American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery - Craig Unger
Language: EnglishKeywords:
American
Cultural
Espionage
History
Literature
Nonfiction
Politics
Russia
Spy Thriller
Shared by:demogorgon666
Written by
Read by Jason Culp
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Format : MPEG Audio
File size : 682 MiB
Duration : 12 h 24 min
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 128 kb/s
Album : American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery
Album/Performer : Craig Unger
Track name : American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery
Performer : Craig Unger
Genre : Audiobook
Recorded date : 2021
Writing library : LAME3.100
Copyright : ©2021 Craig Unger (P)2021 Penguin Audio
Cover : Yes
Cover description : Cover
Cover type : Cover (front)
Cover MIME : image/jpg
minor_version : 1
major_brand : aax
comment : Chapter 20
compatible_brands : aax M4B mp42isom
Audio
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 3
Format settings : Joint stereo / MS Stereo
Duration : 12 h 24 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 128 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 kHz
Frame rate : 38.281 FPS (1152 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 681 MiB (100%)
Writing library : LAME3.100
| Announce URL: | udp://tracker.leechers-paradise.org:6969/announce |
| This Torrent also has several backup trackers | |
| Tracker: | udp://tracker.leechers-paradise.org:6969/announce |
| Tracker: | udp://tracker.coppersurfer.tk:6969/announce |
| Tracker: | udp://tracker.open-internet.nl:6969/announce |
| Tracker: | udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce |
| Tracker: | udp://tracker.tiny-vps.com:6969/announce |
| Tracker: | udp://open.demonii.si:1337/announce |
| Tracker: | udp://tracker.torrent.eu.org:451/announce |
| Tracker: | udp://thetracker.org:80/announce |
| Tracker: | http://open.trackerlist.xyz:80/announce |
| Tracker: | http://tracker2.dler.org:80/announce |
| Tracker: | udp://tracker.leechers-paradise.org:6969 |
| Tracker: | udp://tracker.coppersurfer.tk:6969 |
| Creation Date: | Tue, 06 Apr 2021 16:52:24 +0200 |
| This is a Multifile Torrent | |
| American Kompromat - How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump and Related Tales of Sex Greed Power and Treachery.mp3 682.11 MBs | |
| American Kompromat - How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump and Related Tales of Sex Greed Power and Treachery.jpg 30.5 KBs | |
| American Kompromat - How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump and Related Tales of Sex Greed Power and Treachery.cue 1.48 KBs | |
| Combined File Size: | 682.15 MBs |
| Piece Size: | 512 KBs |
| Comment: | Updated by AudioBook Bay |
| Info Hash: | dfffb75ea469d181b25ed04103241ca1cc6173ba |
| Torrent Download | Torrent Free Downloads |
| Tips | Sometimes the torrent health info isn’t accurate, so you can download the file and check it out or try the following downloads. |
| Direct Download | Start Direct Download |
| Tips | You could try out alternative bittorrent clients. |
| Secured Download | Download Files Now |
| Ad |
|
This post has 84 comments with rating of 5/5
April 6th, 2021
Leftists were saying anyone scared of Russia was crazy from the 1950s all the way until 2016 when all of a sudden Russophobia became politically useful
April 6th, 2021
Until recent decades Russia was a communist state - which represented one sort of threat to the US and its allies. Now, under Putin it is a very different sort of threat.
If you can’t see that, no wonder you got fooled by Trump and social media.
April 6th, 2021
What a load of bulls#!t
April 6th, 2021
Agreed Lake. Current lefty’s going Karl Marx. Every one will be equal but some will be MORE Equal. Russia Russia, while China smiles and texts Joe to keep in line or else. This is an insult to garbage.
April 6th, 2021
I’m here for the comments.
April 6th, 2021
If you don’t see today’s Russia as being closer to fascism than it is to communism, you won’t see anything. There again, fascism has always been second nature in large parts of the good ole USA
April 6th, 2021
Hi @Siadwell
I disagree. I think your view is biased. Below is why. Please feel free to reply, correct me, or expand on your thoughts. Thanks!
“Until recent decades Russia was a communist state - which represented one sort of threat to the US and its allies. Now, under Putin it is a very different sort of threat.”
USSR was a socialist state, not a communist one. And it did not pose a threat to the USA, except in the paranoia deliberately spread from the heads of a minority of lunatics into the whole system of education and politics across the USA.
Interestingly enough, USSR asked, back in the days, to be admitted to NATO. After being rejected and ridiculed, and after the US government(s) harboured even fascists and Nazis in order to “gain competitive advantage”, USSR went on and created its own pact - the Warsaw Pact.
Cuban Missile Crisis was a response to the US regime stocking nuclear missiles in Turkey and at the borders of the USSR. After the US regime ignored all Soviet attempts to discuss and resolve the issue (essentially to remove the nuclear warheads from Russian borders), Soviets went on and did a similar thing in Cuba - near the US borders.
However, while the world knows what happened, it is the majority of Americans that are oblivious and have no clue about the reality.
Then comes Korean war, Vietnam, US state terrorism across Latin America,… Were those threats to the US and its “allies”?
And what “allies”? Who are you in war with or against? There is some serious delusion and paranoia floating in the brains of some Americans. Similar paranoia drove Germans to Hitler, fascism, and wars. The US regimes see enemies everywhere, attacks countries across the world, and is involved in constant stream of wars. Think about it for a second, please.
“If you can’t see that, no wonder you got fooled by Trump and social media.”
If you can’t see that it does not matter whether Trump or Obama, Biden, Hillary, Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr, etc., if you can’t see that the US is the problem, not the whole world, if you can’t recognise that what you mean by “allies” is a couple of thugish regimes trying to protect the old style slavery, colonialism, monopoly, imperialistic posture, than please think again. Who are your “aalies”? A couple of regimes - the UK and perhaps Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Australia, and maybe 3-4 more countries - all colonialist powers and officially racist societies until a couple of decades ago. Oh, and a handfull of tiny island-states that the US geriatric politicians use as a formal support so that it’s not only the US that votes some ridiculous policy in the UN, but there is a 500-people island supporting it as well (and the issue is not really in size or numbers, but in total political and economic dependence and interests those satellite countries have to support abnormal US politics).
@InsaneCrazyMad
“Leftists were saying anyone scared of Russia was crazy from the 1950s all the way until 2016 when all of a sudden Russophobia became politically useful”
Those you call “leftists” are right-wingers in the eyes of the rest of the world (the world outside the US bubble). Those are simply a tiny bit less right than the other US right-wingers.
The world essentially fears lunatics and tries to co-exist with the US, UK, and other war mongering regimes and their supporting populations.
No one is a threat to you, except stupidity and now ecological and economic disasters that are approaching fast to all of us.
US citizens might better focus on how to get healthcare and education like most of the rest of the world provides, get rid of deeply ingrained madness, paranoia, racism, aggressiveness, and think about how to help make the world a better place, not a bombed place.
Good luck!
April 6th, 2021
Craig Unger is a talentless hack.
April 6th, 2021
@ petezete
I agree with a lot that you have to say. You are very strong on the historical contexts but skip almost totally over the question of today’s Russia and Vladimir Putin.
That makes me wonder.
April 6th, 2021
@jimkelly21
April 6th, 2021
“Agreed Lake. Current lefty’s going Karl Marx. Every one will be equal but some will be MORE Equal. Russia Russia, while China smiles and texts Joe to keep in line or else. This is an insult to garbage.”
Current “lefty” is “lefty” only through the superficial US political lenses and only in comparison to the US right, otherwise known as far-far-far-right.
Anything teeny-weeny left of that far right is a bit less far right, but that doesn’t make it left.
Left would be if they supported a system in which education is of high quality and free for all, housing is free or cheap, healthcare is free and accessible (anything from visiting a GP to a heart surgery or hip replacement), parent leave is 12-18 months, racism is no more, sexism is no more and women are equally paid as men, range of salaries is 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 (lowest to highest in the country), not 1 to 5000, and so on. That would be left. And it would be better for you, most likely, although you probably won’t allow yourself to entertain that thought or living in a normal country and having what you realistically could have if the US wanted to become a normal civilised country.
