Rome was an empire. The United Kingdom was an empire. That's a classic case of not believing everything you see and read in books.
Was definitely empire for a good while there!
Russia's at it again
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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.
Was definitely empire for a good while there!
Whataboutism is literally the only defence that supporters of Putin have. People can complain about Theresa May as much as they like but she hasn’t had Jeremy Corbyn arrested or murdered yet. Putin can’t say the same with regard to Nemtsov or Navalny.
The propaganda side of things is getting to be not too far off to be sure, though I can’t help but think that’s more Murdoch than Tory machination.
Just a question on empires, can more than one be active at the same time?
Prior to the October Revolution it absolutely was an empire. It's not even debatable really. The question is whether you also consider the USSR to have been an empire, not if Russia was an empire prior to Lenin (it was).
Of course, why not?
I guess you can make an argument for Russia being shit at colonialism, but they were deffo at it. Like, who sells Alaska?
Well we couldn't be arsed to fight for America. I reckon we'd have tried harder if we knew what was out back.
This is a weird discussion. A Slavic-speaking, Orthodox Christian people based in Eastern Europe doesn't conquer dozens of other peoples speaking a vast range of Indo-European, Turkic and other languages, practising alternative forms of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Shamanism and whatever else, and stretching from the Arctic to India and the Caucasus, from the Baltic to the Pacific and the Black Sea, without establishing an empire - indeed one of the greatest, most extensive empires in history.
Rome was an empire. The United Kingdom was an empire. That's a classic case of not believing everything you see and read in books.
Fella you said you thought no-one thought Russia was an empire - I provided a link to lots of people who clearly thought it was. You need no longer labour under the false belief that no-one thought Russia was an empire.
It is sometimes useful to think of it in that way, yes. As for the US.
I'm not one for conspiracies but something doesn't wash with this whole thing, for me. They're saying the nerve agent (which is 4-6x stronger than any other) was smeared on Skripal's door and over his car. Surely you'd expect a far more surgical approach from an operative who's smuggled such a substance into the country? feck knows.
Yes I mean when they hit Georgi Markov they used a poison pellet fired from an umbrella. A very clean hit and that was 40 years ago. It's hard to believe they are so sloppy now.
You should read the story of how ‘professional’ the infamous polonium delivery was. Quite amusing.
Anyone who recalls the often-farcical attempts on Castro's life won't be surprised by a want of professionalism.
Russia was not a colonial Empire. It was an Empire.
A colonial empire is an Empire like Great Britain was. Where it had overseas colonial holdings. Colonialism is based on colonization, that establishes colonies, which are apart from the home state, and subordinate to it.
The Russian Empire was, aside from Alaska, a contiguous land empire based on conquest. Settlers follower this conquest through Siberia to the Pacific, but these were not colonial holdings. They were annexed into the Russian state proper.
Diplomatic bags can be quite useful for smuggling items into a country so an operative may not have had to do any smuggling as such. Possible too that using very dangerous nerve agents is not a large part of anyone’s “spy” training.
If it was smeared over the front door how did the policeman get involved, and how did they get to Zizzi...is it slow acting? It doesn’t ring true to me...though I’ve not been watching the news so may have missed something. (Is the postman ok....)
Then again maybe they found a way to administer the two component parts separately (ie safely) so that they only caused symptoms when they “merged”. No idea whether this is possible of course.....just a random thought. Also we don’t know how much was put on the door. Amount may have been tiny.
The policeman apparently went to their aid when they became ill on the park bench.
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With respect, feck knows why there's speculation on the effectiveness of this nerve agent and its vector, on this thread. Like anyone on this forum has a clue, or as to whether it 'rings true' or not.
Russian bots and trolls are in full flow over this and they’re posting quite a bit of rubbish that a quick Google search can quash quite easily. Means they’re doing their job I suppose when people get sucked in.
Yulia Skripal improving rapidly. (BBC and SKY)
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Whether inadvertently or not, he's spot on about Russia. Trump will of course chicken out in terms of taking any meaningful action.
When John Bolton uses phrases like 'very disproportionate response' we should start being very, very afraid. To that feckwit, a 'proportionate reponse' would probably be bombing Moscow.
Disproportionate is what we have now. A feckless, symbolically limp-wristed diplomat ban that won't hurt them in the least since they will simply retaliate with an identical move.
Is it?
So... bomb Moscow?
Bombing isn't even being discussed, so why bring it up. There are plenty of economic and cyber options that can cripple them and send a message that this sort of thing is not going to work.
BREAKING (SOON (PROBABLY)): White House confirms plans to hire Bolton as National Security Adviser have been shelved.
Sounds like that moustache is starting to become more annoying.
Have you ever actually listened to John Bolton? He discusses using military force against several countries in the very article just above. Do you really think its that much of a stretch to think that 'Showing our muscles to the commies' might come up from this guy at some point? It's basically his entire worldview.
That one fascinates me tbh. Very creative.
Irrelevant. At the end of the day Bolton works for Trump.
Fantastic news.Yulia Skripal improving rapidly. (BBC and SKY)
Conspiracy theorists now out in force on twitter.
People who claim there was never a Russian empire obviously need to go back to secondry school for a history lesson
I think this is correct in the classical way these terms were used, but more recently scholars of empire have used 'colonial' in a broader sense, to include stuff like the existence of a civilising mission ostensibly based on post-Enlightenment Western values, recognition of a distinction between metropole and periphery, and the application of an inferior subject-status to the conquered natives. Recent studies of Russian Turkestan speak of it in terms of 'colonialism', as they do with the nature of Ottoman rule in Yemen and Libya in the late 19th c., despite both empires being of the more traditional, land-based type.