They really amped up the Bond villain vibes — Count Timothy von Icarus
Want to make a bet? When Finland and Sweden announce they are seeking membership in NATO, the aerospace of either or both countries will be infringed by Russian aircraft. — ssu
Second, I wasn’t exclusively referring to the current scenario but also to the risks of escalation as one of your zealous fellows has warned all of us about — neomac
their meddling in Russia's backyard with Europe as its forward pawn
— Tzeentch
Russia is Europe's backyard. — Olivier5
...
Over the past week, PayPal canceled without explanation the accounts of two prominent independent news outlets. It escaped notice by the mainstream press, which spent the weekend congratulating itself over the freedom to criticize the powerful.
senior staff writer Alan MacLeod having his personal account canceled at the same time. PayPal told him it had detected “activity in your account that’s inconsistent with our User Agreement,” something he calls “patently absurd” because the last time he had used PayPal was to buy a £5 Christmas gift in December.
All of these Russians want to be free from Western influence, so be it, let them do whatever they want. Let us put up anti-air defense weapons around their borders so no nukes will fly out whenever someone has dementia and then let them be alone, isolated from the "western nazis". Let's stop all the trade and every interaction with them, they don't want to be part of the western world anyway, so fuck'em. — Christoffer
Nobody is going to wait for Putin to make the first move on this. — neomac
You miss the point, the point is class and privilege, not blood lines (I said institutions) The structure of the British class system was virtually as rigid as the caste system, going right back to the year 1066.
Where do you think this class system (and therefore British imperialism) originated? — Punshhh
- Anglo-Saxon Review, Vol. 2, Sept. 1899From the early sixteenth century downward adventurers like Hawkins, Drake, Raleigh, Blake, Monk, and a thousand others, had followed the sea, and in their calling had fought more desperately than all armies of the kingdom put together. Also they had reaped their reward. They had established themselves in every quarter of the globe, and magnates like Sir Josiah Child, who controlled the East India Company under Charles II., ranked with the chief nobles of the land. Moreover the great modern British epic was a naval epic, although by no means lacking in triumphs upon land. Possibly no nation within an equal space of time ever developed a more splendid or more varied array of martial genius than did England during the hundred and twenty seven years which elapsed between the expulsion of the Stuarts and Waterloo. Marlborough, Boscawen, Clive, Hawke, Wolfe, Rodney, Collingwood, Wellington, Nelson: on land and sea, to east and west, the Anglo-Saxon race did not so much defeat their rivals as expel from their conquests, and confine within their borders, all races attempting to compete with them in the expansion of their empire …
What you seem to be saying is that if someone doesn't want to submit to your EU-NATO Empire, they should be destroyed. Sounds Nazi enough to me. And a bit unhinged, to be honest. — Apollodorus
Plus, Finland has a long history of Nazism. It's a well-known fact that Finland aligned itself with Hitler in WW2. — Apollodorus
HAHAA!!!!
At least the Forum's Putin troll works like Clock-Work! Just as anticipated months ago, out comes the nazi card when Finland (& Sweden) will make their application. — ssu
More than 20 heads of state from around the world gathered in Stockholm yesterday to consider the lessons of the Holocaust against the background of a national awakening in Sweden to its own murky wartime record.
Swedes have long enjoyed the illusion of innocence, of freedom from Nazi-related guilt, but now, amid a welter of revelations, the country is slowly coming to terms with an historical truth that is more complicated than the idealistic neutrality thought to have been maintained throughout the Second World War.
Some Swedes were in fact engaged in close collaboration with Nazi Germany and their government deliberately chose to draw a thick veil over their activities when the war ended.
What has particularly shocked and disgusted many people in the run-up to the Stockholm conference on the Holocaust is a television documentary exposing how several hundred Swedish soldiers volunteered to fight on the German side during the war. Some worked as guards at Treblinka, the concentration camp where 900,000 Jews were murdered.
The Swedish authorities, it has now emerged, never attempted to investigate the deeds of these soldiers when the true horror of Nazi Germany came to light.
Sweden also enjoyed the profits of doing business with the Nazis. It is emerging now that some of the gold handled by its central bank, the Riksbank, had been looted from Jews by the German Nazis. There was evidence at the time that the gold was plundered but both the management of the Riksbank and the government turned a blind eye. Unclaimed accounts in Swedish banks at the end of the war were also handled ineptly.
Most Swedes behaved honourably during the war and this is borne out by the fact that refugee status was given to thousands of Scandinavian Jews. Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved some 20,000 Hungarian Jews by issuing them with Swedish passports is, of course, the prime example of personal heroism against evil.
Nevertheless, Swedes have begun to look at their past from a new perspective. The morality of neutrality is being seriously questioned.
At the same time, the Swedish neo-Nazi movement is growing stronger.
History makes it clear that among Swedes Raoul Wallenberg was an exception …
Like their German counterparts, the Swedish Nazis were strongly anti-semitic and as early as May, 1945 became early adopters of Holocaust denial … At the end of the 1980s a new National Socialist movement developed in Sweden … Particularly in the 1990s, there was a plethora of neo-Nazi organizations, most infamous being the militant network Vitt Ariskt Motstånd ("VAM") which translates to White Aryan Resistance … Of neo-Nazi movements, the Swedish Resistance Movement (SMR) most resembles classical Nazism. It professes openly to National Socialism and believes that people can be divided into races with characteristic properties. It calls for a government with a strong leader … Many individuals who had been active in the Nazi movement have connections in established Swedish society. These include eminent individuals and professionals such as police officers … Only in recent years has the Swedish press acknowledged Queen Silvia's father, Walter Sommerlath, was a member of the German NSDAP, and never left it …
Finland's air force has been using a swastika ever since it was founded in 1918, shortly after the country became an independent nation and long before Nazism devastated Europe.