And your current “lefty” is NOT going Karl Marx. To go Karl Marx they would need to realy read and study those ideas, debate, develop their own, build on it, improve, reject, etc. However, in the USA, even your academic staff don’t read Marx - they read short interpretations their colleagues wrote based on other colleagues’ interpretations - let alone your youth or your “lefties”.
Your “lefties” are busy fighting with their colleagues “righties” about how to not allow Americans have basic healthcare or decent salaries and holidays. And your “lefties” are not educated enough, they did not invest themselves into studying anything at a deep level - Marx included. The US politicians and US youth want everything condensed, summarised, simplified, from maths to science to philosophy to politics. The rest of the world sees that as big mistake and stupidity.
So no, there is no Marxism in the US. If you don’t like something the US right-wing politicians do, don’t blame Marxism, please. It is your right-wing politicians having a right-wing domestics.
April 6th, 2021
> “If you don’t see today’s Russia as being closer to fascism than it is to communism, you won’t see anything.”
I don’t know. Fascism and Communism are pretty damn close together.
April 6th, 2021
Also, people here are using the term “the rest of the world” to mean Europe and …. pretty much just Europe. That’s not the rest of the world.
April 6th, 2021
Ah here, pete - most pilgrims are here because they’re tired of reading (for work; vision problems; etc.) - then you go & hit ‘em with a slab of History one-o-none. None of which takes account of the threat posed to the West in the form of proxy wars, the opportunistic & bellicose Soviet blockade of Berlin, nuclear espionage (beginning with Stalin), the threat of nuclear war itself, the creation of slave states founded on soundly murderous Marxist ideology (forced famines, genocide, concentration camps) - across the USSR, and Eastern Europe, and North Korea - following the Russian backing of Korean Marxists in undemocratically seizing power in the North, and their subsequent invasion of the South - which was again a clear & present threat to an American ally - as was the militant Marxist menace to South Vietnam, where the Vietnamese requested American military assistance, as a result of an existential threat.
It’s always been difficult to be a neighbour of Russia, as demonstrated by history & current threats. As to Turkey, the Turks were threatened by the Soviets (19 Mar 1945, Molotovv advised Turkey’s ambassador in Moscow that the Soviet Union was unilaterally withdrawing from the 1925 Non-Aggression Pact). The Soviets claimed part of eastern Turkey - the districts of Kars, Artvin and Ardahan; and also desired military & naval bases within Turkey’s ambit, essentially overall dominance of the region.
In March 1947, because of the various Soviet threats, with the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine, the Americans underwrote the frontiers of Turkey and Greece. The Turks also sought aid from the Americans and joined NATO in 1952. They had to, in order to secure some measure of protection and stability. The Soviets and the Turks were in different camps during the Korean War and throughout the Cold War.
Concerning the farcical Soviet application to join NATO, as Molotov wrote, the ploy was meant to “undermine plans for the creation of the European Defense Community.” However, Molotov did foresee problems in the event that the Soviet Union’s application was successful, as NATO would likely insist on democratic institutions, while the Soviets clearly considered democracy to be anathema.
As to the US giving comfort & aid to “fascists and Nazis” - try this for a dose of accuracy: after the fascists & Soviets had actually invaded & subjugated Poland in a joint operation, Stalin’s appeasement of Hitler continued with a large increase in deliveries to Germany of grain, fuel, cotton, metals and rubber purchased in south-east Asia, circumventing the British blockade.
During the period of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union had provided 26,000 tons of chromium, used in metal alloys, 140,000 tons of manganese and more than two millions tons of oil to the Reich. Despite having received well over eighty clear indications of a German invasion – indeed probably more than a hundred–Stalin seemed more concerned with “the security problem along our north-west frontier” which meant the Baltic states. On the night of 14th June, a week before the German invasion, 60,000 Estonians, 34,000 Latvians and 38,000 Lithuanians were forced on to cattle trucks for deportation to camps in the distant interior of the Soviet Union. Stalin remained unconvinced even when, during the last week before the invasion, German ships rapidly left Soviet ports and embassy staff were evacuated (always a dead giveaway, I find).
Between Oct 1940 and Feb 1942, in spite of the ongoing German attack on the Soviet Union from June 1941, the Red Army, in particular the Soviet Air Force, as well as Soviet military-related industries were subjected to purges by Stalin.
Of course, he also needed enormous amounts of materiel from the other imperialist nations.
April 6th, 2021
Siadwell
April 6th, 2021
@ petezete
“I agree with a lot that you have to say. You are very strong on the historical contexts but skip almost totally over the question of today’s Russia and Vladimir Putin.”
Thanks, Siadwell. And thanks for a civilised reply. We are here to discuss, debate, learn how others see the world. So thanks for your reply.
I don’t think I skipped over the question of today’s Russia. On the contrary, I mentioned that it is not a threat of any sort to the US or its “allies”. It is not Russia that expanded to the borders of the US or UK. It is the US that expanded into central and then Eastern Europe, all the way to the borders of Russia.
There are no Russian nuclear missiles on the US borders. There are US missiles on and near Russian borders.
There are no Russian fleets and carriers near the US shores. There are US carriers near Russian shores.
Russian fighterjets are not flying anywhere near the US. In fact anywhere outside of Russia. It is the US fighterjets and radar stations flying near Russia.
It is not Russian militarism that is trying to conquer the world. It is not Russians trying to lead an arms race. On the contrary, they said numerous times they can not and will not enter a similar race that took a huge toll on them during the first cold war. It is the US military complex that is thursdy and needs to squeeze the last dollar from US citizens and from “allies” in order to grow and grow and grow. Grow for what? Until when? Why?
When it comes to Putin, I understand that you might have seen only one side, only what local propaganda has shown you, day in day out, year in year out. It is normal that you think he is evil, Russians are evil, Chinese are evil, even Koreans and Iranians are evil, Cubans are evil, Venezuelans are evil, Bolivians are evil, and that you might think it is the US that should police the world, change the governments across the world and set up their own pawns in each country they please.
I think it is dangerous to set up coups across Latin America and claim this or that guy is president just because a bunch of geriatric US politicians want a puppet government … again … in countries from which cheap oil or something can be extracted and stolen.
I am sure there are enough interviews and even short statements of Vladimir Putin on Youtube nowadays, with English translation, that you can see for yourself and make your own decisions without me telling you what to think, and without CNN or Fox poisoning your brain.
And, of course, you would need to put things in context and not try to force what YOU (American politicians, media, people) imagine should work in every country around the world and not try to create the world in your own image. Most of the world does not like that US image to start with.
“That makes me wonder.”
Nothing to wonder, really. Not a 10 cent bot, not working for this or that side. Just educated and informed. Not relying on a handful of owners of the majority of world media to tell me what I’m supposed to be thinking. Not a crazy conspiracy theorist, either.
Just educated and questioning things, comparing facts, and looking into sources of information, not third grade news anchors and commentators.
April 6th, 2021
“Current “lefty” is “lefty” only through the superficial US political lenses and only in comparison to the US right, otherwise known as far-far-far-right.”
Thanks, Pete. This is the thing that is hard to understand by the rest of the world. In most of European countries the Dems would be considered moderately right leaning group.
April 6th, 2021
- and don’t mind Caesar. He’s a fairly talented 12-year-old, nothing more.
April 6th, 2021
You & me both ill, old pill. As usual, the arguments always stand for themselves (care to be the “independent” fact checker? No? Ah…)
And didn’t you guys fight with the Nazis against the Russians? In old Barbarossa?
As Basil Fawlty would say, “Don’t mention the war!”
April 6th, 2021
racist slaver decedents will suck any dick to oppress their betters.
