Alt Left: More Debates on Chinese Communism

Commenter: As with Communism in Europe it would be flushed down the drain of history if the workers actually had a choice in the matter.

Yes, they traded it for socialism. Which is theoretically ok by me, although the socialists they traded it for are scum. Transdniestria and Belarus have some pretty Soviet-like systems, and they keep voting it back in every year, in Belarus by 75-8

You don’t understand. Communists nowadays desperately want to stay in power, especially the CCP. There are CCP committees in every village and town in China, and the locals elect representatives for their villages, towns, and cities. If they don’t do what the people want, the people throw them out. There are 100 protests every day in China, and the authorities just let them go on.

If the locals need something at the village, town, or city level, the local committees and representatives go to their higher-ups and let them know. As the party is desperate to stay in power, the people are often given what they want. “Serve the people” means just that. Once the CCP stops doing that, the people will overthrow them.

Also there are a number of 10

Commenter: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/28/foxconn-plant-china-deaths-suicides

That’s an old article. It’s a problem. They crack down on those companies, and the companies will take off and head off to some Global South shithole with even worse protections. Race to the bottom.

Alt Left: What Libertarianism Is Really All About

From an Internet debate I am participating in:

It’s the libertarians who practice wealth distribution-from the workers and the natural world who produce all real wealth into the pockets of thieves and parasites, the worst of whom, in theory at least, are the ‘libertarians’ driven, as they are, by intense hatred of other people. You have it ass backwards, I fear. If only there was MORE greed and MORE exploitation of others, we’d reach libertarian ‘Heaven’.

If anything drove a stake through the heart of Libertarianism, it was COVID.

Alt Left: China Is Communist

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China and the USSR set world records for doubling life expectancy in the shortest period of time. First the USSR set a record, then China broke it. Capitalism will never beat that record.

France maintains public spending at over 5

Are they Communist?

France is a socialist system.

I trust Communists about whether a system is Communist or not, not some reactionary dogs. If Communists say a system is Communist, it’s Communist.

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7

Public corporations at all levels in China compete with other public enterprises (say a steel mill in Beijing competes with a steel mill in Shanghai), and all publicly owned firms also compete with private firms in China and overseas. If you can’t compete, you might have to go under.

Many so-called SOE’s are owned by local municipalities, often cities. Cities run whole industries making all sorts of things. It’s sink or swim for these companies, so there is a lot of motivation to perform. Furthermore, if the city’s company fails, you’re out a job. People have a stake in it.

That company that was the #3 producer of TV’s on Earth? A public company, competing with private companies all over the world and kicking their asses.

All public companies in China run on a profit model. They compete with other public companies. Workers are given paychecks that are a faction of the company’s profits that month, so wages go down or up depending on how well the company does. The SOE then deducts 9

All of Chinese military economy is state-owned. It does great. All of Russia’s military economy is state owned. It kicks the US’ ass. Oil and gas are state owned all over the world. Works great. Things like shipbuilding have to be state owned because it might take 75 years to make a profit.

Telecommunications are publicly owned the world over, and they work best this way. Education and medicine work best publicly owned, as is mass transit and infrastructure construction. China could not have possibly built up all that incredible infrastructure with private corporations. Would not have happened. That high speed rail network was built by public firms. So was the highway network. So is all the housing. So were all the ports and harbors. Capitalists are crap at all of those things, just garbage.

I will admit that capitalists are good at making widgets. Making stuff, products for sale to consumers. That’s all they should be doing. China shuts them out of politics and the media altogether, which makes it communist right there, as the state is over the market.

Capitalist fanboys, Libertarians and other faggots are all trying to claim the Chinese model because it kicks ass. It’s Communism kicking ass, so this looks bad. So they lie and say it’s capitalist. It’s not. It’s market socialism.

See how fast China built those hospitals when COVID hit? Capitalist countries can’t compete with that. The highest COVID death rates were recorded in the most capitalist countries with the weakest state sectors. The more socialist the country was, the lower the death rate was.

On the other hand, I’m not sure state corporations are not supposed to make money. Are public transit, the phone company, the military, the cops, firemen, cities and towns, the corps of engineers, on and on, supposed to turn a profit? Of course not. I know that public transit must be run at a loss because that is it’s nature. It cannot be run by private companies because they will charge so much for tickets that no one will buy them.

The nature of state owned companies is that they don’t operate at a profit.

Most countries on Earth work under some sort of a socialist model, so some sort of a socialist model is the norm for human development in the world today.

What China is doing is the future of Communism. This is what we will be calling Communism now – market socialism.

Alt Left: Ukrainian Captures a Russian POW, Gouges His Eye Out, and Shoves a Knife Down His Throat

Alt Left: Ukrainian Nazis Torturing a Russian Female Soldier

Alt Left: Ukrainian Nazis Capture Russian POW’s, Beat and Brutalize Them, and Force Them to Kneel in Front of a Ditch

Alt Left: Fake Izyum Massacre

Alt Left: Ukrainian Soldiers Giving a Nazi Salute

Alt Left: The War Is the US and NATO vs. Russia, Not Ukraine Vs. Russia

Alt Left: Romanians Are Nazis

Alt Left: Iran Has No Nuclear Weapons Program, Part 37

Here.

This is not true. Just because there was some 80 grade enriched uranium around doesn’t mean that they were making 80 grade uranium. They could just have easily have been making 60 grade uranium and  some 80 grade got into the mix. Happens all the time.

Have you noticed that everyone, I mean everyone believes that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. It’s a lie that was made up a long time ago by the Jews (Israel), the world’s most proficient and superb liars. Just to show how good they are, notice how many people believe this crap?

