Dr. Gonzo

I thought so too at first, but they've also taken some steps to isolate Russia economically (although I think China sees Russian isolation as useful - they've got a history of exploiting relatively isolated countries so that they can influence them; Russia seem ripe for Chinese exploitation, but it probably benefits China to let Russia feel more of the brunt of isolation at first so they are more desperate). I think this more could be about not wanting to show the average Chinese football viewer that people in the UK can do public political protests. But honestly, who knows with China. Economic dominance is their main goal - so I think them walking that thin line between supporting Russian economic isolation (at least temporarily) and appearing a bit softer on them than the West (with moves like this or abstaining to vote in the UN) probably lets them keep their options open.

It must be @Cicero - https://jontaffer.com/cicero-sidecar/

Every clip I've ever seen of Indian news makes it look completely unwatchable. There are always at least 3 heads on the screen at any given time... sometimes way more. And the shouting and arguing is absolutely mental.

I don't think the sanctions will cause that. Rather it's the climate of identity politics and culture wars that will drive that (and are already driving that in some places tbh). I think it's a bit weird that we can separate people in the West from the actions of their governments - even if they're democracies. We don't assume everyone from the UK believes every word Johnson tells us, we don't assume that everyone who voted for Bush or Blair thinks illegal wars are justifiable even. I think it's strange that so many people are quick to paint all Russians with the same brush that Putin and the kleptocrat oligarchs are painted with and make these big generalisations about a massive nation full of millions of individual people. And unlike us, these people have barely any say in who's in their government and how it behaves...

I agree with this. Other countries in other sports have gotten banned for refusing to play athletes of other countries for political reasons. Banning Russian athletes in international competitions seems weird to me - it's not like the Olympics where they've been caught having a state sponsored doping program (and still allowed to compete, not under Russia's flag... but as Russian athletes). Simply banning all Russians for competing over political reasons is something we're not meant to see in sport. It's wrong when Iran (for example) refuses to compete against Israeli athletes over politics - and that's why they've received bans for doing that in the past, I think most recently a 5 year ban from competing in international judo tournaments because of a refusal to compete against Israel. And that's also sort of unfair as Iranian athletes don't really have a choice what their dictatorship government says if they get matched against Israeli athletes... and why so many Iranian athletes defect when they get a chance. And it's not like the US ever received a ban after the Iraq invasion... and they have a democracy so you can even make the argument that US athletes are infinitely more culpable for their country's war crimes. Honestly, the collective economic punishment for Russia really doesn't sit well with me because I know the likely result of heavy sanctions is regular Russians will suffer while the elite will loot what's left of a crumbling economy. I can understand sanctioning football clubs that have ties to the Russian state... but the collective punishment of all Russian athletes for the invasion seems a little uncalled for.

Kel said the Nazis never commit the Holocaust, it is all a global conspiracy and all the evidence is faked, and most bad things we learn about them are a lie that all stem from that global conspiracy... she was mental, she'd believe any shred of evidence that would support backing the Nazis and denying the Holocaust... but insist that the numerous actual physical evidence of those crimes against humanity were all fake. Yes, shut up was banned because he refused to apologise for making an unfounded serious accusation about someone on here being a Nazi sympathiser, even though the thread he's referring too makes it pretty fucking clear that accusation was less than baseless. And yes, he was given loads of chances... Instead of learning from any of his mistakes, he decided to double down here and call someone a Nazi to just shut them up while simultaneously attempting to defend the legacy of Joseph Stalin (here's some light reading on why Stalin was a bad man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin - and that quotes the historian he's supposedly read books of and gone to lectures of ). Guy's a massive twat. And back on topic, Putin is also a massive twat.

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.