Billy Jean King Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 This thread gets more like reading the RT social media channels by the day. I'm surprised a few are not being head hunted by them ! 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
welshbairn Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 The collaborating Governor of occupied Zaporizhzhya has decided it's safer running the place from Crimea. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongTimeLurker Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 Russia has really lost the plot now. Bald & Bankrupt kicked out and banned from reentry: 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
welshbairn Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 (edited) Things have been getting fraught in Kherson. Quote According to the Investigative Committee’s report, at about 8 p.m. on June 19, Igor Yakubinsky, Sergei Privalov and D.A. Borodin, three officers attached to the sub-division Military Task Force No. 9 of the FSB entered the Food Fuel cafe on Ushakova Avenue when they discovered two contract soldiers, Sgt. Sergei Obukhov and Junior Sgt. Igor Sudin “idly spending time, consuming alcoholic drinks,” according to the Investigative Committee documents. The FSB officers remonstrated with the enlisted men for drinking while in uniform. Obukhov responded by removing his sidearm and firing rounds into the floor, the report stated. Privalov tried to grab the gun, whereupon Sudin started spraying the security servicemen with rounds from his AK-74 assault rifle, as Privalov and Yakubinsky returned fire. Obukhov, Privalov and Yakubinsky “died on the spot,” according to the documents, while Borodin and Sudin were “hospitalized with injuries of varying degrees of severity at Federal Naval Clinical Hospital No. 1427 of the Russian Defense Ministry, located in Sevastopol,” in occupied Crimea. A fourth FSB officer, unidentified in the documents, fled the site. https://nz.news.yahoo.com/report-drunk-russian-soldiers-in-kherson-fired-assault-rifles-at-fsb-officers-in-deadly-incident-001518057.html Edited September 1, 2022 by welshbairn 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikingTON Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 1 hour ago, oaksoft said: Where do you imagine those Bulgarians and Latvians went? That'll maybe answer your question. Hint - if you read anything which suggests something other than the US and other western countries, you probably need to check your sources. They fled their countries after the Soviet political repression was ended and Western freedoms were introduced, you clown. The political regime was irrelevant to that choice then. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbykdy Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 (edited) 12 minutes ago, virginton said: They fled their countries after the Soviet political repression was ended and Western freedoms were introduced, you clown. The political regime was irrelevant to that choice then. That is correct, they left as they were no longer in danger of being killed for trying to do so and also because holding an EU passport over the last 20 years or so made freedom to move much easier. You honestly think that a lot of those people wouldn't have left while under communist rule if it had been possible? Edited September 1, 2022 by bobbykdy 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cairn Terrier Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 Not even a shred of awareness in this laughable take: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/30/gorbachev-political-legacy-destroyed-by-putin By the time Gorbachev stepped down at the end of 1991, the Nato-Soviet frontier was no longer a flashpoint. Nato pulled all but a few thousand troops back from the eastern flank, and the terrors of the cold war seemed consigned to history books and museums. In the wake of the Ukraine invasion in February, Nato has rushed troops eastwards, mobilising 40,000 troops under its direct command, with plans to put 300,000 on high alert. 1) There was no NATO-Soviet frontier during the Cold War. It was a NATO-Warsaw Pact frontier. One of those Cold War alliance systems was disbanded - NATO however was not because it was a vehicle for continued American imperialism. 2) NATO's rush eastwards was actually decided in the 1990s, when the pinky promise that Gorbachev accepted that it would not expand proved to be utterly useless. That - along with the 60+ million people dumped into abject poverty - is why Gorbachev is viewed as an arch-chump rather than a 'great statesman' by his own people. His legacy was trashed by his own stupid actions and the domestic/international brigade of looters he enabled. The Soviet Union shared a border with Norway…….a member of NATO. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dorlomin Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westsplaining 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beefybake Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 9 hours ago, virginton said: 1 million Bulgarians have left their country since 1991, and its population is expected to shrink by a further 2 million by 2050 within the EU. Lithuania's population has dropped by 23% since Soviet rule ended and it gained independence. Latvia has lost one-fifth of its population since EU accession in 2004. But please tell us more about how Soviet political repression was responsible for people wanting to live in western Germany and run around Munich in a Merc all day. More whataboutery....... and irrelevant diversion 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikingTON Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 (edited) 4 hours ago, bobbykdy said: That is correct, they left as they were no longer in danger of being killed for trying to do so and also because holding an EU passport over the last 20 years or so made freedom to move much easier. You honestly think that a lot of those people wouldn't have left while under communist rule if it had been possible? The claim was that conditions were so bad because of repressive communism that they had to lock people in. Well they removed the repressive