Warsaw will officially welcome the arrival of 3,500 US troops to Poland as part of a Nato military build-up on the bloc’s eastern wall, a move attacked as a provocation by Moscow.
On Saturday, Polish prime minister Beata Szydlo and defence minister Antoni Macierewicz will meet the troops, part of Nato’s Operation Atlantic Resolve, at their new base in the western Polish town of Zagan.
Nato leaders said the deployments, agreed at recent summits, are a response to the Russian stand-off with Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea.
10,000 Russian women a year die as a result of domestic violence.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/12/politics/james-mattis-defense-confirmation/index.html
"I think right now the most important thing is that we recognize the reality of what we deal with (in) Mr. Putin," Mattis said. "We recognize that he is trying to break the North Atlantic alliance, and that we take the steps, the integrated steps, diplomatic, economic, military and the alliance steps, working with our allies to defend ourselves where we must."
He identified Russian aggression, terrorism and Chinese actions in the South China Sea as the biggest security issues since WWII.
"I think deterrence is critical right now, sir, absolutely, and that requires a strong military," Mattis said, arguing that the US military is not robust enough right now.
...
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet," he would tell his Marines in Iraq, according to Thomas Ricks' book "Fiasco." He also drew criticism for saying in 2005, "It's fun to shoot some people."
Lebedev said he hoped that Trump and Putin could find common ground on a variety of issues, including Syria. Trump has suggested that the U.S. and Russia pool their efforts in combating the Islamic State group in Syria.
“There is a chance for them to make a big deal,” Lebedev said.
He said Moscow and Washington could also team up to tackle money-laundering and other financial crimes.
Lebedev said Russia could be an efficient partner in the international fight against financial crimes, pointing at recent efforts by the Kremlin to crack down on official corruption.
your thoughts?
people talk about ~RUSSIA~ in terms and tones that suggest it's actual-hell
toutvabien posted:why is the US so vehemently anti-russia lately? is it a power/resource-grubbing kinda imperialism thing, or just a we-need-an-enemy-to-focus-on thing, or..? i don't think i've ever seen this much anti-russia sentiment (LGBTQ issues aside) since the actual cold war. sorry if this Q seems really idiotic, i'm just scratching my head a lot lately
people talk about ~RUSSIA~ in terms and tones that suggest it's actual-hell
it was her turn
ilmdge posted:Much of it is perhaps intended to make rapproachement untenable for Trump.
Like that's the motivation of the deep state, while the motivation of Dems is that they're weepy liberal losers eager to scapegoat a boogieman for their failure and tar Trump as illegitimate - not because of his racism or cabinet of bilionaires, but because of the noise coming out of the woke CIA deep state because they can't resist any opportunity to recast themselves as the true patriotic American far right party.
swampman posted:Warsaw will officially welcome the arrival of 3,500 US troops to Poland as part of a Nato military build-up on the bloc’s eastern wall, a move attacked as a provocation by Russia
is that "a move attacked as a provocation by Russia" or "a move attacked as a provocation by Russia"?
fape posted:The US has run out of poor nations to exploit for labor so they're going to create new ones by bombing the shit out of Eastern Europe and blaming Putin for it
Maybe this is just the endgame of video game completionists: to see if the billionaires working together can successfully occupy every single foreign country at once, and whether that even puts a stop to random barbarian spawns
swampman posted:your thoughts?
toutvabien posted:anti-russia sentiment (LGBTQ issues
when that came from democrat politicians, it was to prepare for this
toutvabien posted:why is the US so vehemently anti-russia lately? is it a power/resource-grubbing kinda imperialism thing, or just a we-need-an-enemy-to-focus-on thing, or..? i don't think i've ever seen this much anti-russia sentiment (LGBTQ issues aside) since the actual cold war. sorry if this Q seems really idiotic, i'm just scratching my head a lot lately
people talk about ~RUSSIA~ in terms and tones that suggest it's actual-hell
the US has been on a course since the fall of the USSR to expand NATO into the traditionally russian/soviet sphere of influence. the early years of this were coupled with the US-puppet yeltsin regime and encountered little serious opposition with a few outliers (e.g. yugoslavia). as explicit NATO expansion as well as proxy wars (e.g. syria) have pushed the boundaries right up to the russian border / continued to threaten every russian strategic ally, and as Russia post-yeltsin has gradually begun to assert more traditionally realpolitik-al national geostrategic interests, the conflict has become ever more difficult to conceal from the usually oblivious US public.
the victory of trump, achieved in part with at least some degree of russian propaganda influence, over the (current occupants of the) deep state's chosen figurehead clinton has also unleashed a massive and seemingly unprecendented series of spasms as the deep state makes its last ditch efforts to try and lock in a fait accompli of maintaining its preferred course to preserve and expand US geostrategic primacy before trump's ascenscion, at which point those bets are far less certain.
also, I would suggest that the kind of nationalist fervor we're witnessing will eventually (if it hasn't already) take on a life of its own as it did during the depths of the cold war, and hating russia will begin to simply be popularly regarded as good and right for its own sake. this will still be manipulated and leveraged for geostrategic objectives, but it will make it a lot easier when the need for pretexts to catalyze this begins to wither away.
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:there was also all that stuff about south ossetia back in 2008, which was my first memory of russia as 'the bad guys'.
that was when i noticed the U.S. press deciding russia was Bad Again whole hog, mostly through john mccain quoting parties. it was also the big tip-off that the Western press had finally completed its slow elimination of its foreign bureaus and would now be relying completely on the U.S. State Department and USAID-aligned NGOs for reporting on most events worldwide, because the news media would never pay for stringers or spend the money to place anyone in country again, no matter what happened.
cars posted:that was when i noticed the U.S. press deciding russia was Bad Again whole hog, mostly through john mccain quoting parties.
2008 is also really the blossoming of my political consciousness so there might have been a lot of other signs before then that i simply cant remember. itd be interesting to go back through the media and see how russia was being reported on from 2000-2008. 2008 was also when putin switched from president to PM for 4 years which media all thought was corrupt, medvedev is a putin puppet, and so on.
Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 ()
Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 ()
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-arms-deal-idUSKBN14Z0YE
le_nelson_mandela_face posted:roseweird is my left liberal friend. coming this fall to FXX
Working Title: Rosenwald
