Talk about politics here.
Probably quite a quiet thread at the moment I expect.
Politics Discussion: Cynicism Always Warranted
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Nice work if you can get it.
Unfortunately as a result of those 44 days that only works out at $13.78.
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Nice work if you can get it.
That’s very little money. Can’t even afford a house in London on that salary!
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“Boris Johnson Pulls Out”
With a headline like that it is no wonder they cancelled Mock The Week. The jokes write themselves.
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Rishi Sunak has won after all his rivals dropped out.
The UK’s first Hindu PM elevated to that position on Diwali.
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As a British Asian, of Rishi’s generation no less, I do have a smile on my face right now. I cannot lie.
Growing up here (in the U.K.) in the 1970s and 80s was difficult for us. Racial tension and ignorance was something we all had to endure. And, still do to a lesser extent. I never expected to see someone like me reside in No 10. To see this happen on Diwali too is pretty special.
I recognise, of course, that had this gone to the Tory party members, he would have lost out again. But, the fact that it didn’t, and there are now circa 80,000 people fuming about this fills me with immense joy.
He’s still a Tory and I still want him kicked out at the next possible opportunity, but for right now, I’ll let it slide.
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Word is the Daily Heil has exploded.
Really like your take on it Vik, that it is good in a way, but Sunak is still a Tory politician.
I expect him to do a Kwartang, when he needs a quick escspe he’ll shamelessly play the “is it cos I is Indian?” card, while scorning equality initiatives.
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Speaking to Sanjay on Telegram, his comment was the same as Vikram’s in slightly different words.
He’ll enjoy the moment of representation for today and then hope Sunak gets kicked out at a general election.
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So what’s the over/under that he lasts longer than Truss?
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He’ll definitely go longer. Truss was a spectacularly bad idea all round, and a total disaster from the moment she walked in. Sunak is at least competent (for a Tory). Given the state of the country he inherits I really can’t see him doing worse.
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He’s politically adept enough to successfully play the “spending cuts will hit those who deserve them, not you” card. And claim total innocence when those who backed him, happy that others would get cut, are cut in turn.
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For sure. We’re definitely back in Austerity 2.0 territory here, short of another global disaster.
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“They think it’s all over…” But is it?
Say the Standards Committee finds Johnson guilty. Johnson isn’t the kind to go quietly, he knows Sunak is every bit as guilty as he is so torpedoes him as PM as an act of spite. What then?
Guess we’ll find out when that report comes out.
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He’ll definitely go longer.
Agreed. For a start because it’s hard to go shorter, nobody has, and also yes he is more sensible and pragmatic and basically told Truss all her fantasy economics would end in exactly where it did.
I’d predict Sunak will probably last until the next general election, which is a bit bold considering the chaotic nature of the current Tory party. However like John Major he’s boring enough to probably get through it. The main risk is what we have seen slightly already, Sunak and his family are stinking rich, beyond most politicians even in the US. Where and how all that money is invested could come back to stick a spoke in the wheels.
If he does make it through, and he will recover polling deficit from Truss’ omnishambles, is the optics of a billionaire who will be asking people to tighten their belts and unfortunately the racist element on the right who I suspect will go for the Reform party before voting for a brown person.
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Johnson isn’t the kind to go quietly, he knows Sunak is every bit as guilty as he is so torpedoes him as PM as an act of spite.
Sunak is guilty, the fixed penalty is proof of that, but the privileges committee stuff is about knowingly lying to Parliament. If there was any evidence he did that I think we’d have heard it by now. The fact that he doesn’t drink alcohol also means I don’t think the ‘piss up while the country suffers’ stuff will stick, whatever Johnson might say.
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As much as we can welcome the progress that Sunak represents in the abstract, I can’t welcome him personally as PM for quite a few reasons – including how long he supported Johnson as PM and the direct role he has played in allowing tory policy to damage the economy that he’s now seeking to repair.
And even acknowledging the fact that he’s been made PM without a vote from the UK people, or even his own party membership, the fact that he’s done it without saying a single word publicly in this latest leadership campaign is slightly staggering.
As always, there’s a strong sense that the tories have bet on the person who they think is most likely to ensure their survival, and be best for the party, rather than best for the country.
We’ll soon see what kind of PM he turns out to be, I guess.
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That this is something controversial is incredible. I wonder what led us to this state of madness.
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Sorry, you think negotiating with a country that has invaded another and claimed parts of it as its own territory shouldn’t be controversial? Man, you’d have loved Neville Chamberlain.
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We’ll soon see what kind of PM he turns out to be, I guess.
Oh, the kind who reappoints Suella Braverman as Home Secretary.
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It is genuinely a very hard chasm to cross. While in theory negotiation and compromise is good where does that come in with aggression across borders?
