The RUSSIA thread

[Bluehawk]

Alternatively they can change the eagle to a rooster, with a shiv in one talon and a cone of sunflower seeds in the other.

 

[Evelyn]

Why even bother with all of this fancy heraldry? An Adidas logo would represent the populace well enough.

 

[AreJohn]

Pfft, republicans using heraldry. 

 

[IA]

... but evil western food.

The pic of that woman in the market.

 

[PinCussion]

Spoiler

It bothers me that the republican Russian Federation has a coat of arms with an escutcheon over the eagle's chest representing a non-existing monarch's primary title, and that the eagle wears crowns and bears a sceptre and orb befitting that non-existent office. It's bad enough that the eagle itself represents the continuity of the Byzantine Palaiologos bloodline, which no longer sits on the Moscow throne, because of course, it doesn't exist anymore, but then the head of the sceptre is a complete reproduction of the coat of arms, including another sceptre, so the baseless monarchist pretension is repeated fractally, forever and ever. Infinite eagles, infinite crowns, infinite sceptres.

At least the Karenskiy government had the good sense to scrap all that crap and just keep the eagle. I mean, it was ugly, but at least it was logical. The only thing the Russian Federation removed from the original Imperial arms was the blue ribbon of the Order of St. Andrew, which was probably the least problematic symbol of them all.

Kill the eagle, toss out Georgie Porgie, get a shield with the tricolour in there, put up some supporters, a brown bear from Novgorod on the left with a Roman fasces, and a Zilant from Kazan with a bunchuk on the right. Around the shield have a braided ribbon of three different colour schemes: light blue from the Order of St. Andrew, orange with three black stripes from the Order of St. George, and the Russian tricolour from the Hero of the Russian Federation, and this ribbon terminates below the shield with a giant Heroic gold star, flanked by the white cross of St. George on the right and the black eagle and saltire of St. Andrew on the left, both of which are smaller than the star. So the shield represents the Russian people themselves, upon which the state derives all its authority, the supporters represent two continents and disparate cultures coming together to synthesize Russia, and the braided ribbon and medallions represent the state itself, binding the people together in law and order. Guaranteed to impress or offend no one, instilling no emotion whatsoever - everything a national arms must be for the 21st century.

Not sure how that coat-of-arms would look in practice, but it sounds pretty pimpin' in theory.

 

[Vicccard]

Kill the eagle, toss out Georgie Porgie, get a shield with the tricolour in there, put up some supporters, a brown bear from Novgorod on the left with a Roman fasces, and a Zilant from Kazan with a bunchuk on the right. Around the shield have a braided ribbon of three different colour schemes: light blue from the Order of St. Andrew, orange with three black stripes from the Order of St. George, and the Russian tricolour from the Hero of the Russian Federation, and this ribbon terminates below the shield with a giant Heroic gold star, flanked by the white cross of St. George on the right and the black eagle and saltire of St. Andrew on the left, both of which are smaller than the star. So the shield represents the Russian people themselves, upon which the state derives all its authority, the supporters represent two continents and disparate cultures coming together to synthesize Russia, and the braided ribbon and medallions represent the state itself, binding the people together in law and order. Guaranteed to impress or offend no one, instilling no emotion whatsoever - everything a national arms must be for the 21st century.

Someone has given this a lot of thought.

 

[Bluehawk]

I shat that out in five minutes.

 

[Vicccard]

The only fault in your logic is that you wrongly think Russia doesn't have a monarch currently.

Spoiler

Can't post in this thread without making Putin jokes.

 

[Anarion]

Oleg Sentsov gets twenty years. Only a week after that Estonian security guy was put in jail. That must be harrowing, I hope they might get released somehow.

 

[Mad Vader]

I suppose they are chips on the negotiating table. The Russians would extract something for their release.

 

[Jhessail]

Indeed. The only difference to Cold War era that this time Russia has made the process highly visible and public.

 

[Vicccard]

Someone told me yesterday that he is sure we can still work out a deal to become good friends with Russia to fight international conflicts.

My reply that Russia was the cause of most international conflicts was not honoured with another reply . 

 

[Duh]

Someone told me yesterday that he is sure we can still work out a deal to become good friends with Russia to fight international conflicts.

