[quote=“Cheasty, post:1124, topic:16906, full:true”]
How do you know this? Did you have a few pints with him over the weekend?
Gearoid Hegartys sending off is way more important tbf
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Try and post something that makes at least a small bit of sense next time.
I am not interested in shit talk from you.
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I wasn’t talking to you
Don’t reply to me so
I didn’t. I replied to cheasty. But he had replied to you so you must have been tagged .
Fine
What would she know? Living in her Ivory Cashel…
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Things that matter. Mul showed more aggression than either side of this war after the AI was wrapped up. Smashing ash
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Makes perfect sense. Worlds gone quite now, rather than zen for a bit after the madness of trump and covid the media have gone into overdrive for a none story yet ignore corruption, that is paying msm wages
The purpose of NATO enlargement is being demonstrated right now. If you’re in NATO, you don’t get attacked by Russia.
But this is not about NATO at all. NATO is a complete red herring.
This is about democracy and freedom in the most basic sense. Putin does not tolerate democracy and freedom in its most basic sense.
Most big issues are complex. This is not. This is the most simple thing possible to understand. This is 1939 stuff.
Yeah buddy, CNN need to remove those 200k troops they have on the Ukrainian border quicksmart.
Evil
That’s your opinion, which isn’t shared by most reasonable people, including at least 50% of US foreign policy experts (non neocons). It’s an opinion that wasn’t even shared by many US foreign policy experts 3 decades ago, who warned at the time of the dangers of NATO expansion.
Ukraine joining NATO would mean war, and nobody sensible wants war, especially involving nuclear powers. The reasonable answer here is closer economic ties between the EU and Ukraine, and forget about Ukraine (or Georgia) joining NATO.
What I say is the truth. Ukraine was a neutral country in 2014 and Russia invaded it.
Again, this is NOTHING to do with NATO. NATO is a convenient excuse for Putin.
The bare truth is Putin will not countenance a free, democratic society in a former Soviet country. The only protection for free, democratic ex-Soviet colonies is being in NATO, as the Baltic countries are. Otherwise you get invaded.
So, like, duh Putin is going to use NATO as a distraction. The fox doesn’t like the hen house unguarded.
Putin invades countries in order to stop them being admitted to NATO. He has done this with Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine.
Polling shows 65% of Ukrainians want NATO membership and 74% want EU membership. They want to live in peace, free of the Russian jackboot.
The only thing we should care about is what the people of Ukraine and other ex-Soviet countries want. The ever-increasing majority want nothing to do with Putin’s Russia.
Nobody should give a flying shit want Putin wants. Putin is the nearest thing to Hitler we have seen in Europe in the last 77 years. The west needs to get organised and prepare to dig in for a long struggle to strangle him out of power, with the desired end goal being him languishing in a cell in The Hague. At a minimum, Ukraine should be being armed to the teeth with every defensive and offensive weapon it can muster.
Giving in to Putin now has grave implications for the whole of the world. It would be a carte blanche for any world or regional power to redraw the borders of the world through starting wars of aggression and conquest. This is not the 19th century.
But - if Russia starts this war, and if it fails, and if the west ever gets Russia where it wants it ever again, the country should be forcibly broken up into different parts. It is a nation drunk on Nazi like propaganda and exquisite self-pity, just like Germany was in 1939, and there needs to be a reckoning for it, once and for all, just like Germany was forced to have a reckoning.
Russia is less trustworthy than a great white shark off a Sydney beach.
Oct. 22, 2012
When I first arrived in Moscow, I soon learned that if I asked if something could be done and I received the answer, “OK, no problem,” that did not mean I could expect for the deed to be accomplished. Many times when I left for the United States and had paid for various tasks to be done by the time I returned in two months, I came back to a job that was either done incorrectly or not at all. In fact, several times the other person acted as though our conversation concerning the job had never taken place.
I found lies were more acceptable than admitting a lack of knowledge about how to do what I had requested. Or they had overcommitted and rather than telling me that they would not be able to accomplish my request, they simply procrastinated and kept insisting that the job was “almost done,” when in fact, it had not even been started.
When speaking with Russian friends about my frustration in such situations, they laughed and said, “That’s normal here!”
Many Russians lie on a regular basis. They lie even when they don’t have to lie. It is a national pastime. It can proceed from the small “white lie” of a family member to one of major proportions from a government official. But often, most Russians are not deceived and know when a statement is a falsehood.
