yeah ask Joe Stalin how impossible that might be.

So you surely are against Kosovo independence, a clear case where NATO caved an artificial country out of thin air through brute military power.
 

What is the justification for continuing US occupation for more than 30 years since the Cold War ended?
 

Replies: @animalogic

Nixon made a wheat deal with the Soviets--and their silence on the US space fraud was part of the arrangement.

A great book that covers this in more depth:

https://www.amazon.com/One-Small-Step-Great-Dominate-ebook/dp/B07NB2QL13

The Soviets quickly realized that a manned moon mission was impossible with current technology--and Nixon gave them a win-win scenario.

Na, the goal has always been Mars, but they have to make money to get there

Replies: @mal

Really, Carlo ?! Are you another ' expert ' in the field, or what ?...Take a look at the belly of the airplane, just before ' hitting ' the tower...what do you see ? What do you think is that...' thing ' under the belly...have you ever saw one under an airplane, at the airport ( if you ever use an airplane for travel )...?!...EVER ?!...There is even a movie, part of a serial from Feb. '01, I think...on ' Fox ', where a rogue group is taking control of an commercial airplane and taking toward WTC...' Predictive programing '...

Tukhashevsky was purged in 1937, thus beginning the purge of the military. Kahlkin Gol was fought during the summer of 1939. Thus Khalkin Gol occurred after the military purge.

While there are undoubtedly are many exaggerations of Soviet military capacity pushed by Rezun, it also is worthwhile to honestly consider the unfolding scenario while making allowances for the Soviet military performing in an optimal way. The first consequence of Stalin playing out the Rezun-script would be a Japanese declaration of war on the USSR. The Axis alliance required that such an attack on one of its members be responded to by all. More than that, anyone who looks at the early formation of the Axis knows that Japan was originally more interested in a drive against the USSR than in Pearl Harbor. Hitler had already identified Russia as his target of expansion of living space and had no desire to share any part of it. Instead Hitler tried to encourage Japan into confrontations with the UK and US under the assumption that this could act as a distraction from his own bid for expansion.

But if Stalin had simply struck west before Barbarossa was launched then Japan would quite certainly have immediately mobilized to strike at the USSR. This would mean no Pearl Harbor. But now someone is likely to mention the US sanctions on Japan. It's not even clear that Roosevelt would have been able to maintain those sanctions in these circumstances. People like McMeekin gladly quote Truman's comment about how the US should support whichever side seems to be losing. Well in the summer of 1941 that appeared to be the UK and USSR. However if Stalin had done as Rezun claims then the situation would have looked very different. In such a case one could expect a vast rise in isolationist sentiment which would have made it difficult for Roosevelt to sell the public on sanctions against Japan.

At this point one has to decide how much of Rezun's script one wants to buy. Some people allow for the possibility of Stalin striking in July 1941 but maintain that the Red Army would have gotten bogged down without advancing too far. If this scenario is made then one can very well imagine Churchill greeting Stalin as an ally against Hitler. Roosevelt would have a hard time persuading the US public that they should want to join the war on either side. But at least in this case the war might have developed as a Churchill-Stalin alliance. But Rezun goes much further in his claims and actually tries to argue that Stalin was on the verge of Sovietizing the whole continent of Europe with his forces occupying perhaps every region from Norway to Portugal to Italy. That crazy scenario has quite different implications.

The record shows that Churchill began advocating a war against the USSR among his own officers as early as the beginning of 1945. Churchill went on urging Truman through 1948 that he should use the atomic bomb on the USSR now before a Soviet bomb was developed. Of course McMeekin himself mentions Operation Pike which was a plan for an attack on the USSR by the Allies that was made in 1940. But in the post-WWII era Churchill played all of this on the down low. That was because the appearance of such a great victory in WWII imposed constraints on Churchill. If he had arbitrarily started advocating in public for renewed war it would have ruined his reputation unless he first had a solid block of important people won over to his view.

This would not apply if we assume the Rezun-script in force. Under these circumstances Churchill's entire reputation would come to hinge on positioning himself as the man who had rallied the West to fight Joseph Stalin. There should be no question that from the moment this happened Churchill would promptly have begun exploring the possibility of alliance with Japan. There's barely an outside chance that the tensions between Britain and Japan which existed in early 1941 might have prevented any formal alliance for appearing between Churchill and Tojo. But a de facto alliance would certainly have taken shape very quickly.

That brings one to the question of what would FDR have done. Many people of the Right frequently exaggerate the levels of Soviet influence on Roosevelt. A better study of this was done by Frank Costigliola in Roosevelt's Lost Alliances. Roosevelt was clearly ready to achieve what he hoped a stabilization of power blocs by recognizing a Soviet domain of influence in eastern Europe. But nothing about Roosevelt's performance suggests that he would ever have acquiesced to what Rezun asserts. Quite the opposite.

In his declaration of war on the US Hitler made the charge that Roosevelt was looking to a war to reinforce his authority in the domestic US economy. There's a good bit of truth to that. Robert Taft and other such conservatives had placed limits on how far the New Deal could go. In 1937 the recession started coming back again and Roosevelt's own conservative critics who had tried keep the New Deal from working labeled this as a "Roosevelt recession" even though it could be better blamed on Taft. Roosevelt was certainly looking for a way out of this, and a war was an obvious solution.

