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The News
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So Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter for $43B
Thoughts? Opinions?
Mine: Higher Powers that be help us all if that deal is made…
Twitter Adopts ‘Poison Pill’ Defense To Thwart Elon Musk Takeover
I think if Musk is successful and goes crazy they way people are thinking he will, there could be a mass exodus from the platform and it could do long term damage to the platform.
I personally barely use Twitter. I have just never warmed up to the platform.
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Poor Alex Jones and InfoWars… It might have been his “take” on Sandy Hook, you think?
https://news.yahoo.com/alex-jones-infowars-files-bankruptcy-071324206.html
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It isn’t likely that Jones is actually bankrupt (except in the moral sense), he’s just filing for bankruptcy protection to put all legal suits on hold and to avoid having to pay any settlements. In that respect he is following in the footsteps of his fellow scumbag Donald Trump
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Question is whether he can keep going in another form – in contrast to Trump, I think all of his eggs are in the infowar basket?
Couldn’t happen to a better person anyway. I hope he finally slouches off and disappears and dies a few years down the line off alcolholism without anybody taking notice.
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In Germany, teaching the Holocaust is mandatory. It includes visits to concentration camp, museums, etc. They don’t shy away from their own ugly history. Yet the kids aren’t damaged; they’re strengthened, matured, humbled. US needs to do same re slavery. Not that complicated.
— SiggyRose (@SiggyRose1) April 20, 2022
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Not that there aren’t a lot of motherfuckers who complain about it all the time, “Oh this was so long ago what do we even have to do with it anymore” bla bla bla.
But yes, Germany is actually pretty good at this. Funnily enough, that is probably because the US constructed the German state in that way in post-war Germany. But then, it’s always easier to see how somebody else should examine their faults than to do it with your own.
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dies a few years down the line off alcoholism without anybody taking notice.
while that is one way he could go. I personally hope he gets shot accidentally(drive by, wrong place, wrong time) because of his asshole take on Sandy Hook. I know wanting someone to get shot is rough but I am a big believer in Karma.
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The BBC seems to be struggling with where South Africa is located… the clue is in the name, but then what do you expect! pic.twitter.com/cHrMpqqv79
— Sir Makhubo IV™ (@MrMakhubo_) April 21, 2022
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So Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter for $43B
Thoughts? Opinions?
Mine: Higher Powers that be help us all if that deal is made…
It would be bad for twitter and bad for Musk… so a win-win for the rest of us.
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Then again, we must think about the larger picture of what will now be allowed.
Media supposedly influences the masses and a crucial election is coming in 2024.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s about six months where anyone high profile who criticises Musk or any of his phallic substitutes gets censured or banned, at which point he gets bored and sells it at a loss, or chunks of the infrastructure literally catches fire like everything else he touches.
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The thing that pisses me off the most about Musk buying Twitter is his constant complaining about taxing his wealth because his wealth is “unrealized”. Yet somehow he’s able to outright buy another company for $44 billion. It’s disgusting and shows just how absurd billionaires complaining about unrealized wealth is.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s about six months where anyone high profile who criticises Musk or any of his phallic substitutes gets censured or banned, at which point he gets bored and sells it at a loss, or chunks of the infrastructure literally catches fire like everything else he touches.
Then comes the question:
Who gets the smoldering ruins when Musk sell Twitter at a staggering loss: Zuckerberg and Meta or Bezos and Alphabet?
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Harvard pledges $100 million to atone for role in slavery
Better late than never, I suppose.
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Who gets the smoldering ruins when Musk sell Twitter at a staggering loss: Zuckerberg and Meta or Bezos and Alphabet?
History would suggest that if Twitter gets sold at a loss it’ll be in permanent decline. When people stop using a social media or web service they almost never come back.
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Probably something that we don’t know about yet.
I’m not saying a big decline will necessarily happen either but I think something like Twitter has peaked. It actually commands a much bigger profile than it should based on user numbers because its open format allows journalists access to important figures, be it celebs or politicians, and it’s very easy to write an article of embedded tweets.
Some decline I think is hidden in questionable data too. I was looking at Facebook stats and their reports of ever growing engagement seems to run very counter to what I’m seeing, which is a nearly dead newsfeed with about 10 of the 600 people on my friends list posting anything regularly. Even in groups I belong to like one with old photos of my home town used to have hundreds of posts a day 10 years ago and now just get a trickle. I think more are communicating directly on Whatsapp.
