Deleted the second post.
Weren't you in it at some point of time? Pretty sure I read that on here
Russia Discussion
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Deleted the second post.
Weren't you in it at some point of time? Pretty sure I read that on here
Do you genuinely believe this?
It's not a matter of whether or not I believe it. Check out some of the programs USAID or the State Dept. have. They spend billions annually on promoting infrastructure development, women's rights, journalistic freedoms, student exchange programs, and countless other empowerment programs for citizens in (primarily) developing countries. To deny or laugh at this is fine, but these are facts.
Yes I know the US does promote democracy in some countries, which is to be applauded. In other countries, they turn the other way at best or help organise regime changes at worst.
I thought you told me previously that you were in the US administration at the time of the Iraq war and the general belief amongst your colleagues was that Iraq genuinely had WMDs? Which absolutely terrifies me if true.
Its actually a bit more complicated than that. All the things I mentioned in my last post are US policy, but aren't always welcome in certain despotic/authoritarian states and in other situations there are broader equities at play where the programs are less pursued - examples would be Saudi Arabia and the energy relationship, Bahrain and their hosting of a key US naval base, Uzbekistan and their former hosting of a key supply base in Afghanistan, and other countries whose authoritarian structures would be threatened by the introduction of democratic principles (such as Russia and their expulsion of USAID and subsequent paranoid law forcing NGOs to register as "foreign agents").
In which case, perhaps best not to make sweeping incorrect statements that the US promotes democratic reform in every country it has an embassy in? And just admit that it promotes democratic reform in countries in which it benefits them and props up dictators in countries where it benefits from them.
And that's ok, it isn't different to how a single other country in the world would act in their position and a damn sight better (for many people anyway). Even in Iraq, where the discourse has shifted from the ridiculous wmds to the even more ridiculous we're in there promoting democracy, US backroom political intrigue has helped breed the newest in a long line of Arab despots.
And that's ok, it isn't different to how a single other country in the world would act in their position and a damn sight better (for many people anyway). Even in Iraq, where the discourse has shifted from the ridiculous wmds to the even more ridiculous we're in there promoting democracy, US backroom political intrigue has helped breed the newest in a long line of Arab despots.
There was nothing incorrect about it. That is the US government's policy. Whether or not it is welcomed in every country is what prevents its implementation for the reasons I highlighted above. The dictators you speak of generally are averse to democracy building programs because it would destabilize the authoritarian power structures in their countries (including Putin).
Of course it is incorrect. You said the US promotes democracy in every country in which it has an embassy. We then rightfully come to an agreement that this isn't the case at all (in fact, sometimes they help overthrow governments....). Whether this is due to American policy or resistance in those countries is irrelevant because it therefore isn't American policy in those countries.
Not to mention that democracy in certain countries isn't in America's best interests, I doubt a democratic Gulf for example would be anywhere near as close to the US.
I think the Americans are far more concerned with free markets and free movement than freedom to vote anyway. If you have that and you don't get in the way of foreign policy, they'll let you act pretty much as you desire.
Not to mention that democracy in certain countries isn't in America's best interests, I doubt a democratic Gulf for example would be anywhere near as close to the US.
I think the Americans are far more concerned with free markets and free movement than freedom to vote anyway. If you have that and you don't get in the way of foreign policy, they'll let you act pretty much as you desire.
There's nothing inconsistent about pursuing democratic principles in every country, but not necessarily achieving them because the countries in question are authoritarian. And your point about democracy not being in the US's best interests is completely off the mark. The problem is what happens in certain countries when they have revolutions and the subsequent unrest that destabilizes trade before ultimately becoming democratic. Ultimately, all democratic states benefit economically if a majority of other states are democratic.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger
Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his "updated summary of the record of US foreign policy" which shows that, since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.
The leaders of these obstructive nations are usually violently shoved aside, such as the democrats Muhammad Mossedeq in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile, or they are murdered like Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his "updated summary of the record of US foreign policy" which shows that, since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.
The leaders of these obstructive nations are usually violently shoved aside, such as the democrats Muhammad Mossedeq in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile, or they are murdered like Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
My comments above are just during the Obama years where many policies have changed.
