Dr. Gonzo

I too pay my idiot tax from time to time

Are the seizures without court orders? I assumed the court orders would be resulting from the sanctions? I agree with you, they shouldn’t be seizing assets without court orders, and I’d assume with sanctions list those court orders would be easy to get. But if they’re doing it without court orders that just seems too wrong.

Kel but that was handled really quickly each time she’d show up telling us about how the Nazis were just misunderstood like the animals we eat.

Conservative historians whitewashing a totalitarian’s brutal history suddenly makes Stalin not that bad of a guy

I’ve gone back and read that thread and I take back what about I said about you not being able to understand nuance. You’re just being a cunt and you’re just calling her a Nazi to shut her down because you think it’s a way of winning an argument.

how’s me saying you don’t understand nuance brown nosing? She condemned the Red Army and said the intentions of the Soviets were as clear as the intentions of the Nazis. That’s not condoning the Nazis at all, it’s a strong refutation of the idea that the Red Army was a force for good.

Some people are just incapable of being able to understand that things aren’t black and white. He clearly just thinks Nazis = bad, red army fought Nazis, therefor red army = good. Tbf I don’t understand that position because it requires ignoring the history of Europe after the Second World War… but hey, not my fault the education system fails people.

Russia’s shut down the one independent news channel from being able to be watched on TV. Only available on YouTube now but they’re likely all about to be prosecuted, their editor in chief has already fled. They’ve also fully closed down independent news radio and a newspaper. Why? Because they called a war a war and reported on Ukrainian cities being bombed.

Is anyone else enjoying the usually pro-Putin Daily Mail now pretending they weren’t twerking for him just a week ago?

Where was that moral fibre in the UK when we invaded Iraq on false pretenses? We had anti war protests, but did we have soldiers refuse to follow orders en masse?

They have the internet but it’s been increasingly restricted - they’ve already blocked Wikipedia pages covering the war and they’re planning on outright taking Wikipedia out. There are anti war protests, but there are also huge numbers of people who support the war - much like the US during Vietnam and Iraq. Russia’s even closed down non-state owned news sources that have called the war a “war” - and the “official rationale” Russia’s given for the war, that it’s a peacekeeping mission to denazify, demilitarise, and to remain as peacekeepers until a new (probably Russian puppet) government is chosen, is not a secret. It was in Putin’s unhinged speech & its what Russian state media is feeding its population.

The obscene money in the premier league is nothing new. Would United have had a 20 year period of dominance had the TV money for league winners not been outrageous? Who knows but probably not. Chelsea were weird because aside from being incredibly wealthy compared to competitors, the owner had close ties to a dictatorship. With City and Newcastle the ties to the dictatorship are so close you can’t actually separate them from the dictator - and both of them are playing a leading role in the genocide in Yemen. I don’t think it’s that strange that dictators and war involved in British football gives people bad vibes.

Okay but like @RondónEFC says…. these are kids who are being lied too. It is the career military men, the high up officers, that I think deserve the condemnation. Not kids being sent to die for a dictator. This isn’t like the US or UK we’re talking about where people sign up to go kill people in far off lands we’ve invaded for the sake of economic imperialism. Most of these troops are conscripts that are lied to about the reason they went there.

Easier said than done, especially in a country like Russia.

sounds pretty grim

Lmfao you’ve got to figure out who that’s the fucking funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time

Gillett and Hicks reportedly interested I would absolutely fucking love that

The calls for any NATO country to enforce a no-fly zone are insane. The implication of taking on Russian aircraft and AA in the area to establish a no-fly zone means another world war, there's no way of avoiding that. And in 2022 that likely means nuclear weapons flying all around the world. I feel for this woman and every Ukrainian that's impacted by this war (so likely, every Ukrainian), but we don't need to test out the theory of mutually assured destruction at any point in our history. Although a part of me finds it amusing that the US and UK were very quick to invade Iraq on the pretext that Iraq had WMDs... but they absolutely won't risk openly getting into conflict with Russia because we all know Russia has WMDs.

