Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
Well done. What a self-destructing way to defeat his own achievements.
This is a precise example of what I’m saying
Scott is quoting an ex Finnish PM who is Helsinki’s version of Jolyon Maugham. Check his Twitter history. This Finn hates Brexit with a vengeance and often says quite lunatically anti-British stuff - and he has been doing it since 2016
There is a small subset of people who patently lost their wits because Brexit. They really are best ignored. For their own good
You patronising oaf. Do you ever read the garbage you write? I don't know whether the plan is to outpost Tim but even with your various ludicrous name changes your non stop posting is making the site unreadable. The days of the Raj are over. Time to get over it
The old prostate giving you a bit of gyp, this morning? Sympathies
Well done. What a self-destructing way to defeat his own achievements.
This is a precise example of what I’m saying
Scott is quoting an ex Finnish PM who is Helsinki’s version of Jolyon Maugham. Check his Twitter history. This Finn hates Brexit with a vengeance and often says quite lunatically anti-British stuff - and he has been doing it since 2016
There is a small subset of people who patently lost their wits because Brexit. They really are best ignored. For their own good
You patronising oaf. Do you ever read the garbage you write? I don't know whether the plan is to outpost Tim but even with your various ludicrous name changes your non stop posting is making the site unreadable. The days of the Raj are over. Time to get over it
In other news, if you haven’t heard the Italian commentary of the last three minutes of the game in Cardiff on Saturday, you really should. A magnificent swing in commentator emotion in the space of 10 seconds. Madonna!
The last 3 minutes of that game are some of my favourite minutes of any rugby I’ve ever watched. It’s one thing to win such an historic victory in the last minute… but to do it with a try like THAT!
Magic
Sad that Wales lost, but well done to Italy, and it will give them confidence for the future.
FWIW, I think if Finland or Sweden were attacked, we would find ourselves in a shooting war with Russia. And that's why neither country will be attacked.
I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I think Finland is in a very invidious position. They look as if they might join NATO, but haven't actually done so. Possibly the worst of all worlds.
Now represents, theoretically, an opportunity for Putin to act which may not be available later. Extremely unlikely we may think, but who knows what the thinking is in the bunker.
NATO is a red line. If anyone attempts to invade they get incinerated by NATO air power. Not so, Finland. Membership brings benefits.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
I think you've just changed my mind on something. What a weird sensation.
There is definitely something in spending it on stuff that is actually useful. Drones. Missile defence/anti-air.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
The NATO countries might be slightly safer. But this is not the comfort blanket you seem to take it for. There are lots of non NATO countries that could be attacked in a similar way. Finland is an obvious one. Are you suggesting that we should do nothing if Finland gets attacked, because it isn't in NATO?
Technically we have no obligation to defend Finland no as it is not in NATO and hence there are no NATO troop reinforcements in Finland unlike Poland and the Baltic States for example. That was the risk Finland and Sweden took when they decided not to join NATO given their closeness to Russia, despite the fact Finland for example was in the Tsarist empire at one stage and fought a war to become a safe haven for white Russians from the Bolsheviks.
Of course we would impose further economic sanctions on Russia if it invaded Finland like we have over its invasion of Ukraine but we would likely not respond militarily as we would had a NATO nation been invaded.
Though I think non NATO Georgia and Moldova are more likely targets for Russian invasion beyond Ukraine than Finland. Finland is also in the EU but the EU has no army unlike NATO as yet
This - which I accept is the western position - is appeasement and weakness. It is drawing 'red lines' that are ultimately completely artificial. The red line of NATO can collapse because a) we don't know if Biden is really willing to bomb Russia; b) we don't know how committed a future republican US president will be to NATO; and c) NATO has been in decline for many years. Its resurgence, sparked by fear, is a couple of weeks old and may not be sustained.
Putin just sees this weakness and strikes at the first opportunity. It seems inevitable to me that the paradigm will change, and the west will decide to fight back. The question is when.
Unless a NATO nation is invaded I can guarantee the West will do nothing militarily against Russia, certainly with Biden President. Otherwise you get WW3. Biden has made adamantly clear he will not fight Russia unless it invades a NATO nation. That is just reality.
I think you're right in terms of direct infantry, armour or air confrontation. But if you count special forces, cyberspace and intelligence we're probably already at low-level war with Russia.
Btw, were you at the Festival this year, and if so how did you do?
I was not there this year, but I didn't lose as much money as usual
This year I didn't look at the form at all and finished ahead. Is there a lesson here?
The lesson of this year's Cheltenham is thanks partly to the increased number of races, and partly to Willie Mullins, most of the good things won. Only one of Willie's ten winners was bigger than 5/2.
From Chris Cook (son of...) in the Racing Post:- In total, 16 of the 28 Festival winners were returned at 3-1 or shorter. It may seem normal to you for big-race winners to be well fancied but depth of competition at the Festival used to ensure that such prices were a rarity.
At the 2012 Festival, just five of the 27 winners were 3-1 or shorter. In 2002, when the meeting was only three days long, it was four winners out of 20. All the way back in 1992, just two winners were that short.
Isn't that rather bad news for racing? Like trying to make money at a point to point.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
The same was true in the Baltic states, where the Soviets pursued a campaign of mass murder in 1939-40.
As I've posted before, if the Nazi's hadn't been so insanely fixated on the idea of Slavs (etc) being sub-human they would probably have won.
FWIW, I think if Finland or Sweden were attacked, we would find ourselves in a shooting war with Russia. And that's why neither country will be attacked.
I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I think Finland is in a very invidious position. They look as if they might join NATO, but haven't actually done so. Possibly the worst of all worlds.
Now represents, theoretically, an opportunity for Putin to act which may not be available later. Extremely unlikely we may think, but who knows what the thinking is in the bunker.
NATO is a red line. If anyone attempts to invade they get incinerated by NATO air power. Not so, Finland. Membership brings benefits.
This is partly why the Finns are very keen to associate themselves with the West via the EU, and why Johnson's comments have gone down like a bucket of sick in such a strategic location. The Swedes also very much see the EU as a layer of their armour.
My anecdotal 'evidence' matches this thread. The people in my life who are avowed tories and Boris fans did not go to University.
The problem here for me as a Labour (or when the situation suits LibDem of Green) supporter is that it is all too easy to come across as snotty. This really came to the fore with Brexit where the divide was quite stark. Thick, stupid, easily misled people tended to support Boris and Brexit. Of course there are exceptions to this like our very own Leon who I am sure is very bright.
See how easy it is to get snotty over it? It's something which is guaranteed to wind up Brexit supporters and Boris tories, who will point with some justification to the same kind of Metropolitan elitism which herded people into the Brexit fold. Concerns about ghost towns, immigration and the EU's manifest centralised corruption were ignored by the well-educated.
I wonder if Mike and Ipsos have really hit on something. That THIS is the real and biggest divide in Britain today?
This has been the biggest divide in politics for at least 6 years.
There are some Labour seats with very low levels of people with degrees, like Nottingham North and Hull East, which may be vulnerable to the Tories at the next election if this trend continues.
Indeed before Brexit the biggest divide between Tory and Labour was how rich you were, the more you earnt and the more property you had the more likely you were to be Conservative and the poorer you were the more likely you were to vote Labour.
Now the biggest divide is age, the younger you are and hence the more likely you are to have a degree the more likely you are to vote Labour and the older you are the more likely you are to vote Tory.
Remember Cameron won most over 25s in 2010, now the Tories only lead with over 55s in current polls. While the Tories did best with C2s not ABs in 2019 with Boris, whereas Cameron did best with ABs
It'll probably be back to 40+ for the Tories by the time of the next GE.
They could still win with that, if the Tories are back to only over 50s though as they were in the Blair years then they are heading for defeat (though in 1997 remember Blair even won over 65s though the Tories still won ABs).
FWIW, I think if Finland or Sweden were attacked, we would find ourselves in a shooting war with Russia. And that's why neither country will be attacked.
I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I think Finland is in a very invidious position. They look as if they might join NATO, but haven't actually done so. Possibly the worst of all worlds.
Now represents, theoretically, an opportunity for Putin to act which may not be available later. Extremely unlikely we may think, but who knows what the thinking is in the bunker.
NATO is a red line. If anyone attempts to invade they get incinerated by NATO air power. Not so, Finland. Membership brings benefits.
Finland cannot just join NATO in a couple of weeks. It has to be accepted in to NATO (not absolutely clear at present) and there would need to be a parliamentary vote or a referendum. Public opinion in Finland has only just moved decisively in favour of NATO membership. The policy it held for the last 80 years has served it very well. It was Putin who rejected Finland and its 105 year independence from Russia, and and pushed it towards NATO - by essentially declaring it to be part of Russia. This makes Finlands neutral, independent stance impossible to continue.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
The same was true in the Baltic states, where the Soviets pursued a campaign of mass murder in 1939-40.
