Even Russia has issues with China’s claims:
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-breaks-silence-china-map-disputed-islands-1823983
But sure, keep blaming the US for China’s actions. Poor China, also being forced into doing this.
Regarding the “Nazi apologia”, what part of “don’t invade someone else’s country” don’t you understand? Tankies gonna tankie, I guess.
Trump is being charged with crimes
Not for dropping bombs or ordering drone strikes in a different country.
I’m not defending the occupation and whole “nation building” (which I doubt they though would take 20 years). Just pointing out that there was a difference between Afghanistan and Iraq, and that difference was reflected by the support (or lack of) from other countries.
So, tl;dr: After being hammered by strikes they made an offer to hand him over to a 3rd party?
Even if you remove the veto power, what exactly would you expect to happen?
Bush wasn’t going to be arrested and put under an international court for the same reason Putin isn’t going to be arrested for invading Ukraine. You can tell them “hand him over”, they say “make me”, and the only way to enforce the decision involves war, which no one wants to have.
The veto power is a problem, but it’s not the main problem here.
I wouldn’t put Afghanistan and Iraq on the same level.
Bin Laden (and Al-Qaeda) was in Afghanistan and they refused to hand him over. That invasion had the support of NATO and even Russia and China. Why? Because Al-Qaeda existing doesn’t benefit anyone and they were behind the attacks.
Iraq was different. It was mostly a US and British invasion, under false pretences. Iraq used to have chemical weapons and even used them against civilians back in the 80s, started a war with Iran and invaded Kuwait, but those were not the reasons given for the invasion…
Now, why wasn’t Bush charged with any crimes? For the same reason nothing will happen to Putin in Russia. What are you going to do, invade the country to arrest the president?
Is it fair? No. But it’s how the world works.
People will forget - like we eventually forget about everything - but the information doesn’t have to disappear from the internet.
Have a website, blog, etc? Write about your experience, what you saw other people doing, the reactions, what politicians did, what you felt, etc. Archive the pages on the usual archival sites, so something lives on even after you die.
Just like some people went back to read what the newspapers wrote about the “Spanish” flu 100 years ago, someone is likely to get back to what we wrote/filmed/saved during this pandemic.
A few points:
0:
First things first:
1:
The peace terms Russia offers is the equivalent of me telling you that I’m going to beat the shit out of you if you don’t give me a room of your house and stop talking to your neighbours. Obviously you won’t accept my terms, not because you want to fight with me, but because my terms are not acceptable to you.
I really fail to see why would anyone support these type of invasions where one side just annexes land because they can. Would you support it too if it was the US? I wouldn’t.
2:
The “little green men” - later confirmed by Putin to be Russian - were not invited by anyone. A group of people inviting someone to annex them is also not a justification for an invasion. That’s not how international law works nor would you accept that justification from other countries.
If it walks like and invasion and quacks like an invasion, then it’s an invasion. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Putin’s own version of history even justifies all this because it’s all “Russian land” anyway.
3:
I really don’t like Nazis, Ukrainians or not. The problem with invading because of them is that Russia has the same type of crowd, which following the logic promoted people like you means that any country can now invade Russia, as they also have a “nazi problem”, not only in political parties, but also in Ultra groups and “philosophers”. Well, unlike you, I don’t think we should be invading countries because they have some ultra nationalistic groups… so I’m not going to support any invasion of Russia either.
I’d also like to remind you that the far right party had less than 2% of the votes in the 2019 election. If less than 2% is a signal that the country is full of nazis, then maybe I don’t know how % work.
The now very famous Azov Battalion (thanks Russia for creating some martyrs, like wtf?) was created in May 2014. What’s the context though? In February, Russia took over Crimea and started shit in the east, confirmed by people like Igor Girkin. The bloated, weak, and corrupt Ukrainian army was shitting their pants and the usual groups got together to fight. It wasn’t only the far right though, you even had far left anarchists doing the same. I don’t know why this is a surprise… who’s going to stand and fight if not those with more extreme views?
4:
I don’t know if the USA was behind the coup, in any case, with Russia’s interventions in Belarus and Kazakhstan that seems to be acceptable from their point of view.
What I know is things went to shit when the then president Viktor Yanukovych did a 180º turn on the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement and decided to do an agreement with Russia instead. Maybe you’ll blame the US for that decision, I don’t know, but that’s when the protests, Maidan, etc, happened.
