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Tenpoundbass
2015 Jun 12, 11:50am
We're not on the moral high road anymore. he can do what ever he wants. I'm not worried about the asshole sitting in Kremlin, I want accountability from the Fuckers in Washington. Less you'd rather Putin be our leader, then by all means let's pick the man apart.
HydroCabron
2015 Jun 12, 11:53am
The stillborn museum was one of several official efforts to honor Stalin this year: A statue was erected in the southern city of Lipetsk, and splashed with red paint the night it was unveiled
That kind of thing tends to happen when most families have a grandfather or great grandfather who was disappeared in the 1930s.
For some reason, people dislike it when you kill their relatives for no fucking reason whatsoever.
I'll say this for Stalin: He stopped killing competent generals after Operation Barbarossa started, thereby saving Russia. Of course, Stalin was heavily responsible for the initial successes of the Nazi blitzkrieg, because, after executing and imprisoning millions of people who were no threat, Stalin trusted Hitler to keep his word.
Seriously: suppose you see conspiracies everywhere, and openly espouse wiping out entire demographic groups in Russia, preferring to kill 10 innocent people over letting one disloyal one go free. With that kind of mind, you still choose to trust Adolf Hitler?
Could Putin be worse than the Rs & Ds,the dumbass voters put in office?
MisdemeanorRebel
2015 Jun 12, 12:39pm
Had nothing to do with Trust. Stalin reached out to France and the UK for an alliance to protect Poland and Czechoslovakia; they sent diplomats on the slow boat to China with no negotiating power. Then they told Stalin they wouldn't talk to the Poles (Who stole Russian territory while the Russians were fighting the Civil War in a revanchist attempt to rebuild the Grand Duchy of Poland-Lithuania) on their behalf, and the Polish Ultraright government wouldn't have agreed anyway.
There was no appeasement: France and Britain were counting on Hitler going east, which is why they kowtowed to all his demands in the West. To get to Russia, Germany would have to go via Poland, which is why the French army sat in the Maginot Line while the Germans had the vast majority of their army in Poland and the Ruhr Valley was guarded only by a handful of "Stomach Battalions" and elderly reservists.
Since the last war was a meat-grinding, trench-warfare slog, they figured any German-Russian war would last years, plural, giving them more time to build up, and allowing them to mop up whichever exhausted winner won the bloody victory.
The French and British clapped their hands with glee when the Russians moved to reoccupy Belorussia and their stolen territories, as they thought the Russians were coming to engage the Wehrmacht. Then, suddenly, nothing happened - until Hitler turned West.
TL;DR: The French and British tried to screw the Russians over, Stalin got out of it at that point.
Stalin was a scumbag, but a Geopolitical wizard.
Barbarossa was only a surprise because it started right before the Summer, of course Stalin didn't trust Hitler, he was pretty sure he'd face Hitler in a year or two. He just didn't believe they'd start an invasion so late in 1941, so all the new recruits were sent to the Soviet-German border with new equipment. Problem was, the trainers didn't arrive yet. Untrained troops who couldn't use the new equipment were shocked, and Stalin spent days delaying a coordinated response because he figured Hitler was just trying to create a Border Issue to use in the future as an excuse to invade.
MisdemeanorRebel
2015 Jun 12, 12:49pm
Putin, once critical of Stalin, now embraces Soviet dictator's tactics
What a bullshit title. Nothing in this article suggests Putin is planning on invading Poland. Everything is proceeding exactly as George Kennan predicted in the 90s: NATO will expand to Russia's borders, insisting it's no threat over Russia's objections. Then, when NATO tries to expand to Ukraine or Georgia, Russia will respond and the West will proclaim "Ahah! Knew it! Aggressive Russia!"
This was before Putin was President.
MisdemeanorRebel
2015 Jun 12, 1:05pm
Ever heard of the Monroe Doctrine? That was the US being Stalin before Stalin was cool.
Yep, The South China Sea Doctrine is just the Chinese Monroe Doctrine. Foreign powers from another continent, get out and stay out.
MisdemeanorRebel
2015 Jun 12, 3:30pm
Yep. We were sphere of influencers from the beginning of our existence.
And still are.
