Putin's war

Not sure why those kids should prevent people from speaking out about Ukraine. Are you saying that people who were not Russians killed by people who were not Ukrainians justifies the killing of Ukrainians by Russians? Genocide in Rwanda means you can't speak up here? Deaths in concentration camps in WW2 means you can't say anything about Ukraine? And murders by the Golden Horde in the 1300's and 1400's mean you can't say anything about Ukraine? And pillaging by the Norse against the English coast in the 1100's means you can't speak out against what is happening in Ukraine? Even if you've never spoken out against the atrocities we inflict upon one another in the past, now is as good a time as ever to start.

I don't remember anymention of the illegal war in Iraq until now.

Yet as soon as Putin invades Ukraine the Quislings can't stop going on about it.

The truly crazy part is: these are the guys who were ginning Trump to go in and sort out Syria. And they supported the war in Iraq from day one till today.

US forces wiped out a Wagner Group force and a Russian Army force in Syria as well.

No, the people of the U.S. have every right to speak their mind.

However, some of us wonder at the hypocrisy of some of the people in this country when there was no cry for the war criminals of the U.S. to be brought to justice for their crimes in Iraq.

I suspect it may be related to the difficulty of seeing ourselves directly expanded to our identity as Americans. It's egoism on one hand, and nationalism on the other hand. I call it the Medusa effect. It's a defense mechanism we're all endowed with and struggle with.

Basically it's just the inability or difficulty to see our own flaws as individuals or nationalists.

You could also point out there haven't been a 100 war crime trials in the last twenty years - every year fill with war all over the planet.

"Another platform for Western domination and narcissism": Russia keeps its word, leaves the Council of Europe - and thus denounces the European Convention on Human Rights.

According to Russia, it will withdraw from the Council of Europe.
"The decision to leave the Council of Europe has been taken. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's letter to this effect has been handed over to the organisation's Secretary General," the head of the Russian delegation to the Council's Parliamentary Assembly, Pyotr Tolstoy, said, according to the Interfax agency. "Russia is voluntarily withdrawing from the Council of Europe, this is a balanced and well-considered decision."

There is really only one way this war should end: Russia stops bombing its neighbouring country and brings back its soldiers.

That Ukraine is forced to negotiate with the regime that invaded it is intolerable. And it is almost indecent, politically and morally, in view of the images of civilians killed, to talk about what Ukraine should do to stop the terror.
It is not the attacked that has the duty to do something, but the attacker.

The war in Ukraine is not the same as the war in Bosnia or Kosovo in the 1990s. Russia is not Serbia. The West could force the regime in Belgrade to give up through military pressure. This is not possible with Moscow, unless the USA and Europe want to accept the possibility of their own destruction.

That is why, for example, the debate about a no-fly zone for Ukraine, an instrument that was effective in the Balkans 30 years ago, is so pointless and at the same time so dangerous. One can understand why Ukrainian President Volodimir Selensky is calling for it. But it is also easy to see why NATO has so far refused to take this step: contrary to what Putin claims, it does not want to wage war against the nuclear power Russia.

A second historical analogy that is often heard at the moment does not fit the situation either: Munich 1938. This refers to the agreement that Great Britain, France and Italy concluded with Hitler's Germany in that year, which left parts of Czechoslovakia to the German dictator - the low point of Western appeasement policy. Ukraine must not be left to Putin, they say. Otherwise he will march on and attack Poland and the Baltic States, just as Adolf Hitler once did.

But Hitler had no atomic bombs. Perhaps he could actually have been stopped in 1938 if Britain and France had resisted militarily at the time. Russia, on the other hand, has nuclear weapons. This is not a trivial difference, but a fundamental, even existential one. It seems to have become almost chic in some circles to nonchalantly state that the Third World War had actually started long ago. However, the very fact that commentators can type this nonsense into their laptops undisturbed refutes their thesis: if World War III had actually already broken out, they would have other things to worry about than their blog entries.

