"Putin plans to make the West destroy itself" Topic

"There's only one person who'll be genuinely pleased with the Intelligence and Security Committee's Russia report, finally revealed on Tuesday, and that's Vladimir Putin. Russia emerges as an amorphous and formidable enemy — all the more so because the inconclusive and much-redacted report contains next to no substantiated allegations. Instead Russia appears as a phantom, unknowable menace, and this will spawn a thousand conspiracy theories far more corrosive and confusing to our politics than any Moscow-generated Twitter-storm or document leak.

There's no smoking gun on Brexit. Yet the government-induced delay in publication allows anyone that way inclined to imagine a cover-up. Even the insistence that the state should do more to prevent Russian meddling plays into Putin's hands. The fear of Russian interference in British elections creates chaos and division — and this, rather than any particular result, is Putin's real goal.

Russia may be reeling from a collapse in oil prices and one of the highest rates of Covid-19 infection in the world, but Moscow relies on pushing the idea that it's the West that is really in trouble, racked with violent culture wars and suffering from a profound loss of faith in its own values. The Kremlin's new party line is: we may have it bad, but their crisis is much worse. And where Putin's propagandists lead, its trolls and hackers follow…"
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Armand

He may very well be right to believe that.

Credit to the Russians for finding weakness and exploiting it to accomplish their goals.

I think one of the reasons that the west is in decline is an inability to develop coherent strategies and goals unlike the Russians and Chinese who have very coherent goal and implement efficient strategies to accomplish them.

The west has also forgotten subtlety. The main US approach since 1991 is military. And since 2001 this has only got worst with intelligence agencies such as CIA taking on a more paramilitary approach at the expense of previous subtlety.

Save the French and their pseudo-empire in Africa, the Europeans have no coherent strategy or foreign goals at all. UK is US' poodle, the Germans are happy running their mercantile empire of the EU, Italy and Spain are a mess and Poland just wants to keep Russians and migrants out.

The Russians and Chinese on the other hand are ambitious and know what they want and don't care what they have to do to get it.

Isn't this what the Russians have been doing for our entire lifetimes?

Yes, but now they are more successful at it.

The thing about it is that the most successful strategy the US has used in the past is "soft" power: culture, economics, philosophy. The US lost that vision in the post-Cold War period, & current politicians are only accelerating the decline. Despite the nasty things the US had done in the Cold War, I think the world is a better place under a Pax Americana rather than a Pax Sino or Pax Russia.

Damon.

Isn't this what the Russians have been doing for our entire lifetimes?

At least since Napoleonic times. The last thing the Tsars wanted was a revolution like 1794.

Garand – I take issue with your post. Current politicians and the presidential office holder are America's only and last hope of reversing the decline.

During the Cold War we tried to contain communist expansion into countries all over the world. The history books now tell us that the Cold War ended in 1989-90 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ousting of communist regimes in Eastern Europe through free elections. The ultimate irony is that communism has taken hold right here in the USA with communist agitators trying to destroy America and take away our freedoms.

Uparmored – I take a little issue with your post. I think the American people (well, most of them) are America's hope. They have to power to oust bad politicians and elect good statesmen. If any decide to run. Failing that, they are armed to the teeth and may strive to maintain a culture governed by the rule of law.

The ultimate irony is that communism has taken hold right here in the USA

I wouldn't call them communists as they are all still relatively "free market".

I would say they are anti-nationalist, pro-globalist, anti-European culture.

They are also pro-immigration which is in line with neoliberalism – ie free movement of labour and flooding of labour markets to reduce bargaining power of labour.

I would call them a form of extreme centrism. Modern centrism was neoliberal in terms of economics but pro-social security to catch all the victims of neoliberalism.

Modern centrism is anti-nationalist, pro-globalisation and pro-multiculturalism. It is also extremely pro-minority.

There is nothing about union empowerment (here in Australia unions are turning right wing because the left no longer supports them) and there is certainly nothing about nationalisation of means of production.

There isn't even much about higher taxation/wealth redistribution. Instead the talk is now of printing money (quantitative easing and deficit funding) or reducing defence/police spending to fund any expansion of government social services.

The Chinese aren't communists anymore either – they are now pure fascists. The Russians are probably headed down the same path way.

I would, there are many communists/socialists here, they are quite brazen, and definitely not for "free markets".

"There isn't even much about higher taxation/wealth redistribution…..".

Apparently, you don't watch the news much, or get ALL the maneuvers going on behind the scenes.

Seriously compare these guys to actual communists and they are very timid economically.