Realism drives international affairs, not happy hopes and neoliberal nonsense. What how fast neoliberals become assholes when they don't get their way. The go to force immediately.
zzyzzx
2015 Jun 12, 5:51pm
Ever heard of the Monroe Doctrine? That was the US being Stalin before Stalin was cool.
Thew where are our Gulags?
lostand confused
2015 Jun 13, 5:05am
Thew where are our Gulags?
We are the country that throws more people in jail than any nation on earth. We are the country that spies on all its citizens. We are the country where the President can legally make anyone he chooses to vanish from the face of the earth-no trial, no need to explain to anybody, just disappear for any length of time. We are the country where the biggest trade deal in the history of the nation is being negotiated in secret and it is classified-anyone who discloses the terms can be severely punished. WE are the country where the gubmnt gets into the lives of every family and determines how much time and money one member owes another-even though the other member might have cheated with a hundred men and passed off strangers' children as his. We are the only industrialized country with a dual taxation-with an exemption of course-but in the whole world, only one country does the same. Russia is not what I am worried about.
Thew where are our Gulags?
We are the country that throws more people in jail than any nation on earth.
Not just the highest in the world, we incarcerate our citizens at 10 TIMES the rate of other western democracies.
# 1, Baby!
They may be getting ready to ramp-up. (Conspiracy Theory Alert)
KBR got 1/2 billion in '05 to build "Temporary Immigration Detention Centers".
I am not sure if, or how, these are currently being used .
MisdemeanorRebel
2015 Jun 13, 1:57pm
We are the country that throws more people in jail than any nation on earth. We are the country that spies on all its citizens. We are the country where the President can legally make anyone he chooses to vanish from the face of the earth-no trial, no need to explain to anybody, just disappear for any length of time. We are the country where the biggest trade deal in the history of the nation is being negotiated in secret and it is classified-anyone who discloses the terms can be severely punished. WE are the country where the gubmnt gets into the lives of every family and determines how much time and money one member owes another-even though the other member might have cheated with a hundred men and passed off strangers' children as his. We are the only industrialized country with a dual taxation-with an exemption of course-but in the whole world, only one country does the same. Russia is not what I am worried about.
And all the "Anti-Communist" blowhards are the one who defend these Stassi policies the most. Extreme Neoliberal-neocon ideology is functionally no different than Fascism or Communism, all extremists end up at the same place.
The Government tried to put Reddit-cofounder Aaron Schwartz away for 35 years for trying to download taxpayer financed JSTOR (Academic Papers) and PACER (Court Records) databases.
This is a country where not obeying T&C, a civil contract to use computer systems, to the letter, is actually a criminal offense carrying a stiff prison term.
If the people who authored the TPP had their way, 35 years in Alaska breaking rocks would be the punishment for making a backup copy of a DVD or lending a friend a book.
Where county, state, and city governments sign contracts with Private Incarceration Companies guaranteeing to keep jails 90% full.
40 years of Republicans and the near-total sell out of the "Third Way" Democrats have made it this way.
zzyzzx
2015 Jun 15, 7:48am
Not just the highest in the world, we incarcerate our citizens at 10 TIMES the rate of other western democracies.
We also probably have 10x the blacks compared to other western democracies.
zzyzzx
2015 Jun 15, 10:02am
And what does race have to do with the incarceration rate?
Blacks commit crimes at a much higher rates than whites, hence the higher US incarceration rate. Duh!
MisdemeanorRebel
2015 Jun 15, 10:33am
Putin threw a couple of pink haired Social Justice Warriors in jail after several incidents they were involved with sticking stolen frozen food up their vajayjays, having an orgy in a public museum, and interrupting a church service while physically pushing clerics and guards who tried to escort them off the premises. P-Riot is mostly about not giving maternity benefits to mothers and the government encouraging people to have 1-2 children, that's their #1 complaint, and ironically one of them is a mother. They're actually fighting against a modest benefit scheme for young parents.
Getting a few months in a basket weaving women's prison is hardly a big deal. Indeed it's pretty light considering people in the US who have drunk sex on the front lawn get a stiffer sentence and labelled sex offenders for life to boot. In Russia, sex on the snow drunk on Friday Night is called Normal, and a cop wouldn't be bothered.
