the sanctions caused more trade to leave the Dollar dominated system.

>Ehhhhh… that's not what the only motivation Putin gives in his big essays about how Ukraine didn't used to exist when he was a kid.
What the, you think world events are about personal anecdotes ? The Ukraine war was a proxy war between Nato and Russia. Nato wanted to get a foothold in Ukraine, and the Russians blew up Ukraine to prevent that.

>Whether or not Russia could delude itself into thinking it could hold Ukraine forever were it to take the entire country (and it already has a sizable chunk, and not everybody within that portion is a Russian loyalist
They'll likely succeed at integrating the eastern part of Ukraine into Russia. I don't know what happens to the western part of Ukraine. The Russians seem to be trying to purge the neo fascistic right sector and then make a neutral rump Ukraine with pre-Euro-maidan politics.

>their motives don't end with NATO.
While that is true, the fact remains that If you subtract Nato expansion from the equation, the Ukraine war never happens.

>and now there are serious miscalculations being made by the US and Zelenskyy gov't
The US wants to keep Ukraine happening going until the election Season is over, and then that project is finished. Zelensky is no longer democratically legitimized because he didn't hold elections. When the US is done with him, that'll make it easy to get rid off him.

>Russia greatly underestimated Ukrainian resistance to begin with
Well the Russian game-plan was to roll in with the tanks and force the Ukrainians to negotiate. That almost worked the Ukrainians almost signed the Istanbul peace deal. That would have been a 2 months border skirmish, with an almost intact Ukraine and low body-count. They didn't foresee that the west could force Ukraine to sacrifice it self.

>now the US either overestimates it or simply doesn't care
The strategic error the US made was to only look at Russia's relatively small economic foot-print in financial terms. They ignored the material industrial power when gauging strength.

>>482012
It wasn't "rational" to start this conflict to begin with, but here we are.

For some of the people driving this, it's personal. The Kagan family is deeply invested in this conflict and have been since they helped pen Project For A New American Century. Their ngo Institute for the Study of War is basically entirely devoted to managing this war with Russia. Iirc, Victoria Nuland who is married to one of the Kagan brothers, I believe she's descended from Ukrainian Nazis that fled to the West after the war, so for her in particular this anti-Russian crusade is a personal vendetta.

But aside from them, you've also got the Biden and Clinton families that also have a lot riding on this conflict and have invested significant capital in it.

More generally though, the entire "rules based order" is riding on this. This will be the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union that another country has not only told the US "no," but also acted to physically stop it, and by all apparent evidence is succeeding. For the Atlanticist bourgeoisie, losing this war is a catastrophic outcome because it means their monopoly on violence is over and now there is a real alternative to their dictatorship.

Not only is Russia fighting and winning, but it's doing so against "all of NATO." It shouldn't even be possible that this "gas station with nukes" could oppose them, not with "a gdp smaller than Italy's."

But also, part of the reason the war has to continue from Nato's perspective is because there isn't any alternative, not for them anyway. They never really even considered one. In part it's because there's a yawning void of intellectual capacity among nato leadership, but also these societies have become so ossified that the flexibility required to adapt to these new circumstances might very well not exist.

It's not rational, but at least the in US "rationality" was abandoned with the Bush administration. The dominating ideology of the empire is explicitly non-rational.

>We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

>>482051
>sentimental nonsense, countries are abstract entities that don't feel embarrassment
Ok, well it makes them look bad at functions.

>There can be only one hegemony and it's without a doubt the US.
Regional hegemony can exist… and Russia had it wrt Ukraine until the US/EU-backed coup. Russia actually does have a lot of regional influence, and that's been impacted by this war, although it's also had the effect of tightening their relationship with China.

>What the, you think world events are about personal anecdotes ?
No?
I think that when Russian nationalists write big speeches saying, in effect "the territory of Ukraine is ours and we don't recognize anything else" that they mean it. And there are Russian nationalists, including Putin, who mean it. It reflects a real political tendency within Russia, and I don't discount it when I consider the motivations behind Russia's actions.

