Geopolitics

[Mciahel Goodman]

When the public discourse turns to geopolitics, there are always at least two frames of reference in usage at any given moment. Firstly, you have the populist narrative which is given by the media in bitesize chunks for majority consumption (even if their goal was to educate and foster dissent rather than indoctrinate and manufacture consent, on which point I'm open to debate, the sheer volume of material they would have to cover almost debars such attempts). Most of the first frame is dominated by simplistic appeals to emotional sense (scholars of war propaganda will be familiar with the Belgian atrocity stories from the first world war and millions of others before and since). The second, always implicit, frame is geopolitical. Geopolitical strategists, like those who work at state departments around the world, do not live or think in the same frame as the majority of people who get their news from the "news". They instead study maps, troop movements, sociopolitical history, and financial markets. They play the "great game" as a mode of employment (it's what they do, after all). Here's the clash: we, the public, generally do not like to think of it in these terms but geopolitical strategists are not driven by morality but instead by what is optimal for any given state's interest. They speak in terms of the domination of one state (theirs) over another. So here is a good example, which is also prescient as it was written in the 1990s:

A geostrategic issue of crucial importance is posed by China’s emergence as a major power. The most appealing outcome would be to co-opt a democratizing and freemarketing China into a larger Asian regional framework of cooperation. But suppose China does not democratize but continues to grow in economic and military power? A “Greater China” may be emerging, whatever the desires and calculations of its neighbors, and any effort to prevent that from happening could entail an intensifying conflict with China. Such a conflict
could strain American-Japanese relations—for it is far from certain that Japan would want to follow America’s lead in containing China—and could therefore have potentially revolutionary consequences for Tokyo’s definition of Japan’s regional role, perhaps even resulting in the termination of the American presence in the Far East.

However, accommodation with China will also exact its own price. To accept China as a regional power is not a matter of simply endorsing a mere slogan. There will have to be substance to any such regional preeminence. To put it very directly, how large a Chinese sphere of influence, and where, should America be prepared to accept as part of a policy of successfully co-opting China into world affairs? What areas now outside of China’s political radius might have to be conceded to the realm of the reemerging Celestial Empire?
In that context, the retention of the American presence in South Korea becomes especially important. Without it, it is difficult to envisage the American-Japanese defense arrangement continuing in its present form, for Japan would have to become militarily more self-sufficient. But any movement toward Korean reunification is likely to disturb the basis for the continued U.S. military presence in South Korea. A reunified Korea may choose not to perpetuate American military protection; that, indeed, could be the price exacted by
China for throwing its decisive weight behind the reunification of the peninsula. In brief, U.S. management of its relationship with China will inevitably have direct consequences for the stability of the American-Japanese-Korean triangular security relationship.

Finally, some possible contingencies involving future political alignments should also be briefly noted, subject to fuller discussion in pertinent chapters. In the past, international affairs were largely dominated by contests among individual states for regional domination. Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America’s status as a global power. However, whether any such coalitions do or do not arise to challenge American primacy will in fact depend to a very large degree on how effectively the United States responds to the major dilemmas identified here. Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an “antihegemonic” coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower. Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will require a display of U.S. geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.

If you were to continue reading that book, you would understand that American planners (from all across the spectrum) conceive of conflicts like the current one in terms that are very different/completely removed from the moral frame of reference. They all understand themselves to be competing in the same arena (national/international dominance) and tend to use very similar language despite actual linguistic differences.


Another, related example, from the Financial Times today:

All of this supports China’s long-term goal of building a post-dollarised world, in which Russia would be one of many vassal states settling all transactions in renminbi. Getting there is not an easy process. The Chinese want to de-dollarise, but they also want complete control of their own financial system. That’s a difficult circle to square. One of the reasons that the dollar is the world’s reserve currency is that, in contrast, the US markets are so open and liquid. Still, the Chinese hope to use trade and the petropolitics of the moment to increase the renminbi’s share of global foreign exchange. One high-level western investor in China told me he expected that share would rise from 2 per cent to as high as 7 per cent in the next three to four years. That is, of course, still minuscule compared with the position of the dollar, which is 59 per cent. But the Chinese are playing a long game. Finance is a key pillar in the new Great Power competition with America; currency, capital flows and the Belt and Road Initiative trade pathway will all play a role in that. Beijing is slowly diversifying its foreign exchange reserves, as well as buying up a lot of gold. This can be seen as a kind of hedge on a post-dollar word (the assumption being that gold will rise as the dollar falls).