It's all the Bullshit Media really had on Putin, and he called for clemency during sentencing (believe it or not, he's not a dictator, the Moscow Militia and Local Judges arrested and tried them, not Putin's Secret Police).
I can name a whole shitload of incidents in the US where local authorities and the federal government have taken similar stupid non-violent protests and reacted with ludicrous amounts of violence and punishment.
Another favorite Media tactic is to blame Putin for every missing Journalist over the past 15 years, even though he's prosecuted and imprisoned (or they've escaped to London ahead of trial) the Oligarchs who were the #1 Suspect, as these Journalists were investigating them when they were found dead. He's also put several hitmen in prison for killing Journalists.
Not one peep about the 10 missing journalists in just the last year alone in Ukraine, all of them critical of Kiev's Corrupt Government or the handling of the War. Still waiting for the Odessa Fire criminals to be caught, or the mystery snipers at Maiden, but I won't hold my breath.
This whole debate can be traced back to 1800s when pro westerners wanted to implement changes that would allow the society to progress while slavophiles would get defensive and marvel in their own backwardness in the name of tradition. However, tradition in this context reflects being ruled by a strongman dictator who is larger than life. After all dostoyevski accurately portrayed the commoner as needing "miracle, mystery and authority." From this view, it is only natural that many russians share putin's sentiments where they miss the power of the soviet union. How disturbing was it that in 1953 so many russians cried at the death of that georgian thug because they could not imagine life without him. Such worship of authority and cult of personality are not recipes for success on the world stage.
MisdemeanorRebel
2015 Jun 15, 11:54am
This whole debate can be traced back to 1800s when pro westerners wanted to implement changes that would allow the society to progress while slavophiles would get defensive and marvel in their own backwardness in the name of tradition.
Bullcrap. The Tsars were inspired by the Autocrats of Austria and France.
All British males did not get the right to vote until 1918, after WW1
How disturbing was it that in 1953 so many russians cried at the death of that georgian thug because they could not imagine life without him. Such worship of authority and cult of personality are not recipes for success on the world stage.
He was a dick, but he took Russia from Oxen and horseplows to Steel Mills and Nuclear Power, despite ruling in the aftermath of one world war, and having the most modern part of the country invaded and burned to the ground.
As for the Slavophiles, many were originally from Galicia, but under the Austrians that ruled the area imprisoned and harassed the Slavophiles, and supported the "We're long lost nordics" idea in Lvov and Ivano-Frankovsk, which is why the Neo-Nazis today are all from that region and were the most enthusaistic Nazi supporters, second perhaps only to the avidly Jew hating Lithuanians. It's also why the OUN-UPA loved to slaughter Poles, since they saw themselves as Superior Nordics and not Slavic untermenschen.
Austria really got off lightly from WW2, when you consider how militant Austrian nazis were, and how beloved they were by the populace.
Not just the highest in the world, we incarcerate our citizens at 10 TIMES the rate of other western democracies.
We also probably have 10x the blacks compared to other western democracies.
And what does race have to do with the incarceration rate?
Blacks commit crimes at a much higher rates than whites, hence the higher US incarceration rate. Duh!
Brazil is 50% black and 274 per 100k incarceration, the us is 12% black and 803 per 100k incarceration. Jamaica is 90% black with 152 per 100k incarceration rate. Care to explain how this works? Oh wait, they don't have a war on drugs or for profit prison system. Duh.
Brazil is 50% black and 274 per 100k incarceration, the us is 12% black and 803 per 100k incarceration. Jamaica is 90% black with 152 per 100k incarceration rate. Care to explain how this works? Oh wait, they don't have a war on drugs or for profit prison system. Duh.
Brazil and Jamaica also have much higher crime and murder rates than the US. Jamaica's murder rate is one of the highest in the world, beaten only by other South/Central American countries like Honduras, Venezuela, Belize, El Salvador.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/10/worlds-highest-murder-rates_n_5125188.html
So that is how it works. Maybe they need more people in jail?
RWSGFY
2015 Jun 15, 4:21pm
lack of employment
You can say "lack of employment" with a straight face in a country overrun with illegal immigrants who somehow manage to find jobs even though they often don't even speak English.
RWSGFY
2015 Jun 15, 4:33pm
Who is hiring the illegals that are overrunning the country ?
