Just now, Kz! said:

Very normal response. JFC liberals are retarded.  

He wrote "the war is endless, by design" and he's a "journalist" Tell me you're shilling for a genocidal POS without telling me your shilling for a genocidal POS.

17 minutes ago, Kz! said:

lol Pulitzer prize winning journalist who broke one of the most significant stories of the last twenty years. God, liberals are stupid.  

 

2 minutes ago, we_gotta_believe said:

 

F'ing perfect

2 minutes ago, VanHammersly said:

He wrote "the war is endless, by design" and he's a "journalist" Tell me you're shilling for a genocidal POS without telling me your shilling for a genocidal POS.

Yeah, he's a pulitzer prize winning journalist who broke one of the biggest stories of the last two decades and has been an outspoken critic of both political parties. He's also staunchly anti-war and has been for the entirety of his career, which is why you no longer like him.  

11 minutes ago, Kz! said:

Very normal response. JFC liberals are retarded.  

Some are, to be sure.

But it's clear that liberals don't have a monopoly on retardation and general idiocy.

 

 

 

Muh freedom of speech 

In #Germany, a man threw a 10-year-old boy off a bridge because of the Ukrainian language

In the German town of Einbeck, several Ukrainian children were playing near the bridge when an unknown man began to complain that they were speaking Ukrainian. He ordered them to speak in Russian and then said that "Ukraine started the war". 

According to the prosecutor's office, the man threw the 10-year-old boy over the bridge railing into the canal. The child hit the iron beams and suffered injuries to his head and left leg. While the boy was lying in the canal, the man threw a glass bottle at him, which hit the child's right shoulder. After that, the unknown man left. The children then warned their parents. 

According to the representative of the prosecutor's office, the boy was not seriously injured. He was treated at the hospital and then released.

The prosecutor considers the attack, which took place last Saturday (August 26), to be politically motivated. Police are looking for the perpetrator and are asking witnesses for information.

3 hours ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

 

Muh freedom of speech 

 

Russian historian and political scientist, Doctor of Historical Sciences Valery Garbuzov was fired from his post as director of the Institute on the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Previously, he wrote a long article in which he described in detail the absurdity of state propaganda, condemned anti-Western rhetoric and indicated Russia’s real place in the world:

"Thus, today there are only two informal empires on the planet - the USA and China. Russia is a former empire, the heir to the Soviet superpower, experiencing an extremely painful syndrome of suddenly lost imperial greatness.
The fact that Russia today exhibits a pronounced post-imperial syndrome is more a tragic pattern than a historical anomaly. Its peculiarity is that it did not appear immediately after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, but made itself felt much later, with Putin coming to power. More than 30 years later, the delayed syndrome, the possible occurrence of which was not previously given much importance, has acquired a threatening character..."

https://www-ng-ru.translate.goog/ideas/2023-08-29/7_8812_illusions.html?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

 

The full text is pretty good. It basically shows that this idea of "late stage capitalism" which has origins in Soviet thinking from the mid 20th century is trash, despite its revival in the last decade or so (even among my left-wing friends, which just makes me roll my eyes). 

Light reading on a Saturday morning, the segment on imperialism in its totality is here: 

One thing is clear: the US and China are the two informal empires of the modern world. Moreover, both of these empires, born in different parts of the world, in different eras, are very similar in terms of the methods of spreading their global influence. It is no coincidence that the main confrontational axis of the modern world lies precisely between them.

Russia has its own - special - orbit. As the main heir to the Soviet superpower created on the ruins of the Russian Empire, it became a hostage of its own imperial complex. This is precisely what explains its current foreign policy behavior and the problems that it brings to the world.

It is no secret that after the collapse of the colonial empires, all the metropolises had an inevitable nostalgia for the lost greatness - the so-called post-imperial syndrome. It was formed almost immediately, when it was clear that the former colonial power was collapsing.