As I've posted before, if the Nazi's hadn't been so insanely fixated on the idea of Slavs (etc) being sub-human they would probably have won.
Not the least of the Nazis' stupidities is that large numbers of Slavs fufuill their Aryan ideal, being blonde haired, with blue, grey, or green eyes. Many Soviet women snipers could have been poster girls for the Third Reich, had they been German.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
I think you've just changed my mind on something. What a weird sensation.
There is definitely something in spending it on stuff that is actually useful. Drones. Missile defence/anti-air.
One problem is that defence is like health spending. "Look at me - I spend x% of GDP"
X% of GDP doesn't mean much if you are buying Ajax with it.
Sajid Javid joins Rishi Sunak in having to argue that night is day on behalf of the prime minister over the Brexit/Ukraine row: "I don't accept that he was comparing the UK to Ukraine." Which is nonsense, of course. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1505807648448565250/photo/1
So what interpretation did he offer for this ?
"I know that it's the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. "When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don't believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. "It's because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself."...
That both the UK and Ukraine are in the category of countries with a freedom loving people. That doesn’t mean that the UK is equivalent to Ukraine
Yes, Boris’ quote about “Ukraine and Brexit” really isn’t that offensive. You can see what he’s trying to say. It was emotionally misjudged but not an obviously foolish or outrageous statement
But the misjudgement (or canny trolling?) got his opponents to hyper-ventilate, which then made the news
I’m cynical enough to go with canny trolling. The words were carefully chosen. You would hope for better, but that’s the PM the UK has. For now.
You said exactly the same thing about the refugee cock up. If you don't like what you hear you call it trolling rather than accepting it is true. It is true as was the refugee issue. I'm not a troll. I don't even have a twitter account, but I was fully aware of the refugee issue and had an immediate reaction to Boris' statement.
Doesn't look good if your reaction to everything you don't like is 'trolls'.
@StillWaters my apologies, wrong person. Please ignore my post. Sorry.
No problem. Just to be clear I think you were being trolled by Boris, not a troll yourself!
On the refugee issue, I tend to view it as, initially, a combination of cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility. Where Patel was at fault was politically not realising it was a problem (I find it hard to believe that she could be personally unmoved by the situation) and being unable / unwilling to devote the focus and energy to sorting it out.
I don't know how the new system works, so no idea whether the criticisms are justified, but it seems to be these are criticisms of execution rather than of principle at this point, so definitely an improvement. Let's hope that it works.
(The only person on here I accuse of being a troll is Heathener. Because she is. A spinner of Putin-preferred lines with a compromised VPN that is on an anti-spamming blacklist and was also used by two previous trolls)
Just to clarify again my post wasn't in response to you. I posted in error, so grovelling apologies. So accusing you of claiming we were trolls on these 2 issues was just plain wrong by me. It was aimed at someone else who did do so, but I replied to the wrong post.
Well done. What a self-destructing way to defeat his own achievements.
This is a precise example of what I’m saying
Scott is quoting an ex Finnish PM who is Helsinki’s version of Jolyon Maugham. Check his Twitter history. This Finn hates Brexit with a vengeance and often says quite lunatically anti-British stuff - and he has been doing it since 2016
There is a small subset of people who patently lost their wits because Brexit. They really are best ignored. For their own good
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
A new Cold War would be a godsend to NATO generals. Endless and near oversight-free spending on military hardware for a war they know they would never fight.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
The same was true in the Baltic states, where the Soviets pursued a campaign of mass murder in 1939-40.
As I've posted before, if the Nazi's hadn't been so insanely fixated on the idea of Slavs (etc) being sub-human they would probably have won.
Not the least of the Nazis' stupidities is that large numbers of Slavs fufuill their Aryan ideal, being blonde haired, with blue, grey, or green eyes. Many Soviet women snipers could have been poster girls for the Third Reich, had they been German.
The Slavs weren't quite as beyond the pale as the Jews were they? I think the Nazis were at times prepared to tolerate them so long as they joined in the fight against Bolshevism.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
I think you've just changed my mind on something. What a weird sensation.
There is definitely something in spending it on stuff that is actually useful. Drones. Missile defence/anti-air.
One problem is that defence is like health spending. "Look at me - I spend x% of GDP"
X% of GDP doesn't mean much if you are buying Ajax with it.
Ajax is a highly effective Covid treatment, I'm sure I read that somewhere.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
I think you've just changed my mind on something. What a weird sensation.
There is definitely something in spending it on stuff that is actually useful. Drones. Missile defence/anti-air.
One problem is that defence is like health spending. "Look at me - I spend x% of GDP"
X% of GDP doesn't mean much if you are buying Ajax with it.
Yup. Though health is slightly different in that keeping people alive is often more expensive than the alternative, so you end up in a vicious cycle. Same goes for some elements of resolving child poverty with the work incentives issue.
The objective of the NHS should really be "sudden death".
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
I'm the suite sure the conclusion the MoD will arrive at will be: why do we need two divisions (1 actual and 1 home for wayward infantry regiments) of conventional forces when we're never going to fight Russia because they've got 6,000 nuclear weapons and, even if we did, we don't need anything like a force that size to beat them.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
I think you've just changed my mind on something. What a weird sensation.
There is definitely something in spending it on stuff that is actually useful. Drones. Missile defence/anti-air.
One problem is that defence is like health spending. "Look at me - I spend x% of GDP"
X% of GDP doesn't mean much if you are buying Ajax with it.
Ajax is a highly effective Covid treatment, I'm sure I read that somewhere.
No, that's Jif. As cream in hot broth.
Perhaps we should upgrade @HYUFD from a Covenanter to an Ajax?
FWIW, I think if Finland or Sweden were attacked, we would find ourselves in a shooting war with Russia. And that's why neither country will be attacked.
I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I think Finland is in a very invidious position. They look as if they might join NATO, but haven't actually done so. Possibly the worst of all worlds.
Now represents, theoretically, an opportunity for Putin to act which may not be available later. Extremely unlikely we may think, but who knows what the thinking is in the bunker.
NATO is a red line. If anyone attempts to invade they get incinerated by NATO air power. Not so, Finland. Membership brings benefits.
This is partly why the Finns are very keen to associate themselves with the West via the EU, and why Johnson's comments have gone down like a bucket of sick in such a strategic location. The Swedes also very much see the EU as a layer of their armour.
I just went and checked the website of Sweden’s main paper. Dagens Nyhet. There is not a single mention of Johnson’s remarks about Brexit/Ukraine. Not one. The outrage is all confected in your relatively tiny brain
About the only thing I can tell from that video is that it was not obviously trailing any fuel or other large items, so it's possible it was substantially intact when it hit. But even that could have missed parts of the plane falling off, e.g. stabiliser or engine.
FWIW, I think if Finland or Sweden were attacked, we would find ourselves in a shooting war with Russia. And that's why neither country will be attacked.
I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I think Finland is in a very invidious position. They look as if they might join NATO, but haven't actually done so. Possibly the worst of all worlds.
Now represents, theoretically, an opportunity for Putin to act which may not be available later. Extremely unlikely we may think, but who knows what the thinking is in the bunker.
NATO is a red line. If anyone attempts to invade they get incinerated by NATO air power. Not so, Finland. Membership brings benefits.
This is partly why the Finns are very keen to associate themselves with the West via the EU, and why Johnson's comments have gone down like a bucket of sick in such a strategic location. The Swedes also very much see the EU as a layer of their armour.
I just went and checked the website of Sweden’s main paper. Dagens Nyhet. There is not a single mention of Johnson’s remarks about Brexit/Ukraine. Not one. The outrage is all confected in your relatively tiny brain
Utter nonsense, also turning to abuse, as you tend to in extremis. The statements between Bildt and Stubb were very likely co-ordinated, because both countries have a very different strategic perception of the EU to yourself, for obvious geographical reasons.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
The same was true in the Baltic states, where the Soviets pursued a campaign of mass murder in 1939-40.
As I've posted before, if the Nazi's hadn't been so insanely fixated on the idea of Slavs (etc) being sub-human they would probably have won.
Not the least of the Nazis' stupidities is that large numbers of Slavs fufuill their Aryan ideal, being blonde haired, with blue, grey, or green eyes. Many Soviet women snipers could have been poster girls for the Third Reich, had they been German.
The Slavs weren't quite as beyond the pale as the Jews were they? I think the Nazis were at times prepared to tolerate them so long as they joined in the fight against Bolshevism.
