2/ "collectivization" as nation-scale stealing of most of land from farmers and giving it to collectives (kolkhozes) and the government (sovkhoz). this detached people from their roots and destroyed productivity, with all the attendant hungers, poverty and misery.
3/ related: "dekulakization" as process of killing or jailing the farmers that were previously well off. this also destroyed productivity and detached communities from the knowledgeable and respected members.
4/ killing off, siphoning off and globalizing the elites of conquered countries: the unrepentent ones are killed off; the willing ones are schooled & trained in capital and offered positions high up in communist hierarchy. top-down cultural replacement.
5/ on similar note, subversion of elites in the non-conquered countries through education & training in Moscow. of all the KGB's work, this one apparently was the most budgeted.
6/ gulag archipelago - the large scale channeling of inmates (largely political inmates) into heavy and highly dangerous labor for economic reasons. common penalty: 10 years hard labor in gulag.
7/ large scale use of "blocking detachments" - military formations created to shoot at own troops if they started retreating.
8/ astroturfing a break-away faction & region and coming to "rescue", in order to conquer or disarm whole neighboring countries. examples: Ukraine (DNR, LPR); Syria; Georgia; Abkhazia; Transnistria; much of the "Cold War" like Vietnam & Korea; early in WW2.
9/ in common with some other socialist systems: use of feminism & its grievances & its eagerness for promises of equality
to divide politics and to steer policy through narrative, rather than through contract with society.
11/ use of compromising material to subjugate the official religion to state's ends.
while various states use various methods of subjugating religion - Russia & China in particular use compromising materials on the clergy, and also hand-picking the clergy hierarchy.
12/ replacement of art & literature with state-sponsored pulp.
>inb4 american college educated nu-elites attempt the same: that comes from entirely the same ideological & practical roots.
13/ centrally planned economy - on both the production and consumption side.
with all the attendant inefficiency, wastage, shortages and general lack of reliable information on the economy.
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2/ several excellent points, in particular touching the somewhat counter-intuitive tension between populism and Russian invasion.
3/ my only big gripe with the article: no, China is not self-aware as to its readiness & capability level.
in the same way the authoritarian Russia was not self-aware about the internal weakness & corruption in its military - the information filters at every level of bureaucracy
1/ a bit of aviation guesswork: consider the Tu-141 reconnaissance drone that crashed in Croatia. reportedly *exploded* with force of a 120kg bomb, tho the crater is small and believable for a fast (~700kn) falling ~6t vehicle. luckily nobody hurt.
2/ i have speculated whether it was perhaps a scuttling charge (to destroy any recordings & devices) or maybe even fuel fumes.
"War is Boring" with an even more interesting tidbit: it's got *retro rockets* to facilitate soft landing, besides the chute.
3/ a brief ~1 second firing retro-rocket would sound pretty close to an explosion.
alternatively, a malfunctioning one going off during the crash could conceivable explode (deflagration) like a rather potent explosive charge.
i've checked out @emeriticus's tweets and i am disappointed.
2/ two particularly bad tweets stand out:
"but what about america?" and "it's time to eat the rich".
3/ bonus bad content:
>untrained
nope, most ukrainian men go through full military training in the course of their mandatory conscription; those got rifles.
>making stuff up
russians fired on nuclear power plant that's larger than Chernobyl. the risks, if small, were there.