Russian toll in Syria battle was 300 killed and wounded: sources

A Russian military doctor said around 100 had been killed, and a source who knows several of the fighters said the death toll was in excess of 80 men.

The timing of the casualties coincided with a battle on Feb. 7 near the Syrian city of Deir al-Zor where, according to U.S. officials and associates of the fighters involved, U.S.-led coalition forces attacked forces aligned with Moscow’s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Russian officials said five citizens may have been killed but they had no relation to Russia’s armed forces.

The clashes show Moscow is more deeply involved in Syria militarily than it has said, and risks being drawn into direct confrontation with the United States in Syria.

The casualties are the highest that Russia has suffered in a single battle since fierce clashes in Ukraine in 2014 claimed more than 100 fighters’ lives. Moscow denies sending soldiers and volunteers to Ukraine and has never confirmed that figure.

The wounded, who have been medically evacuated from Syria in the past few days, have been sent to four Russian military hospitals, according to five sources familiar with the matter.

The military doctor, who works in a Moscow military hospital and was directly involved in the treatment of wounded men evacuated from Syria, said that as of Saturday evening there were more than 50 such patients in his hospital, of which around 30 percent were seriously wounded.

The doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to disclose information about casualties, said at least three planeloads of injured fighters were flown to Moscow between last Friday and Monday morning.

He said they were flown back on specially equipped military cargo planes which can each accommodate two or three intensive care cases and several dozen less severely wounded patients.

Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, said initial information was that five Russian citizens in the area of the battle may have been killed, but they were not Russian troops. She said reports of tens or hundreds of Russian casualties were disinformation inspired by Russia’s opponents.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-casualtie/russian-toll-in-syria-battle-was-300-killed-and-wounded-sources-idUSKCN1FZ2DZ

Marxist Feminism’s Ruined Lives by Mallory Millett

It was 1969. Kate invited me to join her for a gathering at the home of her friend, Lila Karp. They called the assemblage a “consciousness-raising-group,” a typical communist exercise, something practiced in Maoist China. We gathered at a large table as the chairperson opened the meeting with a back-and-forth recitation, like a Litany, a type of prayer done in Catholic Church. But now it was Marxism, the Church of the Left, mimicking religious practice:

“Why are we here today?” she asked.
“To make revolution,” they answered.
“What kind of revolution?” she replied.
“The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded.
“By destroying the American family!” they answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” she came back.
“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied.
“By taking away his power!”
“How do we do that?”
“By destroying monogamy!” they shouted.
“How can we destroy monogamy?”

Their answer left me dumbstruck, breathless, disbelieving my ears. Was I on planet earth? Who were these people?

“By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!” they resounded.

They proceeded with a long discussion on how to advance these goals by establishing The National Organization of Women. It was clear they desired nothing less than the utter deconstruction of Western society. The upshot was that the only way to do this was “to invade every American institution. Every one must be permeated with ‘The Revolution’”: The media, the educational system, universities, high schools, K-12, school boards, etc.; then, the judiciary, the legislatures, the executive branches and even the library system.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/240037/marxist-feminisms-ruined-lives-mallory-millett

Can Ukraine Survive Without the IMF?

Tension is rising between Ukraine’s administration and the IMF over Ukraine’s anti-corruption failure.

Here’s an argument in the UBJ against the perception by some that Ukraine doesn’t need the IMF.

https://www.theubj.com/news/view/can-ukraine-survive-without-the-imf

Me? I’m torn. Ukraine definitely needs help fighting corruption, but I’m deeply suspicious of organizations like the IMF. There’s an argument to be made that international help stabilizes Ukraine’s existing regime that the corruption rackets they run.

US strike in Syria kills Russian fighters in first such clash

On 10 February, a US drone destroyed an advancing Russian-made T-72 tank from the “same hostile force,” the US military said on Tuesday.

While reports have varied widely, claiming anywhere from a handful to more than a hundred Russians were killed and describing them alternately as military troops or private contractors, the 7 February clash nonetheless appears to have been the deadliest between US and Russian citizens since the Cold War.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/13/us-strike-syria-kills-russian-fighters-first-clash/

Climbing

For anyone who’s climbed any length of time, this is totally not a big deal. Nevertheless, I’m pretty proud to now be completing 5c’s and attempting 6a’s. I think I can safely say that I’m transitioning from beginner to intermediate. :-)

The Making of the Russian Nation

In a masterful dissection of Russian history (Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation, 2017) Harvard professor Serhii Plokhy focuses on the sources of identity adopted by Russia’s rulers since the Principality of Moscow launched its drive for territorial expansion in the 15th century.

