'The Source Of Russian Brutality' As Proven By Fiction
The currently "Most Popular" piece at the National Interest website has a somewhat intriguing title:
The Source of Russian Brutality
Russia’s military operates on a Soviet, totalizing view of war that ignores distinctions between soldiers and civilians.
That is of course news to me as well as to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Right which is counting civilian casualties.
From 24 February 2022, which marked the start of the large-scale armed attack by the Russian Federation, to 24 September 2023, OHCHR recorded 27,449 civilian casualties in the country: 9,701 killed and 17,748 injured.
Meanwhile the military casualties in the war exceed several 100,000nds. Compared to any other modern war the ratio of civilian casualties to military casualties is thus extremely low. How is that demonstrating 'Russian brutality'?
So lets see what the author, one Ivan Arreguin-Toft, is alluding to:
One need not be an expert on international law to understand how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March of 2022 has violated the laws’ core principles. The Kremlin’s pretexts, the alleged violation of Russia’s “sphere of influence,” cited by, for example, international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, remain inadequate to justify the invasion of an internationally recognized sovereign state.
Russia's reason for the war is the threatened entering of its neighbor country Ukraine into an aggressive NATO. The Secretary General of NATO recently said so. That may(!) be "inadequate" to justify a war. But what about a war over fake WMD claims in a country on the other side of the planet? Has any U.S. reason for waging wars ever been "adequate"?
On top of that, in its prosecution of an illegitimate war, Russia continues to practice war crimes—systematically and deliberately attacking noncombatants, including medical personnel and facilities. We may continue to debate whether allowing Russia to reclaim the USSR’s sphere of influence is acceptable as a tradeoff to prevent a global conflict. Still, there can be no question that Russia’s continual rape, torture, and murder of noncombatants is illegal and damages Russia’s reputation on the world stage.The question, then, is, what explains Russia’s behavior?
Those are strong claims. Strong claims require strong evidence. But the link under "continual rape, torture, and murder" does not go to any evidence. The link instead goes to an overview of the Geneva Convention. In fact - the whole piece does not contain ANY evidence of 'Russian brutality'. ZERO! NONE!
So without presenting any factual evidence, statistic or even anecdote the author simply claims that Russia's behavior is somehow different from others.
He is then off to find something that would explain his farcical claim.
During the entire rule of Russia’s Tsars—from the very founding of the Russian state until 1917, Russia’s military was no more or no less brutal toward noncombatants than the militaries of any other state or empire. But the Russian Revolution and the horrific civil war that followed changed everything.
The first part might be true. All militaries were (and are) generally brutal against noncombatants. They often had to 'live off the land' they marched through and that includes robbing and killing everyone who had not left.
But the second part of the above claim, that the revolution and civil war changed that, is strange. Lets look for evidence:
In place of an aristocratic code of honor, Russia’s surviving officer corps were loyal to the person of Josef Stalin (although in 1938, he had three-quarters of them above the rank of lieutenant executed for treason) and, more broadly, to the international communist movement, which they believed was destined to liberate the world from its capitalist and imperialist chains.
Did any "aristocratic code of honor" ever stopped an aristocrat from killing a peasant? I doubt that.
Stalin's Great Purge was actually against Trotsky and others which wanted to spread communism around the world while Stalin preferred a socialism in one country policy of putting the Soviet Union first. Officers who preferred Trotsky's ideas were indeed purged but the numbers Ivan Arreguin-Toft puts into parenthesis are just totally nuts.
Here is what the purge of the army actually did:
The purge of the Red Army and Military Maritime Fleet removed three of five marshals (then equivalent to four-star generals), 13 of 15 army commanders (then equivalent to three-star generals), eight of nine admirals (the purge fell heavily on the Navy, who were suspected of exploiting their opportunities for foreign contacts), 50 of 57 army corps commanders, 154 out of 186 division commanders, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.
That sounds like high numbers but more importantly we are taking General ranks here and not all 'people above the rank of lieutenant'. Moreover most of the purged were not executed. The total numbers were also much smaller than had been perceived:
At first, it was thought 25–50% of Red Army officers had been purged; the true figure is now known to be in the area of 3.7–7.7%. This discrepancy was the result of a systematic underestimation of the true size of the Red Army officer corps, and it was overlooked that most of those purged were merely expelled from the Party. Thirty percent of officers purged in 1937–1939 were allowed to return to service.
How can one get from those historic facts to "three-quarters of them above the rank of lieutenant executed for treason"?
One can't. And that is why one should stop reading that trash piece right there. The rest gets only worse.
During the cold war Ivan Arreguin-Toft had learned Russian while in the U.S. army. His duty included signal intelligence in Germany. We can be sure that he was also given the usual indoctrination lectures about the 'deviant Russian mind'. Since then he has dabbled in cyber-security which he is currently teaching somewhere. I find no evidence that he, at any time. has learned about history or sociology. The piece he delivered shows no such knowledge.
How all that qualifies him to make evidence free claims that Russia is extraordinary brutal is beyond me. Especially when his underlying theory is not based on historic facts but pure fiction.
What is most astonishing though is that there seems to be a market for such dreck.
Posted by b on September 30, 2023 at 14:16 UTC | Permalink
next page »This is what passes for analysis in the West. Just hurl out a bunch of plausible-sounding but unsubstantiated accusations about Official Enemies. This is almost always accompanied by historical amnesia about equivalent actions by the West.
If you ever confront one of these people about their double-think in real life, they either accuse you of being a propagandist/apologist for the other side, change the subject, pull funny faces, or stare at their shoes and trail off.
Posted by: SpatialFix | Sep 30 2023 14:31 utc | 2
The alleged brutalities of the enemy have always served to cover up his own crimes.
Think of accusing Putin of kidnapping people, especially children, when Ukraine is notorious for selling its own children!
Moreover, it appears to be much safer to surrender to the Russians than to fight them Ze's way !
Posted by: Chb | Sep 30 2023 14:35 utc | 3
Ahhhh....
'international law', whatever that is (biggest mechanized divisions with most drones, artillery and rockets?), justifies u$$a funding a war to restore kiev's jurisdiction (for galatian nazis) to ethnically cleanse Russian sections of whatever the 'international law' wants to....
justify government sanctioned and funded mass murder!
who put these neocon vipers in charge of justifying government run legal murder?
Posted by: paddy | Sep 30 2023 14:37 utc | 4
The National Interest is a leading outlet for our neocon elite. In that role, it tells us what they believe.
Their beliefs are wrong, but we still need to realize the delusions of those governing us.
Our policy is guided by these delusions. They don't just lie to us, they lie to themselves, and then act on those lies.
Posted by: Mark Thomason | Sep 30 2023 14:37 utc | 5
That makes wonder you what is really true about WW2 in general. They demonized the Soviet Union during the cold war and they certainly demonized everything German immediately after the war and during the show trials of Nuremberg. It speaks volumes about the thoroughness of the propaganda if everyone knows about gas chambers and zyklon B while the vast majority is virtually oblivious to the claim that, according to the official history, most victims died of carbon monoxide poisoning by the deeds of the Einsatzgruppen, not even in the camps. And, to show the stupidity and idiocy of the evil Nazis, they used the most inefficient producer of carbon monoxide available: diesel engines. But I am sure that all the evil details of the history written by the victors is 100% true, and there is no propaganda involved in the storytelling of the greatest crime in human history, none. /sarc
Posted by: Dandy Chiggins III | Sep 30 2023 14:47 utc | 6
…international law…
Posted by: paddy | Sep 30 2023 14:37 utc | 4
Regarding international law: Watch Russian FM Destroy US Hypocrisy on International Law
Lavrov at his best :-D
Posted by: Zet | Sep 30 2023 14:48 utc | 7
According to a quick Googling of the matter, a more or less average ratio of civilian to combatants killed during a modern war is: 2 civilians to 1 soldier killed.
According to the U.N. numbers cited above, the civilian-soldier death ratio in the Ukraine War, assuming a half million soldiers dead as I've heard over and over, would be 1 civilian for every 50 soldiers killed.
So that's about 100 times less civilian deaths than average.
My apology to the National Interest website for using actual numbers.
Posted by: Dolgen | Sep 30 2023 14:52 utc | 8
big thx "b"
this MoA entry might be one of the most important in this war,
These fake "brutality" claims to shatter would be core to fighting the foundation of the information warfare going on against RU.
"Objective" and thus undeniable numbers and allegations align with the "non-rational" emotional racism and prejudice. Their combination is an extremely powerful propagandistic tool.
Usually to "hate" Russians was not legit in the public sphere. But with RU crimes which were out of the question this changed.
To prove much of these crimes as fabrication would weaken one major force behind the masses who want to see RU destroyed -
- in contrast to those masses who dont wan´t that but who are muted via lawfare - §130 in Germany i.e. - and TV&press "coverage". Almost the entire press corps is complicit in this.
Their incompetence has to be made known and proven. Too little is happening on this front by too few people.
Eventually everything available especially in languages I personally have no command of should be collected and analyzed. I can only hope a few witty scholars are doing just that.
Posted by: AG | Sep 30 2023 14:52 utc | 9
The different standards is what kills any attempt at a reasoned conversation with normies in the West.
Yes, the USA killed almost all of its indigenous population in a few decades, but it's "part of the growing pains of a country" and "well, they were also being aggressive". However, Soviets are monsters who eat babies because of the two famines in the early 20th century, which wouldn't have happened at all if we weren't sanctioning them to death in the first place.
