Dr. Gonzo

I don't think Russians shouldn't be proud of being Russian - I think it's fine if they're proud of being Russian tbh, I actually feel quite bad for these athletes made to play under a "neutral" flag (although with ROC we know it's the Russian Olympic Committee... so still Russia, so it seems a bit pointless to me). They live in an autocracy, they're not like the billionaire oligarchs that can actually have a say in how the country is governed tbh. Sure Russia might like to use them as a propaganda prop but at the end of the day these are just athletes who want to represent their country - like athletes all around the world do. I can see what you're saying on the last bit, but imagine if that standard was applied to the UK and US because of Iraq. And unlike Russia, our elections aren't a complete sham where someone wins with a "definitely not suspicious" 90+% of the vote... we voted for the dickheads who lied to the world and invaded a country... we're arguably more culpable as citizens of western countries for the foreign policy decisions made by our leaders. I don't even think it's right that so many Muslim nations refuse to play Israel, even if their governments don't recognise that Israel as a country exists. I disagree with the idea that football (or any sport tbh) isn't political - clubs represent communities and often the politics of those communities are represented in their club... but on a national level international tournaments promote a different kind of political message: unity and world peace, even between countries where the governments absolutely hate each other athletes can take to the pitch and compete. With the olympics I can sort of understand it, because of that state sponsored doping scandal and Russia the state being directly behind cheating in the olympics... but even then, I am not so sure banning Russians from competing under the Russian flag makes too much sense. If anything that state sponsored doping program should have led to greater reforms/innovations in doping tests & if an athlete tests positive, they probably shouldn't be given the opportunity to compete (like that ROC figure skater that was allowed to compete).

I've never understood the point in this - I think them doing this in the Olympics is just really weird actually. Why should athletes have to shun their national identity for competing just because they're from a country with a shit government? I can understand blocking people from playing who come out in support of Ukraine or say they support the war, but the whole "neutral flag" thing to me is just weird and tbh a bit stupid. But again, I think there's a far cry between a Russian athlete and a Russian oligarch that's got his fingers all over the history of Putin's time as leader of Russia since the very beginning.

Why wouldn't they?

I'm sure having a manager with a winning mentality helped them quite a bit. With England it's a bit different, especially in that era when the players formed cliques based on what clubs they played for - it's hard to have a good winning mentality at your team when you've got your clique in the team and don't really get on with the rest of them. And yeah, that's a failure of the managers of that era as well & something Southgate's done well at - fostering a team that has the mentality to fight for each other & plays with a style/identity - even though he's not half the tactician Sven, Capello, or even Hodgson were. With United, it just feels like they play well when they're up for it but they're also capable of getting outplayed by better sides or hiding in a shell when the going gets tough. I don't even think you have to be a great manager to spot that issue and even far less talented sides can manage to look like they give more of a fuck than some of these players do. The regression at United's been staggering and yeah, none of the managers appointed really come close to the level of Ferguson - not even "the Special One" - but that's not just down to the managers and their decisions. Atletico are proof that if you have good players and a manager that keeps them mentally strong, you don't even have to play good football to have a good manager. They're the Spanish champions and we really shouldn't be surprised that they've knocked this United side out, but everyone knows how they play in Europe... yet they've been in the quarter finals a ridiculous amount of times and he's won La Liga in the Messi era a few times while playing his brand of dogshit football. It's not just the manager's tactics that matter, it's instilling the right attitude. And yeah, some United managers have failed at that... but also many United players have let the club down with their attitudes.

I think the West generally & Russia and China respectively come out with these statements because they’re trying to sway public opinion so it’s “don’t trust the US/China/Russia” But typically that’s effective when you couple it with a “because” - something you can point to to justify it. The US claims of a biolab that created Covid came with no real evidence or anything to point to. Similarly China and Russia here with this Ukraine claim haven’t been coupled with anything to point to it being true. And with Chinese foreign policy, public statements are typically a tit for tat where they meet the praise others give them with praise of their own, and they meet insults others give them often by recycling the insult they faced. Also I think if the US were making secret biolabs abroad they’d do it in the Middle East or Africa

I think it’s got a bad history of corruption, but I don’t really know. I think Zelensky ran on an anti-corruption campaign and politicians usually only really do that in places where corruption is a serious issue. Having said that, countries with politicians that run on those sorts of campaigns often remain corrupt as ever. Not saying that’s the case here though, cos I dunno how corrupt they really are/were. Just that typically it’s countries that have bad corruption issues that have people run on anti-corruption platforms.

