0pTicaL823
Germany and Japan teamed up again Russia? Hmmm, wonder what happened the last time Germany and Japan teamed up against Russia.

Rytis Kurcinskas
LOL  good one

Keanu Victor
Fair point but your forgetting, they had the USA and the commonwealth and the free forces of Europe on their side as well. The US, Europe and the commonwealth aren't on Russia's side anymore, they are imposing sanctions on them. Oh and Japan didn't actually team up with Germany against Russia, they were only at war for a couple of months in 1938-39 and the last month of the war. The rest of the time they were at peace. It was the US and the Chinese that defeated Japan, not Russia. They effectively did absolutely nothing to japan. Russia only won because of numbers, nothing more. For each man the Germans were 10 times better, in both skill and technology. Oh and now the people against Russia outnumber them and have better technology. So sucks to be you Russia.

SilverЪ Pozzoli
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Storm

It sucks to be you, Keanu :)

deathtokoalas
indeed. it's largely understood that truman ordered the nuclear attack in order to prevent japan from falling into soviet hands. also, it should be understood that the reason the americans entered the european theatre of the war in the first place (remember that they were attacked by japan, not germany) was to prevent the soviets from taking over western europe, which no doubt would have happened otherwise. the british are a slightly different story, but for all meaningful purposes the americans entered wwII against the soviets.

in today's world, germany and japan are both client states of washington. there's nothing really meaningful in the comparison.

0pTicaL823
I'm not Russian but I know for a fact the US did not end WWII. I was brought up believing the story of US dropping 2 atomic bombs and WWII was over, US contribution to WWII was minimal at best. The USSR took the brunt of the attack and did all the work, on BOTH western AND eastern fronts. The deciding factor was the Soviet's declaration of war on Japan and what I like to call the "Manchurian Blitzkrieg" that ended WWII. Over 800,000 elite Japanese troops surrendered in less than a week. Any strategist knows that when you lose troops of that size, it's checkmate. Japanese cities were dropping faster than flies, US was carpet bombing Japanese cities for shits and giggles. Dropping 2 or 20 atomic bombs  wouldn't have made a difference. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa - a highly respected historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara agrees.

Keanu Victor
never said the US ended ww2, I just said that the US were a lot more involved in the defeat of JAPAN, not Germany than the soviets were. So what about August storm. The Japanese had already been pushed back from most territories by then. It was the millions of Chinese people that gave their lives which stopped Japan not the Soviet union. The soviets stopped Germany, not Japan. If America had not been in ww2 you would now be saying Heil to the fuhrer. They didn't do as much on the ground but their contribution in equipment was unquestionable. A lot of which by the way went to the USSR.

deathtokoalas
yeah. the americans were funding both sides up to '41, and some say even longer than that. lots of money involved in funding a war....

i don't think it's true that we'd be speaking german if it weren't for american involvement, but the germans and french and italians and spaniards (and maybe even the british) might be speaking russian....as a second language. attacking russia hasn't worked out for anybody that's tried it. it was a huge strategic error. and, i'm not quite sure why there's such a resistance to this idea that hitler lost because he made a series of mistakes, rather than that he was out-manned or whatever else. maybe it was a jewish conspiracy, who knows...

mainland china was indeed the primary battleground of the asian theatre, but you have to understand how important oil and rubber were to japan. the chinese didn't have an air force, which was the dominant factor in japan picking on them in the first place. the dominant factor that contributed to japan's collapse was cutting off those supplies, which is perhaps the royal navy's last major victory. of course, there was some help from the french and the americans, but...

that doesn't change the fact that the soviets were in position to invade before the bombs came down and the americans weren't.