Yes, the USA "performed more than 200 military interventions" since the end of the 2nd World War, "illegally invading" countless countries in the process, but they had good intentions, motives and ultimately it was for the greater good. But hey, Soviets and Russians intervened at the behest of the Afghan communist government while the US was busy propping up sharia law there, and they did recently invade a neighbor country which was threatening to attack them with nuclear weapons. So yeah, monsters.
Now everyone is howling at the moon because Russians supposedly massacred a bunch of pro-russian civilians in Bucha, who were still freshly bleeding when "discovered", days after the Russians left.
How can you argue against that?
Posted by: Lemming | Sep 30 2023 14:57 utc | 10
Israel in 2006, with a force less than 1/10th the size of Russia's, killed roughly 1,200 Lebanese civilians and wounded over 4,000 in a month. Multiply that number by a factor 10 times for size and again by 18 months, and you would get a sense what an army that genuinely does not differentiate between miliary and civilian would do. They would have killed at least a couple hundred thousand civilians by now.
Posted by: Bob | Sep 30 2023 15:00 utc | 11
It was one of the features of the Civil war in China that the Communists made considerable effort to recruit prisoners into the ranks of the PLA while they assumed that peasants and workers in conquered territory would come to support them when they understood their programme, which included land reform and writing off debts.
The doctrine of their opponents-the KMT- was to terrorise the population into doing what they were told, this included executing large numbers of prisoners, killing communists on sight ( the same policy as that the Nazis used) and treating civilians as inferiors.
The same was true in the Russian Civil war- the Reds regarded peasants and workers as natural allies who would rally to their cause, while bourgeois and landowners were treated roughly.
In fact the National Interest article is the purest projection- US doctrine is to terrorise civilians into deserting their government. That was what Shock and Awe was about. That is why there were a million civilian casualties in 2003 in Iraq. Not to mention the 500,000 children dead through sanctions in the years before the war.
To put it simply, again, the NATO doctrine is that civilians are aliens on the wrong side, while the communist doctrine is that they are workers ready to 'throw off their chains.'
So the article is not just wrong but the reverse of the truth: Russia is making every effort to rebuild the ties with Ukrainians. NATO goes out of its way to induce the peoples to hate each other. Hence the widely publicised (by the perpetrators) mistreatment of Russian POWs and the promises of good treatment by the Russians.
In fact if the Revolution did make a difference in the way that Russian soldiers treated civilians it was the complete opposite of that alleged by Arreguin-Toft.
The casual way in which the National Interest repeats the most incredible lies about the 1938 purges is an indication of the intellectual corruption of a society in which most people actually believe such stuff :"75% of officers executed for treason" turns out to be the US way of saying that about 5% were punished, some by execution, most by losing Party membership, or by serving a few months in jail. The great majority returned to the colours within the next couple of years.
Posted by: bevin | Sep 30 2023 15:28 utc | 12
Indeed, one obvious example of how many purged officers weren't executed is marshall Rokossovsky (well he wasn't a marshall when purged, he became one during the great patriotic war). He was tortured, had his teeth knocked out and was sent to the gulag, but when the Nazis came, he was taken back into the Stavka, and actually agreed to defend USSR and then free Poland (being Russo-Polish himself).
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Sep 30 2023 15:32 utc | 13
Overcome with modesty, the National Interest failed to mention that the United States holds the dubious honour of achieving first place in the pursuit of brutality and war crimes, and by a very large margin.
No other explanation for the feelings of the North Koreans towards the United States is needed.
Posted by: CitizenSmith | Sep 30 2023 15:34 utc | 14
Excerpt from what CitizenSmith linked above :
…., 3.) Mass executions of civilians:
According to witnesses, the commander of the U.S. Forces in the region of Sinchon by the name of Harrison ordered the mass killing of 35,383 civilians (19,149 men and 16,234 women) during the period between October 17th and December 7th, 1950.
The civilians were pushed into a deep open grave, doused with fuel oil and set on fire. Those who tried to escape were shot. …..
Posted by: Exile | Sep 30 2023 15:40 utc | 15
Man, THANK YOU SO FREAKING MUCH for that concise and clear note on the "Stalin purge". Western media of any kind NEVER speak about it in any way even remotely approaching truth. They're too busy constructing an axiomatic religious hatred of Russia as the devil to let contradictory things get in the way.
That's just it - just like the racist russophobe who penned that article, they want only to see it as some mad blood orgy of senseless slaughter of anyone who wasn't pure evil. Ironic, then, that aside from how colossaly inflated the claims about that party power struggle are, the true nature of the competitors for power flies in the face of Western dogma - Stalin's side wanted essentially isolationism and to abandon any crusading revolutions for the sake of building their own nation at home, whereas Trotsky's ideals demanded precisely the latter and implied the sacrifice of the nation like a revolutionary suicide bomber. Meanwhile Western dogma more or less reverses their positions in its portrayal. Though, given how many Trotskyists made their way to the West and ended up influencing its politics, up to and including revenge on Russia and the roots of wokeism (woke delusions are fundamentally Trotsky-style in how they view the world and call to crusade).
Sadly, the issue is that we're in faith-based claim territory now. It's axiomatic for most Western figures, and even civilians, that Russians are somehow exceedingly brutal and merciless, that it's a distinguishing Russian feature somehow. It's at the core of Western self-image as noble and righteous, opposing the inhuman and evil Russians - they can't allow the thought that Russians are not in fact inhuman or evil, and especially not that Russians are far less destructive or indiscriminate than the West has ever been.
Posted by: Red Outsider | Sep 30 2023 15:42 utc | 16
I have known the tale of the brutal, wild, child-eating, mp3-downloading, animal raping russian for centuries.
It's part of propaganda to dehumanize the opponent.
Posted by: Ruediger | Sep 30 2023 15:45 utc | 17
National Interest does produce some good articles on occasion but
that is a rare event.
When Russia helped the Union and Abe Lincoln.
1. Russian warships in NY and SF
2. Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War
Posted by: Angelo | Sep 30 2023 15:51 utc | 18
Not absolutely new. I've seen several times the play of a generic scheme when someone "demonstrate" russian sick mind :
First. A "Truth" is made up about Russia, which as no basis in objective reality.
Second. A genius expert decides to explain the causes of this "Truth".
Third. The genius finds there is no rational cause for the "Truth". [of course, he cannot find a real one, since the "Truth" is actually pure non-sense].
Fourth. Therefore, there can be no other explanation than the sickness of the russian mind.
Posted by: Parisian Guy | Sep 30 2023 15:57 utc | 19
"Russia’s military operates on a Soviet,--totalizing--view of war that ignores distinctions between soldiers and civilians."
This word totalizing has been in the mouth of a lot of trolls at the bar lately. From the 60s forward, in reaction to the general opinion in the west, that the soviets, despite Stalin, we're still better than the Nazis, a psuedo left emerged using the concept of "totalitarianism" to argue the Nazis and Soviets we're actually one and the same evil phenomena.
This was of course rejected by anyone with even a passing grasp of history or politics, but in the US where there'd never been a mass explicitly class based party and amidst the cold war with the same soviets, this false equivalency was accepted broadly and promoted by the psuedo left. Michael Harrington is one prominent example.
The logic is that only US capitalism is truly free and the ideologies of the 19th and 20th century Europe were all the same: dark, evil and "totalizing".
This stupid conception gained a lot of adherents in the 60s and 70s, in fact it was only from people who were young then that I heard it repeated, until recently.
From that conception, many a fake leftist could argue that a new real socialism must be built by rejecting the entire theoretical heritage from Marx forward and replacing it with very generic, supra-class, ostensibly virtuous single issue goals such as fighting racism, sexism, homophobia, saving the environment etc all of which can be safely "fought" within capitalism. Never mind that capitalism itself actually exacerbates and in many cases deliberately creates these problems.
...which naturally leads us to the intellectual authors of this war: the Capitalist Dem party virtuously pretending to battle the abstractions of racism, sexism, homophobia while backing Nazis (their the same as the Russians so who cares) and pushing the world to the brink of a "totalizing" war of nukes. Yes, the Russians abandoned communism a generation ago, but they've been touched by the evil and remain in it's thrall.
US RC, at least the real drivers of this war in government, are mad. Nonetheless, even madmen have to explain what they are doing to themselves.
US imperialist nuts are convinced that communism and fascism are essentially the same and that triangulating them in Ukraine to destroy one another is the most virtuous of dirty tricks, clearing the way for virtue signalling US imperialism to reorder the world under it's infantile conceptions..with the virtuous US billionaires making massive profits too, of course.
Clearly, the reality is very different, but I'm convinced this is how the tops of the US political elite explain things to themselves and one another on the theoretical level.
Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands in 2015 (I think) was a first step in giving this false equivalency an intellectual imprimatur with the goal of casting the Nazi collaborators in Eastern Europe as not so bad, really.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Sep 30 2023 16:16 utc | 20
Russian brutality?
In WWII who systematically bombed the other side's cities in mass aerial attacks in waves that were timed so that each succeeding wave would kill rescuers and firemen tackling the aftermath of the previous wave? Who nuked two cities, both of which were overwhelmingly civilian targets?
Not the USSR.
Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast | Sep 30 2023 16:30 utc | 21
Even b, missed the point here. Russia started the SMO to stop the genocide against the Russian ethnic population that had been going on for eight years with the connivance of Germany, France and the whole NATO apparatus, in former Eastern Ukraine. That is simply R2P.
Demilitarizing and denazifing a bunch of lunatics openly declaring their intention to build a nuclear weapon justifies the Russian intervention.
John Mearsheimer and his ilks should stop being economical with the truth.