Let’s look at it a different way, until 100 years ago Ireland was part of the UK/GB for a very long time, centuries. If they started a war to take some of that back would anyone agree ‘yeah we’ll compromise, they can take Leinster’ – because we like peace overall. Why upset the apple cart? Just invade, aim for 100% control, then negotiate 75%. It is bullshit.
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they can take Leinster
Can they bollocks
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We’ll soon see what kind of PM he turns out to be, I guess.
Oh, the kind who reappoints Suella Braverman as Home Secretary.
Yep. He had his chance and he blew it.
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they can take Leinster
Can they bollocks
Well I was told they are English speakers there Lorcan which of course proves categorically they’d rather be ruled by London.
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We’ll soon see what kind of PM he turns out to be, I guess.
Oh, the kind who reappoints Suella Braverman as Home Secretary.
Yep. He had his chance and he blew it.
I can only imagine it’s what she was given in exchange for backing Sunak rather than Johnson in the recent leadership contest (which played a part in cutting down on the support for Johnson and letting Sunak be installed unopposed).
Glad to see he’s making good on his promise to restore integrity to the office of PM.
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they can take Leinster
Can they bollocks
Well I was told they are English speakers there Lorcan which of course proves categorically they’d rather be ruled by London.
Look, all I’m saying is that I literally live down the road from where my Great-Grandfather shot at British soldiers 106 years ago, and that might be in Leinster…
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they can take Leinster
Can they bollocks
Well I was told they are English speakers there Lorcan which of course proves categorically they’d rather be ruled by London.
Look, all I’m saying is that I literally live down the road from where my Great-Grandfather shot at British soldiers 106 years ago, and that might be in Leinster…
Do we know if he hit any of them?
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Do we know if he hit any of them?
Him individually? Not sure, but the garrison did inflict casualties while only taking one themselves.
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Look, all I’m saying is that I literally live down the road from where my Great-Grandfather shot at British soldiers 106 years ago, and that might be in Leinster…
As a rugby fan I’m well up on the provinces of Ireland and of course the outrageous nature of the concept was my point.
I am anti war by nature but I find it difficult to see what ‘compromise’ doesn’t reward Russia for invading. I can’t think of an example really in the recent past where one side has been allowed to keep a chunk of what was taken in exchange for a ceasefire.
I don’t know maybe after 8 years the Ukrainians would be willing to cede Crimea officially via the UN. I’ve not heard it discussed much.
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Watch out, Hunter Biden? What voters predict a GOP House majority would do
In the poll, one prospective action was predicted across party lines: that Republicans would use new powers in a majority to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
The ever crazy Marjorie Taylor Greene says a GOP controlled House will investigate companies that stopped donating to the GOP after Jan 6th. They really don’t even bother trying to hide their fascism anymore.
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Fuck Hunter Biden, nobody cares.
Buuuuut where the midterms are concerned – listen, if the GOP does take the House, let alone the Senate, after what the Supreme Court did… I mean, even with redistricting and whatnot, if taking away this basic human right from large parts of the America population doesn’t deliver a humiliating defeat to the Republicans, then I don’t know what to say. Except that maybe the US deserve whatever they’ll get.
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Oh, America is good and screwed. The GOP will win the midterms because our collective attention span is short and people can’t see beyond inflation and don’t understand it enough to realize neither party will suddenly be able to fix it. And the media here plays the “both sides” narrative all too often out of fear of sounding biased, which a lot of younger, liberal voters use as an excuse to give into apathy. Don’t get me wrong, the Dems do largely suck. But while they’re disappointing, the other side is legitimately a fascist party looking to strip away rights from anyone who isn’t a white, wealthy, straight, “Christian” man.
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This is messed up:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/30/dover-petrol-bomb-immigration-centre-border-force
Doubtless the politicians will come out with the usual hollow platitudes. Then they’ll dial the toxic rhetoric down for 48 hours and return to business as usual, oblivious and heedless of the world they’re encouraging.
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So it looks like Brazil is getting couped by Bolsonaro with the aid of the military and police.
In a bizarre turn of events, a US president has come out in defence of an elected left-wing leader in South America and suggested that there not be a coup. Changing 60 years of national policy just like that.
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Not that it would surprise me in the slightest but I’m not reading yet abut Bolsonaro staging a coup. It seems to be pretty quiet on his end, which could be foreboding.
It’s pretty clear the very fast response of congrats from leaders is try and legitimise Lula before any of that starts.
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While in theory negotiation and compromise is good where does that come in with aggression across borders?