This is probably China just giving the US a taste of its own medicine after some claims about biolabs that China found insulting regarding the origin of covid.

They’re coming from a place of loving United and knowing what it takes to be a top team in Europe. I imagine seeing United the way they’ve been this season pains them. I hate the fuckers, but I understand it. Especially now that I’m living through a period of my life where we are actually good - it’s not just having quality players. The attitude in a winning side is something else compared to past very good sides I remember us having in the past. Going from being players that have that attitude to watching players that very much don’t have that attitude is probably so annoying for these ex-United legends. I fucking love it.

From a Western perspective, the Ukraine-Russia conflict is a lot more "clear cut" than the crisis in Yemen, at least in terms of "standing up for Western values." With Ukraine getting invaded, it's a democracy that wanted closer ties with the EU getting invaded by an autocratic country. It's much easier for us to imagine a side to support in this conflict, we're from the UK and have lived with democracy our whole lives - we have such close ties with the EU too that we were even fucking in the bloody thing until recently. With Yemen, it's a much more complicated situation because: ultimately, regardless of who wins the conflict, there's nobody that you or I (or anyone else on the forum) would consider a good option for the future of Yemen. And it's a conflict steeped in sectarian bullshit, which is really offputting for most people. Since 2004, the Houthi rebels (who at the time I think were all Shia, whereas now they're predominantly Shia but Sunnis fight with them too now) started an insurgency against Yemen's government (which was essentially a Saudi puppet government), by 2014 economic collapse & the end of oil subsidies had turned this conflict into a full blown civil war. In 2015, the president of Yemen fled when the Houthis stormed the presidential compound. And it goes without saying, the Houthis are definitely not nice people. They're religious extremists, just a different flavour to what we're used to with Wahabi/Salafist extremists like ISIS (which btw we can also thank the Saudis as the biggest financial backers and proponents of the shite Wahabi ideology). Having said that, having absolute shit people in your country is not justification for what the Saudis have done to Yemenis generally. Hadi (Yemen's president) fled to Saudi Arabia, where MBS & co. decided to support their failing puppet by leading a military intervention in Yemen. This originally consisted of bombing campaigns, but eventually spread to a blockade. This blockade has prevented food from reaching Yemen. The blockade would eventually lead to a food source crisis, which at this point has expanded into a famine in the country. As the war expanded, the Saudi coalition (which the US and UK are a part of) started racking up a long list of war crimes in the conflict. They declared an entire city a legitimate military target (violating international law) and began deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure with cluster munitions. They began deliberately targeting facilities run by aid organisations & targeting camps for wounded war victims and doctors - this sent the message that aid workers and medical personnel in Yemen should fuck off outta there, which has led to critically low numbers of doctors in Yemen. This isn't just an issue for providing aid to the war wounded, it's led to the spread of diseases like cholera... and of course it's not like COVID-19 decided it would just ignore a warzone. Other war crimes aside (btw, it's weird typing that out), using famine and disease as weapons of war to prop up a puppet government that was ousted from the country it was meant to rule is absolutely disgusting. But as I've described, they're not just using famine and disease for the war - there's a whole host of other war crimes. And it's absolutely grim what's going on in Yemen and pretty disgusting that the West doesn't just arm these warmongers but also provides them support as members of the coalition as well.