The Germans didn’t just tolerate blonde blue eyed Slavs. They coveted them
One of the enormous but lesser known crimes of WW2 was Germanys policy of stealing - literally stealing - “Aryan-looking” children in Poland and elsewhere. The kids were then given to childless German couples
The tragedy of this still echoes down the decades. 200,000 kids were taken
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
I think you've just changed my mind on something. What a weird sensation.
There is definitely something in spending it on stuff that is actually useful. Drones. Missile defence/anti-air.
You do need to be able to hold territory so that the Russians can't park artillery on it and pound your cities to bits, which is the weak link in the Russia can't even defeat Ukraine narrative.
We'd want our armed forces to be strong enough to prevent the artillery barrage of our cities. Preventing outright defeat is not enough.
FWIW, I think if Finland or Sweden were attacked, we would find ourselves in a shooting war with Russia. And that's why neither country will be attacked.
I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I think Finland is in a very invidious position. They look as if they might join NATO, but haven't actually done so. Possibly the worst of all worlds.
Now represents, theoretically, an opportunity for Putin to act which may not be available later. Extremely unlikely we may think, but who knows what the thinking is in the bunker.
NATO is a red line. If anyone attempts to invade they get incinerated by NATO air power. Not so, Finland. Membership brings benefits.
This is partly why the Finns are very keen to associate themselves with the West via the EU, and why Johnson's comments have gone down like a bucket of sick in such a strategic location. The Swedes also very much see the EU as a layer of their armour.
I just went and checked the website of Sweden’s main paper. Dagens Nyhet. There is not a single mention of Johnson’s remarks about Brexit/Ukraine. Not one. The outrage is all confected in your relatively tiny brain
Utter nonsense, also turning to abuse, as you tend to in extremis. The statements between Bildt and Stubbs were very likely co-ordinated, because both countries have a very different strategic perception of the EU to you, for obvious reasons.
Next in the Leon-Kubler stage is to tell you how you have lost it on account of your extreme age. Which of course is ironic given the grand old age our Leon has reached, no small achievement for someone with a history of such riotous living.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
It's hardly as simple as that. Some chose - at risk of death - to shelter Jews during the war; Kyiv was acclaimed as a "Hero City' for its resistance against the Nazis, and the majority of Ukrainians sided against Hitler, with losses that accounted for around 40% of total USSR casualties.
There were few good choices if you lived on the largest battlefield of WWII. And like everywhere else they went, the NAZIs found collaborators.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
They were threatening military tribunals - the mechanism for punishing traitors and collaborators- not treating them as enemy combatants
Is there a case here for NATO fitting a load of drones with loudspeakers and flying them over the Russian forces broadcasting a warning of the likely personal consequences of taking part in such actions?
Not really. Poor use of resources, most will not believe the drones, will be used as example of NATO lies and individual soldiers will be coerced into acting anyway
From memory, leafletting was done by both Germany and Britain in WW2. Drop leaflets over the enemy towns. I wonder if any studies were ever done into its effectiveness?
As an aside, looks like the Ukrainians lost a Frogfoot plane last night.
From my great grand uncle Harry's newspaper cutting -
"He was in Normandy three months, and he said the Germans were then still hopeful the Allied troops could be "bought off" with propaganda. He has a souvenir of one of their attempts - a German leaflet dropped by 'plane over the battlefield. It is headed "Why die for Stalin?" and as usual lays the blame for the war on the 'Bolsheviks'.
"Needless to say," said L/Corpl. Sills, "these leaflets had not the slightest affect on the troops.""
The Kremlin is dampening hopes for a peace deal with Ukraine.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, says "the degree of progress falls short of what we would like and how the dynamic of developments demands of the Ukrainian side" – meaning Russia's ongoing assault on its cities.
Peskov said direct talks between Putin and Zelensky will only happen if Kyiv "does its homework by holding negotiations and agreeing their results."
"For now, there is no substantial movement. They won't have any agreements to commit to."
Peskov thanked the countries mediating – led by Israel and Turkey – for their help. "It's important to make Ukraine more amenable."
But Russia won't commit to a ceasefire before a deal because "nationalist groups use any pause to regroup and continue attacking Russian forces."
Sajid Javid joins Rishi Sunak in having to argue that night is day on behalf of the prime minister over the Brexit/Ukraine row: "I don't accept that he was comparing the UK to Ukraine." Which is nonsense, of course. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1505807648448565250/photo/1
So what interpretation did he offer for this ?
"I know that it's the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. "When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don't believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. "It's because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself."...
That both the UK and Ukraine are in the category of countries with a freedom loving people. That doesn’t mean that the UK is equivalent to Ukraine
Yes, Boris’ quote about “Ukraine and Brexit” really isn’t that offensive. You can see what he’s trying to say. It was emotionally misjudged but not an obviously foolish or outrageous statement
But the misjudgement (or canny trolling?) got his opponents to hyper-ventilate, which then made the news
I’m cynical enough to go with canny trolling. The words were carefully chosen. You would hope for better, but that’s the PM the UK has. For now.
You said exactly the same thing about the refugee cock up. If you don't like what you hear you call it trolling rather than accepting it is true. It is true as was the refugee issue. I'm not a troll. I don't even have a twitter account, but I was fully aware of the refugee issue and had an immediate reaction to Boris' statement.
Doesn't look good if your reaction to everything you don't like is 'trolls'.
@StillWaters my apologies, wrong person. Please ignore my post. Sorry.
No problem. Just to be clear I think you were being trolled by Boris, not a troll yourself!
On the refugee issue, I tend to view it as, initially, a combination of cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility. Where Patel was at fault was politically not realising it was a problem (I find it hard to believe that she could be personally unmoved by the situation) and being unable / unwilling to devote the focus and energy to sorting it out.
I don't know how the new system works, so no idea whether the criticisms are justified, but it seems to be these are criticisms of execution rather than of principle at this point, so definitely an improvement. Let's hope that it works.
(The only person on here I accuse of being a troll is Heathener. Because she is. A spinner of Putin-preferred lines with a compromised VPN that is on an anti-spamming blacklist and was also used by two previous trolls)
On Ukrainian refugees: for once here is something that really is connected to Brexit. Here is finally a "Brexit opportunity". While EU countries will be struggling finding school places, health provision and housing for millions of refugees, Britain won't be. The UK government was bound to try to keep the refugees in the EU, otherwise what was the point of Brexit? Can't understand why anyone is surprised by this.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
I think you've just changed my mind on something. What a weird sensation.
There is definitely something in spending it on stuff that is actually useful. Drones. Missile defence/anti-air.
I'm sure it's only temporary.
Yes, military spending should be driven by projected needs rather than general "it's a dangerous world" sentiment.
I can see the logic of Germany's ramp up. They were low for such a nation and this Putin action has shaken up some of their core beliefs and assumptions.
The military budget that's long departed the realms of reason is the United States. They spend the best part of a Trillion dollars per annum. As much as the rest of the world put together. Quite incredible when you think about it.
And Trump hiked military spending while at the same time saying the US should be more isolationist and stay out of foreign wars. More screaming illogic. It's a mad world really.
Well done. What a self-destructing way to defeat his own achievements.
This is a precise example of what I’m saying
Scott is quoting an ex Finnish PM who is Helsinki’s version of Jolyon Maugham. Check his Twitter history. This Finn hates Brexit with a vengeance and often says quite lunatically anti-British stuff - and he has been doing it since 2016
There is a small subset of people who patently lost their wits because Brexit. They really are best ignored. For their own good
You patronising oaf. Do you ever read the garbage you write? I don't know whether the plan is to outpost Tim but even with your various ludicrous name changes your non stop posting is making the site unreadable. The days of the Raj are over. Time to get over it
There are people in this thread who risk making PB unreadable. Leon is not one of them.
FWIW, I think if Finland or Sweden were attacked, we would find ourselves in a shooting war with Russia. And that's why neither country will be attacked.
I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I think Finland is in a very invidious position. They look as if they might join NATO, but haven't actually done so. Possibly the worst of all worlds.
Now represents, theoretically, an opportunity for Putin to act which may not be available later. Extremely unlikely we may think, but who knows what the thinking is in the bunker.
NATO is a red line. If anyone attempts to invade they get incinerated by NATO air power. Not so, Finland. Membership brings benefits.
This is partly why the Finns are very keen to associate themselves with the West via the EU, and why Johnson's comments have gone down like a bucket of sick in such a strategic location. The Swedes also very much see the EU as a layer of their armour.
I just went and checked the website of Sweden’s main paper. Dagens Nyhet. There is not a single mention of Johnson’s remarks about Brexit/Ukraine. Not one. The outrage is all confected in your relatively tiny brain
Utter nonsense, also turning to abuse, as you tend to in extremis. The statements between Bildt and Stubbs were very likely co-ordinated, because both countries have a very different strategic perception of the EU to yourself, for obvious geographical reasons.