Of course the US Gentile neocons of both parties got in on the lie after the Jews started it because they have their own reasons to hate Iran, mostly stemming from the 1979 embassy takeover and hostage situation at the dawn of the revolution.

And a lot of US Gentiles really love Israel as much as Jews do, so they hate Iran for that too. People need to understand that Jews are only

Jews aren’t the only Zionists in the US! Most Zionists in the world are not even Jewish. They’re Gentiles! A lot of these Gentiles have a genuine love for Israel. It doesn’t feel like someone is putting a gun to their head to support the country. So US support for Israel cannot all be pinned on a bunch of Jews.

You don’t like Israel? Fine, go complain to the majority of US Gentiles! Singling out Jews as the only Zionists in the country and the source of all US support for Israel is ridiculous. They couldn’t do it without the help of over 110 million Gentiles. Why don’t you go harass some of those Zionist Gentiles?

Everyone with any sense on this issue knows that Iran has never had a documented nuclear weapons program. Khomeini said it was immoral for Muslims to develop nuclear weapons and his fatwa was long in force. Later Khameini ratified the fatwa.

Now when those mullahs issue fatwas, the state cannot go against them. And they’re not going to issue a fatwa saying no nuclear weapons and then go ahead and violate the fatwa by making them on the side. It doesn’t work that way. The Iranians are pretty up front. They aren’t congenital pathological liars like their enemies the Jews and the Americans.

Nevertheless, there is a rumor that Iran had a nuclear weapons research program during the Iran-Iraq War. Just a research program. I’m not sure if you realize how much time and manpower goes into a nuclear weapons project. First you have to find all of the manuals on how to make one, and it’s almost impossible to get them, as they are not made available to anyone.

You might get a few if you scour libraries in Europe. Anyway, a research program is just that. They study how to make one and write up documents, manuals, papers, and whatnot. That’s all it is. Some experts think it is likely that Iran had this program during the war, but everyone agrees that they haven’t had any nuclear weapons program since the war ended and if they had a research project, they ended it at the time.

Since 1992, Iran has had no nuclear weapons program in any way, shape, or form. They don’t even have a research program, as that was shut down. The UN Nuclear Agency has been inspecting Iran’s nuclear program for many years now, and they have never found a single bit of evidence for the existence of a nuclear weapons program.

Even if Iran had enough weapons grade material to make a bomb, the situation is not like the Jews’ lie that they could “breakout in 3-6 weeks!!!!!!!!” They’ve been saying that forever now. “Iran three weeks away from nuclear breakout!…Iran six weeks away from nuclear breakout!” Breakout means they can develop a nuclear weapon in that amount of time.

That’s complete crap. First they would have to resurrect the research program and get that going again. Then they would have to work on the bomb itself. Making a nuclear weapon is fiendishly difficult even for industrialized states. You have to get the trigger mechanism down to thousands of a second, and it’s extremely difficult to do and can take years to get it right.

So a pile of weapons grade material doesn’t mean jack unless Iran wants to make a uranium bomb or dirty bomb, but all that does it contaminate a 1 square mile area for decades. As Iran is under a fatwa preventing the manufacture of a nuclear bomb and that includes uranium bombs, they’re not even going to make a uranium bomb, and nobody ever uses those anyway.

I can’t believe how many people have fallen for this crap about the nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program, but it shows you the potency of a political lie.

Alt Left: American Partisanship Is Insane

Just to give you an example, the person I live with, in addition to being severely mentally ill (they are in a severe manic episode off and on for a very long time now, like 14 months), is an extreme partisan Democrat. My mother and father were exactly the same.

We were watching TV tonight. Tucker Carlson was on. He watches Fox all the time because he “wants to know what the enemy is thinking,” which is just fine. Tucker segued to a piece about Biden landing in Kiev to meet with the Ukrainian leader, the Jewish Nazi Fuehrer Volodymyr Zelensky.

Soon after Biden arrived, as Biden and his Nazi friend were walking in the street, an air raid alert sounded. No one in Kiev had heard an air raid alert in the last five days. There were no planes or missiles in the sky and no one heard any explosions. The air raid siren was completely fake, a Potemkin air raid siren, so to speak.

I mentioned that the air raid siren was obviously a fake one just to add a Hollywood feel to the visit and he got very upset. He kept insisting that the air raid siren was real. I guess there were invisible planes and missiles in the sky and explosions that you can’t see or hear.

You see, you cannot say anything that makes the US or Ukraine look bad in this war, no matter if it is true or not. Everything has to be positive. If you say one negative thing, you’re a Putinist. Finally changed the channel and made some remark accusing me of being a Putinist, telling me to go watch Russia Today. This is insane behavior, but everyone you meet is like this nowadays. Everyone’s either an insanely partisan Democrat or a wildly partisan Republican, although I will admit that the Republicans are far more self-critical than Democrats. With the Democrats, it’s the party line or you’re with the enemy.

Later the show segued to a bit about the chemical train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio where a train carrying vinyl chloride crashed and created a chemical fire and environmental catastrophe. I noted that it appeared that Biden was blowing it in this crisis. He hadn’t declared a state of emergency yet, and his cabinet member who would be in charge of such thing, Pete Buttigeg, has not even bothered to show up.

The people are suffering from the fumes and the rivers and streams are poisoned. Entire flocks of chickens 20 miles have died from the fumes. I remarked that Biden was blowing it here, and he needed to show up or send in Buttigeg or declare a state of emergency, for God’s sake, do something.