Yeah, anyone doubting Abramovich's connection with Putin really needs to look into the facts. He personally interviewed every single cabinet appointee in Putin's first cabinet & that's after recommending Putin to Yeltsin. He also recommended Medvedev to Putin as his "successor" in that brief period where he wasn't allowed to be president so he needed a puppet successor. Abramovich is being targeted now because Putin has made his Russia a pariah state. Saying "well people used to not care" doesn't suddenly make Abramovich an innocent man - he's someone who's benefitted from Russia's corruption post USSR and is so closely tied to the most elite in Russia they're basically inseparable. The fact that some people used to not care should open peoples' eyes to what's happening in English football, not be used as an excuse to turn a blind eye to it for even longer. They probably think he's an "authoritarian" because of his "liberal overreach" - although I'm not sure the facts really paint a picture of authoritarian rule or overreach. Here's a world leader who let truckers converge on his capital and at US-Canada border crossings for weeks and bring a capital city to almost complete shutdown (while they attempted to prevent politicians from doing their jobs) and blocked imports/exports for several weeks costing over $21.1b in trade to be blocked. Was he authoritarian in letting them protest for several weeks with pretty light penalties? Because I've got family that actually live under an authoritarian regime and they've attended protests and they usually don't get weeks before they face arrest... it's pretty instant that the threat of arrest comes in and it's coupled with the threat of imminent violence against the protestors. So from where I'm sitting, I don't think what Trudeau's done looks very authoritarian. And is it liberal overreach to end a protest after weeks while it hurts businesses in Canada and the US to the amount where tens of billions are lost? Honestly, I think there's a case to be made that in the US or UK if business interests were threatened to the point of losing that sort of money by protestors... those governments would step in to act much quicker than we saw with Canada. Both examples are good examples of lazy & bad faithed arguments to try to highlight "western hypocrisy." It relies on people outside of Canada not knowing enough about what happened with the protests in Canada and perhaps being sympathetic to those who were given a choice of getting a jab or losing their jobs, in order to agree that "yes Trudaeu acted like a despot" when in reality... I don't think that's what Trudaeu demonstrated at all in his actions. He arguably acted with kid gloves considering the economic cost of those border crossings being shut down. And I think that's a bit weird, because you really don't have to try too hard to find evidence of western hypocrisy that's... pretty fucking legitimate. Our complicity with the Saudi coalition's invasion in Yemen, the Iraq war, etc... but I think highlighting that sort of hypocrisy might be shining a light on a problem in our society that they maybe don't actually want us to address, so that's probably why they don't bang that drum.

When claims of invading for "denaziification" fail... try the following claims to justify your invasion: genocide against ethnic Russians chemical weapons created by the US bio-weapons created by the US how about illegal nuclear arms? https://www.jpost.com/international/article-701359

Saudi Arabia is reportedly considering selling oil in Chinese RMB rather than the US Dollar.

There was a push to increase the minimum wage - it was meant to go in effect this year (in the state the minimum wage was already what the federal minimum wage is though - so in some places it doesn't make much of an impact). It's all gone pretty quiet on that front lately, though. Probably because the government & it's corporate backers don't have appetite to deal with that issue again despite the rapidly rising inflation. I don't know a fucking thing about US unions though - my wife had a union where she used to work, but they didn't actually do anything on behalf of the interests of the workers just collected their dues from her wages. Now she no longer pays into her union, but she's also at a different job so I don't think she's as worried about her rights as a worker as much.

There's hardly a left-wing in America... and it's certainly not represented by CNN or MSNBC, CNN is as "middle of the road" in America as a news-media company can be - in the UK political spectrum we'd probably think of them as pro-Tory news. MSNBC is corporate media masquerading as left-leaning, to sucker people from the left in to watching and push them further and further to the right. They're basically just like SkyNews. Same owners too. CNBC (one of their affiliates) is about as left-leaning as Fox - which isn't too surprising as it's catered towards business news. America is too conservative societally and so driven by corporate interests in every slice of society to really have much room for a left-wing. That's why even some left-wing politicians, like Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein periodically come out with some far-right nonsense to get some media time and "credibility" with US voters who are obsessed with the idea of centricism and "moderates".