No, I’m right. Bildt, like the mad Finnish guy, is another man with a crazed hatred of Boris and Brexit dating back to 2016. This really is just the usual suspects, sorry
“Now Boris Johnson has promised that Brexit will be a "Titanic success". With the music playing, I assume.”
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
It's hardly as simple as that. Some chose - at risk of death - to shelter Jews during the war; Kyiv was acclaimed as a "Hero City' for its resistance against the Nazis, and the majority of Ukrainians sided against Hitler, with losses that accounted for around 40% of total USSR casualties.
There were few good choices if you lived on the largest battlefield of WWII. And like everywhere else they went, the NAZIs found collaborators.
Yes, it was more complex. But I was just stating why someone might have chosen to fight against the Russians.
The thing I think is shown most clearly by this is the astonishing delusions of those who vote Labour. Many seem to genuinely believe that they are still the party of the working class, dedicated to helping the poor and disadvantaged in society.
The reality is that the Labour party is comprised of well educated, well paid, generally public sector professionals with degrees, final salary pensions and middle class expectations. These are, of course, not bad people, many of them are good people and they are the bedrock of our public services. But, even after Blair, they still want to believe that they and not the Tories can do better for the poor. They believe that the Tories are just for the rich and the deluded. They do not see how entitled they are themselves. And how patronising they are to those who are less well educated.
We also see it in their policies. Where are the Labour supporters wanting to get rid of incompetent teachers who have betrayed generations of disadvantaged children? Where are the Labour supporters questioning the chains of debt forged in totally inadequate educational establishments staffed by their members? Where are the Labour supporters focused on taking privileges away from those on fabulously expensive final salary pensions to really help those without them? By their privileges you shall know them.
I think it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that the 10 million or so who voted Labour in 2019 are all elitist metropolitans who are living it up on final salary pensions. Surely, the reality is that older people tend to vote Tory and tend to have fewer qualifications.
The fact is that you can quite easily have a degree and be struggling by on a zero hours contract with no hope of ever owning a home; and can just as easily be a homeowning pensioner with no qualifications and a nice, steady, guaranteed income.
The interesting bit in all this is that the cost of living crisis will affect the latter just as much as the former. That hasn’t happened for a while.
Oh of course, these are sweeping internet generalisations and there will be many exceptions but look at the leadership to see the nature of the party. I also agree that many people who have significantly incrreased their marginal rate of tax until their later middle ages are on zero hour contracts, that is a part of the problem I describe.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
Not just the (latest) invasion - Russian control of the two eastern provinces has turned them into gangster economies, where you need to stay on the right side of violent criminals to run a business or even hold onto your possessions. Consequently many Russian speakers there would now rather be in Ukraine.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
I think you've just changed my mind on something. What a weird sensation.
There is definitely something in spending it on stuff that is actually useful. Drones. Missile defence/anti-air.
I'm sure it's only temporary.
Yes, military spending should be driven by projected needs rather than general "it's a dangerous world" sentiment.
I can see the logic of Germany's ramp up. They were low for such a nation and this Putin action has shaken up some of their core beliefs and assumptions.
The military budget that's long departed the realms of reason is the United States. They spend the best part of a Trillion dollars per annum. As much as the rest of the world put together. Quite incredible when you think about it.
And Trump hiked military spending while at the same time saying the US should be more isolationist and stay out of foreign wars. More screaming illogic. It's a mad world really.
The German increase in defence spending will, hopefully, involve them getting some actual defence capability back. They have a nominally large military, but staggering poor availability.
Sajid Javid joins Rishi Sunak in having to argue that night is day on behalf of the prime minister over the Brexit/Ukraine row: "I don't accept that he was comparing the UK to Ukraine." Which is nonsense, of course. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1505807648448565250/photo/1
So what interpretation did he offer for this ?
"I know that it's the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. "When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don't believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. "It's because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself."...
That both the UK and Ukraine are in the category of countries with a freedom loving people. That doesn’t mean that the UK is equivalent to Ukraine
Yes, Boris’ quote about “Ukraine and Brexit” really isn’t that offensive. You can see what he’s trying to say. It was emotionally misjudged but not an obviously foolish or outrageous statement
But the misjudgement (or canny trolling?) got his opponents to hyper-ventilate, which then made the news
I’m cynical enough to go with canny trolling. The words were carefully chosen. You would hope for better, but that’s the PM the UK has. For now.
You said exactly the same thing about the refugee cock up. If you don't like what you hear you call it trolling rather than accepting it is true. It is true as was the refugee issue. I'm not a troll. I don't even have a twitter account, but I was fully aware of the refugee issue and had an immediate reaction to Boris' statement.
Doesn't look good if your reaction to everything you don't like is 'trolls'.
@StillWaters my apologies, wrong person. Please ignore my post. Sorry.
No problem. Just to be clear I think you were being trolled by Boris, not a troll yourself!
On the refugee issue, I tend to view it as, initially, a combination of cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility. Where Patel was at fault was politically not realising it was a problem (I find it hard to believe that she could be personally unmoved by the situation) and being unable / unwilling to devote the focus and energy to sorting it out.
I don't know how the new system works, so no idea whether the criticisms are justified, but it seems to be these are criticisms of execution rather than of principle at this point, so definitely an improvement. Let's hope that it works.
(The only person on here I accuse of being a troll is Heathener. Because she is. A spinner of Putin-preferred lines with a compromised VPN that is on an anti-spamming blacklist and was also used by two previous trolls)
Re your comments on cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility I am sure you are right. FYI I get involved in numerous campaigns where individuals and groups have been badly or unfairly treated by Govt departments (nothing to do with politics). The level of incompetence is mind boggling. However what I do find is a massive amount of resources are then put into avoiding taking any action or making changes often disproportionate to any cost involved. We see these scandals arise over and over again. There are many more at a lower level of seriousness.
Also for those who think we gained freedoms by leaving the EU, our ombudsman offerings are very flawed with lots of gaps that people and groups fall through. Private member's bills with cross party support invariably fail to fill these gaps. The last and effective resolution was the ECJ has now gone, so many groups are left in limbo with nobody to investigate.
About the only thing I can tell from that video is that it was not obviously trailing any fuel or other large items, so it's possible it was substantially intact when it hit. But even that could have missed parts of the plane falling off, e.g. stabiliser or engine.
Fair enough, in this instance I am educated by you. Thanks. I was following speculation on Twitter which echoed my thoughts: how can a plane ever end up falling vertically like a missile. What would do that?!
But if you assure me it can happen, so be it
By the way we have no verification of that grainy 2nd hand video, so we’re not even sure it DID fall vertically
NEW: The Foreign Affairs Committee has published evidence from another whistleblower who alleges Boris Johnson was directly involved in the decision-making over evacuating Nowzad animals from Afghanistan
Whistleblower Josie Stewart, Head of Illicit Finance in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office - who expects to lose her job over speaking out says “Nowzad staff were included" in the evacuation of Kabul "only in response to this ‘PM decision.’"
Johnson has always denied direct involvement in the case
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
The same was true in the Baltic states, where the Soviets pursued a campaign of mass murder in 1939-40.
As I've posted before, if the Nazi's hadn't been so insanely fixated on the idea of Slavs (etc) being sub-human they would probably have won.
Not the least of the Nazis' stupidities is that large numbers of Slavs fufuill their Aryan ideal, being blonde haired, with blue, grey, or green eyes. Many Soviet women snipers could have been poster girls for the Third Reich, had they been German.
The Russian girls who one sees in Bangkok..... wow!
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Note that Putin's top lie for his own subjects, is that the invasion is to suppress Ukrainian NAZIS. Led by Jewish Nazi & his fellow Fascist insects, bent on keeping the good folk of THE Ukraine down & out.
Pointing out that PUTIN is the real Nazi here, is NOT playing his game, instead it's calling his bluff.
And does NOT deflect from obvious linkages Czarist Autocracy > Soviet Communism > Putin National Neo-Communism.
Which from a hearts-and-minds perspective viz-a-viz Russian people, is probably NOT very persuasive for average Russians. In a nation where Stalin is still a national icon, for a nation that takes its icons VERY seriously. Methinks sanctions & economics will have more & better effect than history & political science lessons . . . from foreigners.
Projection is an insidious tool. If your fascist enemy calls you a fascist first, then just saying it back to him/her makes you look like you're trading insults instead of making a substantive and true claim. See also Trump, D., with all his allegations of others' elitism, lying, corruption, and sexual violence.
Or even, dare we say, PBers calling one another fools.