For example, Winston Churchill was not very pleased with the victory in World War II, because something happened that he was clearly not ready for. Raised and shaped in the British Empire, he could not accept the fact that this empire was falling apart before his eyes. The same can be said about his contemporary - General Charles de Gaulle. Brought up in a French society with an imperial consciousness, he could not get used to the fact that France was irretrievably losing her colonies one after another. But, having overcome their imperial feelings, they still managed to adapt to a fundamentally new situation.

Russia, which today is going through an extremely painful post-imperial syndrome, is also trying to form its own global geopolitical program. But it is still too unsteady, unstable and eclectic. Judge for yourself: the program (rather a set of guidelines) is based on a mixture of ideas of Eurasianism, the "Russian world", on aggressive anti-Americanism, confrontation with the unipolar world and the "decaying" West as a whole.

It also contains ideas of "sovereign democracy", "deep people", longing for traditional values and the Orthodox faith. All such a mixture is held on a conservative adhesive that connects its dissimilar components. In some ways, this hodgepodge resembles the anti-Western ideological inventions of almost 200 years ago - the "theory of official nationality” of the permanent president of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences and part-time minister of public education, Count Sergei Uvarov, who has been in office for 30 years. His triad "Orthodoxy. Autocracy. Narodnost” was the ideological embodiment of Russian monarchism, which, along with Orthodoxy and the autocratic power secured by the support of the people, allegedly act as reliable guarantors of the existence and greatness of Russia.

As for conservatism, which is so fond of the current Russian authorities, it is not so unambiguous. There is no single, timeless and universal conservatism in the world. This is a flowing phenomenon, its objects of conservation are different, it is individual in different countries. And the conservatism that was once in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and is sometimes taken today as a model is hardly suitable in the current circumstances.

Modern Russia, which turned out to be the main successor of the Soviet superpower and is nostalgic for its former greatness and lost influence, is currently experiencing a delayed post-imperial syndrome, despite its small share in the world economy, still has a strong expansionist charge and the ambition of global geopolitical influence that has not yet been revealed. .

Having a rich experience of communist expansionism associated with the activities of the Comintern, quickly creating a sphere of its own regional and global influence after the victory in World War II, and instantly losing it with the collapse of the USSR, modern Russia is trying so far unsuccessfully to take a belated revenge.

To this end, it initiated the creation of new integration associations (CSTO, EAEU, SCO, BRICS), thereby forming its own geopolitical fields and spaces. The same goals were pursued by the once successful energy strategy of Russia, which was perceived in the world not only as a tool for securing reliable markets for energy resources, but also as a key element in organizing its own spheres of global influence.

Trying to rally around itself on an anti-Western platform the former colonial and oppressed peoples of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, involving them in the struggle against the countries of the "golden billion” that has been pushing its world domination and has been dominating the world for decades, Russia today claims to be the leader of the "global the majority."

However, it has not yet been able to compete with the United States and China and become an independent geopolitical anti-Western locomotive. And with the help of the newly created state mythology, it is unlikely to be able to.

The purpose of all this is quite obvious - plunging one's own society into a world of illusions and accompanied by great-power and patriotic rhetoric, undisguised and deliberate indefinite retention of power at any cost, preservation of property and political regime by the current ruling elite and the oligarchy integrated with it.

In the conditions of the information age, replacing realities with illusions, Russia seemed to be frozen in the past, still relying on the tsar-priest or another firm hand of the supreme power, while trying unsuccessfully to regain its former greatness, lost possessions and world influence.

In this regard, we note that many today are inclined, according to the expert on the autocratic-bureaucratic reality M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, to confuse two concepts: "Fatherland" and "Your Excellency." The words spoken by the great writer in the era of tsarism are relevant today. The current domestic minions of authoritarianism (like the satraps of ancient Eastern despotisms that have sunk into oblivion), apparently completely devoid of historical consciousness, without hesitation, with touching tenderness, sincerely identify the head of state with the state itself, the temporary ruler of the country with a great national and historical constant.

