|
I feel like it is possible to say that invaders are not liberators without just casually writing off a load of victims of the nazis and also sort of suggesting that killing other ethnicities is understandable. But possibly not if you are an american politics/media type. jiggerypokery posted:Like the obliteration of Ukrainian cities and their civilians, Climate Catastrophy, the complete destruction of the labour opposition, constant vicious attacks on minorities of all kinds from both the press and the government? This is starting from the premise that those things can only be caused by foreign money and also that she doesn't also want the complete destruction of the labour opposition and the attacks om minorities from the press and government to just be a little quieter, and isn't just pushing a narrative that will facilitate that rather than the necessary changes. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Mar 13, 2022 |
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 19:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 19:30 |
|
|
Hitler absolutely did use 'these people are really Germans and we are reasserting our natural borders' though. The Sudetenland at least, probably a lot more, I am not an expert.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:05
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:
No, it's starting from the premise that any light on the way corruption operates in this country is a good thing. If you want to push the "necessary changes" I'd applaud that too
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:06
|
|
|
jiggerypokery posted:Like the obliteration of Ukrainian cities and their civilians, Climate Catastrophy, the complete destruction of the labour opposition, constant vicious attacks on minorities of all kinds from both the press and the government? absolute lol if you think the government is only attacking minorities because *~*Russia*~* is paying them to
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:13
|
|
|
Julio Cruz posted:absolute lol if you think the government is only attacking minorities because *~*Russia*~* is paying them to what are you, a child? No. I think the government is attacking minorities because the opposition to do so was utterly dismantled after 2017 by a press who are either literally owned by climate denial money or russians looking to keep their assets safe or at least beholden to/funded by those interests.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:20
|
|
|
That seems to ignore the possibility that politicians in the UK want to do that of their own volition and are enthusiastically supported in doing so by a significant plurality of the population.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:24
|
|
|
HopperUK posted:Hitler absolutely did use 'these people are really Germans and we are reasserting our natural borders' though. The Sudetenland at least, probably a lot more, I am not an expert. Sudetenland is a v good example, yes, with pretty good parallels to the Russian minority in Ukraine. On top of that the literal justification for Germany invading Poland and kicking off World War 2 was the 'liberation' of the historically-German Free City of Danzig within Poland's borders. After false-flag 'Polish' attacks much like the 'Ukrainian' attack on Russian troops like the day before Putin invaded, too.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:24
|
|
|
Jedit posted:he never made out that anyone in the countries he invaded was really a German. This, in particular, is insanely incorrect.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:25
|
|
|
jiggerypokery posted:what are you, a child? No. I think the government is attacking minorities because the opposition to do so was utterly dismantled after 2017 by a press who are either literally owned by climate denial money or russians looking to keep their assets safe or at least beholden to/funded by those interests. huh all the attacking of minorities they did before then must have been an illusion or something
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:28
|
|
|
Julio Cruz posted:huh all the attacking of minorities they did before then must have been an illusion or something you are being deliberately dense and I really struggle to see why. It's sad and weird. You're looking for an enemy where there isn't one. The opportunity to stop all the pain and death caused by austerity was thwarted when the 2017 general election was lost and the media went into hyperdrive to make sure it was never that close again. OwlFancier posted:That seems to ignore the possibility that politicians in the UK want to do that of their own volition and are enthusiastically supported in doing so by a significant plurality of the population. No it doesn't. They make it possible. It's not a co-incidence that russian oligarchs have their money here and we have an enormous gaggle of frothing cunts in every conceivable position of power and influence. That doesn't mean exposing who paid what to whom when is an entirely useless thing to do.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:36
|
|
|
jiggerypokery posted:Russian money has utterly corrupted the UK since the 90's. It's not just Russian money, but it is 0 coincidence that brexit happened, Corbyn was politically assassinated and oligarchs all launder their money through the UK and not France or Germany. Yeah, see, this is what I mean about the Cadwalladr narrative obscuring more than it informs. British corruption and misrule predates the fall of the Iron Curtain by centuries, and even if you discount the internal dynamics that produce it (such as our alarmingly fossilised class structure, the limited progress of worker empowerment, the knock-on effects of empire, and so on) it's difficult to argue that of the modern external customers for a British state for sale, Russia are either the biggest or most influential. They're just conveniently unpopular and ill-behaved enough to serve as the scapegoats who can be used to conceal and excuse other foreign investors' misdeeds. Again, look at how much the Ukraine war is being used to rehabilitate the invasion of Iraq and distract from our complicity in the genocide in Yemen. It is now a bipartisan political consensus that NATO is above criticism only months after Afghanistan entered a new stage of its transformation into hell on Earth, and weeks after the Manchester arena bomber was revealed in court to be a NATO asset. A limited hangout that turns a partial expose of corruption into a defence of our own murderous imperialism is not especially worthy of praise.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:40
|
|
|
jiggerypokery posted:That doesn't mean exposing who paid what to whom when is an entirely useless thing to do. I think it is far less useful than the narrative that everything is the fault of the barbarous easterlings corrupting our pure western ideals, is harmful, and the two are being quite thoroughly packaged together and you are not doing a very good job of separating them.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:44
|
|
|
jiggerypokery posted:wonton corruption Wasn't this a Shadow Warrior expansion?
