Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[HKP90]

4 hours ago, MakemineVanilla said:

Russell Brand attacking, Democrats, Banks and the Tories, with quotes from the Guardian:

 

Russell Brand is what thick people think bright people are.

 

[HKP90]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

See, this here’s part of the problem. Here we have a brutal tyrant commanding war and destruction on a huge scale in a neighbouring democracy, completely against international law and norms. Yet somehow ( and I acknowledge there’s an element of truth in your comment and the video contrast) the thing to rail against is “the woke crew”. It’s not you I’m critical of here, it’s this notion that there even is a “woke crew” and the further notion that people who believe in tolerance and equality and respect don’t or can’t fight for their country. It’s kind of imagining a cultural enemy when there isn’t one. Yes there are a lot of seemingly spoilt, not fully developed, twitterers and facebookers who virtue signal from shallow lives, but mostly it’s just people wanting to find a place to belong.

The problems of the world are more Putin and less the “woke” as annoying as they sometimes can seem.

I'm convinced that the concept of 'woke' is just a way that right wing politicians play into the nostalgia, and confrontational 'them and us' mentality that a certain section of society are motivated by. 

Same as 'political correctness gone mad'. People trying hard not to be crappy to each other is not the work of the devil. At worst it is misguided altruism, which I would take over distrust of someone who 'doesn't look like us' any day of the week.

[NurembergVillan]

The irony of Brexit being funded by the Kremlin is not lost on me.

[Rolta]

45 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

The irony of Brexit being funded by the Kremlin is not lost on me.

What a word removed. The shame of it. To use what's happening in Ukraine to try to continue his bullshit.

Edited March 19, 2022 by Rolta

[trekka]

Interesting thread on Twitter.  What is going on?

 

[It's Your Round]

59 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

The irony of Brexit being funded by the Kremlin is not lost on me.

What an absolutely vile cretin. Just when you think he can’t sink any lower, he adds another pound of lard to his arse and slides away. 

[magnkarl]

Not confirmed, but again big for Ukraine if true.

[magnkarl]

18 minutes ago, trekka said:

Interesting thread on Twitter.  What is going on?

 

Could mean many things. Could mean that the army in Belarus is starting to group for a western push against Lutsk, or it could mean that the Belarusian army is considering a coup with Brest as their base. To be perfectly honest, the Belarusian army is rumoured around 50k strong. If Lukashenko wants to keep his country from a population already in open revolt since last year he’ll need these troops at home.

Belarus is not a nuclear power. NATO could blitz their capital and arrest him to show Putin what will eventually happen to him. A token force of 20.000 Belarusians won’t make a dent against the now over a million conscripted Ukrainian army.

[bickster]

Impressive if true

[Awol]

Who knows if this is true - but I hope it is.

 

[bickster]

I was trying to think of something to say, I'm sure you'll all know what to think anyway

 

[Awol]

11 minutes ago, bickster said:

I was trying to think of something to say, I'm sure you'll all know what to think anyway

 

 

[Awol]

Meanwhile, Russia seriously thinks it’s going to strong arm more European states 

 

[foreveryoung]

22 minutes ago, bickster said:

I was trying to think of something to say, I'm sure you'll all know what to think anyway

 

Taken or Kidnapped. Bit old skool this? If true I cannot see Nato staying out of this for much longer.

[Awol]

The contempt of this Ukrainian squaddie is amazing. If Belarus joins the invasion too, NATO may have some trouble holding Poland back.

 

 

[Panto_Villan]

7 hours ago, HKP90 said:

I'm convinced that the concept of 'woke' is just a way that right wing politicians play into the nostalgia, and confrontational 'them and us' mentality that a certain section of society are motivated by. 

Same as 'political correctness gone mad'. People trying hard not to be crappy to each other is not the work of the devil. At worst it is misguided altruism, which I would take over distrust of someone who 'doesn't look like us' any day of the week.

That's a huge straw man, right? Sure, there's a debate to be had about how overused the terms "woke" / "political correctness gone mad" / etc are and the answer maps very closely to what your political views are, but they're obviously a real thing to at least *some* degree.

Sure, misplaced altruism is better than xenophobia, but it's perfectly possible and much preferable to do neither of those things. It's not a binary choice.

And clearly not every example of errant wokeness is misplaced altrusim either - e.g. Jussie Smollet, etc. It's perfectly possible to weaponise woke culture for personal gain and accepting that and calling it out when it occurs doesn't have to undermine your support of the movement as a whole, although right-wing nutjobs will tell you it should.