>The Ukraine war was a proxy war between Nato and Russia. Nato wanted to get a foothold in Ukraine, and the Russians blew up Ukraine to prevent that.
This is an oversimplification, and you make the mistake of discounting the interest of Ukrainians themselves who were caught in the middle of all this. They aren't without agency. Pre-Maidan Ukraine wasn't just a puppet of Russia, and post-Maidan Ukraine wasn't just a product of NATO. I haven't seen any convincing evidence that there wasn't genuine hostility within Ukraine towards Russia which was exploited and bolstered by the US. The scale of the unrest isn't accounted for, nor is there any account I know of which suggests that Yanukovich wasn't at least as massively corrupt as his successors.

I also don't believe that NATO was ever serious about getting a foothold in Ukraine. I think that they knew the risk of provocation, and only intended to do some "not touching you!" shit with Russia. Ukraine being a member would have deterred a conflict, which would have been less profitable. Since the start of the war, we've seen increased militarization in the rest of Europe, and that plays into the MIC's hands wrt profits.

>They'll likely succeed at integrating the eastern part of Ukraine into Russia. I don't know what happens to the western part of Ukraine. The Russians seem to be trying to purge the neo fascistic right sector and then make a neutral rump Ukraine with pre-Euro-maidan politics.
It's a clusterfuck. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>The US wants to keep Ukraine happening going until the election Season is over, and then that project is finished. Zelensky is no longer democratically legitimized because he didn't hold elections. When the US is done with him, that'll make it easy to get rid off him.
I don't know. Maybe.
Actually, yeah. With Trump in office, probably - they're projecting continued genocide of Palestinians, and increased hostility towards China and Mexico. Although this could be a Nixon situation where he says he'll stop a war and just doesn't for several years, but I don't know. I think if Biden somehow gets a second term (no chance in Hell) it might actually be more likely to continue, but that's not gonna happen.

>Well the Russian game-plan was to roll in with the tanks and force the Ukrainians to negotiate. That almost worked the Ukrainians almost signed the Istanbul peace deal. That would have been a 2 months border skirmish, with an almost intact Ukraine and low body-count. They didn't foresee that the west could force Ukraine to sacrifice it self.
That's a good point!

>The strategic error the US made was to only look at Russia's relatively small economic foot-print in financial terms. They ignored the material industrial power when gauging strength.
It's difficult to believe they seriously did that. Someone has to have said something… I don't know. Unbelievably stupid, but with the neocons… you never know.

>>482061
>I think that when Russian nationalists write big speeches saying, in effect "the territory of Ukraine is ours and we don't recognize anything else" that they mean it. And there are Russian nationalists, including Putin, who mean it.
Funny, I don't recall anything from Putin that actually goes this far. You sure you're not constructing a straw man, as neocon propagandists love to do? I don't see any reason to believe Russia would actually try to conquer the entirety of Ukraine including its Russophobic western region. It would be as John Mearsheimer describes: like swallowing a porcupine.

>>482051
>Well the Russian game-plan was to roll in with the tanks and force the Ukrainians to negotiate. That almost worked the Ukrainians almost signed the Istanbul peace deal. That would have been a 2 months border skirmish, with an almost intact Ukraine and low body-count. They didn't foresee that the west could force Ukraine to sacrifice it self.
I do wonder what people in Ukraine and the rest of the world are going to write about this later. Will anyone be able to learn from this history?

>>482063
>I do wonder what people in Ukraine and the rest of the world are going to write about this later.
History books are first written by the victors. In time history books get rewritten to fit the political sensibilities of the societies that follow. Eventually all political dimensions are lost and it becomes epochal descriptions, like we describe the stone age or the iron age. What's left will be something like:
<People used metal vehicles with projectile accelerators to kill each other..
To be fair it's gotten a lot easier to keep records, so maybe more historic information of our time will survive and future historians will have it easier to piece together a more objective view of the events of our time.

>Will anyone be able to learn from this history?
Oh yes many lessons will be learned, mind you, that also includes the wrong lessons.
The neocons will draw the conclusion that they did nothing wrong and they simply lacked enough weapons.
The Ukrainian nationalists will draw the conclusion that they need a higher birth-rate to generate more canon-fodder.
Other countries that watched the fate of Ukraine might learn to avoid having that done to them. Some US neocons very publicly floated the idea of applying the "Ukraine model" to Taiwan, and the Taiwanese reacted very negatively to that.
The Russians will likely conclude that the west is a beast with 3 heads. There is a racist head that wants to kill them, there is a trickster-head that wants to fool them and there is a consumption-head that wants to buy their industrial commodities. And their conclusion will be to wall off from the west and only seek contact when the consumption-head is in the ascendant.
The people that want to start WW3 will conclude that proxy-wars are insufficient kindling to set the world on fire.
The western weapons producers will draw the conclusion that their weapons need a user-interface that is easier/faster learned, otherwise their weapons will look bad if hastily assembled sacrificial conscripts are to use them.

