Ukraine Invasion - Please do not post videos showing attacks/similar

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Zethor said:
Ok it's not a claim but it "wouldn't surprise you".. As for the evidence, it actually suggests the opposite of what "wouldn't suprise you" - a plan to "orchestrate" an uprising is destined to fail because people protest when they are p*ssed off, not when you want them to. Ergo, Cuba.
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See below. How can you sit there and judge it's destined to fail given the US thought otherwise and went through great lengths to put it into practice. Please read the aims of the project again, mass scale political propaganda direct from the US to the populous, if they did not have a reason to be ****ed off the US was going to provide some. Perhaps you should apologise for the name calling?

The operation was indeed complex and severe and the US did go to great lengths to put it into action. Yet.. zero results. I haven't seen one Cuban protesting, not one. What does that tell you? Maybe, just maybe, that's not how protests work?
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I'm going to suggest you take the advise you offered me before, google and read.

Step 1

First, the network would build a Cuban audience, mostly young people;
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Step 2

Then, the plan was to push them toward dissent.
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Given

But documents reveal the team found evidence that Cuban officials tried to trace the text messages and break into the ZunZuneo system. USAID told the AP that the project stopped in September 2012 when a government grant ended.
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Seems to suggest they only got the step 1 before being uncovered hence no protests. That and you blatantly ignoring the documented aims of the clandestine operation .
 
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Curio said:
True, but in 2008 the "War on Terror" was still in full swing. Now it's over. What are the military supposed to do now to justify their budget and reverse any cuts?
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Well I dunno about the USA, but here in the UK we've made a shed load of soldiers redundant and failed to recruit enough part-timers to replace them. If your conspiracy theory were valid, 2008-2012 was about the right time to be "inventing a bogeyman" so that these cuts wouldn't have been necessary.

Personally though I prefer to believe Occam's Razor - that the simplest explanation is often the right one. In 2008 there was a financial crises, western governments needed to cut spending so were prepared to overlook Russian aggression in the hope that by playing nicely with Putin, he'd eventually come round to our point of view.
 
scorza said:
I'm not sure what your point is here? Should we not intervene in conflicts if tribal people weren't involved? Weren't you just a few posts ago criticising "the West" for not intervening in Africa where most (if not all) people belong to one tribe or another.

Libya might not be perfect, but I'd argue it's better as at least they have hope of a better future now, rather than the certainty of repression under the Gaddafi dynasty.
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Nothing of the sort. There is a big difference between backing a legitimate government against rebels (Sierra Leone for example) and taking sides in a tribal conflict (Libya). The former we need to do more of (and there are plenty of opportunities in Africa to do this, just see what the French are doing now) the latter less so, rather than take sides we need to spend more time peacekeeping, or just stay out of it and make sure it doesn't spill over into other nations nearby (if they don't have the ability to protect themselves).

Better in the sense that another tribe are now in power and it looks like the country may fragment into several seperate states with significantly more intertribal fighting. Yes better...
 
Craterloads said:
Seems to suggest they only got the step 1 before being uncovered hence no protests. That and you blatantly ignoring the documented aims of the clandestine operation .
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Did you read the article at all? They never got uncovered and never had any intention of provocating dissent. USAID set it up to provide a non-government censored twitter-lite, people running it got cold feet at the involvement of the US Government (that 'no one must ever know the government were involved') and tried to go without, system could not run without USAID money, system died. Now being investigated by same Government... which is where AP got their documents from. Democracy in action.

Officials at USAid realized however, that they could not conceal their involvement forever — unless they left the stage. The predicament was summarized bluntly when Eberhard was in Washington for a strategy session in early February 2011, where his company noted the "inherent contradiction" of giving Cubans a platform for communications uninfluenced by their government that was in fact financed by the US government and influenced by its agenda.

They turned to Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of Twitter, to seek funding for the project. Documents show Dorsey met with Suzanne Hall, a State Department officer who worked on social media projects, and others. Dorsey declined to comment.

The State Department under then-Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton thought social media was an important tool in diplomacy. At a 2011 speech at George Washington University, Clinton said the US helped people in "oppressive Internet environments get around filters." In Tunisia, she said people used technology to "organize and share grievances, which, as we know, helped fuel a movement that led to revolutionary change."

Ultimately, the solution was new management that could separate ZunZuneo from its US origins and raise enough revenue for it to go "independent," even as it kept its long-term strategy to bring about "democratic change."
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At most there was a hope that opposition parties would use it to communicate and maybe have a negative impact on the cuban government but it sounds like amateur hour anyway. Such a non isuue.
 
Amp34 said:
Nothing of the sort. There is a big difference between backing a legitimate government against rebels (Sierra Leone for example) and taking sides in a tribal conflict (Libya). The former we need to do more of (and there are plenty of opportunities in Africa to do this, just see what the French are doing now) the latter less so, rather than take sides we need to spend more time peacekeeping, or just stay out of it and make sure it doesn't spill over into other nations nearby (if they don't have the ability to protect themselves).

Better in the sense that another tribe are now in power and it looks like the country may fragment into several seperate states with significantly more intertribal fighting. Yes better...
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I'm not convinced that the roots of the Sierra Leone conflict wasn't tribal at its core - like I said, pretty much everyone in Africa is in a tribe.