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All the Russian oligarchs who have died under strange conditions this year | Fortune
Last week, two more Russian oligarchs were found dead alongside their families within 48 hours of each other in alleged murder-suicides. They’re the latest of a series of high-profile Russians to die in mysterious circumstances in recent months.
It’s not the first time there have been reports about Russian officials dying suspiciously, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has long been known to take extreme measures to silence his opponents. In 2017, USA TODAY published an investigative report detailing at least 38 oligarchs who died or went missing over a three-year span.
In the early months of 2022, at least six prominent members of Russia’s upper class have been found dead under strange conditions.
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We just sent $33 billion in militarized aid to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, here is Philadelphia. pic.twitter.com/fxuKbcqg9k
— Kathryn Rose Fisher (@kayrosef) May 1, 2022
US Urban decay is nothing new. There are follow up vids in that thread of LA, Boston, Detroit…
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I do support defunding the police initiatives. Because I think police in the US have been tasked with too much, some of which they are not equipped to be responsible for. Namely, mental health issues. We have people who study and train for how to deal with mental health issues. They should be leveraged and utilized properly so the police can focus on crime. Hell, we should really be trying to train military vets as social workers to help with this issue. Would be a great way to help out vets who need a career. Which means diverting funds from police to social services.
Also, as Al pointed out, the money to fund police is more and more frequently being used to militarize police forces.
I agree that the branding is bad (lots of liberal branding sucks) but I also don’t really trust simple police reform. The systems are so terrible and the police are far too resistant to change (or any criticism at all). So yeah, reallocate funds to take some responsibility away from police and find ways to demilitarize these forces.
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Working for a city, I have interactions with police at all levels. Having talked and worked with them and knowing some things about them that I do, it is really easy to see what the core problem is.
They believe they are always right and everyone else is wrong. The gun and the badge just reinforce that.
They have a mindset that they are indoctrinated in from early on (hell, the entertainment industry is a big contributor to that) and is passed on and reinforced. It is a mindset that needs to be purged from law enforcement and replaced with something better. Cops also need to stop hiding behind the “blue wall of silence” and speak up when they see something wrong. Bad cops need to be removed from service and and never be able to be a law enforcement officer again. Bad cops need to be punished whenever they they step out of line and punished hard. Do that long enough and often enough, that will send a very clear message. Remove limited immunity so they can’t hide behind that either.
But really, change that mindset and you will have begun genuine police reform.
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Unfortunately, too often when police are criticized or slapped on the wrist (in NYC, at least), they respond by staging slowdowns and “blue flu” and other retaliations to punish the mayor or city councillors that criticized them. The current mayor in New York is a former cop, but that hasn’t given him any more control over the NYPD than any previous mayors. Case in point: when Mayor Adams threatened to crack down on transit cops “who spend too much time on their cellphones instead of patrolling”, the union responded to the effect that it’s the government’s fault for insisting that cops carry cellphones.
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I agree that the branding is bad (lots of liberal branding sucks) but I also don’t really trust simple police reform.
Yeah I mean the branding sucks because ‘defund’ reads to many logically as ‘disband’.
To be fair if I read a right wing source saying ‘defund Planned Parenthood’ I would read that as cutting all funds and shutting it down, not reduce the budget by 30% and invest more in social care and mental health support. It has been noted even minorities that face most of the issues recoil at ‘defund’ because they want protection when needed.
The truth is that reform is the correct word but in the past that has meant insignificant changes that don’t touch the core of the problem so activists struggle to support it.
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Yeah I mean the branding sucks because ‘defund’ reads to many logically as ‘disband’.
Look, we had to compromise somewhere and wound up saying “OK, we can’t disband the police just yet”
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Cops also need to stop hiding behind the “blue wall of silence” and speak up when they see something wrong.
Amen. That cop knelt on George Floyd’s neck for almost 10 minutes and THREE! officers did nothing to stop him.
The screening process needs to be reformed. As it is, the cops in the Hood city areas act like an occupying army.
Never mind reports of officers with ties to certain organizations…As for NY mayor Eric Adams… He is a former policeman and he was beaten up by the cops when he was 15 years old.
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Well, “someone” really wants to sell the weapons for it.
