61–70 of 120 posts
> Western diplomatic sources told Iran International > In early-November, an unnamed source at Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport told Kayhan-London > Citing an unnamed Iranian source, > There are also unconfirmed reports that officials are transferring their assets to friendly countries Basically, "source? trust me bro!"
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Venezuela gives more cover. Larger, gives less shits. There are African options too.
>African options Libya? Egypt? Be specific. Let's plan where they will go and prepare for their arrival.
Libya's governments have strong military relationships with Turkey and/or the US+France so a no-go
If they try to take asylum somewhere outside Iran it would probably be Malaysia (lots of the Iranian elite send their children to the British+Australian university campuses there plus it's basically First World) or Qatar (similar reason as Malaysia but also American universities)
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The idea is that if the leader can live luxuriously in another country, they have an incentive to stop being a bad leader and retire in luxury already. If bad leaders got executed, then the incentive for bad leaders would be to stay in power no matter the cost. The reason dictatorships turn murderous when they lose popularity is that the dictator knows they will be killed if the opposition wins, so they have no choic…
> The idea is that if the leader can live luxuriously in another country, they have an incentive to stop being a bad leader and retire in luxury already. That sounds plausible, but does it actually happen? I mean, tyrants have certainly fled the country to live somewhere else and retire their ambitions, but have they ever done so peacefully?
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>African options Libya? Egypt? Be specific. Let's plan where they will go and prepare for their arrival.
Egypt has strong a military relationship with Saudi and the US so a no-go Libya's governments have strong military relationships with Turkey and/or the US+France so a no-go If they try to take asylum somewhere outside Iran it would probably be Malaysia (lots of the Iranian elite send their children to the British+Australian university campuses there plus it's basically First World) or Qatar (similar reason as Malaysi…
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Someone told me in a bar on K Street the thing Vladimir Putin fears most is being hung from a gas station like Mussolinu, and I suspect that goes for all totalitarians. What scares me is I've met people like that at home in the USA. There is a quote by a KGB defector which I lost the cite for. "There is nowhere to defect to." They can live in luxury, but you cannot buy respect. Folks are allowed to show you, in small…
> Someone told me in a bar on K Street the thing Vladimir Putin fears most is being hung from a gas station like Mussolinu, and I suspect that goes for all totalitarians. Putin has openly said he despises what the west did to Gaddafi and believes thats what they want for him. He not only fears it, but but said he fears for his civilization (Russia). The west makes it pretty easy to be feareful - https://www.cbsnews.c…
I think the fuller explanation is that Putin got drunk on his own Kool-aid of successful propaganda ops against the West, and thought that would translate into battlefield success. Nobody thinks of themselves as a bad person, so the perspective of rulers is that people love them and want to be ruled by them. Hence why Russia started off by sending shock paratroopers to be "greeted as liberators" rather than an actual invasion force.
What I do know is the Russia-Ukraine war is a referendum on the post-WWII international order - whether those lines on a map mean something. And even despite the moral hazards from the outsized winners in that international order (eg the Iraq War), it's seeming that we're much better off with it than without it. And this applies a thousand times over if you're American or European.
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NK leaders probably know there is no way out, so also nothing to lose. Iran, for example, is less bad I guess than North Korea.
So if China refuses to grant them exile they will tell the army to attack people randomly or to detonate a nuclear bomb? How many would follow this order?
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>Putin asked what right the west had to assassinate Gaddafi without a trial and destroy all the countries infrastructure The purposeful destruction of infrastructure is an inexcusable war crime. But "the west" did not stick a sword up Gaddafi's butt -- that was his own people, enraged by the actions of a totalitarian. "The West" did not wander into Libya and and lynch a so called world leader who only wants norms fol…
“We came, we saw, he died.” - Hillary Clinton
(You should have guarded the embassy better. RIP vilerat.)
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I think the only Russian leader who ever left and lived abroad was Gorbachev. Even Navalny came back to face the music, and he wasnt even president (yet?) I do not believe they are self serving at the expense of their country and will live in a bunker while their countrymen are bombed. They all thought and think they were doing the right thing for their country. Even Yeltsin, when he did in 1993 what essentially the…
Hordes of them around the revolution. After there was never a serious change of power.
I am talking about subsequent leaders who actually ruled Russia. Yeltsin helped usher in the Chicago Boys reforms in Russia and he literally fired on Congress. The Peruvian guy does less than that but he is denounced - yet Yeltsin was supported by USA. There is a cover of Time Magazine w him holding an American flag saying “Yanks to the Rescue” where we claimed to have interfered in the Russian elections to have him re-elected despite a 6% (!!) approval rating. We did it so the communist party candidate wouldn’t get into power (Zyuganov).
They even made a movie about it https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X1Z7pAcGQSQ
So when it comes to Russia, interfering in their elections is something we are proud of doing and even probably overstate it for propaganda purposes. That is another reason why even on a logic/hypocrisy level, very little said by large states (especially empires) means anything to intelligent people. It’s all sound bites designed to get public support for the latest policy of the latest administration, who themselves make it up as they go. Instead of working hard to hear legitimate concerns of others and prevent wars, they escalate wars. This is true across the board in Russia, China, USA etc. They supposedly “work for us” but they do such a terrible job and then we have to pay with our taxes and our boys (and kill other people by the tens of thousands) for THEIR mistakes while they never even come close to paying the price an average young male member of the public has to pay.
In the Russian revolution, 20 million people died, many killing their own relatives. But not Stalin, Lenin, or any of the Bolshevik leaders. Must be nice to be the political class. And people buy this bullshit. Read “war is a racket” by Smeey Butler
It's so weird to me how rare it is that the leaders of countries are executed by the population and to even call for that upsets people regardless of what their reign is like. There's almost no incentive to be a good leader since if it all falls apart you'll just end up living luxuriously in another country. Why is there such a high value placed on human life that ignores the impact that person had upon the world? Fe…
>to even call for that upsets people regardless of what their reign is like. Its was so weird when Gaddafi was killed. He was a murderous villain and the west had directly made sure that his regime would fall or even outright tried to kill him with bombings. But when some of his so-called subjects got their hands on him and finished the job it was much maligned in the press. For some reason the more power you have th…
By my understanding he sponsored IRA terrorists and unnecessarily attacked Egypt and Algeria in some minor conflicts and a few public executions (Lockerbie was pretty clearly a Syrian action).... That's it? I do think he claimed to be a murderous villain since that was working for assad
I could be wrong but on raw terms it's not too far off from say any given us president in the last 100 years
It's so weird to me how rare it is that the leaders of countries are executed by the population and to even call for that upsets people regardless of what their reign is like. There's almost no incentive to be a good leader since if it all falls apart you'll just end up living luxuriously in another country. Why is there such a high value placed on human life that ignores the impact that person had upon the world? Fe…
This is a sentence that I would hope never to have associated with me. We need to re-consider the value of people's lives … on what basis? Because of the harm they have done to others, I guess. And why is that harm so bad? Because people's lives have value, surely. But should we interrogate whether all the people hurt by an official's actions were good or bad people before deciding how much to weight that official's harm to them?
If the principle of life having value doesn't extend to everyone, then it doesn't really cover anyone. To put it differently, if there is a principle according to which a life can be said to have no value, then that principle, howsoever aimed at the powerful it might initially be, will be used against the powerless.