Now it happens that Roosevelt calculated that Hitler offered him his best option of finding such a war. But if Stalin had done as Rezun claims then this would obviously not be possible. Roosevelt would have to find a better war somewhere. The public certainly wouldn't have much interest in a war against Japan under these circumstances. Instead we know that Churchill would have been campaigning up and down the whole region of Western civilization for a drive against Stalin. It is also safe to assume that Churchill would have been given a very friendly by people like Harry Truman, Charles Lindbergh, Herbert Hoover and quite a few others.

In these circumstances it's easy to forecast how things would have gone. After patiently allowing Churchill to prep the public opinion Roosevelt would have played out almost exactly the same act which he did after Pearl Harbor. He would present himself as shocked at the action of an aggressor, he would rehash how he had always sought to keep the US out of war, and then he would have asked Congress for a declaration of war on Stalin. With Stalin presumably having occupied all of Europe the development of the atomic bomb would have quickly become significant as part of the war effort. The war might even have gone on into early 1946. But once the a-bomb had been developed this would decided everything else.

People who ignore this as the obvious outcome while citing Rezun have simply not bothered to think things through to the end. Stalin, however, was exactly the type of person who would have thought this through far in advance. Stalin was also very much aware of the efforts to build an a-bomb from the early stages. This much alone allows us to reject the Rezun-script as pure fantasy. Even if Stalin had attempted his own preemptive strike against Hitler as Zhukov urged him to do on May 15, 1941, he still would have sought rather to meet Churchill halfway in Europe and accomplish something like what eventually did occur at a cheaper cost. But even in these circumstances Churchill would have been much more forward about demanding that Stalin get out of Poland, as he wanted to do in 1945 when he proposed Operation Unthinkable to his staff.

The main trouble with the Soviet gear once fighting began was the shit ergonomics and that they lacked two way radios. While they had a better tank design than the Germans by the metrics of speed armour and gun size the Germans had weaker tanks with well spaced upholstered interiors with individual escape hatches and two way radios and internal intercoms. I’m not sure that lack of a good radio and intercom which tipped the balance until well into 1942 was a sign that the Soviets didn’t intend to ambush the Germans. The Russians were using 30,000 tanks in summer 1941. Germany had ~3,000 machines. The newer Soviet T34 were a month away from deployment and the Russians had 300 KV1 with better guns and armour than the Germans in the field at the start. Soviet tanks with vastly superior guns, armour and speed to the PzKw 3,4! It’s pretty clear the Soviets didn’t think about communication gear. That’s why they got crushed.

The Soviets were going to attack. Sure of it. They had badly designed signals gear and little of it.

Replies: @Patrick McNally

AirPower in the east wasn’t as important in the fall of France. Real problem was the lack of communication gear for the Russians to coordinate their numerical superiority. They just didn’t see it as important if they were going to drive 50,000 tanks at Berlin.

Exactly. The Soviet Army was completely unprepared for any kind of big war....Rezun’s thesis makes no sense at all.
 

Replies: @Carlo, @JMcG, @Ron Unz

The Soviets ended up crushing Finland. They annexed the Baltic’s and Eastern Poland effortlessly and stole Bessarabia off Romania. They squished Japan in Kalkin Gol. What are you talking about?

Replies: @Carlo, @Patrick McNally

I think they want people to believe they must take the jabs or die.

So....they will be able to shoot whatever they want into people, and God knows what kind of satanic chemical stew it might be.

I do think it's all about control and jewish paranoia, bottom line.

Putin had excellent relations with Netanyahu. This enabled Russia to tell him precisely what Russia's red lines were in Syria. Netanyahu never overstepped them. As a result, Assad has won the war and US troops will be leaving shortly, as in Afghanistan.

Long term, the continuance of the Zionist entity that is Israel is in serious doubt. The vast majority of Russian "Jews " who emigrated to Israel are either highly secular or of only partial Jewish descent - sometimes a quarter or less. As the situation deteriorates, these groups will increasingly look to move to somewhere safer. The Russians know this, and will take back skilled workers and people with capital, if they agree to conform to Russian standards.

So Russia's policy has both short term and long term objectives. It's called pragmatic diplomacy - it enables you to get what you want. Before WWI all the Great Powers practiced it. Now the West is in thrall to HomoGlobalism. Its diplomacy is completely counterproductive and against its own interests.

