Shaun Lawson Profile picture
Mar 1 5 tweets 2 min read
Victim blaming. We ASKED FOR IT with our support for a country which wants to be part of the EU and needs protection from Russia!

Russian claims of the 'threat to it' posed by NATO are the same as Russian claims that Assad didn't use CW or of a 'Nazi junta' running Ukraine. Lies
The real 'threat' to Putin's Russia is of a successful liberal democracy on its borders, showing the Russian people the very real alternative that's possible.

Putin grew up in the Cold War. He was a KGB agent for 16 years during the Cold War. He sees the world through that lens.
A very large reason why the USSR lost the Cold War - which Putin considers 'the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century' - was that the peoples of Eastern Europe saw that our values and our system were infinitely preferable.

Putin fears it happening again.
Look at a map. Look at the gargantuan size of Russia. The largest country in the world, double the size of the US, double the size of China.

And do you know how much of Russia, which is 17 million kilometres squared, borders NATO members? 6%.
How TERRIFYING. What will become of poor little Russia?

It chose this war. Ukraine did not. NATO did not. The West did not. Enough of this apologia for illegal war, illegal annexation, and the wanton slaughter of innocents.

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More from @shaunjlawson

Mar 2
This is a thread about empathy. Specifically: *selective* empathy.

Which we're all guilty of to some extent - the lives of some seemingly mattering to us a lot more than others - the right even more so. Note Tory flag waving over Ukraine while curtailing the right to protest.
Note perennial Republican pleas for 'the right to life' while opposing any gun controls at all, openly encouraging people not to be vaccinated, decrying masks, and deliberately making life itself as hard as humanly possible for anyone not born into wealth.
"If you're preborn, you're fine. If you're preschool, you're f****d".

But the left has its own huge blind spots on this. They bewilder me often, though I get where they mostly come from. They come from TOO MUCH of a focus on our own wanton hypocrisy in the West.
Read 77 tweets
Mar 2
Notice how leftist commentators are only too pleased to share bullshit headlines - and to lie based on those headlines.

Embarrassing. Pathetic. Contemptible.
A rather massive part of how we've all ended up here is that so many people have the attention spans of a gnat, cannot be bothered just to CLICK A BLOODY MOUSE BUTTON AND READ THE DAMN ARTICLE, and treat a headline as though they're the only thing that counts.
They then all rush in to condemn based on the headline, they all share fake news and utter bollocks, and the corrosion of our politics continues.

Thanks to THEM. A whole hail of idiots who learn absolutely nothing.
Read 6 tweets
Mar 1
1. NATO is a defensive alliance.

2. NATO is no threat to Russia.

3. Russia is indeed led by a mad man. Definition of mad man: taking his country to absolute catastrophe.

4. Strange how those furious about Iraq or Palestine think Ukraine should just roll over.
Except of course, it's not strange - because when it comes to a choice between liberal democracy and authoritarianism at the barrel of a gun, you choose the latter, don't you Jeffrey?

As long as it's not YOU living under militarised dictatorship, that is.
Do you know when NATO last expanded close to Russia's borders? 2004. What a terrifying 'threat' given nothing happened for 18 years until Putin united us all - other than you of course - with his evil.

There's no doubt. You'd have been demanding we sue for peace in May 1940.
Read 6 tweets
Mar 1
Let's update the map of how things currently look. With an absolutely mammoth column of Russian tanks - 64km long - headed towards Kyiv, the answer is increasingly grim. 😢

This is Phase 2 now. With Russia changing strategy, using thermobaric weapons and pouring forces in.
Forces which are likely to be better trained, better resourced and more experienced.

A couple of days ago, I mentioned Russia's obvious aim of land access from the breakaway areas in the east to Crimea. They're getting closer to achieving that now.
But focus in particular on the Dnieper River, one of the largest in Europe. That river splits Ukraine in half.

It seems to me that Putin's plan is very likely to involve annexing the whole eastern half of Ukraine - with Kyiv put under siege until the government surrenders.
Read 22 tweets
Mar 1
This is absolutely excellent by @davidfrum - because it does that all too rare thing. It explains economics in layman's terms. 👏

David's final point about the danger of sanctions being TOO effective is partly why they don't apply to energy. Yet.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
At this point, a semi-digression. UK citizens are, of course, almost all paid in pounds and most only concern themselves with foreign exchange when heading abroad: on holiday in most cases.

Where I live - a small upper-middle income country - that isn't the case at all.
Here, expensive things - like electronics or most obviously, property - are priced in US dollars. Which I also pay my rent in.

When I arrived here in 2012, there were 19 Uruguayan pesos to the dollar: the former was a ridiculously overvalued currency. It's now about 43.
Read 15 tweets
Feb 28
'Anti-imperialist' dictates to democratic sovereign people what they should or shouldn't do. "No NATO"? Yes, what a BRILLIANT idea. 🙄🙄🙄

Meanwhile, this may come as news to some, but some people die in wars. A war started by the Fifth Column I referred to.
Your comment about 'Obama and Co deciding who was in government' is complete, total, absolute, disgraceful nonsense.

Ukraine's Parliament and shortly afterwards, Ukraine's people decided who was in government. Your total contempt for all of them sums you up.
"But Nuland but Nuland". People coming out with this drivel are thick as bloody mince.

And support someone who jailed his main rival, whose previous rival was poisoned by Russia, who stole SEVENTY BILLION DOLLARS from the people, who slaughtered 100 protestors.
Read 4 tweets

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