War in Ukraine

#29,227
#29,227
landscapingvol said:
Define success. They aren’t going to be able to hold Kiev for any length of time or any real areas outside of the areas that already under Russian influence so what is a Russian victory exactly? That’s a heck of a lot of soldiers and material to keep controlling some of the same areas they basically already did to a certain extent. They have also created millions of new enemies inside Ukraine that previously may have been non hostile towards Russia. You give the Russian military way too much credit for some odd reason.
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It’s not odd. His name is Rasputin Vol
 
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#29,232
#29,232
evillawyer said:
Although the term whataboutism spread recently, Edward Lucas's 2008 Economist article states that "Soviet propagandists during the cold war were trained in a tactic that their western interlocutors nicknamed 'whataboutism'. Any criticism of the Soviet Union (Afghanistan, martial law in Poland, imprisonment of dissidents, censorship) was met with a 'What about...' (apartheid South Africa, jailed trade-unionists, the Contras in Nicaragua, and so forth)." Lucas recommended two methods of properly countering whataboutism: to "use points made by Russian leaders themselves" so that they cannot be applied to the West, and for Western nations to engage in more self-criticism of their own media and government.[4]

Following the publication of Lucas's 2007 and 2008 articles and his 2008 book The New Cold War: Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West, which featured the same themes,[15] opinion writers at prominent English language media outlets began using the term and echoing the themes laid out by Lucas, including the association with the Soviet Union and Russia. Journalist Luke Harding described Russian whataboutism as "practically a national ideology".[16] Writing for Bloomberg News, Leonid Bershidsky called whataboutism a "Russian tradition",[17] while The New Yorker described the technique as "a strategy of false moral equivalences".[18] Julia Ioffe called whataboutism a "sacred Russian tactic",[19][20] and compared it to accusing the pot of calling the kettle black.[21]

Several articles connected whataboutism to the Soviet era by pointing to the "And you are lynching Negroes" example (as Lucas did), in which Soviets deflected criticism by referencing racism in the Jim Crow United States. Ioffe, who has written about whataboutism in at least three separate outlets,[22][20][23] called it a "classic" example of the tactic.[24] Some writers also identified more recent examples when Russian officials responded to critique by, for example, redirecting attention to the United Kingdom's anti-protest laws[25] or Russians' difficulty obtaining a visa to the United Kingdom.[26] In 2006, Putin replied to George W. Bush’s criticism of Russia that he "did not want to head a democracy like Iraq's."[27] In 2017 Ben Zimmer noted that Putin also used the tactic in an interview with NBC News journalist Megyn Kelly.[28]

The term receives increased attention when controversies involving Russia are in the news. For example, writing for Slate in 2014, Joshua Keating noted the use of "whataboutism" in a statement on Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, where Putin "listed a litany of complaints about Western intervention."[29]
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Maybe the Russian propaganda is more effective than we ever thought. When somebody proposes tightening election laws, you'd think Jim Crow is hiding in closets and under beds. Just months ago congress felt the need to pass and anti-lynching law - maybe there's been a rash of recent lynchings that the liberal news has held from us - hard to believe when a garage door rope and a fake attack were headlines.
 
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#29,233
#29,233
AM64 said:
I really enjoyed Japan when I worked there for several months. I liked Okinawa even more, but that was before the reversion to Japan. When I went back in the mid 70s (after reversion), I enjoyed it, but it was obvious the Japanese were trying to turn Okinawa into their Hawaii - just wasn't the same as when I was stationed there just a few years earlier - not bad but not as rural and carefree.
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I regret not visiting Ishigaki, Iriomote, Yonaguni and some of the other islands south of Okinawa.
 
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#29,235
#29,235
WBO said:
Rule #1, you do not get involved in ground wars with either China or Russia on the continent. The US people will not tolerate the losses involved unless it's the result of a direct attack on the US. Stalin killed 20 million of his own people and I don't think they'll ever know how many were killed in post revolutionary China through to and including the Cultural Revolution.
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images.jpeg
 
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#29,236
#29,236
DonjoVol said:
I regret not visiting Ishigaki, Iriomote, Yonaguni and some of the other islands south of Okinawa.
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Me, too. I was able to grab a lot of work at Hawk sites on Okinawa and get out of our shop. It was great driving around the island and seeing so many other places, but unfortunately you couldn't stop and enjoy them or meet people. I had a house off base with a couple of other guys, so we did get to see and know more people than we would have otherwise. We repaired things around the house for the woman who owned it; that was an experience going into a hardware store and finding stuff to glaze windows, etc. I've always regretted that I didn't get out and about even more than I did. I keep live video feeds from the Naha Airport on my computer much of the time; I guess I like feeling in touch. As a plane is ready to taxi out, the ground crew line up and bow and wave - a devotion and dedication we just don't see here.
 
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#29,244
#29,244
AM64 said:
Me, too. I was able to grab a lot of work at Hawk sites on Okinawa and get out of our shop. It was great driving around the island and seeing so many other places, but unfortunately you couldn't stop and enjoy them or meet people. I had a house off base with a couple of other guys, so we did get to see and know more people than we would have otherwise. We repaired things around the house for the woman who owned it; that was an experience going into a hardware store and finding stuff to glaze windows, etc. I've always regretted that I didn't get out and about even more than I did. I keep live video feeds from the Naha Airport on my computer much of the time; I guess I like feeling in touch. As a plane is ready to taxi out, the ground crew line up and bow and wave - a devotion and dedication we just don't see here.
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Did they sell you sticky rice to glaze the windows?
 
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