US Strikes on Iran (Operation Epic Fury)

[Thumpalumpacus]

If Leo keeps on he will be in line for a job with the Trump administration.  Perhaps as official ass-kisser.

After twelve years living under Erdogan, it doesn't surprise me that he finds sympathy for the authoritarian right. I certainly hope America doesn't continue to practice this acceptance of creeping autocracy.

[Ivan Denisovich]

- You are not wrong on this. Yet: Why are the Muslim nations of the region so silly (as a general rule). Almost all of them are some sort of rogue state and Saudi Arabian States are all backward monarchies. And the population is generally uneducated, poor and miserable. In the 60’s and 70’s there was this Arab republican nationalism that aimed to rebuild these nations after decades of colonialism. But it didn’t work (for this or that reason: I am not so sure). So what do you do if you are a tiny state right in the middle of such countries that are all hostile to your very existence?

You're racist or just some dumb tool?

Were I this particular tiny country  I would try to not start my existence with ethnic cleansing (Nakba). These tend to piss people off.
 

So I agree with the need to stop Israel at some point. And it’s probably the US who is going to do that.

israel will be stopped by the same USA that just went to war on it's behalf?

But on the issue of Iran, there are contradicting voices even in the typical left-wing media. Some call it a huge mistake by D. Trump. Yet other (like me) are still seeing the facts. If the Strait of Hormuz is so important, you need to have a logical actor in that part of the world. The other option is to comply to the folly of those who control that water way and I don’t see how this can be an option

Leo the far sighted analyst.    You don't know most basic facts about anything and whatever facts you're imagining to see are just your delusion.

Neither israel nor US under current regime are logical actor.

You are not entirely wrong. But the USSR sent the first cosmonaut, woman and animal and artificial satellite to space. The ISS is based on US-Russian (Soviet) scientific collaboration. They invented modules that would be added to one another once out of the atmosphere.

I'm not wrong at all. It's you who don't know shit about inhuman regime and thus praise it for superficial achievements while ignoring its cruelty. You tend to ignore cruelty a lot in fact. Seems to me that you're "might make right" type with zero empathy.
 

Yes, Under Stalin there were more than 20 million deaths (executions, gulags, famine and WWII) and Lenin did not fare much better than him.

I won't bother with searching for real numbers but assuming you believe one you cited does them not make you uncomfortable? Because your tone certainly isn't one that I would take when discussing genocidal regime failures.
 

But they still did not start WWIII during the missile crisis. In fact they did everything to avoid it. I also remember of the nuclear non-proliferation treaties etc. The Soviets were trustworthy once you had a treaty with them.

They helped to start WWII which you curiously avoid to acknowledge. SU had some achievements like allowing divorces or giving access to abortion (it was int the first years of regime under Lenin) but they're vastly overshadowed by it's crimes, genocide included. You understand what genocide means? Holodomor alone means that Soviet leadership and security services would be condemned to lowest circle of Dante Hell as ones who betrayed humanity but you make googly eyes at it cause of first astronaut. You disgust me.

If Iran was in command during the Cuban missile crisis what do you think would have happened?

Some Iranian chick dumped you? You're racist? Or you hate Iran blindly because regimes you love fellating tell you so?
 

This is why I have this extra dislike for the current Russian regime. They lack the rational element that the USSR had somehow.

Soviets arrested and killed thousands because of imagined spies. Where was this rational element then? Perhaps read a book or two before you make an idiot of yourself.
 

Iran has or had a nuclear program. And it’s not just Netanyahu. All Israelis interviewed on TV are mentioning 1) missiles that are being sent from Iran or from its proxies 2) 60% enriched Uranium which is way above the need for civilian / energy usage.
 
/These are the facts.

israel have nuclear weapon and it's guilty of genocide. These are facts. As for misiles well, such tend to happen when you attack another country.
 

Populist does not equal fascists. Populist are people who want to be fascists but usually the population sees through them and stops them before they can become real fascists. Don’t you agree?

I don't agree because I have an actual education. Populist is just term that is in vogue now with talking heads. I find fascists, authoritarians or illiberals to be far better descriptors.
 

