Hood Critic
The Power Circle
Have you been paying attention to what's going on in Iran?
Russia's Invasion of Ukraine (Official Thread)
- Thread starter newarkhiphop
- Start date
Have you been paying attention to what's going on in Iran?
Iranian discontent with their extremist leadership is a permanent fixture - a massive portion of the population has never been confortable with that rule and has only submitted due to the strength of the state apparatus. Their presidents come and go and popularity of said presidents ebb and flow, and Khamenei himself is not particularly charismatic and lacks the popularity that Khomeini had. They have a constant tradition of anti-government protests - 1994 (Qazvin protests), 1999 (student protests), 2009 (Green Wave protests), 2011-12 (Arab Spring / Day of Rage protests), 2017-2018 (economic/political protests), 2018-2019 (general strikes), 2019-2020 (Bloody November protests), 2021-2022 (water shortage protests), and now the Mahsa Amini protests.
As I pointed out already, Russia has two elements that make such a movement more difficult. First off, Putin has been more successful in building his cult of personality and positioning himself in a large portion of the population's minds as the only plausible leader of Russia. And second, Russians just seem psychologically to have very little hope that anything will ever improve in their country. This is demonstrated by the very fact that this is the 9th major protest movement in 28 years for Iran, but Russia has had.....what, those 2011 protests and then....?
And even Iran, after all those protests, has gained little. Like I said in the actual protest thread, even though I wish to hope for more it's definitely led me to be pessimistic whenever I hear that another Iranian protest has sprung up.
I'm not saying that Russians shouldn't protest. But it's obvious that the vast majority of Russians, no matter how strong their dissent, don't believe that their countrymen are going to protest alongside them, and thus any regular citizen's attempt to start said protest is going to be viewed as a suicide mission. It would be easier for dissenters to build momentum against Putin from outside Russia, where information is accessible and they're relatively more out of Putin's reach.
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
Highly Unusual Disclosure Made Of U.S. Ballistic Missile Submarine's Presence In Arabian Sea
It is extremely rare for the US military to reveal the whereabouts of nuclear ballistic missile submarines while they are on patrol.
www.thedrive.com
It's tough to imagine a hot war on Taiwan. What randomly comes to mind is that China would attempt to fight it without actually engaging in a land war. Marine blockade on the island, declare all waters around it a no-go for foreign nations, and tell Taiwan to submit or else. They've put a substantial investment into anti-ship cruise missiles and so I think their ideal goal would be to say, "Any American ship that enters this zone gets blown up", and hope that America decides it's not worth it to lose potentially dozens of ships and thousands of lives over an engagement whose outcome would be very uncertain. Then Taiwan is isolated and China tells them shipping lanes open again once they cut a deal to come back to the mothership.
Just a thought, but as you said, an actual invasion of Taiwan under full-scale war conditions would be something China would want to avoid at all costs.
Total nonsense. No nation has the resources to do that nor would they expend such enormous resources on such a low-yield mission.
And obviously with Finland and Lithuania taking in 40,000-50,000 Russians each, they don't believe it either.
Like I said, either Russia already has plenty of active assets in those nations with MUCH better covers than "open Russian refugee who just got here", or they don't have the resources to do it at all. At this moment, when they're absolutely desperate for manpower to deal with the situation in Ukraine as well as the internal situation, they're not going to have tens of thousands of assets just sitting around doing nothing to be deployed in nations where they can contribute little to the current crisis.
I'm not the one talking all chickenshyt about some refugees and shook of Russia like it's a comic book boogeyman.
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I'm not about to spend my day watching a ton of Russian media, but for those who have, does it appear that they're building towards some sort of orchastrated scapegoat? Or are they really just upset and winging it with their own gripes and theories?
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