April 6th, 2021
Siadwell
April 6th, 2021
@ petezete
I paused a bit here, trying to think of a couple of videos that might be of interest. And I realised it is hard to filter - there are simply too many videos on Youtube that mention Putin one way or the other. So, even though I said you don’t need me to tell you what to think, I thought it would be at least nice of me to offer a couple of short but very informative videos buried deep under all these daily political trashings. These videos are of Putin in live interviews, talking about dead-serious issues we all face.
While these videos won’t tell you everything, of course, nor will answer all your potential questions on Russian politics and Putin, these might provide views alternative to those commonly held among CNN or Fox audience. Comments to each video, coming from American viewers, might also tell you that there are Americans who are not duped by the warmongering US politics and media.
Videos have sometimes misleading or clickbait-ish titles, perhaps best to not pay attention to titles.
Hope it helps and I hope these at least make you wonder whether we all have been duped into wasting precious resources on war machineries and unnecessary hatred among nations.
Putin’s Warning: FULL SPEECH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo
(these are two short speaches, from 2016 and 2007), on nuclear weapons, defence, politics, dangers to us all, and journalists not taking their role seriously.
Putin Tells Everyone Exactly Who Created ISIS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQuceU3×2Ww
Putin crushes CNN smartass Fareed Zakaria on Donald Trump and US elections
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgBicvqT3hQ
Putin Crushes BBC Smartass INCLUDING BBC propagandist’s ques
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0LJptnInQc
Putin trolls CIA on Edward Snowden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVv9R91Osu4
Again, please don’t fall for some of the titles (”crushes”, etc.).
April 6th, 2021
Everyone is our ally right up until they’re not.
Like always, thank you demogorgon for the dl.
April 6th, 2021
Again, please don’t fall for some of the titles (”crushes”, etc.).
What is said or proposed in these videos, the context, and the civilised level of respect and understanding to all sides and to the seriousness of the matters, is what every one of us hopes to find in politicians, no matter which country. If you put aside animosities towards essentially every and any Russian politician and perhaps any and every politician that does not comply with the US political madness, I think you might be surprised by what you see and hear in these videos.
I don’t work for Putin, I don’t troll for Russia or China. I am simply affected, like all of us, by the madness of the world politics, wars, crises, refugees, industrialisation that causes destruction of natural habitats and abrupt changes in climate (which, in turn, causes more and more problems), etc.
The US regimes and presidents, one after another, plot coups or wars or invasions. That does not make the world a better place. Neither does 800+ US military bases across the world.
China and Russia are not a threat. And neither is North Korea with its one semi-working nuclear missile. The US had more than 20,000 nuclear warheads in 2003 when the US attacked Iraq under the false premise that Iraq was somehow part of Al-Qaeda terrorist network. The US is the only uncivilised country that used nuclear weapons to murder people, to annihilate civilians. US academics researched the topic and found Japan was about to surrender fearing Russian and Chinese retributions at the time. The US dropped the bombs for reasons other than ending the war that was already ending anyway. No other country breeds politicians that do that sort of thing, journalists that spread lies about the necessity of such gruesome horrors, not populace that does not question its terrible decisions.
April 6th, 2021
@caesar - I think we would have fought with Cannibals from Mars against the Russians, were they the only available allies(In the end we did, however, kick the Germans out, because we had to.).
And when did the Irish fought in a war? Besides among themselves (who has the biggest potato and ugliest children, I presume the cause). Okay, we too did have a slight inner tiff of political persuasion after we took our independence from Ruskies.
Every family tree here has a war hero or three in them, and at least nowadays we don’t mind talking about it.
April 6th, 2021
@pete - Russia and China with their current dictators are not threats to America, but they are certainly that to their neighbors. China might even grow to be that to most of the world. The main thing to see in Putin is, that he is common as muck. He’s a “laddie” without a sense of humor, I’d say.
April 6th, 2021
Interesting. When did we fight in a war? Lemme see… We fought our oppressive invaders for 800 years, and we took our independence from them. Against all possible odds, I might add. We were “officially” neutral in other subsequent conflicts, although a large section of the population signed up to voluntarily fight the Nazis. Rather than, y’know, fighting alongside ‘em.
You guys certainly did fight against an evil empire, as everyone can appreciate. But with the aid & connivance of another evil empire.
April 6th, 2021
Hey, don’t criticise Putin on this page! Or he’ll “crush” - sorry, “poison” you.
He can’t lose an election, you know. At least the Americans can change their sleazy government. Putin could conceivably come out of an election with a dozen votes, and still govern with an “overwhelming majority” - winning 240% of all votes cast. Unprecedented - both democratically, and mathematically.
April 6th, 2021
800 years is a long time. Why did it took that long, one wonders? Maybe they got bored with you in the end?
I think you can appreciate the fact that while we certainly fought alongside with the Germans (many of them possibly Nazies), we didn’t become Nazies. And while we did lost in the end we didn’t become a communist satellite state, either. And there were only some 3 millions of us.
April 6th, 2021
800 years, much of it against the most powerful empire in history. Right on our doorstep, too. With the entire repressive, imperial playbook being ruthlessly applied in embryo - then extended to the rest of the globe (90% of the world’s countries). Like Russia and China, the “managed” famine also featured prominently. Then India, then Kenya. Useful in clearing the land. Cromwell considered the idea of total population annihilation, then land redistribution. Part of that plan was accomplished.
I dunno, ill, I know you’re bravely rationalising the whole project, but enabling the Nazis while they were murdering over 12 million civilians - in Russia & elsewhere? And the Swedes are in the dock of history for their conduct as well.
At least you know and can admit your history. This very page is evidence of when a person can be militantly ignorant of their country’s appalling history. And as misdirection, tries to merely focus on America.
April 6th, 2021
Such books are elements of russian disinformation, there is no evidence in them, only opinions, read or watch Yuri Bezmenov
April 6th, 2021
I knew the comments would be good but lads you’ve outdone yourselves.
April 6th, 2021
Did everyone not see Trump kiss Putin’s ass in Helsinki? On global television trump cited with Putin against his own citizens and his own military. That was treason I thought for sure that that would be it for him. That he would be led off in handcuffs or not allowed back into the usa. But no you fascist enablers just acted like it didn’t happen. Or when he told everyone to leave the oval office while he turned over secret documents to a known a known kgb agent then later admitted it and said “so what, I am the president. I can declassify and classify whatever I want. I can give secrets to whoever I want.” Disgusting that people still defend this turd.
April 6th, 2021
He is so stupid he didn’t realize that the oval office is taped or didn’t care.
April 7th, 2021
A continuation of my previous comment…
As a reminder, the US regimes used similar tactics when attacking or invading (or supporting coups and dictators) in other countries, such as Syria, Libya, Yemen, Jordan, Serbia, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Korea, Panama, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba. Those same lame excuses were used by Hitler’s Germany when they attacked Poland, for example, in 1939, and so on.
The US is the only country that lost a case at the International Tribunal and then decided to not recognise the Tribunal. Sigh.
Also the only country, except perhaps 1-3 failed states, that does not allow International Court of Justice’s prosecutors to even enter the USA - the US administration cancelled their visas and refused them entry. So much about international law and order.
Not to mention various crimes against humanity and what accounts to war crimes and state-sponsored terrorism.
We don’t need more wars, destruction, terror, forced migrations, countries torn and turned into nothing, millions or tens of millions of people losing their homes and livelihoods, jobs, houses, education, everything.
April 7th, 2021
Left-right only exist in the minds of the American plebs. The people with the real power don’t care at all about your absurd culture war issues except for using them as emotional buttons they push to get y’all to start barking. You’re history’s biggest dupes who make up 4% of the global population (but have the worlds biggest prison population - 2 million). Most of the other 96% laugh at you every day. Y’all are nothing more than a 21st century FREAK SHOW! & don’t even know it.
I feel sorry for all the little American kids. Sadly, they are going to be much worse than the current crop of losers because y’all are making them that way. Monkey see monkey do.
