BBC is just way way better at it, way more subtle, having been doing this for 100 years. When push comes to shove they toe the line just like Russian or Chinese media. RT just doesn't have the same funding or talent to make stories more sophisticated. Obviously, the gov must hide any links to BBC to maintain the appearance of free press. But I'm sure pressure is exerted one way or the other, for example:
> From the late 1930s until the end of the Cold War, MI5 had an officer at the BBC vetting editorial applicants.
Looking at how UK and EU now outright banned Russian TV and media, I think it would go unnoticed if they started removing or just not hiring certain inconvenient journalists. Certain thoughts are just forbidden these days; it's career suicide to even doubt the gov line, just like during covid when it was practically forbidden to question gov measures or vaccines.
The BBC sometimes expresses a fairly conservative world-view (I mean conservative in the traditional sense, not populist like Boris Johnson) which sometimes happens to broadly align with the government's perspective. I think the BBC often seeks the outsider perspective, but seldom centres it.
The current UK government is not as enthusiastic about the BBC as they might be; and the BBC's senior management treats its relationship with the government as something to be managed.
The BBC is not a monolith. Even if the government was able to unduly influence some people inside the BBC, that influence wouldn't extend to much of the BBC's output, because frankly the BBC is not very good at operating as a single joined-up entity.
That's an absurd comparison. Tory may threaten BBC. There are still articles which stop just short of "here's how Boris lied" (https://www.bbc.com/news/60679290) On the other hand RT publishes what Kremlin wants it publish. There is no opposing view allowed. They'd simply not exist if they wanted to be independent.
It's more than a name change though isn't it? It's access to women only spaces and women only sports etc. This is what people are really upset about. I don't think people actually care about name changes.
I don’t see Danielle trying to compete in women only sports here, so this boils down to throwing a temper tantrum like a toddler and being rude because you (as in Lunduke, not you as a poster Im answering to) think you have a right to determine how a person feels about themselves, more than the person. There is no excuse for it.
Not for reactors that have been shut down for more than 20 years. Decay heat removal from a shut down reactor is an issue for days or perhaps weeks after shutdown, not years.
Russia will take control of all or most nuclear power plants and other infrastructure. At which point it's only a matter of time until the people of Ukraine will surrender with no water or electricity.
As it stands the West can do nothing.
In the case that NATO starts shooting, the sarcophagus over Chernobyl can be bombed (Putin can blame Ukrainians here).
It seems to be that there's no way out for the Ukrainians :(
> Russia will take control of all or most nuclear power plants and other infrastructure. At which point it's only a matter of time until the people of Ukraine will surrender with no water or electricity.
I doubt Ukraine will surrender as long as it can supply its forces with food, drinking water, and ammo.
> As it stands the West can do nothing.
The West can do a lot of things that it chooses not to do out of fear. IMHO one of the biggest mistakes it has made has been to be very, very clear about what it won't do, while letting the Russians be very, very unclear about what it won't do. The result has been the Russian leadership is not afraid, and has taken advantage of the freedom that affords to bomb the shit out of Ukraine.
If NATO had massed soldiers in Poland in January and been deliberately ambiguous about its intentions, it's quite possible that Russia might not have invaded Ukraine at all (and then mocked the NATO by saying "LOL guys, we were really just doing exercises").
Supplying the Ukrainians with food, water and weapons is a good start. Supplying them early warnings about troop movements from satellite imagery and cracked Russian communications would be a second, and it would be very deniable to boot. Sanctions will reduce the ability of the Russians to keep up the offensive in the mid-term, and there is indirect pressure to be exerted via the Chinese (who are miffed at the lack of warning they got from "close friend" Putin about his plans) and other diplomatic means. And finally there are of course all sorts of black ops you can do in an active warzone, similar to how Russia deployed "little green men" in Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014.
> Supplying the Ukrainians with food, water and weapons is a good start.
Countries have been very public about doing this.
> Supplying them early warnings about troop movements from satellite imagery and cracked Russian communications would be a second, and it would be very deniable to boot.
They're pretty obviously doing this, Ukranian forces seem to have a lot of knowledge about Russian movements.
> And finally there are of course all sorts of black ops you can do in an active warzone
Something like 20k "volunteers" have gone to Ukraine to fight. Many of these people are likely not random couch surfers that decided to sign up.
I think the west is already doing almost everything you've outlined here. We just aren't in a position to know.
> They're pretty obviously doing this, Ukranian forces seem to have a lot of knowledge about Russian movements.
There are direct reports of this. IIRC, they're taking raw intelligence, scrubbing it to hide sources and methods (they think the Ukrainian government is full of Russian spies), and refraining from recommending specific actions based on it (because they feel like that would cross some stupid line and irritate the Russians too much). My understanding is that they've been able to get timely updates the the Ukrainians pretty quickly.
> Please elaborate on what else the West can do? No fly-zone is a non-starter
No fly-zones. It's pretty clear that falls into the category of something the West can do, but chooses not to out of fear. Because the West is afraid, Putin isn't.