In any case, Ukraine had laws and the new government and elections followed that law. It’s just what it is, we don’t have to like it. And it’s certainly none of Russia’s business.
5:
NATO had an open door policy from the start. I know this, you should know this, and Putin certainly knows this. The policy doesn’t change. Nor it should change. We don’t tell Russia’s CSTO to change their rules, they don’t tell us to change our rules. It’s simple to understand.
Ukraine has been trying to join NATO from the early 2000s. Are they in NATO? No, of course they are not. The chances of me joining NATO today are higher than Ukraine’s chances in 2014, yet Russia did what they did.
Russia invaded Ukraine, but not because NATO kept repeating the same “we will consider any application” talk they’ve been repeating from the start. Nothing changed. Russia started a war - not NATO - and as grown ups they also need to accept the consequences of their decisions.
6:
because no great power ever allows foreign military threats to amass on its borders
I thought it was because of the Nazis? And I’m sorry, where’s the “great power” here?
Reminds me of the UK after WW2. Still acting like they were rich, powerful, and had an empire. Russia needs to have a good look at themselves. They are not the Soviet Union or are in the US or China’s league. We all need a reality check sometimes, hopefully this will be theirs.
Also, and while with many differences and a weird past, not even during the Cuban missile crisis did the US invaded Cuba. Shit only almost hit the fan because of the nukes, not because Soviet troops were there… and they were there for a long time before that.
7:
What’s happening is that the US has gotten its latest war that it’s been pushing for for decades. It’s always the USA, always has been, except this time, right?
Chechnya, Georgia… yes, it must be always the US forcing Russia to start wars. It’s never Russia’s fault, the poor guys just can’t control themselves and have to wage war on everyone around them.
Next we’ll blame any war in the Pacific on the US too when China decides to occupy some random island that doesn’t belong to them, because of course China was “forced” to be aggressive. Their claims over the south china sea that overlap territorial waters of other countries? All the US fault! Can’t you see they are being oppressed for gods sake!!! /s
It’s always everyone else’s fault. The US should start doing the same. Vietnam? It’s all the Soviet’s fault. Iraq? I don’t know, maybe blame Iran or something 🤷♂️. I’m joking, they shouldn’t do that.
What about taking responsibility for our actions? Russia decided to invade Ukraine. No need to be so defensive about it, they started the war, it’s them that crossed the border in 2014 and 2022. The way some of you talk it’s as if Ukraine/NATO/US invaded Russia, but no, Russia did it.
[I’d really like to continue this conversation about how Russia is totally blameless for the war they started (lol), but I have more important things to do. I’ll leave the thread here.]
Ukraine, with the resources and military they had, wanted war with a nuclear power with a much larger military? Was anyone in Ukraine even talking about war in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea and started that shit in the east? Where they so full of themselves in 2022 that they though they could take on a nuclear power?
Something doesn’t fit here.
Russia invaded Ukraine. Not the US, not NATO, not the EU, not China, not the bogeyman: it was Russia.
You should stop painting Russia as if they are a bunch of amateurs that can’t control themselves. They weren’t baited or provoked. They looked at the political situation in Ukraine and made the decision to invade, twice. Putin isn’t a moron, so presenting him as being played by the US or having no other choices makes no sense.
What’s happening is the consequence of a country invading another in order to expand their borders. Anyone (and I mean anyone) doing that should pay a heavy price so they learn the lesson.
I’m not Ukrainian, so it’s not my place to tell them to just bend over and take it. If they want to continue fighting, then it’s their right and I support their position.
I’m also not sure if a compromise is possible when the positions of both sides are so far apart. Ukraine thinks they can win, Russia still thinks they’re the 2nd best army in the world and that all is going well, so even if you trust Putin or Russia (which you shouldn’t, see the 2nd Chechen War), I’m not sure how both sides can agree on a middle ground. There are still too many cards to be played before we reach that point.
Those who truly worry about human life should keep in mind that if it’s too easy for aggressors to start wars, they’ll keep doing it because it works. Do nothing, appease the aggressors, and you might end up with even more dead people.
But hey, it’s just Slavs killing Slavs, right?
All I see is Russia invading another country (2014 and then again in 2022) and bringing war, death, and destruction to a land that had its problems but was fairly peaceful. Them being “slavs” matters little here.