April 7th, 2021
It is not Russia that creates chaos around the world, it is not China, it is not North Korea, it is not Cuba.
It is the US and its little helpers, its “allies” in crimes against all of us.
That has to stop some day, hopefully sooner rather than later, and it starts with education and young people.
@InsaneCrazyMad
Fascism and communism are very different, “pretty damn close together” mostly in propaganda hits and among the misinformed. Communism is a social construct that aims to raise the standard of living for all and create a just society of moral people and ethical behaviours, where motivation to work and contribute is not in monetary value (money is of no importance any more) but in ethical stance (everyone contributes according to their abilities, while everyone is given according to their needs). It is a different moral standard. Prior to that it was envisaged that the society should go through unknown number of iterations of socialism to get to that point of consciousness and education and equality to actually be able to reach different ethical standards.
Please be aware of the fact that socialism started in poor countries, in most cases oppressed colonies or then-dictatorships that the masses wanted to get rid of. Socialism did not start among the rich echelons of rich societies. So when you compare the results, it is always good to look at the relative achievements - how big and important the leaps were - not only the then-current state (as the propaganda tends to do).
Communism does not equal Stalin, just like being German does not equal being Hitler-like and being American does not equal being racist or being a bully or beating your wife or being a mass murderer or being Trump or Obama. There were and are millions of good people, wanting peace and prosperity. Communism was a new kid on the block and was supported by the poor and oppressed, offering access to free education, healthcare, housing. In colonialist countries, many of the rich saw this as a threat to their personal wealth and, therefore, stood against it. From there stemmed propaganda, clandestine operations, sabotage, cold war, distrust, insanity and madness, investments in militarism instead of cooperation and peaceful advancement.
April 7th, 2021
Yet another collection of BS wrapped in a cover and called a book. I’ll spend my time watching grass grow. A better use of my time.
April 7th, 2021
“It is not Russia that creates chaos around the world, it is not China, it is not North Korea, it is not Cuba.
It is the US and its little helpers, its “allies” in crimes against all of us.”
@pete - That’s just childish. I could earlier see and even agree with some of your points, but now I think you’re just a troll.
April 7th, 2021
“I dunno, ill, I know you’re bravely rationalising the whole project, but enabling the Nazis while they were murdering over 12 million civilians - in Russia & elsewhere? And the Swedes are in the dock of history for their conduct as well.”
@caesar - Yup, history, funny old thing. One reads all the time how countries and peoples pick their favorite spots and then whine and wallow in it.
Well, I don’t take credit or blame about the bulk of my country’s past. There are things I’d like to change, but lacking a time-machine…
I also find overt patriotism quite disgusting. And I’m willing to poke fun about yours and mine, when I get the chance. When people finally understand that this is such a tiny globe, we may find some real system to provide for everyone. Without burning everything around.
April 7th, 2021
Anyway, in the end history is just a string of bad planning and accidents.
April 7th, 2021
Amen to that. Blind patriotism is foolish. But does that mean you don’t believe that Mother Russia is strong like bull - and the last true hope of humanity?!
…and that’s the Pravda, the whole Pravda, and nothing but the Pravda, so help me, Stalin.
That’s what Edukatioи reveals, at any rate. (As long as you define Edukatioи as constituting effective indoctrination and bleak operant conditioning.)
And there was me thinking that the Cold War had concluded…
April 7th, 2021
…forward! To the past.
April 7th, 2021
“Nonfiction”
April 7th, 2021
“Edukatioи”
Now, really? I’ll just bet you put a few hours to produce that piece of art.
April 7th, 2021
“And there was me thinking that the Cold War had concluded…”
It’s ended. This is just the cuddling after.
April 7th, 2021
recommended reading: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/16/ivan-ilyin-putins-philosopher-of-russian-fascism/
April 7th, 2021
@illodiini - “Edukatioи” was a learning experience, I had to check it with my friend, Cyril. He’s a saint.
Their state propaganda is remarkably effective. Arguably, to a greater extent than the Soviet era, because back then people could see the lie in their daily lives. Although, many would rationalise by saying: “If comrade Stalin knew of these injustices, he would end them!”
Naturally, Putin says liberal democracy is dead and in the West immigrants can ‘kill and rape without (sic) impunity’ - fairly standard racism on display there, of course. However, sounding the death knell for liberal democracy is somewhat premature. It was certainly strangled at birth/aborted in Russia, thanks to the Putin rogue state kleptocracy.
Triumphant over a quarter of a century ago, liberal democracy prevailed definitively over the totalitarian utopias which had murdered and enslaved hundreds of millions of human beings. Moreover, it’s still the preferred system of most of humanity - if they’re afforded the option. Which is why criminal states/regimes can’t ever allow that choice.
April 8th, 2021
@illodiini
April 7th, 2021
“@pete - That’s just childish. I could earlier see and even agree with some of your points, but now I think you’re just a troll.”
Troll - ha, you got a smile on my face! :)
I’m not a troll. On the contrary, I avoid what usually equates to waste of time - debates over comments that most likely not many care about anyway (but someone might one day, randomly).
What I wrote had to be in a simplified form, as this is not a place for a PhD elaborations. Perhaps that’s why it sounds like trolling.
Someone, I think @caesar963, alluded I am (or might be) Russian, and it was alluded I might be a “Russian patriot” or “motherland patriot”. If I was, would that weaken the arguments I laid out? Aren’t arguments detached from the person?
Anyhow, I am not a troll and I will happily let some people here indulge in their (misinformed) idea I might be Russian.
Back to the point… There is not enough space here to answer and elaborate, as we all know it. But the fact is that recent coups in Venezuela and Bolivia were orchestrated and directly supported and then recognised by the US regime, not by China or Russia, nor by Iran or North Korea. Organising and instigating coups in foreign countries is state-sponsored terrorism.
What happened in Libya? Oh, yes, “evil leader” and “we helped unarmed protesters” and “we support democracy”. Similarly in Iraq. Similarly in Syria. Similarly in Yemen, Lebanon, etc. It is always the US and it is always a country rich in oil or gas, or it might be transport routes, or it might be to prevent “evil communism” (Vietnam, Korea).
And every time it ends up in bombing, destruction of a target country and its core infrastructure, instalment of puppet regimes or complete lawlessness for years or decades to come, millions of refugees, millions of internally displaced (refugees within their own country), thousands or millions of educated permanently leaving destroyed countries and moving to the US or UK or EU (or, in smaller numbers, to Canada, Australia, NZ, South Africa).
Did Russia invade? Outside of the USSR war in Afghanistan (and US creation of Talibans as we know them today), are Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, or Iran invading other countries?
When you look at it impartially, you start to notice it is always the US, UK, and sometimes their “allies” (constituting tiny tiny minority, hovewer allowing for appearance that it is not a purely US invasion/war only).
@caesar963 made some statements - some dubious, some outright wrong, some right - and then “arrived” at “conclusions” that did not follow the premises. From cherry-picking data and putting it into wrong or incomplete contexts, to inferring rules that don’t stick, it seems the whole process was dubious or wrong. If this platform allows it (later), I may make another comment and demonstrate it with an example or two.
And, as always, I look forward to everyone’s thoughtful and intelligent comments and a respectful debate.
April 8th, 2021
The implication that Trump is a Russian agent is laughable, he’s an Israeli one.
April 8th, 2021
@caesar963
Thank you for your inputs.
I am not sure how to take what you have written.
On the one hand, you listed some historic events. On the other hand, you misinterpreted a lot of the meaning and context.
Unlike some of the esteemed colleagues in this debate, I am not tempted to think of anyone - caesar963 included - as a troll. I am closer to thinking that there are some inhibiting factors that prevent individuals from applying logic and seeing the world for what it is if/when the reality clashed with individual’s deeply rooted political views or political wishful thinking or self-identification with certain groups (ideological, political, national, state, etc.).
caesar963 speaks of times long gone, as if those times and events are the facts of the present times - they are not.
Let me briefly demonstrate flaws in your reasoning on your first paragraph only - due to limitations of this space here.
