Bobby_2021

@BlueOak @martins name

But they still get advanced weapons from the US. And if a conventional war breaks out, it will be a full-blown nuclear war like we never saw before. NATO membership is nuclear protection without having developed nukes on your own. Tensions between the countries are normal thing to have, believe it or not. Getting NATO into the scenario turns the matter into a potential nuclear escalation which we absolutely cannot tolerate at any cost. So, it wasn't about the security? Like Bush said. You cannot play both sides. Should I take what the western leader says at face value or not?

International agreements, even if it is written in paper as no value as long as the parties involved do not intend to honor it. Gorbachev did not have enough negotiating power, at the time and he was a pretty chill dude and good friend with Clinton. It was a time when a great war ended and no one was under threat from any enemy. For him, verbal promise was enough. He went to back to Russia believing that he did get a promise to not expand NATO East. That is what he thought in his mind. But none of this change the fact that he was lied to. He did not care. But that might not have been the attitudes of people that came after him, like Putin and Bush, who were more conservative and authoritarian and waged wars accross the globe. Ukraine not having nukes is what got them invaded today. America will not allow Ukraine to have nukes. But there could be American controlled nukes in Ukraine. When America says Ukraine should pursue freedom, what means is the Ukraine should have freedom to follow American way of life. The y should not have the freedom to follow the Russian way of life. They favor democracy when the democratically elected candidate favors the west. There is a reason why the people of Taiwan prefer to maintain the status quo as opposed to complete autonomy. Even the United States do not recognize Taiwan as a state. They need to appear neutral so as not provoke the big guy. That is what Putin also wanted: Ukraine should be neutral, if not pro Russian. This was a reasonable thing to ask for. Just do not give membership to Ukraine to anything European. This is too much to ask for from the west, apparently. I do not have a scenario to give you. What I am saying is that do not need one, to be frank. US certainly did not need one to go on with invasion of Iraq. Why would you hold Russia to a different standard? This is what I do not get. You think Western security interests are normal and Russian security interests are evil. The point is to stop NATO from ever having a sliver of chance to take advantage of Ukraine. So I the scenario that I am trying to give you is the scenario they do not want to see happening.

India is mostly neutral, officially. People have all sorts of biases and attachments which they scream out on social media. But the government is going with a neutral stance overall.

It is e-books over physical ones, all day every day.

@BlueOak I agree that there could be multiple reasons for wars. But I would like to see the same kind of scrutiny for the rhetoric when western leaders say it. The west also wants to secure global trade for themselves, but they do it in the name of democracy and freedom, so people do not take it seriously. I want both of them to be judged on the same standards.

I like this video even though it paints a simplistic picture somewhat. 1. Gorbachev was sort of manipulated or led to believe, to put it nicely, that the NATO would not expand eastwards. The western leaders including the leadership of NATO knew that they were not going to keep their promise. This would have made more sense once you find that Clinton pushed for the expansion despite republicans opposing it, after discussing it with the executives from the Lockheed Martin and Boeing. They were well aware that NATO expansion was in the cards but did not reveal that to Gorbachev. So, it is totally normal for Russia to feel betrayed. The narrator of the video knows a lot of stuff that he is intentionally hiding. There was no ambiguity or lack of clarity into what the Gorbachev heard. The western leader lied so that they could get over with the reunification with Germany. 2. The narrator admits that the Russian invasion of Georgia was indeed due to the opening the membership to NATO. So he is aware that Putin could use invasion as a response to NATO membership invitation to countries. Putin did not trust the west enough to bank on their promise of not letting Ukraine NATO. That is if Ukraine had no plans to join NATO at all. But Putin did not perceive it like that at all. Of course, I am not justifying the Ukraine war as if anybody doing anything is giving the license to kill and invade sovereign countries. Putin is the only one at fault for starting this bloody war. Nothing could justify it. It is just that NATO should be blamed for creating the environment that they know would definitely result in an invasion. 3. IF NATO expansion is not the cause of the war, then what is the cause of the war for real? It could be geopolitical advantages, but it again seems unlikely that Putin is willing to pay such a huge price for natural resources.

I can give you many scenarios if you have the empathy to relate to them. 1. Cuban Missile Crisis The United States was scared the shit out their pants when the Soviet Union deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba, in response to the US deploying missiles in Turkey and Italy. US had to negotiate with the USSR to get the missiles out of Cuba. You could easily argue that the United States were far advanced than USSR being a nuclear power with deterrent capabilities. This is a scenario of the of "Soviet expansion" being threatening to the US. Two nuclear power getting closer leading to rising tensions risking a nuclear war is not a good idea. 2. Iraq war. The bush administration was scared for the peace and security of the United States and they set out to Iraq to seek the destruction of their WMDs. There was not even a proof that there were any such weapons at all. But the United States was threatened, and they invaded. Even America had nukes, so why did they invade? If the US can be threatened with imaginary WMDs halfway across the globe, and then invade them, why do you think that Russia's fear of Ukraine joining NATO and hosting nuclear weapons is delusional? Note that by the time there are nuclear weapons in the Ukraine, it is too late. The world might go into a full-blown nuclear war. So, Putin did the preemptive strike no not let NATO ever come there in the first place. As far as Russia is concerned, NATO is the biggest nuclear power and sharing border with them will not lead to anything good. Russians will also have aspirations of security just like the US. They might be forced to invade and make bad decisions in lieu of watching the slow demise Infront of their eyes. When Clinton says he is expanding NATO to promote peace and stability in Europe, you take that at face value. But when Putin says he invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO expansion, you hesitate to believe him. Why?

