Putin: "Britain is no longer a colonial power"

[Verbose]

I was just wondering what everyone’s opinion is on the current dispute between the UK and Russia. Whose in the wrong?

I'd say Russia more so than the UK.

Regardless if Litvinenko's assasination was ordered by Putin or orchestrated by rouge elements in the FSB up to their own devices, it is a particular disease of the Russian security community that it will stoop to stuff like poisoning. It's been a feature of their MO since the Ochrana, the Czarist police, and it's obviously ongoing.

If Britain were to respond in kind, it would send a hitman to Moscow to "double-tap" Lugovoi. Or perhaps just taking out a contract on him locally would be a safer a surer way of going about it. In any case murdering dissidents in the capitals of foreign nations, of which said dissident is also a citizen, is no longer considered acceptable political behaviour. But who knows, maybe the Russian govt. would find it more acceptable than the current mouth-off?

 

[bhsup]

If your government is corrupt and/or immoral, the partiotic thing to do is show others that this horrible government is not the face of the country.

Hrm. It's a "family" matter, really. Kind of goes to the whole Dixie Chick thing about badmouthing the USA overseas in a way.

 

[GinandTonic]

Hrm. It's a "family" matter, really. Kind of goes to the whole Dixie Chick thing about badmouthing the USA overseas in a way.

Does any country other than the US have such an attitude? I guess the closest I see in the UK is that we happily slag elements of our own country off but forigners doing so tactlessly will still give us the hump.

 

[bhsup]

Hrm. Even that's not the same, really. I'd be more ticked at an American national talking down our country overseas than I would a foreigner coming here and talking down our country.

Example: Dixie Chicks comments worse than Chavez comments at UN.

 

[sysyphus]

Talking down your country or its government?

 

[Traitorfish]

good people tend to be patriots to at least some degree.

Utter nonsense. Being a "good" person has nothing, on any level, to do with nationalism. "Good" people are no more or less likely to be patriotic than anyone else.

Talking down your country or its government?

An extremely important, yet tragically over-looked distinction.

 

[luiz]

The world would be a little bit duller without Putin, we gotta give him that.

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The discussion of the British Empire is going nowhere. It was indeed quite cruel, but much like the Spanish Empire, it sometimes get an excedeengly bad reputation. I don't think it was any worse than the other european colonial empires, just bigger.

 

[bathsheba666]

Putin said what?

I demand we send a gunboat....

..as long as it doesn't sink after crashing into the many available rotting and submerged Russian submarines....