I can see him being reluctant to retreat as well. I don't think he's got an exit strategy if the war didn't pan out the way he was wanting to. He can't really retreat and claim a victory for Russians back home. And a sudden end to the war doesn't really do much to remove the sanctions imposed on Russia either - I think much of these sanctions that are going to cause internal pressure on him are probably going to last until he's no longer in power. Imo, sanctions don't really work at forcing citizens to rebel against their government. If we look at the most sanctioned nations on the planet: Cuba and Iran, they've just been cut off from being normal participants in the global economy and their respective governments have responded by just being incredibly brutal towards protestors. I think there's a big misconception that sanctions work well against autocrats because sooner or later they'll have to answer to their own people... but in the west we often forget that in these types of governments ordinary people are the biggest victims of their government. But putting faith in Putin to put the interests of ordinary Russians over his own interests I think is really misguided. And people do hope that causing billionaire oligarchs having their net worth crumble each day that passes will lead them to turn on Putin... but I think it's been shown that Putin's sort of isolated his government from many of the oligarchs that had sway over him before by targeting the oligarchs that don't stay quiet. Being a strongman dictator means if he's to retreat, he needs to be able to claim some sort of victory to save face among his domestic supporters. At this point, I just don't see any reasonable exit for him. Either Ukraine falls, and then he's got a lengthy and costly occupation to handle... or this war keeps escalating. I know I'm not a foreign policy expert, or especially an expert on Russian culture, but I just can't see a reasonable path to peace from Putin's perspective.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/03/2/7327539/ Dunno how good of a source Pravda is - looks like it's currently owned by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation which makes me feel like this: But according to this report, "Ukraine has seized Russian military plans concerning the war against Ukraine from the 810th Brigade of the battalion tactical group of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet Marines. These documents were approved on 18 January." These plans indicate that the war is (or was) meant to last just 15 days and they anticipated they'd have control of Ukraine by now. I think considering the slow progress the Russian army has made, with the high casualties due to Ukraine's stronger than anticipated resistance to invasion... coupled with the western backing Ukraine will be receiving for the entirety of the conflict & the implosion of Russia's economy post-invasion... there's no way this war just lasts 15 days unless Putin gives the order to pack it all in.

So in the aftermath of this invasion, Finland and Sweden want to join NATO & Ukraine and Georgia have submitted applications to join the EU

Saudis probably looking for their receipt to Newcastle to see if they can get a refund.

And many of them were told they were there as peacekeepers who'd be welcomed as liberators - not troops sent to invade. And some of the rations that captured troops have been found with are 20 years old and past their expiration date. I think low morale is a big reason Russia hasn't made gains as quickly as Putin would have hoped - and I think it's because a lot of kids are being forced to be invaders against their will. People want western media and even things like wikipedia blocked off from Russia, but I don't see the point in that... that just cuts Russians off from having sources outside the narrative state media is pushing. It seems counterintuitive to block Russians from having access to information from around the world if the goal is to get more of them to understand they're the aggressors in this war and if we want Russians to speak out against the war. And Russia already wants to block Wikipedia's entries on the invasion because Wikipedia's covering reports on how many civilian casualties there have been... so blocking Russians from Wikipedia access or sources that explain the invasion and the aftermath of the invasion... seems to play nicely into Putin's hands.

Isn’t that pretty expected, even though they’re just kids? It’s an opposition view in wartime Russia, while they’re also trying not to use the words war or invasion publicly. Then young kids start making peace protests outside their enemy’s embassy? No way an autocratic government allows a protest like that during war time, even if they are just children. Yeah its fucked up - authoritarian governments ARE fucked up

This desire some have to want to punish anything with a hint of Russian-ness for this is weird tbh. Yes illegal wars and war crimes are bad, nobody needs to convince me. But banning literature because it comes from Russia, centuries before this, is fucking stupid. Nothing more than absolutely fucking stupid. It’s also been weird/amusing seeing people and countries that are typically very anti-refugee be very quick to offer their support for refugees. I’d say it’s curious, but it’s not - it’s just been interesting seeing how this crisis has let the mask slip for so many people.