Russia invaded Ukraine to expand. They came up with a dozen lame excuses, like protecting Russian speaking people in Crimea from being insulted and to stop the local government (who they called extremists) from taking abandoned Russian military bases, NATO expansion was never a reason they gave for invading.
In Ukraine proper, his stated excuse was that the new Ukrainian government (formed after the Kremlin installed puppet government was ousted) was comprised of NAZIs who were ethnically cleansing Russian speakers in the East, a total fabrication.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/in-putins-words-why-russia-invaded-ukraine/
Try keeping your revisionist Russia centric anti democratic fantasy history to yourself. I know some random internet blowhard failure broadcasting from mommy’s basement told you this alternative fact nonsense, you have got to stop trusting them.

There’s been more NATO expansion in “buffer” nations since Russia invaded than in the 50+ years beforehand, with more coming because they invaded their neighbor…again.

Ukraine will be a NATO country now, so is our business.
Ukraine was in a treaty with the US, so was already our business. We guaranteed their borders against invasion in exchange for their nuclear arsenal. No nation will ever do a nuclear disarmament treaty with America, we don’t keep our word or we would be fighting there.
Russian expansionism isn’t stopped by ignoring it, it’s encouraged. Trump encouraged the expansionism into Ukraine proper (Crimea was Ukraine) when he recognized Russia’s claim on the seized territory, giving the green light to expand their military operations in Eastern Ukraine (that they denied existed but absolutely were there fighting during Trump’s administration and even before, recall Russians shot down a passenger plane in Ukraine in 2014 and never left).

The EU is supportive enough of Ukraine that they just unanimously agreed to $54 billion in military aid, and the EU is our closest trading partner so again, our business. The MAGA ploy to block any aid to Ukraine to aid Russia (hoping it would look bad for Biden) has failed, the EU miraculously stood up as a unified front and agreed to fund Ukraine.
NATO has agreed to admit Ukraine as soon as possible, something never considered before the invasion.


Ukraine is a lost war, lost by Russia…Russia just won’t admit it yet, but their country will be feeling the loss for decades…loss of their army, loss of an entire generation of young men, loss of their economy, loss of hundreds of trade agreements/partners, loss of trillions of dollars, loss of international standing and cooperation, loss of stability. At this point, even if Russia took Ukraine tomorrow, it would be a loss for Russia. They destroyed their prize, and themselves in the process, and the rest of the world is happy to destroy them through a proxy while Russia engages directly and is crushed daily.
Winning!

https://youtu.be/WhILMFdifhk?si=k-egPJ1oDrqKrd_S

Ukraine has already won this war by destroying Russia. It’s exceedingly likely they will also drive the Russians out and may even take some of Russia a s a buffer zone…Russia is losing badly.

I want to expand on this bit. This right here is from the Treaty of Tripoli, which as newtboy noted was ratified unanimously a mere 10 years after the signing of the Constitution. Treaties are part of the "Supreme Law of the Land" and are not just happy words between diplomats - they've the full weight and support of the US legal system behind them.

So VERY CLEARLY, the early politicians of the US had absolutely ZERO objection to the notion that this is NOT a Christian nation. It is secular, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Any claims to the contrary are absurd revisionist history.

CRT is not real outside of law school. It’s a big racist lie. It’s not taught in grade school.

Edit: Yes, if true, actual CRT, the law school class, was banned in grade school, nothing would change….but you want the intentional misuse and bastardization of the phrase to mean any mention of racial disparity, racist actions, slavery, Jim Crow, racist policies including those adopted by the Republican Party at the same time those racist policies were abandoned by Democrats in the late 60’s early 70’s, any mention of lynching, the KKK, the fact that non whites were not allowed to vote, the fact that non whites were not considered full human beings in the constitution, etc to all be under the name “CRT” and want it all to be removed from schools. You want to rewrite history so it resembles the false image you think you project. It’s absolutely moronic, attempted forced ignorance. The Republican plan for children because ignorance makes it easy to abuse and control the populace.

American history is real….and really racist.
By intentionally mislabeling anything about our racist history as “CRT”, a right wing buzz word they have stripped of any actual meaning to create some fantasy racial boogeyman they can point to to excuse blatant racist policy and actions, you think that allows you to pretend it doesn’t exist, to deny it, and to return to it. Removing any mention of our racist history is racist, stupid, and is a ploy to convince right wing morons that racism isn’t real, never happened, and so doesn’t need any fixing or even teaching. It erases an ENORMOUS part of American history, and all of black American history. You love that.