Well, I think everyone is a fool at some point, so that's just a matter of getting your timing right.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Note that Putin's top lie for his own subjects, is that the invasion is to suppress Ukrainian NAZIS. Led by Jewish Nazi & his fellow Fascist insects, bent on keeping the good folk of THE Ukraine down & out.
Pointing out that PUTIN is the real Nazi here, is NOT playing his game, instead it's calling his bluff.
And does NOT deflect from obvious linkages Czarist Autocracy > Soviet Communism > Putin National Neo-Communism.
Which from a hearts-and-minds perspective viz-a-viz Russian people, is probably NOT very persuasive for average Russians. In a nation where Stalin is still a national icon, for a nation that takes its icons VERY seriously. Methinks sanctions & economics will have more & better effect than history & political science lessons . . . from foreigners.
Projection is an insidious tool. If your fascist enemy calls you a fascist first, then just saying it back to him/her makes you look like you're trading insults instead of making a substantive and true claim. See also Trump, D., with all his allegations of others' elitism, lying, corruption, and sexual violence.
Or even, dare we say, PBers calling one another fools.
Well, I think everyone is a fool at some point, so that's just a matter of getting your timing right.
Correction: for "at some point" read "all to often".
FWIW, I think if Finland or Sweden were attacked, we would find ourselves in a shooting war with Russia. And that's why neither country will be attacked.
I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I think Finland is in a very invidious position. They look as if they might join NATO, but haven't actually done so. Possibly the worst of all worlds.
Now represents, theoretically, an opportunity for Putin to act which may not be available later. Extremely unlikely we may think, but who knows what the thinking is in the bunker.
NATO is a red line. If anyone attempts to invade they get incinerated by NATO air power. Not so, Finland. Membership brings benefits.
This is partly why the Finns are very keen to associate themselves with the West via the EU, and why Johnson's comments have gone down like a bucket of sick in such a strategic location. The Swedes also very much see the EU as a layer of their armour.
I just went and checked the website of Sweden’s main paper. Dagens Nyhet. There is not a single mention of Johnson’s remarks about Brexit/Ukraine. Not one. The outrage is all confected in your relatively tiny brain
Utter nonsense, also turning to abuse, as you tend to in extremis. The statements between Bildt and Stubbs were very likely co-ordinated, because both countries have a very different strategic perception of the EU to yourself, for obvious geographical reasons.
No, I’m right. Bildt, like the mad Finnish guy, is another man with a crazed hatred of Boris and Brexit dating back to 2016. This really is just the usual suspects, sorry
“Now Boris Johnson has promised that Brexit will be a "Titanic success". With the music playing, I assume.”
Has it struck you that they both occupy the same political position, and have released notable statements at the same time which differ from other European countries' ? Or why their view of the EU, and many in their country, has been different from your own in the first place ?
About the only thing I can tell from that video is that it was not obviously trailing any fuel or other large items, so it's possible it was substantially intact when it hit. But even that could have missed parts of the plane falling off, e.g. stabiliser or engine.
Fair enough, in this instance I am educated by you. Thanks. I was following speculation on Twitter which echoed my thoughts: how can a plane ever end up falling vertically like a missile. What would do that?!
But if you assure me it can happen, so be it
By the way we have no verification of that grainy 2nd hand video, so we’re not even sure it DID fall vertically
Early days, but the scuttlebutt is that the video is being shown on Chinese state media, and the flight profile shows it going from 29,000 feet to ground in two minutes. Those logs can sometimes be incorrect, particularly in incidents, but my first bet would be something breaking. Could be anything: e.g. the rear bulkhead going and putting the plane into a nose-down pitch.
About the only thing I can tell from that video is that it was not obviously trailing any fuel or other large items, so it's possible it was substantially intact when it hit. But even that could have missed parts of the plane falling off, e.g. stabiliser or engine.
Fair enough, in this instance I am educated by you. Thanks. I was following speculation on Twitter which echoed my thoughts: how can a plane ever end up falling vertically like a missile. What would do that?!
But if you assure me it can happen, so be it
By the way we have no verification of that grainy 2nd hand video, so we’re not even sure it DID fall vertically
This is you all over and hence why you get yourself into a tizzy.
1. Event happens or might have happened. 2. You find some random twitter feed which shows that Event happened for ABC reason 3. ABC is the very worst possible thing that could happen and presages the end of the world. 4. You **** yourself all over PB.
I would sit back and wait for more information if I were you. Just for the sake of your old ticker.
About the only thing I can tell from that video is that it was not obviously trailing any fuel or other large items, so it's possible it was substantially intact when it hit. But even that could have missed parts of the plane falling off, e.g. stabiliser or engine.
Speaking of planes falling vertically, this seems pertinent
“Russia Crash Plane Was 'Vertical' On Impact The Boeing 737 airliner fell vertically out of the sky before exploding on the runway at Kazan airport, according to officials.”
Sajid Javid joins Rishi Sunak in having to argue that night is day on behalf of the prime minister over the Brexit/Ukraine row: "I don't accept that he was comparing the UK to Ukraine." Which is nonsense, of course. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1505807648448565250/photo/1
So what interpretation did he offer for this ?
"I know that it's the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. "When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don't believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. "It's because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself."...
That both the UK and Ukraine are in the category of countries with a freedom loving people. That doesn’t mean that the UK is equivalent to Ukraine
Yes, Boris’ quote about “Ukraine and Brexit” really isn’t that offensive. You can see what he’s trying to say. It was emotionally misjudged but not an obviously foolish or outrageous statement
But the misjudgement (or canny trolling?) got his opponents to hyper-ventilate, which then made the news
I’m cynical enough to go with canny trolling. The words were carefully chosen. You would hope for better, but that’s the PM the UK has. For now.
You said exactly the same thing about the refugee cock up. If you don't like what you hear you call it trolling rather than accepting it is true. It is true as was the refugee issue. I'm not a troll. I don't even have a twitter account, but I was fully aware of the refugee issue and had an immediate reaction to Boris' statement.
Doesn't look good if your reaction to everything you don't like is 'trolls'.
@StillWaters my apologies, wrong person. Please ignore my post. Sorry.
No problem. Just to be clear I think you were being trolled by Boris, not a troll yourself!
On the refugee issue, I tend to view it as, initially, a combination of cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility. Where Patel was at fault was politically not realising it was a problem (I find it hard to believe that she could be personally unmoved by the situation) and being unable / unwilling to devote the focus and energy to sorting it out.
I don't know how the new system works, so no idea whether the criticisms are justified, but it seems to be these are criticisms of execution rather than of principle at this point, so definitely an improvement. Let's hope that it works.
(The only person on here I accuse of being a troll is Heathener. Because she is. A spinner of Putin-preferred lines with a compromised VPN that is on an anti-spamming blacklist and was also used by two previous trolls)
Re your comments on cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility I am sure you are right. FYI I get involved in numerous campaigns where individuals and groups have been badly or unfairly treated by Govt departments (nothing to do with politics). The level of incompetence is mind boggling. However what I do find is a massive amount of resources are then put into avoiding taking any action or making changes often disproportionate to any cost involved. We see these scandals arise over and over again. There are many more at a lower level of seriousness.
Also for those who think we gained freedoms by leaving the EU, our ombudsman offerings are very flawed with lots of gaps that people and groups fall through. Private member's bills with cross party support invariably fail to fill these gaps. The last and effective resolution was the ECJ has now gone, so many groups are left in limbo with nobody to investigate.
Eh? We are still subject to the jurisdiction of the ECtHR, our domestic courts can be asked to and do enforce ECHR rights and they are a part of our domestic law.
Do you believe that Python, Radiohead or Pineapple on Pizza is a good idea?
One out of three for me.
Hmmm. Trying for the ultimate PB activity.....
Coding a Python script to implement a voting machine system, using a variant of AV, for referenda on Scottish Independence and a re-vote on BREXIT, while listening to Radiohead and eating pizza with pineapple on it.
About the only thing I can tell from that video is that it was not obviously trailing any fuel or other large items, so it's possible it was substantially intact when it hit. But even that could have missed parts of the plane falling off, e.g. stabiliser or engine.
Fair enough, in this instance I am educated by you. Thanks. I was following speculation on Twitter which echoed my thoughts: how can a plane ever end up falling vertically like a missile. What would do that?!
But if you assure me it can happen, so be it
By the way we have no verification of that grainy 2nd hand video, so we’re not even sure it DID fall vertically
This is you all over and hence why you get yourself into a tizzy.
1. Event happens or might have happened. 2. You find some random twitter feed which shows that Event happened for ABC reason 3. ABC is the very worst possible thing that could happen and presages the end of the world. 4. You **** yourself all over PB.
I would sit back and wait for more information if I were you. Just for the sake of your old ticker.
But I’d barely post at all if I followed your absurd advice to avoid hasty, irresponsible, hysterical over-reaction! What a ridiculous idea!!!