 

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/books-by-orwell/animal-farm/preface-to-the-ukrainian-edition-of-animal-farm-by-george-orwell/

When the USSR was an ally during World War II, allied forced confiscated a shipment of a Ukrainian translation of Orwell's Animal Farm, featuring the only preface he had written for any editions of the novel (that I'm aware of). It was handed over to the Soviets who promptly destroyed nearly all copies.

Here's the preface. Worth a look.

Quote

I have been asked to write a preface to the Ukrainian translation of Animal Farm. I am aware that I write for readers about whom I know nothing, but also that they too have probably never had the slightest opportunity to know anything about me.

In this preface they will most likely expect me to say something of how Animal Farm originated but first I would like to say something about myself and the experiences by which I arrived at my political position.

I was born in India in 1903. My father was an official in the English administration there, and my family was one of those ordinary middle-class families of soldiers, clergymen, government officials, teachers, lawyers, doctors, etc. I was educated at Eton, the most costly and snobbish of the English Public Schools. But I had only got in there by means of a scholarship; otherwise my father could not have afforded to send me to a school of this type.

Shortly after I left school (I wasn’t quite twenty years old then) I went to Burma and joined the Indian Imperial Police. This was an armed police, a sort of gendarmerie very similar to the Spanish Guardia Civilor the Garde Mobile in France. I stayed five years in the service. It did not suit me and made me hate imperialism, although at that time nationalist feelings in Burma were not very marked, and relations between the English and the Burmese were not particularly unfriendly. When on leave in England in 1927, I resigned from the service and decided to become a writer: at thirst without any especial success. In 1928—9 I lived in Paris and wrote short stories and novels that nobody would print (I have since destroyed them all). In the following years I lived mostly from hand to mouth, and went hungry on several occasions. It was only from 1934 onwards that I was able to live on what I earned from my writing. In the meantime I sometimes lived for months on end amongst the poor and half-criminal elements who inhabit the worst parts of the poorer quarters, or take to the streets, begging and stealing. At that time I associated with them through lack of money, but later their way of life interested me very much for its own sake. I spent many months (more systematically this time) studying the conditions of the miners in the north of England. Up to 1930 I did not on the whole look upon myself as a Socialist. In fact I had as yet no clearly defined political views. I became pro-Socialist more out of disgust with the way the poorer section of the industrial workers were oppressed and neglected than out of any theoretical admiration for a planned society.

In 1936 I got married. In almost the same week the civil war broke out in Spain. My wife and I both wanted to go to Spain and fight for the Spanish Government. We were ready in six months, as soon as I had finished the book I was writing. In Spain I spent almost six months on the Aragon front until, at Huesca, a Fascist sniper shot me through the throat.

In the early stages of the war foreigners were on the whole unaware of the inner struggles between the various political parties supporting the Government. Through a series of accidents I joined not the International Brigade like the majority of foreigners, but the POUM militia—i.e. the Spanish Trotskyists.

So in the middle of 1937, when the Communists gained control (or partial control) of the Spanish Government and began to hunt down the Trotskyists, we both found ourselves amongst the victims. We were very lucky to get out of Spain alive, and not even to have been arrested once. Many of our friends were shot, and others spent a long time in prison or simply disappeared.

These man-hunts in Spain went on at the same time as the great purges in the USSR and were a sort of supplement to them. In Spain as well as in Russia the nature of the accusations (namely, conspiracy with the Fascists) was the same and as far as Spain was concerned I had every reason to believe that the accusations were false. To experience all this was a valuable object lesson: it taught me how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people in democratic countries.

My wife and I both saw innocent people being thrown into prison merely because they were suspected of unorthodoxy. Yet on our return to England we found numerous sensible and well-informed observers believing the most fantastic accounts of conspiracy, treachery and sabotage which the press reported from the Moscow trials.

And so I understood, more clearly than ever, the negative influence of the Soviet myth upon the western Socialist movement.

And here I must pause to describe my attitude to the Soviet regime.