communism and what has happened since? The dissident weirdos got into power and the people have left in their droves under the glorious system of neoliberal capitalism. Millions of people left eastern Europe for richer destinations before 1917 and the Bolshevik Revolution taking place. Hundreds of thousands left the satellite states of eastern Europe like Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary between 1918 and 1939 when they were independent countries - and only, err, border walls and highly restrictive passport rules* stopped it being millions. And millions have subsequently left the region again after 1989 despite semi-liberal democracies and free markets being constructed/restored. Political economy explains this repeated pattern of migration rather than Cold War fairytales about ideology. *No common worker gets a passport to leave unless you're an undesirable, national minority. Edited September 1, 2022 by vikingTON 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikingTON Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 2 minutes ago, beefybake said: More whataboutery....... and irrelevant diversion It's entirely relevant to assessing the migration flows of a regime to directly compare it to its successor. Because this basic logical act shreds the simpleton narrative that the big, bad communist regime was somehow responsible for a phenomenon that has been going on for 150 years. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
invergowrie arab Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 Australia alone has over 1.2 million UK born residents. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Detournement Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 22 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said: Australia alone has over 1.2 million UK born residents. I'd like to see us send another 10-15 million down there. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BFTD Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 6 hours ago, welshbairn said: Things have been getting fraught in Kherson. https://nz.news.yahoo.com/report-drunk-russian-soldiers-in-kherson-fired-assault-rifles-at-fsb-officers-in-deadly-incident-001518057.html Sensationally, 'Borodin' translates to 'board' in English, which in Esperanto is...Baracus 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newbornbairn Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 10 hours ago, welshbairn said: Polish emigration shot up when they joined the EU, but dropped right back as their economy grew. It's almost as if they fled their countries that had been impoverished by the Soviets in search of a better standard of living at the first opportunity, then returned when standards rose. Whodda thunk it? 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
welshbairn Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 (edited) Even after 70 years of a social engineering experiment, the Soviet Union still had to bar citizens from going abroad, even on holiday, in case they thought there was maybe a better way of going about things. Doesn't imply a lot of confidence in what their system had to offer. Edited September 1, 2022 by welshbairn 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lurkst Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 12 hours ago, dorlomin said: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62750584 Maybe he had a phobia about needles? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Ferrino Posted September 1, 2022 Share Posted September 1, 2022 1 hour ago, welshbairn said: Even after 70 years of a social engineering experiment, the Soviet Union still had to bar citizens from going abroad, even on holiday, in case they thought there was maybe a better way of going about things. Doesn't imply a lot of confidence in what their system had to offer. They were paranoid and we had an opportunity to change that in the early '90's. Sadly our own paranoia, or prejudices caused us to miss that which has let the shit stuff grow again. Or, our system meant there's too much money to be made from proliferating national tension. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikingTON Posted September 2, 2022 Share Posted September 2, 2022 9 hours ago, Newbornbairn said: It's almost as if they fled their countries that had been impoverished by the Soviets in search of a better standard of living at the first opportunity, then returned when standards rose. Whodda thunk it? When is the quarter of Latvia's population that has left since 2004 scheduled to return? Why is the 'returning population with rising capitalist standards of living' effect going to lead to a fall in Bulgaria's population by 2 million people? There's a more straightforward explanation for why Polish emigration dropped around 2016 than your stack of nonsense theory. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikingTON Posted September 2, 2022 Share Posted September 2, 2022 (edited) 9 hours ago, oaksoft said: You should have a wee look at footage from the removal of the Berlin wall and watch particularly the heaving crowds full of relieved sobbing people who left the Eastern Bloc to travel West as soon as a hole was punched in it before you start calling other posters "clowns". West Germany was immediately overwhelmed overnight. You see VT, unlike you, I have the advantage of actually having witnessed it as it happened rather than reading it from assorted online blogs. You might want to tone down the personal insults BTW. It's not exactly helping with keeping the discussion moving along. Unlike you I actually have a specialism in the subject of migration from eastern Europe, and can therefore place 1989 in the context of the New Immigration to the USA and the new, New Immigration in our neoliberal moment too. If you want to start doing the same by actually reading a book setting out that context, then try Tara Zahra's truly excellent The Great Departure... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Departure-Migration-Eastern-Europe/dp/0393353729 Edited September 2, 2022 by vikingTON 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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