Plokhy asserts that Russia’s “myth of origin” was the medieval state of Kyivan Rus—a multi-Slavic kingdom centered in modern-day Ukraine and established 200 years before Moscow appeared as a small town located in an outlying province. The Rus were a Norse tribe that founded the ruling Rurik dynasty in Kyiv, but the “Rus” name was subsequently appropriated by Moscow in one of the earliest recorded examples of identity theft. Muscovite rulers feigned descent from the Ruriks and claimed Kyiv as the birthplace of the Russian monarchy, state, and church. This fraudulent history became the legitimizing narrative for Russian tsars when the small autocratic Muscovite polity began its imperial adventure in the 15th century.

Moscow’s earliest propagandists depicted the three developing East Slavic nations (Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian) as “tribes” of one Russian nation. Moscow’s rulers consolidated their claims to dominate all Eastern Slavs by declaring Russia as the “Third Rome” or successor to Christian Byzantium, which was extinguished by the Muslim Turks in the 15th century. For the next 400 years, Muscovy annexed its neighbors’ territories and prevented the emergence of other East Slavic states. Its Russification campaign was crafted to eradicate the distinct identities and languages of neighboring Slavic peoples, particularly the Ukrainians, who had a more direct claim to Kyivan Rus.

http://cepa.org/EuropesEdge/War-in-Ukraine

Very close idea to my essay: A Look at Russian Civilization: Power, Truth, Trust, and War .

I like to state is this way: “Russia is an empire seeking legitimacy through nationhood. Ukraine is a nation seeking legitimacy through statehood.”

From Kruty to the Maidan

On January 29, 1918, in a battle near the train station at Kruty, some 80 miles northeast of Kyiv, a small contingent of Ukrainian forces – composed mainly of a student battalion of the Sich Riflemen and a company from the Khmelnytsky Cadet School – faced a superior Russian Bolshevik force of 4,000 men. The Ukrainian contingent succeeded in blocking the Bolshevik advance on Kyiv for several days. The young Ukrainians’ resistance also enabled the Ukrainian National Republic to conclude the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, a major accomplishment as a result of which the UNR was recognized by the Central Powers despite the Bolsheviks’ attempts to represent Ukraine.

But the losses at Kruty were great. After several days of intense fighting, the Ukrainian contingent was forced to retreat, and 300 young men died defending their country. They were surrounded and slaughtered, noted the late Dr. Orest Subtelny in his book “Ukraine: A History,” and their deaths “earned for them a place of honor in the Ukrainian national pantheon.” As the Encyclopedia of Ukraine underscores, the battle of Kruty “is commemorated as a symbol of patriotic self-sacrifice and is immortalized in numerous literary and publicistic works.”

http://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/from-kruty-to-the-maidan/

Book- Alain Brossat and Sylvie Klingberg’s Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism

Full Review here: https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2018/01/27/a-review-of-revolutionary-yiddishland-a-history-of-jewish-radicalism-part-1-of-3/

My excerpts below:

Alain Brossat and Sylvie Klingberg’s Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism was first published in France in 1983. A revised edition appeared in 2009 and an English translation in 2016. Intended for a mainly Jewish readership, the book is essentially an apologia for Jewish communist militants in Eastern Europe in the early to mid-twentieth century. Brossat, a Jewish lecturer in philosophy at the University of Paris, and Klingberg, an Israeli sociologist, interviewed dozens of former revolutionaries living in Israel in the early 1980s. In their testimony they recalled “the great scenes” of their lives such as “the Russian Civil War, the building of the USSR, resistance in the camps, the war in Spain, the armed struggle against Nazism, and the formation of socialist states in Eastern Europe.”[i] While each followed different paths, “the constancy of these militants’ commitment was remarkable, as was the firmness of the ideas and aspirations that underlay it.” Between the two world wars, communist militancy was “the center of gravity of their lives.”[ii]

Continue reading

Bolsheviks whitewashed Kharkiv Impressionist artist Mykhailo Tkachenko from history

Tkachenko was well known and appreciated at the end of the nineteenth century in both France and the Russian Empire. However, he subsequently vanished from the art scene for many decades, only to resurface relatively recently. In essence, Tkachenko was a victim of changing political tides. He died at the relatively early age of 55 in 1916 as a respected member of the Impressionism movement. However, following the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet regime rejected the “decadent” art of the “bourgeois” world. This left the artistic legacy of Tkachenko consigned to oblivion. Meanwhile in Paris, Tkachenko’s works were absorbed into private collections and there were no follow-up exhibitions or publications to sustain his reputation. . . .