I draw the conclusion that we need a UN that is more neutral/independent and less impotent. I'm thinking that it should be funded by a peace-tax. Every country whose population is currently not suffering combat deaths will be obligated to pay the peace-tax. And that money will be used to fund diplomatic missions and a special spy organization. Said spy organization will be tasked to sabotage the political conspiracies that precede and set off wars. I'm hoping that the peace-tax funding mechanism would keep it on mission, and turn into the an inverted CIA of sorts. I know that this is just manipulation of the superstructure and not really fixing the real causes for conflicts, however you can't blame me for wanting harm-reduction sand in the gears of war.

>>482059
>It wasn't "rational" to start this conflict to begin with, but here we are.
Yeah this is endlessly frustusing (frustrating & confusing).

>For some of the people driving this, it's personal. The Kagan family is deeply invested in this conflict and have been since they helped pen Project For A New American Century. Their ngo Institute for the Study of War is basically entirely devoted to managing this war with Russia. Iirc, Victoria Nuland who is married to one of the Kagan brothers, I believe she's descended from Ukrainian Nazis that fled to the West after the war, so for her in particular this anti-Russian crusade is a personal vendetta.
>But aside from them, you've also got the Biden and Clinton families that also have a lot riding on this conflict and have invested significant capital in it.
This would be a dynamic similar to what happened in clan societies. How is that still happening, shouldn't the bourgeoisie have created a state bureaucracy that frustrates clan shenanigans ?
I'm not saying your wrong, you're obviously right about this, but how ?

>More generally though, the entire "rules based order" is riding on this. This will be the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union that another country has not only told the US "no," but also acted to physically stop it, and by all apparent evidence is succeeding.
I tend to agree but is this really the first time since the post Soviet era that they got blocked. The US did like 250-ish "military interventions" since the 90s. It wasn't all a victory lap, they lost a bunch of those.

>For the Atlanticist bourgeoisie, losing this war is a catastrophic outcome because it means their monopoly on violence is over and now there is a real alternative to their dictatorship.
It must seem like a catastrophe, loosing all that power. But is it really ? Consider that China spends about 10 times less to get the same amount of influence compared to the US. When the Chinese set up shop in some country, they build roads/rails, string up communication/power-lines, construct air/naval-ports and so on, and they get so much more bang for their buck compared to the US setting up military bases. I guess you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
The Chinese don't have a monopoly on building useful stuff, everybody can do that. Sending a digger construction vehicle is worth 10 reaper drones worth of influence.

>Not only is Russia fighting and winning, but it's doing so against "all of NATO." It shouldn't even be possible that this "gas station with nukes" could oppose them, not with "a gdp smaller than Italy's."
Yeah, all those think tanks and they never bothered to check whether Russia had a factory that could make lots of artillery shells.

>But also, part of the reason the war has to continue from Nato's perspective is because there isn't any alternative, not for them anyway. They never really even considered one.
I agree that Nato structures will never cease to pursue war with Russia, but Nato has been reduced to an arms lobby, it no longuer facilitates collective security. Europe has an incentive to dissolve Nato because it's the means by which the US keeps the disparate European militaries segregated in to small mostly ineffective national forces. If Nato goes away, Europe could consolidate all it's national armies into a European one. Weapons production could be consolidated as well, so much duplicate effort and incompatible technical standards could be economized away. Current structures are so un-optimized that you could reduce military spending by half while still massively increase force projection capabilities. I guess it would also require a few new political institutions, you have to let people elect the head-honcho who controles what that military does. Otherwise people won't go for it, but that's an administrative wrangle. Difficult but doable. Europe would become a "big place" that could have it's own foreign policy. I think it would elevate the people who favor keeping relations with Russia on non-hostile terms. Warm and friendly relations are not realistic for the foreseeable future but non-hostile would still be an improvement.