I understand the dillemma, still I think we need to keep talking. This is not a just war on the part of the Western powers that are keeping it going; our countries share a responsibility with Putin in getting this started, laying the groundwork for it. It isn’t the black and white situation our media are painting it as. So we also share the responsibility to find an end to the violence.
The only conversation that currently should take place is the Ukrainians asking Russia the following, Arjan: “are you going to withdraw all your forces back to the Russian border circa 2014 and surrender the following list of individuals for war crimes trials at The Hague?”
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Of course.
One thing I always like to ask though, when people say stuff like this – how much unprovoked invasion and genocide should we tolerate from Russia?
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One fucked-up dude started this mess and the same one fucked-up dude has to end it. But that same fucked-up dude? Mobilising his entire country to win stuff he lost within hours of starting it.
Meanwhile, Brazil has told another fucked-up dude to fuck off. Bye bye Bolsanaro, bye bye bastard
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None, but the question for me is which decisions will lead to better outcomes overall
Funny you should mention that. Currently we have a member of the UN Security Council that has invaded a European power, completely unprovoked, making a mockery of international law and its own treaty obligations, and has committed war crimes and blatant acts of genocide. I’ll let you into a little secret – allowing that to happen and backing away from it in the slightest, is not going to work out well at all.
If you believe that Russia will be satisfied with the chunks of Ukraine it currently holds, then I have a Nigerian prince I’d like to introduce you to, Arjan.
I’d think a little harder about long term consequences, if I were you. Anything other than the removal of all Russian forces from Ukrainian territory and the perception of Russia’s total defeat, preferably with the removal of Russia’s leadership, will just be a brief respite for everyone. Whatever negative consequences you may think we’re going to suffer from opposing Russia, we’re going to end up having to face them anyway – I’d like to remind you that Russia has been waging a hybrid war on the West in general since at least 2014.
Sorry to say it, but there are no good choices here, and in any case, it’s Ukraine’s call, not ours.
If you think the decisions of Western countries since the Russian military build up began, or when they encouraged Ukraine to break the Minsk II agreement, or when they meddled in the protests in 2014, were the right course of action, I would understand your standpoint
Would that be the agreement where Russia sent a bunch of paramilitaries into a neighbouring nation to destablise it and act as the precursor to an invasion? Also, would those be the protests where tens of thousands of Ukrainians risked their lives to overthrow a government that was funneling wealth out of the country and into the pockets of Russian oligarchs? Where the immediate response of Russia was to invade and occupy part of that country? Is that the one? That’s the one where we assume that Russia was going to act in good faith? That one?
One thing that always gets me is the refusal to accept that the people of Ukraine might have some agency of their own.
So we should be looking for a way to end the mayhem.
Well, one sure fire way to end the mayhem would be for Russia to withdraw its occupation forces and stop bombing civilian infrastructure.
They’re there by choice. They were never under any threat from Ukraine – they have thousands of fucking nuclear weapons. They simply decided that they wanted the land and resources of a neighboring nation and decided to take it by force.
Everything they have done has been optional for them. They’re drone-bombing civilians by choice. There’s no military objective to it – they’re losing on the battlefield, and rather than simply withdraw their forces, they’re throwing tens of thousands of their own people into a meat grinder while trying to freeze the Ukrainian population into coming to the negotiating table and agree not to push them back to their own territory. Which would make Putin look bad. Their systemic genocide, from raping, torturing and murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians, to trafficking people to their own territory, to stealing their fucking children, was by choice – because they don’t want the people living on that land and using its resources to consider themselves as Ukrainian.
I get the “can’t we all just get along?” vibe, Arjan, I really do – but not this time.
[mod notice – weird stuff happening with submitting this – delete duplicates if necessary]
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I don’t think anyone here really disagrees on the morality of the situation. The question is now how do we best resolve it.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of the world largely agreeing that Russia is in the wrong isn’t enough to convince them to withdraw. If only it was.
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I don’t think anyone here really disagrees on the morality of the situation. The question is now how do we best resolve it.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of the world largely agreeing that Russia is in the wrong isn’t enough to convince them to withdraw. If only it was.
Arjan is right about one thing: it is about long-term consequences. The issue is that it is profoundly naïve to think that any ceasefire would be anything other than temporary, and do anything other than cost everyone more over time.
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I don’t think anyone here really disagrees on the morality of the situation. The question is now how do we best resolve it.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of the world largely agreeing that Russia is in the wrong isn’t enough to convince them to withdraw. If only it was.
Arjan is right about one thing: it is about long-term consequences. The issue is that it is profoundly naïve to think that any ceasefire would be anything other than temporary, and do anything other than cost everyone more over time.
What do you see as the way forward?
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Every time Putin opens his mouth, he talks about the illegitimacy of the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian people. Every. Single. Speech.
