Baden

And this from a Russian angle could read as: "Why would Russia prepare to attack the U.S.? What missing facts would allow that to make sense?" So, why...

I'm not making normative judgements about whether Russia should feel threatened or not. I'm simply trying to help lay out an explanatory framework for...

Nothing I've said should suggest I'm not aware that Putin has the morals of a snake, that the invasion was morally unjustified, and that he is committ...

No, I was responding to the odd accusation of political nihilism. If I want to say anything about any of the posters mentioned, I'll say it.

You ask me how NATO antagonised Russia and then you don't want to know how Russia perceives itself to be antagonized by NATO. What? As for this: So fu...

Jesus H. Christ, I'm a mod and I'm arguing against the pro-NATO narrative right now, you dill.

That Western Europe was a nicer place to live than the USSR I'm not debating and is not even remotely the issue here. :roll:

This makes no sense as a response to my post. It's the opposite of politicial nihilism to look beyond propaganda to actual real people and how they ar...

Yes, I was being hyperbolic. Oh, OK. Well, you can go right back to the end of the cold war and work your way up from there. I find this a good overvi...

And the following calculus doesn't really make sense: Putin's an evil madman + Putin has half the world's nuclear weapons = No need to care about Russ...

There are a much wider and more important range of economic and security reasons the US cares about Russia. The most pertinent being: "The nation poss...

It should be easy for you then to demonstrate where I've been naive. Go ahead.

Yes.

I said 'Your' as in 'you', not the pro-NATO side.

I'm not saying they make that explicit in their documents. It's my wording. As I see it, NATO represents an expanded pre-cold-war block and Russia a d...

I hope so. :love:

You could have just asked for a better explanation, but ok.

Not if you're the meat in that sandwich. I mean just to be concrete about it re the current situation: if the war continues, NATO can feel it's winnin...

No, but I'd agree with the sentiment, at least re the British (don't expect much from my own crowd either).

I'm happy to take hits for poor explanations, but if you get absolutely nothing from what I and Street have just said, it's your loss, frankly.

Throwing sand in the air isn't going to work here. The evils of Western imperialisn are well known. But none of what you've presented is evidence of a...

It doesn't require a politicised label. It's pretty much axiomatic that power serves power. :up:

To add to that, I don't see this as a "winnable" war. Everyone worth a shit has already lost and can only continue losing more the longer it persists,

My point was more that the proper "side" to take is not of one powerful interest vs another when that's the very narrative that feeds their continued ...

I hope articles like these continue to help extricate us from our projections of Ukraine and realize it's a real place most of us know fuck all about....

:lol:

No, @"StreetlightX" posted an interesting, if depressing, article worth considerstion. You post garbage conspiracy theories about a NATO Jihadi war on...

No, you said the West's Jihad on Russia and "other Slavic nations", implying it was of racist intent by suggesting Zelensky being non-Slavic played a ...

Of course, I mean Ukraine invaded Russia, just as Georgia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan did. They're in on the jihad too! As much as I don't care for the...

Yes, I guess I wasn't out protesting that with millions of others around the globe because Apollodorus would never just make random stuff up to suppor...

Lucky you. :up:

Yes, it's been long enough that @"Hanover" can back down while saving face because no-one remembers the original argument. :smile:

I wasn't getting into any normative stuff, just describing the way things work. Part of my last post was to recognize that the teaching of the standar...

Their world. If your world includes accountancy, you need more than three numbers and so on. And within each world are subworlds with different specif...

I feel like I want to give credit to @"ssu" for presenting the more or less pro-NATO case reasonably. I don't know if you've read everything but some ...

:snicker:

I said you "may have voted for". I didn't know who you voted for and I was including congress. Anyhow...

Wait a second... :chin: :lol:

OK. If he did, that's good. (I originally wasn't referring to him in particular but your whole political establishment anyhow. And we'll judge them by...

No, my point is it may have been just a soundbite for the gullible like most politician's campaign promises. Good night.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/02/15/biden-doubles-down-failed-yemen-policy "When running for office, President Biden promised to “make sure America do...

Being Irish doesn't make you any more moral than anyone else, frank nor does being Catholic, I'd wager. But thanks for the vote fo support, I guess.

We're calm as far as I know. @"frank" https://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/19/politics/jared-kushner-saudi-arms-deal-lockheed-martin/index.html E.g. "Presi...

I'll get what I can for you on that. In the meantime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_States%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_arms_deal "In August 2018,...

Here's a gun; you can have it for half price (not direct financing). Here's half the price of a gun to help you buy a gun (direct financing). Distinct...

Cross posted...

It's not really that simple, frank. What counts as "financing" is debateable. It could be argued there's no difference except accounting between a dis...

I'm happy to be corrected on the facts. I just wonder if you agree that ethically there's no major difference. If you sell someone a weapon knowing th...

Ok, can you explain to me the huge ethical difference you see between e.g. selling someone a gun knowing they're going to murder someone with it and g...

Just to add that the fact that sympathy is (delibrately) fostered and controlled by narrative, exposure and proximity rather than more relevant stuff ...