You’re completely INSANE and you should be on ANTI-PSYCHOTICS, you gibbering MADMAN
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
Not just the (latest) invasion - Russian control of the two eastern provinces has turned them into gangster economies, where you need to stay on the right side of violent criminals to run a business or even hold onto your possessions. Consequently many Russian speakers there would now rather be in Ukraine.
About the only thing I can tell from that video is that it was not obviously trailing any fuel or other large items, so it's possible it was substantially intact when it hit. But even that could have missed parts of the plane falling off, e.g. stabiliser or engine.
Fair enough, in this instance I am educated by you. Thanks. I was following speculation on Twitter which echoed my thoughts: how can a plane ever end up falling vertically like a missile. What would do that?!
But if you assure me it can happen, so be it
By the way we have no verification of that grainy 2nd hand video, so we’re not even sure it DID fall vertically
This is you all over and hence why you get yourself into a tizzy.
1. Event happens or might have happened. 2. You find some random twitter feed which shows that Event happened for ABC reason 3. ABC is the very worst possible thing that could happen and presages the end of the world. 4. You **** yourself all over PB.
I would sit back and wait for more information if I were you. Just for the sake of your old ticker.
But I’d barely post at all if I followed your absurd advice to avoid hasty, irresponsible, hysterical over-reaction! What a ridiculous idea!!!
You’re completely INSANE and you should be on ANTI-PSYCHOTICS, you gibbering MADMAN
*pauses to consider the prospect of you barely posting at all*
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
Do you believe that Python, Radiohead or Pineapple on Pizza is a good idea?
One out of three for me.
Hmmm. Trying for the ultimate PB activity.....
Coding a Python script to implement a voting machine system, using a variant of AV, for referenda on Scottish Independence and a re-vote on BREXIT, while listening to Radiohead and eating pizza with pineapple on it.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
Scott, with all due respect, with all that's happening right now, do you think anyone gives a flying f**k about dogs or cats being flown right now?
You're like a dog with a bone, but there's more important things happening.
And both of these reports refer to the staff, not the animals. So, is it possible the PM was asked if these staff fell within those who had worked with us and were deserving of protection or evacuation? Yes. Does anyone care about that? I certainly don't and I was deeply annoyed at the idea that valuable space was being given up on planes in favour of stray cats and dogs.
About the only thing I can tell from that video is that it was not obviously trailing any fuel or other large items, so it's possible it was substantially intact when it hit. But even that could have missed parts of the plane falling off, e.g. stabiliser or engine.
Fair enough, in this instance I am educated by you. Thanks. I was following speculation on Twitter which echoed my thoughts: how can a plane ever end up falling vertically like a missile. What would do that?!
But if you assure me it can happen, so be it
By the way we have no verification of that grainy 2nd hand video, so we’re not even sure it DID fall vertically
This is you all over and hence why you get yourself into a tizzy.
1. Event happens or might have happened. 2. You find some random twitter feed which shows that Event happened for ABC reason 3. ABC is the very worst possible thing that could happen and presages the end of the world. 4. You **** yourself all over PB.
I would sit back and wait for more information if I were you. Just for the sake of your old ticker.
But I’d barely post at all if I followed your absurd advice to avoid hasty, irresponsible, hysterical over-reaction! What a ridiculous idea!!!
You’re completely INSANE and you should be on ANTI-PSYCHOTICS, you gibbering MADMAN
That's a climb down on Leon's part in my book.
If whatever failed at the top of the descent tipped the plane off horizontal and thus affected ability to glide, would we talking about the end of a parabolic descent? Leon, I think, going for the hyperbolic in preference.
Or thinking how paper planes, once stalled, fall from the sky, which is more halt and drop.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
Scott, with all due respect, with all that's happening right now, do you think anyone gives a flying f**k about dogs or cats being flown right now?
You're like a dog with a bone, but there's more important things happening.
Fail. The dogs and cats are the numerator, so don't pretend they are the denominator
Our fat PM endangered and probably ended the lives of actual people, to fly some doggies about, to keep Ilse indoors happy, and has lied about it and caused the Defence Secretary to lie about it and for lies to be told to a Select committee. But whatever.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
A new Cold War would be a godsend to NATO generals. Endless and near oversight-free spending on military hardware for a war they know they would never fight.
Yes, a great opportunity beckons for them and also for a certain sort of politician. I hope things in general don't get all silly and bellicose over the next few years. Let's just supply and support Ukraine, keep Russia in the freezer, boil the Putin frog, no WW3.
I was quite enjoying (for want of a better word) following the financial war using the proxy of the GBP:RUB exchange rate. But this seems to have been static for the last week or so. Has the Ruble been suspended on international exchanges? (I don't even know if such a thing is possible.) What are the implications of this?
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
(Of course Pen Farthing should have been advised to either shoot his animals or set them free to fend for themselves - something dogs and cats are quite capable of doing - and report to the airport with his staff. Or fuck off and die.)
About the only thing I can tell from that video is that it was not obviously trailing any fuel or other large items, so it's possible it was substantially intact when it hit. But even that could have missed parts of the plane falling off, e.g. stabiliser or engine.
Fair enough, in this instance I am educated by you. Thanks. I was following speculation on Twitter which echoed my thoughts: how can a plane ever end up falling vertically like a missile. What would do that?!
But if you assure me it can happen, so be it
By the way we have no verification of that grainy 2nd hand video, so we’re not even sure it DID fall vertically
This is you all over and hence why you get yourself into a tizzy.
1. Event happens or might have happened. 2. You find some random twitter feed which shows that Event happened for ABC reason 3. ABC is the very worst possible thing that could happen and presages the end of the world. 4. You **** yourself all over PB.
I would sit back and wait for more information if I were you. Just for the sake of your old ticker.
But I’d barely post at all if I followed your absurd advice to avoid hasty, irresponsible, hysterical over-reaction! What a ridiculous idea!!!
You’re completely INSANE and you should be on ANTI-PSYCHOTICS, you gibbering MADMAN
That's a climb down on Leon's part in my book.
If whatever failed at the top of the descent tipped the plane off horizontal and thus affected ability to glide, would we talking about the end of a parabolic descent? Leon, I think, going for the hyperbolic in preference.
Or thinking how paper planes, once stalled, fall from the sky, which is more halt and drop.
Fair point
On the other hand, thanks to ubiquitous cameras, we can now see lots of plane crashes
I’ve never before seen one drop vertically like a missile. But I accept that it happens, albeit rarely?
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
I'm the suite sure the conclusion the MoD will arrive at will be: why do we need two divisions (1 actual and 1 home for wayward infantry regiments) of conventional forces when we're never going to fight Russia because they've got 6,000 nuclear weapons and, even if we did, we don't need anything like a force that size to beat them.
I wonder what they'd choose to spend the money on if the public and political mood delivers them a big increase in budget?
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
Scott, with all due respect, with all that's happening right now, do you think anyone gives a flying f**k about dogs or cats being flown right now?
You're like a dog with a bone, but there's more important things happening.
Fail. The dogs and cats are the numerator, so don't pretend they are the denominator
Our fat PM endangered and probably ended the lives of actual people, to fly some doggies about, to keep Ilse indoors happy, and has lied about it and caused the Defence Secretary to lie about it and for lies to be told to a Select committee. But whatever.
Indeed, whatever.
This country is a nation of animal lovers, its bizarre but people do seem to often like animals more than "actual people".
When I was at Uni I used to regularly collect money for charity in tins, a different charity each weekend, and you'd get far more generosity from people for animal-based charities than people-based ones.
Its never made sense to me, but people always seem to be like that.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
Scott, with all due respect, with all that's happening right now, do you think anyone gives a flying f**k about dogs or cats being flown right now?
You're like a dog with a bone, but there's more important things happening.
And both of these reports refer to the staff, not the animals. So, is it possible the PM was asked if these staff fell within those who had worked with us and were deserving of protection or evacuation? Yes. Does anyone care about that? I certainly don't and I was deeply annoyed at the idea that valuable space was being given up on planes in favour of stray cats and dogs.
it says staff/animals in the tweet linked to
and there is no get out there. the taliban regard professional dog-botherers with the same very slightly nauseated contempt the rest of us do, but otherwise leave them in peace. Marshall gave very specific evidence that other dog rescue ops in kabul kept going unmolested. OTOH the taliban murder and kill people who interpret for our troops, teach in girls schools etc. these wankers are best seen as economic migrants getting a free ride.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
I'm always a bit wary of "widespread knowledge" because it is a short step to hearsay but people have been condemned or convicted before. I'm not even convinced that evacuating doggies cost a single human life.