In Communism there is no private ownership of capital.

In Communism you don't tax the rich as they simply don't exist in the first place!

So how is calling for higher taxes on the 1% or for higher spending on social services communist?

And you guys forget the rich were taxed far more in the US and elsewhere in the past and up to the 1970s – you know the golden era of the middle class.

Of course the neoliberal propaganda machine has made you think taxing the rich 1% who hold 40% of wealth is a bad thing and it is better to let the 80% who own a mere 7% of wealth get progressively poorer.

And no these rich guys don't create jobs where they don't have to and they certainly don't look out for their employees. Bezos is on his way to becoming a trillionaire yet Amazon works its employees to a bone and pays poorly.

Here's a good article how neoliberalism killed the middle class in the US:

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You can see this trend today in America. When we had heavily regulated and taxed capitalism in the post-war era, the largest employer in America was General Motors, and they paid working people what would be, in today's dollars, about $50 USD an hour with benefits. Reagan began deregulating and cutting taxes on capitalism in 1981, and today, with more classical "raw capitalism," what we call "Reaganomics," or "supply side economics," our nation's largest employer is WalMart and they pay around $10 USD an hour.

Then there's the stupid myth of working hard gets you rich. Again wrong, the hardest working people in the world are impoverished third worlders living in slave like conditions.

And I will guarantee even in the west the rich work far less hard than their most lowest paid employees.

I worked in stock broking, accounting and now public health and I can tell you for a fact that the lower level workers work far harder than any managers or senior partners. And no, the rewards are not there.

Indeed in the stock broking firm I worked, only those from elite private schools were promoted regardless of their competence. The rest of the staff were low paid, promised the world and then discarded when they asked for promised pay rises or promotions.

"Work hard and you will get your just rewards" is no different to the Christian concepts of" stay poor and pious in the material life and you will be rewarded in the after life."

It's just another control method.

The new "aspirational" class (ie poor idiots who dream of being rich so vote against their own interests) are now a key voting block in Australia.

This – like a lot of topics on this particular board – cannot help but become political.

Well, in 1991 Soviet Union collapsed on its own, but the west applied a lot of pressure and resources to make this happen. It would not be enough without the changes that happened internally, within СPSU itself of course.
Mid 80s it was clear that the system in SU is in serious crisis, and there was basically 3 ways for changes:
- North Korean/Stalin model which will be quite difficult to implement and the results might not be good enough,
– – Chinese model, with liberalization of private property, economic freedom but tight control over ideology,
- or the way that was picked by Gorbatchev and his team, who thought that socialism can be gradually reformed in both economics and ideology, keeping CPSU at power, but making some ideology changes as well as a bit of economics liberalisation.
Сhinese never allowed any ideology freedom, but went with great steps into building a system which is no longer communism, but basically state capitalism – you have liberalization of economy with strong state support, but you should never question the line of CPC.
What we've seen in SU, is as soon as ideology freedom was allowed, the system crumbled. Keeping all nationalist elites in their respective countries also added to the disaster. Being a local shakh looked so much better than being just a secretary of local party committee.

It might very well be, that the West had no clue how to put plan economy, mostly working for military, on free market rails, but most of the people here think that what was happening in 90s, when the country barely survived was an agreed course of action aimed as solving the problem of potential rival once and for all.

And at that time we're talking about real interference, not some posts on the internet. Just read about Yeltsin 2d term elections.

All in all, China is trying very hard to beat US in its own game – i.e capitalism, controlling their own companies and supporting them, securing influence and resources with credits and treaties and learning/stealing from localized production.
I'm not a big fan of China, but US is pushing us hard to embrace them…

"In Communism there is no private ownership of capital.

In Communism you don't tax the rich as they simply don't exist in the first place!

So how is calling for higher taxes on the 1% or for higher spending on social services communist?

And you guys forget the rich were taxed far more in the US and elsewhere in the past and up to the 1970s – you know the golden era of the middle class.

Of course the neoliberal propaganda machine has made you think taxing the rich 1% who hold 40% of wealth is a bad thing and it is better to let the 80% who own a mere 7% of wealth get progressively poorer".

We're getting there.

Someone recently posted, and I'm sure many others think it, that ALL the money and assets of the 1% should be seized to pay for ALL the new stuff they want to spend money on.

Only problem with communism/socialism is that eventually they run out of other peoples' money, and that's when the widespread killings begin, since there aren't enough resources to go around for everyone.

Someone recently posted, and I'm sure many others think it, that ALL the money and assets of the 1% should be seized to pay for ALL the new stuff they want to spend money on.