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Sooo apparently now Finland and Sweden are thinking of joining NATO… wow, someone REEEEALLY wants to start WW3, don’t they? u_u
If I lived in Finland, I would want to join NATO too. Looking at recent history, I notice that Russia has invaded many bordering countries that aren’t members of NATO but has never invaded a country that is. So joining is just common sense really.
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Sooo apparently now Finland and Sweden are thinking of joining NATO… wow, someone REEEEALLY wants to start WW3, don’t they? u_u
I assume “someone” is Vladimir Putin?
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That’s how they thought for a long time, as well. Currently, they’re more afraid of Russia simply deciding to attack them.
I wonder if Putin factored all of this into his plans. Savy as he usually is, I doubt that the growth of NATO is an effect he would have wanted.
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I assume “someone” is Vladimir Putin?
Sure, maybe… he wouldn’t be the only one though… lots of other people stand to benefit more from this conflict than him.
If I lived in Finland, I would want to join NATO too. Looking at recent history, I notice that Russia has invaded many bordering countries that aren’t members of NATO but has never invaded a country that is. So joining is just common sense really.
Now that you mention it, you know who else invades many countries that aren’t members of NATO? yup… you guessed it. So maybe it IS a good idea after all…
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The question is whether the US or the NATO states really factored in Russia’s very predictable response to their expansion.
Oh, there’s no question at all that they fucked up that part. That much we all know.
Doesn’t mean Putin hasn’t fucked up, as well, though, in not anticipating Finland and Sweden’s and other countries’ predictable responses to his Russia’s invasion of a neighbouring country.
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The question is whether the US or the NATO states really factored in Russia’s very predictable response to their expansion.
It’s quite a delayed response though isn’t it? It’s been 18 years since a country neighbouring Russia has joined NATO.
Recently it’s just Albania and North Macedonia two tiny countries on the Med that are 4 nations deep away from Russia.
I’m not necessarily proclaiming that the way NATO have acted is blameless but there seems very little there to suddenly prompt Putin to go start bombing Ukraine. He’s made it pretty clear he thinks Ukraine, or large parts of it at least, belong to Russia.
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In fairness it is pretty outrageous how so many countries have deliberately upset Russia by taking steps to ensure that they aren’t invaded by Russia.
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I’m not necessarily proclaiming that the way NATO have acted is blameless but there seems very little there to suddenly prompt Putin to go start bombing Ukraine. He’s made it pretty clear he thinks Ukraine, or large parts of it at least, belong to Russia.
Also very clear that he doesn’t think there is something like a Ukranian culture or a Ukranian people. His aim is to wipe out that notion and to make it all Russian; he’s stated that pretty clear. Jonny’s cynicism about NATO, justified or not (and I certainly think it is at least to some extent), doesn’t change any of that.
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The US goal is to hurt Russia and it’s spending Ukrainian lives to do it.
You make it sound like there is no Ukrainian agency in this, which I think is grossly unfair on the Ukrainian people who have 100% ownership of their own choices. The US didn’t tell Ukraine to oppose Russia, Ukraine decided, by themselves, to oppose Russia, and then *begged* the West to help them.
Certainly US arms manufacturers are profiting from this, and they are probably hoping the war goes on and on. But they are not the ones making the decisions to fight.
the Russians are also mostly obligated to fight.
This is quite an interesting point, because no they actually are not. Russia’s laws say that you can leave army service at any time, just like quitting any job, *if* the country is not at war. And currently the country is not “at war”, according to Putin.
Russia is already struggling with soldiers just going home, and there’s nothing they can do to stop them (nothing legal — they can heavily lean on them and threaten them, but would you want an armed man under your command who you’ve bullied into being there?).
Russia also can’t send in any of their conscripts, because that’s illegal under Russian law when the country is not at war. (Evidence suggests they actually are doing it — but again, that doesn’t make for an army you would want to rely on.)
So a sizeable chunk of the Russian army is now composed of “separatists” from eastern Ukraine who have been forcibly drafted to fight for their “independence” from Kyiv. You can probably guess how well that is working for them.
So, I think the majority of people actually fighting are essentially being forced to.
I’m in pretty much daily contact with friends in Kharkiv, and the story I’m getting is that Ukrainians are fighting because they want to survive, not because Biden or even Zelensky is forcing them to.
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I don’t disagree as far as the war profiteering that’s going on is concerned, and yes, this is turning very much into the kind of proxy war we have had in the past.