>It's not rational, but at least the in US "rationality" was abandoned with the Bush administration. The dominating ideology of the empire is explicitly non-rational.
Evidently this is true, but i still can't wrap my head around how "the crazies" end up running the show.
<We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
I know that quote, in retrospect it's probably the most self defeating attitude of the neocons. Because obviously all their geopolitical opponents analyzed what the neocons were doing and began exploiting the neocon pattern, and the neocons can't adapt to it because they think only they create reality. For example the US neocons destabilize a region and then the Chinese swoop in with their "win-win cooperation" deals. As a result another neocon scheme to subjugate a vassal falls flat. They have lost like half a dozen countries this way in the last couple of years. Including Saudi Arabia, the US's knob for adjusting oil-prices. There is no reflection, all they do is go harder on what no longer works.

>>482062
Mainly this: http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67828

Lenin criticised this plan and suggested making concessions to the nationalists, whom he called “independents” at that time. Lenin’s ideas of what amounted in essence to a confederative state arrangement and a slogan about the right of nations to self-determination, up to secession, were laid in the foundation of Soviet statehood. Initially they were confirmed in the Declaration on the Formation of the USSR in 1922, and later on, after Lenin’s death, were enshrined in the 1924 Soviet Constitution.

This immediately raises many questions. The first is really the main one: why was it necessary to appease the nationalists, to satisfy the ceaselessly growing nationalist ambitions on the outskirts of the former empire? What was the point of transferring to the newly, often arbitrarily formed administrative units – the union republics – vast territories that had nothing to do with them? Let me repeat that these territories were transferred along with the population of what was historically Russia.

Moreover, these administrative units were de facto given the status and form of national state entities. That raises another question: why was it necessary to make such generous gifts, beyond the wildest dreams of the most zealous nationalists and, on top of all that, give the republics the right to secede from the unified state without any conditions?

At first glance, this looks absolutely incomprehensible, even crazy. But only at first glance. There is an explanation. After the revolution, the Bolsheviks’ main goal was to stay in power at all costs, absolutely at all costs. They did everything for this purpose: accepted the humiliating Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, although the military and economic situation in Kaiser Germany and its allies was dramatic and the outcome of the First World War was a foregone conclusion, and satisfied any demands and wishes of the nationalists within the country.

When it comes to the historical destiny of Russia and its peoples, Lenin’s principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake, as the saying goes. This became patently clear after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Of course, we cannot change past events, but we must at least admit them openly and honestly, without any reservations or politicking. Personally, I can add that no political factors, however impressive or profitable they may seem at any given moment, can or may be used as the fundamental principles of statehood.

I am not trying to put the blame on anyone. The situation in the country at that time, both before and after the Civil War, was extremely complicated; it was critical. The only thing I would like to say today is that this is exactly how it was. It is a historical fact. Actually, as I have already said, Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy and can be rightfully called “Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine.” He was its creator and architect. This is fully and comprehensively corroborated by archival documents, including Lenin’s harsh instructions regarding Donbass, which was actually shoved into Ukraine. And today the “grateful progeny” has overturned monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. They call it decommunization.

You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for Ukraine.

Going back to history, I would like to repeat that the Soviet Union was established in the place of the former Russian Empire in 1922. But practice showed immediately that it was impossible to preserve or govern such a vast and complex territory on the amorphous principles that amounted to confederation. They were far removed from reality and the historical tradition.

It is logical that the Red Terror and a rapid slide into Stalin’s dictatorship, the domination of the communist ideology and the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, nationalisation and the planned economy – all this transformed the formally declared but ineffective principles of government into a mere declaration. In reality, the union republics did not have any sovereign rights, none at all. The practical result was the creation of a tightly centralised and absolutely unitary state.

In fact, what Stalin fully implemented was not Lenin’s but his own principles of government. But he did not make the relevant amendments to the cornerstone documents, to the Constitution, and he did not formally revise Lenin’s principles underlying the Soviet Union. From the look of it, there seemed to be no need for that, because everything seemed to be working well in conditions of the totalitarian regime, and outwardly it looked wonderful, attractive and even super-democratic.

And yet, it is a great pity that the fundamental and formally legal foundations of our state were not promptly cleansed of the odious and utopian fantasies inspired by the revolution, which are absolutely destructive for any normal state. As it often happened in our country before, nobody gave any thought to the future.

It seems that the Communist Party leaders were convinced that they had created a solid system of government and that their policies had settled the ethnic issue for good. But falsification, misconception, and tampering with public opinion have a high cost. The virus of nationalist ambitions is still with us, and the mine laid at the initial stage to destroy state immunity to the disease of nationalism was ticking. As I have already said, the mine was the right of secession from the Soviet Union.

