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The Russian army has a history of disparaging and mistreating Muslim soldiers. I don't think that's the case in the US military.

I believe you.

It doesn't call to kill ukranians? Really? “A significant part of the masses of the people, who are passive Nazis, are accomplices to Nazism,” he writes. Ukraine’s elites “must be liquidated as they cannot be reeducated and the social swamp that backed them must be subject to the terror of war and made to pay for their crimes.” What do you think liquidated means in this context? That they be given a bubble bath?

Really? The far-right mystical writer who helped shape Putin’s view of Russia His breakthrough work was the 1997 book “The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia,” which was so wildly popular that supermarkets placed it at their checkout counters. It set out a playbook for dealing with the West that seems by now all too familiar: using disinformation and soft power to “provoke all forms of instability and separatism” within the United States, including by stoking racial and political tensions, while bolstering nationalism and authoritarianism at home. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/12/dugin-russia-ukraine-putin/

*Deleted post edited out* Still trying to evade the issue. I see you've given up on trying to claim that sanctions havn'et worked on Iran. As for Russia, as any economist will tell you, if there is only a market to buy stuff from a country, and that country is not allowed to buy in return, the value of it's currency will inevitably rise. It's not proof of economic health but quite the opposite: Russia Privately Warns of Deep and Prolonged Economic Damage Confidential document contrasts with upbeat public statements Russia may face a longer and deeper recession as the impact of US and European sanctions spreads, handicapping sectors that the country has relied on for years to power its economy, according to an internal report prepared for the government. The document, the result of months of work by officials and experts trying to assess the true impact of Russia’s economic isolation due to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, paints a far more dire picture than officials usually do in their upbeat public pronouncements. Bloomberg viewed a copy of the report, drafted for a closed-door meeting of top officials on Aug. 30. People familiar with the deliberations confirmed its authenticity. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-05/russia-risks-bigger-longer-sanctions-hit-internal-report-warns?leadSource=uverify wall

I don't think Putin has ever fought in a war. Well, unless you count hockey.

And even though I earlier wrote this in reference to the Trump pulling out of the agreement because it was entirely predictable that you would pull the evasive move you ultimately did: "Really? Tell that to the Iranians after Trump pulled out of the nuclear agreement. (And please, no discussion of whether he was right to do what he did. I think it was a big mistake.) But the issue you raised is the effectiveness of sanctions." (I put the disclaimer in boldface now for your benefit) Still, you bring it up anyway. Stop trying to deflect. You claimed that sanctions are ineffective. "Sanctions hahaha. Yup, Europe loving the sanctions and begging for more lol. Apart from the collective west, hardly any other country bothers about sanctions anymore. US hegemony is no more, in case you didn’t know." Clearly, they are not. You've got nothing.

As I specifically pointed out, this was not a talk show. This was an op ed column from an official Russian media source. And as for those crazy talk show hosts, How is it that the Russian government prohibits them from calling the Ukraine misadventure a war but won't stifle them from mouthing violent, genocidal rants?

Six charts that show how hard US sanctions have hit Iran https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48119109 Here's an update https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/23/these-6-charts-show-how-sanctions-are-crushing-irans-economy.html I can't believe that you have no knowledge of this. Or of the insurrection taking place in Iran now thanks to the poor state of the economy: How Iran’s economic woes created conditions ripe for protests https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63154987

Since you seem to feel you have license to do some psychological analysis, I think it's only fair that I take a shot at it, too. There are plenty of people whose comments I "like" via emojis. I diagnose that your feelings hurt because you're not one of them.

Really? Tell that to the Iranians after Trump pulled out of the nuclear agreement. (And please, no discussion of whether he was right to do what he did. I think it was a big mistake.) But the issue you raised is the effectiveness of sanctions.

Sure it's "you and your friends igniting hate and doing the propaganda". Russia’s Ukraine Propaganda Has Turned Fully Genocidal A more recent RIA Novosti op-ed by Timofey Sergeytsev describes the planned extermination of an entire nation in a matter-of-fact manner.... “A significant part of the masses of the people, who are passive Nazis, are accomplices to Nazism,” he writes. Ukraine’s elites “must be liquidated as they cannot be reeducated and the social swamp that backed them must be subject to the terror of war and made to pay for their crimes.” https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/09/russia-putin-propaganda-ukraine-war-crimes-atrocities/ RIA Novosti (Russian: РИА Новости), sometimes referred to as RIAN (РИАН) or RIA (РИА) is a Russian state-owned domestic news agency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIA_Novosti

Those UN investigators have so much to learn from you.

Respected by whom? I believe that 3 days before Russia invaded Ukraine Goldman predicted that it wouldn't happen.

Well, that's one way to avoid responding to the fact that an independent UN team of investigators found plenty of evidence of mass torture and murder of civilians.

I certainly didn't misquote you since i didn't quote you at all. Just for your information a quotation is something framed by quotation marks that purports to be exactly the words uttered or written by some person. For instance, if I claimed "My point is, you quoted me in an attempt to try to prove something" that would be a misquotation because what you wrote was "My point is, you misquoted me in an attempt to try to prove something". Perhaps you mean I misconstrued what you wrote? What you wrote is this: "How about when posters on a forum call for a general election because a new government will do better but offer no figures or info as to why, that doesn't count?". I don't think I misconstrued it at all. You seem to believe that this is relevant data the way say the unemployment figures or other data are. I don't understand why you think that what some some members on aseannow.com believe has some sort of probative value. People on this forum believe all kinds of things including many conspiracy theories.

You should reread the paragraph you commented on to find out what the US can do about it.

I'm not going to answer all your nonsense but lots of those civilian corpses were found to be tied up and bore marks of torture. This was one of the findings of the independent UN investigators.

If that were the only criteria for judging misrule, you might have a point. The fact is Xi inherited a vibrant economy from his predecessors and is doing his best to ruin it. His repeated and massive covid shutdowns for one instead of importing superior vaccines made elsewhere. Presumably out of nationalist pride. By the way, the shutdowns discourage consumption which is one way of suppressing inflation. There have been huge declines in domestic consumption. China also has a big youth unemployment problem. About one third of their labor force was in construction that was largely supported by government programs that took no account of market forces. Now there is massive unemployment there. His latest disaster is food security. He's forcing people in the countryside to grow rice and wheat instead of more profitable crops. Income for these people is plummeting. Also, to return to CPI. China doesn't disclose how it weights its computations of inflation. As you may know, it can be a capital crime to disclose this information without government approval. So who knows how it really compares to inflation figures elsewhere.

Here's a link to an at-length and fascinating interview with Fiona Hill, perhaps America's foremost Putinologist: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/10/17/fiona-hill-putin-war-00061894

You missed baboon's joke and the point of it. It's about how long Truss can expect to be in office.

Well, if it was all about you, you might have a point. But it isn't, so you don't.

Really? It was made worse by the pandemic? Well, it is true that there is the issue of long covid. Apart from covid, though, this problem has been in existence for the last 50 years. As for who these men are: "They’re disproportionately low-income men who either dropped out of high school or didn’t go beyond a high school diploma." https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/08/15/men-not-at-work-why-so-many-men-ages-of-25-to-54-are-not-working/ The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7745920/ And, of course, the war that the right has waged on unions over the past 70 years hasn't helped.

When I open this thread, the thread above it was about Kamikaze drones. 2 kamikaze threads in a row!

Even in the medium run it should put a crimp in the manufacture of current weaponry.