V. Illych L. posted:

i, for my part, have no idea where the S300 was designed or manufactured, so i'm not making any claims as to that, but it was the start of the polish climb-down over the issue.

Marzzle posted:

I don't even want to kiss and hug vladimir putin

Frosted Flake posted:

gradenko_2000 posted:

How could China do this to Xinjiang

16-bit Butt-Head posted:

stalin was from the mushroom kingdom

speng31b posted:

its almost like liberals don't need to be convinced about stuff because their media consumption pattern is about actively looking to be told what to believe so they can repeat it uncritically

January 6 Survivor posted:

FF if it makes you feel better if we were at a dinner party and you started talking about artillery I'd just listen

Frosted Flake posted:

Frosted Flake posted:

I'd respect them more if they actually believed it. It's the combination of zeal and certainty with total plasticity that makes it so hard for me to square.
I know you can say the only true underlying belief is class interest but that's not really satisfying because who knows how much of that is even conscious?

e: I have to agree with the many people coming through to mention Xinjiang. What the gently caress?

Lostconfused posted:

Command & Conquer Generals came out in 2003 and it's so full of racial slurs and stereotypes that I don't think you could ever have something like that outside of the post psychosis that existed in America. And I am not sure if that even includes cheese eating surrender monkeys and freedom fries.

paul_soccer12 posted:

is it new or have all these NAFO accounts always had the nazi bar cross in their display names

Lostconfused posted:

Command & Conquer Generals came out in 2003 and it's so full of racial slurs and stereotypes that I don't think you could ever have something like that outside of the post psychosis that existed in America. And I am not sure if that even includes cheese eating surrender monkeys and freedom fries.

Marzzle posted:

cnc generals is a fantastic piece of american history. heritage not hate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT6kblEmGGc

January 6 Survivor posted:

FF if it makes you feel better if we were at a dinner party and you started talking about artillery I'd just listen

quote:

A secret Soviet-era document uncovered in Estonia suggests that Patriarch Alexy II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and spiritual leader of tens of millions of Christians, was a fully fledged KGB agent.

Accusations that Alexy, elected Patriarch in 1990, co-operated closely with the KGB under the code name 'Drozdov' (Thrush), have circulated since a parliamentary commission was allowed a brief peek at secret police files in Moscow in 1991.

But the Estonian text is the first publicly available document to support the theory that Alexy was more than a mere collaborator and that from 1958 he was an active agent, using the KGB as a career ladder at a time when the secret police persecuted organised religion.

The Russian Orthodox Church claims the document is a forgery but has made no attempt to disprove its authenticity. The Patriarch has made no comment.

...

Yet the evidence, in the 1958 annual report of the Estonian branch of the KGB, which was left behind in Tallinn when the Soviet authorities pulled out of the newly independent country in 1991, is compelling.

The report, seen by the Guardian, consists of a stack of yellowing typewritten pages bound together as a book, which carries the legend 'Top Secret Ekz. No. 2 Series K' and the title `Summary of operational intelligence work by the 4th department of the KGB in the Council of Ministers of the Estonian SSR in 1958'.

On page 125 is a short account of the recruitment, in that year, of a young Orthodox priest given the codename 'Drozdov'. The agent is not named, but key characteristics coincide with Alexy's life.

Like the Patriarch, Drozdov was born in Tallinn in 1929, spoke fluent Russian and Estonian, was a doctor of theology and was serving as an Orthodox priest in Estonia in 1958.

Drozdov, who impressed the KGB with his eagerness, discretion and lively, forthcoming manner, began his career as an agent by providing information on a corrupt priest at a church in the small town of Jyhvi.

The Patriarch was the rector of the Church of the Epiphany in Jyhvi from 1950 until 1957. By 1961 he had become the bishop of Tallinn and Estonia aged only 32. The 1958 KGB report on Drozdov said his promotion to this post was 'considered' during his recruitment.

In the same year that he became a bishop, Alexy's rapid rise within the World Council of Churches began - the very course the KGB planned for Drozdov.