The above is interesting because it frames the first quotation. A lot of simultaneous actions which have many implications beyond any single country. The end of the dollar hegemony is the theme and China's longterm planning for it (understood twentyfive years ago) is the backdrop against which the author is reading the Russian invasion of Ukraine (a hastening or consecration of an inevitable shift in the world order).

The frame of reference for geopolitics is strictly amoral (with a few exceptions: morality is baked into the overall framework as in proportional response theory, but it sits in the background almost never being a forefront issue). As such, it has less to do with with what is right from a moralistic viewpoint and a lot more to do with what is right from a "might is right" point of view ("the strong do what they want, the weak do what they can", as Thucydides said, and that is roughly how state planners engaged in this frame of discourse still tend to think). Or, the dominance hierarchy.

That does not sit well with most people because we like to think that the moral order is primary and the rest is secondary. Reading the newspapers and watching the news, it is the moral frame which is active and the geopolitical is almost always left to the background or brought forward only insofar as it clarifies a given instance of justified morality. Moral views are much truer from a bottom up perspective (it's how we as people, or general public, tend to react) but not from the top down (people who more or less set the tone for political discourse do not think primarily in moral terms). So when people take a view of events from this frame, the one predominantly occupied by state departments, it comes across as amoral largely because it is, technically, amoral: an abstracted, elevated, frame of reference which seeks to understand events in context, both diachronic and synchronic. This does not mean the people are amoral, including state planners or the general person giving an opinion (me in this instance), it just means that two different frames of reference are in play and tend to come into conflict with each other (the reactionary frame criticizes the geopolitical/historical frame as seditious or uncaring and the geopolitical/historical frame criticises the reactionary frame as naive, or generally something along those lines). Often these views are not even mutually exclusive, but appear that way because the centre of one focus is decentered from another.

The point I'm making is probably already understood by most. I am making it here, as the start of a geopolitical thread, because I don't want to derail the Ukraine thread or any other thread with geopolitical "whataboutery" (which is in itself largely the product of two interrelated but temporally distinct frames of reference clashing). I think it's good to have a place where people can put historical and contextual arguments forward, though a live war thread dedicated to updates is definitely not the place for that. So I open this one instead for anyone with any long- or shortform contributions to make about any events that are happening but which contributions are too abstract for the tenor of the tone set by said event (updates are generally what is expected, and that is fair enough).

Not limited to any given conflict, past or present, so no "whataboutery" is possible. I'm primarily interested in understanding the order that is now emerging with Russia/China on one side and US/NATO on the other (with the rest of the world wedged between).

EDIT: This is quite a good video but would threaten to spill into whataboutery as soon as people begin to discuss it in depth and go back a hundred years in history (which is exactly what I mean by two frames that aren't necessarily in disagreement but conflict):

The economic reasons for the war with Ukraine. TLDR it's about Oil, Gas, Money and probably a canal.

Another example from @VidaRed. This is one of the most well known, or most suggested, videos on geopolitics these days (because of its topic) and has a provocative title, but is actually a very nuanced discussion of the factors which lead up to where we are today.

John Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation. Mearsheimer is best known for developing the theory of offensive realism, which describes the interaction between great powers as being primarily driven by the rational desire to achieve regional hegemony in an anarchic international system.

 

[Mciahel Goodman]

Continuing the theme of a thread about basically everything and nothing, an interesting look at Tucker Carlson and his ties to the Contras during the South American "interference" by the US.

Tucker Carlson is the hottest media personality in America. Comfortably the most watched cable news show, Tucker Carlson Tonight is a ratings bonanza, with even former President Donald Trump said to be a keen viewer. Part of Carlson’s appeal is that he presents himself as a maverick outsider, someone who thinks outside the box and is not afraid to launch tirades against the powerful and criticize the government and its foreign policy. Certainly, he does surprise many people, covering subjects other cable news hosts do not touch. However, on closer inspection, this populist everyman persona is all a facade; Carlson himself has deep connections to the government and the national security state and works hard to obscure the real centers of power, channeling popular rage towards safer targets.