He goes over several points, including NATO (later on), but one of those points is the point above essentially just arguing that Ukraine is a fake state invented by the communists through overly lax policy.

>>482081
Okay? But that's not the same thing as explicitly saying "the territory of Ukraine is ours and we don't recognize anything else". Putin chooses his words very careful, should the time come when he actually means to say something like that, he will say it. You might have more luck quote mining Medvedev for stuff like this.

This reminded me just how brutal the wests exploitation is of women and children specifically and it made me fucking depressed.

Russia-China relations “turning sour” as Putin “embarrasses” Xi | Roger Boyes

When Russia collapses, a lot of the former oblasts and autonomous regions will set up shop on their own and there will be a transition period while micro-nations form up, similar to what happened during the post-Soviet collapse. At best, the Duchies of Moscow and St Petersburg will have each other and a bit of hinterland, and all the rest of the russias can get back to what they were doing before the tsars arrived.

Tuva, of all places, is technically claimed by the Taiwanese Government, as it was part of China under the Kuomintang.

Chukotka and Kamchatka could well become American.

>>482233
sounds like cope
the overly aggressive neocon foreign policy made the Russians and the Chinese mend the break that occurred during the Sino-Soviet split.

>>482233
Supreme delusion.

I heard something about a beach and some church attacks. What's going on in Russia, now?

>>482233
Delusional.

>>482233
Kek this guy just dropped his fan fiction

>>482400
>I heard something about a beach and some church attacks.
The Ukrainians shot an US-made missile at Russia. It exploded above a beach and killed a bunch of tourists. Apparently it was filled with cluster bomblets, and the death-toll was quite high. The Russians are blaming the US for this because they're doing the battlefield intelligence to steer these missiles on target.

The Ukrainians and the US say they shot the missile at a Russian military base, and a Russian anti-air defense system intercepted it, and that's what exploded the missile.

I think the US will get blamed for this because they were the ones that brought the death pinata to the beach in the first place. Especially because it's cluster munitions that killed civilians, again.

The Russians might do a partial no-fly-zone for unmanned spy drones, forcing the US to use more expensive manned spy-planes to maintain the ability to target missiles.

Another response might be that the Russians will dial up the jamming systems until it blurs the line to directed energy weapons, and it begins to damage the spy equipment, to force the US to re-engineer the drones.

The Russians could conclude that the US is scheming to get Russian civilians killed, and then retaliate in kind.

I think the moral of the story is to get rid of cluster munitions. If this had been a normal missile, the likelihood of injuring anybody would have been low, even if it popped above a crowded beach. The death pinatas aren't worth the trouble.

>>482430
The Ukrainian media response has been to say that there cannot be any beaches on the peninsula and any civilians present are occupiers of Ukrainian land. They're not even interested in ambiguously framing this as a whoopsie-daisy.

>>482456
>The Ukrainian media response has been to say that there cannot be any beaches on the peninsula
Wait what ? they're denying the existence of a geographic feature ?

>They're not even interested in ambiguously framing this as a whoopsie-daisy.
Do they not realize that blowing up civilians with cluster bombs on purpose, makes them the baddies ?

>>482456
Correction: it wasn't the Ukrainian media that said this. It was actually one of Zelensky's advisors.

>>482496
<beaches are fictitious
they definitely lost it

>>482507
>beaches are fictitious
I think he is saying is that he does not believes that there are civilians having fun on the beech behind Russian lines because Putin is such an evil dictator or something.

>>482510
>he does not believes that there are civilians having fun on the beech behind Russian lines
Well in that case, it's still a crazy argument that says the Ukrainian fun-police will drop a cluster bomb on people that go to the beach without having fun.

>>482512
>Well in that case, it's still a crazy argument that says the Ukrainian fun-police will drop a cluster bomb on people that go to the beach without having fun.
It is a demented post I just wanted to point out he is obviously not denying the geographical existence of beeches. The implied context is that there are no civilians on those beeches because Putin is evil and Russia is losing and whatever lies the CIA has been telling.

>>482522
>I just wanted to point out he is obviously not denying the geographical existence of beeches. The implied context is that there are no civilians on those beeches
So they're saying the civilians they murdered were fictitious.
>It is a demented post
indeed