That’s because international world order is still at its infancy. We poor humans still do not have a Society of Nations that are capable of punishing such wrongdoers, in this case, Netanyahu. But there is still an arrest warrant on him. And he should be judged. But it’s the same in Iran. Did you read about these soccer player girls in Australia? Is threatening teenager with the lives of their families in line with international law?

You compare soccer girls to genocide you clueless clown? You don't have any sense of proportion in this empty head of yours.
 

So you need to understand redneck / right wing people better. Sometimes, in life too, you need to find your own solutions. But I said “sometimes”. As the human race we should hold on to our institutions so maybe next time we won’t need strong figure to solve this kind of problem for us. Because that’s what we are doing. We are saying “Oh I hate you! I hate you so much!” while expecting them to solve things for us. And this is what makes them strong. Not the fact that they are wannabe fascists

If I will want two bit sociological analysis from ignoramus I will be sure to give you a call.
 

What would you do if Tichuana was filled with the posters of the perpetrators of 9/11. And not for a week or so, but for decades? What do you think would eventually happen?

I wouldn't have bombed it but I'm not scum or apologist for warmongering, genocidal regime.

[Ivan Denisovich]

If Leo keeps on he will be in line for a job with the Trump administration.  Perhaps as official ass-kisser.

After twelve years living under Erdogan, it doesn't surprise me that he finds sympathy for the authoritarian right.  I certainly hope America doesn't continue to practice this acceptance  of creeping autocracy.

He also have sympathy for totalitarian left. You're writing about dude who ignores SU crimes (genocide and Ribbentrop-Molotov pact included) and praises it for rationality and first astronaut in space. It appears to me that living under this turkey cunt of authoritarian erased any traces of empathy from him.

[Ivan Denisovich]

@Leonardo17

- I mean it ended up being George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. But there were communist values. Communist work ethics. The communist doctrine was nothing like Hitler’s completely sick ideology either. There are still communists in this world too. While admitting that the first experiment failed rather badly, many are still critical of our liberal values and believe that communist ideals are simply better.

I was referring to your implication that the USSR made any kind of an effort to create a classless society. Of all the major figures in the October Revolution, the only one who was fully committed to a classless ‘worker’s paradise’ was Trotsky, and he wound up in Mexico City with an ice axe in his skull.

Boru

Lenin too wanted to build communism I would say. I suppose most of early Soviet leadership wanted it but all enthusiasm in the world will not help in materializing utopia.

[Thumpalumpacus]

"Enthusiasm", or personal gain? That's a pretty blurry line not only in that epoch. The power-struggle that followed quite quickly rouses questions, to my mind.

[Ivan Denisovich]

"Enthusiasm", or personal gain? That's a pretty blurry line not only in that epoch. The power-struggle that followed quite quickly rouses questions, to my mind.

Enthusiasm. From what I read early bolsheviks truly wanted to build communism but no matter how enthusiastic they were utopia can't be built. Of course those who wanted riches started to join party too, after takeover but old guard wasn't opportunistic.

Marxism leninism was all about faith and just like in other religions you have believers and ones going through the motions.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Leonardo17


I was referring to your implication that the USSR made any kind of an effort to create a classless society. Of all the major figures in the October Revolution, the only one who was fully committed to a classless ‘worker’s paradise’ was Trotsky, and he wound up in Mexico City with an ice axe in his skull.

Boru

Lenin too wanted to build communism I would say. I suppose most of early Soviet leadership wanted it but all enthusiasm in the world will not help in materializing utopia.

Fair enough. Lenin wasn’t nearly as bad as history paints him, but he wasn’t nearly as committed to the Marxist ideal as Trotsky was - Lenin was a pragmatist, Trotsky was an idealist. Still, he recognized Stalin for the thug that he was and recommended he be removed, so points for that.

Boru

[Ivan Denisovich]

Fair enough. Lenin wasn’t nearly as bad as history paints him, but he wasn’t nearly as committed to the Marxist ideal as Trotsky was - Lenin was a pragmatist, Trotsky was an idealist.