While brilliantly straddling the two artistic worlds of the Tsarist Empire and France, Tkachenko remained very committed to his native Ukraine. He drew inspiration from the beautiful landscapes and village scenes that figure so prominently in many of his Impressionistic works, while taking an active interest in Ukrainian history. According to Rubin, Tkachenko, “repeatedly returned to Ukraine in order to paint Ukrainian scenes, and to do them in the more progressive, novel style he had learned from the Impressionists. In other words, he brought Impressionism to Ukraine.”

Tkachenko also brought Ukraine to French Impressionism. As you look at the catalogues and reviews of the many exhibitions and works from his 20 years in Paris, it becomes clear that most of his art drew on Ukrainian themes. Art critics also noted this source of inspiration and routinely identified Tkachenko with Ukraine. As if to illustrate this connection, the two works for which he won gold medals in 1911-12 were entitled “In Ukraine” and “View of Poltava Province”.

Tkachenko was a close friend of another painter from the Kharkiv area, Serhiy Vasylkivsky, who achieved fame with his paintings of Ukrainian Cossacks.

http://bunews.com.ua/lifestyle/item/art-history-time-to-rediscover-the-forgotten-ukrainian-genius-of-french-impressionism

The bear that ate the honey.

I suppose it’s normal for kids to keep impressing and delighting their parents with new abilities and understandings. Their bodies and brains develop so quickly.

Yesterday, I joked with my wife: “Who finished the honey? I think a little bear must have snuck into our kitchen, climbed up into the cabinets, and ate it all.” Then I turned to Danylo.and said, “If you ever see him, catch him.”

He went to the bedroom and returned with the big stuffed bear relatives had gifted him.

We couldn’t believe it. Though he can name some animals and other things from flash cards, I would never have guessed he understood a single word of our conversation.

Did Marx call for the extermination of ethnic minorities?

It seems like the often referred-to quote, popularized in the movie “Soviet Story” was written by Engels, not Marx. It also mistranslated on word into “racial trash” to make it seem worse.

The whole idea that Karl Marx called ethnic minorities “racial trash” and that he wanted to exterminate them (i.e. Scottish Highlanders, Bretons, Basques, South Slavs, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs and Czechs) comes from a book titled “Politics and Literature in Modern Britain” and an article in the “Encounter”, both by literary historian George Watson, and published in 1977 and 1984 respectively. Also, in the film “The Soviet Story” Watson is the voice behind the phrase: “[Karl Marx was] the ancestor of the modern political genocide”. This is a popular extract from Watson’s work that can be found on the internet:

In the January and February 1849 issues of his journal ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’, Karl Marx published articles calling for the extermination of whole races in Europe. These articles were included in a book of the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin published in Germany during 1902 and again in 1913. It is most likely that Engels wrote them. This socialist programme considered the Slav nations to be ‘counter-revolutionary’. The Germans, Poles and Magyars (Hungarians) were considered to be ‘the bearers of progress’. The rest must go:

“The chief mission of all other races and peoples, large and small, is to perish in the revolutionary holocaust”.

It was explained that the Slavs had failed to pursue essential historic evolution, so were therefore counter-revolutionary. All European countries contain ‘left-overs of earlier inhabitants’, now rightly brought into subjugation by more advanced peoples. Amongst such ‘racial trash’ (Voekerabfall) were listed Scottish Highlanders, Bretons, Basques, South Slavs (Slovenes, Croats, Serbs) and Czechs.

“Until its complete extermination or loss of national status, this racial trash always becomes the most fanatical bearer there is of counter-revolution, and it remains that. That is because its entire existence is nothing more than a protest against a great historical revolution. … The next world war will cause not only reactionary classes and dynasties, but also entire reactionary peoples, to disappear from the earth. And that too is progress”.

As Marx and Engels aged, they took greater interest in Eugenics and Social Darwinism suggesting that progress was interpretable in racial terms.

For what I found, the article to which Watson is referring to is titled ‘The Magyar Struggle’, and was published in number 194 of the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ journal on the 13 of January 1849 (which can be found in full at: http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1849/01/13.htm). By reading this article you can clearly see that the main problem with Watson’s theory is that Marx did not write that article!… Engels did!!! That’s a huge mistake for an unbiased literary historian -though he latter seems to reluctantly admit the possibility that it was Engels, and not Marx, wrote it-.

Then we have Watson’s claim that Marx (Engels in any case) called for the extermination of whole races in Europe. Of course, if we pick and choose phrases from the article and take them out of context, then it does look like Engels (not Marx) wanted to get rid of certain ethnic minorities (and not races). But if we read the whole article it seems clear that Engels was talking about those ethnic minorities in the context of the European Revolution of 1848 (a year previous to the publication of the article), on the role that these played in previous conflicts (as fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and supporters of European monarchies), and on them being taken into account in any future revolution as dangerous reactionaries and counter revolutionaries; and not because they were from an ethnic minority or from a different race, as Watson tries to make us believe.

