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Anastasis

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Anastasis

  1. I am kinda surprised at OK and NV. What am I missing about RI?
  2. I am happy for us to be isolated from supporting salafi-jihadist movements in any way. Just given the priors.
  3. Just offsetting the neg strafers like you.
  4. Here are the population adjusted numbers for federal spending.
  5. Population numbers would be the most obvious potential confounder in those data. These others are certainly worth considering though.
  6. You just gonna go all out with the brainless crowdsource move huh bolverk? This board is special.
  7. You should post the links.
  8. Will everyone stand and slow clap?
  9. We don’t have anything to worry about until the AQ ideological progeny start flying planes into our buildings again.
  10. Like I said, none of these takes are really outside of the mainstream. Here's a piece from NPR on it. Under the tags takes you through Yeltsin's re-election with oligarch support and finally the emergence of Putin. Look I understand that there is an element of monday morning QB'ing involved here, as with all this stuff. But we have to be willing to learn from our mistakes. We can't even get to that point though if we cannot acknowledge that there were mistakes and ramifications that we have to work through today. This isn't just related to post-cold war policy in general and russian in particular, it generally applies to every single continent on this earth. For example, check in on dailies coming out of Syria. How 'shock therapy' created Russian oligarchs and paved the path for Putin https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/22/1087654279/how-shock-therapy-created-russian-oligarchs-and-paved-the-path-for-putin The Rise Of The Oligarchy The Russian oligarchy arose out of the mayhem of rapid privatization in the 1990s. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian president Boris Yeltsin, a leader in the revolt against communism, had to figure out how to transition from a command-and-control economy to a market one. Yeltsin turned to the Russian economists Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, who, with the aid of Western advisers, hammered out the details.
  11. Damn dude, that's some pretty racist shit man.
  12. I just gave you shock therapy as one example. I think that it is a pretty mainstream assessment that shock therapy was a failure, primarily hurt ordinary Russian people, consolidated broad anti-Western sentiment, and directly led to the rise of the oligarchs. We botched the biggest moment of influence at the end of the Cold War. Both economically and militarily.
  13. Of course we should have foreign policy. And hopefully one that is informed by the outcomes of our past policy failures. Speaking of Russian oligarchs, shock therapy is a good example in this exchange.
  14. This one is fun as well, if you want to do the Rise of Putin origin story.
  15. Nothing I have said here was outside of the mainstream media ca 1996-2014.
  16. Y'all are right, obviously. None of the people I noted know anything about the long-run history wrt Russia, the post-cold war landscape, nor predicting exactly how this would all play out. Certainly not the architect of Cold War strategy. Forget the fact that they have been largely proven correct and prescient. Old, out of touch, and washed up. And y'all claim that I am the one consuming propaganda. Really choice shit y'all running out there.
  17. Y’all all look like neocons to me. Sad!
  18. Y'all telling me that this is all Russian propaganda right off Lavrov's desk, but the talking points related to the inevitable outcome of NATO expansion and straight from the mouths of George Kennan, Stephen Cohen, Bill Burns, Bob Gates, and numerous other US Ambassadors and diplomats. Not everything that is opposed to our dysfunctional foreign policy strategy is a Putin talking point your clowns.
  19. You and I can tell Russia whatever we want. They view military build up by the west and Ukraine admittance into NATO as an existential threat. They will continue to throw meat into the grinder as long as it takes or until shit gets wild and they roll out tactical nukes. Some of you guys are very happy to see that handle keep spending. Some of you are very comfortable with nuclear brinkmanship. I’d prefer to find a pathway to deescalating this shit and learn from our mistakes. Not sure that I would hold my breath on that last part.
  20. Fantasy land stuff. What I pointed out was that American foreign policy incoherence makes for the worst bedfellows, eg “AQ is on our side in Syria.” Courtesy Mr. Sullivan. And of course under his watch Julani with a 10mm terrorist bounty from the US on his head took over the presidency. For wildcats rhetorical purposes this translates to “supporting gas attacks on civilians.”
  21. I am cheering no such thing. I think that this war needs to come to an end as quickly as possible. Two ways forward, either Ukraine fights on for another who knows how many years, or some form of ceasefire and terms happen. I wish that that the latter would have been achieved back in 2022. Would have saved tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives. If the people of Ukraine want to keep this going for another 3+ years, that is certainly their prerogative. You mentioned family in Kyiv. Curious what their positions are? Do they support going to the negotiation table to bring hostilities to at least a temporary end, or do they want to continue on?
  22. Here are two senators rallying with a neo-nazi and the media treatment at the time. But tell me more about who sided with neo-nazi nationalists in Ukraine. https://grabien.com/story?id=517212 HAYES: “When Senator John McCain and Senator Chris Murphy went to stand with these protesters in December, they stood next to this guy, who is an opposition leader and who also happens to lead Ukraine's right-wing nationalist party, Svoboda. They were also first registered as a neo-Nazi party and they're in the streets right now shooting at police. You know what arguably could be called naive? Going on stage at a Ukrainian opposition rally and not realizing you're standing next to a man who heads Ukraine's right-wing nationalist party, a party that was first registered as a neo-Nazi party, which is exactly what John McCain did back in December when he stood next to Oleh Tiahnybok, the leader of Ukraine's Svoboda Party, which according to 'The New York Times' traces its roots to the Ukrainian partisan army of World War II, which was loosely allied with Nazi Germany.”
  23. Pissed off Ukrainian nationalists. Somewhere in that timeline Biden also put NATO membership on the table, and notably more temporally proximal to the invasion. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-14/ukraine-protest-zelensky-peace-plan Far-right groups protest Ukrainian president’s peace plan
  24. Zelensky ran on ending the conflict with Russia.
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