Notice how you can't answer the question directly. But the Israeli constitution makes it very clear. So you don't have to. Honestly we are good. I don't intend to change your mind. You are entitled to defend Israel because it's your state.

@Nivsch Hey man it's a straightforward question. Do you think Jewish settlements are a national value?

"Jewish settlements are a national value." Isn't that enough of an apartheid for you?

It's literally coded into your legislature. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Nation-State_of_the_Jewish_People The state of Israel is here to advance whatever the jews wanted and views the *jewish settlements as a national value*. Apartheid state is one that seperates people based on race or ethnicity. Here the ethnicity of jews are given more relevance than other ethnicities and their causes are seen as lesser to that of other ethnicities in Israel. I can add plenty of jews who agree with me as well.

The second video you linked is utter trash and riddled with subtle western biases that I couldn't even keep watching it. NATO is not here to provide security for the Baltic states and to protect them from Russian aggression. Lol. You have to relinquish the idea that US/NATO is some sort of global police that comes to heroically save helpless nations from the scary giant evil Russia. Real world is not Hollywood lol. NATO is here to secure their own interests. Which is to create wars to the profits of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. I can comment on more bullshit in the video if you want but I don't see the point. I agree with most of what Mearsheimer asserts. Americans are too myopic to get the point he is making.

That's from your perspective. What's ZERO is the empathy of the Americans or the collective west. They just can never put themselves in the shoes of other nations and see the world from their perspective. NATO is basically controlled by Washington. And Washington is controlled by the military industrial complex which needs endless wars to fatten it's pockets. It's a sick denegerate system and any country is wise to not Trust America and their flimsy promises. NATO itself was created to counter the Soviet Union. So they don't even have a legit purpose to stay alive and was in the process of decay. So as the military industrial complex. They need a new enemy to stay relevant. So the policy to push NATO eastwards started way back in the 90s Clinton Administration. Who do you think persuaded to push NATO expansion? The Military Industrial Complex. Of course. Sell weapons. Spill blood. Billions in profit. Of course their end goal was to get a long lasting war with Russia. You have to be beyond oblivious to not see this especially in the light of all that is happening right now.

Pretty low bar for being considered evolved. I see it in India everyday.

The CIA are even smarter. You can hunt down the "high IQ rich" folks if they want. Only their HQ. Their business still operates in US, EU etc. They still need to move money to HQ Heard that even Dubai started introducing taxes. These havens exist because the government let them. And if the government want to get you, they will. Green countries have policies that you might think are going Nazi on rich people.

They can leave. But they can't transfer their wealth with them. There can be policies to that can't be gamed by packing bags and leaving the country. Although taxing the rich shouldn't be the absolute best priority of any society at the moment. It's only a secondary goal. There are better things to do to bring fairness in business.

Left or right are labels that are applicable to ideas, not individuals. You are correct in the sense we should not be labelling people as leftists or rightists. But we need to categorize ideas and label them. So labels are quite useful in that sense.

Give it a try for yourself and then report back. It is a pain in the ass, and you will not be able to make sense of anything. I am talking from experience. Even proper lawyers struggle to make sense of this. Correct discussions starts from policy.

Lame reasoning. Israel or jews across the entire world does not even have enough people to be considered "popular". Who's popularity are they protecting? BBC released an entire documentary on how democracy is losing grounds in India. They did not care about offending a billion people. CNN reports on the roughly the same grounds. They do not care about popularity at all. Just imagine if US passed a bill giving exclusive rights to whites, and described America as the land of white people and described white settlement as a national value. Will CNN not report that in fear of being unpopular? That is what is happening in Israel. I ought to get this information from the BBC/CNN not from YouTubers with less than 200k subs.

I do not want CNN to say that. That is my conclusion. I totally agree. What I expect CNN to do is factual reporting on what is happening in Israel.

The BBC will rather report that Modi is a fascist rather than Israel being full blown far right racist state that is far worse than what South Africa has once been.

The intensity of your voice matters. What tipped me over was the non mainstream small YouTuber news channels. What happened to mainstream ones like CNN who poise themselves to do factual reporting on global issues. And the BBC? Those small youtuber channels are screaming in the middle of nowhere and CNN is whispering in the crowds.

What is striking is when the US media who throws tantrum on the slightest remark of racism in the US is dead silent of the gross injustices on apartheid state of Israel. Much of the reason I supported Israel initially is because of the void of this information and I judged Israel in good faith.

If that is what you want to do, then bring in your lawyer. Collect all the judgements released by courts. Even some of my lawyer friends struggle to make sense of the legal language and you want to discuss all that on an internet forum. It's clearly out of scope. Try reading those judgements released by the courts on any matter. You will never want to discuss anything about laws ever again.