Political Posts

[Xerxes]

I disagree with that statement. Sounds like we are saying that, "we are doing all the hard work of choking you to death, but you got to do some legwork and remove the guy we dont like". 

 

Sanctions are stupid and work only to create an entire generation people that know nothing but misery, The moment sanctions goes up, at that very moment, almost instantiously, black markets comes into business. And whoever controls the border and ministries and flow of goods, controls the black market.

 

We are making headlines about going after Oligarch yachts and mansions, but at this very moment, we are creating a new class of oligarch in Russia. We do not know the names of this new class of enterprising Russians that will circumnavigate the sanctions, because they are being created at this very moment. But you will know them and hear their stories 15 years from now.

 

[mcliu]

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/mar/07/impossible-bolshoi-music-director-tugan-sokhiev-quits-over-calls-to-denounce-ukraine-invasion

I suspect this cancel/anti-Russia movement across the West is backfiring and making even moderate/West-leaning Russians become more anti-West and stand firmer behind Putin.

 

https://www.jpost.com/international/article-700677

Putin's offer, Zelensky's dilemma: What is going on in negotiations between Russia and Ukraine?
According to sources privy to details about Bennett's trip to Russia, the negotiations are much more serious than what the West has been saying – and Zelensky faces a tough decision.

[elliott]

17 hours ago, Gregmal said:

Absolutely. 100% the media is scum of the earth. An enemy just like Putin except they effect more Americans than he does.

 

unfortunately, I dont think thats US exclusive.

another thing that strikes me about all this, and which the media has a lot to do, is the suppression of diversity of thinking. for example, if you have business in Russia and dont leave the country, you have become evil. so companies must leave Russia even when their actions are only going to hurt the Russian population, not Putin and company.

 

this may deviate from the topic too much, but I think this conflict has made this so much clear. the media has taken their side, and either you are on theirs or you are on the enemys. there is no other option.

 

[mcliu]

It's like how Westerners think Russians only sees one side of the story. Except it's also the same in the West.

The difference is in the West, you're allowed to see the other side, just that no one really cares to.

This is made worse now by cancel culture.

Edited March 8, 2022 by mcliu

[thefatbaboon]

I agree with Xerxes. I had never really thought about it before but when I went through the sanction history they don't seem to have helped - not once.  Cuba must be 6 decades under sanctions and it's been Fidel Castro and his brother.  NK -  father and son. Iran - a couple of ayatollahs. Venezuela - Chavez and Maduro...etc.

 

I guess if you find a ghetto, rife with crime, controlled by mafia bosses, would you increase or decrease the population's chance of getting out from under their crime lords by "ghetto-izing" the area even more?

 

It is politically popular to talk about "punishing".  Punishing crime and drug lords, punishing international malefactors. It is sad that more thought doesn't go into to this. 

 

There are 40 million Ukrainians whose lives and country is getting destroyed.  There are 150 million total isolated Russians who's net worth has been obliterated over the last week, can't fly out of their country, who have no access to most of the daily goods and services that we all take for granted.  And there are hundreds of millions of of average Europeans and Americans who's costs of living are soaring. 

 

Also, another thought I had, if we don't buy Russian energy don't we have to buy someone else's energy?  And if we buy someone else's energy then that country is not selling it to whoever they were selling it to before we bought it and that entity who can't buy it from whomever they were buying it before will have to buy it from.... Russia...no one has 10 million bd of hydrocarbons sitting in their cupboard. 

 

Anyway, the peace deal of neutrality/demilitarization and handing over Crimea and the Donbas looks good to me.  Not perfect but the alternatives are worse.  Hopefully they agree it because both War and Sanctions are lose/lose propositions.

 

Edited March 8, 2022 by thefatbaboon

[thefatbaboon]

25 minutes ago, mcliu said:

It's like how Westerners think Russians only sees one side of the story. Except it's also the same in the West.

The difference is in the West, you're allowed to see the other side, just that no one really cares to.

This is made worse now by cancel culture.

 

You say that we are allowed to see the other side but has anyone else been shocked how quickly Russian news sources like RT have been forbidden?  

 

Not that he will care about my appreciation - I am a nobody -  but Elon Musk went up in my opinion when he said that he would have to be threatened by a gun to ban Russian news on his Starlink and that all news is to some degree propaganda.

 

 

[Gregmal]

Musk is a national treasure 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

49 minutes ago, thefatbaboon said:

I agree with Xerxes. I had never really thought about it before but when I went through the sanction history they don't seem to have helped - not once.  Cuba must be 6 decades under sanctions and it's been Fidel Castro and his brother.  NK -  father and son. Iran - a couple of ayatollahs. Venezuela - Chavez and Maduro...etc.