Posted by: Steve | Sep 30 2023 16:33 utc | 22
Belgian Babies Bayoneted
Sudanese Aspirin Factory
Kuwait Baby Incubators
Bosnian Rape Camps
Libyian Rape Pills
Rewritten from WWI's UK's Wellington House propaganda factory. Then it was
Huns bayonet belgian babies
Huns bomb aspirin factory
Kaiser operates rapecamps
Hun warlords feed rape pills to troops in France.
This thing does have a WWI feel to it.
"Wellington House" made known to me because a poster here referenced Thomas Fleming's book and i irdered and read it.
Good site this is.
Posted by: Dogtired | Sep 30 2023 16:37 utc | 23
Belgian Babies Bayoneted
Sudanese Aspirin Factory
Kuwait Baby Incubators
Bosnian Rape Camps
Libyian Rape Pills
Rewritten from WWI's UK's Wellington House propaganda factory. Then it was
Huns bayonet belgian babies
Huns bomb aspirin factory
Kaiser operates rapecamps
Hun warlords feed rape pills to troops in France.
This thing does have a WWI feel to it.
"Wellington House" made known to me because a poster here referenced Thomas Fleming's book and i irdered and read it.
Good site this is.
Posted by: Dogtired | Sep 30 2023 16:37 utc | 24
Trotsky's ideals demanded precisely the latter and implied the sacrifice of the nation like a revolutionary suicide bomber.
Posted by: Red Outsider | Sep 30 2023 15:42 utc | 16
Trotskys internationalism ("ideals" is really abstract) was really that of Marx and Lenin, so maybe just say Marxist internationalism.
Describing spreading the revolution internationally as "suicide bomber" would indicate you see international revolution as a suicide mission, hence you are neither a revolutionary or a Marxist, red.
And in the end the epigones of Stalin did sacrifice the nation to US imperialism without any fight at all.
Had Trotsky defeated Stalin or simply not been killed by Stalin, the Russian Soviet would still exist. US imperialism perhaps would not.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Sep 30 2023 16:38 utc | 25
John Mearsheimer and his ilks should stop being economical with the truth.
Posted by: Steve | Sep 30 2023 16:33 utc | 22
Mershheimer is the Cassandra of US imperialism, doomed to be right and ignored.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Sep 30 2023 16:39 utc | 26
Israel in 2006, with a force less than 1/10th the size of Russia's, killed roughly 1,200 Lebanese civilians and wounded over 4,000 in a month. Multiply that number by a factor 10 times for size and again by 18 months, and you would get a sense what an army that genuinely does not differentiate between miliary and civilian would do. They would have killed at least a couple hundred thousand civilians by now.
Posted by: Bob | Sep 30 2023 15:00 utc | 11
And they recently won visa free travel in and out of the US despite the overwhelming number of terrorist movements the country has spawned.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Sep 30 2023 16:42 utc | 27
Hell, suspected Trotskyites is one thing, but even white officers were allowed to resume their service, provided they had acted honorably during the civil war. In fact, the opposite of what is claimed in the article is true: Russians are too kind and considerate, even when inappropriate and often to their own detriment. They could probably cut their own troop losses in half at any time, at the expense of Ukrainian civilians.
Posted by: Skiffer | Sep 30 2023 16:44 utc | 28
USA, USA, according to the US Ivy league university Bard; the US has killed kinetically ~1M plus another>3M through dhiorrea and starving children through sanctions just since 9/11.. Remember the US SS Madalyn Albright, 500,000 Iraqi children and it was "worth it on TV. Destroyed and killed so many in Korea there was nothing left to bomb. Millions in Vietnam and Cambodia Laos etc. The firebombing of defenseless German and Japanese civilians and even nuking the Japanese civilians. Good thing that the western memory hole is so big.
Posted by: Bob | Sep 30 2023 16:47 utc | 29
As most of us know here that in today's intelligentsia the Party line must be kept vigorously growing. If you are someone who wants to make a living writing and are mediocre you just publish the Party line and all the officially recognized outlets and publishers will welcome you. You cannot find, for example, any stories any more that say anything postive about "enemy" countries like Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea (there is always something positive about anywhere) and so on. I've also noticed that anything the official media will not publish stuff (as it once did) on Pentagon corruption (which is extensive and systemic).
Fortunately, as is beginning to happen, the more intelligent (and less money-hungry) writers and commentators are beginning to wake up. This will eventually create a new dispensation in the same way the repressive 50s transitioned to the more open-minded 60s in the USA's cultural life.
Posted by: Chris Cosmos | Sep 30 2023 17:03 utc | 30
The choice of subject demonstrates Bernd's integrity. Teachers should take a cue from him.
U.S. history goes hand in hand with murder and robbery.
North and South America were colonized by Europeans.
The actual landowners enslaved, displaced and murdered. Biological warfare was also used, blankets of smallpox infected people, etc. given to the natives.
"A good Indian is a dead Indian".
The cradle of the United States is genocide.
Civilians have never had it easy in war.
Example 1
https://www.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de/zwangsarbeit/zwangsarbeit/index.html
"Over 12 million people performed forced labor in Germany during World War II."
So besides the numerous dead and aggrieved, about 12 million were enslaved by the German side.
Example 2
https://www.journal21.ch/artikel/seit-1945-sechs-millionen-tote-us-kriegen
"Our lack of awareness has less to do with oversight than with habit," writes John Tirman, who has also written a book on the subject ("The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians of America's Wars"). Americans, the author says, see themselves as generous and empathetic, and often they are, as in the case of natural disasters such as the Asian tsumani in 2004 or the Haitian earthquake two years ago: "But when it comes to our wars overseas, we care only about the fate of U.S. troops."
Conclusion:
War has to do with killing.
Not everyone finds that easy.
In the U.S. Army, there is a tradition of dehumanizing opponents. This is supposed to make killing easier, but it also affects the civilian population (in addition to the daily war routine - e.g. setting up free fire zones in populated areas). Vietnamese were called 'gooks' etc, Iraqis 'sand niggers' etc.
Did they also have a name for the Germans? Or did they copy the 'Untermenschenkonzept" there?
Ukraine follows the US and Nazi tradition with its 'Orcs'.
The West is drowning in propaganda.
Posted by: 600w | Sep 30 2023 17:04 utc | 31
Western media has begun an attempt to separate the undeniable truth of Ukrainian nationalist atrocities during WWII from the current government in Ukraine. A story today highlights a documentary being shown in Austria about the wwii massacres of Jews, Poles, and Russians (referred to as Ukrainians of course) by the nationalists, but insists that this is all about the past and that there were, of course, other nazi collaborators across Europe - [so what happened was 'normal' for the times]. This must be due to wide coverage of the flap about the nazi cheered in the Canadian parliament. "Of course claims by Russia that Ukraine has a nazi problem are just propaganda." They fail to mention all the far right nationalists infesting the current government, or the honoring of Stephan Bandera, or the Azov battalion, Right Sector and other far right militias, etc.
Awful Avalanche has a four part series posted on the Canadian nazi problem which is worth a read.
Posted by: the pessimist | Sep 30 2023 17:09 utc | 32
Just take a look at the history of Jules Cesar. His conquest of the Gaule is the matrix of all war of agression and empire expansion.
He lied a lot to pretend people in Gaule were brutal, bloodthirsty etc etc. Most of his claim were indeed completely false but allowed him to justify the slaughter.
Since then, nothing changed.
Posted by: W | Sep 30 2023 17:22 utc | 33
Since then, nothing changed.
Posted by: W | Sep 30 2023 17:22 utc | 33
Poor, poor history, W. Try harder.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Sep 30 2023 17:26 utc | 34
I’ll have you know Ivan Arreguin-Toft ‘risked his life in the Cold War’! His words, in the tranquil west German city of Augsburg hidden away with his wife to be translating or some bs job. Glad you exposed this trouble making coward.
Posted by: Jeff A | Sep 30 2023 17:26 utc | 35
"...Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands in 2015 (I think) was a first step in giving this false equivalency an intellectual imprimatur with the goal of casting the Nazi collaborators in Eastern Europe as not so bad, really." Ahenobarbus@20
You may be right. But my view is that it went much further back. And that the most systematic purveyor of these views was the Foreign Office's Information Research Department which originated in the late 1940s (1948 I believe). Britain was deeply interested in opposing communism intellectually because it saw it (rightly) as the major external force behind the anti-colonial movements which threatened the , economically vital, colonies. Above all their interest was in ensuring that, when the Colonies became independent, as they knew that they must, they would be ruled by licensed anti-communists such as Tunku Abdul Rahman. As Kenya sends 'Police" to Haiti to do the Empire's dirty work for it the logic of the policy- to demonise communism- is evident.
The current "They are both as bad as each other" ideology is promoted by fascists and their useful idiots, who are Legion.
I have no quarrel with Trotsky, who I consider to have been one of the handful of political and literary giants of the last century. But I think that you are wrong in thinking that his survival would have ensured the USSR's. As to Stalin I am coming to the view that the major problem in the 'struggle for power' lay not with him but with the chameleons Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin.
Posted by: bevin | Sep 30 2023 17:35 utc | 36
Angelo | Sep 30 2023 15:51 utc | 18
*** When Russia helped the Union and Abe Lincoln.***
And consider what horrors that intervention led to, worldwide...
The royals in Russia thoroughly deserved to be wiped out, even just for that.
Posted by: Cynic | Sep 30 2023 17:51 utc | 37
The Nazi government, like their successor state, the US, used bribery of top military officers as a way to subvert resistance to their invasions.
If Stalin hadn't removed disloyal officers from their posts, perhaps the USSR would have lasted as long as Denmark or Belgium.
