malaysian plane down in ukraine

[exploited]

So at worst he spoke too much and stuck his nose where it doesn't belong... That is pretty much standard behavior for American Presidents. When you keep it in perspective, Obama has done well, IMO. Certainly not perfect, but I've been very impressed given the ridiculous amount of problems he inherited.

[eynon81]

Libya and Syria were primarily Hillary's doing too. She was the big pusher there.

[Kane]

We're approaching the invasion point:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/ ... D020140815

I don't for a second believe Putin wishes to negotiate the terms of the convoy entering the Ukraine.

[The Comrade]

he already rerouted the convoy from the specified point to karkiv like a dick, now russian army is flooding across the border. the invasion is already happening basically.

[The Comrade]

karkiv has a large russian population by the way. probably trying to make up for losing donetsk

[Kane]

Not surprising. Well, now we get to see what kind of bite the sanctions will have on Eurasia. The EU ain't looking so hot now but that's been the case for several months now (yay monetary union of the future that needs to be today).

[The Comrade]

the way the EU is handling the ukrainian conflict raises strong parallels with how they handled bosnia.

lots of talking, very little action, zero agreement.

[The Comrade]

something else to note is that the situation is reaching a tipping point. putin's h and is forced and he now has to either back down or escalate. donetsk is surrounded and luhansk is slowly being cut off from the LPR. there's a lot of chatter that the volunteers see the writing on the wall and are making preparations to fallback to russian territory. strelkov has resigned and (and will likely be killed. he's too anti-putin and too popular to remain alive) and this humanitarian convoy has come at way too convenient of a time. add to that all the probing that russian armor has been making at the border lately. they're either trying to incite something so they can retaliate or they're genuinely doing recon on how best to blitz eastern ukraine.

[Kane]

[The Comrade]

i watched a very good documentary called "the world without US". it has awful production values and you'd assume it's thinly veiled propaganda but it makes a very well defined case how europe has become spoiled post-war with the ever-present promise of american military support. three generations of that has basically warped europe into this weird "if i don't act long enough, it will go away" mentality when it comes to any kind of armed conflict.

think about it. we handled bosnia. we handled kosovo. we handled iraq the first time (which europe greatly benefited from). we handled libya (which europe benefited from). sure there were token european forces in those conflicts but would europe have banded together and done anything about them on their own(that wasn't a complete f**k disaster)? watching france go into mali was actually surprising to me because i didn't think a european power had the nuts to act unilaterally.

we maintain stability in regions of the world where we get nothing out of it, but europe does. it's a ridiculous situation and is frankly embarrassing for such a large and economically powerful region of the world. as you said, if the ukrainian conflict doesn't wake them up (and i have a strong feeling it won't) then europe is well and truly f**k going forward.