Replies: @Z-man, @Fred Not Reed

Mossad gives American secrets to the FSB. Remember Pollard, the Israeli's gave infomation on CIA assets to get Jews out of the USSR. Israel claimed it was a "mistake".

https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jan/12/julianborger1

Seemingly not much left. There are some consumer electronics assembled (not “manufactured”) in the USA, but presumably with a fairly low domestic-parts component. For example,

https://www.klipsch.com/blog/made-in-usa-speakers

its interesting that way back the very definition of a 5th generation fighter was the ability to supercruise that is why all swedish, french, and joint european fighters today are not considered gen 5 fighters

russian fighters prior to the su 57 were not considered gen 5 because of the same the mig 31 was an exception because it was and still is an excellent supercruiser but it lacks in built stealth characteristics so no gen 5 status for it true enough

NO GENERATION 5 FOR YOU as a generation 5 soup nazi would say

the f35 monstermutant was originally meant to be a supercruiser tactically, there are very good reasons to include a requirement for supercruising in the design of modern fighters no its not just bells and whistles, supercruising is indeed a major factor in the succesful use of fighters in a modern conflict it can be done without but it sure is a mighty fine feeling to have it

well looky here and lo and behold the f35 cannot manage to supercruise that is a major design disaster but you know americans-suddenly the ability to supercruise has be redefined away its no longer part and parcel of the generation 5 definition

twenty-five years of intense work and the result is a failure, so what happens now? well everyone in nato pretends that the supercruise requirement never existed and life goes on like nothing happened simply f35, after 25 years of work, now does not include supercruising but it still is the bestest mof in the sky and everyone who disagrees is some sort of ruski false news spreader

people used to make fun of brezhnev for supposedly doing that-pretending that when an initial requirement could not be met it never existed in truth, brezhnev until close to the very end was cognisant of major problems in the old ussr and, at least tried in vain to come up with some solutions

forty years later, the west is undergoing a similar process but the frightening thing thing is it cannot even manage some sort of brezhnev-like responses behind the scenes problems just dont exist for the modern west...everythin is jest fine!

There not having been any major dogfighting between air forces since the clashes in Lebanon or the Falkland Islands conflict in the 1980s its hard to say what approach is best. Are military fighter jets just manned sensor and weapons platforms sent to attack specific targets or independent operators with pilots acting as their own generals.

My guess is the days of manned combat aircraft are coming to an end. Elon Musk's reusable Falcon rocket boosters offer superior range, speeds and payload capacity to any airbreathing aircraft. The only problem is liquid fueled rockets are not as reliable, round the clock power plants as jet engines. You can get around that with solid fuel rocket boosters but AFAIK they are not reusable but as the cost of military aircraft grows that may no longer be a consideration.

Replies: @notbe

It is also likely that the Russian VKS will acquire this fighter, as in many missions a heavy, expensive fighter like the Su-57 is not needed.
 

Replies: @notbe

It's always the scary, evil "Nazis" with you people. The National Socialists were in power for 10, 11 years maybe before they were wiped out. 1945 is a long time ago. Find a new boogeyman. The Ukrainian nationalists are a completely different group, but, like the Negroes in America whining about the imaginary KKK, you guys have to have your "Nazis". It makes you look ridiculous.

Replies: @Fiendly Neighbourhood Terrorist

You need to find a new compass for orienting yourself in the present world. Shouting slogans wont give you mental clarity.
All in all it seems that prior to the Bolshevik Russian who left a highly unfavorable .impression upon the Ukrainians, Russian presence was not gladly accepted, hence the desire for independence from the Russian Empire, then and now. This independence was twice made possible by Germany in the last century. Why should they not keep in good memory their time of freedom from Russia, Russian ideology or other foreign ideologies?

Replies: @AnonFromTN

And don't forget the transfer of technology as well as the emigration of talent from Europe to America during the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries which turned a nation of cowboys and hillbillies into an industrial and technological powerhouse overnight. Unlike the USA, Latin American countries failed to acquire the technology and attract the talent from Europe which relegated all the countries South of the USA to a perpetual state of industrial and technological underdevelopment persisting to this day. Mexico and Brazil could have industrialized their economies in the same manner as the USA after getting their independence from Spain and Portugal, respectively, which for some reason did not happen unlike the USA.

Replies: @showmethereal, @Fray Juan Crespi, @David Davenport

It was not the Europeans who "decided to destroy themselves twice in huge world wars;" that was a decision and plan of the bankers, epitomized by those Brenton Sanderson discussed elsewhere.

in September 1919, . . .
in one of his Army educational courses, [Hitler] had
heard a lecture by Gottfried Feder, a construction engineer and a crank in the field of economics, who had become obsessed with the idea that
“speculative” capital, as opposed to “creative” and “productive” capital, was the root of much of Germany’s economic trouble. He was for abolishing the first kind and in 1917 had formed an organization to achieve this purpose: the German Fighting League for the Breaking of Interest Slavery.

Hitler, ignorant of economics, was much impressed by Feder’s lecture.

He saw in Feder’s appeal for the “breaking of interest slavery” one of the “essential premises for the foundation of a new party.” In Feder’s lecture, he says, “I sensed a powerful slogan for this coming struggle.” Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer, 1960
 

Shirer's dismissive tone reflects the attitude of the bankers who demanded war to protect their privileges.

Replies: @HeebHunter, @Curmudgeon

And the Europeans were "lucky" that the Ming Emperor foolishly stopped all naval advancement - which at the time was a century ahead of Europe. A strong Chinese navy and merchant fleet would have meant no E/SE Asian colonies and the riches that came along with them.
"Time and chance happens to all men".... It happens to nations too indeed.

So true. It is perfectly fine for USA to send all kinds of warships to China and Taiwan.
But Iranian ships visiting Venezuela? Oh no, that is 'forbidden'! LoL
I would have loved to see the Americans attempt to intercept or block the innocent freedom of passage in the international ocean, near Venezuela. And be DESTROYED by a Russian submarine!
This would of course be unfortunate (yet richly deserved).