8 hours ago, blandy said:

See, this here’s part of the problem. Here we have a brutal tyrant commanding war and destruction on a huge scale in a neighbouring democracy, completely against international law and norms. Yet somehow ( and I acknowledge there’s an element of truth in your comment and the video contrast) the thing to rail against is “the woke crew”. It’s not you I’m critical of here, it’s this notion that there even is a “woke crew” and the further notion that people who believe in tolerance and equality and respect don’t or can’t fight for their country. It’s kind of imagining a cultural enemy when there isn’t one. Yes there are a lot of seemingly spoilt, not fully developed, twitterers and facebookers who virtue signal from shallow lives, but mostly it’s just people wanting to find a place to belong.

The problems of the world are more Putin and less the “woke” as annoying as they sometimes can seem.

I'll be interested to see what happens in the next few years regarding say the activism at large tech companies about how they shouldn't be working with the Pentagon because the military is bad. I know Google pulled out of a big contract with the Pentagon after employee protests and there were similar protests at Microsoft and Amazon too.

One of my friends is part of the LBTQ community and has very progressive views, and during the BLM protests a couple of years ago we pointed out her views on how society should change would leave the West unable to defend itself or compete economically with the rest of the world, and she said she was fine with that and felt the West deserved to fall because of its historical crimes. She very much seemed to mean it at the time, although one would hope she might have changed her mind now there's been such a horrifying demonstration of why fighting for your country / values can sometimes be neccessary (especially given the countries most likely to fill the power vaccuum caused by the fall of the West aren't exactly known for their tolerance of the LBTQ community).

Edited March 19, 2022 by Panto_Villan

[BleedClaretAndBlue]

 

[Panto_Villan]

Re: the Belarus thing, I was reading an article yesterday talking about the threat of nuclear escalation in a conflict with Russia and it was talking about how NATO had wargamed the scenario of NATO being in armed conflict with Russia and how to respond to Russia using a single relatively small tactical nuke on a military base in Germany as a warning. They ran it several times with different personnel to see how they would react.

The first team decided that they would just ignore the nuclear attack and continue with the war against Russia using only conventional weapons in order to prevent further escalation, the logic being that tactical nukes aren't actually substantially more powerful than the most powerful conventional weapons. Which is fair enough.

The second team to run the exercise decided it would be more appropriate to respond with a more significant nuclear strike to illustrate to Russia the dangers of further escalation (which is also fair enough). What made me laugh is that they decided to make that point to fictional Putin by nuking Belarus, who weren't even involved in the fictional conflict.

It does make a weird kinda sense though, given Belarus doesn't have its own nukes. So as @magnkarl said above we might see NATO make an example of Belarus if things end up escalating.

[HKP90]

24 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

That's a huge straw man, right? Sure, there's a debate to be had about how overused the terms "woke" / "political correctness gone mad" / etc are and the answer maps very closely to what your political views are, but they're obviously a real thing to at least *some* degree.

Sure, misplaced altruism is better than xenophobia, but it's perfectly possible and much preferable to do neither of those things. It's not a binary choice.

And clearly not every example of errant wokeness is misplaced altrusim either - e.g. Jussie Smollet, etc. It's perfectly possible to weaponise woke culture for personal gain and accepting that and calling it out when it occurs doesn't have to undermine your support of the movement as a whole, although right-wing nutjobs will tell you it should.

I'll be interested to see what happens in the next few years regarding say the activism at large tech companies about how they shouldn't be working with the Pentagon because the military is bad. I know Google pulled out of a big contract with the Pentagon after employee protests and there were similar protests at Microsoft and Amazon too.

One of my friends is part of the LBTQ community and has very progressive views, and during the BLM protests a couple of years ago we pointed out her views on how society should change would leave the West unable to defend itself or compete economically with the rest of the world, and she said she was fine with that and felt the West deserved to fall because of its historical crimes. She very much seemed to mean it at the time, although one would hope she might have changed her mind now there's been such a horrifying demonstration of why fighting for your country / values can sometimes be neccessary.

Delete the last sentence if that bothers you, but it's not moderates that use words like woke and snowflake, it's folks at the other end of the spectrum (xenophobes to use your term), so to my mind a comparison is fair.

 

[bickster]

32 minutes ago, BleedClaretAndBlue said:

 

Given that Azov are very busy blowing up Russian armour in the Donbas I don’t see how they’d manage it