You bold faced liar. That’s EXACTLY what “anti CRT” is about, renaming the slave trade as “Africans immigrating”, calling slavery “job security”, pretending that Lincoln ended racism completely (but being confused because in your mind slavery is a hoax), ignoring the murderous atrocities during reconstruction, ignoring the blatant often deadly racism that was the norm through the 70’s, and the institutional racism that still exists, never mentioning and pretending attacks against blacks like Tulsa and others, mass murders, arsons, terrorism, all by law enforcement so there’s no legal remedies for the survivors….(The Tulsa race massacre took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of White residents, some of whom had been deputized and given weapons by city officials, attacked Black residents and destroyed homes and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, US)…never happened. The anti CRT movement is about erasing that history so they 1)don’t feel guilty or uncomfortable for trying to defend or excuse having a murderously racist history, and 2)so it’s easier to return to that racist society with minimal effort because they won’t know where it leads.

Why? Because the senators that were complicit all switched to the Republican Party after the southern strategy, and those who believed in equality and rights for all switched to the Democratic Party. Another bit of racist history you personally love to deny despite it being the historical, undeniable record of our history. They don’t want to be asked, because they either answer truthfully and are proven to be racists, or lie and lose their racist voter base. Racists are nearly all…99%+-, right wingers. They do not belong to the party trying to eradicate racism. They belong to the party that openly accepts and fosters racism, and pretends, often insists it doesn’t exist when they’re in public….your party. The party of racists, white nationalists, insurrectionists, revisionists, anti American, pro Russian, sexist, anti democracy, anti education ignoramuses.

Quit bringing nothing but dishonest bold faced lies and rewritten history to the table. That means you leave, because dishonest bold faced lies and revisionist history are all you ever spout….because you are a dishonest liar and blatant consistent racist….and a sexist.

LBGTOW (little boys going their own way)….that describes you people well, we wish you would follow through. Go on now…shoo. Go your own way, buy your own country and go there. See for yourself just where unopposed right wing nonsense leads, just leave the US out of it. Ask Musk to forget Twitter and buy Guatemala or an island nation, invite Trump to lead for life, then GO! You have so many issues with other people having rights, so GTFO and create your own white male controlled, white right wing utopia…or move to Russia….but don’t expect to get to come back when it devolves into criminal despotism, economic collapse, and ecological disaster.

Stopped watching at "The never ending killing fields of Iraq".

Now, if the speaker goes on to accuse Bush Sr. for failing to remove Saddam after having Liberated Kuwait, I judged too quickly. I'm pretty confident though that this is just more of the revisionist history garbage blaming Bush Sr. for Iraq, rather than Saddam's campaign of genocide against his own people and his conquest of Kuwait.

I mean, if you want to rail against American exceptionalism, at least have the decency to blame the presidents prior to Bush(Carter and Reagan) who supported Saddam after the Iranian revolution, rather than the American president who finally took the right side against one of the most brutal tyrants and dictators of his time.

Merrimack Garland was often right leaning and above reproach, and in your words, "his entire life was ruined" by dickheaded obstructionist republicans that wouldn't allow the unAmerican Muslim black activist to impact the supreme court if they could obstruct it, only they get to do that in their favor by any underhanded means necessary. Recall, they were proud of their pure obstructionist position from day one of Obama, pretty infantile to complain now that Trump doesn't get cooperation with his disastrous hyper partisan divisive plans and nominations.

Really, no republican argued against them? Sotomayor 68-31, Kagen 63-37, barely confirmed with 3 votes to spare, that's not no republican argument, and not confirmed with ease. You are such a blatant revisionist or so authoritatively ignorant it's astonishing and makes any discussion a chore, requiring I teach you actual history before replying to your always incorrect claims. Try googling before spouting more easily debunked nonsense, have some pride. Only trolls don't care that 98% of their claims are dead wrong and easily proven so.

In this case, revisionist history of probable fiction.

