Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

DaKardii wrote: Wed Feb 16, 2022 11:27 pm

Xeraphim1 wrote: Wed Feb 16, 2022 4:57 pm Actually, neither China nor Russia are really communist. Both are fascist states with Russia having the trappings of democracy while China is more of an unapologetic police state.

Why would anyone respect Putin as a leader? He's lied, cheated and stolen to get into and keep himself in power as president for life. The only people allowed to run for office are the ones he allows while he and his cronies have looted the country and overseen its economic decline. he engages in crass and ridiculous spectacles supposedly to show his "manliness" such as riding horses bare chested or wrestling bears or lifting locomotives. he makes Trump look modest and bumble. And Putin isn't even a Christian other than in a generic non-religious sense.

Russia isn't fascist either. It's just a corrupt keptocracy with some nationalist tendencies.

China on the other hand is a different story. It is indeed fascist in all but name.

DaKardii wrote: Wed Feb 16, 2022 11:31 pm

Navigator wrote: Wed Feb 16, 2022 2:35 pm Interesting how this is following the German strategy for the dismemberment and takeover of Czechoslovakia. Which included the "protection" of breakaway republics (and the participation of Hungary, and, believe it or not, Poland).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_oc ... hoslovakia

As a side note, from the headlines of the New York Times of August 28, 1939 (a few days before actual invasion of Poland):
"Hitler tells Paris he must get Danzig and Corridor"
"Berlin thinks door is left open to Peaceful Solution"

Funny how history repeats itself. Ukraine will be our modern day Czechoslovakia. What Putin really wants are the Baltic States, and hegemony over Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria). This is as much of a pipe dream as Hitler's Germania.

Putin is much more interested in uniting the Orthodox countries under one empire than he is in restoring the Iron Curtain. That means his imperial project won't be pushing further west once Ukraine is out of the way. Instead, it will be turning south.

Xeraphim1 wrote: Thu Feb 17, 2022 3:01 pm I don't think Putin cares about uniting Orthodox countries at all. Remember, he isn't religion and sees religion as a tool, not something to value in and of itself. I think a more accurate statement would be that Putin wants to rebuild the Russian Empire/USSR.

DaKardii wrote: Thu Feb 17, 2022 3:14 pm

Xeraphim1 wrote: Thu Feb 17, 2022 3:01 pm I don't think Putin cares about uniting Orthodox countries at all. Remember, he isn't religion and sees religion as a tool, not something to value in and of itself. I think a more accurate statement would be that Putin wants to rebuild the Russian Empire/USSR.

Controlling the Balkans was a central foreign policy goal of the old Russian Empire. That was a major reason Russia fought so many wars with Turkey during the Tsarist era.

• Xi Jinping, China's mighty-looking leader, has an "enormous
  array of domestic enemies." — Gregory Copley, president of the
  International Strategic Studies Association and editor-in-chief of
  Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, to Gatestone Institute,
  February 2022.
• Xi created that opposition. After becoming China's ruler at the
  end of 2012, he grabbed power from everyone else and then jailed tens
  of thousands of opponents in purges, which he styled as
  "anti-corruption" campaigns.
• Beijing is panicking, adding nearly a trillion dollars in total
  new credit last month, a record increase.... When the so-called
  "hidden debt" is included, total debt in the country amounts to
  somewhere in the vicinity of 350% of gross domestic product.
• Not surprisingly, Chinese companies are now defaulting. The debt
  crisis is so serious it can bring down China's economy—and the
  country's financial and political systems with it.
• In the most recent hint of distress, "Fang Zhou and China"...
  wrote a 42,000-character essay titled "An Objective Evaluation of Xi
  Jinping." The anti-Xi screed, posted on January 19 on the
  China-sponsored 6park site, appears to be the work of several members
  of the Communist Party's Shanghai Gang faction, headed by former
  leader Jiang Zemin. Jiang's faction has been continually sniping at Xi
  and now is leading the charge against him.
• Xi's problems, unfortunately, can become our problems. He has, for
  various internal political reasons, a low threshold of risk and many
  reasons to pick on some other country to deflect elite criticism and
  popular discontent.
• The Communist Party of China has always believed its struggle with
  the United States is existential—in May 2019 the official People's
  Daily declared a "people's war" on America—but the hostility has
  become far more evident in the past year.
• Virulent anti-Americanism suggests Xi Jinping is establishing a
  justification to strike America. The Chinese regime often uses its
  media to first warn and then signal its actions.
• America has now been warned.

Navigator wrote: Wed Feb 16, 2022 2:35 pm

Guest wrote: Wed Feb 16, 2022 6:31 am And this will be Russia's excuse to attack Ukraine: they will be 'protecting' the two newly independent breakaway republics...