Anyone who thinks he would be happy with any negotiated settlement short of “Here, have all of Ukraine” obviously hasn’t been paying attention.
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From all the reports on how the Russians treated the Ukrainian cities they occupied, it isn’t even taking the territory but taking it and killing the inhabitants.
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Therfore the Western powers share in part of the guilt.
Maybe and not many here are staunch defenders of the various foreign policies over the years but it goes back a bit to what I said previously.
Are Ukraine willing to cede Crimea to Russia? Would Putin he happy with that?
I don’t know and I still think this sits primarily in their court. While western powers are deemed to support Ukraine they are also shitting themselves about possible nuclear escalation and western Europe in particular is suffering economically from the gas cut off. Unlike selling arms to Saudi to prolong the Yemen conflict they are spending a lot they can’t massively afford.
If these regions that have been invaded are happy with colonisation the logical response is a democratic one before a military one.
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In the other shitshow, apparently Tory MPS are deeply unhappy with Sunak and already drafting letters of no confidence.
What took them so long this time?
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What’s weirder is Putin had practically got away with nabbing the Crimea, pretty blatantly too. Yet, that wasn’t enough for him. If he’d kept his nerve, instead of six-figure death toll trantrum, he’d still have it.
Sure, Ukraine wouldn’t be happy about it but they also know they’ve no way to really force Russia to give it back to them. Now? Having given Putin’s armies a kicking, they might be thinking that they can take it back.
January 2022 – UK and the US aren’t as close as they were, US and EU are butting heads over stuff, no one is being that attentive to Ukraine, so Putin decides to invade, instantly reversing everything he wanted. It just doesn’t add up to me.
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What do you see as the way forward?
One thing you can always count on with the US, and by extension the West, is for it to do the right thing… once every other option has been exhaustively tried first. In this case, we’ve grudgingly adopted the correct strategy for dealing with an overtly fascist, hostile and imperialistic nuclear-armed state – containment and corrosion.
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In the other shitshow, apparently Tory MPS are deeply unhappy with Sunak and already drafting letters of no confidence.
What took them so long this time?
They had to get a fresh head of lettuce.
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Therfore the Western powers share in part of the guilt. Neo-cons have been adding fuel to this fire at least since 2014.
So we should be looking for a way to end the mayhem.I don’t disagree. I mean, I am not sure whether a different Eastern European policy by the EU would have changed things; I think it has become clear that Putin has been decided on building a new Russian Empire quite a while back, and that this is not necessarily a decision made because he feels threatened.
On the other hand though, hell, the recent model for invading a country on false pretenses was the US invading Iraq and Afghanistan and you could see the neocon’s conquest of the Middle East for their New American Century as the first blow in the new cold war for world domination with Russia that we’re in today. So yeah, sure, the West has their share of blame, too.
Buuuuut that still doesn’t change the current situation: Russia has declared Ukraine as theirs, and they won’t go back on that unless they really have no other choice. On the other side, Ukrainians refuse to be conquered by a hostile force that is going to oppress, rape and genocide them for a hundred years if they go give up, which you can’t blame them for.
There is no middle ground there, and a thousand diplomatic talks won’t change that. All that would do is allow for Russia to regroup and to have a breather in which to optimise their military and get their footing back, so they can crush the opposition withouth bleeding out themselves too much, with the protest in their own country that that currently entails.I don’t see any alternative to supporting Ukraine. Thinking that there is one is nothing but a pipe dream that ignores every action that Putin has taken for many years now.
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Buuuuut that still doesn’t change the current situation: Russia has declared Ukraine as theirs, and they won’t go back on that unless they really have no other choice. On the other side, Ukrainians refuse to be conquered by a hostile force that is going to oppress, rape and genocide them for a hundred years if they go give up, which you can’t blame them for.
Well I’m not sure about that. If you’re right, and Russia is really determined to get the whole of Ukraine, or more, I agree there really is no alternative to the current course of action.
You can argue and speculate about a lot of things, the US grand chessboard strategy to keep Europe divided, the right of self determination of the people in Crimea, etc. but I agree if Russia is just going to push forward until they are countered we have no alternative.
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Arjan wrote:
Well I’m not sure about that. If you’re right, and Russia is really determined to get the whole of Ukraine, or more, I agree there really is no alternative to the current course of action.Their opening move was to try and take the country’s capital city, Arjan. They’re documented as having a “kill list” that was thousands of names long, consisting of the entire legislature and executive, along with prominent civil servants, high ranking police officers, mayors of cities and media figures.
On the list was the Ukrainian President, his wife and children. They sent special forces to the capital to capture and (presumably) execute him.
They were going for the whole cake.