Keep in mind that I am a Biden supporter. I voted for him of course. I’m coming from the loyal opposition point of view. I just want him to pursue better policies and quit screwing up. The person I live with shut down all of this conversation, and turned off the channel again. You can’t say anything bad about the president or his administration, ever. You can’t say they’re screwing up and they need to get their act together.

Everything they do is absolutely perfect and never needs to be changed

You’re also not allowed to support any Republican or Republican project ever, and you can’t even say one positive thing about any major Republican politician. If you do, you’re a traitor,  and you’re with the enemy.

I caught a ton of heat for saying Trump’s “grab em in the pussy” comment was not about sexual assault. Remember he said that when you’re rich and famous, you can do anything with them? You can grab them right in the pussy, and they just let you do it because you’re rich and famous. See that part where it says they let you do it? This means that there’s no sexual assault. If she lets you do sexual things with her without protesting, it can’t be sexual assault or rape in any sense of the word.

My mother then implied that it was still sexual assault because the only reason they let him do it was because he was rich. So I guess if I’m a rich guy and I go around grabbing women, and they let me to do it because I’m rich, then that means I’m sexually assaulting them, right? Because they’re only letting me do it because I’m rich, right? This is bullshit!

Anyway, I was told by my mother, “Don’t defend him!” meaning don’t defend Trump. Now I hate Trump as much as any Leftie, but I did support a few of his policies, and I will defend him where he’s in the right and his critics are wrong.

This is absolutism. Our side is 10

I’ve noticed that a lot of conservatives do the exact same thing too. Furthermore, there are number of boxes you need to check to be a conservative.

First of all is COVID denialism. Mandatory. That’s a crazy position that just might get you killed.

Next is contempt for people warning about global warming and demanding we do something about it. That’s global warming denialism. Another absolutely insane position that might just destroy the whole planet if we don’t watch it.

I’ve noticed lately that another one is election denialism. You have to take the insane and false view that Biden stole the election from Trump. It didn’t happen and there’s no evidence that it did.

I wonder if people even think about these positions before they take them? Or do they just go down the line and check all the boxes if they are conservative and check all the opposite boxes if they are liberal? If they do, critical thinking is history.

Alt Left: Why I Support Russia

Alt Left: China Is a Communist Country

A Libertarian laissez faire free-marketeer recently told me that not only is China capitalist, but it is the most capitalist country on Earth. LOL.

No one on Earth thinks China is a capitalist country, much less one of the most capitalist countries on Earth, except some capitalist fanboys, Libertarians, etc. A few Western Left types, especially Trots, say that China is not socialist anymore and instead is capitalist, but that’s not a common point of view. Anyway, the Western Left have long been lunatics! The rest of the Left laughs at them.

Many Marxists and Communists all over the world say that China is a Communist country.

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Some years ago, the #3 manufacturer of TV’s in the world was a Chinese state-owned firm that was literally run by its workers. That is, the workers got the entire profits as a paycheck, but then they had to deduct 9

China has eliminated extreme poverty, one of the first countries to do so.

The private sector is in a very tight leash in China. They have to do what the state says, or orders. If they don’t, the state will just go in and confiscate the business! Then they will give it to someone who will do what they say. The market is simply a tool for the development of the productive forces in China. It’s not form of politics as it is under capitalism. In China, the state is over the capitalists and in capitalist countries, the capitalists are over the state.

Furthermore, the capitalists and billionaires are not allowed to own the media. All media is state owned, I believe. They fear that allowing capital to own the media will lead to a capitalist country.

All land is publicly owned. You cannot buy or sell land. Once you allow private ownership of land, it’s gone and you have a capitalist country.

In fact, China and Iran are two of the most socialist countries on Earth.

All foreign owned firms have been mandated to give 1

China has spent a vast amount of money in the rural areas because they have been falling behind. All of the infrastructure is state-owned and there is massive state spending on such. 5-10 of the largest Fortune 500 companies in the world are Chinese state-owned firms. The state spends a vast amount of money at all levels of the economy.

The spending would boggle your mind. Did you see how fast they built those new hospitals when COVID hit? You can’t do that in a capitalist country. China has one of the best high speed rail networks on Earth. Why can’t we build one? China’s policy with the Global South is one of solidarity, not exploitation and imperialism.

Public firms compete against private firms in China. China still has five year plans that are followed to the letter.

In response to the Libertarian free-marketeer claptrap that “socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried,” and “How could any intelligent person be a socialist?” almost every country on Earth is socialist in one way or another. The US is one of the only outliers. Most very smart people in the world are socialists of one type or another. Socialism works great. It just depends on what kind you are talking about.

Alt Left: Both Conservative and Liberal Social Values Are No Good

Polar Bear:

Western Cultural Conservatives’ Holy Trinity:

  • Patriotism (Americanism here)
  • anti-Communism
  • anti-abortion

Note: The true American way probably doesn’t even conflict with Nazism

Western Cultural Liberals’ Divine Principles:

  • Jews are the guiding light of morality.
  • Negroes are magical, other Third Worlders pretty good but the dark skin of the sub-Saharan African makes them magical. Sort of how Albinos are seen as magical in Africa.
  • No one has their head on straighter than a tranny.
  • Butch lesbians are ideal beauties.
  • Flamers are manly.

This is excellent. It also shows that I am absolutely not a cultural conservative.

