Europe is just getting adjusted to the new reality and the reality is not black-and-white.
Russians didn't discover magic words that they use to hypnotise people and make them vote for pro-Russia candidate. In fact, everywhere in the world the incumbent politics are losing ground because the system is in crisis and people are looking for a change everywhere and Russia appears to be able to propel politicians who are closer to the their politics simply because the incumbent ones screwed up.
Is America different? Just a month ago in the American election – those who are anti-establishment and pro-Russian won.
US and Europe will go through a soul searching and hopefully will come out of this in a better shape. It has to go through this because the ideology collapsed, economy doesn't perform and the hypocrisy is unbearable anymore.
For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are blocking the Chinese electric cars? Can't stand others making the world better place better than they do?
Can you tell me if US is about freedom and respect of the international law, borders and trande?
If so why they support Ukraine against Russian invasion and then support Israel who occupies Palestinian territories since many years?
Can you tell me why people should drink from paper straws when the rich fly private jets?
Can you tell me why the capital can go anywhere but people should be stopped at the borders?
Can you tell me how the economy is s great when so many people suffer?
The west is in crisis, the ideology doesn't hold and the economy doesn't provide and all the Russians have to do is to point it out. They don't use spell, they just tell what everyone sees. This needs to get fixed, let's hope that the damage wouldn't be too big.
> For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are blocking the Chinese electric cars? Can't stand others making the world better place better than they do?
Because the EU is a bunch of democracies, and a few of the biggest ones do not want to accelerate electrification bad enough to threaten parts of their industry/economy right now. This tracks with the electorate; support for green policies is rather low across the board, almost every nation has different primary issues.
> Can you tell me if US is about freedom and respect of the international law, borders and trande? If so why they support Ukraine against Russian invasion and then support Israel who occupies Palestinian territories since many years?
The Ukraine war is the most clear-cut aggressor/victim situation in a long time, even compared to setups like the Vietnam war: There is not even a puppet government with any legitimacy that the Russians could be claiming to act in support of, and there is no credible casus belli either. It's just blatant expansionism at the cost of a sovereign nation.
Israel/palestine is a complicated mess-- it is basically a civil war of sorts, and the Americans DO support people in Gaza/Westbank a ton (humanitarian aid).
> Can you tell me why people should drink from paper straws when the rich fly private jets?
Note: The non-private jets are a much bigger problem actually, but since there's not enough popular support to curtail air travel significantly, the easy pro-environmental actions happen first.
> Can you tell me why the capital can go anywhere but people should be stopped at the borders?
Because the people inside those borders don't want other people with no capital wandering in. The capital alone (or its owners) they don't really mind as much.
> Can you tell me how the economy is s great when so many people suffer?
Can you be more specific on this? I'd say the economy is not great, not terrible, and its about the same for the people (talking about central Europe here).
> and the Americans DO support people in Gaza/Westbank a ton (humanitarian aid).
Humanitarian aid doesn’t help preventing bombs kindly donated by the US from falling. The large difference in casualties (what is it? 40 Palestinians for every Israeli?) tells me it’s not a civil war, but an extermination.
Israel settling occupied territories doesn’t earn them much sympathy either. If you want a buffer to feel safe, annex and protect the people who live there while fully demilitarising the land.
The only country that has ever granted Palestinians concessions without deaths is the US (e.g. the desettlement of Gaza), and that is only possible because we have leverage over military aid.
It's also the country that consistently blocks any sanctions against what the rest of the UN perceive as countless war crimes committed against Palestinian civilians by the IDF.
That's so wrong it doesn't stand the simplest smell test.
Soldier: Captain they're firing on us, what should we do?
Capatain: Wait till they kill one of us, we can't fire back until then.
It is most certainly a war. It will stop being a war when one of the sides stops fighting. Since Hamas is still attacking the IDF and still attacking civilians in Israel with rockets and still holding hostages we still have a war.