Lenin lived and breathed for revolution. It was him who convinced doubters that bolsheviks should seize the power:

History can be dramatic and full of exciting, rousing action on battlefields and barricades – and sometimes it can be made in committee meetings. There were twenty-one Bolshevik Central Committee members, but only twelve sat at the round table beneath a single lamp in Sukhanov’s living room where the decision was made to trigger the Russian Revolution. It was a minority of an already small minority.
Lenin spoke for an hour and repeated his demands that a coup should be mounted immediately. He was impatient and constantly on the verge of anger, but as Trotsky said later, ‘he was obviously restraining himself’.
Occasionally he banged his fist on the table to emphasise a point. ‘Since the beginning of September there has been a certain indifference to the idea of insurrection,’ he began. Then he outlined clearly and in detail why ‘we must seize power now and not wait for the Soviets, or any Congresses…The time is right now and the moment of decision has arrived. The masses are tired of words and resolutions. The majority are now with us. The success of the Russian and the world revolution depends on two or three days’ struggle.’
The argument ran on for seven and a half hours. Occasionally there was a short break when Flaxerman made tea or served spicy sausages, and to give the taker of the minutes, a young office clerk named Varvara Yakovleva, a break. At midnight the lights went out, as was usual in Petrograd at that time; the current was on for just a few hours a day. They continued by the light of an oil lamp and candles.
Lenin had convinced most of the doubters. Originally Trotsky had wanted to wait until after the Congress of Soviets – which he chaired – had met. But Lenin persuaded him that would be too late. ‘By that time the Congress will be up and running and it is difficult for a large, organised body of people to take swift, decisive action. We must act on the 25th, the day the Congress meets, so that we may say to it “Here is the power! What are you going to do with it?” ’
Only Lenin’s oldest comrades, Kamenev and Zinoviev, held out. They were against a coup on principle and for practical reasons. ‘There is no demand by the people for an uprising,’ said Kamenev. There was everything to be gained by ‘waiting a few weeks for the Constituent Assembly where we have an excellent chance of winning a big legal
majority. Comrade Lenin’s plan means to stake on one card the fate not only of our Party, but the fate of the Russian and world revolution.’ Zinoviev agreed and said simply that if they failed, ‘we will all be shot’.
Almost at dawn a vote was taken. It went Lenin’s way ten to two, with only Zinoviev and Kamenev voting against. Lenin reached across the table and picked up a pencil. There was no paper so – famously – he scrawled on a child’s exercise book the biggest decision the Bolsheviks took: ‘Recognising that an armed uprising is inevitable and the time perfectly ripe, the Central Committee proposes to all the organisations of the Party to act accordingly and to discuss and decide from this point of view all the practical questions [Victor Sebestyen, Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror, p.339-340].

 
Those aren't actions of someone who isn't committed to Marxist ideal. As a side note I do recommend above quoted work as it is perhaps best biography of Lenin I had read.

In the end all bolshevik leaders were pragmatists as no idealist would accept Brest Litovsk or NEP. They were idealists only in the sense that they wanted to create world in which:

[...]Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.

It is difficult to predict the extent of self‑government which the man of the future may reach or the heights to which he may carry his technique. Social construction and psycho‑physical self‑education will become two aspects of one and the same process. All the arts — literature, drama, painting, music and architecture - will lend this process beautiful form. More correctly, the shell in which the cultural construction and self‑education of communist man will be enclosed, will develop all the vital elements of contemporary art to the highest point. Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and subtler; his body will become more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise”.*

Lastly Trotsky certainly had his share of pragmatist decisions:

Lenin and his closest comrades believed that one of the characteristic features of modern "bourgeois" states, a standing army, was undesirable and inappropriate for the Workers' and Peasants' Republic over which they presided. Thus, even as negotiations with the Central Powers were underway at Brest Litovsk, the old Imperial Russian Army was being dismantled. At the same time, however, it became apparent that the rag-tag Red Guard units and elements of the imperial army who had gone over the side of the Bolsheviks were quite inadequate to the task of defending the new government against external foes. Thus, on January 15, 1918 Sovnarkom decreed the formation of the Worker-Peasant Red Army, to consist of volunteers from among "the most class-conscious and organized elements of the toiling masses."

The architect of the Red Army's formation was Trotsky who was appointed People's Commissar for the Army and Navy in March 1918 and remained in that position until 1925. Assisted by General M.D. Bonch-Bruevich, a former Imperial Guard officer who served as head of the new Soviet Supreme Military Council, Trotsky assiduously recruited and defended the use of former tsarist officers, euphemistically known as "military specialists." [...]