But surely "head of illicit finance" is the best job title we've seen on pb today.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
(Of course Pen Farthing should have been advised to either shoot his animals or set them free to fend for themselves - something dogs and cats are quite capable of doing - and report to the airport with his staff. Or fuck off and die.)
Exactly the same people complaining about what happened would also be complaining if that had happened - "heartless to strand beloved pets", and all that.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
(Of course Pen Farthing should have been advised to either shoot his animals or set them free to fend for themselves - something dogs and cats are quite capable of doing - and report to the airport with his staff. Or fuck off and die.)
Wrong, see above. There was no suggestion the staff were in danger.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
(Of course Pen Farthing should have been advised to either shoot his animals or set them free to fend for themselves - something dogs and cats are quite capable of doing - and report to the airport with his staff. Or fuck off and die.)
Exactly the samepeople complaining about what happened would also be complaining if that had happened - "heartless to strand beloved pets", and all that.
Not would. The same people were complaining.
Scott was loving posting all Farthing's Tweets etc bashing the government and people saying how heartless they were being for not getting involved.
Now he's spun on a penny farthing to be doing the opposite.
About the only thing I can tell from that video is that it was not obviously trailing any fuel or other large items, so it's possible it was substantially intact when it hit. But even that could have missed parts of the plane falling off, e.g. stabiliser or engine.
Speaking of planes falling vertically, this seems pertinent
“Russia Crash Plane Was 'Vertical' On Impact The Boeing 737 airliner fell vertically out of the sky before exploding on the runway at Kazan airport, according to officials.”
There are 7,649 737s in service worldwide, second only to the 8,374 A320s among civilian jet planes, so it's not surprising that you can find other accidents involving 737s.
We can still be past the peak of deaths and hospitalisations, even though cases are rising (although even they may have already neared the peak).
Not unless the ifr and ihr are changing, can we?
They can be. Deaths are basically flat despite the case numbers having started rising some time ago. And hospitalisation went up immediately showing most are incidental admissions.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
Scott, with all due respect, with all that's happening right now, do you think anyone gives a flying f**k about dogs or cats being flown right now?
You're like a dog with a bone, but there's more important things happening.
Fail. The dogs and cats are the numerator, so don't pretend they are the denominator
Our fat PM endangered and probably ended the lives of actual people, to fly some doggies about, to keep Ilse indoors happy, and has lied about it and caused the Defence Secretary to lie about it and for lies to be told to a Select committee. But whatever.
Indeed, whatever.
This country is a nation of animal lovers, its bizarre but people do seem to often like animals more than "actual people".
When I was at Uni I used to regularly collect money for charity in tins, a different charity each weekend, and you'd get far more generosity from people for animal-based charities than people-based ones.
Its never made sense to me, but people always seem to be like that.
Many, many, many years ago, when a student, I was involved in a Rag Week whose charity was Guide Dogs for the Blind. We spent a warm afternoon tin-rattling and eventually, after some two or three hours, one of our number, tired but some what refreshed ..... we'd been doing cafe's and pubs ..... started asking if anyone wanted to help a blind guide dog. It was never forgotten!
(Of course Pen Farthing should have been advised to either shoot his animals or set them free to fend for themselves - something dogs and cats are quite capable of doing - and report to the airport with his staff. Or fuck off and die.)
That would have been a political catastrophe for the government. Bear in mind most British people like animals (particularly relative to people from Afghanistan) and don't go in for the performative disregard for animal welfare that's common on here.
This is one occasion when Johnson actually got it right and the subsequent lying about it is exactly what you'd expect.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
I'm always a bit wary of "widespread knowledge" because it is a short step to hearsay but people have been condemned or convicted before. I'm not even convinced that evacuating doggies cost a single human life.
But surely "head of illicit finance" is the best job title we've seen on pb today.
That is one thing the Tory party really excel at to be fair.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
I'm always a bit wary of "widespread knowledge" because it is a short step to hearsay but people have been condemned or convicted before. I'm not even convinced that evacuating doggies cost a single human life.
But surely "head of illicit finance" is the best job title we've seen on pb today.
Subsequent career opportunities would seem to be quite good.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
(Of course Pen Farthing should have been advised to either shoot his animals or set them free to fend for themselves - something dogs and cats are quite capable of doing - and report to the airport with his staff. Or fuck off and die.)
Exactly the samepeople complaining about what happened would also be complaining if that had happened - "heartless to strand beloved pets", and all that.
Not would. The same people were complaining.
Scott was loving posting all Farthing's Tweets etc bashing the government and people saying how heartless they were being for not getting involved.
Now he's spun on a penny farthing to be doing the opposite.
All in a day's work for Scott.
Just as well Scott isn't Prime Minister, then. The fact is that for some reason NOWZAD staff/animals were prioritised over, say, interpreters. As has been well documented (h/t @Ishmael_Z ) the effort this logistical (ie not the planes themselves but the effort around the evacuation) required meant that others couldn't be evacuated.
The PM said he had nothing to do with it and it now appears that he did have something to do with it.
So the PM is lying which I appreciate falls into the does the pope have a balcony category but it would be nice to think that people still care. Especially politically geeky people on PB but you don't so fair enough.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
I'm always a bit wary of "widespread knowledge" because it is a short step to hearsay but people have been condemned or convicted before. I'm not even convinced that evacuating doggies cost a single human life.
But surely "head of illicit finance" is the best job title we've seen on pb today.
I have a business card somewhere from a guy at Shell whose title was "Head of Knowledge"....
(Of course Pen Farthing should have been advised to either shoot his animals or set them free to fend for themselves - something dogs and cats are quite capable of doing - and report to the airport with his staff. Or fuck off and die.)
That would have been a political catastrophe for the government. Bear in mind most British people like animals (particularly relative to people from Afghanistan) and don't go in for the performative disregard for animal welfare that's common on here.
This is one occasion when Johnson actually got it right and the subsequent lying about it is exactly what you'd expect.
WTF are you on about, "performative disregard." Do they kick dogs to death in the streets in your parts? and have an exemption from our literally, for once, world leading agriculture animal welfare standards?
And you are saying that an action was justified because although it entailed the possibility of brown people being tortured to death, because it saved the face of a tory government? I am trying to read your post ironically and coming up with nothing
And btw if he had quietly shot or euthanased the lot who would ever have known? he would have kept quiet as the grave, because the last thing anyone making a living out of the "rescue" racket dares to admit is that they ever hasten their charges on their way to doggie heaven. nothing dries up the donations quite so effectively.
I wonder what they'd choose to spend the money on if the public and political mood delivers them a big increase in budget?
Probably...
Reverse the cut in the E-7 buy Restore SEAD capability lost with Tornado by joining the Germans in Eurofighter ECR Throw money at Ajax until it works Buy a tracked APC/IFV to replace the cancelled Warrior CSP More A400M to reverse the recent cut in tactical airlift Accelerate AS90 and MLRS replacement to this decade Loads of Bayraktar TB2 because that's fashionable More StarStreak
Can't really do much for the RN as there is nowhere to build any more ships and it's not politically possible to build them outside the UK.
NEW: A second Foreign Office whistleblower claims it was 'widespread knowledge' in Whitehall crisis centre that Boris Johnson made decision to extract Nowzad staff from Kabul last summer.
(Of course Pen Farthing should have been advised to either shoot his animals or set them free to fend for themselves - something dogs and cats are quite capable of doing - and report to the airport with his staff. Or fuck off and die.)
Exactly the samepeople complaining about what happened would also be complaining if that had happened - "heartless to strand beloved pets", and all that.
Not would. The same people were complaining.
Scott was loving posting all Farthing's Tweets etc bashing the government and people saying how heartless they were being for not getting involved.
Now he's spun on a penny farthing to be doing the opposite.
All in a day's work for Scott.
Just as well Scott isn't Prime Minister, then. The fact is that for some reason NOWZAD staff/animals were prioritised over, say, interpreters. As has been well documented (h/t @Ishmael_Z ) the effort this logistical (ie not the planes themselves but the effort around the evacuation) required meant that others couldn't be evacuated.
The PM said he had nothing to do with it and it now appears that he did have something to do with it.
So the PM is lying which I appreciate falls into the does the pope have a balcony category but it would be nice to think that people still care. Especially politically geeky people on PB but you don't so fair enough.
Comments
Looks like pilot suicide or a hijacking by suicidal terrorists
Now represents, theoretically, an opportunity for Putin to act which may not be available later. Extremely unlikely we may think, but who knows what the thinking is in the bunker.
NATO is a red line. If anyone attempts to invade they get incinerated by NATO air power. Not so, Finland. Membership brings benefits.
There is definitely something in spending it on stuff that is actually useful. Drones. Missile defence/anti-air.