A blue-blooded chip off the block

Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson was born into a wealthy California family in 1969. He attended a number of private preparatory schools in California and New England, including the exclusive St. George’s School in Rhode Island, where today attendance costs between $46,000 and $67,000 per year. From there, he went on to study history at Trinity College, a private Connecticut liberal arts institution that charges similar fees.


Carlson is a blue-blood through and through. His great-uncle was Arkansas Senator William Fulbright, while his step-mother, Patricia Swanson, is the heiress to the Swanson Frozen Food company fortune. In his earlier years, before his character change, Carlson openly described himself as a trust-fund baby. “I’m extraordinarily loaded just from money I inherited from a number of trust funds,” he said in 2008.


His father, Richard “Dick” Carlson is an important journalist and high state official who was appointed by Ronald Reagan as director of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the body that oversees government-funded media, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio and TV Martí and Voice of America, of which Dick was also the director. (USIA has since been replaced by the U.S. Agency for Global Media). Together, these outlets are part of what The New York Times called a “worldwide propaganda network built by the CIA.” Their goal is to bombard enemy countries with regime-change propaganda. Until the 1970s, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was directly funded by the CIA.


In his position as director of USIA, Dick played a considerable part in the downfall of the Soviet Union. In a 1990 event alongside media moguls Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner, he noted that “international broadcasting played a very critical role, as was suggested by Mr. Murdoch, in the events that took place in the USSR and Eastern Europe in the past couple of years.”


Listening to his speech, it is clear he saw his primary role as being to bring about regime change. In fact, he was proud of it, stating:

International broadcasters were equally important in laying the groundwork for the democratic revolutions that we have seen. Isn’t it incredible how Western all those Eastern Europeans sound in talking about freedom, democracy, free enterprise, environmental concerns. And they didn’t get those ideas from their own media or from textbooks in their own countries; they got them mainly from international broadcasters like Voice of America, the BBC, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe.”

In this same job, Dick was a key component in the ultimately successful attempt to bring down the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua through hybrid warfare. The U.S. bombarded the country with incessant propaganda, funding local media outlets that preached regime change, amplifying fake news and scare stories, and supplying enormous amounts of weapons and training to far-right death squads that labeled themselves “Contras” (short for counter-revolutionaries). U.S.-trained and -armed death squads would go on to carry out massacres across Central America throughout the 1980s, killing hundreds of thousands of people.


Dick would later be appointed by President George H.W. Bush as U.S. Ambassador to the Seychelles and serve on a number of neoconservative think tanks. Chief among these is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), an organization widely accused of being little more than a front for the Israel lobby. Indeed, when asked point blank if that were the case, he refused to deny it, stating only that, “Israel is a country under siege. It’s a democracy in a part of the world where there are no democracies. And it is under constant irregular terrorist attack and threat.”


Also on the board of the FDD at that time were Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a high official at the center of the Iran-Contra Affair, (the operation where the U.S. sold weapons to Iran to fund Nicaraguan death squads), and R. James Woolsey, CIA director from 1993 to 1995. Dick would later team up with Woolsey again at the Institute for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence.




A couple of preppy freedom-fighters

From his position as head of USIA, Dick’s role in the U.S. dirty, hybrid war against Nicaragua can be reasonably surmised. But far fewer people know that a young Tucker himself also played a part in it. While still in college, Tucker and his roommate, friend and Daily Caller co-founder Neil Patel went to Nicaragua at least two times to, in Tucker’s own words, “get involved in the war and support the side that was right, which was not the Sandinista side.”


Hundreds of people have written about the Fox News star, but none have unearthed this connection. Carlson has rarely talked publicly about his time in Nicaragua, and never at any length. However, in a 2017 podcast interview with The Jamie Weinstein Show, he was asked about it directly. “I don’t think many people know that you were actually a freedom-fighter who traveled to Central America to fight with the Contras. Could you fill [our listeners] in on that story?” Weinstein asks. “No,” he replied, laughing, before coyly stating that his supposedly “liberal” father “let” him go because he and Patel “wanted to go see the war in Nicaragua.” “All kinds of hilarity ensued,” he added, laughing nervously before changing the subject.