I have never visited Russia and my knowledge of it consists only of what can be learned by reading books and newspapers. Even if I had the power, I would not wish to interfere in Soviet domestic affairs: I would not condemn Stalin and his associates merely for their barbaric and undemocratic methods. It is quite possible that, even with the best intentions, they could not have acted otherwise under the conditions prevailing there.

But on the other hand it was of the utmost importance to me that people in western Europe should see the Soviet regime for what it really was. Since 1930 I had seen little evidence that the USSR was progressing towards anything that one could truly call Socialism. On the contrary, I was struck by clear signs of its transformation into a hierarchical society, in which the rulers have no more reason to give up their power than any other ruling class. Moreover, the workers and intelligentsia in a country like England cannot understand that the USSR of today is altogether different from what it was in 1917. It is partly that they do not want to understand (i.e. they want to believe that, somewhere, a really Socialist country does actually exist), and partly that, being accustomed to comparative freedom and moderation in public life, totalitarianism is completely incomprehensible to them.

Yet one must remember that England is not completely democratic. It is also a capitalist country with great class privileges and (even now, after a war that has tended to equalise everybody) with great differences in wealth. But nevertheless it is a country in which people have lived together for several hundred years without major conflict, in which the laws are relatively just and official news and statistics can almost invariably be believed, and, last but not least, in which to hold and to voice minority views does not involve any mortal danger. In such an atmosphere the man in the street has no real understanding of things like concentration camps, mass deportations, arrests without trial, press censorship, etc. Everything he reads about a country like the USSR is automatically translated into English terms, and he quite innocently accepts the lies of totalitarian propaganda. Up to 1939, and even later, the majority of English people were incapable of assessing the true nature of the NSDAP regime in Germany, and now, with the Soviet regime, they are still to a large extent under the same sort of illusion.

This has caused great harm to the Socialist movement in England, and had serious consequences for English foreign policy. Indeed, in my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of Socialism as the belief that Russia is a Socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated.

And so for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the Socialist movement.

On my return from Spain I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone and which could be easily translated into other languages. However, the actual details of the story did not come to me for some time until one day (I was then living in a small village) I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.

I proceeded to analyse Marx’s theory from the animals’ point of view. To them it was clear that the concept of a class struggle between humans was pure illusion, since whenever it was necessary to exploit animals, all humans united against them: the true struggle is between animals and humans. From this point of departure, it was not difficult to elaborate the story. I did not write it out till 1943, for I was always engaged on other work which gave me no time; and in the end I included some events, for example the Teheran Conference, which were taking place while I was writing. Thus the main outlines of the story were in my mind over a period of six years before it was actually written.

I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure. But I should like to emphasise two points: first, that although the various episodes are taken from the actual history of the Russian Revolution, they are dealt with schematically and their chronological order is changed; this was necessary for the symmetry of the story. The second point has been missed by most critics, possibly because I did not emphasise it sufficiently. A number of readers may finish the book with the impression that it ends in the complete reconciliation of the pigs and the humans. That was not my intention; on the contrary I meant it to end on a loud note of discord, for I wrote it immediately after the Teheran Conference which everybody thought had established the best possible relations between the USSR and the West. I personally did not believe that such good relations would last long; and as events have shown, I wasn’t far wrong.

I don’t know what more I need add. If anyone is interested in personal details, I should add that I am a widower with a son almost three years old, that by profession I am a writer, and that since the beginning of the war I have worked mainly as a journalist.

The periodical to which I contribute most regularly is Tribune, a sociopolitical weekly which represents, generally speaking, the left wing of the Labour Party. The following of my books might most interest the ordinary reader (should any reader of this translation find copies of them): Burmese Days (a story about Burma), Homage to Catalonia (arising from my experiences in the Spanish Civil War), and Critical Essays (essays mainly about contemporary popular English literature and instructive more from the sociological than from the literary point of view).

 

Tankies need to read some of that.

 

Cardboard drones

 

 

 

3 hours ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

 

 

This explains Russia's new infantry uniforms... 

Omg! Super soldiers! 

8 hours ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

 

Yeah. Highly flammable objects sitting on top of where the fuel tanks are.