I do think there is an important difference though, in that there wasn’t a civil war going on in the first place. It could be argued that both Russia and the Western nations tried to stir one up in recent years, but that’s not quite what happened, so Russia didn’t have a Ukranian faction to support from behind the shadows, the way both sides have done in Syria.
What’s the end goal? Declare victory on a pile of rubble and piles of Ukrainian and Russian corpses?
I’m sure there are a lot of Ukrainian volunteers but all men 18-40 were essentially drafted into the fight and the Russians are also mostly obligated to fight. So, I think the majority of people actually fighting are essentially being forced to. What freedoms are we supporting in all these profitable arms deals supplying the conflict?
What’s the alternative to supporting Ukraine? Telling them to give up, to submit to the invasion and letting themselves be genocided (at the very least culturally, possibly more than that)? Is that less cynical or more so?
I argued similarly to the way you are doing when it came to the conflict in Syria. After Russia backed Assad, it was clear that this war was lost and that supporting the opposition would only lead to more bloodshed and destruction. But that was in a fragmented country that was fighting a civil war, with splintered opposition groups. Ukraine is a different case, and one where refusing to help people desperately asking for international help would on the whole be worse than helping them – even if that means supporting them in fighting a terrible war.
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This is quite an interesting point, because no they actually are not. Russia’s laws say that you can leave army service at any time, just like quitting any job, *if* the country is not at war. And currently the country is not “at war”, according to Putin.
On a sidenote: My kid recently showed my a clip that showed military recruitment videos from three different countries – the US, China and Russia. It was quite fascinating. The US is these days of course putting an emphasis on diversity and responsibility and personal opportunity. China on the strength of their fatherland and patriotism. Russia… Russia’s video was just fucking scary, really, because it focuses entirely on the joy of becoming a killing machine.
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Vandals have desecrated a WW2 military cemetary here in the Netherlands with texts saying “Slava Ukraini”, “fuck Putin”, “Azov”, and swastikas. Now the question is was that done by Ukrainians or Russians doing a “flase flag”. Any way, it’s quite unpleasant.
edit: they made a grammatical error, writing “slava ukraine” instead of “ukraini” which would be correct in Ukrainian, and “ukraine” is correct in Russian…sooooo not Ukrainians probably but Russians making it look like Ukrainians. (Or Dutch nazis I guess)
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You make it sound like there is no Ukrainian agency in this, which I think is grossly unfair on the Ukrainian people who have 100% ownership of their own choices. The US didn’t tell Ukraine to oppose Russia, Ukraine decided, by themselves, to oppose Russia, and then *begged* the West to help them.
This can be a problem, while they are undeniably influential the world does not revolve solely around the USA. A bit of an adjunct to American exceptionalism from a different direction.
Ukraine doesn’t like being invaded and wants to fight back, that’s a fairly universal response as is conscription in those circumstances.
The Guardian’s daily podcast had an episode on the Roe v Wade repeal this week and the US based journalist was asked what this means globally. The answer was the US was a leading country in legalising abortion and others could copy what they do as they did then. No they weren’t leading, they did it 6 years after the UK and many other European countries and in truth it is a domestic policy issue. The example then came of Hungary and Poland who have enacted similar restrictive approaches but umm, they did it first so why isn’t it couched as the US following Hungary’s lead?
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That’s part of the question here. First, I think the US government pushed Ukraine into this war and did so for its own interests.
I can’t imagine that. I mean, I am sure the US was pushing Ukraine into a Western direction and and pursuing their own agenda with that, but I doubt very much that the plan was to provoke Russia into a war. That shit is costing us all too much (including Russia, of course).
and less likelihood that Ukraine remains intact or independent.
Less likey compared to what would’ve happened if they’d surrendered after a week?
Again, I think that’s highly unlikely. The war sucks for Russians, too, and it will do so even more when the Ukranians get more weapons in support. Russia would still win, but it’s more likely they’ll grant Ukraine some form of independence the higher the cost of war is as it goes on.
I’m concerned that the avenues to a peaceful solution are being ignored or downplayed while the narrative that the Ukraine is somehow winning even though its cities and infrastructure are being destroyed and its people killed or sent fleeing their homes is dominant.
There hasn’t been any indication that Putin is going to accept any peaceful solution outside of total surrender by Ukraine, which the Ukrainian government won’t accept. I don’t see what anybody could’ve done to change that, except for leaving Ukraine to fight alone and be crushed more quickly.