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:45
|
|
|
HopperUK posted:what the gently caress 'hitler didn't kill ethnic Germans' what the gently caress WHAT THE gently caress from the same country that brought you "even hitler didn't use chemical weapons on his own people"
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:47
|
|
|
feedmegin posted:Sudetenland is a v good example, yes, with pretty good parallels to the Russian minority in Ukraine. On top of that the literal justification for Germany invading Poland and kicking off World War 2 was the 'liberation' of the historically-German Free City of Danzig within Poland's borders. After false-flag 'Polish' attacks much like the 'Ukrainian' attack on Russian troops like the day before Putin invaded, too. Northern France too. The perceived germanicness (or lack thereof) also had a strong influence on how the various occupied/collaborating nations were treated, including white Britons on channel islands.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:48
|
|
|
You can even make a semi-serious argument that the Guardian/Observer, Cadwalladr's employer, was more actively involved in the dismantling of British democracy than the Russian billionaires they blame for it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:50
|
|
|
Darth Walrus posted:Yeah, see, this is what I mean about the Cadwalladr narrative obscuring more than it informs. British corruption and misrule predates the fall of the Iron Curtain by centuries Yes but there is undeniably a gross weird narrative that "this sort of thing doesn't happen here". Exposing naked corruption, taking money from the same people who are bombing cities all over the news, right now, utterly lays that bare in a way that shakes even the most BBC Newsnight of centrists. We have to get behind that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:51
|
|
|
I can't imagine that somebody in british politics would be involved with people bombing cities indiscriminately. But if they were it must be because of the russians.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:54
|
|
|
Shocking, isn't it. Every single opportunity to expose that and damage the mechanisms that allow it have to be taken. e: (because you added the bit about russians) OwlFancier posted:I can't imagine that somebody in british politics would be involved with people bombing cities indiscriminately. But if they were it must be because of the russians. Drop this "because of the russians" poo poo. It's a total strawman. If she was in a court case about saudi money, we would be having the exact same conversation. She's not. I wish someone was.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 20:57
|
|
|
In case it wasn't obvious enough we bomb cities too. To suggest that the atrocities of war are uniquely a russian problem, or any other external problem rather than something we do as well is utterly disgusting, and cadwalladr seems quite clearly on that side with her idiotic western exceptionalism. Was blair also bought by russians, were the people who supported airstrikes on syrian hospitals bought by foreign money? How many crimes of people who were born here, raised here, lived their entire lives here, worked in politics here, have ideas that are rooted here, should we pass off as being the result of foreign influence? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Mar 13, 2022 |
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 21:00
|
|
|
jiggerypokery posted:you are being deliberately dense and I really struggle to see why. It's sad and weird. You're looking for an enemy where there isn't one. you're literally blaming everything wrong in the world on Russia and somehow I'm the dense one? yeah good luck stanning for Carol, I'm out
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 21:01
|
|
|
jiggerypokery posted:Yes but there is undeniably a gross weird narrative that "this sort of thing doesn't happen here". Exposing naked corruption, taking money from the same people who are bombing cities all over the news, right now, utterly lays that bare in a way that shakes even the most BBC Newsnight of centrists. The problem is that Cadwalladr and those of her ilk are presenting a narrative of British corruption that feeds into that gross weird one, by portraying it as a recent, foreign imposition by a currently fashionable enemy state. You understand how this is unhelpful to any greater or more meaningful understanding of the matter, yes?