Replies: @RoatanBill

How could Putin offer Ukraine a better trade deal?????

You're talking about trading with the worlds largest trade block,but also allows for an unprecedented level of access for Ukraine industry into the EU internal market,which is worth far more to Ukraine going forwards than anything Putin could offer

Putin's solution, kick off a war!

Which really isn't what strong and confident country needs to do,only a weak and suspicious mentality would react in such a way,Putin knew his economy couldn't compete with the EU but the absolute last thing was to have a future successful Ukraine,integrated in the EU sat right on his border

Basically people in Russia would wonder,' why is Ukraine doing better than us?,whats Putin done for us'

So its easy to see why Putin kicked off,weakness and fear!

There was no CIA coup,thats just stuff to scare the kiddies in Russia,you know all that stuff about colour revolution,its normally called democracy and progress,working towards a better future,but in Russia those are two dirty words,as they'd destroy the ability for Putin and his criminal friends to loot the country

Replies: @bike-anarkist, @Mulga Mumblebrain, @El Dato

How does what your saying will happen not perfectly fit the model of collapsed state you dummy?

For Russia, Armenia, Moldova, Belarus etc. if even 10% of what has happened in Ukraine or what is expected to happen, ocured in those countries then everybody would be describing it as a collapse.

Amusingly its clear that the Utopia for Ukraine is exactly what is happening in Crimea - huge investment, infrastructure improvement from specifically Russian money on internationally unrecognised land.... that they fantasise and hope to claim back for free.
Russia is STILL the top trading parter and investor in Ukraine

"It will be a worse version of the Baltics, which were also completely deindustrialized but at least receive funds from the UE and young people can emigrate to work more easily and send money to their relatives."

My question is why on earth did the Baltic states sign up for that????

Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Mitleser

At least that scenario sounds cool and mutants being organic maybe can carry the legacy of the original people, depending on the severity of the mutations.
 

But what if the minds of all Russians are uploaded into cybernetic bodies
 

killing the meatbags in the process and making the new “Russians” much more efficient
 

Replies: @216

As someone who works with his hands crafting timber framed homes I am aware of a major difference between tools and technology.

A tool is something which amplifies my natural abilities, therefore giving me freer ability to create. This may be a chisel, circular saw, or so on. They are extensions of myself, but I am the motive force. As I like to tell new hires in training, human beings are the original and best CNC machine.

Some companies cut all their timber joinery with CNC machines, which are impressive machines, but have definite constraints in what they can cut. Therefore the joinery choices are dictated not by strength or suitability but by the constraints inherent in the technology.

One is also highly constrained in timber stock choices as a CNC machine cannot process if the material is not perfectly square and accurately dimensioned. I on the other hand, can produce perfect joinery in timbers that are highly irregular, naturally curved, twisted, etc.

The former (chisel, saw, etc.) are examples of true tools which free me to create to the utmost of MY abilities. The CNC machine cut frames just force one into a technologically constrained box, albeit with faster production times (which you have to achieve to pay the big loan).

I'm making a similar point to yourself, but in a different context. It comes back to the question of what is the point, or goal, of why we are here. I'm not sure that trans-humanists think in those terms though. What is the point in fundamentally transcending humanity when every one of us is too lazy to barely scratch the surface of the abilities we are born with. Trans-humanism seems in many ways a lazy use of technology to avoid the work of actually becoming human.

What say you, Anatoly? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

Replies: @silviosilver, @ThreeCranes

It’s a goal of satanists and gnostics.
 

But what if the minds of all Russians are uploaded into cybernetic bodies, killing the meatbags in the process and making the new “Russians” much more efficient, and again they take over the world, the galaxy even – how would this be a triumph and not a complete and utter defeat for a Russian nationalist?
 

Have to agree with the sentiment here. AK is of course describing nationalism as he wants it to be, not as it is. The amount of people who get that this is a winning strategy is miniscule - totally irrelevant to the reality of nationalism as a a real world political phenomenon.

Transhumanism in the way AK presents it is simply advantageous on its own merits - no matter what political ideology it is cloaked in. Of course nationalists will do better in the long run if they accept transhumanism - which I think is what AK is trying to say here. But so will every political group if they make improving human capacity of the in-group one of their core objectives. A better title for this article would be 'Transhumanism is adaptive. Act accordingly"

The better question is if there is a relevant political ideology that is genuinely transhumanist in the way AK is describing? I don't think I've heard of one - the ones that are kind of do it by accident or out of fealty to natural law (some forms of libertarianism).

Poland even invited the US to have a new military base in their country, and pay all the expenses! What can Russia do in such a case? Absolutely nothing.
 

You are right that it is a two way street. Poland really needs to let go of its historical enmity towards the USSR. Orthodox Christian Russia should not be unnecessarily griefed for the mis-deeds of the preceding Soviet Empire. Russia & Poland working together against Merkel & Laschet's Elite German Globalism would open the door for that reconciliation.

