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Russia-Ukraine War

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Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,161 ✭✭✭zerosquared


    Oh look it

    Russia creating “Electronic Compatriot Card” program offering services, possibly citizenship to Russians abroad, likely for justifying further aggression, ISW says.

    Reason 999 to send Russians back to Mordor



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,415 ✭✭✭Wolf359f


    Poland also considering shooting down Russian drones and missiles close to the Polish border.

    Maybe start with baby steps and just shoot down the ones that enter Polish airspace?

    https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/05/22/poland-undecided-on-engaging-air-defenses-against-russian-missiles-in-ukraine-airspace/



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,451 ✭✭✭zv2


    Time to join NATO and kill some Russians. (Norway has banned Russian tourists from entering)

    It looks like history is starting up again.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 672 ✭✭✭Avatar in the Post


    Anyone having applied and received one of these should be denied citizenship of whatever country they are in and deported to their beloved Russia… before the obligatory tour of Ukraine.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,010 ✭✭✭thomil


    I just hope to god that this isn't announced via some sort of press release or leak that gives the Russian forces time to relocate their assets.

    Good luck trying to figure me out. I haven't managed that myself yet!



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,451 ✭✭✭zv2


    The west's policy is crippled by fear. And Putin knows it.

    It looks like history is starting up again.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,618 ✭✭✭Padre_Pio


    That's my view.

    I've only been to China once, and only seen a small fraction, but they're light years ahead of the west in so many things.

    It's worth bearing in mind while the Chinese see a lot of propaganda about their own country and the West, we also see a lot of propaganda about China. The language barrier completely divided us.

    I remember asking a Chinese colleague how he feels about YouTube, Wikipedia etc being banned and his response was that it doesn't bother him, they have their own versions of everything that have just as much content.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,015 ✭✭✭jmreire


    Thats a worrying statement from Putin….given past performance!



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 24,555 ✭✭✭✭Sleepy


    I can think of a very old-fashioned solution to this: return the monies seized in cash/bullion, in a public location.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,161 ✭✭✭zerosquared


    He didn’t wait long after his own coronation to start the Purges

    Poor Russian officers they have to worry about their own lot more than the Ukrainians

    https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-detains-fourth-top-defence-figure-bribe-taking-media-2024-05-23/



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,849 ✭✭✭Brussels Sprout


    Interesting…

    image.png


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,669 ✭✭✭Rawr


    I lived in China for a spell and learned a good chunk of the lingo. Trust me when I say that what little you saw was, at best, copied from a Western source, and at worst little more than an empty facade.

    In the main cities, and especially the centers of those cities, you’ll encounter shining metropolis’ that look like downtown Tokyo or the like, but go anywhere beyond those areas and you’ll find yourself transported back the guts of 50 - 60 years to what China was like during the hight of the cold war.

    Modern China is efficient in only two ways.

    • In the absolute control of their people
    • And the copying of ideas and technology from other countries.

    The Chinese internet is indeed content-rich…that is until the government arbitrarily chooses to censor something. Then your choices are taken from you. Live TV, like news, simply isn’t a thing there and I sorely missed it too when I was there. They dare not broadcast anything live…everything must be reviewed first…

    Everything in the country works on the principle of “Cai bu dou” which roughly translates to “Meh, i guess it’s alright”. This applies to safety standards, quality in general and even human rights.

    Although today’s China has developed over the years since their 2000s boom, it is still a huge house of cards built upon Western trade. Even with their colonial adventures in Africa, China is extremely dependent on trade with the West to keep ticking over. This is why they pretend to sit on the fence with Russia. They are of course going to try to make a few quick bucks from the desperate Russians (China is ironically by far the most capitalist place I have ever been), but I don’t expect them to join Moscow in some kind of ideological conflict against the West. All they really want, is continued power, money and maybe a bit of clout to go with it. That is the China I remember, and although there were things there that I really loved…they were never lightyears ahead of the West.



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,321 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    This is reflected in the people I know who've experience with China, including one who lived there for a few years.

    As for the war; it's all down to economics. Sure China can get cheaper oil, grain and the like from Russia, but its economy is massively dependent on The West©. EG Chinese exports to Russia have gone up since the war, but they're roughly equivalent to China's exports to just Italy and Spain.

    And we can see that in the wider context. Russian media was all gung ho about Putin's visit to Xi and their great relationship, but what actually got signed off on? Vague promises of cooperation, but nothing economically concrete. Crucially China is still dragging her heels over building a Russia-China pipeline that Russia has been publicly pushing for because of the massive loss to those earnings after the EU revenue fell off a cliff. For a start China knows they'll likely have to build it or most of it, because that industry has, or rather had, been built and propped up by western tech and know how. Now Xi's trip to France was poo pooed by the same Russian media, but in just one area alone it looks likely China is going to sign off on buying a shedload of Airbus aircraft to add to the many hundreds of millions they've already spent in the last couple of years(to the chagrin of Boeing. Well if you haven't brought out a truly new airframe in years and the "upgrades" you do make tend to make planes crash, well…).

    China also knows how dependent they are on The West©. Far more than Russia was and is. The Western sanctions are hurting Russia and they will stymie growth in the long term(which is their purpose), but if even half of the same sanctions were applied to China would cause them economic mayhem and we'd really see how "robust" China's economy actually is. Russia is an exporter of energy and food so won't go cold or hungry anytime soon, but China is a massive importer of both… Imho those sanctions had an even bigger mental effect on China and took a helluva lot of the wind out of China's sails regarding Taiwan.