No one was shelling anything until Russia sent their “little green men” into Ukraine. Just saying…
I personally don’t want anyone to die, but it’s not like Ukraine asked Russia to invade them, steal their land and kill their people.
he would have not genocided tens of thousands of ethnic Russians since 2014
Zelensky became president in May 2019…
edit: I am really being downvoted for pointing out a fact? lol.
And I say, “Thanks dude! Bavarian cream is my favorite!”.
Okay, nothing wrong with this, unless you knew the person wasn’t a “dude”.
And the office temp shouts, “I’m not a dude!” and pushes the coffee and donuts onto the floor. Big mess.
Obviously wrong, but a “I call everyone dudes, no offence meant” from you would show everyone in the room that you didn’t mean to offend them.
And I reply, “Nobody cares about your stupid gender.”
And now you’re an asshole. And a dumb one at that as not only you expressed your opinion about someone else’s “stupid gender”, but also turned others against you.
Assuming this even happened and you’re not leaving anything out, you lack “people skills”.
If you (user 1) are talking with your friend (user 2) through me (telegram) and I have the encryption keys, then for me (telegram) communications are essentially in plain text. I can even encrypt them 100 times… I have the keys and can read your (user 1 + user 2) messages.
You’re again talking about storing messages (not sure why). Telegram might encrypt their storage (I never claimed they didn’t), but they have the keys and therefore can read what’s stored. They also have the keys for the messages, so there’s no hypotheticals or claims here: they have the keys for everything, so they can read everything.
E2EE is opt-in and currently only available for direct chats. Unless you manually start a “secret chat”, there’s no E2EE MTProto 2.0 to help you. They can read everything.
The audit done in 2020 goes over how Telegram encrypts their cloud chats and those encryption keys are not stored on the same servers. While E2EE is preferable, the reason why Telegram works the way it does is because how messages are handled by default.
So… Telegram has the keys to decrypt your messages?
I mean, it’s not hard to understand. The party that holds the keys can read the messages.
I didn’t say anything about them “storing messages in plain text”. I said that they don’t do E2EE by default and since they have the keys for the TLS that encrypts data in transit, they can read the content of your messages. Encrypting their drives - something that any decent service does - only protects you if someone “steals” a drive: Telegram has the keys and can obviously read the contents of their drives.
I found this Kaspersky blog post which provides a nice tl;dr. They even make the same point as me:
Let’s go straight to the root of the problem: Telegram is a unique messenger with two types of chats: regular and secret. Regular chats are not end-to-end encrypted. Only secret ones are.
No other messenger does this: even the notorious WhatsApp, part of Mark Zuckerberg’s data-hungry empire, uses end-to-end encryption by default. The user doesn’t need to do anything at all, there are no special checkboxes or anything: messages are protected from all outsiders (including the service owners) right out of the box.
[…]
This is not new. Back in 2015, Edward Snowden had this to say about Telegram’s defaults:
I respect @durov, but Ptacek is right: @telegram’s defaults are dangerous. Without a major update, it’s unsafe. [source]
To be clear, what matters is that the plaintext of messages is accessible to the server (or service provider), not whether it’s “stored.” [source]
In practice, they’re no different from Messenger, Slack, Discord or a direct message on Reddit. Most messages on Telegram can be read by them, just like Google can read all messages in your Gmail.
Why is Signal or WhatsApp better? Because they do E2EE for all messages. It doesn’t matter if they forget to encrypt their servers, all they see and store is encrypted messages. You hold the keys, not them.
WhatsApp uses the Signal Protocol. Is it as private as Signal? No, it “leaks” way more metadata. Have I personally checked if they’re encrypting messages? Also no, although others have. Is it possible that they’re doing something “funny” and no longer encrypt? Yes, but is there any suggestion or proof of that being the case?
Should you use WhatsApp? No, but the suggestion above was to use Telegram, a service that doesn’t do end-to-end encryption by default and leaks the same type of data as WhatsApp. Going from Messenger to Telegram is a sideways move. From Messenger to WhatsApp would be at least a small upgrade (with the benefit of having more contacts there than Telegram, at least in some countries).
I understand the point about it also being a Meta app. I guess the question is what do you trust more? Telegram and the people behind it with your plain text messages or a Meta app with end-to-end encryption? I don’t trust either, so I pick encryption.