X% of GDP doesn't mean much if you are buying Ajax with it.
https://twitter.com/franakviacorka/status/1505691787280670723
The objective of the NHS should really be "sudden death".
Perhaps we should upgrade @HYUFD from a Covenanter to an Ajax?
Planes sometimes crash vertically, for other reasons. For instance, see the following, which fortunately did not crash, but was vertical for a portion of its fall:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_006
About the only thing I can tell from that video is that it was not obviously trailing any fuel or other large items, so it's possible it was substantially intact when it hit. But even that could have missed parts of the plane falling off, e.g. stabiliser or engine.
One of the enormous but lesser known crimes of WW2 was Germanys policy of stealing - literally stealing - “Aryan-looking” children in Poland and elsewhere. The kids were then given to childless German couples
The tragedy of this still echoes down the decades. 200,000 kids were taken
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_children_by_Nazi_Germany
We'd want our armed forces to be strong enough to prevent the artillery barrage of our cities. Preventing outright defeat is not enough.
Some chose - at risk of death - to shelter Jews during the war; Kyiv was acclaimed as a "Hero City' for its resistance against the Nazis, and the majority of Ukrainians sided against Hitler, with losses that accounted for around 40% of total USSR casualties.
There were few good choices if you lived on the largest battlefield of WWII. And like everywhere else they went, the NAZIs found collaborators.
"He was in Normandy three months, and he said the Germans were then still hopeful the Allied troops could be "bought off" with propaganda. He has a souvenir of one of their attempts - a German leaflet dropped by 'plane over the battlefield. It is headed "Why die for Stalin?" and as usual lays the blame for the war on the 'Bolsheviks'.
"Needless to say," said L/Corpl. Sills, "these leaflets had not the slightest affect on the troops.""
Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, says "the degree of progress falls short of what we would like and how the dynamic of developments demands of the Ukrainian side" – meaning Russia's ongoing assault on its cities.
Peskov said direct talks between Putin and Zelensky will only happen if Kyiv "does its homework by holding negotiations and agreeing their results."
"For now, there is no substantial movement. They won't have any agreements to commit to."
Peskov thanked the countries mediating – led by Israel and Turkey – for their help. "It's important to make Ukraine more amenable."
But Russia won't commit to a ceasefire before a deal because "nationalist groups use any pause to regroup and continue attacking Russian forces."
https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1505838225834790914
Those beastlyUkrainians attacking those nice Russian peacekeepers.....
Yes, military spending should be driven by projected needs rather than general "it's a dangerous world" sentiment.
I can see the logic of Germany's ramp up. They were low for such a nation and this Putin action has shaken up some of their core beliefs and assumptions.
The military budget that's long departed the realms of reason is the United States. They spend the best part of a Trillion dollars per annum. As much as the rest of the world put together. Quite incredible when you think about it.
And Trump hiked military spending while at the same time saying the US should be more isolationist and stay out of foreign wars. More screaming illogic. It's a mad world really.
“Now Boris Johnson has promised that Brexit will be a "Titanic success". With the music playing, I assume.”
https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/794187656829734913?s=21
“I wish it was a joke, but I fear it isn't. Exit upon exit.”
https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/753303826971713536?s=21
Also for those who think we gained freedoms by leaving the EU, our ombudsman offerings are very flawed with lots of gaps that people and groups fall through. Private member's bills with cross party support invariably fail to fill these gaps. The last and effective resolution was the ECJ has now gone, so many groups are left in limbo with nobody to investigate.
But if you assure me it can happen, so be it
By the way we have no verification of that grainy 2nd hand video, so we’re not even sure it DID fall vertically
In the case of WW3 in the cold war years, the assumption was that the USSR would invade both - and they would be backed up by NATO.
After the Cold War, the assumption was - no war in Europe.
Whistleblower Josie Stewart, Head of Illicit Finance in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office - who expects to lose her job over speaking out says “Nowzad staff were included" in the evacuation of Kabul "only in response to this ‘PM decision.’"
Johnson has always denied direct involvement in the case
https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1505849384839307265
RIP.
1. Event happens or might have happened.
2. You find some random twitter feed which shows that Event happened for ABC reason
3. ABC is the very worst possible thing that could happen and presages the end of the world.
4. You **** yourself all over PB.
I would sit back and wait for more information if I were you. Just for the sake of your old ticker.
“Russia Crash Plane Was 'Vertical' On Impact
The Boeing 737 airliner fell vertically out of the sky before exploding on the runway at Kazan airport, according to officials.”
https://news.sky.com/story/russia-crash-plane-was-vertical-on-impact-10427640
Another Boeing 737
UK cases to the ECJ were comparatively few and mainly focused on environmental and employment issues where it was claimed that the UK was either not meeting the relevant standard or had failed to transpose it correctly. There is an interesting analysis of UK cases before the ECJ here: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/news/latest/new-analysis-shows-uk-rarely-taken-european-court
Domestic courts are still required to enforce these laws unless they have been changed and there are almost no examples of this so far.
Coding a Python script to implement a voting machine system, using a variant of AV, for referenda on Scottish Independence and a re-vote on BREXIT, while listening to Radiohead and eating pizza with pineapple on it.
You’re completely INSANE and you should be on ANTI-PSYCHOTICS, you gibbering MADMAN
Josie Stewart, head of illicit finance at FCDO, has given evidence to @CommonsForeign
https://twitter.com/LOS_Fisher/status/1505852800965791744
You're like a dog with a bone, but there's more important things happening.
💬 Boris Johnson's speech in Blackpool was condemned as crass, unwise and diplomatically damaging at a time when the emphasis should be on unity. Here’s what thePM should have said instead, according to @iainmartin1. https://reaction.life/the-speech-boris-johnson-should-have-given-on-ukraine-and-brexit-putin-russia/
If whatever failed at the top of the descent tipped the plane off horizontal and thus affected ability to glide, would we talking about the end of a parabolic descent? Leon, I think, going for the hyperbolic in preference.
Or thinking how paper planes, once stalled, fall from the sky, which is more halt and drop.
Our fat PM endangered and probably ended the lives of actual people, to fly some doggies about, to keep Ilse indoors happy, and has lied about it and caused the Defence Secretary to lie about it and for lies to be told to a Select committee. But whatever.
(Of course Pen Farthing should have been advised to either shoot his animals or set them free to fend for themselves - something dogs and cats are quite capable of doing - and report to the airport with his staff. Or fuck off and die.)
On the other hand, thanks to ubiquitous cameras, we can now see lots of plane crashes
I’ve never before seen one drop vertically like a missile. But I accept that it happens, albeit rarely?
This country is a nation of animal lovers, its bizarre but people do seem to often like animals more than "actual people".
When I was at Uni I used to regularly collect money for charity in tins, a different charity each weekend, and you'd get far more generosity from people for animal-based charities than people-based ones.
Its never made sense to me, but people always seem to be like that.
and there is no get out there. the taliban regard professional dog-botherers with the same very slightly nauseated contempt the rest of us do, but otherwise leave them in peace. Marshall gave very specific evidence that other dog rescue ops in kabul kept going unmolested. OTOH the taliban murder and kill people who interpret for our troops, teach in girls schools etc. these wankers are best seen as economic migrants getting a free ride.
But surely "head of illicit finance" is the best job title we've seen on pb today.
Scott was loving posting all Farthing's Tweets etc bashing the government and people saying how heartless they were being for not getting involved.
Now he's spun on a penny farthing to be doing the opposite.
All in a day's work for Scott.
It was never forgotten!
This is one occasion when Johnson actually got it right and the subsequent lying about it is exactly what you'd expect.
Why?????????
The PM said he had nothing to do with it and it now appears that he did have something to do with it.
So the PM is lying which I appreciate falls into the does the pope have a balcony category but it would be nice to think that people still care. Especially politically geeky people on PB but you don't so fair enough.
And you are saying that an action was justified because although it entailed the possibility of brown people being tortured to death, because it saved the face of a tory government? I am trying to read your post ironically and coming up with nothing
And btw if he had quietly shot or euthanased the lot who would ever have known? he would have kept quiet as the grave, because the last thing anyone making a living out of the "rescue" racket dares to admit is that they ever hasten their charges on their way to doggie heaven. nothing dries up the donations quite so effectively.
Reverse the cut in the E-7 buy
Restore SEAD capability lost with Tornado by joining the Germans in Eurofighter ECR
Throw money at Ajax until it works
Buy a tracked APC/IFV to replace the cancelled Warrior CSP
More A400M to reverse the recent cut in tactical airlift
Accelerate AS90 and MLRS replacement to this decade
Loads of Bayraktar TB2 because that's fashionable
More StarStreak
Can't really do much for the RN as there is nowhere to build any more ships and it's not politically possible to build them outside the UK.