Indrek Jurjo, the Estonian historian who investigated the KGB report, said: `It must be him. It's very close. There were very few priests of the Orthodox Church here at that time. The description, the age, the plan for him to become a bishop - it fits.'

The report describes Drozdov as agreeing to work for the KGB on patriotic grounds. 'He's described here as an agent,' said Mr Jurjo. 'That means he had a KGB officer who he met with regularly in clandestine locations and who interrogated him. He would also have written reports.' Drozdov's reports, along with the KGB annual summaries after 1958, were taken to Moscow in 1991. After the 1991 putsch, President Boris Yeltsin gave a Russian parliamentary commission carte blanche to probe into some of the darkest secrets of the KGB, only to withdraw it a few months later under pressure from the secret police and other powerful figures.

Father Gleb Yakunin, an Orthodox priest and former MP who searched through KGB files, said he found several references to Drozdov. To his regret, he made no copies, and never found the card-index in which the codenames of agents were matched with their true identities.

One reference in the report from October 1969 reads: 'Agents Drozdov and Peresvyet travelled to England as part of the delegation to the Conference of European Churches.' Father Gleb, who was imprisoned in Soviet times for his opposition to state interference in the Church, said the Patriarch must lead the clergy in mass repentance.

'To co-operate with a state which sets as its aim the destruction of religion is a great sin, and a betrayal of Christianity,' he said.

The Patriarch is highly influential: the Kremlin values his support, and Alexy is close to at least one of Boris Yeltsin's likely successors, Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov.

In Russia only one small newspaper, the weekly Novaya Gazeta, has reported the Estonian find. A freelance television journalist, Boris Sobolyev, who travelled to Tallinn to film the story, has been unable to find a Russian news programme willing to air it.

Father Chaplin said: 'In recent times many anonymous photocopies of all sorts of pieces of paper have been circulated. In none of them is there the slightest evidence that the individuals we are talking about knew that these documents were being drawn up, or gave their consent. So I don't think any reasonably authoritative clerical or secular commission could see these papers as proof of anything.'

quote:

“Former KGB Lt. Col. Konstantin Preobrazhensky, who defected to the U.S. in 1993, is the author of two books:  KGB/FSB’s New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent and Russian Americans: A New KGB Asset. 

In his books he describes the grave concerns being felt by many Americans of Russian descent about the fact that, on May 17, 2007, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, (ROCOR), signed an Act of Canonical Community with the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.

ROCOR was originally established by White Russians who fled the Bolshevik Revolution and settled in America. These new concerns are founded on the known history of the Moscow Patriarchate, that it was founded by Stalin in 1943 for the specific purpose of espionage, disinformation and subversion. All its appointees were selected by the KGB, many were card carrying members of the Communist Party, and not a few had a dual role as ‘Bishops’ and ‘priests’ and uniformed officers of the KGB, in whose wardrobes hung both cassocks and uniforms.

What was worn on any given day was decided by which of their two roles they had to play.

All bishops, and most priests were KGB agents and collaborators. The bishops were formally part of the nomenclature of the CKKPSS; (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and therefore had to be approved by the ideological Department. The ‘ecclesiastical merits’ of a candidate didn’t interest the Ideological Department; on the contrary they were hostile to such qualifications. The fewer the merits, the better the candidate. Registration as a bishop in the Council of Religious Affairs was granted after an ‘interview’ (?interrogation) with its chairman, Vladimir Kuroyedov, a KGB Lt. General.

quote:

The former Soviet Union is undergoing a religious revival. People inside and outside the Russian Orthodox church are reexamining its ancient ways, rediscovering its long-forgotten saints, searching its institutional memory for answers to urgent questions facing the nation. The Western reaction to this remarkable resurgence of religion in Russia has been mixed. All observers welcome the fact that free inquiry about religion and free religious worship have been restored in the Russian Federation. At the same time, many are concerned about the xenophobic tendencies that have accompanied the religious revival in Russia and that became especially evident after the liberal forces suffered a defeat in the December 1993 parliamentary election. Calls to restore the great Russian empire sounded by the winners brought to mind the old slogan, "Moscow, the Third Rome," that had spurred Muscovy in the 16th-17th centuries to expand its dominion over neighboring countries. The situation is further exacerbated by a few Archbishops and Metropolitans who exhort the Russian people to bring the orthodox, unchanging faith -- Pravoslavie -- to the world.

