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[Hiberno-Britannic Politics] 240 Days Till Brexit
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These points would be valid if they didn’t involve fooling every intelligence agent in the region, every humanitarian organization in the region, every chemical watchdog trying to glean every scrap of evidence they possibly can and every single country that listens to any of the above.
There is proof by the UN that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons - https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8bztma/russian_military_says_that_an_alleged_chemical/dxazqrp/
http://undocs.org/A/68/663
Now no-one can say that Syria does not have WMD's, if they say they don't then they are liars. What is more is that they have used them.
Missiles were launched tonight.
They're certainly not great but Macron is at least a competent douchebag.
At the very least it should hopefully force the UK and US to accept refugees from Syria, and to help them to evacuate safely to the US and Europe, and stop the disgusting recent trend of hoping somebody else will deal with it and pretending not to notice when it's places like fucking Lybia drowning them off their coast and enslaving the survivors.
It's more than that, the UK is the "mastermind" at the centre of a ton of conspiracy theories in the middle east. This is not fooling agencies, it's mass media control/trying to get a home ground advantage that'll tilt the scales when it comes to putting boots on the ground. You don't even need everyone in on the conspiracy theory, just enough that an aura of distrust settles around the other guys to make lives a little difficult and the odd truly crazy lone wolf.
"No smoke without a fire" kind of common knowledge, whilst you're firing an artillery company's worth of smoke grenades into the general area. Trying to turn any moderate that might want to work with the western powers into the republican version of Hillary Clinton.
[edit]God damn yes we should be matching this with a massive refugee program - that might be how you counter this kind of narrative whilst also mitigating the damage we're causing. Plus woo to not being complete and utter monsters to people in need! Not like we're not short a few doctors, nurses or even fruit pickers recently...
That Russian puppet government was also a fair democratically elected government. While I certainly think that moving towards authoritarian shit is bad, I also believe that just fucking with other countries because you don't like what they do is bad.
The point is not Russia=Good/USA=Bad. The point is that these kinds of geopolitical conflict produce wars.
I wonder how competent he is in foreign affairs. He doesn't have much experience there.
I mean not Trump level but...
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
That's me at maximum clench for the night...
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But what you are saying is complete bullshit dude. Yeah, it was a democratically elected government but it was also toppled by internal unrest. None of this shit has anything to do with the US or Russia and it's not up to Russia to decide they are mad about the issue and invade and annex territory. Especially because that doesn't even make sense as a response to a government getting toppled since annexing Crimea doesn't solve the issue of a democratically elected government falling.
The point is absolutely that "US == Bad, Russia doesn't like the US, therefore Russia == notBad". Because otherwise why the fuck are you blaming anyone but Russia for something Russia did? Literally the whole point of their statement there is whataboutism.
None of this should actually be shocking though if you've spent any time around left-wing politics. Their take on this issue is not abnormal. It's the same reason you see like Jill Stein with connections to RT.
Because they said they could shoot down the missiles and they couldn't...so wait to claim credit for some local US chaos from the Cohen bust and pretend that they tipped them off once something seems to be happening.
Or they just shot missiles into somewhere in Lebanon for no reason other than generally fuck things over.
And if Russia was planning a nuclear strike, the embassy in downtown DC wouldn't be wasting time that could be spent on crying and panicking or fleeing in terror given DC would clearly be a primary target
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
We should probably stop pretending that the country that has, over the last few years, invaded the Crimea, stoked fascist violence in Europe, successfully swayed the Brexit vote, successfully swayed the US election, launched a chemical attack on the UK and has, thus far, more or less gotten away with every single one of those things, is a limp has-been nation clinging to its long-forgotten superpower heyday that can’t hurt us.
Sure, but only the last part of that is not true.
Like, Russia is absolutely a limp has-been failing state desperate to regain the prestige and power of being a superpower. They just also have some strong effective tactics they can use against democracies and in certain conflicts (see - Georgia or Crimea or Syria) have their back up against the wall enough that they are willing to push harder then other countries are willing to push back.
See this is exactly what I’m talking about. Once you’ve used a nerve agent on NATO soil and spent weeks taunting the country in question, you’re pretty much off the limp list. We have to stop kidding ourselves and dismissing Russia as powerless. They’re clearly not.
Seems to be going around lately.
They have achieved targeted strategic victories in Syria and Crimea in the last few years very effectively.
Biggest issue is that the one super power left has decided it wants to be friends with Russia, and rest are either too weak to act against them, don't give a shit, or are too dependent on Russian energy exports.
Russia is dangerous as fuck. That doesn’t mean it isn’t weak, ailing, and the most likely eventual victim of whatever world order that they are trying to create.
Worst case scenario, they take rest of us with them.
Best case, we're still going to bleed before this is over.
So there's that.
On the downside, there's going to be new winter.
No you don't. That's not a move that requires being a super-power. It just requires having nerve gas and nuclear weapons. North Korea could pull this off and we know that because they did the exact same kind of thing.
Your response here is exactly what I was talking about: you are confusing "can cause damage or trouble" with all the other things you mentioned like "limp has-been nation" and "clinging to it's long-forgotten superpower heyday". These are not the same thing.
I don't know why you ignore the part of my post where I say that they can still do plenty of damage in their current state but it's ridiculous to not note Russia as a state in serious decline on multiple fronts.