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Former Prime Minister Imran Khan shot in foot in reported assassination attempt in Pakistan
How many assassination attempts on political figures have there been this year?
Are we counting tories knifing each other in the back? Because I think that takes it into triple figures.
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edit: Well “evil regime” could be hyperbolic, I don’t know. I just believe there are assholes on both sides, even though Putin’s assholes might be the worst. I think at this point it’s hard to trust anything the media says about this war. It’s a bit like the fog of war.
Well, currently the Russians are consistently targetting civilian infrastructure, which is a war crime. There may be fog, but the cold hard fact is that there is one people that is being attacked, and one aggressor.
Well I’m not sure about that. If you’re right, and Russia is really determined to get the whole of Ukraine, or more, I agree there really is no alternative to the current course of action.
Well, they took Crimea, waited to see if anybody was going to stand up to them, and then decided to take the rest of it. Looks like a pretty clear strategy. Also, Putin has made very clear that he doesn’t believe that Ukraine as an independent country should exist. He hasn’t made a secret of this.
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Former Prime Minister Imran Khan shot in foot in reported assassination attempt in Pakistan
How many assassination attempts on political figures have there been this year?
It’s very dangerous being a politician in Pakistan.
You have to admire them really. I listened to a BBC radio doc on the last days of Bhutto and they tried to kill her with 2 failed attempts in 2 days the the 3rd worked. Just like Khan she was independently very wealthy with another country to live in comfortably (Khan lived in the UK for years and married a billionaire’s daughter, a handsome and eloquent sporting star won’t suffer for job offers).
We complain about politician’s being self serving and maybe they needed the adulation but if it were me I’d stay in my Tuscan villa or London townhouse enjoying some cocktails. Fuck putting yourself in the firing line.
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I thought that kill list thing was suspicious. Remember this rumor came from the US where neo cons were pushing for more interference.
It doesn’t matter (and haven’t you spent a lot of time in the last year saying people criticise US policy too much?).
For all the sins of others this is the first clear landgrab, with the open admission that is the end goal, in Europe since WW2.
I do get the criticism that this is often painted too black and white, that Zelenskyy is sometimes presented as the flawless second coming when he has embraced his own dodgy oligarchs and right wing figures but to me there are some clear lines in all that grey area.
You can’t go grabbing land by force with no plausible claim to self defence. It is a very troublesome concept that a ‘peace treaty’ means the aggressor gets to keep part of what they took. There is no precedent for that since the appeasement of Hitler in 1938/9 and his ‘annexing’ which did not turn out well. In the end Putin has made public his aims and ideology, he believes Ukraine belongs to Russia. So looking at past history is there anything to suggest any agreement wouldn’t be broken as soon as he bolstered his troops and arms to have a second pop?
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The only “peaceful” way out of this that I can see is for Putin to leave office (in whatever form that takes) and for the next person to end hostilities and leave Ukraine alone. That gets Russia some goodwill and the sanctions lifted.
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Along with accepting their invasion to prevent it has made Ukraine joining the EU and NATO inevitable.
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Not so. Ukrainians have been credibly accused of war crimes by organizations I have some confidence in like Amnesty since this began in 2014.
That’s not quite a refutation though of what Todd says. One is the aggressor in the fact that Ukraine never crossed its borders to attack Russia (except in retaliation).
I’m sure Ukraine have been guilty of war crimes because quite frankly I don’t think you can have one without the other. The Allies in WW2 committed many war crimes, carpet bombing of civilian targets in Germany and Japan for a start. The only way I see to avoid war crimes is not start any wars.
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Well, currently the Russians are consistently targetting civilian infrastructure, which is a war crime. There may be fog, but the cold hard fact is that there is one people that is being attacked, and one aggressor.
And if anyone doesn’t believe the media reports of that, all I can say is that I have been on a Skype call with friends in Kharkiv and literally heard rockets exploding in the background, in a residential district.
Of course, you don’t have to believe me either, I could be lying just as much as the media does
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There is a Twitter account called UkrARMY cats & dogs which is literally nothing but Ukrainian soldiers posting pictures of themselves with cats and dogs they meet along the way.
That, more than anything else, tells me which is the right side in this war
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There may be fog, but the cold hard fact is that there is one people that is being attacked, and one aggressor.
Not so. Ukrainians have been credibly accused of war crimes by organizations I have some confidence in like Amnesty since this began in 2014.
People tend to forget there are 10 million ethnic Russians who live in Ukraine (probably less now since many left for Russia) who are at danger from Ukrainian extremists.
The UN report detailed that a decade of fighting Russia’s paramilitaries has led to an enormous amount of violence and crimes on all sides, including the loss of about 4000 Ukrainian soldiers and 3500 Ukrainian civilians. As far as systematic violence directed at Russian speakers by the Ukrainians, the OSCE did a fact finding mission in Donbas looking for evidence of ethnic, low-level violence – link – they found no evidence of it.
