Vance really effed things up in Europe

@FreddieUK What he said on free speech was true. As you say, whether such restrictions are justifiable or not is debatable.

@ArishMell
You are denying reality. Without Christianity, there would be no western culture. You would bite the hand that feeds you.

@sree251 i had a professor who use to say that all the time

@Toofargone
Professors are all alike. They cast pearls before swine.

@SunshineGirl I looked into the geography there, using an atlas.

Putimn stole Crimea with its major naval land commercial harbours on the Black Sea, in 2014; but Russia already does have legal coastal access on the Baltic.

Her main, direct port is St. Petersburg (Stalingrad then Leningrad, in the USSR): normally a popular cruise-ship destination.

Russia also has the internationally-recognised exclave of Kaliningrad, between Poland and Lithuania; with at least road access from Lithuania. It probably has railway access too, across one or both neighbours.

So Putin cannot claim lack of Western coastal access, though I do not know how his invasion of Ukraine affects communications with Kaliningrad. Normally, it is probably a fairly straightforwards agreement with Poland and Lithuania.


It's probably true that Vladimir Putin has no interest in Poland, but likely because he cannot take it. His parents had survived the dreadful WW2 Nazi siege of Stalingrad, and in his teens he developed an ambition for a career in the KGB. He gained a Degree in German, and became a KGB / Stasi Liaison Officer, when no-one could foresee the Communst regime eventually failing as it did. Putin now holds a festering grudge about the collapse of his beloved USSR empire and loss of Russian might. Although Poland is probably not in danger of military invasion by Russia, there is still widespread, real fear there that if Putin succeeds in taking Ukraine, it might be next, with poor little Moldova on the way. If he cannot simply send his tanks in, his other arsenal is more covert: the subversion, sabotage, remote interference he is already using against Western nations including the UK and USA.


.....

Regarding Poland, one effect of that four centuries of other countries trying to steal her land is that the language is one of the purest in the world, with few or no dialects. The Poles recognised long ago that preserving their own language was one of the protections of their national identity and self-respect, so they heavily standardised it. I learnt that by chance, from a tourist phrase-book!

I fear our Russian friend's idea of German "greatness" may be looking back 80 years....

@sree251
I do know a bit. NATO isn't innocent in this but that does not justify an imperialist invasion. What have the Ukrainian people done to deserve this?

@SunshineGirl When does Putin plan on invading Baltic states? Is he going to invade Poland too? Will it be a long wait? You seem to be able to read his mind.

“What makes you think Germany is not already "great"?

I read about children getting murdered in the street and people saying they are less safe. Germany has become an über-modern, secular, progressive nation that has lost its way.

@jshm2
Here is the history: Hitler asked for return of land that was taken from Germany under Treaty of Versaille. Poland refused at the behest of the UK just as Boris Johnson told Zelensky to reject the peace treaty with Russia at Istanbul. The result is WW2 and the Ukraine war, respectively.


No government trusts any other. Geopolitical shifts mirror cloud formations in the sky. Get real.


All US Administrations are seat warmers - four years at a time unless Deep State is in office. The nation is always in a state of civil war. We just hate each others' guts.


ASEAN? Do you even know what it is? As for BRICS, it got a shot in the arm from NATO when Russia's assets held in the EU and US were frozen on account of the Ukraine war. Trump will free those assets held in the US to restore confidence in the US Dollar. This may not restore confidence in the USA over the long term unless Deep State can be gutted. It is so rotten, it's woke nature needs to be ripped out, root, branch, and stem.

@ron122 Guy who comes here and complains about "freedom of speech" while openly endorsing the AfD (actual German Nazi, so bad I to the Nazi spectrum that Italian neo-fascists refuse to work with them) and while his own govt strips the AP of access because they called the "Gulf of Mexico" the way it's officially called?

How's the "truth" going over there? 🤣

@ron122 good one!

@sunsporter1649 Vance just refuted that meme, big time.