What are you talking about? Whether you believe the reason for not achieving them is the 'fault' of the US or the 'fault' of the ruling regimes, it all ends up making a mockery of your original black and white statement that the Americans pursue democracy in each and every single one of their embassies worldwide (especially when historically, we know they have been used both for that....and also for overthrowing governments).
I'm not talking about economically. Im talking about politically and militarily. Certainly I think few Bahrainis or Qataris in a democratic system would be too enamoured with the American troops stationed in their country.
I'm not talking about economically. Im talking about politically and militarily. Certainly I think few Bahrainis or Qataris in a democratic system would be too enamoured with the American troops stationed in their country.
My comments are strictly about the Obama years. I can't speak about Dubya's policies or something some President 5 decades ago did during the height of cold war brinkmanship.
Ok Raoul, we're just going round in circles now and I've talked with you before on American foreign policy (pre Obama the peaceful democrat as well) and we've gotten nowhere so I'll just leave it there.
Fair enough, I didn't realize that. It's a distinction worth mentioning at least.
Though I expect you'll agree that Obama's idea of world politics is strikingly similar to that of GW Bush, especially considering he ran as an anti-war candidate, of sorts. Most of Obama's supporters expected a dramatic turn-around, the poor lambs.
But the continuation of Bush II's policies didn't surprise me at all, because America's foreign policy hasn't changed since the end of WWII as far as I can tell, regardless of presidents. It would seem that such decisions are made by those that spend their lives at the top of our security apparatus, someone like Obama quickly realizes that he has no power to change that and does an about-face.
I haven't noticed any turning point in US military and intelligence activities to make me think things are done any differently than they have been for a long time now. But I'd be glad to learn differently.
The only area where Obama has matched Bush is on the drone program, which he has expanded. He ended Iraq and Afghanistan, opted for a muted role behind France and Britain on Libya, didn't invade Syria, negotiated with Iran, and has been passive aggressive with Russia over Ukraine. Excepting the drone program, all of the others are areas where Bush or another Republican would've been more aggressive, especially on Syria, Libya, Iran, and Russia - at least two of which may have received military action. When viewed in their totally, Obama's policies have been much more muted than Bush, as they're based on Joseph Nye's "Smart Power" concept, whereas Republican's tend to gravitate more towards unilateral interventionism.
The US Vice-President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden has joined the board of directors of Ukraine's largest private gas producer. My guess is, it's to promote Ukrainian democratic reforms even further.
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That is fecking scandalous tbf 
The US should really butt the feck out in all honesty - this should be an issue for the EU to deal with with Russia.
The US should really butt the feck out in all honesty - this should be an issue for the EU to deal with with Russia.
That is fecking scandalous tbf
The US should really butt the feck out in all honesty - this should be an issue for the EU to deal with with Russia.
The EU are dealing with it, but there's more leverage when all sides are United in confronting Putin's interference in Ukraine. If it wasn't for the US and the threat of deep sectoral sanctions, he may have already used the tens of thousands of troops currently amassed on the Ukrainian border to walk in and annex the Donbass region.
The optics are pretty terrible. Still, it's not as though he's a former government official doing it. He's not Gerhard Schroeder or Dominic Strauss-Kahn.Those Bidens, they sure get around. Joe's older brother James has received a cozy deal from Hill International, a firm that builds homes in the Middle East. James was hired as executive VP of the company in 2010. Six months later, Hill won a contract from the federal government worth some $1.5 billion to build homes in Iraq. The Iraqi government is supposed to provide the cash for the deal.
As Charles Gasparino writes in The New York Post, “One friend of James Biden’s estimates his net worth at around $7 million, yet he seems to have a remarkable lack of concrete business experience. An attorney who’s done work for him called him a “serial entrepreneur,” but didn’t name the startups he was responsible for.” So what’s his value? Gasparino explains: “James Biden’s obvious value comes from his connection to the Obama administration.”
Iraqis got a taste of democracy US style, now it's Ukraine's turn. Spreading democracy across the globe, and all that.
As Charles Gasparino writes in The New York Post, “One friend of James Biden’s estimates his net worth at around $7 million, yet he seems to have a remarkable lack of concrete business experience. An attorney who’s done work for him called him a “serial entrepreneur,” but didn’t name the startups he was responsible for.” So what’s his value? Gasparino explains: “James Biden’s obvious value comes from his connection to the Obama administration.”