One can only speculate of course, but, given the lack of violence before the paramilitaries arrived, and outside of the areas they’ve controlled, it at least looks like the violence wouldn’t have happened at all if Russia hadn’t sent in mercenaries to these areas to try and repeat what they managed to do in Crimea.
I thought that kill list thing was suspicious. Remember this rumor came from the US where neo cons were pushing for more interference.
Also Ukraine has had its own enemies list of anyone they deem too friendly to Russia since 2014.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrotvorets
Honestly I don’t think you can trust Western governments in anything they do (or that the media reports.) We live under an evil regime. Yeah, maybe not as bad as Putin’s, but I still don’t trust anything they claim to be doing in Ukraine.
edit: Well “evil regime” could be hyperbolic, I don’t know. I just believe there are assholes on both sides, even though Putin’s assholes might be the worst. I think at this point it’s hard to trust anything the media says about this war. It’s a bit like the fog of war.
Yep, they have a list, Arjan – the key thing is what they choose to do with it. A quick look at the link seems to show that so far they haven’t planned the execution of tens of thousands of men, women and children in the name of cultural genocide. So I’ll hand the win to Ukraine there, if that’s okay with you.
And yes – the West has done bad things. Please explain to me how that excuses Russia invading a neighbouring country and committing acts of genocide. You’ll find me over in the corner, sitting right on the edge of my seat.
Look, at the risk of repeating myself, Arjan, none of this actually means anything anyway – Putin didn’t invade to save lives in eastern Ukraine.
He’s told us, repeatedly why he’s sent his forces in – it’s especially evident in the way he’s trying to eliminate the entire concept of Ukrainian identity and having his forces go around torturing and exterminating populations that resist. He doesn’t believe Ukraine “should” exist – he thinks its a “made-up” country and that the people there are actually Russian, but they’ve been brainwashed by the people in charge. If you’re in any doubt about this, a quick google will bring up one of his very long, rambling and turgid speeches where he’ll tell you exactly that.
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Not so. Ukrainians have been credibly accused of war crimes by organizations I have some confidence in like Amnesty since this began in 2014.
Like Gar says, in a war there will be war crimes from both sides. Including against the civilian population – the ethnic Germans of Sudetenland could tell you stories along those lines.
People tend to forget there are 10 million ethnic Russians who live in Ukraine (probably less now since many left for Russia) who are at danger from Ukrainian extremists.
And ethnic Crimean tartars who have been persecuted and oppressed by the Russians in the Crimean region.
But, yes, I am sure things have been difficult for ethnic Russians in Ukraine ever since the 2014 invasion, and have become more so in the last year. What I do not believe is Putin’s justification for the war of a genocide against Russians happening in Ukraine before the war, and I don’t think there are any reports by Amnesty or similar organisations showing anything on that scale or on any organised level.
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The only “peaceful” way out of this that I can see is for Putin to leave office (in whatever form that takes) and for the next person to end hostilities and leave Ukraine alone. That gets Russia some goodwill and the sanctions lifted.
Some sanctions lifted, perhaps.
I’m strongly of the opinion that Russia needs to be on the naughty step for a very long time.
They need to be contained and their ability to project force, militarily, financially and culturally, corroded until we see some real political and perhaps even social change – right now, Russia is openly fascist and imperialistic – until that changes, allowing it to rearm, allowing it to begin influencing our politicians and economies, allowing it to rebuild its influence operations and hybrid warfare abilities would be borderline suicidal for the West in general.
The worst thing we could do is let them replace their leaders, pull back to where they were prior the invasion, then say “all is forgiven, let’s have some petrochemicals”. So they re-arm, double-down on subverting our political systems and make plans to get it right next time. All while China watches intently.
We’re going to struggle to contain the far-right networks they’ve amplified and backed as it is.
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I’m strongly of the opinion that Russia needs to be on the naughty step for a very long time.
They need to be contained and their ability to project force, militarily, financially and culturally, corroded until we see some real political and perhaps even social change – right now, Russia is openly fascist and imperialistic – until that changes, allowing it to rearm, allowing it to begin influencing our politicians and economies, allowing it to rebuild its influence operations and hybrid warfare abilities would be borderline suicidal for the West in general.
The worst thing we could do is let them replace their leaders, pull back to where they were prior the invasion, then say “all is forgiven, let’s have some petrochemicals”. So they re-arm, double-down on subverting our political systems and make plans to get it right next time. All while China watches intently.
