Genuine question. Will these sanctions have anywhere near the desired effect on Russia. They’ll run a surplus this year. Can they not go to the Chinese for a few bob if things get a bit tight? Plus it seems like imposing sanctions on Putins nearest and dearest in the Oligarch world is probably frivolous as they probably had the foresight to move whatever they needed weeks ago anyway.
I think people need to be clear here and define Putin as a cunt & not all Russians.
There appears to be no appetite from the Russian public to start a War.
Getting those of influence to remove Putin is the key to stopping these issues.
Finding someone to do that whilst NATO flirts with the idea of extending its membership currently seems far from likely to work.
That article @balbec posted sums up nicely where the “ West “ have fucked up over the past 20 years.
Whilst squabbling for internal power they’ve dropped the ball on what’s important in a Global sense.
Putin has been in a position of power to concentrate on these issues and now he has huge bargaining power.
You’ve had incidents of the Russians being responsible (directly or indirectly) for the shooting down of a passenger plane, the annexation of various pieces of Ukraine, their buddy hijacking a Ryanair plane in Belarus, running a cyber crime operation that has extorted hundreds of millions from businesses, governments and hospitals, yet all we’ve seen is some token sanctions which don’t seem to act as any sort of disincentive.
Putin knows that short of firing a rocket at the US or an EU member then nothing is going to happen in a military sense.
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€118 billion has been funnelled out of the IFSC to Russia. Ireland’s hands are not remotely clean here.
You’re just flailing about and lying now, so I’ll leave it at that.
Address the question or fuck off. Why has Putin chosen to act now rather than the four years Trump was in power? Did he get the OK from Tucker Carlson to invade? That’s your level of logic.
The words of former FBI director Robert Mueller in 2011. The question is, why was sod all done about it in the last 11 years. There has been massive institutional failure across almost every western country at multiple levels since then. The west has been asleep at the wheel.
Putin is the apex of world criminality in every sense.
*We are investigating groups in Asia, Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East. And we are seeing cross-pollination between groups that historically have not worked together. Criminals who may never meet, but who share one thing in common: greed. *
They may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military. These individuals know who and what to target, and how best to do it. They are capitalists and entrepreneurs. But they are also master criminals who move easily between the licit and illicit worlds. And in some cases, these organizations are as forward-leaning as Fortune 500 companies.
This is not “The Sopranos,” with six guys sitting in a diner, shaking down a local business owner for $50 dollars a week. These criminal enterprises are making billions of dollars from human trafficking, health care fraud, computer intrusions, and copyright infringement. They are cornering the market on natural gas, oil, and precious metals, and selling to the highest bidder.
The sanctions will do nothing as Europe cannot afford the only sanctions that would actually hurt him (energy). He knows Europe will do nothing and any sanctions imposed by the US have trivial impact. He has completely out maneuvered Biden here.
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That was my feeling on it when I heard it.
So the West is fucked….
Where did I lie?
Why do you think? Because he feels his military is now up to scratch?
Whatever Biden does now, and it likely won’t be enough, thank fucking Christ this didn’t happen under Trump. America really would be on Russia’s side then.
The Republican party is now mainly held together by one central defining characteristic - the belief that a legitimate election was stolen, and the belief that it has been done a historic injustice by the failure of a fascist coup against the parliament building to try and overturn that legitimate, democratic election.
They lost, they claimed it was a grand conspiracy of evil. and they wanted to overturn it by force.
These are core Putinist values rooted in a Putinist fantasy world of eternal victimhood.
Decadence and depravity.
Yes, unless we reverse direction. The fundamental problem is the corporate world (especially Tech) see China’s rise and growing influence as a good thing and have western governments in their pockets. We are headed for a very bleak totalitarian future imo unless leaders emerge to stand up to these cunts.
Look what’s happening in Canada, a supposed liberal democracy. People who contributed $50 to the recent protests having their bank accounts frozen and assets seized. It’s actual fascism in action, not pretend fascism.
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Its unreal whats going on in Canada. Its frightening to be honest.
You’d want to have your head examined if you’re in favour of a digital currency rather than cash.
Looking at how they can just freeze accounts if you protest against tyranny.
It is vile.
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Vast swathes of the US right wing now support Vladimir Putin and, like yourself, believe Justin Trudeau is a fascist tyrant for rightly (and belatedely) coming down hard on a plot to undermine Canada’s very democracy.
It is hard to believe people can genuinely believe this bizarro world insanity, but there we are.
That is what Goebbelsesque propaganda has led us to.
Tucker Carlson is not right wing. He has opposed every American war in his professional lifetime which includes many Republican administrations.
He is pro free speech, anti woke and speaks to a lot of disaffected people, who happen to be a sizeable minority now in the western world
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Any normal person stopped reading there.
Claiming I said the West should not get involved. Of course we should get involved, but the kind of sanctions proposed will do fuck all. We need to completely change direction on globalization, Trump had that right even though he was an idiot.
We have allowed ourselves become totally dependent on China for manufacturing and dependent on Russia for energy. The only way to reverse what is happening is to reverse these, but it hasn’t been done and won’t be done because it would impact corporate profits and politicians pocketbooks. It is an utter disgrace that we are facilitating the economic rise of China, a totalitarian regime that would have no qualms whatsoever wiping out half the world’s population if it benefitted them.
Your general tone has been anti-intervention of any kind. I have not seen anything from you to indicate that you were pro-sanctions of any kind.
And we can go back to your Russia propaganda 101 from 2017 where you asked “what the fuck is the problem with Russia?”
Perhaps you see what the problem is now?
Do you think going in on Russia militarily is the right course of action?
Sanctions will do fuck all mate, Putin is just laughing at us. We need a medium to long term strategy to extricate ourselves from dependance on totalitarian regimes.
Is renewables going to cut it?