Both Carlson and Patel would return in 1990 at the time of the presidential election, which pitted Sandinista Daniel Ortega against U.S.-backed, Contra-supporting candidate Violeta Chamorro. Thanks to years of U.S.-sponsored terror and a huge political war chest, Chamorro was able to win, becoming the sixth person in her family to hold the office. According to a 1990 edition of his college’s newsletter, The Trinity Tripod, Carlson and Patel attended “many [Chamorro] rallies.” Indeed, in the National Review podcast, Carlson said that he was literally “standing next to her when she won.”


The younger Carlson presents his time in Nicaragua as purely innocent. “We did not have a place to stay or any set plans. It was very spontaneous. We are both extremely political and we felt that getting to know the country and some of its citizens would give us a better perspective on the situation,” the Tripod quotes him as saying. Speaking to sources who were in Nicaragua at the time, MintPress understands that it was not uncommon for Americans of both socialist and conservative political dispositions to travel there as a kind of political gap year.


Rest at: https://www.mintpressnews.com/tucker-carlson-biography-nicaragua-cia/279782/.

Apparently, for whatever reason, he applied to work for the CIA (and was promptly refused). Who applies to the CIA? Always assumed they would groom you from some prestigious university or institution...

 

[Mciahel Goodman]

Unpopular opinion, but I don't think there's any good guys here. It's criminals fighting criminals, and the common citizens paying a price for it. Putin doesn't have the 'western' luxury of social media and news organizations whitewashing his crimes globally, so it's easier to make him the only villain (he is, not questioning that at all). But the US and UK coming in with their holier than thou bullshit and using other countries to fight their proxy wars is a story we've heard all too often. London clearly encourages Russian corruption, and the US and UK have no right to speak about a superpower invading other countries. 'Spreading the seeds of democracy' and 'civilizing territorites' are just more palatable lies than de-Nazifying a nation. In India, we are yet to celebrate our 75th Independence Day - people seem to forget we had to fight our own wars, and lose many lives to force our English colonizers away to achieve the very goals they posture about championing today. Of all pseudo participants in this war, Germany, now sitting pretty atop a European hierarchy, should best remember what happens when you suffocate a proud animal of space, humiliate it on a global stage and back into a corner with only one way out.

I am shocked at the horrors unfolding in Ukraine - it is unprovoked war on civilians. I am by no means condoning Putin's actions - he is committing war crimes and should be punished, and his retaliation to Western isolation could and should have been diplomatic. I also believe democracy is the least of all evils, so will begrudgingly, but always, choose sides that fight for it. But it cannot be denied that the West forced wounded Putin and mowed him into a corner so they could wave their big dick around, and turned blind eye when Russian interference and corrpution suited their domestic interests while Putin gathered power in retaliation. History repeats itself, the roles merely change.

I hope Russia withdraws their troops. I hope Putin sees sense in his losses and takes the diplomatic route, maybe via Ukraine accepting neutrality and a couple of other conditions, so his economy can recover from the mess. I also hope that NATO stops expanding, Germany reveres its decision to strengthen its military, and China doesn't use this incident as a blueprint for Taiwan. Above all, I hope Ukranians can go back home and stop being pawns on a chessboard they could not influence, and stop living through a war that they did not deserve.

This is the kind of post I meant to be channeled here. The Ukraine thread is not a good place to think through whatever parts of this might be accurate and which parts might be nonsense (the "denazification" line is nonsense, it is only one batallion which is neo-Nazi, the Azov).

 

[DOTA]

(the "denazification" line is nonsense, it is only one batallion which is neo-Nazi, the Azov).

That is true, as far as I'm aware, but also the National Guard of Ukraine tweets "Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs" so there's clearly some big fans of the nazis doing nazi shit outside of the battalion itself.

The idea that Putin is motivated by a dislike of Nazis is obviously nonsense, of course.

 

[Mciahel Goodman]

That is true, as far as I'm aware, but also the National Guard of Ukraine tweets "Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs" so there's clearly some big fans of the nazis doing nazi shit outside of the battalion itself.