Posted by: wagelaborer | Sep 30 2023 18:00 utc | 38
For a balanced, nuanced rumination of the Stalin era controversies from the Saker:
https://www.unz.com/tsaker/the-controversy-about-stalin-a-basket-of-preliminary-considerations/
Personally, I am left with a sense of not knowing enough. So all I can share with you is my gut feeling, my best guesstimate if you want, of what Stalin and the Soviet era represented for Russia. So here are my highly subjective and personal conclusions which I share with you as a basis for discussion and not as The Total And Final Truth on this issue.1) The historical Russia has been murdered and completely destroyed by the Bolshevik/Soviet regime. There is no continuity of any type between the rule of Czar Nicholas II and the Lenin-Trotsky duo. Therefore, there is no continuity between what came before and after these two Bolshevik leaders. The post-Soviet “Russia” after 1991 had nothing in common with the real Russia of before 1917. As for Putin’s Russia, the Russia after 2000, it is a new Russia, a Russia which is neither the pre-1917 one, nor the “democratic” pseudo “Russia” of Eltsin, but a new Russia whose real nature I still have to comprehend and which absolutely amazes me. In my wildest dreams during the horrible 1990s, especially 1993, I would never ever imagined to see what I see in Russia today and this gives me a great deal of hope. This new Russia has much stronger roots in the Soviet period than in the distant pre-1917 Russia, but what it has finally truly ditched is the rabid russophobia of the early Bolshevik years and of the equally rabidly russophobic 1990s. And that is really interesting because nowdays you will find monarchists, like Alexander Rutskoi, and Stalinists, like Nikolai Starikov, generally very much agreeing on the present even if they don’t agree about the past. Speaking for myself, as a “People’s Monarchist” (a kind of uniquely Russian Left-leaning monarchism embraced by Fedor Doestoevskii, Lev Tikhomirov or, especially, Ivan Solonevich) I also find myself in agreement with much of what Starikov writes. Except for his book on Stalin which I find absolutely non-convincing, to put it mildly. So this is something new, I think. I do not believe that the “Reds” or the original Bolsheviks were Russian patriots at all, I believe that this is a total myth, however, I do believe that those who today believe in this myth are themselves sincere and real patriots. So while I don’t believe that it possible to find any common ground or “reconciliation” between the White and the Red principles, I do very much believe that there is a real opportunity for a joint stance of Russian patriots today against the real enemy of Russia: the AngloZionist Empire.
Take a look at this amazing picture: the ex-prisoner of the Gulag shakes hands with the ex-KGB officer. True, Putin was only a foreign intelligence officer member of the First Chief Directorate (PGU) of the KGB which had nothing to do with any purges, dissidents or Gulags, but he still wore the same uniform as those KGB officers who kept a watchful (and mostly incompetent) eye on the Russian people (the Fifth Chief Directorate). So this handshake is immensely symbolic: not only did Solzhenitsyn receive Putin in his own home, but his entire face was beaming with real joy (as was Putin’s). These men were both educated and intelligent enough to realize not only the immense power of this symbolic moment, but they also realized what this meant for Russia: that real Russians (in the civilizational sense, of course, ethnically the category “Russian” is meaningless) were finally back in control of their own country. Solzhenitsyn lived long enough to see his country liberated (at least mostly) from the occupation of russophobic leaders representing foreign interests and he also saw that a fellow officer (Solzhenitsyn was decorated First Lieutenant of the Red Army before his arrest in 1945) was now in command of the country.
There are a few sections elsewhere with reasonable guesstimate numbers, all of which of course are disputed in some quarters as all such numbers are, but generally we are talking millions no matter how you make the tally. I think b's description of the military purge might be on the minimizing side (or about just one particular aspect?) whilst many others go overboard in the other direction. Such extreme events are never easy to unpack, both whilst ongoing in real-time and even decades or centuries later - as this article by the Saker also touches on.
Ahenobarbus | Sep 30 2023 16:16 utc | 20
*** From that conception, many a fake leftist could argue that a new real socialism must be built by rejecting the entire theoretical heritage from Marx forward and replacing it with very generic, supra-class, ostensibly virtuous single issue goals such as fighting racism, sexism, homophobia, saving the environment etc all of which can be safely "fought" within capitalism. Never mind that capitalism itself actually exacerbates and in many cases deliberately creates these problems.***
Also don't forget that in the West these wokists and political correcters derive rather a good living for themselves from spouting their synthetic ideological off-the-shelf shit (not to mention the satisfaction of bullying and punishing other people) -- being paid to do so directly and indirectly by governments and big corporate/financial interests.
So since they themselves are (so the liberal bigots sanctimoniously think) "good", that system which empowers and sponsors them, complete with its NGOs and corporate-entity masters, must therefore be basically good too.
Posted by: Cynic | Sep 30 2023 18:08 utc | 41
The Establishment Narrative filled with factless assertions marches on in the Empire of Lies. Aside from the facts as b related, there are two other antidotes to the mind poison being produced by that publication. The first is Putin's Reunification Day Speech, and the second is the Global Times editorial marking China's 10th Martyrs' Day, "Understanding China's past and future on Martyrs' Day".
When it comes to the issue of brutality in war and even in peace, the Outlaw US Empire is in the top tier: Genocide of Native Americans; Genocide of Koreans; Genocide of Southeast Asians; Genocide of Iraqis; formation and training of Latin American Death Squads; Genocide of Africans during the Era of Slavery; and the poisoning of its own citizenry via nuclear fallout, lead, pollution of aquafers with fracking chemicals, Cancer Alley; and so much more. How many Superfund sites have actually received the funding needed to repair the damage done?
SCF has several items currently that speak to the above and more. "America Needs Regime Change… Robert Kennedy Jr. Dices With Death by Running for the Presidency" is one, and "Crime and Impunity… One Year Lying About U.S.-Led NATO’s Nord Stream Terrorism Breeds More War" is another.
Ending the hegemonic Age of Plunder won't be an easy task, while also keeping the nukes from flying. As the first item above describes, eliminating the Outlaw elements within the USA will take a massive effort that currently seems implausible given the passivity of its society. But that's the surest way to keep the nukes from flying.
Since the archives opened up, demonizing guesses have been replaced by sober counts, and a drastic re-writing of Soviet history in the West is overdue:
The "black legends" accumulated around Stalin in particular need to be stripped away:
See also the works of Professor Grover Furr, passim
Posted by: CloseReader | Sep 30 2023 18:31 utc | 43
“The expected 1 million Ukrainian losses, 15 million refugees, devastated families in Ukraine - all these are vain sacrifices because the victory of Putin and Russia over this entire world of civilized barbarians was obvious even before the start of the SMO.Putin understands not only the power of words and bullets, but also the specifics of a long, long game of cat-and-mouse with all centers of power, and knows that war is a path of deception and that destroying the enemy’s plans and alliances is much more important and smarter than defeating him in open combat.
Putin has already won the war against all of Russia’s enemies; in fact, he didn’t even start it.”
— August Kotlyar
https://twitter.com/apocalypseos/status/1708072959263604923
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 30 2023 18:38 utc | 44
The US, during both the Korean and Vietnam wars, killed huge numbers of civilians.
In fact, the US declared areas of Vietnam “free fire zones” meaning anyone there, men, women, and children, were intentionally murdered en mass.
The US also admitted that killing 500,000 Iraqi children during the between war embargo was “worth it” because the embargo would weaken Iraq.
Thus, when an American writes about the brutality of others, it’s a joke.
Posted by: TimmyB | Sep 30 2023 18:40 utc | 45
You may be right. But my view is that it went much further back. And that the most systematic purveyor of these views was the Foreign Office's Information Research Department which originated in the late 1940s (1948 I believe). Britain was deeply interested in opposing communism intellectually because it saw it (rightly) as the major external force behind the anti-colonial movements which threatened the , economically vital, colonies. Above all their interest was in ensuring that, when the Colonies became independent, as they knew that they must, they would be ruled by licensed anti-communists such as Tunku Abdul Rahman. As Kenya sends 'Police" to Haiti to do the Empire's dirty work for it the logic of the policy- to demonise communism- is evident.
The current "They are both as bad as each other" ideology is promoted by fascists and their useful idiots, who are Legion.
I have no quarrel with Trotsky, who I consider to have been one of the handful of political and literary giants of the last century. But I think that you are wrong in thinking that his survival would have ensured the USSR's. As to Stalin I am coming to the view that the major problem in the 'struggle for power' lay not with him but with the chameleons Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin.
Posted by: bevin | Sep 30 2023 17:35 utc | 36
Snyder is definitely not the first to rehabilitate the Nazis after WW2. There was a certain Ernst Nolte in Germany in the 80s whose line was essentially that the Nazis were justified based on the threat of Communism from the east. But I think Snyder represents the moment the US RC began to come around the idea aka went mad.
I can't really say that Trotsky's survival would have ensured the USSR's. Counterfactual history is so speculative and doesn't allow for accuracy, but I can say had he, a genuine marxist theoretician who led the first socialist revolution in world history, survived it would have been much more difficult to liquidate the Soviet Union.
Even if he never returned to Russia on the strength of a left political revolution against the beauracracy, his work would have born fruit. The likelihood he would have developed a party along the lines of the Bolsheviks in the west would have been much greater, especially during WW2 and it's aftermath.
And you're certainly right about these three stooges: Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin. They all idiotically paved the national road for Stalin, then realized the error after it was too late. You can see it on their faces in the mugshots Stalin took. Especially Zinoviev.
As Trotsky said, had he and Lenin not been present, the revolution would not have occurred. Lessons of October is the essential proof of this.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Sep 30 2023 18:43 utc | 46
thanks b... quote "What is most astonishing though is that there seems to be a market for such dreck."
timothy sydner is extremely popular.. maybe someone can explain that...