In Lenbanon the ratio of casualties was also skewed. Again it is some magical fairy thinking that Israel would allow Hezbollah to keep firing rockets at its civilian population centers in order to meet some casualty ratio metric. Again it doesn't pass the simplest smell test. I think you need to look a bit deeper at why you're saying this and think a bit more critically. Once Hezbollah effectively surrendered, and we have an agreement, there is no more war. They could have not started that war, they could have surrendered earlier, the outcome is on them. Just like the outcome in Gaza is on Hamas.
The ratio of casualties means absolutely nothing. It pretty much means Hamas fighters are ok to keep fighting even if a lot of them get killed. No country will stop fighting when its enemy is still fighting just to meet some casualty count ratio.
In terms of "someone who looks like them" Hamas' choice of having its combatant pretend to be civilians and embed amongst civilians is the root cause of a higher number of uninvolved getting killed.
EDIT:
Basically the statement that we can make value/moral judgements strictly based at looking at post-event casualty counts is just very obviously false. This is true on the micro when e.g. police kills some criminals and the ratio may be infinity. It's true in self defense situations where you kill any number of attackers trying to kill you. and it's true in the macro, there are many wars when one parts manages to have an overwhelming victory and certainly many examples of battles in history that are like that.
In modern times there is no such requirement on a military according to "international law". The only requirement is that a specific action serves a military purpose, the number of combatant killed is unlimited and collateral damage is also acceptable. There are protections for soldiers that surrender but in this specific situation because Hamas combatants do not wear uniforms they don't even get those protections.
Early in the war when Hamas was launching massive barrages of rockets into Israel and has killed many civilians Israel was totally justified to use deadly force to stop those launchers. If they're buried in shafts then using heavier bombs is also justified. Hamas is the responsible party since its actions are those that created the need to stop this. Israel's warning to civilians to evacuate was above and beyond what other western armies have typically done in these situations. Hamas' using force to make civilians stay is again on Hamas.
If you want to call this an asymmetric war then by all means. It still doesn't change anything.
And just a by the way, in the war US led against the Islamic State there were: 6 US serviceman killed, 16 US serviceman wounded. France who also fought the war had 2 serviceman killed. 83,000 ISIS militants killed (at least 13k civilians killed by coalition strikes). Take that for a casualty ratio.
> few of the biggest ones do not want to accelerate electrification bad enough to threaten parts of their industry/economy right now
Do you see the problem? Those in control screw up and they expect to get bailed out by forcing people to buy their inferior and expensive products.
> The Ukraine war is the most clear-cut aggressor/victim situation
It's actually not that clear cut and if you apply the same filters for both of the countries you will see it. Try testing for internationally recognized borders and the situation is same for the Israeli invasion and Russian invasion. Test for separatist movements and you will find very similar things, test for minorities getting attacked and you will see that its quite similar. Not the same but when you pick something like "Russia must respect the internationally recognized borders" and you don't apply the same for Israel then you are a hypocrite, you are not doing it from standpoint of a principle but due to your own interest and if you are doing it out of your own interest people start asking why I'm paying for it? Where's my cut if this thing pans out?
> The non-private jets are a much bigger problem actually
I don't know if that's true or not but you ask people to sacrifice their comfort for a common cause, then everyone should do it.
> Because the people inside those borders don't want other people with no capital wandering
But then people start noticing that it's not the poor immigrants who want to work who buys al the properties. Some people want the poor stopped at the border and the rich welcomed. Others want different things, a lot of people don't want oligarchs buying all that property and leave it empty.
> I'd say the economy is not great, not terrible
In the case of the US elections, there were many opinion polls showing that people are not satisfied with the economy. They are also not satisfied with many other things related to the economy. Just yesterday someone killed an insurance CEO at a filthy rich location and so many people were cheering for the killer.
How is it "expansion invasion" if peace terms offered by Russia, which are now public knowledge with recent documents leak, shortly after invastion didn't include any new territories for Russia? Ukraine walked away from that offer.
1.Russia sponsored separatist movement in Donbass with money, weapons and agents.
2. Russia directly occupied Crimea while lying they do not.
3. Russia signed a Budapest memorandum to respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in the existing borders and restrain to use force against it.