Skeptical as I am, they've also released criminals so it's likely their alliance with various factions is one of necessity. I doubt a Jewish president wants to be involved with a neo-Nazi regiment, but what choice does he have really?

The idea that Putin is motivated by a dislike of Nazis is obviously nonsense, of course.

And yeah, Putin absolutely did not invade because of a Nazi problem (whatever else his rationale was). Just a convenient means of raising support. The US/EU/NATO expansion still remains the only real way of understanding Putin's action from a pragmatic frame (not that it's justified, it isn't, but in some tactical calculus he has justified it otherwise it wouldn't be happening).

 

[Mciahel Goodman]

Two points.

1. Let's create a new thread for all the arguments about how the West and NATO are hypocrites.

2. Let's never use the word 'Putler' again. It sounds like the title of a canned Rob Schneider film.

That's what this is for (a dumping ground of sorts, general views on current events, so the current part isn't messed with).

I think it's probably hopeless because the more I look at it the more it seems people just want the kind of conflict (on both sides, too) which your point is based on.

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

Wrong forum?

 

[DOTA]

Wrong forum?

I think the idea is some of the topics will not always fulfil the 'current' criteria but to be honest we usually just stick things in the CE regardless of that, so I'd move it.

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

I think the idea is some of the topics will not always fulfil the 'current' criteria but to be honest we usually just stick things in the CE regardless of that, so I'd move it.

My thinking is the thread won't get the right traction in the General.

 

[Spoony]

That Ukraine War thread is cringeworthy.

 

[DOTA]

That Ukraine War thread is cringeworthy.

Yes it is.

 

[Spoony]

Yes it is.

You also can't stray away from the party line.

 

[Gandalf Greyhame]

This is the kind of post I meant to be channeled here. The Ukraine thread is not a good place to think through whatever parts of this might be accurate and which parts might be nonsense (the "denazification" line is nonsense, it is only one batallion which is neo-Nazi, the Azov).

Agreed that it was a post in the wrong thread. Apologies for that.

Also meant that Putin's excuse of denazifying Ukraine is a lie.

 

[Cheimoon]

That is true, as far as I'm aware, but also the National Guard of Ukraine tweets "Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs" so there's clearly some big fans of the nazis doing nazi shit outside of the battalion itself.

The idea that Putin is motivated by a dislike of Nazis is obviously nonsense, of course.

I'll have to make a proper post here soon, but following up on this particular point: I feel that, in general, this is currently all very partisan stuff, none of which really reflects anyone's ideas (except that this Azov unit really is awful). Whatever this unit will do now will be celebrated, cause it's in defense of Ukraine and against Russia - just as people are laughing at photos and videos of captured Russian soldiers for the same reason, even though that goes against the Geneva Convention. It's part of how morality becomes very black and white in war - your side good, other side bad, we can discuss details later (but generally won't if you win).

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

That is true, as far as I'm aware, but also the National Guard of Ukraine tweets "Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs" so there's clearly some big fans of the nazis doing nazi shit outside of the battalion itself.

The idea that Putin is motivated by a dislike of Nazis is obviously nonsense, of course.

Maybe those warmongering arseholes from Chechnya should have stayed home, then?

 

[RedDevil@84]

I put a post on that thread regarding Indian and African students being manhandled and assaulted at the Ukraine-Polish border, by Ukranian soldiers and we had one poster denying any such thing happening to saying it was ok because Ukranian soldiers were tired and exhausted.

 

[golden_blunder]

You also can't stray away from the party line.

That depends on what you mean? If someone is going to post apologist stuff or pretend to understand what goes on in the head of a mad man then they deserve to be called out

 

[golden_blunder]

this thread feels like someone cut open a giant pumpkin and all the crap is spilling out

 

[Sweet Square]

I'll have to make a proper post here soon, but following up on this particular point: I feel that, in general, this is currently all very partisan stuff, none of which really reflects anyone's ideas (except that this Azov unit really is awful). Whatever this unit will do now will be celebrated, cause it's in defense of Ukraine and against Russia - just as people are laughing at photos and videos of captured Russian soldiers for the same reason, even though that goes against the Geneva Convention. It's part of how morality becomes very black and white in war - your side good, other side bad, we can discuss details later (but generally won't if you win).

