The curious, oh-so-Russian tale of General Popov (1)

Popular Popov:  a soldiers' soldier

Way down the rankings on the War in Ukraine pages is the newly-revived story of Russian General Popov, who is now being charged with 'fraud of a particularly extensive nature'.  It's alleged he sold thousands of tonnes of steel, intended for Russian fortifications against the ill-fated 2023 Ukrainian counter-offensive, to a shady metals dealer for over $1m in cash that's been found at his house.  His fall from grace happened late last summer, but at the time it seemed to do with his public complaints that troop rotations weren't being made sufficiently frequently.  No charges were brought back then, nor corruption even mentioned; he'd slid from public attention and been sent to Syria. 

Given that today's backdrop is the recent high-profile 'sideways promotion' of Defence Minister Shoigu, his replacement with an economist known for efficiency, and several other senior officials also being done for corruption of various kinds, it's easy to imagine the new charges against Popov are just part of a traditional changing-of-the guard purge that is so popular with communist and former-communist regimes: happens all the time.  Odd that he was a critic of Shoigu (so why should he go down now, as Shoigu himself falls from favour?) but hey, clearing the decks is clearing the decks.  He probably pissed off others as well.

The reaction from the Russian 'milblogger' fraternity has been very interesting: I.I.Popov is extremely popular, a "soldiers' soldier", credited (by the soldiery, at least) of being the main factor behind the crucial, successful defence of Tokmak on the Zaporizhia front last year.  Here are some typical contributions: 

• Nothing has yet been proven, and we suspect that Ivan Ivanovich could have suffered for his statements.  It is unseemly to keep one of the heroes of our time behind bars
• Front line soldiers were greatly demoralized by news of the removal of the "simple" and "relatable" honest General Popov. Yes, perhaps he had his flaws. But in the context of [other] commanders who sacrificed dozens of personnel for the sake of their next "Star of the Hero" medal, Popov clearly stood out for the better
• The experienced commander, who was doted upon by his subordinates ...  
• I know for sure that without his hands-on leadership in organizing the defensive lines [in 2023], we would hardly have been ready to meet the Armed Forces of Ukraine at the peak of their power
• General Ivan Popov is not a thief. He is a soldier. However... we forgive thieves too. Or they don't get imprisoned at all. A soldier cannot always count on this
• If the investigation proves his guilt, then he must suffer the punishment he deserves, but all the good he has done for the Russian army must be taken into account. He must not be allowed to be made a scapegoat. 

Etc etc.  here are several strands here.  (a) Maybe he's being fitted up (for his temerity to complain about lack of troop rotations);  (b) Maybe he did make off with some steel, but hey, everyone in his position does stuff like that - so what?  (c) Maybe he's too popular for his own good.

(a) is of course entirely possible: we may never know.  Regimes like Russia's do that kind of thing all the time.  In countries with no rule of law, everyone stands in permanent peril of being condemned on trumped-up charges, and those in power never mind reminding people of it from time to time.  I'll return to (b) - a characteristically Russian sentiment - in a second post.

(c) is also interesting: and it's not just in light of the extraordinary Prigozhin mutiny of last year.  Communist and former-communist regimes not only fear the rule of law, they fear the military as a credible alternative source of power.  As soon as WW2 ended, Stalin effectively banished the legendary - and very popular - Zhukov, the clear victor of the eastern front.  Everyone knew why.  The first thing Lenin did after the 1917 revolution was to demobilize the army (even while technically still at war with Germany!), for fear of having armed men loose on the streets.  Here's another telling recent milblog entry on the Popov case: 

A general who makes mistakes, and a popular general who makes mistakes, are two completely different matters from the point of view of 'the system'. Whether he is really guilty of what he is accused of is not so important ...

Poor old Popov.  Keep away from windows and private planes, eh? 

ND 

Evergrande: What Happens Now?

For all their clever CCP-directed, "with-Chinese-characteristics" tweaks to classic western capitalism, somehow they couldn't avoid, errrr, a property bubble.  How demeaning for a communist country!  How ironic.

And how we'd all laugh, were it not for the plethora of predictions that the demise of Evergrande will send out shockwaves across the globe, at a time when we're all a bit fragile.

Really?  Well, perhaps.  I'm no authority on this kind of thing: and in my own sphere I already told you in February that gas prices in the far east were the start of serious energy-price inflation.  But my gut feeling is that if the west could ride the banking crisis of 2007-09, the CCP can engineer a soft landing for Evergrande.  The underlying issue, to my mind, is the impact it has on Chinese politics, both inward- and outward-looking.

On internal politics, I presume a serious property bubble - with the attendant political shame this represents for communists, as alluded to above - strengthens the hands of the socio-economic puritans of the CCP, led by this chap, Wang Huning, (whom I only became aware of recently).  2021 has already seen a striking social-media purge of individualistic content (and social media stars!) that follows hard on the humbling of tall poppies Jack Ma & co.  All this goes by the benign-sounding slogan of "Common Prosperity", but extends to a "clamp-down" on private tutoring (FFS), which must have a major impact down the road.  Does the middle-class man in the street care about Jack Ma?  Not really, I guess.  But his kid's education & perceived life-chances ..?

Then there's the long-awaited Chinese digital currency.  I have absolutely no idea how Evergrande impacts that project - does anyone here? - but it probably does.  Given that it's designed to strip the USD of its strategic role in world finance, it's kinda important for the long run.