The world is perhaps sinking into a new Cold War between the West on the one side and Russia, and possibly China, on the other. But up to now it has been a cold war, except for the territory of Ukraine. Preventing it from becoming a hot war, or at worst a nuclear war, is worthwhile at all costs. Munich 1938 is a tempting historical reference point because it contains such clear moral lessons. But perhaps a look at the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and how a secretly negotiated compromise prevented a catastrophe, would be more helpful.

What does this mean for the question of how the war in Ukraine will end? In any case, it means that Putin will have more say in this ending - and perhaps get more concessions - than the West and Ukraine like. That is bitter. But it is the reality.
Translated opinion (slightly shortened) published by Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

The action had been planned for days, but the route was top secret: a delegation from the EU countries Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia made its way through Ukraine by train. Now it has arrived in embattled Kiev.



The heads of government of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia have arrived in Kiev, according to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. In the evening, he posted pictures on Twitter showing him with his deputy Jaroslaw Kaczynski as well as Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and his Slovenian counterpart Janez Jansa at a table with a map of Ukraine.

It appears that most of the people in Ukraine would object to your conclusion here.

What are you saying? That Ukrainians wish to be a part of Russia?

Russia has overtaken Iran to earn the unenviable title of the world's most sanctioned country as Western countries slap thousands of sanctions targeting Russian entities and individuals in response to the Kremlin's war against Ukraine.

Russia has been pounded with close to 4,000 sanctions since February 22, a day after President Vladimir Putin recognized two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine as independent states and ordered the dispatching of troops to the region, according to Castellum.AI, a global sanctions-tracking database.

I hope he's not saying that. Obviously never lived near Ukrainians growing up or listened to the stories from their parents.

My eight day old response – you're wrong.

Wat are you trying to say? That Putin gets a free one? He's already cleared that book.

You do remember, that you RWers pushed for Iraq and Afghanistan and we lefties didn't, right?

If you want to discuss the Iraq war, please do it on one of the older threads about it or start a new one.
I would like that people stay on the topic of my thread.

Thank you.

That's the tactic, divert the thread from the subject, talk about anything as long as it's not Ukraine.

Perhaps you've mispoken:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden
Sweden:
Main articles: List of political parties in Sweden and Elections in Sweden
The Riksdag chamber, at the time of a vote, in 2009

The Swedish Social Democratic Party has played a leading role in Swedish politics since 1917, after the Reformists had confirmed their strength and the left-wing revolutionaries formed their own party. After 1932, most governments have been dominated by the Social Democrats. Only five general elections since World War II—1976, 1979, 1991, 2006 and 2010—have given the assembled bloc of centre-right parties enough seats in the Riksdag to form a government.

For over 50 years, Sweden had had five parties who continually received enough votes to gain seats in the Riksdag—the Social Democrats, the Moderate Party, the Centre Party, the Liberal People's Party and the Left Party—before the Green Party became the sixth party in the 1988 election. In the 1991 election, while the Greens lost their seats, two new parties gained seats for the first time: the Christian Democrats and New Democracy. The 1994 election saw the return of the Greens and the demise of New Democracy. It was not until elections in 2010 that an eighth party, the Sweden Democrats, gained Riksdag seats. In the elections to the European Parliament, parties who have failed to pass the Riksdag threshold have managed to gain representation at that venue: the June List (2004–2009), the Pirate Party (2009–2014), and Feminist Initiative (2014–2019).
The party leaders lined up before the start of the televised live debate on 12 September 2014.

In the 2006 general election the Moderate Party formed the centre-right Alliance for Sweden bloc and won a majority of the Riksdag seats. In the 2010 general election the Alliance contended against a unified left block consisting of the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left Party.[169] The Alliance won a plurality of 173 seats, but remained two seats short of a 175-seat majority. Nevertheless, neither the Alliance, nor the left block, chose to form a coalition with the Sweden Democrats.[170]

The outcome of the 2014 general election resulted in the attainment of more seats by the three centre-left parties in comparison to the centre-right Alliance for Sweden, with the two blocs receiving 159 and 141 seats respectively.[171] The non-aligned Sweden Democrats more than doubled their support and won the remaining 49 seats.[171] On 3 October 2014, Stefan Löfven formed a minority government consisting of the Social Democrats and the Greens.[172][173]

