DannyL

Wild Horses
It's a seperate point but it's also probably, off the top of my head, the first conflict to start in a place where EVERYONE has smartphones with videocameras and that. I can't think of another where do many people will have had access to that. Like there's no doubt that eg the stuff that was happening in Myanmar was a million times worse than what we've seen so far in Ukraine, but it was meditated in a totally different way
Syria was up to this point the most widely filmed conflict in history which is not unconnected to Russia's industrial strength disinformation campaign in that country.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I've seen a lot of mentions GWB's overtures towards Georgia and Ukraine in the last week, but the fact remains that they didn't join NATO. In fact the Baltic states are the only ex-Soviet countries that have signed up.
Cmon my guy, don't be silly. Every single Warsaw Pact nation has joined - always over bitter Russian opposition - and the only reason more SSRs haven't is that yunno, Russia has literally invaded the only two that have tried. Also, the remaining SSRs are mostly in central Asia, not Eastern Europe. Everyone who feasibly can has joined or tried to.

I would never in any way say this war is justified - Russia earned every bit of mistrust and hatred from its former dominions - but unlike the bullshit about preventing genocide and whatever, NATO encroachment is a very real thing, that's been going on for 30 years.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I feel like I say something like this every time Russia comes up

It's a garbage regime that does a lot of terrible stuff, but we - i.e. our policymakers, neoliberal economists, carpetbagger profiteers, and so on - created the conditions for it to come to power and happily stood by as long as it was content to be a good boy and subordinate itself to the post-Cold War order - it's the original sin. No one in power here was shedding any tears for Chechnya 20 years ago.

And if those are the realpolitik rules you play by, fine, but don't be shocked when the monster you helped create (see also: Bin Laden and etc) turns around and applies them to you. I just dislike the hypocrisy and/or ignorance - tbc that's not directed @ T or any other individual, just in general - of pretending it just springs from some unique well of Russian nefariousness rather than yunno, a set of historical circumstances our own governments had a very large hand in creating.
 

luka

Well-known member
that's what Peter Hitchens has been saying. Vim got me into him. an odd character but he often has an interesting take.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Was just talking to someone earlier who was attacked by Hitchens on Twitter when he challenged him on Syria/chemical weapons. Apparently he searches his own name which is how he found my friend.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
that's what Peter Hitchens has been saying
He's almost exclusively terrible but I wouldn't be surprised if his paleoconservative Euroskeptic thing leads him to call bullshit on the whole "we are the goodest good guys, they are the evilest evil guys" line

I.e. the enemy of my true enemy (a semi-mythic construct of multicultural progressive Western Europe) is not as bad as my true enemy makes it seem
 

luka

Well-known member
He's almost exclusively terrible but I wouldn't be surprised if his paleoconservative Euroskeptic thing leads him to call bullshit on the whole "we are the goodest good guys, they are the evilest evil guys" line
its not that, its more what youre saying. that we kicked them in the balls when they were down.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
he was knocking about in Russia chasing birds when the USSR fell. mental really.

I've never seen that many birds in Russia - did see one interesting bird of prey by a lake one time which we never managed to identify but I am sure there is far more to see if we got to spend more time in nature like that.
 
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