Keanu Victor
actually it kind of has, the mongols back in the 1200-1300s absolutely demolished the Russians. And the Japanese in the war of 1905 absolutely demolished the Russians. Then in ww1 the Germans absolutely demolished the Russians. The Germans beat them so badly that it caused an entire civil war and Russia to sue for peace on humiliating terms. Russia may have saved Europe in ww2 but it was repaying the favour from when it had been saved by the West 25 years before. The only countries that has never been successfully invaded that are of significance are JAPAN and Ethiopia. Russia has been invaded and conquered.

deathtokoalas
the mongol and japanese invasions are not meaningfully comparable to any invasion of russia from the west. to begin with, russia as we know it did not yet exist at the time, and is actually very much a successor state to the mongols in the first place. that's like suggesting that america is easily conquered by pointing to colonization by europeans. it's just not meaningful.

the entirely unprovoked and western-backed japanese invasion was on the colonial fringes of the empire, in an area that doesn't meaningfully even count as russia. it just has nothing to do with attempts to conquer actual russia.

all of the other examples you're citing (along with napoleon's attempt and sweden's attempt in the great northern war) indicate how impossible invading russia is. this idea that the germans defeated the russians in wwI is just absolute rubbish. what happened is that the army revolted, because it thought the invasion of germany was pointless (and it was) and the czar was a more meaningful target. the terms that russia picked were a function of the empire's repressiveness, not a function of german military strength. and, the fact that the germans gladly called a truce is indicative of where the balance of power truly was.

the front is certainly wide open and always has been, but the same reasons that make it difficult to defend make it impossible to close, and work in reverse for invading russian armies.

Keanu Victor
actually the Russians were shit in ww1, they lost millions of men, I think that may have actually contributed more to the mutiny. If Russia were winning the war then they wouldn't have complained. Secondly the newly imposed provisional government did actually try and regain territory from the Germans in early 1918 and got massacred. So they had to give even more land. Napoleon and Hitler were both defeated by snow not by Russian soldiers in their initial invasions. Without the weather Russia would be fucked. While it was summer and autumn the Germans and the French steam rolled across Russia, killed millions and captures huge swathes of territory. Both made it all the way to Moscow and then ran out of resources and the winter set in. If Russia wasn't so vast it would be conquered easily. They have always had leadership that is lacking in quality compared to other nations. Their military is large but not invincible. Countries may Gail to invade Russia fully but Russia fails to invade the west fully as well. It's never going to happen.

deathtokoalas
oh, i don't expect russia to invade western europe. this debate is historical, with essentially no relevance to today.

when you're talking about a country that is being conscripted and sent across a continent to fight a war they don't understand (and wouldn't care about if they did), winning or losing isn't really important. it's fighting that is the problem. most people don't know that canada faced massive general strikes and ethnic unrest during the war, as workers revolted and the french refused to serve. that's because most people don't care about canada. there were comparable revolts in france, as well. you need to flip the situation around and derive the loss of life from a lack of national pride. it wasn't an accident that the communists picked russia, it was very carefully targeted.

you're otherwise explaining my point, not defending yours.

i've been saying for years that obama sounds a lot like dave chapelle's white guy impersonation. this sort of cements the comparison.

best thing on youtube.

i'm actually glad that oliver's viewpoint is presented as smugly as it is, because it's a good representation of the so-called academic opposition to wikipedia. the mere idea of trying to separate between "legitimate academic work" and "amateur enthusiasts" (or whatever he said) is a lot of rubbish that wikipedia is doing an excellent job of exposing and unraveling, leaving a lot of upper class snobs to spit in their teacups. we're taught to look at educators as altruists, which is obscuring us to the reality of the backlash which is that the real reason academics react so badly to wikipedia and free information in general is that it threatens their business model. today, it's encyclopedias that are going under. tomorrow, it's textbook companies. eventually, it's publishing companies altogether, in a totally free (as in speech) economy. this doesn't eliminate academic rigour, it merely separates it from a profit motive and gives it back to the community (and away from the individual) where it belongs. this is progress, and the universities should be scolded for resisting it.