I’m not anti Telegram or anything like that. It’s a nice app, lots of features, smooth, etc, and I use it, but privacy was never their main priority.
I use Telegram every day, but without end-to-end encryption (by default and on groups), it’s as private as Facebook Messenger. They can read everything. The only difference is that currently people trust them more than they trust Facebook, but everything turns to shit eventually.
If Signal is too “boring” or no one uses it in your circles, try WhatsApp. Yes, it’s also from Meta, but at least comms are encrypted (same protocol as Signal) and a lot of people use it.
I don’t know what reddit is saying about Russia, but the “poor Russia, couldn’t help themselves and had to invade” doesn’t convince me. They made a calculated move which didn’t go as well as they expected. It happens sometimes.
NATO had an “open-door” policy from the start. Russia knows this, so unless we really think everyone over there is really dumb, they knew that NATO’s “sure, maybe we’ll let you in sometime in the future” meant little. Ukraine was trying to join since the early 2000’s and the reply was always the same… Ukraine wasn’t going to join NATO in 2014, like zero chance. I recommend reading about the state of their forces, corruption, etc, at the time. What changed was that Yanukovych was going to sign the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement, something that most of Ukraine supported (if we’re to trust polls and look at the reaction when he unexpectedly changed his mind) while Russia wanted Ukraine to do the same agreement with them instead.
The existential threat… I don’t know. Do you really think that their “existential threat” is now higher that Finland joined NATO (because of Russia’s actions)? Estonia is fine, but Ukraine is makes that “existential threat” much, much worse? And who the hell is going to start a war in Russia when they have capacity to reply to normal attacks and will, without a doubt, use their nukes if invaded? Does NATO now have a death wish or something like that?
I keep reading about that non expansion promise… again, I guess you all think Russians are dumb and got verbal assurances thinking that it’s the same as having them in writing. In any case, Russia doesn’t own eastern Europe, many countries have made clear they don’t want to be under their thumb or be part of their country. If Russia doesn’t like this, well, though luck. A reality check would also help here… they’re not the USSR.
The Vietnam example wasn’t a good one, but my point is that if we start finding excuses to justify wars, well, we can, but it never ends and it’s never our fault.
The US has some history with Cuba… but the only time when there was a really serious reaction wasn’t when Castro became friends with the Soviet Union… it was when nukes were deployed in Cuba (partially their fault, after deploying theirs in Turkey). Russia invaded Ukraine because they were winking at the EU and NATO… like, they didn’t even kiss!
I know why they invaded, but I also believe in taking responsibility for one’s actions. We can talk about moral responsibility, but at the end of the day Russia invaded Ukraine and therefore they are responsible for the war they started.
Indeed, it’s normal to have disputed claims, even between China and Russia. But as soon I mentioned China in the south china sea, that “jumped out”. If China behaves like dickheads with Russia, it’s normal. If they do it in a different region, it’s the US’ fault.
You hate a country so much that it clouds your view to the point that you criticise said country for doing something (eg: invasions) and then defend another you like (Russia) for doing the exact same thing. “Go home yanks” one second and defend Russia invading other countries the next. And I’m the fucking zombie?
I never left Europe, so I don’t know what’s that about medicine. I have free healthcare. I’m not a fucking tankie though, you won’t see me defending the invasion of other countries like you do.
There’s not much to run from to be honest. It’s just I have no patience to discuss with people that defend the invasion and annexation of other countries. You want this war, you love it so much that you go around the internet making excuses to justify it, you just lack the balls to admit it. And then, when a country you don’t like does the same, you correctly criticise their imperialism and tell them to go home… you’re not doing it for the right reasons though, after all you like war when Russia wages it. It’s just a general hate of the west that makes you have that reaction.
I really dislike people like you, so, and as soon I submit this comment, I’ll do what I should have done when you replied to me: block you.
I’m not going to ask for proof of that coup because I know you don’t have it, but let me turn that question around… Would a country with so many nazis remove people like Biletsky from power, only give 2% of the vote to the nazis, and elect a jew (all in 2019)?
You’ll probably do some mental gymnastics as you need to hold on to something… I mean, a man needs to sleep at night and if there’s nothing to justify this war Russia started, you might reach the conclusion you’re just a bad person that likes to see big countries invading, annexing, and killing people (as long it’s Russia doing it!).
Ta ta and farewell.