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12 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

That's the type of information - even the stuff you disagree with - you need to file for future reference.  Because I did tell you that changing the voting rules would be far worse than leaving them alone and it is precisely BECAUSE they changed the voting rules that such a large slice of your country's population is still not ready to say that election was on the level.

We disagree with the casuality, which is probably why didn't pay attention and will disregard it now. Had Trump simply conceded, it would have been a normal election with no consequences. I think even you would admit that. If not, then please use your impressive powers of prediction to tell me how that would have played out.

Adding additional voting by mail opportunities didn't undermine democracy, the guy who blatantly and repeatedly lied and attempted to overturn a legitimate election is why there were issues on Jan 6th.

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16 hours ago, R011 said:

You mean the Soviet Union didn't actually invade Afghanistan?    The Taliban didn't let Al Qaeda operate freely resulting in the 9/11 attacks?

No. Soviet Union didn't actually invade Afghanistan – but followed multiple requests of local Gov to step into their civil war (it was ~20 of this requests). By the way when Russian contingent moved into Syria on request of local Gov,  this Gov was in far worse situation then Afghan one when Soviets came. 
As far as I remember,  9/11 attacks were carried by people of non-Afghan origin, pilots were US-trained. So there is hardly strong link between Taliban cover and terror acts themselves (after all Bin Laden was finally killed while hiding in another country, by the way long-time US ally). Anyway, if you insist on Taliban role – the very existence of Taliban was sideeffect of US campaign to support anti-Soviet forces in Afghan civil war.
 

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5 hours ago, Josh said:

Had Trump simply conceded, it would have been a normal election with no consequences. I think even you would admit that. 

Had the Democrats not altered the rules in a way that almost half the country found suspicious and alarming, Trump's message would have fallen on deaf ears.   

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8 hours ago, Pleb said:

Yeah, Syria is the first one that comes to my mind when I think about potential CIA false flags. Remember the white helmets mannequin challenge video? Wtf. Second one is Libya 1986 because of the whole ordeal around Edwin Wilson. 

The White Helmets were getting funding from a number of Western governments and NGOs.  They were hardly a CIA front, though I can see why RT and Assad might want you to think so.  The Wilson affair was not only forty years ago, but if a CIA operation, not a false flag one.

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2 hours ago, glenn239 said:

Had the Democrats not altered the rules in a way that almost half the country found suspicious and alarming, Trump's message would have fallen on deaf ears.   

One third of the country found voting suspicious and alarming because they were told by the former president and thier sole news source the voting was suspicious. It would not have mattered if mail in voting was banned; anything short of a Trump win was going to produce suspicion if all of your news sources and the former president you voted for says it was a fraud.

 

answer my question: Trump admits defeat. What happens?

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2 hours ago, R011 said:

The White Helmets were getting funding from a number of Western governments and NGOs.  They were hardly a CIA front, though I can see why RT and Assad might want you to think so.  The Wilson affair was not only forty years ago, but if a CIA operation, not a false flag one.

Also a couple of coups credited to the CIA seem more along the lines that they knew it was going to happen and just didn’t stop it.

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44 minutes ago, Josh said:

Also a couple of coups credited to the CIA seem more along the lines that they knew it was going to happen and just didn’t stop it.

The Greek Colonels' coup seems to be one of those.  I rather suspect, for instance, the Chilean Army would have ousted Allende even if the US was uninvolved.  It didn't seem to take much prompting to get rid of Diem either.

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I think as much as the US, China, or USSR, or Russia think they have power, at the end of the day if the people don't want change you have to roll them over with tanks. I'm sure the CIA funded 40 different coup attempts, and I agree that is not ok. But I think their few 'successes' were simply things that would have happened anyway.

If you want to change the political trajectory of a nation, Prague and Tiananmen Square point to the the amount of physical effort than is involved. I'm willing to bet that the reason that we don't have Chinese posters is because we post words like 'Tiananmen'.

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I'm always coming back to the West vs. East German example of how democratic and authoritarian systems can handle mass protests.

Peace movement: Started in West Germany over the question of rearmament after WW II. There was broad public opposition from leftists, the churches, unions, intellectuals and veterans against the establishment of the Bundeswehr, and particularly its possible equipment with nuclear weapons. By early 1958, protests reached 1.5 million. From 1960 there were annual Easter marches for peace and disarmament, with a total of 300,000 participants in 1968. The NATO Double-Track Decision lead to a significant uptick; half a million congregated in Bonn during Ronald Reagan's visit in 1982.

