PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[The perfect fumble]

North Korea ? Economy before morality? Half their population starving? Thanks for lightening up my morning..fucking hilarious

What point are you making?

 

[The perfect fumble]

Geopolitics aside, this war, or rather Ukraine’s defence of its homeland, is everything to do with morality.

The notion that Ukraine is not a country at all, but a historical part of Russia, is deeply ingrained in the minds of many Russians, and the majority of the Ukrainian territory presently occupied by Russia has a majority Russian population, Russia has liberated them!

You think that's wrong, I suspect you and I might be on the same side of the argument, but it is an argument not a question of morality.

Europe has seen countries come a go before and will again. There are so many examples, the hotchpotch of states that emerged in the Balkans after the defeat of the Ottoman Turks and then the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then fused together under the banner of Yugoslavia, then break away again, then the wars of the 90's and some more countries pop up.

The break up of the Soviet Union, arbitrary lines drawn for countries no one's ever heard of, bloodlines and nationalism, religions, tribes and ethnicity, lots of new countries all ending in "stan" and don't get me started on post colonial Africa! Somewhere, someone, is always willing to die for the motherland and her freshly minted flag.

Whatever all this is, it has happened before and it''ll happen again, and the opposing forces will both have right on their side.

Take a look at this list of Stateless Nations....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_nation

I'd appreciate it if you'd get back to me with the correct moral position on each one of them.

Thanks in advance.

PS; When you get to Catalans, remember Pep.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

The notion that Ukraine is not a country at all, but a historical part of Russia, is deeply ingrained in the minds of many Russians, and the majority of the Ukrainian territory presently occupied by Russia has a majority Russian population.

You think that's wrong, I suspect you and I might be on the same side of the argument, but it is an argument not a question of morality.

Europe has seen countries come a go before and will again. There are so many examples, the hotchpotch of states that emerged in the Balkans after the defeat of the Ottoman Turks and then the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then fused together under the banner of Yugoslavia, then break away again, then the wars of the 90's and some more countries pop up.

The break up of the Soviet Union, arbitrary lines drawn for countries no one's ever heard of, bloodlines and nationalism, tribes and ethnicity, lots of countries all ending in "stan" and don't get me started on Africa! Somewhere, someone, is always willing to die for the motherland and her freshly minted flag.

Whatever all this is, it has happened before and it''ll happen again, and the opposing forces will both have right on their side.

Take a look at this list of Stateless Nations....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_nation

I'd appreciate it if you'd get back to me with the correct moral position on each one of them.

Thanks in advance.

All the points you advance are non-sequiturs to the statement you made that I responded to, namely this conflict was ‘nothing whatsoever to do with morality’; your words. I believe the right of self-determination is (inter alia) a matter of morality. If you’d said ‘about much more than morality’ then you would have had a point.

I believe it is morally correct that people should be able to determine their own destiny as a nation without being subjugated by other nations and prevented from so doing. Irrespective of the geopolitical and historical backdrop, the bottom line today is that the Ukrainian people overwhelmingly don’t want to be ruled by Russia and they are fighting to prevent that.

To me, that is plainly a matter of morality. Not just morality, but significantly so.

You must think otherwise.

 

[The perfect fumble]

All the points you advance are non-sequiturs to the statement you made that I responded to, namely this conflict was ‘nothing whatsoever to do with morality’; your words. I believe the right of self-determination is (inter alia) a matter of morality. I believe it is morally correct that people should be able to determine their own destiny as a nation without being subjugated by other nations and prevented from so doing. Irrespective of the geopolitical backdrop, the bottom line is that the Ukrainian people overwhelmingly don’t want to be ruled by Russia and they are fighting to prevent that.

To me, that is plainly a matter of morality. Not just morality, but significantly so.

You must think otherwise.

A sizeable number of Russians don't recognise Ukraine as anything other than part of Russia, as it had been for hundreds of years, for them Ukraine is just a difficult Russian province that broke away with the support of western imperialists, when Mother Russia was temporarily weakened by the fall of the Soviet Union.

Morality concerns the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour. So Putin could, at a stretch, ask "what could be more right for a Russian patriot than to make Mother Russia whole again?" But it would be a very big stretch. For Ukrainian self determination to have currency in Russia, it would require Putin and others to recognise Ukraine as an independent sovereign nation, but for many Russians Ukraine is not a sovereign nation, it is simply part of Russia, history shows that, so self determination is a moot point, it is not applicable and consequently so is any question of right and wrong.

Self-determination denotes the legal right of people to decide their own destiny in the international order. Self-determination is a core principle of international law, arising from customary international law, but also recognised as a general principle of law, and enshrined in a number of international treaties.