Until 1945 its planes bore a blue swastika on a white background - and this was not intended to show allegiance to Nazi Germany, though the two nations were aligned.
While the symbol was left off planes after World War Two, a swastika still featured in some Air Force unit emblems, unit flags and decorations - including on uniforms
And of course Finland is up to its neck in it:
"Finland's air force has been using a swastika ever since it was founded in 1918, shortly after the country became an independent nation and long before Nazism devastated Europe." — Apollodorus
Yeah, right when Putin and his minions start doing anti-Sweden and anti-Finland propaganda to the gullible Russian morons we start to see that narrative in here as well. It's disgusting really. — Christoffer
In what? Do you read your own sources? The symbol had nothing to do with Hitler or Nazism. — Baden
The swastika symbol, 卐 or 卍, today primarily recognized in the West for its use by the Nazi party,[1] is an ancient religious symbol in various Eurasian cultures. It is used as a symbol of divinity and spirituality in Indic religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.[2][3][4][5][6] It generally takes the form of a cross, the arms of which are of equal length and perpendicular to the adjacent arms, each bent midway at a right angle.[7][8] — wikipdia
this was not intended to show allegiance to Nazi Germany, though the two nations were aligned.
The far-right groups exercised considerable political power, pressuring the government to outlaw communist parties and newspapers and expel Freemasons from the armed forces ... During the Cold War, all partied deemed fascist were banned according to the Paris Peace Treaties and all former fascist activists had to find new political homes. Despite Finlandization, many continued in public life. Yrjö Ruutu, the leader of the National Socialist Union of Finland (SKSL) joined the Finnish People's Democratic League. Juhani Konkka, the party secretary and editor-in-chief of the party newspaper National Socialist, abandoned politics and became an accomplished translator, receiving a cultural award of the Soviet Union. Three former members of the Waffen SS served as ministers of defense; the Finnish SS Battalion officers Sulo Suorttanen and Pekka Malinen as well as Mikko Laaksonen, a soldier in the Maschinengewehr-Ski-Bataillon "Finnland" consisting of pro-Nazi Finns who rejected the peace treaty.
I don't think you even bothered to read my argument. US is one player, but when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, it's a minor reason.The idea that the US isn't involved or only minimally in my view is a gross underestimation of the involvement of the US intelligence and military across the world. — Benkei
Let's do that. Because Putin might be viewed really then in different light as before.But carry on. We'll revisit this in 5 or 10 years — Benkei
Naziism had not yet been invented in 1918. — boethius
The term "national socialism" was used by a number of unrelated groups before the Nazis, but since their rise to prominence it has become associated almost exclusively with their ideas.
Austrian Nazism or Austrian National Socialism was a pan-German movement that was formed at the beginning of the 20th century. The movement took a concrete form on 15 November 1903 when the German Worker's Party (DAP) was established in Austria
Finland was aligned with Hitler at the time. — Apollodorus
this was not intended to show allegiance to Nazi Germany
Which, of note, Naziism had not yet been invented in 1918. — boethius
If suppressing the free press is bad, then suppressing the free press is bad. It doesn't become not bad because someone else's methods are more extreme. — Isaac
Several Nazi parties operated in Finland in the 1930s and 1940s, among them the Finnish People's Organisation (SKJ) led by Jäger Captain Arvi Kalsta with 20,000 members and the Blue Cross with 12,000 members. Even the Swedish-speaking Finns had their own Nazi organizations like the People's Community Society led by the former governor Admiral Hjalmar von Bonsdorff and Gunnar Lindqvist and the Black Guard led by Örnulf Tigerstedt
Even outside of the actual National Socialist movements, there was glorification of the Nazi Germany in Finnish society. The Finnish police magazine wrote about German police sports and the "Citizens' Reporting Service" (Volksmeldedienst) set up by Reinhard Heydrich uncritically and emphasizing the effectiveness of the Gestapo. The Finnish secret police operated under Ministry of the Interior, led by pro-Nazi and antisemitic Toivo Horelli. The State Police itself was led by also openly pro-Nazi and antisemitic Arno Anthoni and under him it cooperated with the SS, Einsatzkommando Finnland and Sicherheitsdienst. The State Information Service, responsible for propaganda and censorship, also employed the aforementioned right-wing extremists and published pro-German material like Finnlands Lebensraum.
The Nazi Party,[a] officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right[7][page needed][8] political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. — wikipedia
Key word: allegedly. — Olivier5
Consortium, founded by the late investigative reporter Robert Parry, has been critical of NATO and the Pentagon and a consistent source of skeptical reporting about Russiagate, as well as one of just a few outlets to regularly cover the Julian Assange case with any sympathy for the accused. Ironically, one of the site’s primary themes involves exploring disinformation emanating from the intelligence community. The site has had content disrupted by platforms like Facebook before, but now its pockets are being picked in addition. — https://taibbi.substack.com/p/paypals-indymedia-wipeout?s=r
... the thread connecting the recent affected accounts — which include the former RT contributor Caleb Maupin and the host of the Geopolitics and Empire podcast Hrvoje Morić, among others — is that they’re all generally antiwar voices, who’ve been critical either of NATO or of official messaging with regard to the Ukraine conflict. — https://taibbi.substack.com/p/paypals-indymedia-wipeout?s=r
It looks like some folks have their heads so deep in NATO propaganda, they forget that detailed info on Finland and Sweden’s collaboration with Hitler is all over the Internet. — Apollodorus
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