 

I guess if you find a ghetto, rife with crime, controlled by mafia bosses would you increase or decrease the population's chance of getting out from under their crime lords by "ghetto-izing" the area even more?

 

It is politically popular to talk about "punishing".  Punishing crime and drug lords, punishing international malefactors. It is sad that more thought doesn't go into to this. 

 

 

Yup. They are successful in that they make the entire nation more dependent on centralized powers.

 

And in a lot of cases, I almost imagine it makes things worse. It's people who are desperate who most often resort to violence.

 

Do you think you'd have ISIS or the Taliban if all their foot soldiers were middle class with jobs and families at risk? Impoverishing a nation just makes for entire generations that hate the West and have little to lose by fighting against it. 

 

 

[mcliu]

NATO instructors training Ukrainian neo-nazi Azov battalion on NLAW.

Seems like the West isn't concerned about far-right ideology anymore?

 

 

[Xerxes]

Cycles of violence. Worth looking at the history Franco-German conflicts. Same year might be off.

 

- 1806: Napoleonic invasion and subjugation of Prussia

 

- 1815: Battle of Waterloo: everyone knows about Duke of Wellington, little people know that there would be no Waterloo without Blucher and his Prussian seeking revenge.

 

- 1870-72: Creation of German Empire and the elevation of King of Prussia to Kaiser. This was done in the famed Hall of Mirrors in the Versailles Palace in France, after Otto von Bismarck had Napoleon III on the run. Loss of Alsac-Lorraine territories

 

- 1914-18: French re-took the Alsac-Lorraine territories. In 1918, Maraschal Foch and his German counterpart sign the armistice in his train carriage (which i believe was his warcarriage). Treaty of Versailles few years later (1921?) and subjugation of Germany. The treaty was signed in the very same hall of mirrors where German Empire was proclaimed.

 

- 1939-40: German conquest of France. French surrended signed in the very same train carriage that Foch took German's cease-fire. After that Hitler had the train carriage destroyed and in his mind the shame was forever removed.

 

In Sept 1984, severn decades after the start of the First World War, German Chancellor Kohl and French President Mitterrand held hands. That is 178 years from the Napoleonic invasions.

 

Think of everychild now in Ukraine and one of them is thinking ....

 

 

 

 

[cubsfan]

I'm all for not punishing the Russian people and agree with this sentiment.

But do we really not want to punish the Russian government and just sit by & reward them

for destroying Ukraine?  And then make them richer - and let them do it again?

 

[Spekulatius]

44 minutes ago, cubsfan said:

I'm all for not punishing the Russian people and agree with this sentiment.

But do we really not want to punish the Russian government and just sit by & reward them

for destroying Ukraine?  And then make them richer - and let them do it again?

 

It's not about punishing the Russian people although they inevitably will feel the pain. It's about destroying the Russian war machine via their Achilles heel which is their weak economy. The assumption is that Russia simply can't keep war machine  going for long if the economy is in taters.

 

Make no mistake - we are at war with Putin& Russia. We chose our weapon to fight back - finance and trade / tech where we have got the machine gun, and they got a pocket knife (economy the size of Texas). The alternative is either doing nothing, or fight a real war with troops on the ground. We don't want the latter and quite frankly doing nothing at this point is like doing nothing when Hitler moved into Poland.

 

Personally I think the Russian economy will be in total taters in a month or two, We are talking shortages everywhere, high tech parts difficult to get and their army running out of spare parts. I think it is well possible that their tanks will be just sitting there broken in a ditch with no spare parts and the Russian soldiers pack up and take the bus or walk home. Maybe I am smoking something. Worth a try, imo.

[cubsfan]

^^ No - I totally agree. My response was questioning those that are claiming sanctions are unfair 

to the Russians. I've no interest in punishing innocent Russian citizens. They are, in essence, 

collateral damage to a egomaniac. Unfortunately, just like North Korea.

[adesigar]

35 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

Personally I think the Russian economy will be in total taters in a month or two, We are talking shortages everywhere, high tech parts difficult to get and their army running out of spare parts. I think it is well possible that their tanks will be just sitting there broken in a ditch with no spare parts and the Russian soldiers pack up and take the bus or walk home. Maybe I am smoking something. Worth a try, imo.

 

China manufacturing <---> Russia Energy.

Edited March 8, 2022 by adesigar

[hellowod]

Why would China even dare to help Russia directly on its war effort?