So if the Russian majority in those parts of Ukraine presently occupied by Russian forces decided, in a free and fair vote, to join Russia are you okay with that? Or perhaps the fact that Russia first invaded and drew arbitrary lines to gerrymander such a majority would invalidate such a vote? But then Russia considers Ukraine's borders as entirely arbitrary anyway! So down the rabbit hole we go.

I'll tell you what self determination is, it's the ability to draw a line on a map, hold the territory within it, and the people inside the lines to freely call it their own, and you need, and this is most important, powerful allies at your back to support you, that's what the Ukrainians are fighting for. it's what Kurds want too, except they don't have the ability to draw those lines and no powerful friends to help them.

It's all very well talking about "legal rights of people", you have to be recognised as a distinct people first by countries with clout, that's why Pep did this....



A small step, but an important one that Catalan is recognised as an EU official language.

To create a nation state and to hold it together in the face of external and internal threats to its existence is no small feat, ask the Israelis. The ideal state is one of unified purpose, and if not then consent and at the very least compliance, but be under no illusion, a young state exists only if powerful external forces support its existence. Right now that support for Ukraine is under strain and we will see over the coming months just how strong that support is, and if Ukraine folds for lack of support it'll all be down to geopolitics. Right and wrong, questions of morality, they're all points of discussion, but there are no absolutes here.

PS: Perhaps you could start a thread about the moral position of the United States in September 1939, or August 1914.

 

[cheekybids]

The notion that Ukraine is not a country at all, but a historical part of Russia, is deeply ingrained in the minds of many Russians, and the majority of the Ukrainian territory presently occupied by Russia has a majority Russian population, Russia has liberated them!

You think that's wrong, I suspect you and I might be on the same side of the argument, but it is an argument not a question of morality.

Europe has seen countries come a go before and will again. There are so many examples, the hotchpotch of states that emerged in the Balkans after the defeat of the Ottoman Turks and then the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then fused together under the banner of Yugoslavia, then break away again, then the wars of the 90's and some more countries pop up.

The break up of the Soviet Union, arbitrary lines drawn for countries no one's ever heard of, bloodlines and nationalism, religions, tribes and ethnicity, lots of new countries all ending in "stan" and don't get me started on post colonial Africa! Somewhere, someone, is always willing to die for the motherland and her freshly minted flag.

Whatever all this is, it has happened before and it''ll happen again, and the opposing forces will both have right on their side.

Take a look at this list of Stateless Nations....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_nation

I'd appreciate it if you'd get back to me with the correct moral position on each one of them.

Thanks in advance.

PS; When you get to Catalans, remember Pep.

If there’s a border drawn with a straight line then its normally been decided by a stuffed up civil servant cigars & cognac having never been to the country.

 

[Shaggy]

The notion that Ukraine is not a country at all, but a historical part of Russia, is deeply ingrained in the minds of many Russians, and the majority of the Ukrainian territory presently occupied by Russia has a majority Russian population, Russia has liberated them!

You think that's wrong, I suspect you and I might be on the same side of the argument, but it is an argument not a question of morality.

Europe has seen countries come a go before and will again. There are so many examples, the hotchpotch of states that emerged in the Balkans after the defeat of the Ottoman Turks and then the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then fused together under the banner of Yugoslavia, then break away again, then the wars of the 90's and some more countries pop up.

The break up of the Soviet Union, arbitrary lines drawn for countries no one's ever heard of, bloodlines and nationalism, religions, tribes and ethnicity, lots of new countries all ending in "stan" and don't get me started on post colonial Africa! Somewhere, someone, is always willing to die for the motherland and her freshly minted flag.

Whatever all this is, it has happened before and it''ll happen again, and the opposing forces will both have right on their side.

Take a look at this list of Stateless Nations....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_nation

I'd appreciate it if you'd get back to me with the correct moral position on each one of them.

Thanks in advance.

PS; When you get to Catalans, remember Pep.

I'd heard of most of them.

PS, Nearly every region in Spain wants to break from Castille

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

North Korea ? Economy before morality? Half their population starving? Thanks for lightening up my morning..fucking hilarious

It's a gangster state. The ruling elite wouldn't be the ruling elite in a different version of North Korea. It makes complete economic sense for North Korea's elites to behave the way they do in self-interested economic terms because there are no checks and balances on them.

It's like being bemused that the New Year York five families didn't form a pizza company, promote better working conditions for their employees and list on the stock exchange instead of drugs, racketeering and waste management.

 

[moomba]

Any chance we could keep this thread to discussion of the charges?

 

[wolviedinho]

Any chance we could have a few leaks or another charge? Season is going off the rails -:)

 

[Spanishbob]

Looks like the snoopers have been reading our posts on here. Just opened up google search on my pad and Goal.com are running an article relating to the sheikh and his alledged dealings with the Russians and what are the british government going to do about it.