My reply that Russia was the cause of most international conflicts was not honoured with another reply . 

Fascinating.

 

[Mad Vader]

My reply that Russia was the cause of most international conflicts was not honoured with another reply . 

Which ones? Even the Ukraine conflict is two-sided, a Russian aggression arguably provoked by Western encroachment of their sphere of influence.
That said, we'll never be "good friends" with Russia, the cultural divergence in understanding of human rights is too far gone.

 

[BenKenobi]

Trololo

 

[Úlfheðinn]

Soviets Russians gonna Soviet Russian...

Nice to see they continue to follow the Cold War tradition of inadvertently releasing embarrassing information.

 

[Osviux]

My reply that Russia was the cause of most international conflicts was not honoured with another reply . 

Which ones? Even the Ukraine conflict is two-sided, a Russian aggression arguably provoked by Western encroachment of their sphere of influence.
That said, we'll never be "good friends" with Russia, the cultural divergence in understanding of human rights is too far gone.

If Russia wanted to be the cause of most international conflicts it would need to expand it's borders first... oh noes, it's already happening!

It's not fair to call the Ukraine conflict two-sided. Did Western influence send agents to shoot civilian protesters? Did Western influence encroach Ukraine through military aggression and kept lying about it? The West was simply more appealing to Ukrainians than Russia and as a sovereign nation they chose their political path. Genuine friendship with Russia is possible, but only if it stopped intimidating other countries and trying to influence them through fear, corruption and economical pressure.

 

[Mad Vader]

That's very naive, or fairly typical of the average news consumer.

What are the strategic goals of US foreign policy regarding Russia? What do the Germans, the French and the British want there to happen (and implicitly, the EU at large)?
How do these goals affect Ukraine and what are the Western nations doing there to make it so?

Let me just give one example that doesn't make the news because it's complicated, not about violence, and doesn't fit the "Russians bad, West good" narrative.

The American National Endowment for Democracy (which I doubt you've heard of) is a U.S. non-profit soft power organization that was founded in 1983 to promote democracy. Or that's what they say on the wikipedia.
Back in reality,

The NED was set up in the early 1980s under President Reagan in the wake of all the negative revelations about the CIA in the second half of the 1970s...
The idea was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities...
Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, was quite candid when he said in 1991: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED.
In a multitude of ways, NED meddles in the internal affairs of foreign countries by supplying funds, technical know-how, training, educational materials, computers, fax machines, copiers, automobiles and so on, to selected political groups, civic organizations, labor unions, dissident movements, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, other media, etc. NED programs generally impart the basic philosophy that working people and other citizens are best served under a system of free enterprise, class cooperation, collective bargaining, minimal government intervention in the economy and opposition to socialism in any shape or form. A free-market economy is equated with democracy, reform and growth, and the merits of foreign investment are emphasized.

In short, NED tries to buy elections on behalf of the US, or back to the wiki:

Ron Paul also argued against NED funding in 2005 stating that NED has "very little to do with democracy. It is an organization that uses US tax money to actually subvert democracy, by showering funding on favored political parties or movements overseas. It underwrites color-coded ‘people’s revolutions’ overseas that look more like pages out of Lenin’s writings on stealing power than genuine indigenous democratic movements."
...
The NED played a significant role in the 2004 presidential election in Ukraine...
In their 2012 report, NED indicated that it spent US$3,381,824 (from the US federal budget) on the following programs in the Ukraine...

It's not fair to call the Ukraine conflict two-sided. Did Western influence send agents to shoot civilian protesters? Did Western influence encroach Ukraine through military aggression and kept lying about it? The West was simply more appealing to Ukrainians than Russia and as a sovereign nation they chose their political path.

Or was it? Elections can be swung with sufficient funding and organization and NED is just one of the channels.
Unless you also believe that Bernie Sanders could be the next US president.

 

[Osviux]

I do not think that Russians are bad and the West is good. I think that the Russian government is bad, the EU is too soft and that USA is getting involved in the affairs of other countries too much.

And about Ukraine, you want to tell me that USA arranged the coup of the pro-Russian president and then helped falsify the ellections, is that it?

 

[Mad Vader]

Only indirectly. Suitcases with dollars are more effective than planes with bombs, and you get to be the good guy.