US patriotism, pro-Americanism? Get out of here! Down with patriotards! I’m an America-hater but that’s not my choice. They forced it on me. Don’t like it? Well, tell the government to start acting decent, then maybe I’ll support it. I mostly hate the US government, but the people put the government in, so they’re responsible for the state. About all of the non-government and non-voter aspects of US society, I don’t really have much of any comments. I’m not so much of an America-hater in that sense. Besides, US governments, at least Democrats, are pretty good on domestic issues.

Anti-Communism? No way! I’m not a Communist. I’m a socialist. But a lot of us have a soft spot for Communism even though perhaps we might not prefer to live there. If other people choose such a system to live under, we will respect it and wish them well. Besides, anti-Communists are the worst!

Anti-abortion? No way! I’m pro-choice all the way, baby! I support my sisters having control over their bodies! I do want some basic restrictions put in like no abortion after fetal viability (22 weeks?). For late-term abortions, only for the life or health of the mother, and that does not include mental health!

I’m basically just a liberal or better yet a Leftie, although I’m conservative on some things.

Jews are the guiding light of morality. Yeah, I don’t think so. You can say a lot of things about those people, but they’re definitely not known for their honesty! That said, a lot of Jews live pretty moral lives and are not lying, cheating, thieving, amoral snakes like so many of them. If I were a Jew, I would really try to live down this lying, cheating, thieving, Machiavellian stereotype by trying my best to not act that way. The best way to combat a negative stereotype is for people in the stereotyped group to refuse to act according to the stereotype or to act the opposite way.

Negroes are magical. Other Third Worlders pretty good, but the dark skin of the sub-Saharan African makes them magical. Sort of how Albinos are seen as magical in Africa. Right. It’s crazy. Nothing special about Black people and as with Jews above, way too many Blacks act way too terrible. That said, I think Blacks act way worse than Jews. Jews are just white collar crooks. They’re not street thugs. Their attitude is you can steal more with a pen than with a gun.

The group of Blacks called Ghetto Blacks behave in an absolutely horrible way, and they don’t act awful because of White racism or because we forced them to act this way. They act in similar ways elsewhere in the world. It’s their fault and it’s up to them to clean up their act, unless it’s genetic and they can’t.

That said, there are many millions of Blacks in the US who act just fine. They behave in a more or less middle class manner and these are the Blacks you see on TV, etc. A lot of Blacks with good jobs fall into this category. This group of Blacks, frankly, from a White point of view, act like White people. Note: to us that means “they act civilized.” This group of Blacks may act different from Whites in some ways, but generally these are not bad differences. They’re either positive or neutral.

No one has their head on straighter than a tranny. Well, yeah. Transgender people have more mental disorders than any other group we deal with clinically.  9

Most MTF transgenders simply have a sexual fetish called autogynephilia, where they are sexually aroused by the idea of themselves being and dressing like a woman. Basically late-stage transvestic feitishism. 1

Butch lesbians are ideal beauties. Well, of course they are not. Frankly, most of us men find them rather disgusting.

Flamers are manly. Well, you can’t say that gay men are effeminate, that’s for sure. They will say that’s a homophobic stereotype. It isn’t. Most gay men are effeminate.

As you can see, the cultural values of both the Right and the Left are not acceptable in my opinion. I reject the basic values of the Right because I’m simply not a conservative and I don’t even like them! I’ve been on the Left my whole life.

That leaves us with the cultural values of the modern Left, which I would love to support because they feel good but I can’t because they’re nothing but lies. Furthermore, it’s insane.

I reject both conservative and liberal cultural values. Is there any space for folks like us out there?

I guess this is what the Alt Left was all about.

Alt Left: The West Supported Fascists and Nazis in the Greek Civil War

Alt Left: The Nazi Roots of NASA, the EU, NATO, the UN, and the World Economic Forum

The legacy of Nazism in the West.

As you can see, all of the major institutions of the West in the postwar period were derived from Nazi roots. The head of the EU and the first chief of staff of NATO were both former Nazis. Even NASA in the US had Nazi roots. And the UN was headed by a former Nazi a while back.

I don’t think Nazism ever went away in the West. It just went underground and now it’s poking its head up again.

The woman who is the current head of the EU, Ursula Von Der Leyen, had a Nazi grandfather. Crystina Freedland, a top official in the Canadian government, had a grandfather who was an unrepentent Ukrainian Nazi after WW2 for many years. He was associated with radical Ukrainian nationalist formations who had been Nazi collaborators.

Say what you want to about Russia, but at least their ancestors weren’t Nazis, for God’s sake.

The World Economic Forum also has deep Nazi roots.

See this site for more on that. Click the arrows to the right to click through the different screens. But when you get to the part about the Club of Rome and the World Economic Forum, I advise you to quit reading.

Klaus Schwab is the head of the WEF or World Economic Forum. His father ran a company with deep ties to the Nazi regime. It helped make armaments for them and used slave and POW labor in its plants. The firm was given awards by the Nazi government for being a “model national socialist company.” It was deeply tied into nuclear technology for a long time and at the close of the war, this firm was working to develop an atomic bomb for Hitler’s government.

After the war, Klaus went to work for the company. During this period, the company formed deep ties with the apartheid regime in South Africa and worked intensively with them on the nuclear program, which I believe may have made some bombs before it was dismantled.

As you can see above, I feel that much of the hullabaloo about the World Economic Forum and the Club of Rome is rightwing conspiracy theory nonsense. Supposedly the WEF has a deep agenda to reduce world population, I guess by killing off a bunch of us. Members also made some lame comments about the need to start eating insects, which may not be a bad idea except that we are exterminating them from the planet.

Someone also made a stupid comment about the future: “You will own nothing and you will be happy.” I suppose this is about the new “rental model” of capitalism where you never own anything anymore and instead you just rent out everything at a monthly rate. Software is definitely going to this model. It’s ominous.

