The end?

Heard anything from your friend yet BoroLad?
Previously on the thread I had been checking in often see if he had sent any updates, over the past 24hrs I have been checking in often to see if you had any updates on him and that he is ok.
 
alvez_49 said:
Why would they send a semi retired guy with some retirement flab to a active warzone to 'secure' a nuclear power plant in a Special military operation
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Have you never seen a Steven Segal movie?

In all seriousness, I hope your man stays safe Borolad.

I'd guess no news is good news. If he's on some sort of readiness alert he's probably got better things to do than update a bunch of fat blokes on Teesside.

Fingers (and everything else) crossed.
 
Druss_The_Legend said:
Just to expand on what other people have said.
In February 2022 the world thought that Russia was a military superpower just behind the USA, for generations the Western population had lived in some kind of fear of a war with Russia even 90% of action films up until probably the 90s Russians are the bad guys and Hollywood played on the fear of nuclear Armageddon with Russia(which was close on a couple of occasions).
Most people, me included expected Kyiv to fall within a week, a puppet government put in place through totally legit elections with 99.9% of votes in favour of the new candidate.
I expected some sabotage groups and some guerilla warfare but ultimately Ukraine to fall under Russian rule.
What most people didn't take into account is how corrupt Russia has become under Putin with everyone taking a cut of the money or resources at every level of the supply chain to the point what was left is dregs and scrap, in fact probably the only person of influence within Russia who wasn't actually taking a cut along the supply chain was Putin as he has bigger pies to stick his grubby little fingers in.
I also think that if Russia had succeeded in Ukraine then China would of taken heart and invaded Taiwan, it was no coincidence that China was gathering in force towards Taiwan and Russia was gathering on the Ukrainian border and Russia waited until the Winter Olympics had finished in China for the invasion of Ukraine to begin, I think some kind of unofficial agreement was made between Russia and China.
I think that Russian incompetence, corruption and brutality alongside NATO backing, EU sanctions and Ukrainian determination halted a series of other conflicts happening around the world.
In regards to Putin must of known the state of the Russian military and attitudes in Ukraine towards Russia I wouldn't want to be the one to admit I sold the engines parts from 400 tank or cut corners and used cheap materials on body armour or used the money to maintain the black sea fleet to buy A personal armada of pleasure boats. I remember early on in the invasion on a Putin speech and somebody said something he didn't like and he verbally ripped him to bits infront of everyone and people who upset him tend to have nasty accidents or long prison sentences.
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It's entirely possible Putin didn't know the half of it. We have to remember that Putin is at the head of a communist apparatus. In Management theory the characteristics of pathological work systems and environments are well documented. In a pathological system every layer of management is focussed on survival by trying to make itself look good. So the truth is withheld all the way up the chain of command, failures are distorted or hidden completely, and a false picture is presented to leadership. Communism is the ultimate pathological system, and as communism also = poverty, as you note, everyone in the system will be/have been thieving from it largely out of necessity, so it's no real surprise that the supposedly revamped and re-equipped Russian army has turned out to be woefully unprepared. Western analysts should know this very well, given how many times we have seen it from communist states, most notably of course, the USSR. I mean just look at the east west divide in Berlin at the time the wall fell. A 90s BMW (Merc, VAG) vs a Trabant isn't a meaningful contest in any way is it?

It's astounding really when you look at history that there so many people in the west who continue to endorse all the tenets of communism and push for it as an 'alternative' to capitalism. You can only really conclude that they must be deeply ignorant of history, or malevolent.
 
Communism have never had more than small token support in the UK. I believe there was communist party MP in Clydebank over 70 years ago.

Communism in the USSR seems quite different to communism of say China today. Central Planning certainly failed the USSR after 1945 and to me that level of central planning does not work. The USSR seemed to a distorted form of communism as Geroge Orwell picked up in the 1930s. It soon became more about promoting the USSR than about promoting a fair society freed from poverty.

I sometimes feel that some of the Scandivians are closer to true communism than say the Chinese - Sweden and Denmark used to be high taxes, high public services. I am not sure how true this is today, but it could be.
 
Redwurzel said:
Communism have never had more than small token support in the UK. I believe there was communist party MP in Clydebank over 70 years ago.