[Xerxes]

14 minutes ago, cubsfan said:

^^ No - I totally agree. My response was questioning those that are claiming sanctions are unfair 

to the Russians. I've no interest in punishing innocent Russian citizens. They are, in essence, 

collateral damage to a egomaniac. Unfortunately, just like North Korea.

 

There is no such thing as unfair or fair in war. In a war, you set out to win & completely obliterate your oponenent and then hire bunch of latte-sipping analysts re-write history. Like how Israel done it. They got the Arab lands (fair and square through wars of conquest, IMO), and they can write their own narrative. Several decades later, only the bravest Westerner is allowed to critize Israel, before being called an anti-semitic and shamed into going back on what they said. And even when they critisize Israel, they have to bow and dance and explain themselves. 

 

For every geoplitical action there is an equal or greater geopolitical reaction (a bit different then Newtonian mechanics). So

only a fool would dismiss the long term liabilities of a certain action that we are taking now with Russia. It is a gamble. If it works and somehow Russia get rid of Putin in a not too distant future that is great. But it can also backfire and backfire badly.

 

I would remind everyone, that it was not long ago (last August) when U.S. made a complete mess in Afghanistan, and now it is Russia who is the one making a mess, and sleepy Joe is beaming in pride. Situation changed in a matter of six months. Things that may look very clear now, may look very different 5 months from now. Putin rolled the dice, gambeled and in my opinion lost big time (even if he reduces Ukraine to ashes). Credit goes to Zelensky (who IMO signed his own death warrant with his heroism). Right now we are the one rolling the dice and keep getting double-sixes.

 

 

[cubsfan]

^^^ It's fun listening to you whine about Israel - a sliver of land surrounded by religious fanatics devoted to destroying them. So much for protecting yourself. Is it any wonder that the 1M or so Arabs that live

in Israel have no interest in leaving to live in the hellhole Arab nations around them?

 

Talk about re-writing history..

[Zemergefen]

1 minute ago, cubsfan said:

^^^ It's fun listening to you whine about Israel - a sliver of land surrounded by religious fanatics devoted to destroying them. So much for protecting yourself. Is it any wonder that the 1M or so Arabs that live

in Israel have no interest in leaving to live in the hellhole Arab nations around them?

 

Talk about re-writing history..

This is true.

As an Israeli... they do not have any interest whatsoever of living in other Arab countries.

They have a great quality of life here.

 

[Xerxes]

13 minutes ago, cubsfan said:

^^^ It's fun listening to you whine about Israel - a sliver of land surrounded by religious fanatics devoted to destroying them. So much for protecting yourself. Is it any wonder that the 1M or so Arabs that live

in Israel have no interest in leaving to live in the hellhole Arab nations around them?

 

Talk about re-writing history..

 

Cubsfan, 

Grow up & stop whining just because someone uttered the word Israel.

 

Good thing I stated they had won their land fair and square. Victors had always written their own narrative from the dawn of mankind, whether wars were just or not. If nothing else, get that through your head.

 

 

 

[JAK]

3 hours ago, Xerxes said:

Cycles of violence. Worth looking at the history Franco-German conflicts. Same year might be off.

 

- 1806: Napoleonic invasion and subjugation of Prussia

 

- 1815: Battle of Waterloo: everyone knows about Duke of Wellington, little people know that there would be no Waterloo without Blucher and his Prussian seeking revenge.

 

- 1870-72: Creation of German Empire and the elevation of King of Prussia to Kaiser. This was done in the famed Hall of Mirrors in the Versailles Palace in France, after Otto von Bismarck had Napoleon III on the run. Loss of Alsac-Lorraine territories

 

- 1914-18: French re-took the Alsac-Lorraine territories. In 1918, Maraschal Foch and his German counterpart sign the armistice in his train carriage (which i believe was his warcarriage). Treaty of Versailles few years later (1921?) and subjugation of Germany. The treaty was signed in the very same hall of mirrors where German Empire was proclaimed.

 

- 1939-40: German conquest of France. French surrended signed in the very same train carriage that Foch took German's cease-fire. After that Hitler had the train carriage destroyed and in his mind the shame was forever removed.

 

In Sept 1984, severn decades after the start of the First World War, German Chancellor Kohl and French President Mitterrand held hands. That is 178 years from the Napoleonic invasions.

 

Think of everychild now in Ukraine and one of them is thinking ....

 

 

 

 

 

1945: Russia demands, and is ceded, the Prussian capital Königsberg...... to the victors, go the spoils.

[Spekulatius]

1 hour ago, hellowod said:

Why would China even dare to help Russia directly on its war effort?