The WEF is also associated with the post-pandemic “Great Reset.” There’s been much talk about this, mostly rightwing conspiracy theory, but I don’t even know what they have in mind. Probably not something too nefarious. The WEF is World Center for “globalism,” the bugaboo of the Hard Right. I’m not sure that globalism in the sense of international institutions per se is something to be opposed and I don’t much understand the globalism versus nationalism debate that has the Hard Right so hot and bothered.

Don’t get me wrong. WEF people scumbags, a bunch of rich bastards. On the other hand, they do appear to be somewhat forward-looking as billionaires go. I think I’ll pass on rightwing conspiracy theory about the WEF. This conspiracy theory has long been pushed by Alex Jones and his ilk. They were screaming about this some time ago. They claim there is an agenda to reduce human population from 8 billion to 1 billion. Apparently this means killing 8

Alt Left: Why Is Russia in Ukraine? The Odessa Massacre Is One Reason

Alt Left: Ukrainian Nazi Militia Member Zaliznyak Lost an Eye

Alt Left: Photo of Ukrainian Nazis Gouging out a Russian Soldier’s Eye

Alt Left: Photos of Ukrainian Nazis Murdering Civilians for “Collaborators” for Having White Ribbons of Taking Russian Humanitarian Aid

Alt Left: Oleksiy Goncharevko, from Pro-Russian to Nazi in the Blink of an Eye

Alt Left: A Bit on Stalin and Marxism

From an online debate I am having. The other commenter is in blockquotes.

Every Marxist I have met in real life wanted to separate “True Communism” from Stalin.

Those are Trots. Stalin was a Communist all right. Anyway, I’m not even a Communist. I’m just a socialist. But like a lot of us, I have some sympathy for Communist states. If the people want a system like that, they can have it.

But they all agreed that Stalin was a mass murderer and a stain on Marxism.

Mao said Stalin was 7

Also would like to know if you support the Marxist belief that democracy should not be allowed and that the people should not be allowed to vote on if they want Communism.

I’d say that if the Communists screwed up so bad in serving the people that the population wants to go try their luck with capitalism, give them the rope to hang themselves with. But that’s not the case in any existing Communist country. 9

Alt Left: More on the Ukraine War

From an online debate I am having. The other commenter is in blockquotes. There is a bit of an aside on the Winter War at the end.

So UN votes are invalid if a guy in a forum says an uncited principle supersedes them?

The UN is going against its own principles. The right to self-determination is enshrined right in the UN, therefore the votes in the five oblasts that voted to join Russia are valid.

The UN is just a tool of the US anymore though. I told I loved it when the Iraqi guerrillas bombed the UN building and killed all those UN scums in Iraq. They ratified that imperialist Nazi-like war of aggression!

Did Putin violate your principle by invading the 8

Everyone speaks Russian down there. Various polls showed that 65-7

I suppose some of the pro-Ukies might have left for Ukraine though. It’s been well known for a long time that support for Russia in that area is the weakest among those pro-Russian oblasts. A good 2

Do you believe they voted to join Russia after being violently invaded?

As a matter of fact, they did. Solid majorities in all of those oblasts voted to join Russia after being invaded.

Crimea is 3

Putin’s leaked plans already came out. His attack on Kiev was not a draw.

Well, at first they went in with a small force and fought a very professional and humanitarian war, the object lesson of a humanitarian war in fact. They thought they would need a small force because Ukraine would just cave. In fact, Ukraine agreed to all of Russia’s demands in the first month but Boris Johnson ordered Ukraine to scuttle the deal.

At that point there would be no quick war so the quick war plan was shelved. Russia probably had 10-15 different plans for that war depending on contingencies. If one plan fails, they just go to another one. When they put in the new plan, there was no way they could take a hostile Kiev with 30,000 troops, so at that point it became a blocking action.

The USSR didn’t win if they tried to take the all of Finland and then settle for

Russia didn’t try to conquer and annex all of Finland. They just wanted regime change. Everyone knows the Finns sued for peace. You can read the actual document online.

Alt Left: “RAND Corporation Strikes Again,” by Observer R for the Saker blog

A good article about two recent RAND Corporation (Deep State/Pentagon) studies. The first said the US should avoid a long war in Ukraine and basically cut and run as soon as possible. This one, purportedly an endless list of Russia’s military “failures,” ends on a note that suggests that although Russia will probably lose or at least not win the war (whatever that means), there is a possibility that Russia may indeed win the war, and we need to be aware of that.

So their concerns are getting slowly graver. The article then references a piece by Alastair Cooke. Cooke says that the “elephant in the room” in Washington is that Russia will inevitably win the war. The other major problem is that NATO does not have enough manufacturing capacity to fight this war against Russia.

RAND Corporation Strikes Again

by Observer R for the Saker blog

[typographical corrections 2/15/2023]

As the Ukraine war enters its second year, RAND Corporation entered the ring with two punches. The first was the January issuance of a study entitled “Avoiding a Long War.” The second was a February article by a RAND researcher entitled “What Russia Got Wrong,” which was published in Foreign Affairs.

The latter article was sent by email on February 10, 2023, as part of an advertisement to subscribe to Foreign Affairs. It is an advance copy of the print edition for March/April 2023. That issue was not out yet and did not appear on the magazine website when this paper was written.

The January report, “Avoiding a Long War,” received wide publicity and comment because it seemed to overturn a previous RAND study done in 2022 that had suggested a long war in Ukraine would benefit the US. It was widely noted that RAND receives most of its funding from the US Defense Department, and that the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff had suggested in late 2022 that it was a good time for Ukraine to negotiate a cease fire.