I can't recommend Malcolm's podcast, Revisionist History, highly enough!

ok,first off?
this is heritage foundation,a right wing think tank.
this by itself is not terribly damning.

however.

bridgette gabriel is a spokeswoman for the FRC:family research center.

the FRC,along with james dobson's "focus on the family" ,were both funded with seed money from the families of betsy devos and erik prince,the amway pyramid scheme dynasty.

so what enoch?
what's the big deal?

well,when you understand the underlying religious philosophies of the the devos/prince family.you know that they are christian supremacists who wish to install an amercian government that adheres to "christian" laws and "christian" values.

yeah..you know that whole "sharia" law that has rightwingers pissing themselves? same thing,but this is with JESUS,so it has to be good,right?

and what this gabriel woman does is utter revisionist history to fit her own narrative and agenda.i am talking fucking blatant,but since most americans don't even know their OWN history,never mind the history of a religion they profess to love and worship,they just lap this womans bullshit up as if it were spoken from god's own lips.

because let us be frank,and clear.

christian right wingers literally piss themselves at the thought of muslims.and this woman hand feeds that fear.

this woman is a fucking disgrace.
9/11!
benghazi!

this woman feeds on your ignorance.
stop being a fucking tool to demagogues like this fucking twat waffle.

@transmorpher
i would say we disagree but i cant even say that.
you didn't counter ANYTHING i said,you just accused me of being dishonest.

which has been pretty much your position this entire thread.i thought i was doing you a solid by laying down some history,which helps explain some facets of radical islam.

notice my wording:facets.

do you realize that i taught comparative religion and cultural religious history?
do you realize just how foolish you appear to me right now?

you want to counter my argument....by not countering my argument,and implying i am being dishonest.

ok sweetheart,
i think i see the problem here.
YOU are seeing the dynamic through a singular lens.

you want to ignore the historical implications and simply focus on islam itself?
ok,that's fine.
i find it stupid,short sighted and incredibly biased,but whatever..

yoooou have an agenda to get to don't ya?

ok.
then let us just strip the dynamic of ALL historical implications and focus solely on islam itself.
(which is why you mentioned Maajid Nawaz, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris, Hitchens )
you clever clever boy...
i see what you did there../ruffles hair.
you are SO adorable when you are being myopic and lazy!

so what would you like to discuss?
how islam is in desperate need of a reformation?
or maybe how the original intent of islam from a spiritual perspective was hi-jacked by his cousins and turned into a political conquest machine,that subjugated ...

you know what?
why am i bothering?
you have revealed yourself to be a condescending,sanctimonious know-nothing.who read a couple of books and thinks he 'get's it".

no dude..you read sam harris.

look man,
i am not here defending islam,because as religions go,islam is kinda shit.
but to ignore how neoliberalism and american interventionism have amplified,and worsened and already crappy situation.

that's not even intellectually dishonest.
that is just plain lazy.

whats next?
you gonna do some 'thought experiments" and try to argue that at least america's "intentions" were nobel?

you WERE! weren't you!!

and this little revisionist nugget "Those countries have had problems long before any western intervention."

oooh really?
because,unlike YOU,i actually know the history of that region.
so if you want we can compare how some cities and countries were considered "progressive" and even "liberal",and even some (granted,only a few) that were considered "secular" *gasp*.

how about this,instead of me repeatedly taking you to the woodshed to give ya some of that "learnin",how about you just go look up the history of kabul,afghanistan.

that's it.just one city.

and then come back and tell me that neoliberalism,colonialism and good old fashioned empire building hasn't been a major force in the rise in fundamentalism and radicalization in the middle east.

it looks like you really ARE going to make go all the way back to the dark ages!

and dude..seriously..hitchens ROCKED,but sam harris?
no..juuust no.
i don't do apologists as a counter argument.

edit:i will say that i agree with this "There are actual muslims (such as Maajid Nawaz)that say islam has a problem(especially particular strands of it), and it needs reform. Embracing the muslims who want reform is the only way forward."

you mean that islam may need a reformation?
*gasps*/clasps hands to face.
didn't i fucking already SAY that?

ah well,foiled by my pedantic ways.

Some refugees arrived during the war, but not that many. Before that, Jews were about 8%of the population, so barely "significant".
Invaders came in mass soon afterwards, ignoring local laws and wishes, causing major problems, they didn't assimilate, they grabbed land, then power from the natives, and ended the peaceful coexistence that had lasted centuries before they invaded. The Nazis were long gone when they did this in about 1948, and not a factor at all then, and certainly not in 1974 when the U.N. suggested the two state solution (as you suggest), which might have worked if not for Israel's insistence on not moving or stopping expansionist "settlers" (read invaders) in Palestinian territory and supporting them with the military, and has been supported by Palestinians since the mid 70's (and publicly by their 'leaders' since 82), while Israel and the U.S. veto to this day, (and get upset when it's even mentioned internationally).

When you steal the land and push the locals out, it's not a surprise that their allies and neighbors come to their defense, I hope ours would, and I'm sure the European Jews wish their neighbors had.

It was an invasion by European Jewish people after the war was over (not refugees) with militarily superior allies that helped them and sold/gave them vastly superior weaponry.