Posted by: james | Sep 30 2023 18:46 utc | 47
so...once again...these kind of authors ignore the 14000 deaths at least crimes against Donbass citizens . and the thousands of war crimes as recorded in the White Book they and Russia have been compiling and pre senting
Posted by: Jo | Sep 30 2023 19:02 utc | 48
The National Interest is mostly certainly not a neo-con mouthpiece, as some have suggested. Perhaps you are confusing it with The National Review, which used to be fairly libertarian under William F. Buckley but now is very neo-conish, never-Trumpian. The National Interest has had some financial difficulties lately and therefore will publish dubious free content that is thrown their way, such as this utter dreck. That said, they have published many thoughtful pieces about Russia, particularly the effect of the war on world oil & gas markets and food supply.
Academic research typically contains many footnotes because it rests squarely on credible sources. That there are only a handful of footnotes, and that most of the are to dubious sources, particularly WikiLeaks, speaks volumes to this paper’s quality (or lack thereof).
In “Syrian and Russian armed forces made no distinction between civilians and insurgents” the link is to a Guardian piece, which is also highly dubious. Worse still, that piece links to a UN press release, which discusses pro-Syrian government forces, not Russian, killing civilians and criticizes them for – wait for it –
“the use of cluster munitions.”
Posted by: Sudsie76 | Sep 30 2023 19:02 utc | 49
Oh sure, the brutality of the "Untermenschen", right!
Reading B's piece reminded me of something seen in one of those documentaries about how civilians in Germany experienced the end of the Nazi war, when the Red Army moved in. An elderly woman from Berlin remembering the day she first met the Russians. She and the other women from her apartment building, together with their children, were huddled together in the "Luftschutzkeller", probably for days on end. A horrific mood of fear and uncertainty. The Soviets' advance then made its way on the street above them. Before long, some soldiers came in and searched the entire building, when they found the people down in the bunker. Somehow, across the language barrier, the soldiers demanded to know how many children and women there were, then they left. This brought on a sense of panic among the women, for in their minds the soldiers' question could only mean they wanted to separate children from women – to collectively rape anyone old enough to be considered a woman. What then happened was the soldiers came back after a while, with a big can full of milk and a bag of rice for the women to cook some “Milchreis” for their families.
“Russia’s continual rape, torture, and murder“, no doubt.
I’m ashamed of the world I live in, the one I have to share with the likes of Ivan Arreguin-Toft.
Posted by: Scotch Bingeington | Sep 30 2023 19:06 utc | 50
The National Interest is mostly certainly not a neo-con mouthpiece, as some have suggested. Perhaps you are confusing it with The National Review, which used to be fairly libertarian under William F. Buckley but now is very neo-conish, never-Trumpian. The National Interest has had some financial difficulties lately and therefore will publish dubious free content that is thrown their way, such as this utter dreck. That said, they continue to publish many thoughtful pieces about Russia, particularly the effect of the war on world oil & gas markets and food supply.
Academic research typically contains many footnotes because its legitimacy rests squarely on credible sources. That there are only a handful of footnotes, and that most of the are to dubious sources, particularly WikiLeaks, speaks volumes to this paper’s quality, or rather lack thereof. One cannot consider this paper a serious academic work, and by extension, the author a serious academic.
In “Syrian and Russian armed forces made no distinction between civilians and insurgents” the link is to a Guardian piece, which is also highly dubious. Worse still, that piece links to a UN press release, which discusses pro-Syrian government forces, not Russian, killing civilians and criticizes them for – wait for it – “the use of cluster munitions.”
Posted by: Sudsie76 | Sep 30 2023 19:16 utc | 51
And once again we are exposed to the utter depravity and hypocrisy of the white liberal. The wars before the Russian Revolution were humane due to the "aristocratic code", but the evil revolutionaries that denounced the western political practices were brutal murderers.
Boer wars, Free State of Congo, two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the War of Terror, but it's always the others who lack humanity. These people are irredeemable racists and it's high time for rational bystanders to expand Malcolm X's scope on the misanthropic qualities of the white liberal (including the various melanated specimens of this sociopathic lot). Goes without saying that many far-right luminaries share the abominal views of the crettin who wrote the article in the National Interest.
Posted by: Constantine | Sep 30 2023 19:18 utc | 52
CloseReader | Sep 30 2023 18:31 utc | 43
Goddammit! I just bought that book. And you're telling me it is available for free!
Posted by: bevin | Sep 30 2023 19:36 utc | 53
Posted by: CloseReader | Sep 30 2023 18:31 utc | 43
Thanks for that Postil piece. One of the best internet publications out there. I get the feeling that the professorial authors protest a little bit too much. For sure they seem to have put a needed dent in highly exaggerated accounts, but taking records from the KGB etc. back in that era as gospel is a little naive. There are too many old accounts of roving bands of thugs perpetrating in situ atrocities etc., none of which would have been recorded in the official sources they cite.
If it is true as they say that the the original population was 200 million, then they seemingly suffered a decline in line with the exaggerated figures; the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
When a regime deals out death to millions, even one is too much for the human mind to bear. The rabidly anti-Russian Bolsheviks engendered a barbaric culture of atrocity and injustice. Perhaps Stalin righted the ship after that initial catastrophe and then Kruschev righted it some more after Stalin, adding his own layers of deception, and so on. Recovering from such a ghastly tsunami takes generations.
Ideology-based revolutions lead to totalitarian excess and the deaths of millions. Not a good road, but that’s where the globalist Reset is almost certainly headed.
Meanwhile in Ukraine right now, all we have is ordinary wartime propaganda laced with inflammatory pseudo-historical demonization, something to which the West has been attuned by decades of one-sided post-war victor’s propaganda masquerading as objective history.
Thanks for the article, b.
Cue that video of the US Marine saying Iraqis deserve what they got because they made them go in and kill Saddam for them; and how he and his patrol went looking for 15 yr old virgins every morning because "it was the best breakfast they could get".
Must be that Aristocratic US code of conduct.
Posted by: PB | Sep 30 2023 19:49 utc | 55
At least here in Oz from my perspective: the ChinaBad propaganda works almost 100% because it has been going on since colonisation and we aren’t taught much at all about China. The RussiaBad propaganda does not work so well. Many people know Russia through Art and History first, and RussiaBad second.
Posted by: Rae | Sep 30 2023 20:04 utc | 56
How about Jews eating Christian babies during the Passover holiday? One of the all-time worst calumnies.
Posted by: Rob | Sep 30 2023 20:06 utc | 57
>> Russia continues to practice war crimes—systematically and deliberately attacking noncombatants, including medical personnel and facilities.
>> the whole [report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights] does not contain ANY evidence of 'Russian brutality'. ZERO! NONE!
Maybe not. It does contain the number of civilians killed in war: 9,701, 83 % of which in Ukrainian controlled territories (by Team Selensky or by Russia).
The most interesting question not asked or answered by the UNHCR: According to the government of the Ukraine, more than 250000 Russian soldiers have been killed since Feb 2022. More than 25 for every civilian victim.
9701 civilian casualties compared to 250000 Russian casualties.
Compare those numbers to the war in Afghanistan, where 70000 civilians died, and 7000 US soldiers Or Irak - 4000 US soldiers died, 400000 civilians.
The US kills 10 - 100 civilians for every US soldier who dies.
Russia kills 0.04 civilians for Russian soldier who dies.
Based on those numbers: Who is waging a war against civilians, then?
Posted by: Marvin | Sep 30 2023 20:07 utc | 58
The master at exploding myths about the Stalin era is Professor Grover Furr, who has written numerous books about the Moscow Trials, Khruschev's lies, the so-called Holodomor, Katyn, and other subjects, using declassified information from the former Soviet archives. Here's a taster, in which he deals with falsehoods from a 'socialist': https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/gfantiskopic0523.html
Posted by: Shakesvshav | Sep 30 2023 20:23 utc | 59
bevin | Sep 30 2023 19:36 utc | 52--
Thanks very much for your objection; for if you hadn't, I would have missed a grand opportunity for that is indeed an excellent source as I busily explore its Introduction. This citation of Thomas Mann is damning IMO:
"To place Russian communism and Nazi-fascism on the same moral place, in the measure
that both are totalitarian, is superficial at best; fascism at worst. Anyone who insist on this
comparison could very well be considered a democrat, but deep in their heart a fascist is
already there, and naturally they will only fight fascism in a superficial and hypocritical way,
while they save all their hatred for communism." 17
Here's the footnote: 17. Mann (1986a), pp. 271 and 278-279; Mann (1986b), pp. 311-312. And from the bibliography: MANN Thomas (1986a), Deutsche Hörer (Oct. 24th, 1942 and Jan. 14th. 1945), in: Essays, Hermann Kurzke (editor), Fischer, Frankfurt, vol. 2. (1986b), [An David McCoy] (1945), in: Id., Essays, H. Kurze (editor), Fischer, Frankfurt, vol. 2.
The work is very helpful since being Italian the author isn't related to the English-speaking world. And his wide field of sources is impressive.
So, many thanks to CloseReader | Sep 30 2023 18:31 utc | 43 for linking the book's pdf. It provides another stone to feel while crossing the river of history.
In “Syrian and Russian armed forces made no distinction between civilians and insurgents” the link is to a Guardian piece, which is also highly dubious. Worse still, that piece links to a UN press release, which discusses pro-Syrian government forces, not Russian, killing civilians and criticizes them for – wait for it – “the use of cluster munitions.”
