gun

gun, 9 months ago

Exactly. If the justice system were apolitical, the average would be a lot higher and the variance a lot lower. Just the last two presidents before Trump alone are responsible for so many crimes against humanity. I know Chomsky went through every recent president and explained how they all could have been impeached.

gun, 9 months ago

Just vote for the lesser of two fascisms

gun, 9 months ago

It is a W. I don’t want any farts in my water.

gun, 9 months ago

Whoa 🤯. Never realized this somehow. That’s awesome. No ads on mobile.

gun, 9 months ago

Sure, because that’s exactly how they would respond. Your hatred of the working class is palpable.

gun, 9 months ago

I was always told the Stalin quote: “one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic”
Except there is no evidence he ever said this.
Nothing sours your opinion on an ideology like realizing its biggest proponents have been lying to you your whole life and they almost got away with it without you noticing.
Stalin did say this though: “I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.”

gun, 9 months ago

There was never a genocide. That was also made up

gun, 9 months ago

How does a purge of corrupt officials constitute a genocide? Let alone mass genocide which was your claim.

There was no systemic starvation of Ukrainians. There was famine that killed a comparable number of Russians and Kazakhs. However, Soviet industrialization and dam building ended a cycle of harsh famines that predated communism, providing a stable food supply for Ukrainians and all nationalities in the Soviet Union.

www.macrotrends.net/countries/UKR/…/population
From the beginning of this graph to the end of communism, the Ukrainian population grew 13 million. That’s unusual if Stalin wanted to genocide Ukrainians, seems like he’s not very good at it. Seems like the more effective genocidal policy based on the graph starts immediately after the end of communism. Curious.

And no, Stalin killing Trotsky was not made up I don’t think. But I have no issue with that; I only wish he had gotten to all of the Trotskyists.

gun, 9 months ago

You trying to tell me that The Polish Operation was necessary?

Yezhov was responsible for that. He abused his power, and was rightly executed.

the blame falling squarely on the Soviet government due to their forced collectivisation programme

Collectivization of farming happened in every modern economy in the world. There’s a reason why only 4 countries in the US produce all of the chicken and eggs. It is simply more efficient than having thousands individual farmers. When the USSR began, they still plowed fields with tractors. Before and after the Russian revolution, malnutrition was the norm. To end this, agriculture has to be modernized like it had been in other countries. This had to be built from scratch. There were virtually no factories building tractors, harvesters, etc. Dams offset the effects of drought by creating reservoirs of water in good times to allow saving for bad times. The USSR had some of the world’s greatest hydroelectric projects, but these could not be built immediately. So clearly, prioritization of industry was vital for population growth to be sustained with a stable food supply.

In a capitalist system the market determines food prices. If people can’t afford to buy food at the market price, the food is destroyed, and production is scaled back. Sometimes food is destroyed in massive quantities on purpose to manipulate the market. There are very recent examples of this in the US where fresh milk is simply dumped down the drain by the gallon. Before collectivization, some farmers in the USSR were destroying grain. After collectivization, this type of rebellion and manipulation is not possible.

When farmland is parcelized, it makes it hard for the individual landowners to afford the necessary equipment to increase output. When farmland is consolidated, a dozen farmers can pool together funds to buy a tractor. In capitalist countries, this happened gradually over time when more efficient larger farms bought out smaller ones, cutting out small farmers completely. In the USSR, this process was accelerated and they did not have to wait decades to modernize, it could happen in years. And at the end of the day, the small farmers still had a stake. These soviet policies did not cause the famine. They would have prevented it if they could have been implemented sooner.

it took 40 years to recover from the 10 million population deficit caused by the Holodomor

Why not say 100 million Ukrainians since we are just making up numbers? 10 million is like double the estimate for ALL the USSR, not just Ukraine. And that’s the figure coming from scholars who say the Holodomor was even a thing. Like, according to them, it was 2-3 million Ukrainians. How does that create a deficit of 10 million?

Also it’s real convenient that your graph only starts in 1950

I went for the first result when searching “Ukraine population graph.” Most results on Google start at 1950. What, is Worldometers communist now? I’m sorry professor, I know this isn’t A+ work, but frankly, I give a shit about other things besides debate silly people online class.

Also, you know genocide isn’t just about straight murder right?

This is a classic dishonest motte and bailey tactic. When most people think genocide, they think of it as mass murder and forced sterilization targeting a specific ethnic group with the goal of elimination of that group. The same claim was made with the Uyghur genocide to get the idea in people’s heads that China was mass murdering and sterilizing Uyghurs, an obvious lie if you research it. Then when people respond with scrutiny they backpedal and call it actually a “cultural genocide,” whatever that means. But every claim that I’ve seen of a cultural genocide in Xinjiang I have later found was a lie. It’s easy to debunk when we live in the 21st century, you can go to China and film people and buildings. Back then, not so much. Psyops in the news make their way into the textbooks.

Nationalism was limited by the USSR when it contradicted Proletarian Internationalism. For this reason the Russian tricolor was banned, and the official Russian flag was only a variation of the Soviet one. Is that cultural genocide against the Russians? If Ukrainian culture is flying a Wolfsangel flag, venerating Stepan Bandera, etc., then I guess they were suppressed. I’m not crying over it though. I think its clear Communists did Ukraine better than the current nationalists do.

USSR’s success at Russification is literally one of the things Putin is using to excuse his invasion.

It’s the exact opposite! Listen again to Putin’s speech on the eve of the SMO. He blames Lenin and communism for giving too much away to Ukraine. Lenin recognized Ukraine as a nation, which is a stretch. Then he gave Ukraine Russian land in the Southeast. Stalin gave Ukraine part of Poland, and Kruschev gave Ukraine Crimea. If anything, the communists did Ukrainization of Russia, and this is what Putin reacts against in his speech. You have it twisted.