Stepping down from that: have Zelensky invite the west to bomb certain Ukrainian roads and bridges in Ukrainian territory that the Russians are using, then do it. Maybe even be funny about it and post a notice of emergency demolition due to unsafe conditions on some Ukrainian DOT-equivalent site. Or supply the Ukrainians with advanced weaponry like anti-ship and cruise missiles (perhaps in-fact secretly operated by Western advisors) to attack Russian landing ships and supply lines.
> NATO shooting down Russian planes is war between nuclear powers. This isn't Libya. This isn't the West being afraid, it's the West acting like adults.
That is the West being afraid, specifically of Russian escalation. They're so afraid, they've pretty much explicitly told Russia it can do whatever it wants.
Getting rid of the Russian interference forever would be still pay back. We must remember that Germany was fully destroyed to rubble also and now is the largest economy in the EU.
Under the correct environment things can recover surprisingly fast.
The west can do for the Ukrainians what Pakistan has been doing for decades for the Taliban: provide safe havens, supplies and weapons to small insurgent groups doing guerilla strikes against the Russians. The Ukraine is so large that to keep it occupied would take hundreds of thousands of troops and Russia cannot afford to keep up such mobilisation for long. They have a few months at most and properly beating an insurgency takes years if not decades.
I don't really buy the Chernobyl argument either. If the NATO starts shooting the Russians already have nuclear weapons to act directly. No need to crack open an old nuclear plant and hope the wind doesn't change.
> The west can do for the Ukrainians what Pakistan has been doing for decades for the Taliban: provide safe havens, supplies and weapons to small insurgent groups doing guerilla strikes against the Russians.
This would be a great tactic to reduce Ukraine to a pile of smoking rubble over a couple of decades of war. I'm not sure that's a great outcome for Ukrainians.
What the West does is what will be the best for them, not necessarily what will be the best for Ukrainians. I'm sure there are a couple of foreign policy officials somewhere that would love the idea of Russia being tied up in the Ukraine for decades instead of using that capacity for bothering other countries.
The will to commit Russia's military in Ukraine is pretty much Putin's alone. His narrative around the invasion was proven completely untrue within days. The sanctions are making life extremely difficult for both ordinary Russians, and for the wealthy oligarchs. Ordinary Russians are being asked to go die in a war against their Ukrainian brothers and sisters, who keep telling their Russian brothers and sisters to stop the madness and get the fuck out. And finally, Putin is 70, how much longer is he going to stay in control?
Russia can't do that. They have no way of moving supplies from Russia into Ukraine. That means Russia's operational capabilities are limited to five days, at which point their troops are stranded.
> Bombing Chernobyl would make zero strategic sense.
OTOH, starting a nuclear WW3 would also make zero strategic sense, and still the West is worried about him doing that. So maybe worrying about this is also valid.
Are you new to politics? This is pretty much standard about all elections/referendums.
Even the remain campaign was full of half truths and manipulations. (Running out of food and medicines for example... When the opposite happened when we needed to vaccinate the entire population).
Unfortunately in the West I think this might be identity politics. There is very much a "us Vs them" attitude with the whole thing. To give an example I see a lot of LGBT "allies" with pin badges, flags, etc. To label oneself as being part of that group.
Without flying the flags you are seen as an outsider.
Modern identity politics in the U.S. seems like the inevitable result of telling people they are "free" but then excluding certain identified groups from social life, jobs, etc.
Over time, people will bond around their exclusion to create a more powerful bloc to assert their rights. It seems to me that the dominant identitarians of the past have largely created the current situation by not following the creed of "live and let live."
Conservatives and the right engage in extreme identity politics, but "identity politics" is most often used as a pejorative against liberals and the left. I wonder why that is. Modern identities probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for historical identification/classification and discrimination.
We just called it "tribalism" in our distant past.
It can never go away. It isn't specific to the US either, it's a part of us as humans. That's the real reason there are no "free" countries. I guarantee, you look closely enough, you'll find the group in that country that is not "free". People just knock the US all the time because the group in our nation that is not "free" is pretty obvious to everyone in the world. But all the other nations are just as bad. I've been to a lot of them, so I can promise you that.
There is not shining example of non-tribalist freedom out there, and only the ready and frequent application of force would ever create such a nation. Even then, it would be against the will of many of that nation's citizens.
What is modern identity politics but a big word that academics and élites dreamed up for tribalism?
You may believe they are different because your ideology needs for you to believe they are different. But at heart, there is no difference. Using terms like "modern identity politics" just allows you to discuss the topic in academia and polite society. On the streets, when the tiki torches, rifles, and baseball bats come out, it really is just tribalism. Different tribes going at each other precisely because they are each the "other".
I feel weird if I select the yellow emoji color since everyone on our internal slack is gung ho about their skin color. Same with pronouns, almost indirectly mandated at this point.
Absolutely. He seems to be consistently spot-on with his analysis of TV and Movies and the wider industry. I also enjoy Red Letter Media:
https://www.youtube.com/user/RedLetterMedia
Both channels use a humours approach to their reviews and analysis.