Posted by: Sudsie76 | Sep 30 2023 19:16 utc | 50
--------------------------------------------------------
Which a majority in the US Congress now say that they are quite happy for Ukraine to use against Russian troops.
Posted by: Ed | Sep 30 2023 20:55 utc | 61
Shakesvshav | Sep 30 2023 20:23 utc | 58--
From the link you provided:
"Khrushchev and his followers produced no evidence to support their accusations. The striking lack of primary-source evidence is what started me on my quest for the truth about Stalin and the Stalin-era Soviet Union years ago." [My Emphasis]
Indeed, there's much of that going around and has for far too long. Khrushchev and his team created an Establishment Narrative out of while cloth just like the Outlaw US Empire does continually. And look at how long that Narrative continues to reign, although it now has many holes in it but has yet to sink under the waves of time.
Thanks for providing that essay; it's now part of my collection.
B.:
"What is most astonishing though is that there seems to be a market for such dreck."
No, it is not astonishing for the empire of lies. The msm is the market. And please remember: reading the corrupt press and all its lies is bad for one's mental health.
The victims are numerous. All around us. Incredible, but true. Most western people believe those lies, and when you try to discuss, they tell you that you are relying the Russian propaganda. They are so much fed with lies, that it becomes almost impossible to go around their cognitive dissonance.
The fact is that the atrocities committed by the ukronazis are systematically attributed to the Russians. For instance: hospital bombing, dam destroyed, targeting the ZNPP, bombing civilians (several examples), Bucha, torturing and killing prisoners, Olenivka bombing, etc.
Posted by: Patience | Sep 30 2023 21:23 utc | 63
Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 30 2023 20:56 utc | 61
karlof1, do you know "Collateral Damage"? Available as pdf here:
https://www.docdroid.net/XYU92yh/collateral-damage-911-pdf#page=22
From page 22, it is about Soviet Union...
Would like very much to read your comments on the pages dealing with Soviet Union and Russia.
Posted by: Patience | Sep 30 2023 21:32 utc | 64
I'd like some feedback about the way I see this conflict.
Russia is not going all out against Ukraine. Rather, Russia treats Ukraine like a brother who has bad friends, and needs a slap in the face to come to his senses.
Russia will go all out later on this changes from a proxy war to a direct war, with the intention of leaving an impression that lasts a generation or two. Even more so if some of the enemies
trigger memories from history
Posted by: Passerby | Sep 30 2023 21:36 utc | 65
Posted by: Marvin | Sep 30 2023 20:07 utc | 57
Before leaving defintively Afghanistan the criminal yankees bombed a van with water tanks killing 10 civilians, among them 7 children. Collateral damage. No consequence for that crime. No photo of the children killed. They are not important for the corrupt press.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/17/politics/kabul-drone-strike-us-military-intl-hnk/index.html
A war crime with no consequence. Disgusting.
Posted by: Patience | Sep 30 2023 21:40 utc | 66
The lion:
"Today is the Day of reunification of new regions with Russia.
A year ago, at referendums, their residents made a fateful decision – to be with their Fatherland. This choice has become a symbol not only of the restoration of historical justice, but also of the unity of the Russian people, their colossal will and dedication.
The special military operation will continue until the complete destruction of the Nazi Kiev regime and the liberation of the native Russian territories from the enemy.
The victory will be ours.
And there will be more new regions in Russia.
Happy holidays!"
https://t.me/s/medvedev_telegram
Posted by: Patience | Sep 30 2023 21:45 utc | 67
Red Outsider @16: "Trotsky's ideals demanded precisely the latter and implied the sacrifice of the nation like a revolutionary suicide bomber."
And where is the Soviet Union now? Deliberately dismantled by Stalinists due to ideological bankruptcy; a political caste who turned dynamic application of Marxist theory to the issues of the moment into static, hidebound dogma that grew increasingly outdated until it no longer provided any realistic path to the future. When Stalinist dogma (mostly the fossilized ideas of better minds reduced to religious scripture) no longer fit the material conditions, the Soviet leadership caste was lost and directionless. Counterrevolution and capitalist restoration then began to look like a good idea as they had no better ideas.
Trotsky was correct. The path he charted was a tough row to hoe, but socialist revolution has never been easy. The Soviet Union might still have been defeated had Trotsky's recommendations been applied, but history shows the course charted by Stalin lead to the most spectacular failure.
Important note: Woke "Cultural Marxism" was absolutely not a product of Trotsky's ideas. That was created by Adorno and Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School.
Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 30 2023 21:58 utc | 68
Did any "aristocratic code of honor" ever stopped an aristocrat from killing a peasant? I doubt that.
How many fewer wars would there have been in Europe if it's "honourable" aristocrats never existed? Every time a country was devastated by another or colonised it was always at the behest of those "honourable" men, look at what the aristocratic elites in England did to Ireland. That's actually the secret to the lack of wars after WW2, WW1 was entirely due to aristocrats, WW2 was due to the mess they made of the "peace" installed after. But since then the elites in Europe haven't quite been the aristocratic ones as before (England comes closest and is unsurprising the place with the greatest hatred of the poor from the rich and which celebrates it's horrible colonial wars and past) not "democracy" which has exhausted itself and become a tool for elite control. It's that the elites just don't have the same sense of aristocratic sense of superiority and ownership of the countries that we've had no big wars outside Yugoslavia until the slaughter in Ukraine.
I'm sure this guy is a jock-shiffer for special forces but won't admit that those guys live to commit war crimes despite their pretense to a "warrior code" most recently seen in the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Posted by: Altai | Sep 30 2023 22:18 utc | 69
Scorpion@53
The statistics cited completely contradict the Black Legend that you once again rehearse. Yout objection to them is a textbook example of circular logic "You can't trust figures gathered by these people because they were murderous thugs- everyone knows that."
In fact the statistics must be taken seriously unless they are refuted. But what they show is that figures of 60 or 100 million deaths, figures that you bandy about like a drunken sailor, are lies of the crassest kind.
One would have hoped that someone who is constantly harping on spirituality and religious values would be glad to learn that those mountains of corpses did not exisy. That the tens of millions who are alleged to have suffered, in fact lived out their lives to their natural terms.
The truth is that anti-communists do not confine their sadistic tendencies to cheering on Death sqyads in Central America or applauding massacres in Indonesia, they take just as much delight in the invention of supposed atrocities by communists, because without them it would be dufficult to convince the public that Operation Phoenix was justifiable or that the dropping of young students into the antarctic seas was necessary to preserve 'Freedom" from the Reds.
Decent people will be glad that the truth, being at last unveiled, is yet another proof of the basic decency of the human race.
One other thing: the levels of incarceration in the United States during the same period- 1918-1990- will almost certainly reveal that both in terms of numbers and in terms of the severity of punishments meted out things were at least as bad and probably worse in the avoowedly capitalist country.
That they are in the prison system now nobody would deny.
Posted by: bevin | Sep 30 2023 22:25 utc | 70
Liars are the root cause of most of society's problems. Let's earnestly begin to CANCEL these MFers. #CancelAllLiars
Posted by: LetsGoBrandon69 | Sep 30 2023 22:41 utc | 71
Patience | Sep 30 2023 21:32 utc | 63--
I'd heard of that publication but never read it. Some of the information provided I haven't read for 20 years, and a great deal I've never read before. The general story and context is known to me. I agree with the paper's premise. In the 1990s, I'd become interested in the work of the late Mike Ruppert, a former LA cop who turned into an investigator of the CIA who like the Late Gary Webb knew of the plot by the CIA to infest inner cites with cocaine and heroin, incite gang wars, and use all the loot made to fund Latin American Death Squads and their governments. Mike was hip to the connection between CIA and the big financial houses who laundered the money; so, the aspects the paper reveals regarding what DCI Bush did before and during his presidency are very plausible. Hudson's works on the nature of Neoliberalism and my own investigation into its founding and spread also cause some very deep and profoundly troubling questions. The recent Canadian approval of a Nazi killer and current NeoNazi leader rekindle the history of why that happened, which also relates to the events in the paper.
The real danger that's faced the people of the USA and world is American Fascism of the sort Henry Wallace warned the nation about in 1944. The big problematic question behind it all: Why did FDR allow all those involved in the 1933-4 Businessmen's Coup Plot to escape prosecution? And secondly: Who designed and who approved the policy of non-cooperation with the USSR in Western Europe and the repatriation and rehabilitation of Nazi (and Japanese) war criminals? For the widespread synchronous nature of the rat lines et al was too perfect for it to be ad hoc or at the direction of a small group. Same goes for the cover up of Pearl Harbor.
In 2004, Mike Ruppert wrote and published a book, Beyond the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, that investigates 911 and its ties. It's online in pdf here.
Sorry I strayed so far from your query. The basic reason why American Fascism has had such great success is the attraction of megalomania and pleonexia to people who get bribed by the Outlaws and get hooked--they're more powerful addictions than heroin. The adage about absolute power corrupting absolutely is 100% correct. That's what Collateral Damage, Beyond the Rubicon and many more works reveal, but too few act on the lessons they provide, at least within the West. Why the East/Global Majority is different is a valid question, likely because of the exploitation it was subjected to and continues.
"To place Russian communism and Nazi-fascism on the same moral place, in the measure
that both are totalitarian, is superficial at best; fascism at worst. Anyone who insist on this
comparison could very well be considered a democrat, but deep in their heart a fascist is
already there, and naturally they will only fight fascism in a superficial and hypocritical way,
while they save all their hatred for communism." 17
Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 30 2023 20:46 utc | 59
Great quote from a great author. I've heard that art can be judged by how beautifully it reveals an aspect of social reality. By that standard, Magic Mountain and Buddenbrooks are masterpieces.