“None of which takes account of the threat posed to the West in the form of proxy wars,”
- What threat?
- Which proxy wars?
“the opportunistic & bellicose Soviet blockade of Berlin,”
- What are you talking about? You think that Russians, who fought on the Eastern front for years and essentially contributed the most to the defeat of Germany, should have stayed home after fighting Nazis all the way to Germany (and along the way liberating prisoners from Nazi death camps)? While, for some strange reason, Americans were entitled to be present in Europe and Germany?
“nuclear espionage (beginning with Stalin),”
- You seem to neglect the following facts:
– Everyone was spying on everyone.
– US secretly imported almost 2,000 Nazi scientists and engineers and tech staff (operation Paperclip and more) to work on its nuclear and other war-related programs.
– US actually used atomic weapons on civilians in Japan, for no military reason. It is petrifying that the US and UK educational systems still teach nonsense about these events, despite the opposite findings of academics worldwide (US included).
“the threat of nuclear war itself,”
- The US regime is the only regime in the world that used atomic weapons on civilians. In 1945 on Japanese, and since then on island people during nuclear tests, during 1999 aggression on Yugoslavia (depleted uranium), 2003 onwards across Middle East (depleted uranium).
- The US was the first to develop atomic weapons and the first to deploy them around the world. No other country has nuclear weapons outside their own territory expect the US (and UK).
“the creation of slave states founded on soundly murderous Marxist ideology”
- Marxist theory was/is not “soundly murderous” as you claim. On the contrary. From what you wrote, it may be that you have not read a single page of Marx’s writings, nor the theory developed by Marx and various followers in various countries during the 20th century. It may be that your only (and very vague) idea(s) about Marxism come from CNN or Fox and the like, i.e. from news anchors who themselves have no clue about what they are reading to the wider audience.
“(forced famines, genocide, concentration camps) - across the USSR, and Eastern Europe, and North Korea ”
- I think you are now inventing things and behaving like a real internet troll, which I thought you were not. This is silly of you to claim.
– By “forced famines” you probably think of essentially very improper and misinformed (and deadly) planning at one point in Chinese history. This was not due to Marx, nor a great planning on their part. It was mostly because of the ill-conceived plan and also unfortunate twist of fate (two-three terrible weather and lost seasons in agriculture) that, combined, caused terrible famine.
– Concentration camps did not exist. Gulags did. Those are different things. Gulags were prisons for political prisoners - in most cases not even political prisoners but people whose possessions or partners or status some other jerk wanted (and so the best way to obtain it was to slander X that he/she was doing Y for the benefit or reactionary Z, so that X ends up in a gulag and stays there for a while).
– Soviet gulags were deadly for many. European ones not for that many. All were far from concentration camps - even according to those who experienced both in a very short succession.
– If you’re aiming at Uighurs in China, I advice you check your numbers and sources. The population of Uighurs - a Muslim population in one of the traditionally poorest regions in China - has doubled in the past three decades, from 20 million to 40 million. That’s the opposite of genocide. Chinese Han (the number-wise dominant Chinese population) essentially flattened and certainly did not double.
“following the Russian backing of Korean Marxists in undemocratically seizing power in the North, and their subsequent invasion of the South”
- Ah, you have gotten this one completely wrong and upside down.
- By the way, Korea bordered with the USSR, not the USA. Claiming that the US has “allies” everywhere where the US wants to have military presence is not quite convincing.
“which was again a clear & present threat to an American ally”
- Ah, the old fairytale of “a US ally and the threat to an American ally” as a pretext to aggression, invasion, bombing, military presence for years or decades… Sounds familiar? Pick a country: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Libya, Syria, etc., or pick a Latin American country.
“as was the militant Marxist menace to South Vietnam, where the Vietnamese requested American military assistance, as a result of an existential threat.”
- Ah, good old Vietnam. However, you got your “facts” all wrong. This is what the CIA claims:
- Vietnam was under French colonial occupation and was trying to get rid of it.
- France wouldn’t allow it.
- Vietnamese organised resistance, led by the “Marxists” as you call them.
- The USA did not want socialism to spread further across Asia and, for some crazy reason, though that destroying a country like Vietnam was worth the effort to set an example.
- The US agreed to support the French in order to stop the spread of socialist movement in Vietnam and further in Asia.
- The US supported a dictator in Vietnam and conducted sham elections. Marxists started to win more and more, so elections had to be seriously rigged, and then again.
- The dictator in the end become so unscrupulous and the system became so corrupted and tortured ordinary Vietnamese, that the US became dissatisfied with the situation.
- In the end Ho Chi Minh and the liberation movement won the North, negotiations with the corrupt dictator failed, and so on.
- The US supported the dictator until the end.
- The US entered the war once the North won, to interfere with what the US saw as a spread of a socialist-communist idea(l) across Asia.
We know the rest. Millions of Vietnamese killed, the US using chemical weapons, cluster bombs, killing innocent people in their own country Vietnam, and all that for more than a decade.
At the same time, the US performed terror and horrible mass bombing and murder of civilians in Vietnam’s neighbours Laos and Cambodia, because those countries had liberation movements as well. Unlike the war in Vietnam, the US aggression and was crimes on Laos and Cambodia were kept under the rug and away from the public eye, even to this day away from the public eye of an average American.
For events in Vietnam, please see CIA summaries if you distrust every other source. CIA explained it very well and many of those findings have now been declassified and are publicly available.
Also, and in conclusion, what happened in the USSR or China or Vietnam or Korea 50 or 70 years ago does not necessarily have to be indicative of the present times. It may be, or it may not.
For example, China moved on and clearly advanced since. The population is educated and can make more informed decisions. Chinese are not attacking anyone. China is not invading anyone. Chinese are helping other countries build infrastructure and capabilities - that creates more stability, helps trade, annuls negative influences of backwardness and religion.
Russia moved on. Russia is not invading - physically or politically - any country anywhere in the world. Russia is not present in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, nor is advancing towards Afghanistan or Pakistan or Venezuela. Russians are now taking care of their own country and their own business and don’t meddle into anyone else’s business, except when invited by their neighbour Syrian government to assist in stopping the advancement of terrorist ISIS and affiliated groups.
North Korea did not attack anyone, nor is invading anyone, nor is performing militarry drills 10 miles from the US shores.
Iran is not attacking anyone, nor is invading, nor has fleets 10 miles off the US coast, nor is having missiles ready to bomb the US.
Now, what about the US? The US organised coups in Panama, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Iran, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Jordan, and across many more countries in East Europe, Africa, Latin America, Middle East. The US has military bases near every country in the world, including Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. The US refuses to leave foreign countries, including Japan, Australia, Iraq, Syria, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Cuba, and many more.
While many speak of “China might do this or that”, it is all hogwash, none of that is reality. The reality is that the US regimes and the US army and secret services are terrorising across the world, creating instability, chaos, causing pain and trauma, killing and displacing millions of innocent people, and all that funded in part by the US taxpayers’ money stolen from potential free education and healthcare (never to be seen in the US) and in part by stolen possessions (oil, gas, loot, forced business and political “deals”).
We all would lead happier and more fulfilling life if that trillion dollars did not go into war machinery of Pentagon, NSA, CIA, private war lords and the likes, and rather went into the US education and healthcare systems and, if anything left, to assist other nations build their education and health and housing so that we all can live in peace.
Marxists and communists are not your problem. Marxism and socialism brought more than 2 billion people from poverty and illiteracy and those people then created amazing stuff and art and culture and science and technology for all of us to enjoy. Marxism did not teach them to hate, nor to invade. On the contrary, people raised their voice against aggressive policies (even back then in the USSR, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Vietnam, and many more) - be it domestic, be it Soviet, be it international (fascism in Italy, Germany, Spain, Greece; colonialism by the UK, France, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands; racism across African continent and in South Africa in the US; imperialism and aggression mostly by the UK and the USA).