That thread(and online in general)gives off a vibe of people treating the current war like a tv show.

Posters commenting “let’s go!” under tweets of burnt out Russian tanks(Which presumably had dead people inside)like it’s a video game speedrun. The fake hysteria over nuclear war(If someone genuinely believed nuclear mega death was going to happen within days then why the feck are they spending their final hours posting on a football forum ?)or the whataboustism shite which is just posters getting annoyed someone might be taking their attention away from the “main event”.

It’s very gross and very stupid.

 

[golden_blunder]

So they can be the first to type “nuke” as the heat blast hits them

 

[RedDevil@84]

That thread(and online in general)gives off a vibe of people treating the current war like a tv show.

Posters commenting “let’s go!” under tweets of burnt out Russian tanks(Which presumably had dead people inside)like it’s a video game speedrun. The fake hysteria over nuclear war(If someone genuinely believed nuclear mega death was going to happen within days then why the feck are they spending their final hours posting on a football forum ?)or the whataboustism shite which is just posters getting annoyed someone might be taking their attention away from the “main event”.

It’s very gross and very stupid.

Pretty much this.

 

[Spoony]

Classic whataboutism. You should be banned. Or something.

 

[Sweet Square]

So they can be the first to type “nuke” as the heat blast hits them

Tbf it shows how good the forum is that people would rather spend time posting than talking to family or friends.

 

[VorZakone]

Tbf it shows how good the forum is that people would rather spend time posting than talking to family or friends.

My family cares and I talk to them a lot. My friends don't care. The Caf is a fantastic forum in that regard with lots of valuable posts.

 

[The Corinthian]

That thread(and online in general)gives off a vibe of people treating the current war like a tv show.

Posters commenting “let’s go!” under tweets of burnt out Russian tanks(Which presumably had dead people inside)like it’s a video game speedrun. The fake hysteria over nuclear war(If someone genuinely believed nuclear mega death was going to happen within days then why the feck are they spending their final hours posting on a football forum ?)or the whataboustism shite which is just posters getting annoyed someone might be taking their attention away from the “main event”.

It’s very gross and very stupid.

This. This. A 100x this.

 

[Abizzz]

I for my part find the apathy to the suffering some are displaying pathetic. Justifying that apathy through suffering elsewhere at another time caused by other people as if the Ukranians had anything to do with it so mindbendingly stupid i'm not even willing to argue it.

People show their real character in times like these.

 

[VorZakone]

I for my part find the apathy to the suffering some are displaying pathetic. Justifying that apathy through suffering elsewhere at another time caused by other people as if the Ukranians had anything to do with it so mindbendingly stupid i'm not even willing to argue it.

People show their real character in times like these.

Quite frankly, some notions are just also disingenous. Take Yemen. People will say there's a raging civil war in Yemen and no one cares.

When in fact, there's already 8 years of war in the Donbas region and that wasn't exactly front page news either in the last couple of years.

The reason why it's now big news is because Russia started a full scale invasion which is so bonkers that of course it's gonna dominate Western media.

 

[Sweet Square]

My family cares and I talk to them a lot. My friends don't care. The Caf is a fantastic forum in that regard with lots of valuable posts.

Talking about the Ukraine situation is fine and the Cafe can be very informative. But half of that thread is just pure hysterical rubbish.

 

[Mciahel Goodman]

When in fact, there's already 8 years of war in the Donbas region and that wasn't exactly front page news either in the last couple of years.

The reason why it's now big news is because Russia started a full scale invasion which is so bonkers that of course it's gonna dominate Western media.

That's a good point and obviously Russia invading Ukraine will get a lot of traction. The problem isn't even that it's dominating news-cycles, that's to be expected as it's massive news, but more about how hypocritical the coverage of the one is compared to the other (advocating doing things on behalf of Ukraine that would be deemed illegal for Palestinian activist, for example). It's not that simple. but the media have been consistently demonstrating their "true colours" to quote an above poster. Corybn was ridiculed for suggesting that the Tories were funded by Oligarchs and now that same press wants to ignore that Corbyn was pointing this out four or five years ago while themselves condemning Russian money in the UK.