"What difference does it make now?"
You forgot to mention they will also work for less than anyone else the majority of the time along with putting up with a lot of other crap.
There was a research on how much average street criminal makes. Surprisingly, typical "corner soldiers" don't fare better than typical low wage workers. They do worse. Even though they risk going to jail or be injured/killed by doing what they're doing instead of working. What keeps them in the game is "lottery mentality" and belief that they can "make it big" even though most of them never do.
RWSGFY
2015 Jun 15, 4:41pm
"What difference does it make now?"
Don't want to risk implicating a group you favor?
No, just find it irrelevant to the topic at hand. Besides, how can I favor somebody who facilitates bringing additional load on taxpayer-funded services?
RWSGFY
2015 Jun 15, 4:42pm
There was a research on how much average street criminal makes
Source, dates, etc..
I've heard about it on local NPR station couple of years back. I'll try to look it up.
RWSGFY
2015 Jun 15, 4:52pm
No, just find it irrelevant to the topic at hand.
I don't...part of the topic was lack of employment and meaningful opportunities.
So businessmen hire them. State gives them driver's licenses and buses their kids to my local school. When they grow up they get in-state tuition and financial aid to go to state-run colleges and universities. One fucker even had the gall to apply for the fucking BAR and fucking court said he should fucking be allowed to practice the fucking law. So if they can do it fresh from the boat with non-white faces and broken English, how the fuck can somebody say that it's impossible and that the only way to survive in this country is by stealing, dealing drugs and streetwalking? It just doesn't add up.
RWSGFY
2015 Jun 15, 4:59pm
There was a research on how much average street criminal makes
Source, dates, etc..
I've heard about it on local NPR station couple of years back. I'll try to look it up.
Probably this is what I heard:
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_analyzes_crack_economics?language=en
"Freakonomics author Steven Levitt presents new data on the finances of drug dealing. Contrary to popular myth, he says, being a street-corner crack dealer isn’t lucrative: It pays below minimum wage. And your boss can kill you. "
MisdemeanorRebel
2015 Jun 15, 5:31pm
There was a research on how much average street criminal makes. Surprisingly, typical "corner soldiers" don't fare better than typical low wage workers. They do worse. Even though they risk going to jail or be injured/killed by doing what they're doing instead of working. What keeps them in the game is "lottery mentality" and belief that they can "make it big" even though most of them never do.
It's from Freakonomics, and it illustrates that young black men are willing to work hard for little renumeration, only the remote chance of making a killing.
justme
2015 Jun 15, 6:28pm
That LA Times article is pure propaganda rubbish. The journalist made a huge leap from "Putin supposedly has not sufficiently denounced the pre-WW2 non-aggression pact between Molotov and Ribbentrop" to "Putin is just like Stalin".
Do you see what she did there? I thought so. If held to the same high standards as Carol J. Williams propose for Putin, there would be a few Western presidents and prime ministers that might be equated with Stalin for not sufficiently denouncing their own pre-WW2 predecessors.
Works so well over here maybe we can export that concept along with the neocon version of democracy we envisioned for the middle east
What is the metric you are talking about when you say it "works so well over here"? The massive reduction in crime in the United States, or the number of people in jail?
"Violent Crime Drops to Lowest Level Since 1978"
http://time.com/3577026/crime-rates-drop-1970s/
MisdemeanorRebel
2015 Jun 16, 11:33am
All Industrialized countries have seen massive crime drops since the 90s. Canada, which built no new net prison spaces relative to population, also saw a collapse in Crime. UK too, post late 1990s when their baby boomers all grew out of it, since their baby boom was delayed by about 5-10 years after ours.
Bullcrap. The Tsars were inspired by the Autocrats of Austria and France.
All British males did not get the right to vote until 1918, after WW1
The slavophiles were anti the forces of enlightment which postulated that science/utilitarianism/rational self interest were keys to advancing society. Slavophiles believed that these forces would lead to loss of russian character and hence opposed them. This enlightment movement came out of what was considered the "west" at the time. Also slavophiles believed that man was not logical in nature but more of an anti-rational/emotional creature which gave them more ammunition to stem progress. Personally it seems that nobility found enlightment to be a threat and coopted significant amount of the masses to oppose it.