“Marxists” and “commies” might be all those nice youth that you see roaming around your city, studying or running Chinese or Viet restaurants, being nice and polite, often best students, usually hard working, not causing any trouble whatsoever. Those are the products of 50 or 70 years of “evil Marxism”.
While in the US we don’t have decent education, no decent healthcare system, no decent parental leave, no decent holiday. But we have guns and we have the best and the strongest army in the world to protect us from all our enemies. Oh, my… What a paranoid state of mind.
April 8th, 2021
Why would a non-Russian troll for Putin’s kleptocracy?
Where I “made…statements..dubious, some outright wrong…“arrived” at “conclusions” that did not follow the premises…cherry-picking data and putting it into wrong or incomplete contexts, to inferring rules that don’t stick” - can you give actual examples? At all? Rather than a vague set of bogus accusations? No? Ahh…didn’t think so.
April 8th, 2021
Pete, me old flower, everything you’ve said is false. Which is even remarkable by internet standards of veracity. I can only best assume that you don’t know any of your history. For inst, “Did Russia invade? Outside of the USSR war in Afghanistan” - this is what can be referred to as lying by partial admission.
Other invasions carried out by Russian regimes (USSR): Reverse order -
[China] - border conflict over an island in the Amur river, 1969
Czechoslovakia, Prague, 1968
Hungary, 1956
WW2: [Germany, Poland (3rd time to invade), Hungary, Austria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Finland, Norway, Korea, Japan, China] - After the war, the Soviet Union took Poland, Romania, and Hungary into the USSR’s borders, and moved other borders around. Also invaded were the Baltic States and Moldova. There was also fighting with anti-Soviet partisans within USSR borders, especially in Ukraine.
[Yugoslavia] - Soviet troops crossed this country as part of the war, but the local partisans, who had largely liberated the country, didn’t let them stay and occupy.
Iran - invaded to provide a link to British forces in southern Iran
Finland 1940 - Winter War
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania/Moldova - the territories the Soviet Union incorporated into itself as a result of the Secret Protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
Poland, 1939 - joint invasion with the Nazis, as per codicil of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Poland 1919 - Polish-Soviet War
Soviets also invaded:
Transcaucasian Republic - a communist state that was temporarily independent of Moscow/Petrograd
[Various independent Ukrainian states/governments]
[Finland, the Baltic States, the Central Asian and Caucasus states], all of which had varying strength independence movements to break out of the Russian Empire, which they had been part of before. Finland and the Baltic States managed to win independence.
In addition to direct invasions: support/funding of coups, assassinations, and terror groups, globally.
April 8th, 2021
Of course, the Russians are always being “invited” in (not the Americans, though!) to commit human rights abuses. By their brave ally, the dictator & war criminal, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria. That’s more chemical weapons, folks.
Russians “invited in” to invade, terrorise, and murder in Ukraine/Crimea.
And Georgia
And Chechnya.
April 8th, 2021
“Caesar speaks of times long gone, as if those times and events are the facts of the present times - they are not.” & “what happened in the USSR or China or Vietnam or Korea 50 or 70 years ago does not necessarily have to be indicative of the present times.” - Then goes on to interminably talk about American history. A little self-awareness?
Hey, by the way, how come Putin’s saved an estimated at $200 billion, on a salary of $187,000? Must be an aggressive saver, eh?
April 8th, 2021
None of the “whataboutery” & misdirection regarding the US absolves Russia of any of these crimes.
Marxism, as applied, has not been murderous? You mustn’t have been paying attenion. Well in excess of 100 million human beings murdered? Forced, planned famines (Holodomor, Ukraine; China)? Genocide? The creation of slave states (and failed states), in order to lock people in and tyrannise/terrorise them? Enormous networks of concentration camps (where “enemies of the regime” are concentrated)? (A particularly Russian model, later copied by the Nazis, of course)
However, the worship of brutal violence was there at the inception of Marxism: “There is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.” Come now, you reveal your lack of knowledge of Marx & Marxism, and your substitution of it with a mendaciously comforting fairy tale. The imposition of concentrated terror is there in the programme of the originator, and has predictably always played out in each blood-soaked iteration.
Instead of spending on food & investing in people, Russia predominantly spent resources on weapons, invasions, and terror, and so the system collapsed. This they did to their own people. Tough to admit your total failure by following a system that, as anyone can tell you, doesn’t actually work.
April 8th, 2021
“the opportunistic & bellicose Soviet blockade of Berlin,”
- “What are you talking about?….While, for some strange reason, Americans were entitled to be present in Europe and Germany?”
You’ve seriously never heard of Stalin’s Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949)? During the multinational occupation of Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies’ railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. All the sectors had been agreed upon, but Stalin naturally got greedy again.
April 8th, 2021
@caesar - Not everything that Pete writes is b.s. just most of it. And the more meaningful about it is what he choose to omit. He’s a crafty troll. All the biggies have a shady history. America is certainly no exception, but they do have the democracy and people some control over their leaders. Russia and China have no such thing, which make all the difference.
April 8th, 2021
All true of course, illodiini. There’s so many of these guys on the net. Deceptive disinformation & mendacious misinformation abounds. It’s the Moscow media management methodology in miniature. Every conceivable distraction & misdirection manoeuvre is deployed.
However, he’s well on his way to a quasi-PhD from Putin University (™) - almost certainly to be awarded for creative “historical” research.
He could even become a billionaire, like the KGB man himself, if he could only seize enough state resources & assets, and then share them out amongst friends & toadies. Be an oligarch. Y’know, for the, er, people. And stuff.
It’s all about that fascistic worship of the bully. Repression in Hong Kong proves China is Strong like Bull! Strong Leaders - stripped to waist - they show us way! All be Strong like Bull! Beat women - kill gays, and Muslims! No pity! No remorse!
April 9th, 2021
@petezete:
“Russian fighterjets are not flying anywhere near the US. In fact anywhere outside of Russia. It is the US fighterjets and radar stations flying near Russia.”
Demonstrably false, and not disputed by Russia. Not just false, but like, realllly false. Russia is pissing everyone off with their aerial brinksmanship, and are dumping boatloads of money and resources into first-strike weapons. Russian bombers are routinely testing US airspace near Alaska. Christ, they’re in Antarctica right now upending international agreements. 2 weeks ago Putin was bragging about military maneuvers taking place in Antarctica by 3 of Russia’s nuclear subs. Don’t even get me started on China’s imperial ambitions.
This narrative you’ve constructed is so obviously, factually incorrect that it really makes one wonder what your motivations are. Is it delusion that flatly ignores information which doesn’t comport with your worldview, or is this just straight-up trolling or disinformation? Whatever the situation, you start with a pretty big credibility gap if you can’t get basic facts straight.
oh, and… lol… that whole thing about how to the rest of the world all Americans are just redder shades of far-right extremists: spare me. Visit Australia, China, Germany, Russia or Israel and you’ll find far-right extremism that puts our homegrown alt-r’s to shame. The only “conservative” attribute that the US might have a lock on over other countries are guns, and within the US it’s an incredibly polarizing issue. Anyways, *shrug* You stuffed a whole lot of wrong into just the parts I saw while skimming through, and it’s hard to believe you don’t know that.
April 9th, 2021
It is kinda sad that there are so many people who desperately and/or opportunistically choose to believe and even worship cretins like Trump or Putin. And they even vehemently ignore plain facts that are available for everyone. Fake-news! Malevolent propaganda!!
There is no real difference between far-right or -left. Various -isms with their various interpretations doesn’t change that. Nazism in its core is mostly the same as any other political movement - or any big religion, for that matter. Power over others, getting worshipped, getting laid, having it easy. It’s not complicated at all. So, sorry, all you big brainiacs here.
April 9th, 2021
You guys make a lot of good points. I agree completely, illodiini, that left/right extremism is essentially the same beast in its brutal effects. While religion has had its excesses, to compare it with those political ideologies is indeed instructive. Religion also contributed the university, the hospital, the concept & doctrine of human rights, organised charity, the preservation of literacy, learning, and Classical culture, objective ethics, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, and civilisation. Whereas political ideological extremism contributed mountains of corpses, massive slave states, untold human misery, total socio-economic failure & collapse. It’s a telling comparison.