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 21:05
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:In case it wasn't obvious enough we bomb cities too. And I would support literally any journalist actually doing any work at all into preventing the UK bombing any more would get my support too, even if they did have dumb opinions as well.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 21:06
|
|
|
Darth Walrus posted:The problem is that Cadwalladr and those of her ilk are presenting a narrative of British corruption that feeds into that gross weird one, by portraying it as a recent, foreign imposition by a currently fashionable enemy state. You understand how this is unhelpful to any greater or more meaningful understanding of the matter, yes? Yes of course I do. But you understand that breaking the idea that Latin American style brazen cash for politics "doesn't happen here" is step one in taking people on that journey?
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 21:07
|
|
|
It really, really isn't, even if I thought she were capable of doing that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 21:08
|
|
|
What is step one then? Do that, then I'll find some other forum to go the loving wall defending you doing it as a Cool and Good thing.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 21:10
|
|
|
"Corruption" is so ingrained into the way politics functions that the explicit act of giving people money to espouse opinions and govern a certain way, IMO, barely even registers. I think frankly that it is pretty silly to focus on that at all, because it is a small subset of the entire nature of politics. Our government is full of landlords, and weirdly it is universally hostile to renters. It is full of rich people because they're the kind of people who go to parties with the wealthy owners of mass media (because the entire nature of mass media necessitates that the owners of platforms are wealthy) and thus they will always support rich people policies and the wealthy press will support them in turn. They issue contracts to companies they own, or to people they know, they create things to spend money on so they can profit from it and this is just how government works. There is nothing in our system of government to prevent it or even to say that it is bad. That is our system of government operating as designed for centuries. The perpetuation of the power of the powerful is how politics works. At every single point it is the product of a vast engine of individual incentives to produce the world we live in, and money is involved at every step of the way but yet only this, specific form of it is somehow bad? Is Cadwalladr capable of suggesting that her very job is just an example of the same thing? She is paid to produce articles which help to sell the political desires of the people who run her paper, who in turn network with people in politics and influence what political actions they take, her literal job is to influence public opinion in a way beneficial to the people who pay her. But this is "journalism" and thus is actually very good, except when people do it to her in which case it is bad. Pointing at specifically people from other countries giving suitcases full of money to people in this country in exchange for political favours and saying "this is the root of evil in british society" is so loving far from describing how it works as to be worse than useless. Yes, it happens, but it is the merest fraction of the reason for why the world is the way it is, and specifically characterising it as the exclusive reason for wrongs happening is serving far more as a distraction from understanding how the great magnitude of wrongs are committed in the UK, than it is helping to end them. And she has happily done her part in propping up the world we live in as a journalist when faced with a better alternative. And she continues to do it by leading the charge of a renewed east/west conflict as a distraction from the systemic wrongs of the world and our society. She is a useful idiot, nothing more. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Mar 13, 2022 |
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 21:21
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:"Corruption" is so ingrained into the way politics functions that the explicit act of giving people money to espouse opinions and govern a certain way, IMO, barely even registers. I agree with much of what you write but who said that was the exclusive reason for what’s wrong with our politics? Russian money may be only a small part, but exposing how a small part works can also show how other parts work, i.e. the system is rotten in this way, and from that we can deduce that it’s rotten in other, related ways. She’s far from perfect but I’d rather she carried on doing what she’s doing than not.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 21:38
|
|
|
therattle posted:I agree with much of what you write but who said that was the exclusive reason for what’s wrong with our politics? Russian money may be only a small part, but exposing how a small part works can also show how other parts work, i.e. the system is rotten in this way, and from that we can deduce that it’s rotten in other, related ways. She’s far from perfect but I’d rather she carried on doing what she’s doing than not. She does. Darth Walrus posted:The thing is that it's only partially real journalism. It's being used to limit public curiosity and empathy as much as it's being used to expand it, narrowly focusing the problems of imperialism and corruption on One Bad Dude in order to further the agendas of other corrupt imperialists. There's no other grounds for deflecting away from the genocide in Yemen, for instance, which is a product of the exact same corruption and imperialism by the British government, except that it's done by people her side likes. She's under extreme and vicious attack, but that's largely because both sides in an elite faction war play dirty, rather than because she's actually threatening the systems at the heart of the problem.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 21:41