That, on the other hand, is a lot of wishful thinking, I would say. We are very far away from Russia even ending open conflict, but I think if they did that, the rest of the world would breathe a huge sigh of relief and normalise relations as quickly as possible.
And I am not sure that that would be a bad thing. I don’t think Putin and his policies could survive losing Ukraine, and if there is a change of direction, it would probably be more productive if the average person living in Russia would immediately feel a positive (economic) effect.
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Sanction don’t have a huge record of success if we’re honest do they? The US embargoed Cuba for 50+ years and it never changed their regime.
I suspect though it depends how integrated your economy and culture is. Somewhere like North Korea is very isolated, they won’t miss McDonald’s and Netflix as the majority don’t even know they exist. There could be more of a pinch in Russia where the middle and high earners have been used to taking foreign trips and quite a global lifestyle in comparison to the others.
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It’s ok, Russia replaced all the McDonalds with a local company!
Russia’s McDonald’s replacement serving mouldy buns and ‘insects legs’
This is the stomach-churning food that customers of Vkusno i Tochka – the chain which replaced McDonald’s in Russia – were served. Rebranded as Tasty and Full Stop in English, the company was supposed to fill the void left by the American fast-food giant over the war in Ukraine. Instead, it hit the headlines for its revolting food. Less than a month after the grand opening in Moscow people have complained of being served mouldy burger buns and ‘insect legs’.
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Yummy.
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It’s ok, Russia replaced all the McDonalds with a local company!
Russia’s McDonald’s replacement serving mouldy buns and ‘insects legs’
This is the stomach-churning food that customers of Vkusno i Tochka – the chain which replaced McDonald’s in Russia – were served. Rebranded as Tasty and Full Stop in English, the company was supposed to fill the void left by the American fast-food giant over the war in Ukraine. Instead, it hit the headlines for its revolting food. Less than a month after the grand opening in Moscow people have complained of being served mouldy burger buns and ‘insect legs’.
I’m glad to see they’re sticking with the original McDonald’s recipes.
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Sanction don’t have a huge record of success if we’re honest do they? The US embargoed Cuba for 50+ years and it never changed their regime.
I suspect though it depends how integrated your economy and culture is. Somewhere like North Korea is very isolated, they won’t miss McDonald’s and Netflix as the majority don’t even know they exist. There could be more of a pinch in Russia where the middle and high earners have been used to taking foreign trips and quite a global lifestyle in comparison to the others.
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Oh, I don’t know, Gareth. Sanctions have their uses. Used as a blunt instrument and as a method of regime change, it’s true – they suck. The elites of your average repressive dictatorship already have systems in place to repress and punish dissent and they aren’t going to go hungry any time soon. The history of sanction regimes in Iran, Iraq, North Korea etc. is that of regimes actually consolidating their power as a result of them – the regime in question has a convenient foreign enemy to point at and blame for its deficiencies, the opposition and general population is weakened.
Sanctions shine, however, when you’re talking about very specific restrictions to disrupt supply chains and industry in hostile nations, particularly for high-technology weapons and military use items, as the Iranians will tell you.
The current sanctions on machine parts and electronics to Russia are crippling its ability to maintain or build anything of military use with post WWII technology, to the point where they’re now having to recycle the chips and circuit boards from anything they can get their hands on. Their e-warfare and guided missile capabilities are going to be effectively zilch in the immediate future. The machine parts ban is completely disrupting their ability to repair their vehicles and maintain the railway logistics to transport them. Throw in similar nuclear technology sanctions to the Iranians, and anything over the tactical nuke yield will be unusable within ten years as they run out of tritium.
Those sanctions we can keep until we’re sure they’re going to play nice.
[edit:] You should probably pay attention to the restrictions of semiconductor technology and microchips just imposed on China, as well.
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The current sanctions on machine parts and electronics to Russia are crippling its ability to maintain or build anything of military use with post WWII technology, to the point where they’re now having to recycle the chips and circuit boards from anything they can get their hands on. Their e-warfare and guided missile capabilities are going to be effectively zilch in the immediate future. The machine parts ban is completely disrupting their ability to repair their vehicles and maintain the railway logistics to transport them. Throw in similar nuclear technology sanctions to the Iranians, and anything over the tactical nuke yield will be unusable within ten years as they run out of tritium.
Those sanctions we can keep until we’re sure they’re going to play nice.
Very good points. And I’ll add that the sanctions against individual oligarchs make a lot of sense to me, too. Freeze those assets.