Iraqis got a taste of democracy US style, now it's Ukraine's turn. Spreading democracy across the globe, and all that.
Ukraine can only get better after all the Russian meddling over the past two decades. Hopefully they elect some decent politicians, move towards Europe, and get their economy back on track. Any close affiliation with Russia will obviously not be in the cards after Putin's invasion.
Replacing soldiers with drones is savvy but doesn't impress me as far as reversing the course of US post-WWII international politics.
I'm glad he's not as bad as Bush but then Bush was the worst president in the history of presidents.
He hasn't replaced soldiers with drones. The drones were already there before he arrived, he just put more emphasis on using them. He can take the credit for end Iraq and Afghanistan,as that's what he ran for President on. As for US policy all the way back WW2, it's hard to get into in a thread about Ukraine.
"....targeted killings, torture and beatings, abductions, intimidation and some cases of sexual harassment – mostly carried out by well-organized and well-armed anti-Government groups in the east."
Another damning indictment of Putin's work in the east and Crimea. The Russian propaganda trolls are in complete meltdown today.
http://www.un.org.ua/en/information-centre/news/1836
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27438422
Another damning indictment of Putin's work in the east and Crimea. The Russian propaganda trolls are in complete meltdown today.
http://www.un.org.ua/en/information-centre/news/1836
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27438422
Not my words, but they sum up what I think of US as a country and its government.
US government means well, after all they say so all the time. The scary thing is that they are - most of them - probably quite sincere in this narcissistic delusion. The elites in Washington are not as much evil (there is a bit of that), as they completely lack experience. They misunderstand history, they live in clichés, they like to argue with slogans. So "bombing" other people for freedom are just words they throw around. Any rival is always demonized, any lie will do.
The media mostly acts to elaborate on existing stereotypes, otherwise people simply couldn't grasp what is going on. It is the lazy leading the ignorant. As long as the good fortune and wealth lasts, it is an amusing spectacle. But what if one day the goodies are gone?
These elites lack real experiences with life. Their education is based on simplistic good-bad formulas, with a heavy doses of myths. Their understanding of other people's history is dismal. They think WWII was won by US invasion of Normandy and fought over Holocaust. They don't get other people because they simply don't get complexity, nuance, local histories. They still don't understand the concept of "ethnic" identity. So they break stuff and retreat to their ignorance.
There is also the acquisitive angle: give us your resources, buy our stuff, borrow and pay us back, after all US is primarily a business. There are too many around the world who dream of getting something from the benevolent Americans, and some do. Enough to keep this latter day cargo cult going. In Ukraine this mindless US approach hit a wall, so they are angry. When people with no real experiences and a great sense of self-worth and entitlement get angry, it can be scary. But I still think at the end they will pull back, they have a short attention span and there are other, easier places to liberate and plunder.
The media mostly acts to elaborate on existing stereotypes, otherwise people simply couldn't grasp what is going on. It is the lazy leading the ignorant. As long as the good fortune and wealth lasts, it is an amusing spectacle. But what if one day the goodies are gone?
These elites lack real experiences with life. Their education is based on simplistic good-bad formulas, with a heavy doses of myths. Their understanding of other people's history is dismal. They think WWII was won by US invasion of Normandy and fought over Holocaust. They don't get other people because they simply don't get complexity, nuance, local histories. They still don't understand the concept of "ethnic" identity. So they break stuff and retreat to their ignorance.
There is also the acquisitive angle: give us your resources, buy our stuff, borrow and pay us back, after all US is primarily a business. There are too many around the world who dream of getting something from the benevolent Americans, and some do. Enough to keep this latter day cargo cult going. In Ukraine this mindless US approach hit a wall, so they are angry. When people with no real experiences and a great sense of self-worth and entitlement get angry, it can be scary. But I still think at the end they will pull back, they have a short attention span and there are other, easier places to liberate and plunder.
That's quite the generalization.
I'm surprised the person put in the effort to type out his lazy generalizations.To be fair, there are certainly elements of truth to it. But the last paragraph in particular is real bollocks.