His opinion was that Ukraine had achieved the maximum territory possible in the war and that things would go worse for Ukraine if the war continued. The Chairman’s opinion was outside the official narrative at the time and did not get much traction in public. Thus the RAND report in January was viewed as another attempt by the generals to educate the rest of the government and public that, in all likelihood, the Ukraine war would turn for the worse come the new year.

The RAND report did serve to help open up space for a competing narrative that the Ukraine War was using up resources that would be better used in the competition with China, the real peer country. Thus one could argue that NATO was not giving up or losing a small war in Ukraine, but was simply reorienting efforts in preparation for the big war with China. One US general conveniently announced that he expected war with China to begin in 2025.

The February article from RAND, “What Russia Got Wrong,” is also a lengthy and well-written attempt at getting the new narrative in place. It serves in two ways: It explains the mainstream reported success of Ukraine in 2022 as being in large part due to mistakes by Russia and extensive support by NATO, and also warns that Russia is learning from its mistakes and will be much improved in 2023.

In addition, the NATO supply of ammunition and rockets is running out and it is doubtful that NATO support will be enough in the future. While the article does not specifically call for negotiations now, it points out at the end that war is unpredictable and that Russia could win after all. The importance of the article is that it was published in Foreign Affairs magazine, the organ of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

“What Russia Got Wrong” shows an extensive knowledge and expertise on the part of the author. The beginning of the article lays out the author’s case:

Before the invasion, Russia’s military was larger and better equipped than Ukraine’s…Why Russia did not prevail – why it was instead stopped in its tracks, routed outside major cities, and put on the defensive – has become one of the most important questions in both U.S. foreign policy and international security more broadly.

The author then goes on for a major portion of the article explaining and answering the question. The answer included

excessive internal secrecy…an invasion plan that was riddled with faulty assumptions, arbitrary political guidance, and planning errors that departed from key Russian military principles.

Additionally, Russia underestimated both Ukrainian resistance and Western support for Ukraine. The article goes on for many pages listing Russian military capabilities and a long list of deficiencies.

The article continues to follow the official narrative through most of the many words, only to waffle at the end. One point is the emphasis on the initial thrust of the Special Military Operation (SMO) by Russia. It was very weak compared to the size of the Russian army, and the author notes it as a failure. There is a brief reference to Russian desire to avoid casualties and damage, but the author is basically looking at the situation as a military issue and assuming that major war strategy and tactics should have been followed.

Instead, Russia is berated for following a political strategy, without the article going into sufficient depth analyzing the war as a political issue. For example, one factor might have been that Russia was trying to keep the action as a small SMO in order to limit the scare it would give the European countries.

Russia tried to portray the SMO as more of a police action to protect the separatist areas from Ukrainian army activities. Furthermore, it has not been clear to observers the reasons for Russian troops to venture into hostile territory so early in the invasion. There was some thought early on that the ventures may have had to do with the biological laboratories and the locations of nuclear materials, but this lacked clarification in the media.

In other words, perhaps Russia did not conduct the invasion of Ukraine according to Russian war doctrine because Russia was not intending it to be a war in the beginning. It appears that it was to demilitarize and remove any Nazi-type influence in Ukraine and to keep NATO out of Ukraine, but the methods were as much political as military.

The military was to be kept to the minimum possible. The Russian plan almost succeeded: There were negotiations in Istanbul almost immediately between Russia and Ukraine, and some sort of partial deal was worked out. It is hard to find the exact terms agreed to, but presumably they were to have Ukraine become neutral, not join NATO, and recognize the local elections in areas to join Russia.

These hopes were shattered when the prime minister of Britain flew to Kiev and reportedly convinced the Ukrainian government to trash the negotiated agreement. One of the members of the Ukraine team was assassinated when he returned to Kiev, with some talk that he was a traitor.

This was murky enough, but got even more strange when, months later, he was declared a hero of Ukraine. In addition, the prime minister of Israel and the foreign minister of Turkey were very busy serving as mediators for ongoing negotiations among Ukraine, Russia and NATO powers to stop the war.

Russia could also be viewed as not wanting to start a war, but rather as issuing a wake-up-call to bring the various parties to the negotiating table. In this regard, Russia was successful. The fact that the negotiations failed can mean that Russia made a mistake, but if Russia had not gone the political route first, it also would have been later viewed as a mistake. In other words, Russia was “damned if it did and damned if it didn’t,” and many words can be spilled arguing each side and every point.

Another instance where it appears that Russia tried to save the Ukrainian army and the people of Ukraine from destruction was when Moscow openly called on the Ukrainian army generals to carry out a coup and stop the war. This also failed, but even now some in the Western mainstream press suggest that factions would like to have the top military man in Ukraine take over the presidency with an eye to changing the situation.

Regardless of whether one views the first phases of the battle in Ukraine as an example of gross Russian ineptitude, or as the initial Russian moves in a game of three-dimensional chess, even the Foreign Affairs article admits that Russia improved a lot during the later stages of the battle. Among other things, the Russians have learned to use obsolete missiles and drones, instead of aircraft, to overcome Ukraine air defenses, and how to jam Ukrainian communications without jamming their own.

The conclusion of the article is that

…there are reasons to think the shift will not salvage the war for Russia, partly because so many things need to change, no single factor explains why the war has gone so poorly for Russia thus far.