The character Naphta from the former always seemed strange to me though. He's clearly a personification of an ideology, but counter to the quote above, it seems he represents the abstract totalitarian with dark aspects of worst Stalinists and Nazis.
Downloaded that Stalin book too. Looks good.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Sep 30 2023 22:54 utc | 73
Re: The Source of Russian Brutality
Projecting this premeditated act of castigation prior to sacrificing their own citizens, lures growing criticisms away from accusatory failed nations of their direct responsibilities & liabilities of never protecting their own vulnerable populace. Creating the illusion of (coercion) justice by intimidation and threats of legalized violence on paper using an amateur cognitive persuasion strategy only telegraphs the west's inner moral guilt and unprosecuted liabilities of centuries of mass slaughter.
Posted by: lynx | Sep 30 2023 23:00 utc | 74
like the Late Gary Webb knew of the plot by the CIA to infest inner cites with cocaine and heroin, incite gang wars, and use all the loot made to fund Latin American Death Squads and their governments.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Sep 30 2023 22:54 utc | 72
I remember that Webb book. He's from my neck of the woods. The story came out around the Lewinsky scandal. I remember it was buried in a tiny section on the back page of the paper I was reading at the time. The cum stains were obviously page 1.
You know he supposedly died of a suicide after being black balled from his profession? What's curious is that he was found in his Sacramento home with two shots to the head.
RIP Gary!
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Sep 30 2023 23:00 utc | 75
Posted by: bevin | Sep 30 2023 22:25 utc | 69
In fact the statistics must be taken seriously unless they are refuted. But what they show is that figures of 60 or 100 million deaths, figures that you bandy about like a drunken sailor, are lies of the crassest kind.
========================
Please, knock it off with the gratuitous ad hominem BS. Grow up.
I don't ‘bandy around’ any figures but may have referred to some at times such as the 66 million number cited in that Saker article I linked. But I don't regard any such figures as reliable, including the KGB execution reports cited in that Postil piece. Like I said, there were many roving atrocities at various times, none of which would have been recorded in the sources cited. Plus, before Stalin (which b was discussing) the Jewish Bolsheviks were a criminal gang of vicious fascist psychopaths making the entire communist movement an outrageous lie which people like you keep propogating. I don’t trust any of their records and suspect that anyone who does, like you, is a partisan tribal sympathizer.
Much of what happened after 1917 was truly ghastly; that you cannot admit this is a serious failing on your part. I couldn't care less about the numbers either way; not my country; not my history. That said, the dynamic is of interest to me today simply because it seems we are all headed into a similar totalitarian-style direction driven by similar psychopaths, so with possibly millions of deaths again. Your sort of atrocity denial along with condescending, manipulative animus is part of a never-ending campaign to undermine ordinary sanity, decency and mutual good will.
Time to look in the mirror, bevin!
Posted by: Lemming say | in 10
Yes, the USA "performed more than 200 military interventions"maybe these links
Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2023 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R42738
BIDEN: "(...) but, ¡Europe can not stay united without the United State! ¡THERE IS NO MORAL CENTER IN EUROPE! When in the last two centuries at the french or the british or the germans or the belgium or the italians moved in away to unify that continent to stand up to this kind of genocide? When have they done it? the only reason anything is happening now is because the United State of America finally ¡FINALLY! is understanding her role (...)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwYVKptqH_o&t=54s
Posted by: Neocons | Sep 30 2023 23:30 utc | 77
I've been watching US military operations since the 60s, even took part in a minor way in the '70s. There's never been a shortage of brutality! Maybe the Russians are watching our movies!
Posted by: lester | Sep 30 2023 23:54 utc | 78
Didn't Bill Clinton's adviser, Madelaine Albright, say that for the US, killing half a million children was "worth it"? How does any country get more brutal than that?
Posted by: lester | Oct 1 2023 0:04 utc | 79
Thanks for the replies. I lived in San Jose when Webb was writing for the San Jose Mercury News. He was clearly murdered. We cancelled our newspaper subscription when they buried his work then dissed him before he was killed. Do note what is said about Hannah Arendt shortly after that citation.
I decided to make Crooke's al-Mayadeen column into an article for reasons I explain here.
Posted by: Patience | 63
- - - - -
There is similar content:
- - - - -
Those were the major operations launched to collapse the Soviet economy and take over it’s key assets. These operations were assisted by a range of allies of the Bush strategy, and traitors to the Soviet Union. As the Soviet Union collapsed, they would line their own pockets, and those of their western backers.
Posted by: Patience | 63 page 22 https://www.docdroid.net/XYU92yh/collateral-damage-911-pdf#page=22
vs
"In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy..."
The "Farewell [Operation]" countermeasures campaign was cold-eyed economic warfare, put in place to inflict a price on the Soviet Union for corrupting a lotty ideals of detente. While there were no physical casualties from the pipeline explosion, there was significant damage to the Soviet economy.
Quotes in book At the abyss : an insider's history of the Cold War https://archive.org/details/atabyssinsidersh0000reed/page/268/mode/2up
Posted by: Neocons | Oct 1 2023 0:26 utc | 81
Overcome with modesty, the National Interest failed to mention that the United States holds the dubious honour of achieving first place in the pursuit of brutality and war crimes, and by a very large margin.
Posted by: CitizenSmith | Sep 30 2023 15:34 utc | 14
----------------------
So, many thanks to CloseReader | Sep 30 2023 18:31 utc | 43 for linking the book's pdf. It provides another stone to feel while crossing the river of history.
Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 30 2023 20:46 utc | 59
-----------------------------------------------------------
karlof1, you are creating too much material for me to keep up with.
The major trouble I have is that you have established so much credibility that I do need to chase if only some of it down.
Ivan Arreguin-Toft should just be put on ignore.
Posted by: Acco Hengst | Oct 1 2023 1:22 utc | 82
100% with b on this one.
The US claiming to preserve international law is as laughable as Al Capone pleading for the Pope's wealth to stay in good health. No sheriff is respected if he brakes his own laws every fortnight. You want to be a pirate than don't preach. Even cattle see through you when you steal too frequent.
The Ukrinazis are poor proxies for rogue cowboys but they can't help themselves under a dollar deluge: kill your own neighbors or family for a billion $? "Sure, we anyway didn't like what they said to our dog ~5 years ago."
Guantanamo US Dons cannot open their mouths on human rights; Obama was the biggest hypocrite with a silver tongue. This mafia has its own people also under 24/7/365 watch, image how trust-full/worthy they are?
Posted by: Antonym | Oct 1 2023 1:59 utc | 83
Do the civilian casualties include the 15K+ dead Ukrainians by Ukrainians after 2014?
Posted by: Tard | Oct 1 2023 2:17 utc | 84
“What is most astonishing though is that there seems to be a market for such dreck.”
There is a huge market for such dreck with tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars being pumped into it over the decades by MI6, the CIA, and all other “western“ intelligence agencies, not to mention every kind of media mogul.
Anti-Russian and anti-Chinese racism is the order of the day, and has been since 1945.
Posted by: Saturna | Oct 1 2023 2:49 utc | 85
Posted by: Shakesvshav | Sep 30 2023 20:23 utc | 58
you quote the historian Furr, that he wrote, among others, also about Katyn (most people here know what it is about) - and you include a long link to his work. That link does mention the WW2 but not a single word about Katyn. The context of your comment seems to imply that Stalin was not responsible for "Katyn". That link you provided quotes Pavel Sudoplatov's book ('Special Tasks'), in reference to murder of Trotsky.
However the same Sudoplatov does provide the facsimile reproduction of Stalin's signature on the order to liquidate (murder) thousands of Polish soldiers (mostly officers), why do you avoid this source in this context?
Putin has apologized to Polish nation for this atrocity, I remember.
So, Stalin was not a saint.
Posted by: fanto | Oct 1 2023 3:07 utc | 86
@8 Dolgen
I am reminded of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Israel suffered more soldiers killed than civilian fatalies.
Lebanese civilians died in very large numbers through indiscriminate IDF artillery and air strikes.
Yet it is an accepted truth of that war that Hezbollah were the terrorists, and the IDF was - as ever - the most moral army in the world.
Go figure....
Posted by: Yeah, Right | Oct 1 2023 4:15 utc | 87
B, your untiring campaign against propaganda is valiant and I remain continually amazed at your stamina. A heroic task fit for Herakles but more like that of the Danaidai I fear.
Posted by: Patroklos | Oct 1 2023 6:11 utc | 88
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand on twitter posted an extract from an article:
This Diplomat article by Indian-Malaysian scholar Chandra Nair is a few months old but absolutely nails it:Anti-China Rhetoric Is Off the Charts in Western Media
Nair explains what anyone who has been paying attention has already understood: that "a key feature of mainstream Western media today is the relentless China-bashing. It is off the charts and tiring, often involving regurgitated trivia or fabricated stories with no evidence to support callous statements about the country, demonstrating a deep lack of understanding".
In his analysis anti-China propaganda "adheres to three core ideas":
1) "The belief that China is a threat to the world... How and why China is a threat is never explored; such is the deep-rooted and almost religious nature of the belief."
2) "China must be linked to every possible global event that affects the West... Media outlets are reverting to the 'yellow peril' of the late 1800s. There is no subtle and nuanced approach to instilling fear like this. It is full-on and very often blatantly racist – but it is now acceptable for one to be racist about the Chinese in Western media, despite the fact that Black-White relations are very carefully described."