it's one thing to point out that this is in direct contradiction to the increasing privatization and corporatization of the "knowledge industry", including skyrocketing tuition prices. they warn of free information dumbing us down, but this is indicative of our existing era of academic sophistry, where students are charged thousands of dollars to sit through lectures where profs summarize books they could get at the library for free. it's another to point out that it's exactly why it's so important - because it breaks that model of education for profit.

once you realize you're dealing with scam artists that are afraid of being called out on it, rather than people working towards the common good as we are so often falsely lead to believe, it is easy to cast aside their criticism as rubbish.

jimmy's making far more sense, here. he's built a great tool that academics should be more excited about adapting to, and would be if they were the altruists so many of us like to pretend they are. now, the challenge is in getting them out of their ivory towers and down on the ground to engage. it may not be in their immediate financial interests, but here's the nice part of it - there's a cusp approaching, where they risk irrelevance if they don't.

and rupert murdoch can fuck off.

scottish independence isn't something i'm following closely or care much about. not my place to care or give advice.

but, i can't imagine how it would be really beneficial to anybody, except the people stepping in at the top of the tax chain. i'm sure there's problems with local governance - there are everywhere - but declaring independence is hardly a solution, and finding a solution doesn't require independence. this is a distraction.

i'd suspect scotland is more independent than quebec, but by how much i don't know. the argument against quebec nationalism is that they'll end up like mexico, a reality that the separatists largely acknowledge. they talk about multiple generations of sacrifice. it's a dumb idea, bluntly. i'd have to think scotland will take at least a small hit.

further, i don't know if part of this is about getting into the eurozone. that doesn't strike me as a good idea.

i think britain is better off outside the european union, and that the islands are better off working together. perhaps that means negotiating the union into an actual union, a confederation of sorts, where britain and scotland (and wales and ireland) are equals in joint government, and yet retain much sovereignty.

trying to disassociate too much is just going to harm everybody.

actually, you have to wonder how much of this goes back to scotland being aligned with the pope and whatnot...

judging from this moment in history, it seems as though the continent might finally have the island where it wants it. that's another empire that is on the cusp of entering the history books....

i mean, it makes sense. pull scotland out, bring them into the eurozone. ireland, too. it's ancient imperial policy.

or maybe britain and russia team up against those fucking germans one last time. i'm not going to like what political incarnation britain would require for this. but i don't get to pick.

crazy? a little poetic, but not crazy...

imperial pain in the ass #3 has always been sweden. i don't think they're much of a military threat right now. but those vikings are sneaky. they've never been conquered. strangely, that might be the centre of real digital resistance (in the guise of neutrality), as britain and russia both finally collapse. is the pirate bay more than it seems to be?

i've had this idea in the back of my mind that the ultimate motive underlying the attacks on libya is eu unification, from north africa through israel to turkey. the saudis won't like that. but it's decades from now.

the romans spent something like a thousand years trying to conquer iran. that ended in the mid 7th century, when the arabs conquered them both after a particularly rough round of fighting that left them both highly vulnerable. know what's funny? the story really does align well with the apocalypse. i think any educated person standing in the region would have seen it coming, this catastrophic conflict between iran and constantinople that would destroy the world - not unlike living through the cold war really. was the biblical apocalypse really something like an ancient kubrick film? probably.

but it was within that collapse of civilization that the arabs colonized the region, meeting minimal resistance 'cause everybody was already dead. there's a few other periods in history where colonization was the result of mass slaughter, not tied directly to it. it was one of the consequences of the invasions of genghis khan, for example. the apocalyptic narrative has real parallels, it's not all fantasy.

but the point is that these historical conflicts have roots that are more deeply rooted than the politics or populations of the regions. they recreate themselves as functions of the land. there's probably no real end to them. whether the eu ever succeeds in reconquering northern africa or not, it will always have a contingency plan in the background. and spain (let alone iran) will always be lost territory to whatever force governs in arabia, regardless of race or religion.

tactics regarding squeezing out the british will always include controlling scotland, whether you're the pope or the emperor or the fuhrer or the european central bank or some future continental entity...