Election turnout in Sweden has always been high by international comparison. Although it declined in recent decades, the latest elections saw an increase in voter turnout (80.11% in 2002, 81.99% in 2006, 84.63% in 2010, 85.81 in 2014)[174] and 87.18% in 2018.[175] Swedish politicians enjoyed a high degree of confidence from the citizens in the 1960s, However, that level of confidence has since declined steadily, and is now at a markedly lower level than in its Scandinavian neighbours.[176]
Administrative divisions


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland#Government_and_politics

Finland

Niinistö's election as a member of the National Coalition Party marks the first time since 1946 that a Finnish President is not a member of either the Social Democratic Party or the Centre Party.
Parliament
Main article: Parliament of Finland
The Parliament of Finland's main building along Mannerheimintie in Töölö, Helsinki
The Session Hall of the Parliament of Finland

The 200-member unicameral Parliament of Finland (Finnish: Eduskunta, Swedish: Riksdag) exercises supreme legislative authority in the country. It may alter the constitution and ordinary laws, dismiss the cabinet, and override presidential vetoes. Its acts are not subject to judicial review; the constitutionality of new laws is assessed by the parliament's constitutional law committee. The parliament is elected for a term of four years using the proportional D'Hondt method within a number of multi-seat constituencies through the most open list multi-member districts. Various parliament committees listen to experts and prepare legislation.

Since universal suffrage was introduced in 1906, the parliament has been dominated by the Centre Party (former Agrarian Union), the National Coalition Party, and the Social Democrats. These parties have enjoyed approximately equal support, and their combined vote has totalled about 65–80% of all votes. Their lowest common total of MPs, 121, was reached in the 2011 elections. For a few decades after 1944, the Communists were a strong fourth party. Due to the electoral system of proportional representation, and the relative reluctance of voters to switch their support between parties, the relative strengths of the parties have commonly varied only slightly from one election to another. However, there have been some long-term trends, such as the rise and fall of the Communists during the Cold War; the steady decline into insignificance of the Liberals and their predecessors from 1906 to 1980; and the rise of the Green League since 1983.

The Marin Cabinet is the incumbent 76th government of Finland. It was formed following the collapse of the Rinne Cabinet and officially took office on 10 December 2019.[126][127] The cabinet consists of a coalition formed by the Social Democratic Party, the Centre Party, the Green League, the Left Alliance, and the Swedish People's Party.[128]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark

Denmark

An industrialised exporter of agricultural produce in the second half of the 19th century, Denmark introduced social and labour-market reforms in the early 20th century, which formed the basis for the present welfare state model and advanced mixed economy. Denmark remained neutral during World War I but regained the northern half of Schleswig in 1920. Danish neutrality was violated in World War II following a swift German invasion in April 1940. During occupation, a resistance movement emerged in 1943 while Iceland declared independence in 1944; Denmark was liberated in May 1945. In 1973, Denmark, together with Greenland but not the Faroes, became a member of what is now the European Union, but negotiated certain opt-outs, such as retaining its own currency, the krone.

Denmark is a highly developed country whose citizens enjoy a high standard of living: the country performs at or near the top in measures of education, health care, civil liberties, democratic governance and LGBT equality.[20][21][22][23] Denmark is a founding member of NATO, the Nordic Council, the OECD, OSCE, and the United Nations; it is also part of the Schengen Area. Denmark maintains close political, cultural, and linguistic ties with its Scandinavian neighbours, with the Danish language being partially mutually intelligible with both Norwegian and Swedish.
Contents


Norway is the same.

If the Democratic Party is Socialist, what might all those Social Democrats be about? They allow for capitalism and there is no doubt some of the larger and oldest family fortunes in the world are from here. And those wealthy families pay big taxes for the privilege of socking it away in wheelbarrows.

Don't you know? Really? They're supposed to invest a certain percentage of their GDP in defense.