/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chukotka and Kamchatka could well become American.

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

>>482233
Supreme delusion.

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

>>482233
Delusional.

>>482233
Kek this guy just dropped his fan fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>>482496
<beaches are fictitious
they definitely lost it

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

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

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

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

Haven't followed the war in a while… has Ukraine taken back Crimea yet?

>>482708
The Ukrainians managed to blow up a few tourists on a beach in Sevastopol with a carpet-bomb/missile type thing. The Russians got seriously mad at the US for letting their ukro-proxy do that. There appeared to have been some sort of dialog between US and Russian officials but we don't know how that went.

The rest is continuation of attrition, the Ukrainians might be loosing up to 3000 people a day (according to some estimations). They're down to kidnapping people off the streets because there's no volunteers left. Can't be long until there's regime collapse.

I'm sort of hoping that many of those people who got designated as cannon-fodder just ran away from the battle, and will turn up alive after the war.

A diplomatic end to the fighting is still possible but the chances for that are slim.

The neocon blob thinks they can keep this going by funding mercenary/rebel/terror groups after the fall of the current Ukrainian regime, but it looks like the people motivated for that kind of thing, probably fell early in the war already.

Most people in the west stopped giving a shit about this, a year ago, and only took note of it when a certain french macaroni suggested to send NATO troops, and that noodle lost an election over it. So i guess in a few months the entire thing will get memory-holed. Especially because Israel might be in the process of disassembling it self by then.

>>482708
>has Ukraine taken back Crimea yet?
My sweet summer child, at some point you are going to find out there were never any WMDs in Iraq.

lol

>>482789
I wish all our presidents were this demented.

A short while ago a missile hit a school in Ukraine. There were contradictory claims about who done it. A few blurry inconclusive pictures and nothing in terms of an independent investigation.

The reason to bring this up at all is because Bellingcat is now claiming they can prove it was the Russians. Which ihmo means that it likely was the Ukrainians. Bellingcat is one of the worst propaganda outlets there is, they've made up so many outrageous lies in the past that simply inverting their claims is a pretty reasonable bet. Bellingcat is also known for attacking investigative journalists.

My initial interpretation was this school got hit on accident, either by the Ukrainians having malfunctioning equipment or the Russians having bad target intel. But now i think a third option is possible: The Ukrainians may have blown up one of their own schools to create negative PR.

>>482818
Bellingcat's original founding purpose was attempting to manufacture Russian culpability in the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 disaster.

>>482818
Didn't the Azov battalion do something similar to a theater in Mariupol?

>>482820
>Bellingcat's original founding purpose was attempting to manufacture Russian culpability in the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 disaster.
Thanks for sharing, i had already forgotten what had spawned it.

>>482821
>Didn't the Azov battalion do something similar to a theater in Mariupol?
There were so many Azov horror stories, i mussed have missed this particular episode.

>>482818
school was hit but it was full of combatants probably. ukrops do that. they film themselves doing that.

>>482834
>school was hit but it was full of combatants probably. ukrops do that. they film themselves doing that.
I guess that if a empty school building is garrisoned by combatants it would be technically legal to destroy it.

However it's probably not worth the trade offs. Your intel could be wrong, and it's civilians hiding in it. Also if you can keep the municipal buildings intact, it'll be much easier to rebuild after the war. From a tactics point of view it's not necessarily a disadvantage. If the other side figures out that you spare certain types of buildings, they're likely going to seek those out as shelter. And it means those buildings can be a lure for intercepting troops trying to get to it. If there are already troops sheltering inside, they'll be stranded as in everything around the protected building is lava. That's a good way to tie up enemy combat forces. You just need to leave one spotter that can call in an airstrike the moment enemy forces try to leave.

ukraine lost lol

>>483218
at least we have the moral high ground

>>483219
Probably until all the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian fascists like the Azov and Bandera people comes to light. Also the Russians went pretty slow, there's a decent chance they managed to keep civilian losses low, possibly lower than the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. The other comparison is going to be Isreal's horror show, and that'll make the Russians look like supremely professional collateral damage minimizers.