However, it goes on to hedge as follows:

But analysts should be careful about forecasting outcomes. The classic adage still holds: in war, the first reports are often wrong or fragmentary. Only time will tell whether Russia can salvage its invasion or whether Ukrainian forces will prevail.

The conflict has already followed an unpredictable course, and so the West should avoid making hasty judgments about what went wrong with Russia’s campaign, lest it learn the wrong lessons, devise incorrect strategies, or acquire the wrong types of weapons. Just as the West overestimated Russia’s capabilities before the invasion, it could now underestimate them.

So, while the first punch from RAND warned that a long war in Ukraine is not in the US’s interest, this second punch from RAND warned that the US should be careful because it is possible that Russia might win the Ukraine war. Many analysts assume that these two RAND initiatives have occurred now because Russia really is winning and the “powers that be” want to break the news very gently to the public and the politicians.

A well-written article by a retired British diplomat, Alastair Crooke, does an excellent job of elucidating further on the topic of Ukraine:

Olexii Arestovich, Zelensky’s former ‘spin doctor’ and adviser, has described the circumstance of the Russian SMO first entry into Ukraine: It was conceived as a bloodless mission and should have passed without casualties, he says.

“They tried to wage a smart war… Such an elegant, beautiful, lightning-fast special operation, where polite people, without causing any damage to either a kitten or a child, eliminated the few who resisted. They didn’t want to kill anyone: Just sign the renunciation.”

The point here is that what occurred was political miscalculation by Moscow – and not military failure. The initial aim of the SMO didn’t work. No negotiations resulted. Yet from it flowed two major consequences: NATO controllers pounced on this interpretation to trumpet their preconceived bias that Russia was militarily weak, backward and stumbling. That misreading underlay how NATO perceived Russia would prosecute the war.

It was wholly incorrect. Russia is strong and has military predominance.

On the presumption of weakness, however, NATO switched plans from a planned guerrilla insurgency, to conventional war along the ‘Zelensky Defense Lines’ – thus opening the path for Russia’s artillery domination to attrit Ukraine’s forces to the point of entropy. It is an error that cannot be rectified. And to try it might just lead to WW3.

Note that the author states that “No negotiations resulted.” He claims that it was a political miscalculation by Russia. Another opinion could be that it was a political gamble by Russia that did not pay off. In any event, it seems strange to claim that no negotiations resulted when the news was full of reporting the mediation efforts by the foreign minister of Turkey and the prime minister of Israel.

The foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine met in Antalya, Turkey, in early March 2022, but the discussions did not yield concrete results according to Reuters. Russia-Ukraine peace talks began later in March in Istanbul. The Turkish Foreign Minister attended the talks and worked as a mediator. He announced that the two sides were close to agreement. However, no actual final result was obtained.

Mr. Crooke does know how to turn a phrase, so this article will borrow one of his paper’s final paragraphs to help wrap up this analysis:

However, the reality is that the Ukraine ‘Balloon’ is popped. Military and civilian circles in Washington know it. The ‘elephant in the room’ of inevitable Russian success is acknowledged (albeit, with the compulsion to avoid seeming ‘defeatist’ – that persists in certain quarters).

They know too that the NATO (as ‘formidable force’) ‘balloon’ has popped. They know that the balloon of western industrial capacity to manufacture weapons – in sufficient quantity and over a long duration – has popped also.

The official narrative about the Ukraine war is changing. The word “narrative” has replaced the older term “party line” that was used in the days of the Soviet Union. But the meaning is similar. The articles by the RAND researchers are an illustration of how the new narrative is broadcast to everyone concerned. The update in the party line is taking effect as the headlines in the mainstream media reflect the bursting of many dreams and delusions about Russia and Ukraine.

References:

Charap, Samuel and Priebe, Miranda. Avoiding a Long War: U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict. RAND Corporation. January 2023.

Crooke, Alastair. Endgame for Ukraine: America vs America. Strategic Culture Foundation. February 13, 2023.

Massicot, Dara (Senior Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation). What Russia Got Wrong: Can Moscow Learn From Its Failures in Ukraine? Foreign Affairs. March/April 2023.

Alt Left: Ukrainian Nazis Executing Russian POW’s on Camera in Bakmut

Alt Left: Psychopathy and Corruption in Business and Politics

This post was written by commenter Manuel Rodriguez, a great comrade from Venezuela.

Psychopathy

Last year, I did a small essay of sorts about psychopathy and the Left. It’s still a work in progress, but this is my general idea:

I’m not sure how it is in other countries, but I noticed here in Venezuela that people who become politicians, no matter how small the office, tend to be socially charming and highly extroverted in a specific way. They in general seem to have very strong social climbing needs and capabilities.

What I propose is that corruption arises from Cluster B and Dark Triad people getting rewarding political positions. I see a similar dynamic in private companies with individuals easily climbing the ladder in the business and then ruining the business by thievery, so it’s not unreasonable that a similar situation happens in the public sphere.

What do you think?

Alt Left: The New Race for Africa

Another post from commenter comrade Manuel Rodriguez from Venezuela.

Africa

Africa has been Europe’s backyard from several centuries ago. The great powers divided the African cake among themselves, with certain African territories going to specific European countries. I’m interested in France in this case. The classic style of colonialism have been replaced by neocolonialism, but the core mindset has not changed at all. Leaks and Freudian slips often gives us valuable and interesting insights about the West’s mentality towards Africa.

Suddenly, we saw a lot of media coverage about Russia and Africa, with France being in the background. Perhaps related to these two countries’ rivalry in Russia was the assassination attempt on Dmitri Sytyi recently, with speculations that French intelligence is responsible for it.

