FabSwingers.com forum: Meerkats...

By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

I can understand economic sanctions designed to disrupt the Russian war machine but I think we need to be careful. As has been pointed out by others, crashing the Roubal will penalise ordinary Russians but actually make those in power richer. Their money is stashed in Euro's Dollars and (most especially) Pounds and had doubled in value back home in Russia thanks to our sanctions. Until we make it more painful for the small number of Russian politicians with any chance of influence to support Putin than to oppose him the sanctions are going to have no effect on their policy.

Just think, Blair saw a million people turn up and protest against invading Iraq and it made no difference, so you honestly think a protesting population will affect Putin?

Beyond economic sanctions with dubious claims to effectiveness, all the rest of the stuff is jingoism and xenophobia. Taking the Meerkats advert off air has absolutely no effect whatsoever except adding to a growing feeling that anything Russian is automatically bad. Right now anti Russian sentiment is deliberately being stoked, this allows us to plunge their economy into the ground, stand by and watch as normal people loose their jobs, their homes and starve because, well, they're Russian, they deserve it. Looks good in the press, looks like we're doing something and saves the real effort (not to mention danger) of working through the maze of shell companies and dodgy accounting to find and confiscate Putins wealth.

What saddens me is the utter blindness to people pouring out anti Russian sentiment to the fact that labeling a person as bad simply because they were born in a certain location is the basis of all wars - we really are no different to them.