China will try to benefit from this, buy some cheap oil/LNG from the Russian etc. but I think they will stay as far away from trouble as they can. This is not their fight and when have you ever seen them helping another country when they had no direct interest or benefit?

They are also seeing the response from the west and draw their own conclusions. Besides this, every Chinese company that does business with Russia has to weigh the cost benefit of doing business there or doing business with the west. That will be looked at case by case and I think it is possible that companies like state owned business do some bartering with Russians, because they have got nothing to lose. Most others will be quite careful, they have seen what happened to Huawei.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Spekulatius

[TwoCitiesCapital]

6 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

China will try to benefit from this, buy some cheap oil/LNG from the Russian etc. but I think they will stay as far away from trouble as they can. This is not their fight and when have you ever seen them helping another country when they had no direct interest or benefit?

They are also seeing the response from the west and draw their own conclusions. Besides this, every Chinese company that does business with Russia has to weigh the cost benefit of doing business there or doing business with the west. That will be looked at case by case and I think it is possible that companies like state owned business do some bartering with Russians, because they have got nothing to lose. Most others will be quite careful, they have seen what happened to Huawei.

 

WSJ had an article today about China having interest in buying stakes in companies like Gazprom. 

 

You can bet that they'll eventually buy oil at a discount from Russia (just like they do Iran) and that they'll take a pound of flesh in strategic equity ownership in these companies now that valuations have been decimated. 

[cubsfan]

2 hours ago, Xerxes said:

 

Cubsfan, 

Grow up & stop whining just because someone uttered the word Israel.

 

Good thing I stated they had won their land fair and square. Victors had always written their own narrative from the dawn of mankind, whether wars were just or not. If nothing else, get that through your head.

 

 

 

Listen to you. So you go on your little rampage trashing the Israeli's for their right to exist.

I can't help it that the Arabs and Persian leaders have nothing better to do than  kill each

other and plant roadside bombs everywhere.  But you go right ahead and justify it, since 

it makes you feel better.

[Xerxes]

You got to be f&&&ing kidding me.

 

I talked about Russia, Ukraine, genocides in Rwanda, Burma, former Yoguslavia etc. I talked about fucking Gorbachov, I talked about Franco-German wars, the mongoles, Golden horde in Crimea, U.S. foreign policy, I talked about how Trump's greatest achievement was to create peace between the Arabs and Israel, ... but the moment someone makes a comment about Israel and its lands, you get all the retards in the world, rolling over themselves up to draw red lines around Israel and profess their support.

 

No comments about children being thrown in the fires in Burma ,,, that is all good.

But we fuc*ing cannot talk about Israel.

 

Let's get this clear and see if we can through your head => Israel won its lands through wars of conquest. PERIOD. There is nothing wrong with that. PERIOD. And it doesnt matter who started the war, Nasser or "name the Arab tyrant" of the day. PERIOD. They have it now and as far as I am concerned they can keep it, since they are better steward than the alternative. PERIOD. But doesnt change the fact that they are responsible for popluation there yet they seem to have no problem treating Palestinean like shit and throwing them out of their home for fun. PERIOD. Are Palestineans any better, nope, since they refuse to accept the inveitable for decades. PERIOD.

 

Now, that doesnt change the fact that everytime someone says "israel", retards line up to support and profess their love for Israel. PERIOD. That is what it means controlling the NARRATIVE. 

 

Who knows maybe 50 years from now, in an unlikely scenario that Russia somehow keeps swaths of Ukraine and de-populates some of the cities and replace the locals with Russians and throws them out of their home, we would be so tired & numb of seeing footages Ukrainian throwing stones to Russian troops that we wont care either.

 

Now, now, now before you get too excited to point out the difference between Russian naked aggression in Ukraine and Israeli wars to defend itself in 1967 and 1973, no one is making that comparision. But the END RESULTS is the same, a population controlling (subjugating) another and making rules. Hence wars of conquest.

 

If this cannot get through your biased, brainwashed head, nothing else can. PERIOD.

I am done with this thread. 

 

 

[cubsfan]

Like I said - go right ahead and defend Fatah, Hamas and Hezbollah. Keep lobby those bombs into

Israel - because in reality - they don't have a right to exist. Cause those Israelis just bull doz Palestinian 

homes for fun. Of course, you have NO explanation for all the Arab neighbors that stick those

poor Palestinians into refugee camps because they want nothing to do with them. Their are plenty

of Palestinians that live in Israel PEACEFULLY, side by side Christians & Jews. What a fucking concept!

 

And those Palestinians are so terribly subjugated that they never leave. And just think, all the

Jews ask is - how 'bout you stop killing people? IS that too much too ask!

 

OF course it's all Israel's fault!