How's that deflection? You quoted some guy saying that Canada's PM had acted like a totalitarian. I meanwhile said a totalitarian wouldn't have allowed a protest to drag on for weeks before he even reacted - I know this is true, you can look at what a totalitarian government does with protesting by looking at what's happening in Russia right now. Or look at other parts of the world, like recently in Iran when farmers protested that there was not enough water to grow food... they got shot at. Those are better examples of a totalitarian reaction to when a protest ends up costing billions in trade. Not letting the issue drag for weeks before addressing it I just don't know how you can say that re: Roman Abramovich. It's not a secret he's got close ties with Putin and Russia's government - his ties are so close he was even in Russian government fairly recently - and he's been suspected of acting as a financier for the Russian government after the 2014 sanctions. Nobody's saying he should be targeted just because he's Russian. People are saying he should be targeted because as a Russian oligarch with his close ties to Putin, he's a "private citizen" in name only - his wealth and Russia's finances are connected. Similarly, the Saudi Media Group is run by members of the Saudi elite who have close ties with MBS and his regime. Their ownership of the Independent indicates how they report on the Saudi government, considering their absence of coverage of Jamal Khashoggi's murder or the crisis in Yemen - and is a likely indication of that Chelsea (and Newcastle) would have a "trusted" western media outlet to help spread positive stories about why their respective Saudi ownership is a good thing for football, the UK, and Saudi Arabia. And even if they're not as closely connected with MBS as they seem... they will always have the public pressure to kowtow to whatever MBS demands. High profile Saudis can't really get away with not falling in line with the dictatorship there. If you don't believe me: just ask Khashoggi's body parts. It's far more nuanced than saying "people in the west are biased against owners from a particular part of the world" - Farhad Moshiri's a billionaire with dodgy ties to a Russian oligarch, but his family fled Iran in 1979 and his billions are completely unconnected with the corrupt and brutally oppressive regime from where he comes from. So while he's probably not a great person (no billionaire is) - he's not acting as the representative of a thuggish government that routinely steals from its people (and he's even taken steps to mitigate Everton's association with Usmanov and keep the club disconnected from the dodgy Russian oligarch). So that's a non-Western club owner that's probably received a fair amount of criticism from his time owning a club... but that criticism happens to be based more around the bizarre decisions he's made as a club owner... rather than using his ownership interest in football to launder money for sanctioned oligarchs & wash a regime that has a rightfully tainted public perception clean in the eyes of sport fans. I guess I just don't see what your issue is - Roman Abramovich is taking justifiable flak because the UK has been far too cozy with Russian oligarchs for too long and this invasion of Ukraine has changed public sentiment to where not even the Tories can turn a blind eye to it anymore. And that people would have similar concerns about the Saudis expanding their interest in British football, I think, can be justifiably have similar concerns.

An authoritarian wouldn't have let a bunch of truckers humiliate him internationally - Russell Brand should stick to doing drugs

I think it's interesting Adam Kitzinger's developed something of a conscience since the coup attempt on January 6th - even stating that "he should have voted to impeach Trump over blackmailing Ukraine" which I think was obvious back then, but even more obvious now that this invasion of Ukraine has happened. But because he was unwilling to see the obvious when it was unfolding... it does make me doubt his sincerity now tbh. It's a bit like the Putin loving Tories that now have to play to public opinion shifting against the Russians so they want to seem tough on Russia now... it just doesn't seem sincere & things like the UK's one month loophole for Oligarchs to get their money out seem to indicate they aren't really sincere. So it makes me wonder how sincere Kitzinger is that his party's propaganda wing has gone so far off the rails. Where was this concern two or three years ago, when the party's propaganda wing was just as far off the rails? Is he only upset because they roused the rabble into demanding they hang Mike Pence? Or is he genuinely upset that they've openly embraced anti-democratic positions? Don't get me wrong, it's good for a republican to speak out against people like Tucker Carlson (btw: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/mar/14/kremlin-memos-russian-media-tucker-carlson-fox-news-mother-jones) - but I do question their motivations, because Fox News slide towards authoritarianism and anti-democratic messaging really isn't new in the slightest.

and tbh the West has done themselves no favours in making it so Putin can't reach for any flimsy justification for the invasion or to justify war crimes

He's had close ties to Boris Yeltsin and Roman Abramovich - it's naive to think a man with intensely close government relations no longer has close relationships with government. Particularly a man credited with introducing the first post-Soviet Russian president with the long-time autocrat in charge of Russia today.

Abramovich is meant to be separate from Putin too, yet we know that isn’t the case.

I think you’re just lucky you don’t know the absolute idiots I know

Just a piss take pal, not serious. But seriously you don’t want your Twitter fans making decisions for the club I’m sure there’s some sound people on Everton Twitter… but all clubs have massive bellends in their support. And if Moshiri was consulting my cousin you’d have a new manager every 2 weeks and probably have an even more shit squad than you currently have.

That’s debatable as fuck

The fucking Russians ended the Iran nuclear deal talks with their outrageous new demands. Fuckers, and fuck Iran’s government for being so in bed with those cunts

I think we’ll probably sell him to PSG this summer unfortunately