But Western evangelicals who flock to Russia hoping to save it from itself find themselves in an awkward position. Ironically, they act as a missionary force that tries to sever Russian Orthodoxy from its traditional moorings and in the process could inadvertently transform the present religious revival into yet another victory for secularism. Just as their well- meaning counterparts are intent on building capitalism in Russia (a project no less heroic than that of building communism), Western religionists are determined to bring the reformation to a country that missed its chance at religious reform in the sixteenth century. But the Russians have seen all this before. Was not the Bolshevik Revolution a drive to impose Western enlightenment on the dark East and to replace its backward mores with the imported prescriptions for universal happiness?

While we cannot -- and should not -- avoid passing a judgment about the path that the religious revival has taken in Russia, we need to resist the temptation of imposing our ready-made schemes on a vastly different country without doing justice to its unique religious culture. It would be prudent to defer our judgment until we had a chance to examine the origins of Pravoslavie and the role it played in the nation's history, including the transformation that the Orthodox faith and church institutions underwent during the Soviet era.

Cuttlefush posted:

yeah i knew nobody was immune to propaganda but it's been wild to see this level up uptake and adherence by people. granted I was a teenager at the time, but I do not remember as many people getting as wrapped up in the post-911 fervor anywhere near as much as this. it does seem to be dying down though.

Jazerus posted:

post-9/11 was an absolute madhouse culturally but in much simpler and more predictable ways. a turn toward racism, islamophobia, country music, and flagfucking, no need for anyone to spend time "educating themselves" about the finer points of military-industrial complex products in order to sound "with it" on a war that everyone vaguely feels is very important but actually doesn't give a poo poo about

Jazerus posted:

post-9/11 was an absolute madhouse culturally but in much simpler and more predictable ways. a turn toward racism, islamophobia, country music, and flagfucking, no need for anyone to spend time "educating themselves" about the finer points of military-industrial complex products in order to sound "with it" on a war that everyone vaguely feels is very important but actually doesn't give a poo poo about

Frosted Flake posted:

I think maybe in November when the news was talking about Tora Bora and so B-52’s, “bunker busters” and various special forces units got singled out for attention?

Jazerus posted:

Dreylad posted:

Propaganda doesn't need to be sophisticated because of the short news cycle and the sheer barrage of it to overload most people trying to analyze it. At least that seems to be the point with large media organizations. Russian propaganda functions the same inward from what I've seen, but outward it seems to be more about signal boosting stories that are otherwise pretty unremarkable with the goal of fueling culture war poo poo, stoking resentment, and that works out well at stirring up those sentiments online, but it doesn't exactly shift policy or public opinion all that much in the short term.

Frosted Flake posted:

If anyone remembers the concern that maybe the Stingers we gave Al Qaeda* would be used against us, the Stingers given to Ukraine have been made defective intentionally via their programming.

Frosted Flake posted:

lol



If anyone remembers the concern that maybe the Stingers we gave Al Qaeda* would be used against us, the Stingers given to Ukraine have been made defective intentionally via their programming. That the idea of controlling who they are given to, or any kind of due diligence, monitoring, long term foreign policy planning, learning from mistakes, has been given up for a technological solution that may or may not work, with either the safeguards or missiles liable to fail, sums up where we’re at imo.

* Yes, mlnp, they weren’t technically Al Qaeda yet.

mlmp08 posted:

Where do you get this stuff?

Or is this just a misleading way of discussing US-only Stingers vs export-model Stingers?

Slavvy posted:

Good god you're a tedious little fed

mlmp08 posted:

I was just curious where FF was getting the idea that Ukraine was given defective stingers. Question answered.