They could have consolidated everything under the RSFSR during the revolution. This would have violated the Marxist principle of self determination of nations. Read Stalin’s “On the National Question.” The USSR’s legislative system was even reformed from a unicameral to a bicameral system, introducing the Soviet of nationalities, giving smaller nationalities in the USSR disproportionately higher representation. This is comparable to the US, where despite California having nearly 80 times the population of Wyoming, they both have two senators, equal representation. Instead of over-representing rural people, in the USSR, smaller nationalities were over-represented.

gun, 9 months ago

Also, what Motte and Baily? No when I think genocide I also think about systemic cultural erasure not just the murder and sterilisation part.

Maybe that’s what YOU think, but that’s not what MOST people think, which is what I said. The Oxford dictionary defines genocide: “The deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of people from a particular group identified as having a shared ethnicity, nationality, etc…” Says nothing about culture, and is pretty unambiguous that genocide requires “deliberate and systematic killing” which is not what you saw in Ukraine. That’s how most people would define a genocide.

so where the fuck did you pull Uyghurs from?

It’s another example where your motte and bailey tactic is used. First, you make the bold claim. Accuse of genocide, mass killings, sterilization, etc. Then when everyone debunks you on it, you fall back to your motte, your safe claim. “Oh no, I didn’t mean genocide like they were systematically killing people, I meant it like a CULTURAL genocide. Nobody said anyone was getting mass murdered.” What a joke. And like I said already, I bring Uyghurs up because its an example where it could be debunked in real time, because it’s in the present. Because the so-called “holodomor” is in the past it is more murky, but the same tactics are used.

Kinda think that’s a bit of a Freudian slip there mate.

Oh, you are trying to psychoanalyze me now. Hmmm. 🤣🤣🤣

Like, you do know Glasnost happened right? The USSR did give you permission to acknowledge that there at least was a famine in Ukraine

Did you not even read what I wrote? Where do I deny there was a famine? I mention it all the time. Did you accidentally reply to the wrong person or something?

gun, 9 months ago

Disagree. Look up compatibilism

gun, 10 months ago

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/0ef105a5-d1fd-4b83-9665-eb194c6de8e0.png

So he’s trying to argue the blue area = the red area in size. Doesn’t look exactly so.

gun, 9 months ago

Blinken makes no distinction between what territory changed hands before 2022 and after. That wasn’t the claim

Edit: Even so, the red area that is not outlined still looks bigger than the blue areas.

gun, 9 months ago

“Map projections” lmao. The mercator map makes area look bigger the further north it is. So if anything, it would oversize the area that Ukraine has retaken in the north while undersizing the area that Russia has taken in the south. But within a small country, distortion from map projection will be negligible.

gun, 9 months ago

I think you’re wrong actually. The map in question does not seem to use the ISW data.

This is the point you are referring to from ISW: understandingwar.org/…/russian-offensive-campaign…

(Aside, According to this arcticle, your 54% is not an actual hard percentage, but an estimate. From their own words, they measure the area of the map using Mercator projection, and state using a different projection would give you a different estimate. They don’t correct for projection error in their measurement, which as I pointed out earlier, biases the figure towards overestimating the recaptured territory in the north, and underestimating the area still under Russia’s control in the south. )

But compare LiveUA map to the timelapse here. Their data shows large areas under Russian control that are not shown as recaptured on the LiveUA map. I should not have said “looks like” when it is clear from the map that the red area, minus Crimea and pre-2022 DPR and LPR, is still much larger than the blue area.

Saying 50% has been recaptured is contingent upon how much territory Russia actually controlled in the Kharkiv and Kiev areas during the first few weeks of the war. This figure is insanely variable based on who you ask. In those first few weeks, Russian propagandists would greatly overstate how much territory in the north had been captured. In reality, Russia went into the northern area with a very small force and captured a few highways. If you paint with a very broad brush, all of the surrounding area came under Russian control, even if Russian troops never had a presence there. But that does not correspond to the strict reality.

gun, 10 months ago

I heard one once that goes like “a fool does what he hates, a wise man does what he loves, but a great man learns to love what is necessary.”
I think I am butchering the original phrasing which is probably why I can’t find any source for this quote. But I think about it a lot.

gun, 10 months ago

It would be equally as easy to lie either way. Instead of reporting 1000 anonymous upvotes, report 1000 fake upvotes from fake users or users who didn’t actually upvote. Any instance that gets caught abusing the protocol would get blocked pretty quickly though. Even though it’s theoretically possible, I’ve never seen it happen.

gun, 10 months ago

When you win at chair solitaire

gun, 11 months ago

You are either camping with other people or are in some kind of military activity. You don’t want to poop because you are embarrassed of how it smells and the people you were with on a previous occasion gave you an extremely hard time over it. Did I guess right? Please, poop in a hole or something, whatever it takes

gun, 11 months ago

How are you going to continue to enforce gun control in your country if there are zero borders?

gun, 11 months ago

Right, but if you want to stop school shootings with gun control and are also left wing enough to want zero borders, how will gun control be possible if crazies can just go and get their guns from places where its legal to get them. Am I fascist for pointing out an obvious contradiction?

gun, 11 months ago

If you don’t stop people from crossing it, how do you check what they are carrying? How do you prevent guns from moving across a border in that case?

gun, 11 months ago

I did. It’s just a random example to argue what @Banana was saying about reality being more complicated.

gun, 11 months ago

In my experience, Windows can install a 25 year old program, but it won’t work

gun, 11 months ago

Need for Seed