Off Topic Politics Thread

Brinkmanship is a very dangerous game.

 

JF Kennedy tried it once, and got away with it. Mind you, look what happened to him.

 

Maybe Boris should try it.

(in blue but not working)

 

Of all the front pages today unusually the Daily Star is the most interesting claiming Putin has advanced rectal cancer.. based on US and UK intelligence.. I've never believed the Daily Star but if the picture of Putin is undoctored, then it looks like he could be using large doses of Steroids.. puffy moon shaped face..

 

Yep, lots of rumours regarding his health.
https://www.nationalworld.com/news/...-health-cancer-illness-bloated-immune-3598600

 

Interesting. And worrying, I suppose, if he thinks he has nothing to lose

 

Russia is currently retaliating with its own sanctions effectively but they don’t touch the sides comparatively because the Western allies have effectively diminished Russias hand.

Military action will only occur if Russia encroaches into NATO territory, the only thing that made me think there could be an exception was if Russia blew one of the nuclear power plants and fallout started streaming over Europe.

Ukraine looks like a huge misstep for them now anyway, even if they take the country the Russian military is going to be stuck managing Ukraine in perpetuity and it is essentially going to become a meat grinder for them that will probably absorb whatever remains of the Russian economy.

I do genuinely wonder about Putins mental state because even though he has always been a nasty piece of work, he was always considered shrewd and measured. This is just an absolute clusterfuck which has no perceivable benefit for himself or Russia. Could be that he is seriously ill as rumoured and this is his death howl to try and create some kind of lasting ‘legacy’ (he has definitely succeeded one way or another).

All just opinion from me though.

 

"Do we want to become a safe haven for international outlaws, the mafia bosses, the despots and their fixers? Do we want London to be the safety deposit box for their dirty money? We should ban those crooks and bullies as a matter of course and prevent them from siphoning their illicit gains through London."

Dominic angryman Raab 2014

 

Obviously the answer was “yes, of course”.

 

There was an excellent article in today's Sunday Telegraph which outlined the extent of opposition to Putin within Russia. I thought it was quite a thought-provoking piece and effectively flies against alot of the sentiment posted on this thread. The contents of the article were quite worrying. 68% of the population support Putin and, despite what is reported in the UK, there is a massive amount of favour for the invasionwhich people feel needs to be done to counter Neo-Nazis from Ukraine. The protesters may be making the headlines over in the West but they are not popular with many Russians and legislation introduced this week has already done quite a bit to silence criticism. Punishment for an initial anti-Government protest entails a nominal detention but , more importantly, it gives you a criminal record which effectively makes you unemployable. A second convction results in a longer custodial sentence whilst a third cultimates in a 15 year sentence. The reporter suggested that the will of many of the younger generation of protesters has already been broken. Given the number of people arrested to date, the authorities are now reluctant to dish out nominal sentences because of the bureauocracy involved and this has had the consequence of seeing first time protesters getting the maximum sentence when arrested alongside hardened anti-Putin fanaticals. Many people who have been actively protesting against Putin in the past now feel broken by the invasion - both from the point of view of the thoroughness of the security services which have effectively contained protests and the legislation put in to place to allow this to happen and also from the fact that it is abundantly clear that the majority of the Russian population are now behind Putin.

Reading this, it is difficult to come to the conclusion that the Russians are really like us. There is a feeling amongst them that the Ukranians had this coming to them. Looking through the British papers and other media outlets such as the BBC, I am starting to sense that we are not necessarily being told the truth and headline articles such as the one in a popular British Red Top newspaper suggesting that Putin was dying and wanted to leave a legacy does raise questions regarding our media. Putin may be a monster yet our media has not really listened to what the Russian public believe. For me, the BBC has been quite poor in some respects. They are quite keen to film anti-Putin protest yet have not really explored just how non-metropolitan Russians feel - if you like, the BBC is something of an echo-chamber pushing out the comments of similarly minded Liberals. I think they forget that Russian is certainly not a Liberal country and especially so when it comes to the people from the small towns, agricultural communities, the less well-off and people who grew up in the Soviet era. I just feel that Putin reflects the ugly side of the Russian people in exactly the same way that Trump does the same for the Americans. The BBC was rightly quick to vilify Trumps supporters but there is an equally good case for them to be the same towards the Russians. In a nutshell, I don't get the notion that most Russians abhor the aggression towards Ukraine and perhaps see this as a price they deserve to pay for getting in to bed with the EU and NATO.

i was also not aware that the UK has been both training and arming the Ukranian army throughout the 2010s - this has iincluded having British Army personnel actively providing expertise within Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion. This would help explain why the Ukranians have been so effective against a rag-tag Russian army but would also help explain the annoyance of Putin with the encroachment of NATO. Putin is a monster but Europe's desire to push it's interests ever Eastwards has certainly been the catylist to antagonise him. Unfortunately, I think the West has humoured Putin for too long and that we are regretably at a point where it is difficult to properly contend with Russia. Reading the report in the Telegraph this morning, it did bring home to me the enormity of the problem and the fear that the sanctions , though whilst both desirable and seemingly necessary at this point, will ultimately galvanize the Russians behind Putin and utlimately embolden him to go something even more rash and disastrous that his actions in Ukraine.