PEACE 😇

Replies: @Xi-jinping

Well you have light slow and cheap things now called drones

Smaller and lighter than a Cessna,and very deadly,and they're just one method of getting at your valuable military assets,as they found out recently in the little war between Armenia and Azerbaijan,oh plus the same Turkish drones took a chunk out of Assads forces also,plus they also blew to bits those precious Pantisar things which silly people think are invincible,which they're obviously not

There's a paradigm shift taking place in military technology and tactics and those big missiles are likely to be bypassed just like dreadnoughts or that Maginot line thing

As for Rust the thing is the Soviet air defence system failed, so did the recent shoot down of the Ukrainian airliner by the Iranians,so did the Saudi defence system when attacked by drones remember against they're oil infrastructure!

The fact is Russia has placed its efforts into trying to stop ' shock and awe' unfortunately they're fighting yesterday's conflict,the future ' shock and awe' will not come in the same way,ie waves of manned combat aircraft,it'll be a war of AI,plus hacking,drone swarms, spoofing and ECM mass combinations and will probably give the first mover the total advantage,one in which the Russian will find difficult to defend,especially since a new arms race will be using cutting edge technology of the 4th industrial revolution which Russia simply doesn't lead in,and because their industrial base and industrial competitiveness is so much lower than that of the west and NATO it's difficult to see much future for the Russian military,its probably reached its high point with its legacy systems and propaganda about hypersonic stuff

Replies: @FB

His airspeed would have been below the stall speed of a loaded fighter, while other characteristics would have allowed Soviet instrument observers to gain sense of what was happening. The first source I read on this said that the air defense operators "wanted to engage" which does not seem credible.

I don’t think Russia has an impenetrable airspace. But certainly, entering in the Russian airspace is a risky business even for a B-2.

Replies: @Carlo

Mathias Rust!!!

Remember him?

Well he was a west German teenager who flew his Cessna light aircraft straight through Soviet airspace and landed slap bang in the middle of the evil empire in Red Square 😂😂😂😂

Oh and wasn't that system supposed to be also impenetrable!!!!

How embarrassing for the Soviets,no wonder those communist clowns lost the cold war

All the stuff you've mentioned is old fashioned legacy junk,its the equivalent of the Maginot Line,besides which you can't defend the largest country in the world with a hundred Pantisar,impossible

As for the other stuff you've mentioned,well if you'd read the source I've given you'd understand why it wont work,and they'll be huge gaps in Russian air defence into which weapons will go through and degrade Russian military,if it comes to that,unfortunately you get to many small boys with a fantasy fixation about these things,as opposed to the actual reality of Russia current capacity

All the west/ NATO has to do is wait,and time will destroy the Putin regime,as Russia is a totally bent criminal and hysterical entity,its economy is still dependent upon exporting raw materials,which other countries basically add value to,Russia is incapable of doing so and under Putin the rot of Russian economy will continue,unfortunately it seems too many people listen to the saker or Escobar and don't bother looking at the real facts about Russia, so basically Russia simply can't win another arms race its doesn't have the industrial capacity,and its own MIC,military industrial complex,is horrendous with corruption and inefficient stupidity

Replies: @Carlo, @Aedib, @Mulga Mumblebrain, @Ray Caruso, @St-Germain, @profnasty

No evidence for Trump's attempt.

Although I've never formed any concise opinion on the moon hoax thesis, your argument definitely does have a clear rebuttal. Just before Nixon took office things were coming to a head in 3 different places. The USA was bogged down in Indochina and after the Tet offensive it seemed, despite a formal military victory by US forces, that it wasn't worth dragging on with. Some rationale needed to be found for Washington to turn down the Cold War, at least temporarily. But as it happens, similar pressures were mounting in Moscow and Beijing at the same time. The programs of crash industrialization enacted in these countries had clearly gone beyond their limits of utility and the governments were looking for a chance to downgrade the Cold War, again at least temporarily. The biggest obstacle was that Cold Warriors in the USA would never have allowed Nixon to do this unless he first scored some prestigious titanic victory on the world stage. Enter the moon landings. In the aftermath of this, the way was opened for detente.

Does that prove that the moon landing was a hoax? No, of course not. Sometimes people weaving conspiracy scenarios will mockingly use the term "coincidence theorist." A lot of coincidences do occur in the natural world. Maybe that's what this was. All of the major powers wanted to at least temporarily shift to detente, but Nixon could only do this after winning a great public victory. Maybe it is just a coincidence that technological breakthroughs enabling the moon landing occurred right when Nixon needed some sign of national success. But either way, there's no reason to think that Brezhnev and Mao would have been unwilling to play along if the whole thing were a hoax. Rather they would have made the willingness to play along with the hoax conditional on a future detente.

to follow the SS motto of “my honor is fidelity” and blind obedience to the masters of the day.
 

Replies: @James J O'Meara, @byrresheim

It's not that communist economics didn't work - its that it made no sense not to trade with other nations just because they have a different system. In fact the Soviet Union never claimed to be COMMUNIST. It was Socialist. It was even in the name - Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics.

A Socialist system is different.

You seem to have a poor understanding of "Communist Economics" anyway, if you claim such drivel.

Exactly!....AKA Barack Hussein Obama

So what happens when you become the “enemy of the state” because you don’t have “double good” political speech and the “Great Scrutinizer” decides to lock out your money app? We already have people locked out of Twitter and Youtube because they have “wrong think”. But what if I can’t buy groceries because I say there was election fraud or I say COVID is a scamdemic?
 