Communism in the USSR seems quite different to communism of say China today. Central Planning certainly failed the USSR after 1945 and to me that level of central planning does not work. The USSR seemed to a distorted form of communism as Geroge Orwell picked up in the 1930s. It soon became more about promoting the USSR than about promoting a fair society freed from poverty.

I sometimes feel that some of the Scandivians are closer to true communism than say the Chinese - Sweden and Denmark used to be high taxes, high public services. I am not sure how true this is today, but it could be.
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Very much still true in Sweden. Their tax system equitably distributes wealth, meaning even those in lower paid jobs have a good standard of living (comparable to other countries) and those at the top of society are almost disincentivised from hoarding/accumulating wealth.
 
I have just had a musing from him, so he is still with us, but has been deep in military stuff. I am travelling at the moment but will update with more later. He is still on 4 hours notice to go and storm something ... He calls this the devil's option. Other avenues are being tried first.
 
borolad259 said:
I have just had a musing from him, so he is still with us, but has been deep in military stuff. I am travelling at the moment but will update with more later. He is still on 4 hours notice to go and storm something ... He calls this the devil's option. Other avenues are being tried first.
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That's a relief he is ok. Tell him he had a bunch of fat blokes on Teesside and a big boned well insulated bloke not on Teesside worried about him.
 
Redwurzel said:
Communism have never had more than small token support in the UK. I believe there was communist party MP in Clydebank over 70 years ago.

Communism in the USSR seems quite different to communism of say China today. Central Planning certainly failed the USSR after 1945 and to me that level of central planning does not work. The USSR seemed to a distorted form of communism as Geroge Orwell picked up in the 1930s. It soon became more about promoting the USSR than about promoting a fair society freed from poverty.

I sometimes feel that some of the Scandivians are closer to true communism than say the Chinese - Sweden and Denmark used to be high taxes, high public services. I am not sure how true this is today, but it could be.
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Communism is incompatible with democracy because when it goes badly (which it inevitably does) governments have to go authoritarian to keep it going . The Berlin Wall did this to stop people fleeing communism . Eastern Europeans absolutely hate communism , and it’s an ideology that should have died in 1991 with the ussr . Scandinavian countries are NOTHING like communism . You’ve just selected those areas because they are countries that have high standards of living .

Communism has created lots of evil ***** and it’s time the left owned it: Stalin , Mao Zedong , pol pot, mugabe and anyone ruling North Korea . It is every bit as evil as fascism
 
Pinkers said:
It's astounding really when you look at history that there so many people in the west who continue to endorse all the tenets of communism and push for it as an 'alternative' to capitalism. You can only really conclude that they must be deeply ignorant of history, or malevolent.
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There are very few people in the west who advocate communism over capitalism, very few.

There are however a lot of people in the west who try to redefine communism as ‘any capitalist system that has social care systems in place’.
 
Boroboyyo said:
Communism has created lots of evil ***** and it’s time the left owned it: Stalin , Mao Zedong , pol pot, mugabe and anyone ruling North Korea . It is every bit as evil as fascism
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You can argue the same for capitalism. Be it the British empire, us foreign policy of the 20th and 21st century, French empire in Africa and far east etc Ideology is the cause of war and death, not the specific political system.
Communism is when the state owns the means to production, ie the companies, assets and land are all owned by the government. That used to exist, but the fall of communism meant they were all sold off…corruptly. It became capitalist overnight with no controls in place to protect people and deny corruption.

It’s now a form of ultra-nationalism and ultra-corrupt capitalism with next to no effective governance and financial or political regulations that makes Russia such a basket case. Its ideology is ‘control by the oligarchs for the benefit of the oligarchs at all costs’ its rampant ideological capitalism. This ideology means taking assets of neighbours breaks no rules, in fact taking from the perceived weak is what oligarchs do.
 
BoroMart said:
There are very few people in the west who advocate communism over capitalism, very few.

There are however a lot of people in the west who try to redefine communism as ‘any capitalist system that has social care systems in place’.
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I think that is fair comment.

Unfortunately both the capitalist and communist economic systems have badly failed since World War 2.

The Ukraine war is possibly rooted in this fact.

Maybe it’s because human beings know they have to live as a team to survive but beyond survival have deep competitive instincts which promote a lot of greed.
 
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