WW3

[Larse]

That’s whataboutery.

It's also ridiculously overstated in comparison to what goes on in Russia. There was a case last year of a captain (immediately sounds like a scapegoat) convicted in Russia of corruption for removing and selling (wait for it)...

Hundreds of T72 tank engines. Hundreds. Not the kind of thing you can hang from the inside of your coat and sidle into your local with...

Absolutely not a chance his superiors weren't in on it. But when the chips are down, there has to be a sacrifice. Comrade...

That's just one. There are thousands of examples like it and worse.

 

[JockyBrewer]

I suppose if you squint a lot and look through your fingers, you might be forgiven for thinking that a constitutional limit of two consecutive terms, being increased to four and reportedly to soon become six is only coincidence and has not got the faintest whiff of dictatorship in a 'political system' that has no real opposition and shamelessly high votes for the incumbent, then fair enough. I just can't stretch my credulity that far I'm afraid.

Edit: "we don’t even choose our own Prime Minister"

As I said before, I'm Irish, so don't have a Prime Minister, we call it Taoiseach. But this isn't the supposed anti-democratic concept people seem to think it is. Staying away from the UK system (because I'm Irish) we choose the people who choose the head of government. It's reminiscent of all that brexit malarkey about 'unelected bureaucrats' which was such a simplification of what in effect is a civil service. Which isn't elected either. And who'd want an elected civil service? It's a recipe for corruption, injustice and stagnation.

There’s a bit of a difference between a Prime Minister and a President, in that a PM doesn’t normally wield an ultimate executive power unless there are truly extraordinary circumstances.

Presidential systems are universally terrible (perhaps except for France, but only because I expect they’d depose a president at a marginal rise in price of cheese). When a president is elected then they have ultimate power and “the will of the people” to misuse it. If they’re not elected then they’re a dictator.

 

[Omega]

That’s whataboutery.

I didn’t start it .

 

[Brew_DD2]

A nuclear conflict will sort out over population, so it’s not all bad.

What over-population? Population is set to peak anyway, and begin to decrease.

 

[Laner]

What over-population?

Please tell me that was not a genuine question?

 

[Brew_DD2]

Please tell me that was not a genuine question?

It is. What metric are you using to state that the earth is over-populated? Resources could sustain far more people and the majority of the earth is sparsely populated, so land isn't an issue.

Whether it would be sustainable environmentally is another matter.

It's kind of a moot point anyway given the world population will be in natural decline come the end of the century.

 

[Laner]

It is. What metric are you using to state that the earth is over-populated? Resources could sustain far more people and the majority of the earth is sparsely populated, so land isn't an issue.

Whether it would be sustainable environmentally is another matter.

It's kind of a moot point anyway given the world population will be in nature decline come the end of the century.

The metric of the population can not reliably feed itself.

“Land is not an issue”? But inhabitable land is..

The environment has been damaged by human activity and is reducing the sustainability of human life, the more of us the greater the damage..

Thats over population.

Who gives a flying F about the end of the century the decline is happening now, the more we do to reduce the population the better. Nuke em

 

[Brew_DD2]

The metric of the population can not reliably feed itself.

Well, that's not quite true, but at risk of the derailing the thread topic, I'll leave it there.

As for the rest of your post, maybe go take a cold shower.

 

[Omega]

He also said this in 2022 (Narva by the way is in Estonia).




Less of the 'we' business, I'm Irish.

Found what Putin said in that speech. Well, if we decide to misinterpret the speech, then Putin makes a claim to all land east of Berlin because those lands were slavic. Equally, if we misinterpret our politicians, then we treat Russia as our slave who should comply to what we tell them.
I need something that cannot be misinterpreted

 

[Omega]

It's also ridiculously overstated in comparison to what goes on in Russia. There was a case last year of a captain (immediately sounds like a scapegoat) convicted in Russia of corruption for removing and selling (wait for it)...

Hundreds of T72 tank engines. Hundreds. Not the kind of thing you can hang from the inside of your coat and sidle into your local with...

Absolutely not a chance his superiors weren't in on it. But when the chips are down, there has to be a sacrifice. Comrade...

That's just one. There are thousands of examples like it and worse.

Good point. However, Ukraine is not far from Russia - I quickly found these articles https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/10...-million-corruption-forged-medical-documents/
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraines-prosecutor-andriy-kostin-scandal-russia-troops/
I often speak to a doctor who is from Ukraine - his brother is disabled from childhood and was never drafted to Soviet army because of the disability, so he is well over 55. However, his brother had to pay the bribe to confirm that he was disabled... One level of bribery is when you pay for injustice to happen, but it is way worse when you have to pay the bribe to maintain the justice...
South Vietnamese Government was well corrupt before USA ditched them. And this was not an isolated case...

 

[Omega]

There's only one way to deal with a bully and it isn't to let him carry on without any reprisals. It was embarrassing watching world leaders kissing putins .... just before he invaded Ukraine we should have done more before now , and I'm sure this would have been over already . We should hit him hard and teach him that just thinking you are right doesn't necessarily mean you are .all our thoughts should be with the Ukrainian people who have been treated terribly by Russia for decades

We, collective West, are the biggest bullies according to Meirsteimer's offensive realism theory. At least we are civilised