Then we also have the issue of the “Völkerabfälle”, which by the way, doesn’t even mean “racial trash”; it literally translates as “residual fragments of people”, and this is how it’s translated in the English version of the “The Magyar Struggle”. This term was not used by Marx (as he didn’t even write the article in the first place), and it was neither from Engels. It was from Hegel! as Engels explains in the article.

Therefore, it looks to me like the answer to the question on the title of this post is clear: Absolutely not; Marx did not call for the extermination of any ethnic minorities or races. This rumour is nothing more than false anti-communist propaganda and a deliberate and malicious attempt to demonise Karl Mark. As Latvian political scientist and cultural commentator Ivars Ījabs explained: “To present Karl Marx as the progenitor of modern genocide is simply to lie”.

https://communism-explained.blogspot.com/2010/05/did-marx-call-for-extermination-of.html

***

We do however have this quote from Marx, which is not genocidal, but certainly murderous:

“There is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terrorism.”
– Karl Marx, “The Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna”, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Nov. 7, 1848.

Karl Marx Was a Pretty Bad Person

When Karl Marx died in March 1883, only about a dozen people attended his funeral at a cemetery in London, England, including family members. Yet, for more than a century after his death – and even until today – there have been few thinkers whose ideas have been as influential on various aspects of modern world history. Indeed, as some have said, no other faith or belief-system has had such a worldwide impact as Marxism, since the birth of Christianity and the rise of Islam. . . .

Marx’s only real jobs during his lifetime were as occasional reporters for or editors of newspapers and journals most of which usually closed in a short period of time, either because of small readership and limited financial support or political censorship by the governments under which he was living.

His political activities as a writer and activist resulted in his having to move several times, including to Paris and Brussels, finally ending up in London in 1849, where he lived for the rest of his life, with occasional trips back to the European continent.

Though Marx was “middle class” and even “Victorian” in many of his everyday cultural attitudes, this did not stop him from breaking his marriage vows and committing adultery. He had sex enough times with the family maid that she bore him an illegitimate son – and this under the same roof with his wife and his legitimate children (of which he had seven, with only three living to full adulthood).

But he would not allow his illegitimate child to visit their mother in his London house whenever he was at home, and the boy could only enter the house through the kitchen door in the back of the house. In addition, he had his friend, longtime financial benefactor, and intellectual collaborator, Fredrick Engels, claim parentage of the child so to avoid any social embarrassment falling upon himself due to his infidelity. . . .

In temperament, Marx could be cruel and authoritarian. He treated people with whom he disagreed in a crude and mean way, often ridiculing them in public gatherings. Marx had no hesitation about being a hypocrite; when he wanted something from someone he would flatter them in letters or conversation, but then attack them in nasty language behind their backs to others. He often used racial slurs and insulting words to describe the mannerisms or appearance of his opponents in the socialist movement.

For instance, in an 1862 letter to Frederick Engels, Marx described leading nineteenth-century German socialist, Ferdinand Lassalle, in the following way:

The Jewish Nigger Lassalle … fortunately departs at the end of this week … It is now absolutely clear to me that, as both the shape of his head and his hair texture shows – he descends from the Negros who joined Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or grandmother on the paternal side hybridized with a nigger). Now this combination of Germanness and Jewishness with a primarily Negro substance creates a strange product. The pushiness of the fellow is also nigger-like.

. . . .

Many found Marx’s personal appearance and manner off-putting or even revolting. In 1850, a spy for the Prussian police visited Marx’s home in London under the pretense of a German revolutionary. The report the spy wrote was shared with the British Ambassador in Berlin. The report said, in part:

[Marx] leads the existence of a Bohemian intellectual. Washing, grooming and changing his linen are things he does rarely, and he is often drunk. Though he is frequently idle for days on end, he will work day and night with tireless endurance when he has much work to do.

He has no fixed time for going to sleep or waking up. He often stays up all night and then lies down fully clothed on the sofa at midday, and sleeps till evening, untroubled by the whole world coming or going through [his room] …

There is not one clean and solid piece of furniture. Everything is broken, tattered and torn, with half an inch of dust over everything and the greatest disorder everywhere …

When you enter Marx’s room smoke and tobacco fumes make your eyes water … Everything is dirty and covered with dust, so that to sit down becomes a hazardous business. Here is a chair with three legs. On another chair the children are playing cooking. This chair happens to have four legs. This is the one that is offered to the visitor, but the children’s cooking has not been wiped away and if you sit down you risk a pair of trousers.