So the answer is no, no way.
 

Eritreans are like Ethiopians though, so it was two similar peoples engaged in a protracted war. Would Egyptian Arabs be capable of such a thing? Not sure, and not sure if their clear technological advantage would compensate for that.

A Trump-tier lady.

🙂

Things were so bad in Ukraine in 2014 that the army had: no fuel, no field rations, no tents, no sleeping bags, no changes of underwear. All stolen by corruption. Old ammuntion too. The troops halted for weeks in front of Slavyansk while supplies were sent to them. The US support to that campaign was 50,000 Meals Ready to Eat.

Poor or at least, lop sided supply chains have been a feature of Soviet/Post Soviet militaries since the Civil War ended. Hence arms dumps full of obsolete weapons for example.

These factors no longer hold. Even without better training, more of a sense of purpose and higher morale, the Ukrainian army would perform better than in 2014.

Replies: @AnonfromTN

I am sorry to be so blunt, but go to Gospels and read 'em again. Jesus was a (proto) Woke.

Replies: @Coconuts, @Beckow, @Gerard1234

If we beiee Russian nationalists, Ukraine and Russia are one people with one culture.

Replies: @Bashibuzuk, @Gerard1234, @Europe Europa

I agree with your sentiments about NYC, but I think it would be fair to call the natural outdoor environment rodent-infested.

I mean, once I was sitting by a fire in the darkness and I heard a rustling behind me. I mistook it first for a mouse, and then a skunk, but it turned out to be close to a 40 lb porcupine (2nd biggest rodent in NA), and as I stood stock still, it came close enough to sniff the toe of my boot. Meanwhile, I remembered with horror, the tales of porcupines chewing up the boots that people left outside their tents to get at the salt on them.

Replies: @AP

Yes, I am not religious in the traditional sense, and I have religious friends who object to my forays into nature as frivolous and having nothing to do with religion - I try and explain to them I am closer to something that might be described as divine in nature than I can ever be in the cities.

I am glad that your brand of traditional religion has retained this connection to nature. I love the old tradition of Catholic monasteries in lonely areas of great beauty.

Replies: @Carlo

You guys should try getting laid.

You are into something here, and even though I am myself religious (traditional Catholic) I agree almost completely with your comment. The Indo-European word for God (*dyew) came from the bright clear sky. In larger urban areas the sense of infinite depth and transcendence of the sky, the diurnal and especially the nocturnal (due to luminic pollution) is lost. My own personal experience is that in the city I am always locked up with a roof over my head. As I myself am a traditional Catholic, I often go to a monastery in a rural area and an important part of my religious experience for me there is to contemplate the clear, unobstructed night sky.

Replies: @AaronB, @Agathoklis

Saint Anthony of Egypt, the original Desert Father, who spent many decades living ascetically in the Egyptian desert.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8a/0a/59/8a0a59c93ef9b4d4eb14fa8af6872b66.jpg

 

I wonder if true atheism – not defined as disbelief in the Christian God, but rather defined as the complete absence of the sense of the numinous that characterizes certain hardcore materialists – is only really possible in an urban environment?
 

Replies: @AaronB, @silviosilver, @dfordoom

Aaron, I think I speak for everyone hear when I say we're all just touched that in these moments of peak spiritual elevation - aka shroom ingestion - it's us you think to share your insights with.

And to be honest, although I seldom agree with much of what you say, it's sometimes just kinda fun to read along with you.

Replies: @AaronB, @reiner Tor

The villains in both Magnum Force and The Enforcer are "Vietnam Veterans." A staple of many movies and 70s TV cop shows was the Crazy Vietnam Veteran. And almost always white. In Magnum Force, the bad guys are Nazi types. In The Enforcer they are crazy left-wingers.

Why? An evil white Vietnam veteran was a safe, politically correct, villain. Also, most TV writers, directors, producers, etc, were people who didn't go. Vietnam veterans have been bashed in the popular culture for decades. See Stolen Valor, by B.G. Burkett. And a relatively unknown book, Vietnam at the Movies, by Michael Lee Lanning.

Replies: @John Johnson, @Johnny Nada

Despite Western criticism of the second chechen war, Putin was trying to be quite pro-Western in his first term, and into the second term. For example, from 2003, in response to US request, Russia has promised to forgive Iraq's debt to Russia, which was effectively support of tens of billions of dollars to America's project to stabilize Iraq after invading it.

Putin's relationship with the Bush government breaks only around 2006-2007. (And by 2008, the relations diplomatic with America are crashed).

This is similar to the pattern with Yeltsin-Clinton. Yeltsin's government was pro-Western in the first term, and becomes increasingly difficult with the West in the second term, and the relations of Yeltsin's government with Clinton crashed finally in 1999. That a similar 7-8 year timeline that Putin's had before finally crashing irreversibly with the USA.

-

In 2007, relations of Putin and Bush were finally collapsing, due to the inability of America to compromise in the missile treaty negotiations. After this, there was no recovery since, despite a certain hope promoted by the media in Russia that was optimistic about Obama (and later Trump).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhkI__TvJYk

And earlier, for example, Tony Blair was the first foreign leader to visit Putin in 1999.

