Quote (kusotarre1 @ Sep 14 2022 12:30pm)

It really wasn't. Korea's trajectory was decided on the other side of the planet. The internal state of the DPRK is largely a consequence of what happened there.

You really think that the DPRK today would be in the state it is without 20% of their population being slaughtered by American weapons, without the Washington-orchestrated famine after the fall of the USSR?

These things matter much more than Kim writing a book about how to direct movies.

Quote (thesnipa @ Sep 14 2022 10:34am)

there are of course outside factors that can enable a "great man", but i think its silly to only count a country as qualifying as a "great man" country if it exists purely in a vacuum.

its just semantics to take the theory as literal, seems overly pedantic.

all im saying is IF there is a modern case for GMT it's NK.

Quote (kusotarre1 @ Sep 14 2022 12:40pm)

GMT is not when a person is revered or ascribed magical powers, I really have no idea what you're talking about.

GMT is the theory that certain people are so individually powerful that they bend history to their will and change it's course on the grand scale of countries and continents. Kim Il Sung wasn't even born when the wars that he would fight as a man were starting. His country was forged by a rising imperialist power on the other side of the planet. That power was partially defeated by a huge country next door helping him. His country was subject to sanctions completely outside his control.

Kim Il Sung is an awful choice to argue GMT is valid, lol.

I'm fairly convinced you two just read the three words "Great" "Man" and "Theory" and decided it meant when a dude gets his picture in every house somewhere.

Quote (THCHunter @ Sep 14 2022 07:40pm)

I don't think its Russia vs Ukraine as both leader are with the evil man.

They just created a other massive event to let them do whatever they want outside of it and it gave them a reason to put most of the blame on.

no matter what happen on the field. Russia or them unfortunately have a ace in their sleeves


if they close gas before or during Winter its ... catastrophic to a extreme level for Europe but it will affect most of the world too as Europe companies will have to reduce their production of everything while creating a massive increase in price of everything with how expensive energy will be.




Now lets think would they prefer a fast war taking few days or a war that last months? Russia as a country would prefer few days but if Russia is part of the evil man group then lasting months is what they wanted.

Putin as a person without be biased by his bad actions or choice is clearly a really intelligent person.

So did he became too old and doesn't think straight or we are just blinded by what is really happening down there?

I know old people at 65-70 years old who start to show some mental health problem but I also know people over 85-90 year old who think twice as good as the one 20 year younger by how they live their life and I don't think how Putin live his life would let his brain go bad by his 70.


So did Putin really underestimate how hard the task would be or did he wanted that all along?

as good as he was as a strategist for all his life .. i can hardly believe he would fail like this.

Quote (kusotarre1 @ Sep 14 2022 08:00pm)

It's wrong to think of Russia as being controlled by Putin and Putin alone. It's a very bureaucratic country that takes it's rules and procedures fairly seriously, and Putin's strongest quality as a leader is that he's successfully wrangled a pretty disparate bunch of people and institutions into something resembling a workable state.

Great Man Theory isn't just silly in Russia, it's silly everywhere. History by and large isn't made by the whims of singular and unique people, but by the glacier-strength movement of capital flows, production forces, ideological currents, and so on. Single people or single weather events or whatnot can surely influence things (would China have carried out the Four Pests campaign without the particularities of Mao? Would Ukrainians today be so deranged without the bad springs and summers of 1929 and 1930?), but even then they are bounded by historical circumstance created by much larger things.

Quote (Santara @ Sep 14 2022 08:35am)

I think there's a subtle difference between de-Russification and not allowing Russification, which is the net effect of the 2019 law. Again, Russian isn't being banned.

I'll confirm at 3:1, my 1k vs your 3k that Crimea reverts to Ukrainian control with 2 years. Gentleman's wager?

Quote (kusotarre1 @ Sep 14 2022 08:45am)

If we're doing bets, how about a shorter term one?

The cities of Kherson, Mariupol, Donetsk and Luhansk will all still be under Russian control by the end of this year. If any of them aren't, you win. 1k, even odds?

Quote (ofthevoid @ Sep 13 2022 01:04pm)

Government that came about by abolishing the pro-Russian side after overthrowing the legitimately elected pro-Russian gov't. Don't you guys hyperventilate about Jan 6th daily? You realize this is that except the govt was actually overthrown and they succeeded with outside help right? It would be the equivalent of pro-Trump militias taking over and then declaring the democrat party sponsored by China so we need to deplatform them and silence any journalism that may agree with them.

Ukrainian isn't being banned in Russia. Russian however was being banned and pushed out from Ukraine prior to this war for years. You want to know why? Because they wanted to instill in people by force that they are not Russian and if you eradicate the language spoken publicly you can essentially de-russify those people (even though 30%+ of the population consider Russian a first language).

Your example about my daughter is retarded. Go back to the 2000s in Ukraine when it was in the pro-east sphere largely. No hordes of Russian rapists or pillagers. Largely content (when it comes to relations with neighbors) populace with no sense of hatred towards their neighbors to the east.

It's just funny how completely ignorant so many of you guys are when it comes reality on the ground in places outside your bubbles. You really think that a puppet regime that's pro-Russia would have resulted in some brutal occupation-like reality, completely not caring that literally a few years prior to that, that was the case with no such draconic reality.

edit: Confirmed bet.

Quote (thundercock @ Sep 14 2022 08:06pm)

Are you doing bets still? I'll take Kherson under Ukrainian control by Jan 1, 2023 if you're up for it.



LOL! Well, I suppose that's a way of looking at what happened.

I brought up your daughter because you seem to be all about "pacifism" when it suits you. I guarantee that you would want your daughter to execute her would-be-rapist so you're not fooling anyone. I also guarantee that if China invaded Russia, you would want Russia to fight back even if it meant that hundreds of thousands of Chinese/Russians were killed in the process.

I don't think Ukraine would have become Stalinist, but Ukrainians would be poorer, have less freedoms, etc. Over the next decade, Ukraine will have a higher GDP per capita than Russia, have more freedoms, etc. It's still going to be a shithole like the rest of Eastern Europe but that'll always been the case. Eastern Europeans will always be the inferior people.

Quote (ofthevoid @ Sep 14 2022 07:06pm)

You keep constructing some nonsensical world reality in which if Ukraine is under the Russian sphere of influence via some puppet that means daughters are getting raped. I'm telling you as someone that's been there when it was pro-Russian that this is bullshit. Pretty pathetic that you have to keep circling back to some "well they'll be raping your daughter" nonsense.