MisdemeanorRebel
2015 Jun 16, 12:58pm
Completely backwards: Most Slavophiles were very Western Leaning, since the concept of racial nationalism and "(Catholic) Christendom" was first postulated in the West and their ideas followed from this: Slavophilia is the mirror image of that, but with Orthodoxy and not Catholicism as Christendom. Most were also noted liberals who pushed to end Serfdom.
Also slavophiles believed that man was not logical in nature but more of an anti-rational/emotional creature
They are. Rationality is the better nature but usually doesn't dominate. Otherwise, Jeans commercials wouldn't feature sexy women shaking their ass and hunky men loading hay on a pickup truck, but advertising thread count and longevity.
Recognizing humans as instinctive rather than primarily rational is an idea based on empiricism.
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-stalin-model-20150611-story.html
Putin, once critical of Stalin, now embraces Soviet dictator's tactics
Only six years ago, President Vladimir Putin visited the Polish port of Gdansk, birthplace of the Solidarity movement that threw off Soviet domination, and reassured his Eastern European neighbors that Russia had only friendly intentions.
Putin spoke harshly that day of the notorious World War II-era pact that former Soviet leader Josef Stalin had signed with Adolf Hitler — an agreement that cleared the way for the Nazi occupation of Poland and Soviet domination of the Baltics — calling it a "collusion to solve one's problems at others' expense."
But Putin's view of history appears to have undergone a startling transformation. Last month, the Russian leader praised the 1939 nonaggression accord with Hitler as a clever maneuver that forestalled war with Germany. Stalin's 29-year reign, generally seen by Russians in recent years as a dark and bloody chapter in the nation's history, has lately been applauded by Putin and his supporters as the foundation on which the great Soviet superpower was built.
Across a resurgent Russia, Stalin lives again, at least in the minds and hearts of Russian nationalists who see Putin as heir to the former dictator's model of iron-fisted rule. Recent tributes celebrate Stalin's military command acumen and geopolitical prowess. His ruthless repression of enemies, real and imagined, has been brushed aside by today's Kremlin leader as the cost to be paid for defeating the Nazis.
As Putin has sought to recover territory lost in the 1991 Soviet breakup, his Stalinesque claim to a right to a "sphere of influence" has allowed him to legitimize the seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and declare an obligation to defend Russians and Russian speakers beyond his nation's borders.
On May 9, the 70th anniversary of the Allied war victory was marked and Stalin's image was put on display with glorifying war films, T-shirts, billboards and posters. Framed portraits of the mustachioed generalissimo were carried by marchers in Red Square's Victory Day parade and in the million-strong civic procession that followed to honor all who fell in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.
Putin's embrace of Stalin's power-play tactics is applauded by many Russians and other former Soviet citizens as the sort of decisive leadership they longed for while watching communism collapse around them. To the proponents of a reinvigorated Russia, reformist Mikhail Gorbachev and his successor, Boris Yeltsin, are seen as having submitted Russia to Western domination.
Stalin "kept us all together, there was a friendship of nations, and without him everything fell apart," said Suliko Megrelidze, a 79-year-old native of Stalin's Georgian birthplace who sells dried fruit and spices at a farmers market. "We need someone like him if we want peace and freedom from those fascists in Europe and America."
Such sentiments are no longer confined to those with actual memories of the Stalin era. A poll this spring by the independent Levada Center found 39% of respondents had a positive opinion of Stalin. As to the millions killed, 45% of those surveyed agreed that the deaths could be justified for the greater accomplishments of winning the war, building modern industries and growing to eventually give their U.S. nemesis a battle for supremacy in the arms race and conquering outer space.
The share of Russians who look back approvingly has been increasing steadily in recent years, and the segment of those who tell pollsters they have no opinion on his place in their history has shot up even more sharply, said Denis Volkov, a sociologist with the Levada Center. He points to this year's massive Victory Day events as the Kremlin's message to ungrateful neighbors that they owe their peace and prosperity to the wartime deaths of more than 20 million Soviet citizens.
"The figure of Stalin is being justified through the war," Volkov said. "There is an attitude now that, yes, there were repressions and, yes, there were huge losses, but we won the war after all."