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There hasn’t been any indication that Putin is going to accept any peaceful solution outside of total surrender by Ukraine
It’s not like efforts haven’t been made, Macron has sat down to help negotiate, the Turkish have too.
Ukraine conceded very early on not to join NATO, so if that’s the primary issue why isn’t the war over?
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It’s the wonders of economics
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Russia is still selling oil, but from what I’ve read they are not getting as much revenue from it as they used to,
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Why domestic terrorism needs to be a priority:
10 dead in mass shooting at Buffalo supermarket
This better not end like Kyle Rittenhouse.
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The US is averaging more than 10 mass shootings per week in 2022
…and we haven’t even gotten to the summer yet, when tempers rise with the temperature.
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The taking alive of #PaytonGendron & #DylanRoof before him, shows us that police don't need training in not killing people who they claim are dangerous. They clearly know how not to do that.
Prayers for #Buffalo and reminder Black people, you are not required to offer forgiveness— Dr Tyffani M Dent (@DrTyffani) May 15, 2022
Let's not forget the offering of aid and giving water to Kyle Rittenhouse – – as he ran down the street with an assault rifle. From the looks of the footage, he was the ONLY ONE packing firepower…
— JeweledSkye (@JeweledSkye) May 15, 2022
If there’s way to put hands on a mass killer’s elbow and escort him to a car that says: ‘so what do you like on your pizza?’ Those cops in Buffalo nailed it. They were rougher to 75 year old man at a peaceful BLM protest than a racist who just killed 10 people. Makes you wonder.
— NoelCaslerComedy (@caslernoel) May 15, 2022
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Not even a day later:
California churchgoers detained gunman in deadly attack
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The gunman in the Buffalo shooting believed heavily in this “Replacement Theory” which is a conspiracy that whites are being
replaced by minorities in the US. It plays into the fears that the country is being taken over, less white, and you know the rest.https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/16/politics/replacement-theory-buffalo-what-matters/index.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/republicans-must-answer-for-great-replacement-theory-violence
The latter link mentions some of the talking heads like Tucker Carlson, the Bannon guy who used to be in Tr*mp’s WH, and Rep Elise Stefanik who may not be as widely known to the public as Marjorie and Boebert, but is still the 3rd highest ranking GOPer.
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Having immense fun trying to even post to this thread. Wondering if I’m getting auto-moderated for something.
yeah some will come from the middle east which is hardly any better
The weird thing is much of the evil of the Middle East is supported or caused by Western countries. We supported many of the atrocities in Yemen, we set up the circumstances that led to ISIS etc. We are very selective with our moral indignation. I have seen people here putting Ukrainian flags on their yeards but I have never seen Yemeni flags. Also the amount of coverage it recives, when compared to another war that is going on like the war in Ethiopia, is absurd. Maybe it really is because they look more like us. But it is also because the West wants Ukraine to be part of its sphere of influence.
The Western attitude is completely wrong, we should at least have taken Russia’s concerns seriously. There are 1o million Russian people that live in Ukraine, and they were threatened and discriminated against. Not that I condone anything Putin does either, what he’s doing is outrageous. But all sides in this are assholes.
Yeah. Sorry, no.
I’ve seen a lot of this over the last couple of months. It’s largely a consequence of a complete misunderstanding of what the Russian Federation actually is, along with, usually, a lack of basic curiosity as to what has actually happened. Pro tip – Russia is an empire, and like most societies with a long tradition of empire (and I’m English, so I should know), its majority culture is chauvinistic and racist, with deeply ingrained imperialistic attitudes at all levels of society. More to the point, that empire is still there – those attitudes may have had generations to fade (often imperfectly) in other countries, but not Russia.
For years now, the Baltic states have been trying to warn the West that something like this was an inevitability, something that should have been blatantly obvious to anyone who followed the Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war, or looked at its earlier invasions of Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia or, you know, Ukraine back in 2014. We cheerfully ignored them, and took their cheap petrochemicals, despite the climate crisis, despite the increasingly obvious effects of Russian political interference, despite Russian expansionism, atrocities and aggression.