Still, he recognized Stalin for the thug that he was and recommended he be removed, so points for that.

If you refer to Lenin testament then Lenin simply wanted to remove Stalin from seat of General Secretary and mustachioed Georgian was far from only one who got criticized. Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin and Trotsky were criticized too.


*https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/200210/9651/trotsky-and-culture-communism

[Thumpalumpacus]

I learn so much reading your posts about the USSR, @Ivan Denisovich.

[Leonardo17]

Awty + Fireball + Thumpalumpagus:
 

- No I’m with you in your anti-Trump posture. I don’t like populists. Populists are people who don’t believe in equality who think they and their entourage should come before everyone else. Which is why I believe that D. Trump must have been involved in the Epstein files at least to some degree. And I also do not believe in the suicide of G. Epstein.

 
/ But what we know as “The opposition” can also make serious mistakes and in some cases that opposition can be wrong and the MAGA people can be right.
 
Ivan Denisovich:
 
- I don’t really like your choice of words. I will give some shorter answers. You seem to be tired too
 
“Some Iranian chick dumped you? You're racist? Or you hate Iran blindly because regimes you love fellating tell you so?”
 
- I meant that Iran would not have backed down at the Cuba missile crisis. They would have started WWIII already (because they think they would go to paradise for that)
 
“He also have sympathy for totalitarian left. You're writing about dude who ignores SU crimes (genocide and Ribbentrop-Molotov pact included) and praises it for rationality and first astronaut in space. It appears to me that living under this turkey cunt of authoritarian erased any traces of empathy from him.”
 
- I think you are misjudging me. It’s just that I maintain a degree of critical mindset at all time. Many of you seem to be rather worried about the MAGA movement. I also have my dose of worries about my own authoritarian government. But as I said, populist leader can sometimes be right and the opposition movement can sometimes be wrong.
 
We may discuss the USSR in future posts but you will have to watch your mouth a little. We cannot have an intellectual discussion if you decide to lose your temper like this.
 
- Communist regimes in the world tended to be very corrupt from the beginning. Lenin + Stalin + Mao were people who were ready to sacrifice people in order to erase all traces of the previous feudal social order and create something new: a modern socialist society.
 
Personally I don’t like Trotsky that much. But I know about the friction between Trotcsyism and Stalinism. I also know about the Prague Revolt in 68 and how this all ended in a bloodbath.
 
And I and still a fan of Che Guevara and the Cuban revolution for instance. Yet, history made it so that those who remember the Batista era in Cuba are nostalgic of that era. And modern socialism has huge issues. I liked Hugo Chavez for instance but look how it all ended.
 
/ Still you cannot say that Communism is not a part of Human History and that communists did now achieve anything in this world. If they did nothing, they defeated fascism. Doesn’t that count for anything?
 
- As a specie we like experimenting stuff. Sometimes we have to try things and it simply does not work. That’s how I see communism. + I believe that a more equalitarian society will be possible in the future. I believe in universal healthcare + free education and other socialist approaches like that (while still believing in democratic values, secularism and supremacy of law).
 
/ So I would advise you to not misinterpret some of the things that I write in this forum.
 
/ All of this was to say that the Soviets were still a rational element. Just like today’s China if you want. I mean you can talk to them when you have to and you can find solutions by simply talking to them.
 
Now it was D. Trump who walked away from the nuclear deal with Iran. So all of this is basically his fault yes. But this isn’t 2018. We’re in 2026. We need to find solutions to today’s issues. Right now we have no nuclear deal with Iran since 8 years and they already have 60% enriched Uranium already.
 
Besides Iran was a more rational element in the 2010’s. It seems to me that they are getting even more fanatical as the years are passing.
 
But Let’s discuss this OK? I’m still far from being a Brainiac who has all the solutions. If you have better ideas to fix this current madness you should share them and I may simply agree.
All I am saying is that The Europeans simply watched when Milosevic was murdering Bosnian Muslims in Ex-Yugoslavia. And at some point, the US decided to move in and together with NATO + UN they stopped the genocide.
 
If I am correct most people here believe that this is different: So explain yourselves. Maybe you are right and I am wrong