 

Here you go Peeps. Another nugget from my disturbed mind. Like John Lennon said; Imagine. Churchill got his wish from Roosewelt and they dropped a third A-bomb on Moskow?
No Isreal. No korea war. No Kuban krisis, Kennedy, vietnam. etc,etc,etc. Just a disturbed thought I wanted to share with my Brethren on here!!!!

 

Why no Israel?

 

You seem to have done your best to interpret everything in the most favourable possible towards Russia and the most negative way possible towards the west

You also appear to be simultaneously claiming that the West has both done too much and not enough with regards to opposition against Russia. Which is pretty incredible really

 

Gary

Not in the least. The West must take a proportion of the balme for the current situation. We have accepted Russian investment into this country and our politucual parties have accepted donations too. The Unexplained Wealth measures have not been implimented at all even though they were introduced to deal with "dodgy" money coming in to the country (I believe that this has only been used in one instance.) We have taken the moral high ground but actually are part of the problem as we have all too often turned a blind eye.

The EU's involvement in Ukraine is more complicated. In 2014 the EU agreed an 11 billion Euro investment package in Ukraine , the EU bank promising to deliver £3 billion euros in three years. This was to pay for developing the indrastructure and agriculture as the EU has a keen eye on Ukrainian wheat production. You can quite readily download this from the Intenet. EU interest in Ukraine has therefore been quite intense in the last 8 years and this has been underscored with military aid from countries like UK and US.

The point I am trying to make is that it is understandable that this has generated the ire of Putin. Ukraine has been increasingly influenced by the West and Russia feels even more hemmed in. I feel that Putin's actions cannot be defended. He is clearly a war criminal. By the same token, his is right that there is a problem with the Far Right in Ukraine which Ukranian politicians have acknowledged Zelenskiy has found necessary to accommodate even if Putin has greatly exagerated the threat.

I think that Russian is still an Imperialist country. There was a comment on this thread a few days ago about it still being Communist. This is complete rubbish - if you like it is almost capitalism at its most extreme. The wealth generated within Russia is distributed amongst Putin's cronies. Where he has been clever os that he has demonstrated a narrative that the West is opposed to Russia and wishes to see her diminished. This is demonstrably the case - albeit this is largely due to Russian interference in Western democracy which has served to make Russia a paraiah state. Getting Russia's neighbours to be pro-EU and pro-NATO with intentions of joining both has given sense fo Putin's idea that Russia has been hemmed in and made to retreat by her traditional enemies.

The issue for me is that Russia is behaving like a 19th century imperial power. Any notion of spreading Socialism must be totally discounted and effectively Russia has no place in the mindset of 21st Century Europe. Her population still preceive Russia as Europe's major power and see that the West has tried to diminish this. The opportunity was there in the 1990s to bring Russia into closer relations with the West but Putin has increasingly made this more and more difficult. I think it is naive to think that he has no support within his country. It is becoming increasingly clear that he does and, unfortunately, that whatever opposition there was has effectively been diminished to a rump.

I am not sure what the solution is because I feel that Putin is now emboldened by his invasion of Ukraine and that his actions are demonstrative that he wishes to destroy this country so that there is nothing left for the west to influence.The threat of nuclear weapons is very real from this mad man and I think we are now in a situation with management and containment of Russian influence will be the order of the day until such point at the Russians get fed up with Putin himself or he steps aside. I cannot see any rebellion within Russia but I can see perceived western antagonism cementing Putin's support within his own country.

 

Some of this doesn’t completely make sense. 68% support the war and feel something must be done about the neo-nazis of Ukraine. But to my knowledge, russian nationalists (as in those who long for russian imperialism) tend towards fascism.

It’s a bit like the BNP saying we need to clamp down on racism in France.

 

Unless Putin has plans to take back former soviet states why should he be so worried about Eastern Europe joining NATO?

 

FYI.
"Use of UWOs
Available from January 2018, the use of UWOs has been limited so far, having only been obtained nine times relating to four cases as of February 2022. None have been obtained since the end of 2019. There have been high-profile successes and failures."
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9098/
Flawed or ignored legislation?

 

Who is Gary?

You are strawmanning very very hard in lots of your points. The majority of people aren’t saying that putin doesn’t have a lot of support. And reporting on protests is not the same as saying they think the majority oppose him. If that is how you read it then you really really are reading what you want to read into these pieces

There are just people who oppose him. That is still a story. Not as big a one

A great many of the stories writing about the people and / or the oligarchs rising up against Putin (including Fiona Bruce’s questioning on QT) very much seem to be speaking in terms hope rather than expectation. Which seems to be your view as well - that it is wishful thinking

Pulling up one person who called it communist and running with that comment is also disingenuous. One misinformed person is not what you should be basing any kind of in depth response on.

And why are you talking about “spreading socialism”. I have not seen that mentioned to a significant degree anywhere. Potentially in that one post noted above where someone was misinformed

Inventing a stance that you assume most people are taking and then criticising it achieves very little and I’m not sure why you are bothering

 

I'm with Gary on this.