Talk about revisionist history BS.

I continue to think them violent invaders, and horrifically racist genocidal ones at that.

Edit: It's anti-Zionist hate mongering, btw. The religion has nothing to do with it.

I've heard this revisionist history BS so many times now I just can't stand it anymore. There was no magical 'gifting' of Palestinian land to invading European Jews. That's a completely baseless self justification for Middle Eastern anti-jewish hate mongering.

Jewish people were a significant percentage of the population in Palestine long before the Nazi's and their ilk started making Europe look unpleasant. They were Palestinians themselves, not invaders. Both Arab and Jewish Palestinians lived side by side in Palestine for a long, long time before the 1940s. Clearly, come the 1940's there was a large influx of Jewish people from Europe. Calling them 'invaders' versus refugees though seems an easy call given the holocaust and Nazi occupation of the whole of Europe. Still, you insist on calling them invaders. I don't have words for how disgusting that is.

So, in the mid 1940's we have a Palestine loaded with Jewish and Arab Palestinians, plus a good number of Jewish refugees. The tensions between those groups escalates into a full on civil war. Not an invasion, but a civil war between Jewish and Arab palestinians where the only group remotely fitting the 'invader' role are holocaust survivor refugees now in a country were there is AGAIN a war against them on the basis of being Jews. I'm not sure I think they are as callously the aggressor. What is more, upon the UN mandating a two state solution to the whole mess, the Jewish Palestinians immediately accepted. The Arab Palestinians though appealed to the Arab league, and many of the leaders within it that stood alongside the Nazi's pontificating solutions to 'the problem'. So now a fledgling independent Jewish state spent it's first day receiving a join declaration of war upon it by all it's neighbouring countries that each out numbered it grossly. I again can't but see the Israeli fighting as defensive. In fact, I must insist it was an existential fight that, should they have lost, would have us discussing the second and even worse holocaust of the European Jews that fled to Palestine.

But I know it's popular today among pseudo intellectual circles to just declare Israel an invasion and occupation by a foreign army of vastly militarily superior super jews. It's a fantasy though, and it's one that was scripted up by hateful racists to justify their hatred. None of that says anything about white-washing Israeli policies in the decades following. If you want to call them invaders from the start though you are speaking a truly horrific set of lies.

The suffragettes weren't feminists. If you want to honour the beginnings of the modern push for sex equality, then you owe your allegiance to such thinkers as John Locke, Jeremy Bentham and JS Mill - none of whom was a feminist. The entire first wave of feminism is a revisionist fiction.

This is on a par with the hideous christian impulse to annex and purloin all good behaviour into itself - "christian driver", "do the christian thing", "christian decency". So too, feminism appropriates every historical social advance in order to declare that, axiomatically, all female freedom ultimately derives from its doctrine, without which women would be slaves of the constantly threatening patriarchy.

In reality feminism is a phenomenon of the sixties - that's the nineteen sixties - with roots stretching back no more than a decade or two; which did a substantial amount of useful work in spite of its many aesthetic and ideological flaws, and which has now essentially petered out to be supplanted by, god help us, the advent of the filthy third wave and its hordes of ranting SJWs.

@Lawdeedaw

There's so much factually wrong here, I don't know where to begin. Let's start with this:

"That rape and mutilation has been going on for centuries but was significant in the Second Sino-Japanese War, a distinct war in and of itself."

Japan was in a state of almost complete isolation from the rest of the world between the years of 1633 and 1853. Even after the period of isolation ended, Japan was too busy for decades industrializing to be rampaging through China, as you suggest.

Japan DID eventually get involved in Chinese politics and in fact went to war with them in the First Sino-Japanese War... in 1894. There are no reports of atrocities committed by the Japanese military during this conflict. In fact, quite the opposite, Japan would release Chinese prisoners of war once they promised not to take up arms against Japan again.

The subjugation of Taiwan (which was ceded to Japan at the end of the first Sino-Japanese War but resisted Japanese rule) is a different story. However, accounts of what exactly happened are sketchy and most of the information we have is anecdotal. What can be gleaned from these anecdotes is that the Formasians put up a fierce guerrilla resistance campaign and that the Japanese tortured and killed anyone suspected of aiding the resistance. Still, it doesn't appear to have been on the same scale as the massacres which occurred during the Rape of Nanking.

As you mentioned, some of the most awful abuses were done during the Second Sino-Japanese War between 1937 and 1945 (the Rape of nanking occurred during this war). The abuse ended Japan's defeat in WWII.