. . . .

He stated that the goal of the organization was “the overthrow of the privileged classes,” initially in cooperation with the petty and liberal “bourgeois” political parties. Marx warned that these democratic parties only want to establish a liberal agenda of reduced government spending, more secure private property rights and some welfare programs for the poor. Instead, Marx said,

Its our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world …

Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.

In the process of overthrowing the liberal democratic order that assumes power following the end of the monarchical rulers, Marx said that the revolutionary proletariat needed to form armed “councils” outside of the democratic government’s authority and control. This is the very method Lenin insisted upon in Russia in the form of “Soviets” after the abdication of the Russian czar . . .

In addition, Marx said, the communist leaders must work to ensure that the immediate revolutionary excitement is not suddenly suppressed after the victory. On the contrary,

… it must be sustained as long as possible. Far from opposing the so-called excesses – instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with which hateful memories are associated – the workers’ party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction.

In other words, Marx was insisting upon fostering a frenzy of “vengeance against hated individuals” that clearly meant terror and mass murder. And this, too, was the signpost that Lenin followed in assuring the triumph of his revolution in Russia. . . .

http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/karl-marx-was-pretty-bad-person

See also:

Genocide quotes

Privatbank fraud cost Ukrain $5.5 B

The investigation was part of Ukraine’s commitment to the IMF “to perform a forensic audit of Privatbank’s operations to identify whether wrongdoing or bad banking practices took place prior to the bank’s nationalization,“ the NBU reported. Recall, Privatbank was declared insolvent and nationalized in December 2016, with total funds spent for its bailout having reached UAH 185 bln (over USD 6.8 bln), including a UAH 155 bln (USD 4.2 bln) contribution from the state and the rest from the bank’s bailed-in creditors.

The results of the Kroll investigation have already been sent to Ukrainian law enforcement bodies and Ukraine’s international partners, Deputy NBU Head Kateryna Rozhkova said during the report’s Jan. 16 presentation. “We are sure that the investigation’s conclusions will help bring the Privatbank case to an end,” she said. In response, former shareholder Ihor Kolomoyskyi called the report “a rant that makes no sense in commenting on.” In his comments to the lb.ua news site, he stressed that the alleged “fraud” has yet to be proven, calling the presentation just part of the NBU’s attempts to distract public attention from other scandals.

Alexander Paraschiy: According to the NBU, Privatbank was using a scheme to collect deposits to finance the businesses of the bank’s shareholders. This “business model,” in our view, was typical for some other failed banks, including Oleg Bakhmatyuk’s VAB Bank and Finansova Initsiatyva; Kostiantyn Zhevago’s Finance & Credit Bank; and even Platinum Bank, which was headed by Rozhkova herself. In its activities, Privatbank was much bigger and possibly much more creative than the mentioned banks. Therefore, it generated much bigger losses for the state and it will be much harder to prove the bank did something unlawful.

http://concorde.ua/rs/daily/item_72598/

Kolomoiski needs to go to jail. Ukraine can’t let this slide.

Yet More Evidence of high level Russian Military coordination in Donbas

SBU releases intercepted comms between PMC Wagner chief, Russian army General on Donbas incursion

The Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, has uploaded on its YouTube channel audio files of intercepted communications between Dmitry Utkin, head of the private military company (PMC) Wagner, the Kremlin’s major tool in hybrid warfare worldwide, and General of the Russian Armed Forces, Yevgeny Nikiforov (call sign “Tambov”).

https://www.unian.info/war/2360147-sbu-releases-intercepted-communications-between-russian-pmc-wagner-chief-russian-army-general-on-donbas-incursion.html

Stalin’s Final Speech 1952 [Subtitled]

Paraphrased:

The struggle to preserve peace.

Soviet Union represents peace loving people all over the world. They support us, here are examples.

It is a global struggle for peace.

In return, we much aid their struggle for liberation.

We faced the fascists almost single handedly. Now, from China to Korea to Czechoslovakia, militaries have appeared in “people’s democracies” ready to face a any threat.

Under Tsardom any step toward progress was a grave crime.

The bourgeois is weaker now. Reactionary. They no longer have support of the people, no longer portray themselves as liberal.

Full rights for the exploited majority.

The banner must by raised by you to gain support for the majority.

Previously the bourgeois supported rights and independence of nations “above all”, now there is no trace of the national principle. They sell national rights and independence for dollars.

Sovereignty has been tossed overboard.

If you want to be patriots, there is no one else to do it (except communists).

Long live our fraternal parties.