So why do they tolerate this phenomenon?
Not telling the truth was reinforced by a Soviet system that lied consistently to their people. The government instilled great fear in its citizenry with nonstop propaganda about enemies who they perceived were everywhere — within and without the country. The Soviet system lied to manipulate, maintain control and create fear and submission. The government could not admit any flaws, and if errors occurred they were instantly denied because they would reveal intolerable weaknesses.
During Soviet times, people often lied just to stay alive. If a parent or spouse was arrested and declared an enemy of the state, the remaining family members often changed their names and lied to obtain false documents to obtain food, a place to live, education or a job. Lying became a standard means of survival to protect oneself or a loved one. I have heard many stories of what people did to stay alive during times of famine or war. Ethics often were discarded while starving or watching a child die.
The government used lies to make the Soviet system appear better than it actually was. They said Russia was the best country in the world, and everyone else had less than they did. They proclaimed that communism destroyed all class variants and everyone was equal when, in fact, Communist Party officials had many privileges the average person did not possess: larger, nicer apartments and furnishings, the ability to shop in private well-stocked stores for food and clothing and the ability to travel and vacation in Party resorts and dachas.
The Party even went so far as to rewrite and delete history. It is interesting to view old photos of Josef Stalin posing with people who were later deemed enemies of the state and compare them with later versions in which these “enemies” were erased — long before Photoshop expertise existed. School history books were rewritten when there were changes in Party leadership or when prominent officials fell out of favor and were arrested, shot or sent to the gulag. My students often mention they have a difficult time with trust because the things that they were taught as absolute truths were so often changed and replaced by new truths. It became an ethical dilemma for teachers and parents who genuinely desired to be loyal Soviet citizens.
One of the ways people survived these mind-bending issues was to practice what is known in Russia as “vranyo.” It is deemed a “white lie” and is generally accepted as acceptable. Vranyo is described as when a person knows he is lying and expects the other person to understand that. One of my colleagues said, “He was lying to us, we knew he was lying, he knew we knew he was lying, but he kept lying anyway, and we pretended to believe him.”
Lying is often used to maintain a better image and to save face. Russians are a very proud people, and under the Soviet system many genuinely believed they were “the best.” For those men and women, their sense of personal value was coupled with this system. Thus, when it fell, so did their personal worth. They also had never been allowed to think independently or understand how to be responsible for themselves. As a result, during the chaos of the 1990s, many Russians were very confused. They were required to suddenly make decisions and accept responsibilities for which they had no training. At the same time, their pride would not allow them to admit that they did not know how to accomplish these new tasks. Consequently, they fell back into their old familiar pattern of vranyo and lied rather than admit that they could not do something or needed help.
Lying often is used to take advantage of others, thus breeding corruption and outright theft. Many entrepreneurs have been robbed because criminals bribed officials who enabled them to evict the rightful owners of newly successful businesses. Contracts have been canceled and property seized. I remember several years ago walking past the Trinity Motors showroom on Tverskaya Ulitsa, and I was shocked to see the windows painted white. I later read that 25 men had stormed in and given the company only a few hours to evacuate the property. Their lease had been canceled by the presidential administration
In addition, just last week, I shopped in the prestigious Tverskoi Passazh shopping center and was dismayed to find that only three days later it was seized by a group of men who drove out the guards and barricaded the door. The presidential administration reportedly canceled their lease that was to run to 2016.
Russia is plagued by lying that ranges from what is deemed as a mild-mannered vranyo to immoral corruption. Vranyo is a lie, and the acceptance of this creates a system of falsehood that undermines trust and condones and encourages deceit, deception and irresponsibility. If someone lies regarding small things, he will likely lie in more important areas and also will accept this offensive behavior in others.
I challenge my students regarding this major issue of honesty and integrity. They admit it has been a struggle for them, but they are breaking this destructive habit and are proud to see the changes in themselves and their families, personally and professionally. They have made commitments to being truth-bearers and honorable citizens of a healthy Russia.
Marilyn Murray is an educator specializing in the treatment of trauma, abuse and deprivation, with more than 2,000 people attending her classes in Russia and other countries from the Commonwealth of Independent States over the past 10 years. Her second book, “The Murray Method,” was recently published in English and Russian.
The frightening thing here is you are probably being serious with that.
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100%. Russian power is a crocodile in the swimming pool of Europe, just like Nazi Germany was.
Why do you think Germany was broken up after the war?