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Some sanctions lifted, perhaps. I’m strongly of the opinion that Russia needs to be on the naughty step for a very long time. They need to be contained and their ability to project force, militarily, financially and culturally, corroded
Yes. There’s a narrative in the west that the sanctions “hurt us more than they hurt Russia”, but the truth is that they have severely eroded Russia’s ability to produce new weapons. Russia has been entirely reliant on the West for key components in their weapons for decades, and the sanctions have blocked that supply. Russia is literally running out of missiles, among other things. When you’re one of the biggest countries in the world and you have to go to Iran to get your weapons, your war machine is basically screwed.
Iran’s Shahed drones now used by Russia have a tiny warhead that kills a lot less civilians than the rockets they had earlier the war. That’s a win for sanctions.
Edit: As Daniel already said while I was slowly writing my post.
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Fair points Daniel and of course I left it open there a bit with the differences between each country. Russia does not resemble North Korea in many ways at all, bar the Communist past which has splintered in massively different directions. The tech elements are true and the software industry is massively dominated by American companies.
The semiconductor business is interesting as it’s massively run by Taiwanese companies, although little is made in Taiwan any more – they outsource to other countries. One of the largest manufacturing areas for them is 5km down the road from me in Penang, in a Commonwealth country. It’s an interesting world we live with these interconnected elements. When people have mentioned China and Taiwan that relationship is far more complex than most imagine. In the tech business they are joined at the hip.
Every desktop, laptop or tablet we may use to post on this board are 90% mot likely to be made by a Taiwanese owned manufacturer, 75% most likely to be made in mainland China (a figure that is dropping, the political tensions and lockdown policies are moving them out, Vietnam being the most popular destination this year).
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That global reliance is being tested too. I was raised in the what is now the last town in the UK to make steel, which is run by an Indian owned company (Tata). Other towns have plants that service the next steps but making raw steel only happens in Port Talbot. It has been pointed out that in a WW2 scenario if that plant closed, Britain would be fucked. They’d not have been able to re-arm.
We can’t return to a world where we all looked inward and were purely self-sufficient but all countries are probably guilty of over reliance on elements we can’t control, the most obvious very recently with Germany’s reliance on Russian gas even though the warning signs were there the tap could be cut off at any time.
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Yep. Also a very obivous case of politicians ignoring the danger because of sheer corruption. Fucking Gerhard Schröder.
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The US midterms are depressing the shit out of me. If this really is a big win for the GOP and especially the Trumpers and election deniers they’re running, like it looks it’ll be, that’ll certainly be another nail in the almost-finished coffin of US democracy, yeah.
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https://www.npr.org/2022/11/04/1134253829/xi-jinping-olaf-scholz-russia-nuclear-weapons
Xi Jinping explicitly speaking out against nuclear weapons is good news I think.
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You said this before. That is so weird…the idea that a Taiwanese company manufactures their products in mainland China.
On a massive scale, check out the details on the most famous of them, the notorious Foxconn.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. (TWSE: 2317), trading as Hon Hai Technology Group in China and Taiwan, or Foxconn internationally, is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturer with its headquarters in Tucheng, New Taipei City, Taiwan, established in 1974. In 2021, the Group’s annual revenue reached NT$5.99 trillion and was ranked 22nd in the 2021 Fortune Global 500. It is the world’s largest technology manufacturer and service provider. While headquartered in Taiwan, the company is the largest private employer in the People’s Republic of China and one of the largest employers worldwide.
It’s largely why I am not as worried as most about China invading Taiwan. You can’t rule out anything in this world of course but the fact that they are so closely intertwined economically and the Asian concept of ‘face’ (that China have been happy for decades that everyone just pretends Taiwan isn’t independent) means it would be a quite drastic move.
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I hope you’re right and the economic intertwining certainly makes it less likely, but I think those decades don’t really count because of the massive changes that Xi Jinping has wrought. It’s become a different country in the last ten years, under his leadership.
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I think moving back more to an autocratic system from a technocratic one add that element of the unknown because of personal whims. There is a reason barely anyone can remember a Chinese president between Mao and Xi because they ran things mostly by committee.
Xi’s position is the one reason I added the ‘anything can happen’ caveat. Albeit the Chinese system is still more bureaucratic than in Russia so he isn’t in quite as dominant a position as Putin.
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The US midterms are depressing the shit out of me. If this really is a big win for the GOP and especially the Trumpers and election deniers they’re running, like it looks it’ll be, that’ll certainly be another nail in the almost-finished coffin of US democracy, yeah.
You can see the different angles like the ads target GOPers over abortion and MAGA.
They really want to get at the women vote.A lot of this is portrayed as “the good guys vs. the bad guys”. It really is the lesser of the two.
The choices all over the world. All slim pickings.
Brazil has Lulla back…Lulla! To choose between him and Bolsonaro.As for American voters and their understanding of major issues. What might happen:
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The real reason Johnson didn’t run against Sunak, or depending on how you look at it, 10 million reasons:
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