What you can see here by doing the math, is that Japan's military abuses in China lasted a grand total of 50 years--from the subjugation of Formosa (Taiwan) to the end of World War 2--not "centuries."

Next, let's talk about misrepresentation. You seem to be implying that Japanese textbooks don't say that Japan is the aggressor in WW2 (or previous conflicts). As I pointed out in my last post, that is flat-out wrong. There is ONE textbook that was approved for use that whitewashes the history but that book has been ignored an not used by the vast majority of schools in Japan.

If you want to criticize Japanese textbooks, you could criticize them on the grounds that though they mention the terrible things that Japanese forces did, they don't go into a whole lot of detail. See this article for more information.

As far as Abe goes, what exactly has he said that is so terrible? Yes, he hangs out with revisionists. Yes, he has expressed his opinion that Japan should stop apologizing for WWII and start looking to the future instead of the past. Yes, he has said that the issue of "comfort women" should be re-examined in light of claims that some of evidence of their existence was fabricated. But these are not really radical statements by any means. And many people and newspapers do strongly and openly disagree with his statements, so this idea that Japanese people don't challenge him is completely wrong as well.

Yasukuni is a total clusterfuck of a situation. It is a shrine to ALL of Japan's war dead. This includes war criminals, but it also includes regular soldiers just doing their duty. In terms of Shinto beliefs, all of their souls now reside there. Basically, if you want to pay your respects to someone who died in military service in Japan, you have to go there to "see them."

Abe is a total dumbass (and the press let him know it) for going there because he knows already how China and Korea will perceive it, but on the other hand his going there does not mean in any way that he reveres the war criminals who are interred there. I have no idea what his personal views are but publically he has stated that he and his wife go there to remind themselves about the terrible toll war had on Japan the last time Japan engaged in it.

Finally, as for the link you provided, it was to a year-old opinion piece that lacks context. Abe made that statement at a time when it was revealed that some of the evidence of the existence of comfort women in Japan had been faked. It was later decided that the apology would not be changed. In fact, The Japan Times is reporting that it is likely that Abe will mention that "comfort women" had their human rights violated by Japan in his upcoming address on the end of WWII, so the comparison of him to Ahmadinejad is a bit far-fetched.

Of course most Japanese are taught that. Who the fuck said otherwise? Oh, by hiding their history you thought I meant they didn't learn about it at all? Well that's a stupid assumption. You know back in the 1960s Americans "learned" about slavery and our part in it, yet it was often prefaced by "those Negros are inferior so it was great times" or "it was really about federal expansion and not those Negros who should know their place." "Misrepresentation" is a hell of a concept.

And I wasn't even speaking about WW2, so where you got that from I have no utter clue? I didn't even hint at it. That rape and mutilation has been going on for centuries but was significant in the Second Sino-Japanese War, a distinct war in and of itself.

I guess what really pisses me off is that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, elected by Japan (not just one side, but everyone, from the Emperor to the Diet, who themselves are elected by THE PEOPLE) is a revisionist who is allowed to say his shit by the people of Japan. This isn't a position that is allowed in the civilized world anymore. Fuck, even Iran's Ahmadinejad denied the Holocaust and had to laugh it off as misspeaking. Abe is so flaunting he even visited Yasukuni Shrine, a place that holds more than 1 thousand war criminals in it.

Imagine a German leader going to a memorial for 1 thousand Nazi heroes, perhaps including Hitler himself? Oh, and the fact that those criminals were accepted after their punishments, is terrifying.

Notice something else. I never said that China has the right to slaughter everyone--which gives plenty of pre-acknowledgement to your point that this hateful revisionism is put out by right-wingers (And condoned by all the cowards on the left.) This is because, much as Germans on the left allowed the slaughter of the Jews, most cannot be held directly responsible for a force greater than them. In this case, there is no force greater, but that is beside the point.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/opinion/mr-abes-dangerous-revisionism.html?_r=0

Actually, Japanese kids learn about Unit 731, the rape of Nanking, and the issue of "comfort women" (though they are still not called by their proper term "sex slaves"). See here for more info.

What is controversial is that the right-wingers managed to get a textbook approved by the Ministry of Education that whitewashes Japan's military past--a textbook, by the way, that was shunned by almost every Board of Education in Japan (it was used by only 0.039% of the schools in Japan).

The notion that Japanese people are unaware of the crimes committed by the Japanese military during WWII is utterly false. As I mentioned, there are revisionist right-wingers out there who are actively working to change that but so far they have been unsuccessful.