In 2003, still Putin was having honoured dinners with Queen Elizabeth and viewed like a equal royalty in London.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTnlJz_jJYI

Meanwhile in Pennsylvania:

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Pa. - A Change.org petition with over 2,500 signatures is asking for a member of the Upper Perkiomen School Board to resign over a social post about Dr. Rachel Levine.

"I am so enraged," Rabbi Jennifer Schlosberg said. "This is the school district in which I was raised and helped shape me into being the person I am." . . .

The petition shows a retweet allegedly by school board member Raeann Hofkin comparing a picture of the former White House press secretary next to one of Dr. Rachel Levene, President Biden's appointee as assistant health secretary, who is a transgender woman.

"The face of America is going from this to this. God help us," the original tweet read.

Deja Lynn Alvarz, a transgender activist, said, "Again, you know it gets so tiring. I can't imagine how Dr. Levine feels.
 

And in another corner of Allegheny County:

Scott Twp. Commissioner Resigns Following Disrespectful Comment Towards Secretary Of Health Dr. Rachel Levine: ‘A Guy Dressed Up Like A Woman’
https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/06/17/scott-township-commissioner-paul-abel-resigns/

Maybe if the Scott Twp Commissioner had worn a dog mask he could have kept his position.

---
nb. Marjorie Taylor Green is being removed from the Education Committee for various of her white national list statements.

Okay, that's good. Looks like I had misunderstood what I had read.

I don't get the point of keeping Il-96 alive. About one every year is produced. It seems like a huge waste of resources to have people working on such a small scale production. PD-35 is many years from serial production and the quad engine Il-96 is simply very inefficient compared to the competition.

The low scale Tu-204 production is another case I don't understand. One or two is produced each year. The plane basically fills the same role as MC-21 but it's just worse in every way. One was produced last year. Surely these workers would be better used for building MC-21, the new modernized Il-76, Il-112 or Superjet?

Replies: @Carlo, @reiner Tor

I wonder if they are not planning to add more Russian components to it
 

On the other hand, CR929 is still in a early stage of development, so it is harder to tell. The last I read is that the first prototype is scheduled to fly in 2023.
 

The new Russian engine for it, the PD-35, is to start its first ground tests this year
 

Replies: @Carlo

"Syria (and all other Middle Eastern countries allied to the USSR) received only downgraded equipment, as the USSR didn’t trust them to operate their most capable weapons."

Not to mention the fact that the USSR wouldn't trust them not to take the planes straight to a US base for cash and prizes.

Soviet instructors often despaired over the lack of capabilities, and even outright treason of many high officers (many of whom were undercover Israeli agents). For example, when the USSR acceded to operate MiG-25 in Egypt, they demanded that airbase security would be performed by them, and that Egyptians officers would not even know the dates and times the MiG-25 would perform their missions (so there would be no chance Israelis would know it beforehand and prepare their defences)
 

I've worked with a fair few Sikhs, and I like them. But when roused they can be pretty unpleasant. The very first surrender of the UK government to multiculturalism was when Sikhs were allowed to wear their turbans on motorcycles, when Native Brits had to wear helmets - this was in the late 1960s. The government, even then, were afraid of them.

Replies: @The Spirit of Enoch Powell

Thanks for that. I had forgotten about Konchalovsky, but had zero idea that Robert Duval had acted as him and won awards for it!

It's interesting that they appear to have only made these films after end of USSR. Khrushchev had destalinised everything in the country so I think he would have enjoyed a negative Hollywood film about Stalin during his time! Nothing to stop Hollywood from doing films about Stalin during the start of the Cold War, particularly as they filmed many anti-soviet propaganda films in the 1950's.
Rasputin,Nicholas II, Lenin,Trotsky,rest of Romanov family, Brezhnev ( or at least characters clearly based on him) all seem to have been done by Hollywood, but Stalin not alot.

It does prove my point about Stalin though...... Robert Duval must be the most inoffensive, mild-mannered, nothing personality in acting!

I’m not saying that is going on here with Coronavirus reporting, but if it (or something similar) was going on, that’s how the establishment would do it.
 

Re your comment on Orwell, I have a slightly different take: Back around 1968-72 imminent man-made global ice age was the hip thing for any self-respecting Climate Scientist to be advocating. I believe it featured on the covers of Time Magazine and Newsweek amongst many others. It certainly made big headlines in British media. Books were written about how all the particulates mankind was kicking into the atmosphere, and therefore blocking the sun, had condemned the world to entering a deep freeze by 1990 or 2000 "at best." Too late to stop it some said. One famous British Scientist—I may be wrong but I think he was the Government's Chief Scientist at the time—advocated mass atom bombing the Poles to warm them. "Scientifically validated" hysteria got a big press. No doubt there were naysayers, but I don't remember any. All the Ivy League Universities from USA to Europe wrote tomes on the coming man-made Ice Age. Try finding any of that in libraries today—or in university records! Diligent searching in Newspaper archives turn up glimpses of the hysteria that existed at the time. Elsewhere? Not so much! No re-writing, but plenty memory-holing. Universities especially don't like red faces of embarrassment. No wonder the world keeps making the same mistakes. It did achieve one thing though: In Britain, up to that point very few homes had central heating installed. By 1973 very few did not have central heating.