>>483220
Israelhas killed more civilians in Gaza since october 7 than Russia has in the 2.5 years of war in Ukraine.

>>483245
Source?

>>483245
>Israelhas killed more civilians in Gaza since october 7 than Russia has in the 2.5 years of war in Ukraine.
Current estimations is that the Zionists genocided about 8% of Gaza's population, just over 180000
8% of Ukraine's pre-war population would be 3.6 million.

The estimations for Ukrainian civilian deaths are between 20k and 70k
That's a difference of 2 orders of magnitude. It's hard to fathom.

>>483219
Like the baby factories, hiding artillery in civilian neighbourhoods and all the war attrocities they've been committing? Yeah, soon you'll be saying they're the most moral army in the world. Whatever it's all too fucking sad, I hate it.

Are ukronazis actually inside Russia's territory now or is reddit coping again?

>>483420
Supposedly 1000 people made it 20 miles inside. Putin should just take france at this point, they don't allow Russia in the Olympics anyway.

>>483420
Yes, it's likely they tried to capture a nuclear power plant near Kursk, that appears to have failed.
The Ukrainians now claim they wanted to capture Russian territory for negotiation leverage, they probably wanted to threaten nuclear shenanigans as negotiation leverage originally. The Russians will probably not negotiate and instead opt to destroy the relatively small Ukrainian force that currently is occupying a few Russian boarder-villages.

As a side-note, the Chinese are mad that all of that stuff happened while they were trying to host peace-talks.

>>483421
>Putin should just take france at this point, they don't allow Russia in the Olympics anyway.
It be easier to just organize Olymbrics with blackjack and hookers

ukraine lost lol

>>483634
>ukraine lost
-their political autonomy ~10 years ago in the CIA color revolution Maidan coup
-a lot of people in the civil war that followed
-the currently ongoing proxy war, roundabout Feb 2022 when the Istanbul peace talks got wrecked
-about half their population to war related emigration
-an entire generation of young/medium-aged men in the killing fields
-about a quarter of their territory

>>483422
>The Ukrainians now claim they wanted to capture Russian territory for negotiation leverage, they probably wanted to threaten nuclear shenanigans as negotiation leverage originally.
I think a more likely explanation is that the US coerced its puppets in Ukraine into doing this precisely in order to ensure there would never be anymore peace talks.

>>483636
>I think a more likely explanation is that the US coerced its puppets in Ukraine into doing this precisely in order to ensure there would never be anymore peace talks.
In retrospect, yeah that does seem more likely.

It may seem like never at present, however those ties that were severed with this war will grow back. Consider how much worse the animosities were after WW2 and how much bigger the ideological divide. And yet diplomacy and trade came back relatively quickly.

>>483638
I really think Russia is going to double down on regime change in Ukraine at this point. They're learned for the final time that the Zelensky vassal government does not negotiate in good faith.

>>483639
>I really think Russia is going to double down on regime change in Ukraine at this point.
I agree that seems likely.
However they haven't done any decapitation strikes so far.

Kek, Putin just Endorsed Camala Harris

<“Putin told the audience that he admired the Democratic Party candidate’s <“infectious laugh” and that he respected current President Joe Biden’s choice to endorse her as his successor.”

Gotta hand it to him, he's intelligent.
They made him into the devil and granted him the power to drain reputation by giving devil-hugs.

>>483821
Good timing since they seem to be trying to revive Russiagate again:
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/09/04/ray-mcgovern-conditioning-americans-for-war-with-russia/

>>483822
>they seem to be trying to revive Russiagate again:
That crazy shit just got a whale killed.

<Hvaldimir, suspected of being a Russian spy whale, spent five years schmoozing Norway’s coastal communities, charming the locals with his toothy grin and seemingly insatiable appetite for attention. But two animal activist groups this week said that someone fatally shot him and left his bullet-riddled body floating in coastal waters.
https://12ft.io/https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/09/06/hvaldimir-spy-whale-shot/

>>483821
>>483822
Lol that is a hilarious move, Putin should double down on this grift and watch the democrats cope and seethe.