Another pro-tip: Russia never thought it was under threat itself. It has seven thousand nukes. It thought its plans to absorb Ukraine into its empire was under threat. The two things are not the same. Russia’s “concern” was that it would be unable to continue to place tame gangsters into positions of power and funnel Ukraine’s wealth into Russia. It wasn’t NATO expansion that set it on this path, either: it was the 2014 uprising that removed the tame gangsters Russia had in place. From that moment on, Putin and his inner circle began their hybrid war campaign against the West (blaming us for the uprising), “annexed” Crimea, and began making preparations to occupy the rest of the country. The Ukrainian’s have known this was coming for a long time.
Now, I can’t speak to the whole “discrimination against Russians” Kremlin talking point – who knows, it might even be true. I’m deeply sceptical, but stranger things have happened. But let imagine for a minute that it isn’t easily debunked nonsense, shall we? I think there’s some ground between “discrimination” and invading a sovereign country with no pretext other than some ahistorical, quasi-mystical “Duginist” horseshit, and some obviously concocted stories of genocide against Russian speakers. I think there’s some ground between this “discrimination” and reducing entire cities to rubble. Between that and moving troops into suburban areas and killing, torturing and raping men, women and children.
So no, Arjan. Hard disagree on the “both sides” from me there.
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Having immense fun trying to even post to this thread. Wondering if I’m getting auto-moderated for something.
yeah some will come from the middle east which is hardly any better
The weird thing is much of the evil of the Middle East is supported or caused by Western countries. We supported many of the atrocities in Yemen, we set up the circumstances that led to ISIS etc. We are very selective with our moral indignation. I have seen people here putting Ukrainian flags on their yeards but I have never seen Yemeni flags. Also the amount of coverage it recives, when compared to another war that is going on like the war in Ethiopia, is absurd. Maybe it really is because they look more like us. But it is also because the West wants Ukraine to be part of its sphere of influence.
The Western attitude is completely wrong, we should at least have taken Russia’s concerns seriously. There are 1o million Russian people that live in Ukraine, and they were threatened and discriminated against. Not that I condone anything Putin does either, what he’s doing is outrageous. But all sides in this are assholes.
Yeah. Sorry, no.
I’ve seen a lot of this over the last couple of months. It’s largely a consequence of a complete misunderstanding of what the Russian Federation actually is, along with, usually, a lack of basic curiosity as to what has actually happened. Pro tip – Russia is an empire, and like most societies with a long tradition of empire (and I’m English, so I should know), its majority culture is chauvinistic and racist, with deeply ingrained imperialistic attitudes at all levels of society. More to the point, that empire is still there – those attitudes may have had generations to fade (often imperfectly) in other countries, but not Russia.
For years now, the Baltic states have been trying to warn the West that something like this was an inevitability, something that should have been blatantly obvious to anyone who followed the Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war, or looked at its earlier invasions of Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia or, you know, Ukraine back in 2014. We cheerfully ignored them, and took their cheap petrochemicals, despite the climate crisis, despite the increasingly obvious effects of Russian political interference, despite Russian expansionism, atrocities and aggression.
Another pro-tip: Russia never thought it was under threat itself. It has seven thousand nukes. It thought its plans to absorb Ukraine into its empire was under threat. The two things are not the same. Russia’s “concern” was that it would be unable to continue to place tame gangsters into positions of power and funnel Ukraine’s wealth into Russia. It wasn’t NATO expansion that set it on this path, either: it was the 2014 uprising that removed the tame gangsters Russia had in place. From that moment on, Putin and his inner circle began their hybrid war campaign against the West (blaming us for the uprising), “annexed” Crimea, and began making preparations to occupy the rest of the country. The Ukrainian’s have known this was coming for a long time.
Now, I can’t speak to the whole “discrimination against Russians” Kremlin talking point – who knows, it might even be true. I’m deeply sceptical, but stranger things have happened. But let imagine for a minute that it isn’t easily debunked nonsense, shall we? I think there’s some ground between “discrimination” and invading a sovereign country with no pretext other than some ahistorical, quasi-mystical “Duginist” horseshit, and some obviously concocted stories of genocide against Russian speakers. I think there’s some ground between this “discrimination” and reducing entire cities to rubble. Between that and moving troops into suburban areas and killing, torturing and raping men, women and children.
So no, Arjan. Hard disagree on the “both sides” from me there.
Yup, exactly my point on the “NATO expansion”. Only Albania and Northern Macedonia have joined in recent years, tiny countries with tiny armies and not bordering Russia. Estonia has 1.5m people, there are bigger cities all around Europe.