Victory exonerated Stalin's excesses, just as it does Putin's "strongman" posture toward neighbors and former Soviet subjects now outside the Russian Federation's borders, Volkov said.
Stalin's standing among his countrymen has waxed and waned with the political upheavals that have wracked the Soviet Union and Russia. He was so dominant a figure in Soviet citizens' lives by the time of his death on March 5, 1953, that hundreds of thousands poured into the streets of Moscow in a chaotic outbreak of mourning when word of his passing reached a public taught to believe that life was impossible without Stalin — the Bolshevik nom de guerre he adopted, signifying "man of steel."
Nikita Khrushchev, who finally prevailed in attaining the leadership after five years of Kremlin infighting, began a campaign of de-Stalinization in 1961, moving Stalin's embalmed remains from public display next to Vladimir Lenin's to a less prominent grave near the Kremlin wall. Stalingrad, the hero city that symbolized the Soviets' watershed battle to turn back the Nazis, was renamed Volgograd, and statues and busts were removed, and streets, institutes and schools were renamed.
But the erasure of Stalin's name and likeness served also to stifle discussion of his vast crimes: Siberian exile or death sentences for political opponents, collectivization of agriculture during which millions starved, deportation of minorities and property seizures that impoverished generations. It wasn't until Gorbachev came to power in 1985 that a candid recounting of his era was attempted.
Even Putin, earlier in his presidency, fell in line with the collective spirit of criticism of Stalin's errors. During the visit to Poland in 2009, a year after he had sent troops to seize territory in sovereign Georgia, Putin appeared to reassure Russia's nervous neighbors that the nonaggression pact that paved the way for war and division 70 years earlier was to be remembered as immoral.
The Aug. 23, 1939, Molotov-Ribbentrop pact's secret protocols doomed Poland to Nazi occupation a week later and gave the Baltic states and parts of Finland and Romania to the Soviet Union. Millions of citizens of those betrayed territories died at Stalin's hand, in political purges, summary executions and slave labor camps.
The scope of Stalin's brutality remains a topic of heated debate. Late Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn once claimed in an interview that as many as 110 million died from the dictator's vast array of repressions between 1921 and 1959, including prisoners who succumbed long after Stalin's reign. Historian Viktor Zemkov, at the other extreme, puts the number of deaths attributable to Stalin at 1.4 million.
"The estimates of 110 million to 1.4 million speak for themselves — a hundredfold disagreement," said Dmitry Lyskov, a state television talk-show host who mounted a failed campaign four years ago to put Stalin's visage on city buses to commemorate Victory Day.
The Russian Military-Historical Society, established by Putin in 2012, announced this year that a new Stalin museum was to open in May in the village of Khoroshevo, 140 miles northeast of Moscow. Stalin spent the night of Aug. 4, 1943, in a small wooden home there, the closest he came to visiting frontline Soviet troops during the four-year fight to defeat Germany.
The sanitized exhibits recounting Stalin's contributions to the war effort and postwar recovery were ready by the planned May 9 holiday. But the opening was postponed amid local opposition led by the Tver regional leader of Memorial, a group dedicated to shedding light on Russia's totalitarian era.
Yan Rachinsky, a leader of Memorial's Moscow chapter, calls the museum "ridiculous," and Stalin's single night there irrelevant to the war victory two years later.
The stillborn museum was one of several official efforts to honor Stalin this year: A statue was erected in the southern city of Lipetsk, and splashed with red paint the night it was unveiled. A bronze likeness of the dictator was put up to mark the February anniversary of his 1945 meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yalta, a Black Sea resort now inaccessible to most of the world as only Russian aviation serves the contested Crimean peninsula.
Stalin has weathered more than six decades of historical revisions to maintain his standing as a rival to the West, "which is the context in which he interests Putin," said Nikolai Svanidze, a writer and historian whose grandfathers died in Stalin's political purges.
"Just as Stalin defeated the West 70 years ago by capturing half of Europe," Svanidze said, "we are defeating the West again today. Crimea is our Berlin, our Reichstag, and there is no way it will be restored to Ukraine in the foreseeable future."
Svanidze also predicts there will be no more credible elections as long as Putin chooses to stay in power. That, he said, is another parallel with Stalin's lifetime sinecure as Soviet leader.
#crime