It's the "physical" externals, though, that should surely trouble us most directly.  Last year we debated the possibility of "Peak China" having already passed.  The decades of extraordinary Chinese softly-softly patience and (rather successful) attempts to build a kind of soft power to rival that of the USA seem to have come to an end with Xi's assaults, physical and otherwise, on HK, India, the South China Sea etc etc etc.  These suggest that either (a) he doesn't care anymore about staying with the soft stuff; or (b) things weren't moving as fast as he wants.

And what's that?  Taiwan, of course - and in his time in the top slot.  By hook or by full-scale attack.

Old Man in a Hurry can be a comical phenomenon; but it can also be dangerous.  Very dangerous.  We have our own in the shape of Biden.  There's an awful lot that can go wrong here.  I've long suggested that Soviet caution in not invading western Europe when it was at its peak state of military advantage, speaks well for Politburo political maturity at that time.  But equally, they weren't in any kind of hurry - hey, they were real Marxist-Leninists; they thought it was going to fall in their laps eventually anyhow. 

But Xi, like Mao before him, is (mainly) a nationalist.  Evergrande?  Pff - a sideshow.  IMHO.

Thoughts?

ND

Weekend: Sport Deeply Unsettles the SJW Left

Not, of course, the cheerful men-of-the-people Left, whose enthusiasm for soccer, rugby league, fishing, whippets, racing pigeons, etc etc knows no bounds.  In this category we must also clearly include the Ed Balls of this world: he typifies whole swathes of healthy middle-class social democrats who also love their sport.

But for other, altogether unhealthy leftist categories, sport is deeply troubling in many dimensions.

1.  Healthy bodies, healthy minds ... and your classic bedsit marxist is, in the immortal words of Molesworth, "uterly wet and a weed".   No good at sports; resenting every second of it at skool; retreating to the library and vowing his revenge on the cruel society that mocked his performances with bat, ball and running shoe; He Hates Sport.  Yes, it was social ineptness and Sport in particular that drove him to becoming a marxist in the first place:  "I'll show you!".  It gets nastier, too: these are the people who, physical cowards to their bones, drool at the thought of ISIS and IRA psychopaths who are actually willing to do the violence to their opponents that weed-boy can only dream about.   ("You only have to look at the little faces of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in the photos with Gerry Adams to conclude that they’d have been almost erotically impressed by the whiff of cordite" - Marina Hyde). 

2.  Sporting endeavour, including team sport, exemplifies individual effort and determination to win, to rise above the others, to prove that, unequivocally, there is better and worse in the performances and achievements of people, and to glory in the prospect of being best.  As far from "all have won, and all must have prizes" as can be.  And would Man U be willing to field a handful of 'under-represented' categories if they were no good at soccer? Would the millions of supporters stand for it?  Yes - but only as team mascot, where it doesn't matter.

Incidentally, mention of team sport leads to another leftist phenomenon we'll come to a bit later.

3.  Sport also handily and daily reinforces some inconvenient truths the SJWs would very much like to deny.  In fact, they do deny them, actively, all the time.  But being confronted with constant, self-evident refutation is never a comfortable thing.

Yup: there are inherent, significant, objective differences between - how shall we put it - different sectors of humanity, as everyone but the most tortuous doublethinker really knows.   Sorry, *trans women*; sorry Semenya: but there it is (even the Graun knows this really - and the feminists are fast being forced to recognise it too).  Women want to have opportunities to enjoy meaningful elite sport?  (not to mention other, quite important things they might like to enjoy, like physical safety).  Then the facts of nature just have to be recognised.  Sport will be the undoing of the current attack-of-the-trans, in all but the most right-on universities.

(Breeding horses and dogs for sport leads to other *awkward* conclusions well-known to every working man, too - and of course George Orwell.  What a minefield!)

4.  Communists in power have never quite known what to do about sport.  On the one hand, they know the workers love it; and it would be great for communist countries to dominate on such a globally prominent stage.  But then the problems set in.  Actually, they often lose: and how humiliating is that, for the superior and wholly scientific doctrine they represent?  So then it has to be drugging and cheating; but that ends up in even greater humiliation: manifest inability to win, and desperation to do so, haha!  What lessons does that reinforce?

As a specific instance of this, China's attitude to soccer is pretty funny.  Apparently, Xi is dead keen on the game.  China has a lot of able bodied people nowadays, and most of them are comendably well fed and healthy, too (I say this because it wasn't always the case).  And team sports - shouldn't that be a natural for them?  With their love of cooperation and coordination and discipline and etc etc etc.

Xi would really, really, love China to excel at soccer; temperamentally, nationalistically.  And wouldn't it be just great politically, too!  How does he privately explain to himself their utter failure to do so, and the deeper implications of this all-too-evident failure?  (Hardly a shortage of resources!)  It's an amusing thought and, by the way, a very good indicator that Maoism and 'Xi thought' contain glaring deficiencies in their supposedly profound, *scientific* socio-psychological assessments - even in their understanding of their own people.

So - a plague on the SJW left in their bedsits, and let's go enjoy the holiday weekend!  A quick lunch - then off to the match.

ND 

Disturbing news for the reality-based community

Why do I keep meeting people who are spouting commie nonsense. Only today I have met some senior executives who should know better. They are bemoaning the state of the country post-Grenfell and saying how rubbish we are governed and how things must change....


How the rich (err, them?) have got richer and the poor poorer. How neo-liberal economics has taken us there, how terrible Brexit is for the Country.


Basically, the Corbyn mantra is working. The Tories too are wrongly adopting this nonsense instead of rallying around their own message.


Very worrying - is it just me or is this becoming common, that people have lost sight of the reality of the Hard Left and are instead running to its, umm, warm embrace?