None of them offer any threat, the threat is the UK and France. They are the only countries in Europe that have nuclear weapons and conventional forces that could defeat Russia and have been in NATO since inception (Germany has the largest population but restrictions on defence since WW2). I actually wouldn’t have been as confident on the conventional piece until we’d seen what a pigs ear they have made of Ukraine, now I know if UK and French forces went in tomorrow Russia would be fucked.
We know that the Trident system means that even if Moscow wiped out the UK so everyone was dead they can still retaliate and wipe them out too as the arsenal is offshore in submarines. In our wonderful system of mutually assured destruction none of these countries can confront each other directly.
I could supply an endless list of shitty things France and the UK have done over the years, as with the US, they aren’t necessarily ‘good guys’ and we have a duty to call our shit out but this entire conflict is at Putin’s door. Nobody else asked for it and if his aim was to curtail NATO then he’s done the exact opposite with Sweden and Finland wanting to join for one simple reason, if their borders are crossed they want the US, UK and France to defend them. They didn’t join before because they trusted that wouldn’t happen, just as Ukraine did when they handed over their nukes with a promise none of the nuclear powers would ever attack them, in retrospect they maybe should have held on.
If there are people in eastern Ukraine that want to be Russian then just poll them rather than bomb them.
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I took a poll of the two people I know in Ukraine (I actually know three, but one went silent in late March and we fear the worst
), one in the east and one in the west, and they both want to be Ukrainian.I realise this is not statistically significant, but it’s good enough for me.
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The demographics in Donbas are confusing, but most people there don’t identify as Russian.
No they don’t. So is invading and killing is the worst method to possibly work out that issue? I’d think so.
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(I actually know three, but one went silent in late March and we fear the worst
I’m so sorry, I didn’t see this the first time I read your post, I hope he or she is alright.
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(I actually know three, but one went silent in late March and we fear the worst
I’m so sorry, I didn’t see this the first time I read your post, I hope he or she is alright.
Thanks. We literally have no idea at this point. It’s someone I only know from an online forum, so there’s no-one we know from their “real” life we could contact. Pretty much the same as when people stop posting here. It’s a very fragile connection we all share.
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South east is all I know. I can guess at the city, as the last message anyone got was basically “my city is being bombed”.
And by ridiculous coincidence, we just got a message in the last half hour! No details, but at least they are alive!
Maybe we were silly to assume the worst. I mean, if I was being invaded the last thing I would think of is posting on an internet music forum, even if I was safe.
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South east is all I know. I can guess at the city, as the last message anyone got was basically “my city is being bombed”.
And by ridiculous coincidence, we just got a message in the last half hour! No details, but at least they are alive!
Maybe we were silly to assume the worst. I mean, if I was being invaded the last thing I would think of is posting on an internet music forum, even if I was safe.
Wow, that is amazing. I am glad they’re still with us.
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More on the 18 year old gunman. His father gave him a bolt action rifle as a Christmas present when he was 16. The semiautomatic he used he actually modified it to shoot more rounds.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/05/15/buffalo-shooting-gun-bought-bushmaster/
I know …”thoughts and prayers” …this is despicable… how was he taken alive and in one piece by the cops when others… you know.
AOC was once questioning someone from media in Washington DC about why the wordings “terrorists” is only used when it comes to Muslims and not domestic white supremacist attacks.
This US gun culture of giving guns and rifles as a Xmas or birthday gift.
We can go back to the Turner Diaries years ago about some future race war/apocalypse so whites should get ready now for it. The NRA… only whites are to have guns. (Interestingly, when black and Hispanic women were buying guns to protect themselves, then the NRA wanted the gun laws to crack down on that practice.)
Biden… Are you sure about that?
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I’m sure Biden sincerely believes that, what he can do to stop it is another matter. Replacement theory is being spouted nightly on Fox News.
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So you’d be happier with a caption reading: “BIDEN: WHITE SUPREMACY IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF AMERICA”?
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No, but as Gareth said what he can do to stop it is another matter. That headline when I read it was just…
Biden can’t change history or erase historical prejudice. What he can do though is make an affirmative statement about whether he believes that prejudice has any place in modern American society, which is how I interpreted that headline.
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There is this message that the US will be less white, whites will lose power, minorities are coming for you, your jobs, and will take over, and you will be “replaced”.
I’m a dumb guy that replaced myself. 😂
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