Interesting how this is following the German strategy for the dismemberment and takeover of Czechoslovakia. Which included the "protection" of breakaway republics (and the participation of Hungary, and, believe it or not, Poland).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_oc ... hoslovakia

As a side note, from the headlines of the New York Times of August 28, 1939 (a few days before actual invasion of Poland):
"Hitler tells Paris he must get Danzig and Corridor"
"Berlin thinks door is left open to Peaceful Solution"

Funny how history repeats itself. Ukraine will be our modern day Czechoslovakia. What Putin really wants are the Baltic States, and hegemony over Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria). This is as much of a pipe dream as Hitler's Germania.

• A wreckage of a car blown up in Donetsk (Reuters)

Guest wrote: Wed Feb 16, 2022 6:31 am > And this will be Russia's excuse to attack Ukraine: they will be
> 'protecting' the two newly independent breakaway
> republics...

Navigator wrote: Wed Feb 16, 2022 2:35 pm > Interesting how this is following the German strategy for the
> dismemberment and takeover of Czechoslovakia. Which included the
> "protection" of breakaway republics (and the participation of
> Hungary, and, believe it or not, Poland).

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_oc ... hoslovakia

> As a side note, from the headlines of the New York Times of August
> 28, 1939 (a few days before actual invasion of Poland):

> "Hitler tells Paris he must get Danzig and Corridor"
> "Berlin thinks door is left open to Peaceful Solution"

> Funny how history repeats itself. Ukraine will be our modern day
> Czechoslovakia. What Putin really wants are the Baltic States,
> and hegemony over Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, Romania,
> Slovakia, Bulgaria). This is as much of a pipe dream as Hitler's
> Germania.

Navigator wrote: Fri Feb 18, 2022 1:29 pm > HEADLINE:
> US VP Kamala Harris To Head Munich Conference, Will Send Putin
> 'very Clear Message'

> I cannot believe that we have sent HARRIS to a "Peace Conference"
> in MUNICH of all places as this unfolds.

> The irony of all this is beyond belief. No one currently in
> positions of power/authority, at least in the west, understands
> history.

US officials said on Feb. 18 that nearly 190,000 Russian troops now surround Ukraine, a number far higher than the 150,000 figure that most intelligence reports suggested only 48 hours ago.

An unnamed US military official told CNN that “this is the most significant military mobilization in Europe since World War II.”

Russia may launch an attack on Ukraine on Saturday, February 19, 2022. The attack would likely begin with an air and missile campaign targeting much of Ukraine to decapitate the government and degrade the Ukrainian military as well as the ability of Ukrainian citizens to prepare to resist a subsequent Russian invasion. US and allied governments have been warning of such an attack for some days, pointing to the size of the Russian forces concentrated on Ukraine’s borders.[1] Western officials have additionally said that Russian troops have moved to jumping-off positions for an invasion over the past 24 hours. The following additional conditions and indicators point to February 19 as an optimal date for a Russian attack:

1. Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky will be in Germany at the Munich Security Conference. He is scheduled to speak at 1530 Munich time.[2]

His absence from Ukraine will degrade his ability to coordinate a response to any Russian attack and create more propitious circumstances for a Russian-sponsored attempt at a coup d’etat.
Russian forces could close Ukrainian airspace to prevent Zelensky from returning to Kyiv.
2. Russian President Vladimir Putin will reportedly oversee Russian nuclear drills on Saturday, February 19, as well.[3]Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will accompany Putin.

Those drills are being conducted out of the usual exercise cycle and are clearly intended to deter any Western response to an attack.
Putin and Lukashenko will observe the exercises from an unspecified “situational center” in Moscow, likely the Russian Ministry of Defense’s National Defense Control Center (NDCC). That would put them in the best position to oversee conventional military operations as well.
Launching the attack during those drills would take maximal advantage of their deterrent effect.
3. Russian proxy provocations in eastern Ukraine have increased dramatically since February 16, including an artillery barrage that damaged a kindergarten in unoccupied Ukraine and multiple other proxy attacks.[4]

Russian proxies have increased the frequency and drama of their claims of Ukrainian attacks on them as well as their false claims that Ukraine is preparing to invade occupied Donbas.
Russia’s proxies in Donbas began evacuating civilians to Russia ahead of a claimed Ukrainian offensive.[5]
Russian senior officials, including Putin, have been increasingly repeating and expanding on those claims this week.[6]
4. The proxy campaign is likely intended on the one hand to draw Ukrainian forces into a response that Russia would then claim to be an attack and, on the other, to use false flag attacks and outright disinformation to fabricate justifications for a Russian attack to “defend” “Russian citizens” in occupied Donbas. This rhetorical and kinetic activity has crossed thresholds pointing to the likelihood of an actual Russian attack.

This update reflects a change to our assessments and forecasts. We have previously assessed that Putin was setting conditions to move Russian forces overtly into occupied Donbas and possibly conduct a limited invasion in unoccupied southeastern Ukraine and/or an air/missile campaign. We now assess that those Russian activities are extremely likely and imminent and that a much larger-scale Russian invasion is very possible.

John wrote: Fri Feb 18, 2022 11:45 am An article by Gordon Chang supports this view by listing all the
problems facing the Chinese Communists today. The situation is so
bad, according to the article, that Xi Jinping's leadership is facing
"end of days."