1983 saw a total of 1.3 million on one day, with a continuous human chain formed from Stuttgart to Ulm. There were peaceful blockades of nuclear weapon sites, including by a group of 20 serving judges. A "Generals for Peace" group of retired NATO generals formed, which was later found to be under direct Stasi influence, a case where the traditional charge of conservatives that the peace movement was a communist front was actually true. Another critical group was the "Darmstadt Signal" formed by active Bundeswehr officers in 1983, which still exists. The republic survived.

Anti-imperialism: Emerged from the student movement of the 60s demanding more political and societal liberties, and criticizing a lack of addressing the Nazi past, the continuation of Third Reich officials in influential positions, relationships with authoritarian states, the Vietnam war, etc. Students waved Mao's red book and chanted "Ho-Ho-Ho-Chi-Minh". A protest against the Shah of Persia to West Berlin on 2 June 1967 radicalized the movement after Shah supporters and police attacked the crowd and a student was shot dead by an officer (who later turned out to have been a Stasi informer, though it was never shown to be a deliberate provocative act). A right-winger also shot and severely wounded student leader Rudi Dutschke in 1968.

This inspired various terrorist groups like the "Movement 2 June" and Red Army Faction, the latter committing its last attack in 1993. There was a sharp divide in society between some who demanded a reintroduction of capital punishment for terrorists, and sympathizers in arts and academia. There was the introduction of new police powers and legal measures which stirred fear of a police state among leftists. There was an attempt to ban suspected sympathizers from public service, which was eventually mostly countermanded by courts. The head of the Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigations himself noted that the state couldn't just rely on repression, but would have to address the grievances of the younger generation. The republic survived.

Environmentalism: Particularly directed against nuclear energy in the 70s. There were regular six-digit protests at nuclear sites which sometimes turned violent. Some warned of the coming authoritarian "atomic state". "Mostly peaceful" protests against nuclear waste transports to the Gorleben storage site, accompanied by huge police deployments, continued until a decade ago. Among the other issues which gained similar national attention was the construction of a new runway at Frankfurt Airport in the 80s.

There were mass protests against the required cutting of trees which were latched onto by radical left-wingers; there was destruction of electric lines and a bomb attack on the house of the airport CEO. In 1987, two police officers were killed and nine others wounded when shot at with a pistol which had been taken from another officer at an anti-nuclear protest in Hanau the previous year. More recently, environmentalist action has been focussed on climate change and against strip-mining of brown coal, like in the Hambach Forest where an activist died after he fell from a treehouse during a police action to clear a protest camp in 2018. The republic survived.

Anti-globalism: Initially a new playground for the radical left since the 90s. Notable recent mass protests with several 10,000 and some or a lot of violence, burning, smashing and looting include those against the G8 summit of 2007 in Heiligendamm, where some controversy arose over use of Bundeswehr Recce Tornados and Fennek scout cars for surveillance; against the 2015 opening of the new seat of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt; and against the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg. The republic survived.

Welfare reform: The "Hartz IV" reform including reduction of unemployment benefits led to weekly protests initially organized by the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany from 2003, particularly in East Germany. At the top, over 200,000 participated in October 2004. As usually, resulting changes occurred not immediately in politics, but in the parliamentary landscape; just like the Greens had emerged from the peace and environmental movements in the 80s, the reforms caused disappointed social democratic voters and union members to migrate to the Left Party which formed from the East German Party of Democratic Socialism (ex SED) and West German Voting Alternative for Social Justice in 2007. The republic survived.

Various recent grievances: Protests against the reconstruction of Stuttgart Central Station in 2010 were a harbinger of a new development. Not necessarily the young and left-leaning, but middle-aged of various if any particular polical background, frequently latched onto by the far right, though other things are the same - discontent with political representation and societal development, warnings of an emerging dictatorship, etc. This includes the weekly PEGIDA marches in 2014/15 which topped out at 35,000 in Dresden alone; and the ongoing anti-COVID protests. Established politics and media lament violence against police, ideological involvement from authoritarian regimes and that supporters shouldn't be in public service, while others warn that not everyone who attends over worries where the nation is headed is a political extremist. It's all very familiar from the 70s. So far, the republic survives.

Now for East Germany - in 1953, the government raised the work quotas to counter the strained economic situation, which included a lack of goods and even food. On 12 June, protests started in rural areas. On the 16th, workers at two Berlin construction sites went on strike. The following day between 400,000 and 1.5 million protested across the DDR, stormed administrative buildings, police stations and prisons. Dozens of police officers were hurt while others joined the protesters; a Stasi informer was beat to death. The DDR government fled to the Soviet military HQ, declared the quota raise revoked, but of course blamed the unrest on foreign provocateurs. The Soviets declared martial law and sent in the tanks. Three dozen protesters were killed and about two dozen more sentenced to death by East German and Soviet tribunals. The republic survived.