It reads like bad journalism run through google translate.
To be fair, I couldn't ever criticise someone who's communicating in a language that isn't their mother tongue. I bet that lad's English is a good deal better than your Ukranian or Russian is
To be fair, I couldn't ever criticise someone who's communicating in a language that isn't their mother tongue. I bet that lad's English is a good deal better than your Ukranian or Russian is
That's true, although there should be an editing process that cleans up the English before its published to a target English speaking audience.
Obama couldn't just 180 pull the US out of Afghanistan or Iraq. Had he, American standing in the world would have increased marginally for about 3 weeks, until whole sale civil war broke out in both countries. The problem is, many people don't look beyond what is in front of their nose. Following an American immediate pullout, the USA would have been blamed for not only invading two countries, but for destabilizing them, destroying their infrastructure and then leaving what was left for the absolute worst exploitative people imaginable.
Obama made the only real play he could with the hand he was dealt, a slow draw down in troops levels so as to allow Iraq and Afghanistan to have even the slightest chance of surviving the US withdrawal.
To be fair, it was a comment on the Guardian's Comment Is Free section article. The home of enlightenment on the internet.
A little footnote from the weekend that i came across.
RAF Typhoons sent to intercept Russian helicopter over Baltic
RAF Typhoon pays "friendly visit" to Russian Stereguschiy class corvette carrying a Ka-27 helicopter
By Ben Farmer, Defence Correspondent
18 May 2014
RAF Typhoon fighters have been dispatched to intercept a Russian naval helicopter in their first encounter with Moscow’s forces while patrolling Baltic airspace in response to Ukraine crisis.
The Typhoon fighters from 3 (Fighter) Squadron were diverted from a training sortie to intercept an unidentified aircraft close to the Latvian border.
The mystery aircraft was believed to have been a Ka-27 helicopter flying from a Russian warship over international waters, but not ‘squawking’ its identification code, or communicating with air traffic controllers.
The Ministry of Defence in London said the Typhoons saw the anti-submarine warfare helicopter on the deck of a Stereguschiy class corvette when they reached the scene, in what was described as a “friendly visit”.
Four Typhoon fighters have been stationed alongside four Polish MiG-29s at Siauliai Airbase in Lithuania since the beginning of the month to bolster Nato air patrols.
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Nato members have taken turns to patrol over Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia since they joined Nato a decade ago, because the former Soviet nations have no fast jets of their own.
The Baltic states have called for more military support since Ukraine crisis flared, because of concerns over Russian aggression. Baltic leaders have complained that the number of Russian incursions into their air space has risen this year.
Nato has trebled the number of fighter aircraft on standby in the area and Danish F-16s were also scrambled from Amari, in Estonia, for the helicopter incident on May 14.
Sqn Ldr Billy Cooper said; "Intercepting aircraft is something we as Typhoon pilots routinely train for in the UK and put into practice on quick reaction alert in both the UK and Falkland Islands.
“Being re-tasked during a training mission is not unusual; we are always prepared to react and perform any tasking, it is what we are trained to do."
British and Russian forces regularly interact in Europe's busy seas and skies, but defence sources said the Ukraine crisis had made contact more sensitive.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/108...intercept-Russian-helicopter-over-Baltic.html
The whole Vice News series is worth following (39 videos on Ukraine and counting), but I think the vid above shows just how little control anyone has over the region, especially with the police clearly feeling powerless in the face of armed gumnen (from both sides!) running around and causing chaos. It's a real worry how the Rada elections on Sunday are going to tuen out, especially in terms of the voter turnout in the southeast regions
And before people say that I'm taking sides, the US and Russia both clearly bear a lot of responsibility here, nobody has really been the 'good' guys in all this to be honest.
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27503017
so thats one of the major sanctions / tools effectivley minimised if not mitigated
so thats one of the major sanctions / tools effectivley minimised if not mitigated
Its a good long term way to diversify away from European dependence, but they seem to still need to build the pipeline infrastructure. Plus the deal would not kick in until 2018, which is a long time in political terms.
Willy Wonkachenko has been elected, overwhelmingly. Hopefully he's more competent than Tymochenko or Yuschenko.