To be honest I only hear the term "ultra right wing" flung around when the left don't have a proper answer. I wasn't accusing you personally of being self righteous, only explaining why it doesn't mean what you thought it did anymore. I haven't read many of your posts to form an opinion but I have read many others on here. Yes, let's talk about gender. Firstly, don't you see any irony that in a post about climate change you lean heavily on the fact that science backed up your comments, but just a few posts later you back an ideology that has no place in science whatsoever? Do you believe in science or not? Your comment about "it doesn't affect me, doesn't affect anyone else negatively", is very blinkered IMO. In the first place, there are many things in this world that don't affect you directly but you will probably have strong opinions about. Gaza is a good example, should we not show our disgust one way or the other because it doesn't affect us? But besides that, the gender problem has a very good chance of affecting you, or more accurately any female members of your family. I know you said you lived in NW Scotland but the news of a well publicised employment tribunal in Dundee this week must have got to you by now. That will tell you all you need to know about what the problem is and why women are being betrayed for the sake of the woke. There are many more examples of how this will affect women negatively if you are curious enough. Finally, people identifying as toasters is nonsense, but why? They're ridiculing an absurdity where people can just announce "I have changed my sex" , "I am non binary" or any of the other umpteen different genders available. This is just not scientifically possible but they expect people who don't see the king's new clothes to go along with a fallacy.
Mate, you are mixing up gender and sex here. If you want to win the argument, you need to recognise that gender is a construct and sex is biological. I can go with you on Sex is absolute. I struggle with the need to tell people a sex is not your sex. That is a biological untruth, but it harms nobody to recognise, as MostlyMadeOfWater did, that some people’s constructed Gender doesn’t fit them. Everything is not black and white.
A traitor to the west. What are you on about. Trump is handling things in his usual crazy way. The best thing to do is wait and see at this point. But usually things work out his way. American foreign policy has cosied up to dictators (often even installing them themselves) basically since WW2 btw. So this is nothing new, really. Most of the outrage against Trump here is manufactured. Like 90% of what Trump does is similar to what other presidents have done, it’s just the corporate media scream loudly about it trying to pretend he’s Hitler
What are you on about? When did any president cosy up to a power that had invaded anyone in Europe? And explain how telling Putin he gets all his demands before negotiations begin is good negotiation? It isn’t. It is pathetic. When was the last time a sitting US president parroted lies started by a malicious power verbatim and failed to apply those same rules to that power? When was the last time a sitting US president extorted a European nation for its mineral wealth? You people will do anything to justify the monstrous acts of an appeaser of Putin.
......Or when a US president declared himself above the law or used an unelected oligarch to shape his policies?
Who says I'm left? What often used to be the right side of conservative has gone a long way along that spectrum and I would call it ultra right wing just because a lot of the views fit with what used to be classed as such. I haven't come across an employment tribunal in Dundee. If you live in Southampton it would be like asking about something in Truro. Gaza does affect me as well, as do all geopolitical issues even in a small way. There is certainly potential that Gaza can have a major effect on all of us, but I do understand your analogy and I do see your point. In terms of gender as an example, I was talking about woke and as such I am then on an ideology and not science. As loading says, sex is biology, gender is psychology. Even within biology, there are grey areas, but I was writing about a construct. It wasn't the intention to debate it as I am well aware that there is no right answer and I'm not going to foist my opinions on you. I would say the stories about the toasters tend to be a twist of the truth or just made up, but I'm sure it does happen (I may find it silly, but who am I to judge!). I would also say that there are clear problems associated with identification, that is evident with issues coming from prisons. It's not easy, and I would say that I used to dismiss it until I met several people that were non binary and they explained how they felt they didn't fit and the conformity caused them to be depressed and suicidal. It wasn't until they embraced how they felt that they were at all happy and that often meant that they were male for periods and female for periods and at times they hated the idea of fitting into either. Apart from struggling with the pronouns at times, it made someone happy.
Stumbled across this whilst looking for something else. https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/nigel-farage-from-russia-with-love The summing up "Brexit was finally done in January 2020. In February 2022, Russia’s plan for Ukraine became clear as it launched a full-scale invasion that led to 14 million displaced people and half a million casualties. This war – the first major land war in Europe for nearly 80 years – goes on and the clear and present threat Putin presents to NATO and its members can no longer be overlooked, or the role of fellow travellers ignored. Farage needs to answer for his role in this historic and epoch-defining conflict."
Former presidents and us foreign policies have been extremely questionable for many years: There was no outcry then. You’re right that this wasn’t Europe, but then I’ve been vocal against the military industrial complex since before it was cool. And Trump hasn’t actually done anything yet. If you notice his reoccurring tactic is to say outrageous things first, then work out the details later. It wouldn’t surprise me if he comes out of it with a good peace deal. It’s what he does.
Worth noting that's from 2016 so it was after Russia had occupied Crimea. Churchill and FDR also got pretty cosy with Stalin, who was far worse than Putin.
Fair point on Obama, but bringing the Second World War into the discussion is ridiculous. Both Churchill and Roosevelt knew that they had to keep the USSR supplied to avoid Stalin making a separate peace with Hitler.
The Crimea invasion and annexing of the terrority should have been met with a far stronger reaction from the west. Putin must have felt emboldened and thought he could match into Ukraine with a largely acquiescencet population only to get a bloody nose. Appeasement now won't be the end of it. I have a friend living in Kazakhstan with interests in Georgia who is appalled by Trump bringing Putin in from the cold as are many others in sovereign states that Putin claims should be part of his empire.
The best historical parallel is the appeasement of Hitler during the 1930’s by Britain and France and the rest of Europe, even after the occupation of the Rhineland and the annexation of the Sudetenland, the latter being eerily similar to Putin’s occupation of the Donbass region. History teaches us that appeasing dictators leads to their becoming even more greedy.
I think negotiations should only begin once the sanctions against Russia have had their full effect and turned its people against Putin. That is the time to open talks.
More than $300 billion worth of frozen Russian assets sits earning interest in European and US banks, nearly $200 billion in the Euroclear bank in Brussels. Seizing those assets and using them actively against Russia in Ukraine might weaken Putin’s support from the oligarchs who keep him in power.
It isn't ridiculous at all. I'm talking about the greatest act of appeasement in history - the decision at the end of the Second World War to allow the Soviet Union to dominate eastern Europe. Churchill had plans prepared for a war against the Soviets (Operation Unthinkable), wanting a better deal for Poland in particular, but it wasn't clear who would win such a war, the American leaders weren't really interested anyway and when Labour won the 1945 election they weren't interested either. As a result, millions of people - including Poland, the country we went to war to defend - were condemned to decades living under Communist rule. I don't condemn that decision either, it was totally understandable. But the situation is somewhat similar now, although the concerns today are less about whether we could win a conventional war or not and Russia's nuclear weapons obviously complicate matters. This war has exposed Russia's conventional military forces as relatively weak and corrupt. Yes, Russia is just about winning against Ukraine but they should be winning. Russia is a much bigger, much more powerful country. Yet after 3 years they still haven't taken the city of Kharkiv, which is only 20 or 30 miles from their border, and Putin has had to use mercenaries, send convicts to the front lines and bring in North Korean troops to keep the war going without resorting to wider conscription, which would be deeply unpopular and might bring him down. If NATO had decided to join the war in force at any point I have no doubt our (well, America's) conventional forces would and could drive Russia's forces out of Ukraine. But nobody wants to do that.
You accept things from Trump you would be frothing at the mouth at from anyone else. His appeasement of Putin is inexcusable.