I also think it'd be perfectly legitimate to back a hypothetical popular uprising against Robert Mugabe's regime - even if it is tribal. I don't see an awful lot of difference in principle between Mugabe and Gaddafi.
 
25 Ukrainian terrorists arrested in Russia some of whom claim to have been sent by Ukrainian secret service, all 25 allegedly employed by a Ukrainian photography cover firm.
 
leaskovski said:
Damn, thats pretty stupid. I hope they weren't planning on doing anything with them with regards to the ISS, otherwise that might screw them over a bit.
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Article said:
Activities relating to the International Space Station are exempt.

In a statement Nasa said it will continue to work with Russia’s space agency "to maintain safe and continuous operation" of the station.

Nasa has depended on Russia for travel to the outpost since the retirement of the space shuttle.
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NASA are not that silly.
 
scorza said:
I'm not convinced that the roots of the Sierra Leone conflict wasn't tribal at its core - like I said, pretty much everyone in Africa is in a tribe.

I also think it'd be perfectly legitimate to back a hypothetical popular uprising against Robert Mugabe's regime - even if it is tribal. I don't see an awful lot of difference in principle between Mugabe and Gaddafi.
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What is a popular uprising? A couple of hundred thousand in a country of say 30 million is not... Unfortunately we have situations where a vocal minority have take precident over the silent majority. Taking the Ukraine crisis as an example, the protests persuaded the government to bring forward an election, however this wasn't enough, instead the president was deposed and unelected members of the protest were installed into key positions. Many of who were facist thugs. A great use of the democratic process, or not... At least several of them are now being seen for what they are and removed from government positions.

While it is understandable that something needed to be done after the sniper incident the bypassing of several democratic processes and installation, undemocratically, of many of the most vocal protestors wasn't democratic or necessarily popularist. The west supports it in this situation because they are pro west, which is hypocritical in itself.

Sierra Leone could have been tribal at heart, however the democratically elected government was popular (in the fact it was a majority elected government) and the rebels were not.
 
Amp34 said:
What is a popular uprising? A couple of hundred thousand in a country of say 30 million is not...
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By your logic, the revolutions of 1989 were not popular uprisings either. In Romania, the communist leader faced a hasty trial followed by summary execution. Was the West hypocritical to support Romanians? Do you think it was a coincidence that the leader of the most repressive regime in the Eastern Block suffered the worst fate? In the case of Ukraine, did you consider the possibility that it was Yanukovych's actions that lead to his deposing?

Can you provide a historical example of what you consider a popular uprising?
 
Looks like this is kicking off again this week with pro-Russian supporters, in a suspiciously well organised display for a mob, occupying not just local parliaments this time but state security buildings in Donetsk and Luhask as well (Breaking News on BBC). Meanwhile in Crimea a Russian soldier has shot dead a Ukrainian officer Source.
 
Just been reading about Foundations of Geopolitics, a text book used within the General Staff Academy of the Russian Military. First published in 1997 it calls for in Europe:

  • Germany should be offered the de facto political dominance over most Protestant and Catholic states located within Central and Eastern Europe. Kaliningrad oblast could be given back to Germany. The book uses the term a "Moscow-Berlin axis".
  • France should be encouraged to form a "Franco-German bloc" with Germany. Both countries have a "firm anti-Atlanticist tradition".
  • United Kingdom should be cut off from Europe.
  • Finland should be absorbed into Russia. Southern Finland will be combined with the Republic of Karelia and northern Finland will be "donated to Murmansk Oblast".
  • Estonia should be given to Germany's sphere of influence.
  • Latvia and Lithuania should be given a "special status" in the Eurasian-Russian sphere.
  • Poland should be granted a "special status" in the Eurasian sphere.
  • Romania, Macedonia, "Serbian Bosnia" and Greece - "orthodox collectivist East" - will unite with the "Moscow the Third Rome" and reject the "rational-individualistic West".
  • Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because "Ukraine as an independent state with certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics". Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire, which would be inadmissible
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Quite scary how some of these things now look likely. Makes you wonder about Farage and UKIP, and how Germany has become dependent on Russian gas, and the Franco-German alliance that dominates EU politics.
 
It's only a Franco-Germany alliance because the UK doesn't want to get more involved e.g. currency union, and it seems the UK wants to be less and less involved in the EU bringing more power back to Westminster, which further reduces the countries influence.
 
scorza said:
I also think it'd be perfectly legitimate to back a hypothetical popular uprising against Robert Mugabe's regime - even if it is tribal.
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just remember that these "tribal" conflicts can usually be more accurately described as "ethnic" (just cause they're all black doesn't mean they're all the same ethnicity) now think why supporting a uprising based on ethnicity might lead to some rather bad results.

I'll give you a hint the answer usually begins with G
 
Tefal said:
I'll give you a hint the answer usually begins with G
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This right?
 
englishpremier said:
I don't understand why there wasn't a presence already given the threat. Or Why don't they ask for UN peacekeepers? That way Russia could be part of the force too.
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Why wasnt there a presence in Western Ukraine when they did exactly same thing.....

Double Stan-darts everywhere.

You wanna join EU? You are a Nazi? Yes! You are a freedom fighter!

You wanna join Russia? You try to do things without blood-shed? No. You are a terrorist and should be shot on the spot.


I wouldnt be surprised if by tomorrow tanks from western Ukraine will roll in, shooting everyone against the "new regime" and this will be labelled as glorious removal of terrorists and hailed by world.
 
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