"None of this shit has anything to do with the US or Russia" is by far the most ignorant thing to say. It has everything to do with them, it is literally the reason for the conflict. It started over the issue of choosing between US/EU or Russia.
To Russia it looked like a pro-Russian government being replaced by an US-backed one. Rather than do nothing they decided to annex Crimea, their main strategic interest. That's a perfectly logical response if you're Russia. Yeah they could have just not invaded, but they didn't. They didn't for all these reasons.
That you want the STW to just go "ooh no guys stop fighting. fighting is bad!" to any armed conflict is hardly a reason to do so. Analysis on that level is neither interesting nor useful.
The USA is a great example. It did a ton of horrific crimes that were logical from its perspective. Imagine one of these people essentially defending American involvement in the Vietnam War by saying it was logical from the perspective of America and so the fault doesn't really lie with the USA and instead lies with the communists.
It is perfectly logical if your Russia. Russia wanted Crimea, so they took it. That doesn't mean it's defensible on any level. And yet that's what STW is trying to do by going on with their whataboutism.
Your continued attempts to defend this shit is ridiculous. One can understand why Russia annexed the territory of a neighbouring country without actually defending it in any way or trying to pretend like it was justified or someone else's fault. But that's not what STW did because that's not their goal.
Europe has had a steady move toward democracy and competent government for decades that was spreading to Eastern Europe due to the opening of the West after the Cold War ended. Russia was on that train to for several years, including in Putin's early years.
The trouble started when Putin's reforms started to fail, and he had to resort to increasing levels of propaganda, paeans to empire, and reliance on corruption to get things done. Suddenly, all the similar progress across Eastern Europe turned into signs of Western imperialism. Before that, Russia wasn't in love with the NATO expansion, but they were also talking openly about a day when Russia might join NATO. Like, there were serious debates in the late 90s and early 00s about the point of a NATO that has Russia as a member.
So let's not pretend that the Russian story that they were being encircled by foes and had to be strong has any validity. They were not only welcomed to the club, but every European politicians was salivating at the prospect of Russian cash flowing into their economy. Russia could be one of the pillars of the EU had that been their wish.
Putin just chose hardline authoritarianism because he's a brutish thug who couldn't hack it at effective governance. The US, EU, and NATO are not saints, but this conflict has everything to do with internal Russian politics and economic stagnation and collapse. The dictator chose belligerence, because you need an external enemy to make a police state work.
It is logical to displace and genocide the indigenous population in order to take their land and populate it with your own people. Makes perfect sense.
I haven’t said they’re superpower. I’ve been pretty clear about them not being a superpower. But they’re not clinging uselessly to their faded glory. They’re using what they have, and they’re using it very, very well.
They got away with releasing a nerve agent in the UK, poisoning UK civilians along with the target of the attack.
That’s not causing damage or trouble. That’s unprecedented.
But is that because Russia is strong and effective or because the US, UK, and Europe are in the midst of a historic crisis of leadership? A lot of bad actors are rising in the power vacuum, but I'd still bet that - barring a nuclear war - in 20 years we'll be talking about China, the EU, and the U.S. in terms of power dynamics and Russia in terms of "those poor people, what can we do about them?"
The US, UK and Europe are in the midst of a historic crisis of leadership in large part because Russia have been so effective.
No, it's not. The Russians have been killing people on UK soil for ages now. With funky poisons and everything.
And Russia is absolutely a state that is decidedly not comfortable with their diminished status in the wake of the end of the Cold War and the subsequent ruin of their country that followed that in the 90s. They have been, especially under Putin, trying to regain their power and status at the international level. It's why you see them so vigorously defending the last scraps of their perceived sphere of influence. They are trying to reinforce the idea that they are still not to be fucked with but they are reduced to doing so for basically the last vestiges of their hegemony and resorting to asymmetrical warfare tactics because they lack other options.
Yeah they’ve used funky weapons of all kinds, but they’ve never poisoned a bunch of other random people in the process, leaving one who had nothing whatsoever to do with them in serious condition in hospital. They poisoned Alexander Litvinenko with pulonium, but that didn’t send the people around him into hospital. Can you imagine what would have happened if it had?
Although honestly I think we’re bumping heads on this for no reason. You thought I was saying Russia was a superpower, and I was focused on you bolding the part of my post about us having to stop pretending Russia can’t hurt us and saying it’s wasnt true.
I said at the start that "they can't hurt us" is the only part of your initial statement that wasn't true. Russia can absolutely fuck with us but that doesn't change how much their country and it's economy is declining or how much their influence has been curtailed. In something perhaps familiar to the UK they are a nation trying to exert the kind of influence they did at the height of their power.
The amount of people they hit with this latest attack can in many ways be viewed as a lack of power more then anything. It's sloppy. The only reason they didn't do something like his before is that they didn't want to. So either they couldn't do it more cleanly or they just wanted to send a message.
Which has been very effective, but would not have been possible if not for pre existing conditions, and many willing stooges in positions of power and influence.
None of this is changing the fact that we keep dismissing the state of a country that has handed us our collective arses not just once, but several times over the last few years. And is still getting away with it.
Yes, we should not dismiss them, but we should also not forget that their success comes not from their strength, but our own weaknessess.