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:She does. I don’t know enough about her work but if she has a one-track mind and a narrow view it does not mean that what she unearths is thereby useless. It’s a bit like a researcher who generates good data but draws the wrong conclusions. The conclusions don’t negate the data or the ability of others to draw different or wider conclusions. therattle fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Mar 13, 2022 |
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 21:50
|
|
|
therattle posted:I agree with much of what you write but who said that was the exclusive reason for what’s wrong with our politics? Russian money may be only a small part, but exposing how a small part works can also show how other parts work, i.e. the system is rotten in this way, and from that we can deduce that it’s rotten in other, related ways. She’s far from perfect but I’d rather she carried on doing what she’s doing than not. But that's the problem with pushing the "Russian money caused Brexit" narrative, because all that happens is we maybe auction off a couple of yachts and some mansions in Kensington, dust our hands, and tell ourselves the job is done without addressing the reasons a) why so many billionaires from around the world have yachts and mansions here and b) *why billionaires exist at all*. It's like when a levee breaks, you can say "Well this particular stream provided the water that overtopped the levee" and going and damming that one stream without actually fixing the levee. Russian money may or may not have been what took the Brexit vote that last 2%, but the problem is that almost every single person really pushing that narrative actually desperately wants to just pretend that it was that 2% that was the problem and there's no need to look any further into it. This is an extremely powerful narrative for both flavours of libs - the Tories, obviously, really don't want anyone looking too closely at what their mates are up to, but the Blairites also really don't want people thinking that there are any solutions to problems that aren't "What the Tories want, but very slightly nicer".
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 22:24
|
|
|
Also loving lol at the idea that Russian money is what caused the 2017 and 2019 election losses when literally the entire mainstream press in the UK was throwing every last thing they could at Corbyn because nothing at all terrifies them more than the idea that the Overton window might move even a millimetre to the left. Russia could have been walled off like Manhattan in Escape from New York and all of the Sensibles would have been flinging that poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 22:27
|
|
|
I just don't want Brendan o' neil to have a job pouring gasoline on trans hate simply because looking into who is paying him probably won't cause the great revolution.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 22:30
|
|
|
goddamnedtwisto posted:Also loving lol at the idea that Russian money is what caused the 2017 and 2019 election losses when literally the entire mainstream press in the UK was throwing every last thing they could at Corbyn because nothing at all terrifies them more than the idea that the Overton window might move even a millimetre to the left. Russia could have been walled off like Manhattan in Escape from New York and all of the Sensibles would have been flinging that poo poo. We've been over this to death. No one in this thread is saying that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 22:31
|
|
|
Does it make a great deal of difference whether it is the spectator or carole's rag doing that job?
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 22:35
|
|
|
One less rag would be an improvement. And gently caress him, in particular.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 22:39
|
|
|
jiggerypokery posted:We've been over this to death. No one in this thread is saying that. Well one person is: jiggerypokery posted:what are you, a child? No. I think the government is attacking minorities because the opposition to do so was utterly dismantled after 2017 by a press who are either literally owned by climate denial money or russians looking to keep their assets safe or at least beholden to/funded by those interests. And like I say, take all of the money that ever crossed a border out of the equation and the blue-tick brigade would still have been lobbing rhetorical Molotovs at Corbyn, completely free of charge, because he committed the worst sin of all and made them feel bad about themselves by just for a second lifting the veil and reminding people there was a whole world of policy beyond burning poor people to keep the house price machine bubble inflated.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 22:40
|
|
|
I can't overstate this - when Putin was still in secondary school, the owner of the largest circulation newspaper in this country was *literally plotting a military coup* against Harold Wilson. Foreign money is not the problem, and has never been the problem.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 22:42
|
|
|
goddamnedtwisto posted:Well one person is: I mean, I can expand to quote:or at least beholden to/funded by
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 22:44
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 19:30 |
|
|
jiggerypokery posted:I mean, I can expand to So take the next step to join all of the people who've been arguing with you about this and realise that it's *money* that's the problem, not the fact that that money happened to cross a magic line on the way - and that the people pushing the story that it's the fact that it's foreign money that's the problem are the ones who most want you not to realise this.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2022 22:47
|
|