MH17

[Tannin]

[Tannin]

[pietillidie]

[Tannin]

Yes, agreed, right up until you get to the unwarranted non sequitur conclusion about "acting blindly" and "gambling with other people's lives". People's lives are ALREADY at risk. To do nothing, as you propose, is ALREADY to take a stance and gamble with people's lives, lives that are ALREADY being lost. We ALREADY have a gamble in play, and it's a monumental sucker bet. We are ALREADY gambling that Putin and his goons will act in a civilised way and not invade other countries and shoot down airliners and not beat up all the little countries around him.

And it's a sucker bet. We lost. Big time. They lost, all the people we let Putin and his goon squads murder because we foolishly gambled that if we ignored him he might not do it after all. Now we can double down on the sucker bet and see countless others murdered, or we can try doing something positive, something with a decent chance of success. We have to bet, there is no option. So let's at least place a smarter bet, one that just might pay off with peace and stability and lower loss of life.

[HAL]

Ah. Alright then. Understood. I will take that under advisement.

[David]

[Pies4shaw]

I am completely behind a ban on rutile exports.

[Tannin]

I had a small rutile once, but the cat tried to catch it and its tail fell off.

[pietillidie]

[Tannin]

With respect, PTID, that's garbage. The key point that you utterly refuse to recognise is that the outside world is already interfering, bigtime. A hostile outside power is already sending in troops, guns, rabble-rousers, propaganda, and powerful surface-to-air missiles.

Our task is to stop the interference by pressuring the foreign power doing the damage to stop it, right now. Putin and his corrupt cronies need Western and in particular European money to stay in power. You know that, I know that, Europe knows that, even Putin knows that.

It's not that hard: we take away the European money stream keeping Putin in power (by buying natural gas elsewhere, or by whichever other sanction is considered most effective and most easily reversible, gas is just the most obvious and most clearly practicable option) and Putin has no choice but to leave office (he won't) or stop interfering in countries which do not belong to him (which he will do, 'coz at that point he has no alternative).

You are supporting brutal, militaristic expansionism of the worst kind - as bad or worse than what the US did in Iraq. That is unacceptable. You need to stop collaborating with the man who (more than any other) caused this tragic state of affairs and who (more than any other) can restore peace to the region.

[pietillidie]

^Yet another ultimately disastrous pre-Iraq argument, devoid of data, missing a comparative analysis of options, and merely a guess based on common discourses concerning these things. I don't get why you would even think it ethical to crap on about things that require a very specific expertise and experience.

The least you could do is stop playing mental chess with a reality you know extremely little about, and map the actors, money and implications trail for us, and your expected outcomes versus the status quo.

Okay, that's an onerous task, but it really is very basic due diligence when playing god with other people's lives.

[Mugwump]

[Tannin]

Mate, it's not that hard, and it's got nothing to do with Iraq. Right now, there is a hostile foreign power throwing its weight around where it doesn't belong, and killing people left, right and centre. We have a choice: we stop the killing by using our commercial influence, or we can condone it and encourage even more bloodshed by doing nothing. That's the choice.

Clearly, we MUST do what we can to stop the killing.

You are arguing that we should roll the dice again with millions of people's lives and let the killing go on and on and on. Fine: if that's what you want, have the honesty to say straight out that you want the war and the killing to go on. That's OK, you are allowed to think that. It's a disgusting and unhuman point of view, but if that is your honest opinion, then so be it.

[David]

I think there's real possibility for a cautious middle ground approach to this—one that both cracks down on Putin in a meaningful way without descending into the kind of damaging hysteria that the war hawks in America and elsewhere live for. If you think I'm exaggerating, let's not forget that Republican candidates were talking pre-emptive strikes on Iran just two years ago. Let's not encourage people like that.

So, let's get the facts clear: Putin is a vile imperialist dictator, but he's not Hitler. Eastern Europe isn't in his sights, just ex-Soviet republics like Ukraine and Belarus (which Russia essentially owns already). Neither are his stooges in Donetsk 'terrorists'. I'm very open to the idea of crippling sanctions, but they have to be appropriate and carried out with clear aims, lest they just be used as a preliminary means of warfare and escalation.

What Putin is doing and has done is unacceptable, but we can't let our moral self-righteousness overpower our sense of moderation. No sane person wants a war between Russia and the west, but there are many less than sane people in positions of power in the world. We can't afford to pretend that's not the case.

[think positive]