You make it sound like big tech companies never cooperate with the law enforcement. I bet CIA and FBI have their hand so far up Zuck’s ass it’s almost like Minority Report at this point.
I'm not even sure which SCO is under discussion here, the unix one, Pakistan's "Special Communications Organization", the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, or if Scotland is up to something surprising, or if it's one of several "State Controller's Office" and "Special Counsel's Office" in the USA…
I mean, unless you live in Middle East and one day they say you have WMD and they destroy your whole country. If you live in the EU or the US - then yes.
Was there a NATO country that condemned Iraq invasion and imposed sanctions? Like banning McDonalds or UPS from doing business there? Most of them participated in the invasion one way or another, did they not?
Unlike you, I actually lived in Russia and I can tell with 100% certainty that it's a bs narrative that was used to build up Putin support based on confrontation with the "west".
I mean, I'm not supporting Russia's actions here, I'm saying the US (mainly) are just a bad an actor. They're essentially fighting a war with Russia (as their warmongers and military complex love to tell their shareholders about), Ukraine is just the pawn in the middle.
I should have said 'towards' the border, not 'on.' My bad.
You are twisting the history. It was russia that attacked Ukraine in 2014 and occupied Crimea and half of Donetsk and Luhansk regions without any slightest provocation from Ukraine side. 2022 invasion is merely an episode in this war that goes for 9 years already.
It would be nice if history was so black and white, wouldn't it?
Ukraine was full of conflict between pro Russia and pro-EU well before that war. It was a complicated political environment.
The invasion was not, and never is, justified, but let's not pretend Putin woke up one day, threw a dart at the dartboard and decided to invade that place.
> It would be nice if history was so black and white, wouldn't it?
Good thing that history is that black and white this time, this is as black and white as WW2.
> The invasion was not, and never is, justified, but let's not pretend Putin woke up one day, threw a dart at the dartboard and decided to invade that place.
Moreover, NATO and Russia signed a treaty greenlighting NATO enlargement before any official talks with former Warsaw Pact countries started, so whatever was allegedly said or heard prior to that is irrelevant anyway.
>> I'm not supporting Russia's actions here
You are, whether you recognize it or not. Your contrarian take is a made up narrative to justify the war. Makes you feel smarter than the rest while advancing Russian interests and blaming victims for crimes against them.
You’re saying this as if moving the NATO border towards Russia wasn’t going to have any consequences. Everyone realized this and willfully chose the path of confrontation. NATO was created against USSR and Russia is a USSR successor.
I don't put much credence in an interview where the guy just says "I know nussink" vs the documented evidence that it did.
No I'm not supporting Russia here, I'm saying they were not just acting "out of nowhere," they are playing the same geopolitical war games (and now actual war), as the US is, but the US are pretending they're absolutely the good guys (i.e. pretending they want peace) while shovelling coal into the fire top speed.
It's a war between Russia and NATO/US, Ukraine just happens to hold shared interests and is now sadly in the middle of this disaster of big boys beating chests.
And that is the wrong question to ask. It is not a binary option. It's not even a scale. It is dependent on the circumstances of the moment. Right now, who is the one invading another country?
>> “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. … Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement was made in that context… Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”
