sburke Posted July 8, 2019 Share Posted July 8, 2019 Just now, Sgt.Squarehead said: If I might make so bold, your mass media do you no favours whatsoever, none of them.....Ours are just the same. Provoking division easy is easy and profitable, but fixing it takes a lot more effort. Not sure if I would blame mass media so much as social media, but yeah it does play it's role. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Squarehead Posted July 8, 2019 Share Posted July 8, 2019 I wouldn't so much 'blame' social media, as 'put it up against a wall and shoot it in the base of the skull' TBH. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ikalugin Posted July 8, 2019 Share Posted July 8, 2019 1 minute ago, Sgt.Squarehead said: I wouldn't so much 'blame' social media, as 'put it up against a wall and shoot it in the base of the skull' TBH. Heh, I find twitter useful. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Squarehead Posted July 8, 2019 Share Posted July 8, 2019 (edited) Heresy! Call the inquisitors! Edited July 8, 2019 by Sgt.Squarehead 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ikalugin Posted July 8, 2019 Share Posted July 8, 2019 (edited) 6 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said: Heresy! Call the inquisitors! Know your enemy and know yourself...... People mindlessly retweeting SJWs (even though they are meant to be mil-technical ppl) is a bit tiresome though. Edited July 8, 2019 by ikalugin 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Squarehead Posted July 8, 2019 Share Posted July 8, 2019 Nuke 'em till they glow! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted July 8, 2019 Share Posted July 8, 2019 TWITter = sums it all up for me. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Squarehead Posted July 8, 2019 Share Posted July 8, 2019 As I recently told my nephew, when he mentioned an interest, 'there's a clue in the name'. Outta likes, I owe you one. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IMHO Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 16 hours ago, sburke said: it isn't NATO sending little green men into other countries wake up and smell the vodka It did exactly this with Kosovo. Sent NATO little green men to grab a piece of land from a country with borders that had been there for generations. The Western view that Kosovo was an isolated case never to be repeated afterwards is a joke. The world changed forever after Kosovo just like it changed again after Crimea. Not for better in either case. To side with you on the question of the strategic consequences of Crimea, when the decision was being discussed there was not a single person from the Russian political-economic leadership that was for it except for one famous guy. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Squarehead Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 TBH I think Russia is fortunate to have that 'famous guy'.....It's an outsider's perspective, but there you go. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 1 hour ago, IMHO said: It did exactly this with Kosovo. Sent NATO little green men to grab a piece of land from a country with borders that had been there for generations. The Western view that Kosovo was an isolated case never to be repeated afterwards is a joke. The world changed forever after Kosovo just like it changed again after Crimea. Not for better in either case. To side with you on the question of the strategic consequences of Crimea, when the decision was being discussed there was not a single person from the Russian political-economic leadership that was for it except for one famous guy. Uh no, Russia adamantly denied those were it’s troops. NATO sent theirs publicly. The description “little Greek men” stemmed directly from this as if they were from Mars. the fracture of Yugoslavia is a whole other subject and frankly probably doesn‘t have a good answer similar to border issues in the Middle East. Stating however that Serbian borders had been there for generations completely ignores Serbian history before and under Yugoslavia and the ongoing strife within that country. Eastern Kosovo was ceded to the Kingdom of Serbia in 1913. The border has in fact been fluid for generations ignoring the underlying population demographics. Hell there is a reason balkanization is a word. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 7 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said: TBH I think Russia is fortunate to have that 'famous guy'.....It's an outsider's perspective, but there you go. That is pretty sad. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Squarehead Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 1 minute ago, sburke said: That is pretty sad. And that is rather rude. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Squarehead Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 8 minutes ago, sburke said: the fracture of Yugoslavia is a whole other subject and frankly probably doesn‘t have a good answer similar to border issues in the Middle East. Nevertheless it set a precedent and simultaneously undermined NATO's ability to take the moral high-ground. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 15 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said: And that is rather rude. No simply a fact. Putin is a brutal dictator. That you could find anything to admire there is sad. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Squarehead Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 5 minutes ago, sburke said: No simply a fact. Putin is a brutal dictator. Oh FFS.....Do you have any idea how utterly ridiculous that sounds. I'm not going to dignify such petty childishness with a response, frankly mate I expected better. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 Really you disagree that Putin is a brutal dictator? Forget your bias of Russia versus US this isn’t about the US this is a simple statement of fact. Is he a brutal dictator or not? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 2 hours ago, IMHO said: It did exactly this with Kosovo. Sent NATO little green men to grab a piece of land When we say "little green men" we are referring to the propaganda lie that Country A is not invading Country B because those solders clearly are not ours because they don't have our flags on their shoulders. It is a short hand way of referring to the lies that Putin's Government told during the invasion of Crimea and Easter Ukraine. The action in Kosovo that you are trying to create an equivalency for is not at all the same. No one lied about what was happening it was done all above board and based on information and events that happened during a long civil war. The action in the Ukraine was done under the cloak of lies and fake information, trumped up propaganda and with "plausible deniability". The fact that the Putin Government and a handful here still deny that the Russians invaded the Ukraine doesn't make it any less true. There is no equivalence between these two events. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 16 minutes ago, sburke said: Really you disagree that Putin is a brutal dictator? Forget your bias of Russia versus US this isn’t about the US this is a simple statement of fact. Is he a brutal dictator or not? Dictator. Clearly. It is enough to consider just press freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_freedom_in_Russia https://rsf.org/en/russia https://rsf.org/en/news/russia-vladimir-putins-damning-record-press-freedom The back bone of a dictatorship is the quashing of press freedom. That is now you can then steal elections and make your opponents disappear all the while making convincing your population that all is well. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Squarehead Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 Are you aware of the ownership structure of the western 'free press'.....Western mainstream media is little more than the mouthpiece of a select billionaire's club. Next. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 3 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said: Are you aware of the ownership structure of the western 'free press'.....Western mainstream media is little more than the mouthpiece of a select billionaire's club. Next. Wow. Short comings aside there is no comparison between the two problems. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Squarehead Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 (edited) To me, a line of BS is a line of BS, regardless of the motivations of the person attempting to feed it to me. PS - Have to agree though, the Reporters Without Borders report is pretty damning (but having said that, many of the same practices are being undertaken in the west by corporate entities such as Google & Facebook, rather than by direct governmental interference). Edited July 9, 2019 by Sgt.Squarehead 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 3 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said: To me, a line of BS is a line of BS, regardless of the motivations of the person attempting to feed it to me. Well yeah BS does suck and there are problems of media ownership. There is one difference though. In a country like Russian and China where *all* the media are controlled by the same group - the government - there is no dissenting information. There are no corrections or retractions (unless by chance that is what the government wants). So, while we in the west can get differing view points and competition to get the fact straight people in Russia and China cannot. Media in the west often point out each other's failings too. All of that is a huge difference. It may not be perfect but the government is not in charge of the message from the start to the finish. Oh and I should add that the distrusting of news sources is a trap that dictators like us to fall into too. How many times have you heard someone say "I don't trust any of that lying media" and then turn around and repeat the government talking points nearly word for word - which they got from the state media. Think hard and see if you can catch your self doing it. I try to pay attention to that in my self. 3 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said: PS - Have to agree thought, the Reporters Without Borders report is pretty damning (but having said that, many of the same practices are being undertaken in the west by corporate entities such as Google & Facebook, rather than by direct governmental interference). See above. Ironically one of the problems of Twitter, Google and Facebook is they try to not give an editorial bent - but that just leaves them free to be used and manipulated with bots or pretend accounts. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerKommissar Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 We're stuck in this tired Cold War mentality. Are the US and Russia that different? Why must they be mortal enemies? They were allies for virtually all of their shared history (7 years war, US civil war, WW1, Rus civil war, WW2). A few weeks back, I even read that US jets bombed an Al Queda target in Idlib, Syria. Both nations were started by European immigrants. While US was founded by Christians, Russia was founded by pagans -- and yet, they voluntarily converted to the same belief. Both nations expanded greatly since their founding. Alaska and parts of California were not fought over, but exchanged at mutually agreed criteria. The descendants of these settlers retain their culture, to this day. Currently, both nations are populated by a diverse number of peoples. It is also fair to say that the interests of these two nations are also very similar. From the interest in space exploration, to emphasis on oil and gas industries. Obviously, the peoples are more similar than they are different. Naturally, both nations have a long history messing with foreign governments. Clandestine operations, propaganda and repression of citizens is nothing new to either party. Now, they act like troubled spouses, blaming eachother for virtually any problem. While their unhealthy competition caused a great deal of suffering, and fear of nuclear exchange that persists -- they have restrained themselves from directly harming one another. I think instead of passive-aggressive moralizing, the world would do good to provide couple counselling. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 So close! But still that bit of denial. Don’t worry though son you are making progress! Pretty soon you’ll be able to look at it without trying to qualify your response by pointing at something else, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. in the meantime we can try some practice work. Statement 1 - The us invasion of Iraq was a poorly thought out, mis guided and disastrous attempt to impose nation building philosophy completely ignoring all the hard won lessons from previous experiences and based on a series of intentional lies put forward by the White House . statement 2 Russian actions in Eastern Europe in particular are ill disguised ventures to undermine democratic forces to protect the hegemony of the Russian state frequently flaunting all international laws and sovereignty of the target nations We will review next week and check your progress. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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