It would be good if you put a short summary in your blog about which African countries have historically been France’s property, and how much of it is relevant and carries on in to the present. I forgot the countries that currently on the spotlight, but Mali and Central African Republic are some of them.

I don’t know to what extent you might know which tactics France might be using in Africa. People say that France is supporting insurgent groups in Mali to sabotage the government and justify a possible intervention, for example.

The USSR was historically supportive of emancipatory movements in Africa. Whenever this was done out from authentic solidarity or mere national interests (hurting her European enemies) is irrelevant. The historical and social image persists for Africans.

The fall of the USSR meant the end of this sort of solidarity. Its not until recently that Russia started to actively help smaller countries as the USSR did.

Alt Left: The West’s Odd, Over-the-Top Hatred of Russia

This is a third post written by our comrade and commenter Manuel Rodriguez from Venezuela.

The West’s Odd, Over-the-Top Hatred of Russia

I’m used to a “Marxist” type of thinking where everything that is done or thought boils down to economy and class interests, or at least is related to these somehow. Some of the things done by the West in the Ukraine war don’t make sense in a Marxist sense, and this gives me the impression that they’re actually driven instead by irrational hatred, even though I don’t usually view things from a Identity Politics kind of perspective.

Much of the stuff done in the beginning like banning everything Russian, flat-out, bald, naked demonization and economic aggression, all done in a sudden “burst”, doesn’t even make sense if we view it as an color revolution attempt. Instead it’s more like SJW Cancel Culture. Russia was literally cancelled!

One of the principles of color revolutions that they always apply is that they make sure that economic aggression methods and other destabilization tactics are not directly linked to them or that “sanctions” are aimed only to the “dictators” and don’t sanctions don’t affect the common people.

The ultimate goal is to make the living conditions unbearable so the population stops supporting the government. The idea is that this might goad some forward-thinking military folks to do a coup attempt against the government. But the end result of the sanctions and the cancelling is that the Russian population feels that the combined West has declared a civilizational war against them where their very existence is at stake (which is actually the truth), closed ranks, and rallied round the government.

I get the impression that there is an actual deep, visceral hate against Russians in the West that explains these behaviors rather than them simply being the actions of certain interests or a coherent strategy. There doesn’t seem to be anything that the Russians have done that justifies this if we view history.

I’ve been studying a bit about Orthodox Christianity. There might be a possibility that Orthodox Christianity possess certain ancient thinking styles that the West doesn’t like. “Pagan” mindsets that the West’s ancestors worked continuously centuries and even millennia ago trying to destroy.

Their seemingly gut reaction is nothing more than a subconscious reaction to something that they can’t quite point out but despise and absolutely want to destroy. I used to think that all the Abrahamic religions were quite the same, but Sufi Islam and Orthodox Christianity seem to be exceptional in their structural and historical features.

I’m trying to discover more on my own from various authors and sources, but it was briefly discussed before in your blog how the Russian mentality has traits that belong to Eastern mentalities.

Alt Left: What’s up in Iran?

We already know that the riots recently were completely fake. The young woman who died was not murdered by the police but instead she had a fatal stroke. He had had a brain operation at age eight. When she exited the police van, she was calm and collected and I’m not even sure if she was handcuffed! They let her out freely without any problems. She didn’t look roughed up. An autopsy afterwards showed that she had not been beaten in the head at all.

To this very day, the lying Western media continues to insist that this young Kurdish woman was murdered by the police, beaten to death. Obviously, they’re going to keep telling that lie forever even though it’s been proven false. Today they were talking about it on Pacifica Radio, the farthest left radio station on the dial in the US. This far Left station was insisting on the lie that this woman was murdered. For the Left, Globohomo is more important than honestly.

It’s true she was detained for not wearing a hijab, but that’s not serious charge. She was led into a courtroom full of mostly other young women and some minders with a judge’s chair in front. The atmosphere was extremely informal and the overall picture one got was one of traffic court or traffic school. She would have been sentenced to attend a three hour morality class, probably to be completed that day. That’s all the penalty that they give to women who break those laws.

So all of the riots were nothing but a huge fake, a tempest in a teapot, months of stupid riots over nothing at all.

There have been some executions but those people all murdered police officers and members of the Basij militias. People like to put down those militias as the regime’s thugs, but 4

We still don’t know how much support these latest riots had.

There were polls done during the last riots and only 1

We don’t have more recent figures on any of those questions, so we don’t know if more people oppose the regime now than did three years ago.

It is still up in the air just how religious Iranians are. Some polls show a large percentage of the population, possibly half the population, as non-religious or not very religious. However, in Palestine, 2

However, the regime does listen to the people. There was a big debate about the mandatory hijab and the role of the religious police in enforcing morals in this regard. By the way, our ally Saudi Arabia also has these very same religious police or muttawa. But I guess it’s ok when they do it. Hijab enforcement had gone on the wane for a long time, and especially in places like Tehran, countless women were wearing the bare minimum of a hijab that was pulled far back on the head so much or most of her hair was uncovered. No one seemed to mind much about that.

The regime had a big debate on whether to loosen the hijab laws and sadly, they decided not to amend the law. I was very disappointed. However, I have just now learned that recently the government has decided that although the law will remain on the books, it will not be enforced, and no woman will be detained for lack of a hijab. Bottom line is there is no mandatory hijab in Iran anymore. Of course the media never told you that because Iran has to be portrayed as evil and we can never say anything good about them.

Polls on the hijab question show a majority of women feel that the hijab should be optional, and it should be legal to outside without a hijab. However, a shocking 8

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