Amazing the Syrian Presidency account is still up. Anyway, Trump fully deserved getting banned when he refused to stand up for r/The_Donald.

Replies: @reiner Tor

Another good #AssadCurse tweet:

https://twitter.com/Der_Gustavian/status/1347123628274548736?s=20

More on the subject: now that Trump is gone, EU will no longer recognize Huan Guaido as president of Venezuela.

EU poodles were willing to play along with this farce for 2 years!

Replies: @Shortsword, @Mikhail, @Janus Knight, @El Dato

Had to laugh out loud! Brilliant meme!

The avionics of the MC 21 is still basically Rockwell Collins so no not just yet.

There is a separate project underway to replace the avionics as well so maybe in 5 years or so...

Replies: @Carlo

Iran has managed to send satellites into space (with admittedly comparatively low success rate but it's still noteworthy since the list of countries that has done this is not long) and build respectably accurate cruise missiles as well as relatively efficient long endurance combat drones. I don't see why they shouldn't be able to make a figher jet which is technologically several decades old.

Some examples of Iranian jet engines:

OWJ turbojet engine (reverse engineered General Electric J85-21, as used in F-5E)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY_mKPKu4Kc

A small, but quite modern turbofan (reverse engineered Williams FJ33)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp-u709KzQU

Thanks, of course you're right. I confused it all in my head and didn't look it up before writing. So, correction: the article 30 is the brand new one that shares no components or general "heritage" with anything that can be traced to the USSR. And the 117/117S confusion stems from the fact that they put an 117S into serial production for the Su-35S, but kept the experimental derivative 117 for the T-50 prototypes, and the latter has probably changed over time (I deduce that from the fact that various variants have kept being flown on an Su-30 testbed out of LII over all these years).

That is until they re-purposed a T-50/Su-57 into a similar testbed, now for the final 30, and took it from there.

Peking?

Replies: @AltanBakshi, @utu

The one named after that 2020 infection, "Coof"?

No "Ivan Kozhedub" downed 60 Axis warplanes, maybe 6, Soviet kill tallies are propaganda fabrications including those of their lady jocks, Soviet combat aviation in WW2 was a suicide mission, the Luftwaffe could achieve air superiority over any battlefield (fuel supplies permitting) right to the end of the war except where the front moved far enough north and west to bring U.S. and U.K. fighters into range.

I think it's John Lewis and Elijah Cummings. Both recently passed away. They're only famous inside USA.

Replies: @songbird

What Shortsword said. And Lewis and Cummings aren't even really that famous inside the US . Most Americans don't recognize them and if they do, they often can't tell them apart, and if they can, they usually can't tell you why you should think well of either of them.

So in other words, they are Affirmative Action Saints.

Replies: @Carlo

There are still thousands of unreasearched, declassified documents from the USSR and most of its allies out there, that can shed a lot of light into 20th century events.
 

We could at last know with full details the conversations between US ambassador April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein and how Iraqis interpreted it as a “green light” to invade Kuwait in 1990.
 

Not sure about Russia, but I strongly suspect they had secured support of the West. Just look at the mostly indifferent coverage in Western media, and contrast it with histrionics during battle of Aleppo. Aleppo because a topic of US presidential campaign because the media forced the issue. Karabakh war (despite the best efforts of Armenian lobby) did not.

Replies: @4Dchessmaster, @Anatoly Karlin

Pretty sure nobody in the West expected Soviet Union to crumble. It came as utter shock to them. Russian Federation on the other hand was predicted to collapse since day 1.

I still don't understand the ubiquity of disinformation about Russia in Western media. It's pathological. No other country gets lied about quite as much.

Replies: @The Spirit of Enoch Powell

I would add electronic warfare, which is also a standard way of anti-drone warfare.

Replies: @Aedib

This council and that council should be seen as just embarassing irrational irrelevant nonsense, just like almost every “debate” between arbitrary and conclusory theological assertions and superstitions.

I understand that is not how the pointless divisions and “doctrinal” debates among the relatively decent nonMuslim/nonJewish peoples of the world are seen, but that had better change and soon.

Replies: @Hyperborean, @Carlo

Technically the Armenian Apostolic Church significantly precedes Constantine I's (rather dubious) conversion or the tetrarchy's adoption of Christianity as the Empire's 'most favoured religion'. The was never so much a split as simply that the Melchites have always been institutionally separate. The Copts and other Syriac 'Monophysites' did break off from the (Orthodox) Melchites later, but this didn't relate to Apostolic Church although it was branded under the same anathema, it precedes those schisms.

It's so true. Knaves think "orthodox" is about beards and hats, lump Monophysites in with the Orthodox church because they have the "O" word in their names.

The Armenian divergence is radically deeper than the East/West split. There was still a fricken Western Roman Empire when the Armenians broke off. Islam didn't even exist! Still I would want to see the Armenians embarrass those dirty Turkified Iranians.

Slava Armenia!

If you know Russian pattern weapons....

-- Is this a folding stock, AKS-74?
-- Was it made in Belarus?

PEACE 😇
.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/08/23/23/32293252-8655857-image-a-19_1598220488221.jpg