The wonderful thing is, pete doesn’t have to wallow in such blatant historical illiteracy. There are excellent works of historiography available - many on this very site. Barbara Tuchman, Antony Beevor, Ian Kershaw, Richard J. Evans, and many others.
On the subject of the extremism that he has so clearly fallen for, I would recommend Hannah Arendt’s towering “The Origins of Totalitarianism” - read it, mark it. Learn from it. “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.” Absolutely.
April 9th, 2021
“Whereas political ideological extremism contributed mountains of corpses, massive slave states, untold human misery, total socio-economic failure & collapse.”
To paraphrase Marx: Religion is the opiate of masses.
Karl got that right. You didn’t, my good Caesar. Just change a few words of what you wrote and it’s the story of any organized world religion.
People did the good deeds, despite religions or politics. Y’know, “Eppur si muove!”
April 9th, 2021
That’s one heck of a list of achievements - and an incredible contrast. One produces both good and bad; while the other results in nothing but the greatest evil. In just a few decades: genocides, concentration camps, planned famines - destruction of civilisation. It takes a long time to build & develop civilisation, but it takes a toxic ideology mere decades to burn it down.
And that genocidal political ideology was the opiate of the 20th century dark age. Marx did eventually get the “concentrated terror” that he wished for - and how. “People did the good deeds” - inspired by? That’s right, baby.
April 9th, 2021
You’re just trying to stay on the good side of “god”.
Anyway, all the bad and all the good are human traits, we just wish to label them for various reasons. By all means, embrace that old time religion, if it makes you warm and fuzzy inside, my good C. In my own bubble, there’s only me and my usually bad “karma”.
April 9th, 2021
I was trying to think what the current opiates are in the West (apart from opioids themselves, of course). Buying s***? Celebrity culture? Worshipping our own image? What’s the vote from the Helsinki jury?
April 9th, 2021
You don’t that there’s any meaningful difference between objective good and evil? You believe that they’re just convenient labels? Have you been drinking again?
April 9th, 2021
Hello good people.
Some labelling is happening here, it seems? Some labelled me as Russian, a demagogue, Putin worshiper, crafty troll, on my way to a quasi-PhD from Putin University, and more. Funny guys you guys.
Now back to serious conversations.
@caesar963, I am not going to try to impact your opinions - from your torrent of comments I think I can conclude that you are a lost case in a sense that no evidence can impact your thoughts; you’ve made up your mind long time ago. You seem to be one of those types that search for any conspiracy theory to fit their grossly twisted views of reality.
I will, however, comment for others to see. This is because one day someone may bump into this abandoned corner of the Internet - it would be a shame to let what you wrote be left without a short rebuke.
As always, can’t respond to every little detail of yours, it is enough to point to major mistakes and major flaws in your reasoning.
INVASIONS…
My point was that Russians are not invading in the present and relative past. Everyone knows - and I acknowledged that as well - that the USSR made many wrong moves in the past, somewhat distant past to where Russia is now and where Russian politics is now. Imposing Soviet political models on East European countries was wrong - but that happened in 1950s and 1960s, and lasted till 1980s. In 1950s and 1960s the US (and some other countries) were openly and legally racists, and practiced slavery and colonialism for centuries. This does not make USSR better, though.
The point is that speaking of Stalin’s or Mao’s times and leadership is not telling us much about today’s Russia and China. While speaking about Vietnam war or the invasion of Cuba paints the same picture as modern-day US invasions. That difference is important: Russia and China learnt what not to do, while the US politicians repeat the same crimes again and again.
INVASIONS BY THE USSR / RUSSIA
The list you made is incorrect. The conclusions you made are false.
FOR EXAMPLE:
“After the war, the Soviet Union took Poland, Romania, and Hungary into the USSR’s borders,”
This never happened. These countries entered something called Warsaw Pact, which was Soviet-led verions of US-led NATO. USSR had its own borders, other countries had their own borders. Just like today’s Germany has its own borders even though a member of NATO.
“There was also fighting with anti-Soviet partisans within USSR borders, especially in Ukraine.”
Ah, you meant to say Fascists in Ukraine? Those that were in many ways worse than German Nazis. Milan Bandera and his fascist Ukrainian movement? Yes, there were fightings. No, those were not “anti-Soviet partisans” in Ukraine, but orgaised fascists who ruled the Fascist Ukraine during WW2.
“[Yugoslavia] - Soviet troops crossed this country as part of the war, but the local partisans, who had largely liberated the country, didn’t let them stay and occupy.”
Wrong again! Soviet/Russian Red Army led the battles for freedom of Yugoslavian territories. There are/were numerous monuments to Red Army and its soldiers in Yugoslavia. While Yugoslavian partisan guerilla (organised and led by their leader and later president Tito, leader of Communist Party of Yugoslavia) fought against Germans and their fascist collaborators in West and North Yugoslavia (facist states of Croatia and Slovenia and Islamist Fascist Bosnia), Red Army mostly fought in East and Cetral-East Yugoslavia (closer to Eastern Front and Russia and also closer to fascist Hungary and Bulgaria on the north-east and east of Yugoslavia).
(This, in part, informs why Soviets pressed harder on some of those countries that were fascist in WW2.)
Anyhow, Red Army’s the most significant battles were for the liberation of Yugoslavian largest city and capital - Belgrade. Belgrade houses monuments to Russian liberators, massive Hero Cemetery dedicated to Red Army soldiers, and some of its main city avenues were and are still named after Russian Red Army leaders.
What you refer to, but obviously don’t know that much, is the rift between political leaderships of the USSR and Yugoslavia, that culminated in 1948. Yugoslavia was then expelled from the Socialist International, at the request of Stalin, due to what was labelled as “deviation from the trajectory” and “liberalisation” of Yugoslavian market and economy.
The relationships normalised in the years after Stalin’s death. Yugoslavia never entered Warsaw Pact. Instead, it chose non-alignment with military pacts and organised something called a Non-Aligned Movement (1961) that organised and fought for freedom of the oppressed and against colonialism, racism, modern slavery, imperialism, invasions, etc.
Unlike Red Army troops who laid their lives to help liberate other people’s countries, West European and US troops kept their presence across colonies and war loot.
Anyhow, Soviet stupidity was lovcalised in time and space: it all happened somewhere between, generously speaking, 1920s and 1970s (or less), and it was all on and next or relatively close to their border. And, what is equally important, modern day Russians don’t want to co-opt any other country, nor want to invade, nor to go into any war.
On the other hand, the US has much much longer history of coups, invasions, thievery, and, what is worse, that simply never ends. It did not start in 1920s - it started much earlier. It did not end in 1960s or 1970s - it continued to this day.
And so while Russians got rid of their Stalin and got rid of KGB as a spying force on every one and every thing, the US still has a stream or warmongering presidents and Secretaries of State and advisors, and has CIA and NSA that spy on everyone across the world - including German Prime Minister and the whole US population. That is a serious problem for everyone, not for US politicians only.
April 9th, 2021
“Russians are not invading in the present and relative past.” = I’ll just let that beauty stand, it’s so laughable that it doesn’t require any gloss. Well done!
None of the continued “whataboutery” & misdirection regarding the US (going back over centuries - but this only in the case of non-Russians) absolves Russia of any of its abhorrent crimes, past or present. As you, of course, know.
No racism in Russia? No homophobia? No Islamophobia? No misogyny? No human rights abuses? No suppression of free expression & opposition? No poisonings? No beatings? No fascist paramilitarism? No Ultra neo-Nazi football hooligans? No extreme ethnic nationalism? No violations of the ECHR? No Circassian genocide - the Russian Empire’s systematic mass murder, ethnic cleansing, forced migration, and expulsion of 800,000–1,500,000 Circassians (at least 75% of the total population)? No practice of serfdom & colonialism for centuries? Ah, what a utopia! No truth, you mean.