 

[RedDevil@84]

I for my part find the apathy to the suffering some are displaying pathetic. Justifying that apathy through suffering elsewhere at another time caused by other people as if the Ukranians had anything to do with it so mindbendingly stupid i'm not even willing to argue it.

People show their real character in times like these.

There is no justifying happening. It is mostly in your head.
Someone saying "How is it different than US destroying Iraq/Libya" does not mean, they are happy with murders in Ukraine. It just means that they are pointing out at hypocrisy.

People immediately dismissing that as whataboutism are showing the real character that they consider people of certain nations more valuable than some others.

 

[VorZakone]

That's a good point and obviously Russia invading Ukraine will get a lot of traction. The problem isn't even that it's dominating news-cycles, that's to be expected as it's massive news, but more about how hypocritical the coverage of the one is compared to the other (advocating doing things on behalf of Ukraine that would be deemed illegal for Palestinian activist, for example). It's not that simple. but the media have been consistently demonstrating their "true colours" to quote an above poster. Corybn was ridiculed for suggesting that the Tories were funded by Oligarchs and now that same press wants to ignore that Corbyn was pointing this out four or five years ago while themselves condemning Russian money in the UK.

Small tip: paragraphs would improve the readability of your post.

And yeah, the hypocricy is obvious and also deliberate, people know damn well that they're being hypocritical.

I don't know what the solution is though, I doubt we will ever have hypocricy-free media coverage.

 

[DOTA]

this thread feels like someone cut open a giant pumpkin and all the crap is spilling out

I think it's great. @Mciahel Goodman has accidentally created a 'Is the Ukraine thread safe to go in to yet?' thread.

 

[Mciahel Goodman]

I think it's great. @Mciahel Goodman has accidentally created a 'Is the Ukraine thread safe to go in to yet?' thread.

Small tip: paragraphs would improve the readability of your post.

And yeah, the hypocricy is obvious and also deliberate, people know damn well that they're being hypocritical.

I don't know what the solution is though, I doubt we will ever have hypocricy-free media coverage.

Yeah, if it is deliberate on behalf of the media and political class (and it probably is) they're playing dangerous games because they're setting precedents for things no one wants to see extended in other areas.

 

[RedDevil@84]

I don't know what the solution is though, I doubt we will ever have hypocricy-free media coverage.

I don't think there is a solution. People (including me) are generally hypocrites. For every thing which triggers us, there will be something similar happening in other part of the world that doesn't trigger us much.
And the media drives the narrative that suits them or the people who fund them.

As obvious in the Russian invasion thread, some people genuinely believe Putin is a psycho who has completely lost his marbles and is sitting on his couch with his thumb over the nuke button.

 

[Abizzz]

There is no justifying happening. It is mostly in your head.
Someone saying "How is it different than US destroying Iraq/Libya" does not mean, they are happy with murders in Ukraine. It just means that they are pointing out at hypocrisy.

People immediately dismissing that as whataboutism are showing the real character that they consider people of certain nations more valuable than some others.

Yeah great job using Ukranian, Afgahn, Yemenite and Iraqi deaths to establish their own moral superiority while doing feck all.

I applaud them. With Vomit.

 

[RedDevil@84]

Yeah great job using Ukranian, Afgahn, Yemenite and Iraqi deaths to establish their moral superiority.

I applaud them.

Exactly my point. You just refuse to understand any other viewpoint.

 

[Abizzz]

Exactly my point. You just refuse to understand any other viewpoint.

No I understand it. I just detest it.

 

[Sweet Square]

I think it's great. @Mciahel Goodman has accidentally created a 'Is the Ukraine thread safe to go in to yet?' thread.

 

[shamans]

So basically, "Please don't call me out if I find this a bigger deal and more meaningful than all the other wars that take place in shite holes!"

 

[iKnowNothing]

Is this the thread where this video posted in the other thread can be discussed?

Taken purely at face value for the benefit of discussion (playing the devils advocate of sorts), listening to what Putin says in this video, is he really very wrong to be concerned with Ukraine becoming a beneficiary of weapons from NATO (as a member or not)?

Yes there are other NATO members in close proximity, but does that mean he can afford to have more adversaries?