    Many worry about Artificial Intelligence. I worry far more about Organic Idiocy.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,849 ✭✭✭Brussels Sprout


    That's really fascinating. I downloaded Tik-Tik a few weeks ago. I have yet to see a video on there that is in any way negative about China. Basically any China content appears to fall into one of two buckets:

    1. Westerners in big Chinese cities like Shanghai marveling at how the infrastructure is "light years ahead of the West"
    2. GeoPolitics types talking about how misunderstood China and its foreign policy are and how badly they were treated in the past by the British and the Japanese.

    Naturally I haven't seen anything about:

    • The mass incarceration of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang
    • The Tiananmen square massacre
    • The tens of millions of people who died as a result of Mao's disastrous Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward.
    • Them creating fake islands in the south China sea so as to stick military installations on them and claim other countries territorial waters

    As a result of this one-sided portrayal I'm curious to see how Gen-Z (the generation who predominantly use and get their information solely from Tik-Tok) will go on to view China in the future.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,618 ✭✭✭Padre_Pio


    Gotta be honest, you probably don't see it because no one wants to see it.

    I don't see too many videos of US war crimes in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay etc.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,849 ✭✭✭Brussels Sprout


    The algorithm is serving me up plenty of anti-American foreign policy content. Same for British and French colonialism.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,618 ✭✭✭Padre_Pio


    Mine gives me woodworking reels and boobs.

    I'm not sure what the Chinese propagandists are trying to tell me.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,740 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    Heard on the Radio some MEP candidates (not sure who they were) saying that they were in favour of peace. Ok, but then went on to say that the West's sanctions had no effect on Russia! They have had to have an effect probably more needed too.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,740 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    Sorry, I should have posted a link. Can't find it now.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,010 ✭✭✭thomil


    Just on that second talking point you mentioned regarding Geopolitical commentary about how badly China was treated by other countries, that point actually holds quite a lot of water. The "century of humiliations" from the Opium Wars to the CCP victory in mainland China has left deep scars in China's collective psyche, and is still one of the driving forces behind China's foreign policy to this day. The aim of consecutive PRC leaders has been to prevent China from ever being at the whim of foreign powers again. I highly recommend reading Henry Kissinger's book "On China", which goes into some real depth on this topic. I get that he's a divisive character to say the least, but he was directly involved in opening China up, for better or worse, so he has quite a bit of first hand knowledge.

    Now, it's been a while since I last read that book, but one of the points that Kissinger argues is that, despite all the red flags and other communist accoutrements, the PRC's foreign policy is more rooted in old imperial traditions than in the revolutionary fervor of Marx, Lenin or even Mao, and draws heavily from how Imperial China managed the numerous "barbarian" tribes and nations on their borders. This basically consisted of a dual approach of binding the tribes that were closest to China via trade, gifts and other methods and buying off the more distant ones, with a good bit of "divide and conquer" thrown in as well. All of this was based on the principle that the "Middle Kingdom", China, was at the interface of Earth and the heavens, and thus basically the only really legitimate nation on Earth, with lands being more savage the more distant they were. The aim was to ensure a series of loyal neighboring states that could be easily influenced, while keeping the more distant ones placated and the strongest ones off balance. This is an extremely simplified and high-level overview and I once again highly recommend reading On China.

    Viewed through that lens, China's approach makes sense. They've recognized Russia as a potential threat that's far too close for comfort, but rather than directly confronting them, they're effectively ensnaring Russia in a network of trade treaties and partnership that are, in the long run, more beneficial to China whilst at the same time keeping them engaged in a war that weakens that potential threat. Keeping Europe and the United States off-balance is a nice side-effect.

    Good luck trying to figure me out. I haven't managed that myself yet!



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,451 ✭✭✭zv2


    It looks like history is starting up again.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,451 ✭✭✭zv2


    lol

    image.png

    It looks like history is starting up again.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,332 ✭✭✭fly_agaric


    Articles said the sanctions are still in place while ruling is appealed, so hopefully that will have a better outcome. Aven has an EU citizenship (Latvian) acc. to one of those articles, so I suppose that is why he was able to go to CJEU to try and get the sanctions removed.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,510 ✭✭✭✭machiavellianme


    I had just finished filling out the forms for Mick and Claire!



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 939 ✭✭✭Detritus70


    This is complete scutter. Total brain rot.

    Trump got nowhere with Kim Jong Un besides getting a few cheap digs in.

    And remember Trump getting dick whipped by Putin?

    image.png

    And if you blow the dust of a few more synapses you might remember:

    Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says. The Trump administration knew that.

    So you can cram your lecture on Biden's foreign security policy.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/politics/russia-afghanistan-bounties.html

    Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,161 ✭✭✭zerosquared




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,618 ✭✭✭Padre_Pio


    Once upon a time I had NVidia stock. Sold in 2021 I believe.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,816 ✭✭✭EltonJohn69


    didn’t they almost go bust when they helped make the SEGA Dreamcast ?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,002 ✭✭✭ToweringPerformance




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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,750 ✭✭✭Pa ElGrande


    Li Jianwei is a former PLA soldier and a Chinese mercenary hired by Russia. He does not give away locations, just describes effects of various weapons systems on them.

    Net Zero means we are paying for the destruction of our economy and society in pursuit of an unachievable and pointless policy.



This discussion has been closed.
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