What people think this? How many? How mainstream in the left leaning political parties is this prevalent? What actions have been taken to make this a reality? What candidates have advocated for this, that have mainstream support & a realistic chance at power?

Frankly, this all sounds like right wing propaganda & fear-mongering: find a few kooks on the left, write a story about them, & try to spin it as something mainstream.

Damon.

Make no mistake, the US is trending towards socialism. Not full-fledged totalitarian communism but more along the lines of most western European countries with more equal access to health care and other socio-economic benefits.

A case in point is the very sticking point that's tying up the next economic stimulus package in congress right now. The democrats want to extend the $600.00 USD-a-week hand-out (or what they call "life-line") for all unemployeds regardless of how much they made before they entered unemployment. The republicans OTOH argue (rightly I should add) that the amount should be variable because the flat rate only serves as a disincentive for those who make less than $600.00 USD a week to get off their back-ends and go back to work.

As for China's system of capitalism sans democratic freedom, it's what works for them because – with the notable exception of the westernized Hong Kongese – the majority Han Chinese culturally speaking are a relatively homogeneous group of people who respect central authority and demand order and conformity even at the cost of individual liberties. What works for us doesn't necessarily mean it will work for other peoples.

the US is trending towards socialism

It's not socialism – there is virtually no control of private enterprise in much of Europe though some countries still subsidise some industries.

Even the supposed socialist Swedes don't practice socialism even of a democratic variety – capitalism is allowed to do whatever it wants within the confines of the law.

Indeed there was a comparison between Margaret Thatcher's approach and Sweden one may years ago and Sweden actually had less government involvement in business and enterprise than Margaret Thatcher's take on neo liberalism.

And there was never pure capitalism in America since at least the 1930s and as late as 2009 you were bailing out rich capitalists for their failures.

The modern western approach is economically neoliberal with a massive social safety net (eg unemployment benefits, subsidised welfare etc).

The social safety net is necessary because reforms have allowed capitalists to do as they please. If you want to close down your American factories and subcontract that production to Chinese government affiliates using slave labour then you are free to do so.

American (and other western workers) suffer. As I showed before well paid manufacturing jobs are replaced with low paying unsecure service jobs.

Even from a cynical perspective without the social welfare net you risk civil unrest. Thus even the right wingers of the 1950s-2020s figured out it was better to give the masses something to keep them quiet.

I even read in an Australian right wing newspaper (The Australian) that we need to allow business to offshore production to China and elsewhere because it is more economically efficient (ie profitable) and that the west needs to rely on having good social welfare nets.

Give them games and bread as the Romans used to say.

go back to work.

What work?

Unemployment rate is 11%! Then there's is the underemployment rate which is people wanting more work but not being able to find additional hours. That rate was 7% pre-COVID.

So that's at least 18% out of work or without sufficient work.

And then there's the people who dropped out of looking for work so don't get counted as unemployed (this continues to grow in the US).

What works for us doesn't necessarily mean it will work for other peoples.

And how do you recommend you fix the increasingly broken America?

Clearly an increasing lasseiz faire economic approach is just killing the working class and slowly pushing the US to third world living standards.

What work?

Many restaurants and small businesses have reopened following federal and state guidelines only to find it impossible to rehire the experienced staff they had prior to the shutdown at the same wages because these former employees are getting paid more not working than if they re-enter the workforce.

Talking head "Dr. Drew" Pinsky said there are voluntarily unemployed people in his district laughing about it and all but invited congressman Adam Schiff to visit his district and see for himself on national television.

Unemployment benefits typically cover around 70 percent of lost wages, not over 100 percent.

+1 15mm and 28mm Fanatik

Fanatik,
It shows how poorly paid those jobs are.

And what % of the 18% unemployed/underemployed are refusing work?

Given pre-COVID half of all American workers earned less than $50,000 USD and 74% lived pay check to pay check. Pre-COVID there were between 6-7% of people in America who lived below poverty line despite being substantially employed!

Basically lack of labour regulation = poor conditions and pay for workers.

Unemployment benefits doesn't cover 70% or 100% of average lost wages. In 2019 pre-COVID average US weekly wage was $970 USD, unemployment benefits were $370 USD (38% of average weekly wage). $600 USD = 62% of average wage.

Though to be fair that's better than Australia – weekly average wage = $1,195 USD, unemployment benefits = $204 USD (17%) (though there are other subsidies). As part of COVID they did increase it to $750 USD to prop up the economy.