“Modern day Russians don’t want to co-opt any other country, nor want to invade, nor to go into any war.” Excepting: aiding Bashar al-Assad, in Syria - more chemical weapons.
Russians “invited in” to invade, terrorise, and murder in Ukraine/Crimea. And Georgia. And Chechnya.
“It continued to this day” - yeah, why doesn’t Putin stop the invasions & leave his neighbours in peace? Imperialism again. It never ends. And the spying as well, yeah.
“Unlike Red Army troops who laid their lives to help liberate other people’s countries” - “liberated” Eastern Europe? You do know what “liberated” means, right? It doesn’t mean colonise or absorb into the dystopian Soviet empire. The unfortunate people of Eastern Europe merely exchanged one evil, imperialist ideology for another. “Liberated” - yeah.
The “stupid Soviet Union” happened & was all gone before the “1970s”? Ah, come on. And “was lovcalised” - to Cuba? Really?
“While Russians…got rid of KGB” - yeah, with a KGB kleptocrat controlling the country & its resources for life. Well done, again.
Russia practiced brutal imperialism - the borders of neighbouring countries/victims - in addition to sovereignty, territorial integrity, and human rights - were all ignored. This is inarguable.
“Fascists in Ukraine” - Is that why so many millions of Ukrainians were earlier starved to death in a planned, intentional famine; brutalised, tortured, murdered and persecuted? A little post hoc, don’t you “think?” Once you begin to defend such actions - planned famines - you’ve lost all moral & intellectual credibility. Such a position as you take is indeed objectively evil.
True, no bogus “evidence” can impact my thoughts. Interestingly, you’ve just called yourself “a demagogue” - bit of a Freudian slip, p’haps? Still, it shows a tiny bit of self-awareness at last.
In all fairness, I’d hate to be in your position, trying to defend the absolutely indefensible. Were I in your role, I would probably be trying to rationalise like a lunatic too. Pretty sure I wouldn’t be defending genocide, concentration camps, torture, repression, imperialism, and forced famines. Damn certain I wouldn’t.
April 9th, 2021
You also helpfully prove my point on Yugoslavia. Lots of statues - but they knew not to let ye stay, as I said, and had as little to do with ye as possible. They probably didn’t want to be starved to death, like Ukrainians, or end up in camps, or as victims of genocide.
However, there were statues. But do the Russians have any statues to commemorate what they did in Poland, when they invaded alongside their Nazi allies? Following the agreed joint invasion of Poland with the Nazis, the Russians committed the Katyn massacre. A series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD (”People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs”, the Soviet secret police) in April and May 1940.
The killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere. The massacre was initiated in NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria’s proposal to Stalin to execute captives. This included Polish Jews: the Chief Rabbi of the Polish Army, Baruch Steinberg was merely one victim. Stalin severed diplomatic relations with the London-based Polish government-in-exile when it asked for an investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The USSR claimed the Nazis had killed the victims, and it continued to deny responsibility for the massacres until 1990, when it was finally admitted.
The Soviets also held back during the Warsaw Uprising, 1944, thereby facilitating the Nazis’ annihilation of the courageous defenders, rather than properly aiding them.
And of course, Stalin had supplied Nazi Germany.
Once again, why deny being Russian? Logically, why would a non-Russian troll & shill for Putin’s kleptocracy? Are you ashamed of being Russian? Merely because it would further weaken all of your phantasy “arguments?” That’s terrible. Never be ashamed of where you come from. Or it’s dasvidaniya dignity.
April 10th, 2021
@caesar:
“You don’t that there’s any meaningful difference between objective good and evil? You believe that they’re just convenient labels?”
While I do have some objections towards objective, I of course recognize the difference. But - you remember the saying about Road to Hell, I’m sure. Paving and such?
“Have you been drinking again?”
I’ll have to check my watch. Yes, it’s been little over 13 years since my last beverage. With alcohol in it, to be precise.
@pete (Pjotr?) - Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
April 10th, 2021
Meanwhile, the current presidents is so thoroughly compromised it’s inconceivable that he is somehow clean.
China won, I suppose a congratulation in in order even if it means the inevitable death of the free west.
April 10th, 2021
@ill - Well done for staying on the wagon (off the wagon?)
April 10th, 2021
Should I point out to Pjotr that three of my uncles and my paternal grandfather fought against Russia. And despite outward politics most of the Finns are not naive enough to trust Russian leaders much farther they can throw them. And while we are reading Pjotr’s fables, Russia is massing its troops against Ukrainian border. Fancy that.
April 10th, 2021
“Well done for staying on the wagon (off the wagon?)”
Yes, well, your people do have problems tell the difference between the two, my good C.
April 10th, 2021
Tell me about it. I’m currently, er, on the wagon?
The fabulous Pjotr’s people also have serious problems with the demon drink.
I’m guessing that’s one of the many reasons why truth & reality are such a bleary blur for him.
April 10th, 2021
Does Pjotr get paid or is he just a useful idjit, I wonder? There are buildings in Russia full of hired trolls and hackers. And they patiently invade forums like this to spew dis-information about Russia and its goals. This a fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades
April 10th, 2021
I know. I think those “buildings in Russia full of hired trolls and hackers” are where Putin PhDs are photocopied, and handed out to the students. You can also buy them on the internet. I have several lining the cat’s litter box.
The cat now has a better Edukatioи (™) than Caesar.
Putin Edukatioи (™) make cat Strong like Bull!
April 10th, 2021
While I’m more like an animal person, at the moment my pets are limited to one 14-year old female cat. We tried to bring in a young rescue dog, but the cat tried make teeny slices of it.
You think Putin is a cat person? He did pat a knocked out tiger once. Can’t remember did he have a shirt on or not. Or that it’s relevant.
April 10th, 2021
I’d start to worry if shirtless Putin started wrestling tigers in your dreams. Did he knock the tiger out first with his kung fu grip?
Elderly cats, much like Vlad himself, are very territorial. Putin likes other people’s territory even more, of course.
Remember that time he met Angie Merkel, and because he was told that she had a great fear of dogs, he was with an enormous, vicious hound (bigger than himself).
That’s the kind of leader you need - Strong as Bull, and loves to scare women. He may have confidence issues.
April 10th, 2021
Naah, Vlad has all the confidence you can imagine in a man the size of a baseball bat.
The tiger was under heavy sedation, I think. He did miss the chance there, for sure, to demonstrate his kung fu skills. I can see him as a bad guy in Kill Bill 3.
April 10th, 2021
Or as Kill Bill’s baseball bat. As an actor, don’t you need to be able to move your face a little bit, and show emotions? I don’t think all the plastic surgery will permit that.
Someone has him on the internet, riding around on a Jurassic Park dinosaur - shirtless, with his frozen, constipated face.
April 10th, 2021
“Does Pjotr get paid or is he just a useful idjit?” - Free vodka. And 2 Putin PhDs (more, if there’s enough ink in the photocopier cartridge). But keep all of that under your Russian hatski, comrade.
April 11th, 2021
It is all Grover Cleveland’s fault. That’s when foreign agents started running this country. Never been a real American president since.
April 23rd, 2021
Drumpfenflakes are angry.. Love it!
May 3rd, 2021
I remember stories of Bill Clinton having been groomed by China. Now it seems Joe Biden has accepted the baton. I would like to see the whole lot of DC’s privileged criminals locked up together in one big cell. Interesting how Trump released more swamp rats than any president in US history. Might do good to lock him up too if these allegations are true.
June 11th, 2023
Thanks @demogorgon666
I enjoyed his other book (House of Trump - House of Putin) and I’m looking forward to this one. Heard a few good things. I’ve also heard that a lot of the book was hard to believe when it was first published, but now because of leaks and we understand a bit more about their MO, the truth in the book is a bit more obvious.
Please reseed.
Add a comment (please log in before commenting)