3) "The sentiment that everything must be done – even illegal and unfair methods – to arrest the rise of China. Never mind the rights of hundreds of millions of Chinese to have a better life after a century of poverty and deprivation... With this assumption unassailably in place, the West has the right to galvanize – and even bully – its allies and ask the absurd question, 'what should be done about China’s rise?' – as if China does not have the right to carve its own place in the new world."Nair says that "people in China and the non-Western world must realize that when it comes to the workings of the mainstream media we are in a new era – a propaganda war the likes of which the world has never seen before... The idea that Western media is run by fair-minded people who are independent, driven only by a desire to talk truth to power, is a mirage. It is a myth, and it is a bitter pill that needs to be swallowed."
I'd say that it's actually even more important that people in the West understand this... They are after all the ones being lied to and fundamentally misunderstanding the world they live in.
Nair also says that the dominance of Western media needs to be "dismantled" so that "readers becoming more aware of global issues by having more non-Western sources to rely on, so they are not victims of the current propaganda war." He points out that this is important for "the West too so that the mass hysteria generated by mainstream media is prevented from creating fear and pitting Western societies against the rest of the world. Today the target is China; tomorrow India and then maybe Africa."
And this to me is really the crux of the issue: at the end of the day the biggest long term effect of all this is more negative to the West than to China or the global South. It isolates the West, only 12% of the world's population, in a delusional bubble of their own creation, an alternative reality where they are good fighting against "evil". And the more they delude themselves into believing this, the harder it will be when they eventually wake up.
I would like to highlight this part: "often involving regurgitated trivia or fabricated stories with no evidence to support callous statements about the country, demonstrating a deep lack of understanding". The same rules apply to both Russia and China. (and Libya and Syria before them.)
Posted by: Petri Krohn | Oct 1 2023 6:21 utc | 89
Petri Krohn @ 88:
Chandran Nair is closer to the truth than even he realises when he describes the notion of China as a threat to the world. This idea is very similar to early modern (as in post-Renaissance / post-Reformation) beliefs held by Catholic and Protestant Christians alike when they encountered the indigenous cultures of North and South America, and perceived those cultures and their belief systems and traditions as satanic, often because some of these traditions were tempting to follow and therefore moral and spiritual threats.
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Oct 1 2023 8:33 utc | 90
The pointed article is just racism and propaganda.
Posted by: Luc Laforets | Oct 1 2023 9:38 utc | 91
8 years of training and arming Ukrainian soldiers as well as fortifying the Donbas. Fail.
"Nuclear option" level sanctions against Russia. Fail.
Reanimating the corpse of the Ukrainian army twice. Fail.
Wonder weapons. Fail.
The industrial capacity of the mighty west to produce arms and ammunition. Fail.
Slander. ????? Well I guess if you can't beat them on the battlefield be a mean bitch and don't let the Russians sit with the cool kids at the UN cafeteria... at least he didn't call them sluts.
Posted by: HB_Norica | Oct 1 2023 10:09 utc | 92
Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 30 2023 23:07 utc | 75
So-called "totalitarianism" is actually a concept that was rebranded after World War II with the intention of putting the Soviet Union and Hitler in the same category, not a very difficult trick to understand.
In fact, it would be more appropriate to put most U.S. presidents in the same category as Hitler, i.e., war criminal leaders of imperialist countries.
Or one could also put Hitler under the same category as the Founding Fathers, i.e., anti-black and anti-indigenous racists.
In any case, Hannah Arendt's notion of totalitarianism is based on the very basic error that the fascist state has a stronger, not weaker, hold on society than liberal states such as the United States and Britain.
The horseshoe theory is also based on such a basic factual error.
It's not a "similar totalitarian-style direction driven by similar psychopaths". The capitalist state has always been what you know totalitarianism looks like. It's just that you've finally swallowed the red pill and seen the real world as communists have always seen it: the extreme oppressive core of bourgeois democracies. Only that those kernels are currently being used against some Trump supporters - the latter being used to their status of being free from repression.
Nazis for Biden: How Washington weaponizes radicals for its political goals
The neoconservatives' buying off of some Nazi factions is similar to the bourgeois regime's buying off of social democrats or "alternative communists" like Orwell.
Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 30 2023 21:58 utc | 67
The only thing I agree with Trotsky on is that the USSR should have been tougher than it has historically done. It's a shame that the USSR didn't even have the will to go on the offensive against the European capitalist countries. If the USSR had the will, the USSR could have united the entire Eurasian and African continents.
However, I think Stalin's work is currently underrated. Even though I am a Maoist, I have read far more of Trotsky's work than I have read Stalin's (In fact, the only news site I currently read regularly is wsws). So I was still surprised when I found out that Stalin's opinions were not as stupid as Trotsky had made them out to be. In current Marxist circles, Stalin's writings are more of an alternative idea than Trotsky's.
Posted by: Colin | Oct 1 2023 11:14 utc | 93
Posted by: bevin | Sep 30 2023 19:36 utc | 52
Do you know libgen and sci-hub?
Just pirate anything you can pirate LMFAO
Posted by: Colin | Oct 1 2023 11:18 utc | 94
One of the best post, that really exposes some of those that comment frequently here. To those that post, please for the sake of AI, leave references, as this makes your points more credible.. Maybe there will be an AI platform that can truthfully digests your discussions and do a proper cataloging that jives with the real evidence.
For a flavoring from the past, that gives a deeper understanding, I recommend listening to YT's WW1 Stories and then WW2 Stories. Most of the readings are from the voice of Nigel Ferguson and quite easy to listen to in English. Most are diary entries and letters to home, but do remember that mail was censored and some are written by fanatics and mostly German accounts.
Posted by: T S | Oct 1 2023 11:56 utc | 95
The little daughter’s on the mattress,
Dead. How many have been on it
A platoon, a company perhaps?
A girl's been turned into a woman,
A woman turned into a corpse.
It's all come down to simple phrases:
Do not forget! Do not forgive!
Blood for blood! A tooth for a tooth!
Poem by Aleksandr Solshenyzin who was a Red Army Officer in 1945 in East Prussia
One might also refer to Milovan Djilas - Conversations with Stalin. The Yugoslav communists full of admiration for the Red Army came to Stalin to as delicately as possible broach a difficult subject: the behaviour of Soviet troops in the small corner of Yugoslavia (the Voyvodina) that they crossed in their war with Germany. They raped and pillaged to an extent that threatened the reputation of Yugoslavian communists. STalin flew into a rage and asked his Yugoslav comrades why they minded Soviet Soldiers "having a little fun".
Why did the Western Ukrainians fight against the Soviets into the Fifties? Because they hadn´t forgotten that in 1939 about 10% of the population had been deported into Siberia where half died nor that many thousand of political prisoners were killed when the Red Army had to quickly retreat in the face of the German onslaught.
Posted by: Tom67 | Oct 1 2023 12:20 utc | 96
the extreme oppressive core of bourgeois democracies.
Posted by: Colin | Oct 1 2023 11:14 utc | 92
Please, please, please... I hear this word time and again from people who think their country is "democratic" (we the good are democratic, the others, the bad, are under dictatorships), when it is not, as if they do not understand the meaning of that word.
The first reason that there is no democratic State is the fact that the power in countries which view themselves as "democratic" is not political, but economic and financial.
The second reason is that once elected those people can do what they want. Without any control of the people. Like to support Ukraine.
Even Switzerland is not a democratic State. The governement and the parliament could break the constitutional law without consequence for themselves. There are several cases where the will of the people was discarded or not allowed to express itself. Not to speak of the corruption of the political class. Like everywhere.
Posted by: Patience | Oct 1 2023 12:21 utc | 97
Wave After Wave Of Men Was Sent In Without Remorse
WW1 Stories
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40nfVXo2pi0
Posted by: T S | Oct 1 2023 12:26 utc | 98
Casualties of WW2:
Soviet Union 26 600 000 - Germany 7 375 800
China 20 000 000 - Japan 3 100 000
Still a long way to go to one soul for one soul.
Posted by: Patience | Oct 1 2023 12:39 utc | 99
Posted by: Patience | Oct 1 2023 12:21 utc | 96
What you say is just bourgeois democracy. Bourgeois democracy is a dictatorship over the proletariat (and petty bourgeoisie), just as proletarian democracy would still be a dictatorship over the bourgeoisie.
Take the bourgeois parliament. Can it be that the learned Kautsky has never heard that the more highly democracy is developed, the more the bourgeois parliaments are subjected by the stock exchange and the bankers? This does not mean that we must not make use of bourgeois parliament (the Bolsheviks made better use of it than probably any other party in the world, for in 1912–14 we won the entire workers’ curia in the Fourth Duma). But it does mean that only a liberal can forget the historical limitations and conventional nature of the bourgeois parliamentary system as Kautsky does. Even in the most democratic bourgeois state the oppressed people at every step encounter the crying contradiction between the formal equality proclaimed by the “democracy” of the capitalists and the thousands of real limitations and subterfuges which turn the proletarians into wage-slaves. It is precisely this contradiction that is opening the eyes of the people to the rottenness, mendacity and hypocrisy of capitalism. It is this contradiction that the agitators and propagandists of socialism are constantly exposing to the people, in order to prepare them for revolution! And now that the era of revolution has begun, Kautsky turns his back upon it and begins to extol the charms of moribund bourgeois democracy.
Posted by: Colin | Oct 1 2023 12:42 utc | 100
The comments to this entry are closed.
Belgian Babies Bayoneted
Sudanese Aspirin Factory
Kuwait Baby Incubators
Bosnian Rape Camps
Libyian Rape Pills
And many more ……it’s a pattern
Posted by: Exile | Sep 30 2023 14:27 utc | 1