In 1989, protests emerged against the official fasification of municipal election results in May. From August, thousands of DDR citizens used vacations in Hungary and Czechoslovakia to flee to the West. In September, weekly peaceful demonstrations began in Leipzig which grew to half a million participants by early November. The republic crumbled.

Edited by BansheeOne
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Over half century ago , while I was still a child , I recall hearing a number of older people offer explanation for the great disaster that had befallen Russia : " Men have forgotten God ; That 's why all this happened " Since then I have spent well nigh fifty years working on the history of our revolution ; in the process I have read hundreds of books , collected hundreds of personal testimonies , and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval . But If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up to sixty million people , I could not put it more accurately than to repeat : " Men have forgotten God ; That 's why all this happened ..... Alexander Solzenitsyn.

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The problem as far as Russia was concerned, the Church was one of the pillars of the Romanov Establishment. Fairly inevitably, if one became discredited, then the other would follow. Id say it was less a case of Russia forgetting God (There were not so many athiests as you think, and I think even Marshall Zhukov actually requested for an Orthodox Christian burial in his will) than the Orthodox Church not giving itself enough sea room from the Romanovs.  If the Church hadnt been such a discredited institution along with the Royal Family, its likely someone would have fought for it, which seemingly they did not.

There are  rumours that when Moscow was threatened in 1941, they carried some religious Icons (Or some religious relics I cant recall) and flew them around Moscow by aeroplane, to create some kind of mystical cordon sanitaire against the Fascists. Doesn't matter whether they did it or not, but it does say something that the Soviets believed it and it seeming brought them some comfort. And I guess it did work when all is said and done.

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52 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

The problem as far as Russia was concerned, the Church was one of the pillars of the Romanov Establishment. Fairly inevitably, if one became discredited, then the other would follow. Id say it was less a case of Russia forgetting God (There were not so many athiests as you think, and I think even Marshall Zhukov actually requested for an Orthodox Christian burial in his will) than the Orthodox Church not giving itself enough sea room from the Romanovs.  If the Church hadnt been such a discredited institution along with the Royal Family, its likely someone would have fought for it, which seemingly they did not.

There are  rumours that when Moscow was threatened in 1941, they carried some religious Icons (Or some religious relics I cant recall) and flew them around Moscow by aeroplane, to create some kind of mystical cordon sanitaire against the Fascists. Doesn't matter whether they did it or not, but it does say something that the Soviets believed it and it seeming brought them some comfort. And I guess it did work when all is said and done.

Good people know God from government, evil people think government is God. 

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I mean the state was by 1905 not on such good terms with the Orthodox faith, look at the Bloody Sunday massacre of the Gaponists.

From wiki:
 

Quote

The march on the Winter Palace was not a revolutionary or rebellious act, though it was done against the permission of public authorities. Political groups, such as the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and the Social Revolutionaries disapproved of the procession due to its lack of political demands.[14] Father Gapon even encouraged his followers to tear up leaflets that supported revolutionary aims.[15] The majority of Russian workers retained their traditional conservative values of Orthodoxy, faith in the autocracy, and indifference to political life.[16] The workers of St. Petersburg wished to receive fair treatment and better working conditions; they decided, therefore, to petition the tsar in hopes he would act on it. In their eyes, the tsar was their representative who would help them if he was made aware of their situation. God appointed the tsar, therefore the tsar had an obligation to protect the people and do what was best for them. Their petition was written in subservient terms and ended with a reminder to the tsar of his obligation to the people of Russia and their resolve to do what it took to ensure their pleas were met.[17] It concluded: "And if Thou dost not so order and dost not respond to our pleas we will die here in this square before Thy palace". Gapon, who had an ambiguous relationship with the Tsarist authorities, sent a copy of the petition to the Minister of the Interior together with a notification of his intention to lead a procession of members of his workers' movement to the Winter Palace on the following Sunday.[18]

Edited by KV7
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45 minutes ago, KV7 said:

I mean the state was by 1905 not on such good terms with the Orthodox faith, look at the Bloody Sunday massacre of the Gaponists.

From wiki:
 

IIRC, Gapon was something of a loose cannon even inside the Church. I think he was subsequently defrocked or left.

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1 minute ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

IIRC, Gapon was something of a loose cannon even inside the Church. I think he was subsequently defrocked or left.

What he himself believed or how he was received by the church is somewhat irrelevant, and he was actually an Okhrana spy, for which he was later executed by the SRs. He was close to the feelings of the mass of believers though.

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7 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Russians have been spamming things like that since November.

I have contacted friend of mine who is currently in Lugansk area. The answer is “Yasinovataya has been such a place since the beginning of 2017 that it is considered amazing when there is NO shooting there. As for our site, we are surprisingly quiet.

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