4. Russia signed a series of Minsk peace treaties.
Why you think that they really offered a peace in a good faith? History of modern Russia, USSR and empire show any peace treaty or other international documents with nothing, just a waste of the paper.
Russians always lie. That's putty western world are blind because Russian bribes are too good to miss.
Those peace terms included Russia getting to annex Crimea, stationing troops in Donbas (eastern Ukraine), Ukraine retreating all of their troops, Ukraine being neutral (permanently non-allied).
In return, Ukraine would have gotten some guarantor states safekeeping its newly drawn borders (but Russia would have been able to veto any action of those guarantor states in case someone, possibly Russia, attacked the Ukraine again).
This seems a bit of a complete joke to me? Can you explain, why, exactly, Ukraine should have taken that offer? This is basically "I give you everything we are currently fighting over, in return I get an absolutely worthless promise from a serial liar". No deal.
> Try testing for internationally recognized borders and the situation is same for the Israeli invasion and Russian invasion.
I do not understand your point. Ukraine has borders that were recognized by Russia itself (Budapest Memorandum). They violated those borders when they annexed Crimea-- their excuse: those people want to be part of our empire-- ok.
8 years later they marched on Kyiv-- whats even the excuse for that? Do you think the people in Kyiv want to be liberated from their president, and governed by some Russian oligarch?
If Russia is in a similar situation than Israel, then were are the massive acts of terrorism against Russian citizens comparable to October 7th? Where are the missiles fired towards Moscow, before 2014?
I don't know why you interpret my comment like that, I don't support Russia, I say that Israel is just like Russia from that standpoint.
Are you by any chance assuming that Israel is absolutely innocent, therefore I must be claiming that Russia must be also innocent? It's the other way around, they are both aggressor and invaders. Anyone claiming that countries shouldn't invade other countries and respect the internationally recognized borders then should support Ukraine and Palestine.
> Russias invasion of Ukraine on the other hand, does not have an October 7th
Zelensky massed the largest land army in Europe excluding Russia, and then in March 2021 officially declared imminent war on Russia. Only then did Russia start heavily militarizing its border and a year later, after many failed attempts at diplomacy, formally invaded.
Gaza can't even do many of the these things because they don't have statehood, much less a real army.
It is offensively disingenuous to argue that Israel's genocide and illegal occupation is justified by Oct 7, but Russian military operations can never be justified even by an official and credible declaration of war by military-peer Ukraine.
What was the justification for annexing Crimea in 2014 then? Your timeline seems a bit biased to me, because having a big part of your nation annexed by a neighboring army seems like a reasonable cause for shoring up your land defenses to me.
Do you also dispute that there were Russian troops on Ukrainian territory before 2021, fighting alongside Ukrainian separatists with Russian provided materiel? Because there is a long report on this, since they accidentally shot down a civilian airliner...
I'm not "bad faith trolling". Unlike a troll, I actually stand behind my points instead of taking up some arbitrary contrarian position which I then shift around whenever parts of it become untenable to defend.
Also note that accusing others of trolling or shilling is against the site guidelines.
> thinks Israel-Palestine conflict started on October 7.
I most certainly did not think or say that. But this was a discussion about the analogies between the Ukraine war and the Israel/Palestine massacres, and bringing up '67 or the first intifada would have been about as relevant to that discussion as Holodomor or the Ukrainian Peoples Republic short history (which is why I did not talk about any of those).
> "but what about 8 years before 2022 Russian invasion?"
My point is that you picked a highly arbitrary date to support your position-- pretending like Ukraine set up the conditions for war with Russia out of the blue, followed by honest diplomatic attempts and a formally declared war from Russia out of any other options.
This is simply not the case: Russia built up its invasion troops months before attempting the invasion, and its fishing for excuses, false-flag operations covered ceaselessly in state media (to manipulate public opinion) and efforts to misrepresent the Donbas situation are quite well documented. There also never was a formal declaration of war, and calling the march on a sovereign nations capital a "peacekeeping operation" seems a bit of a stretch to me.
I honestly believe that there could have been genuine reasons for Russia to involve itself in the Ukraine-- even to send soldiers into the Donbas. But insisting that Russia shifted troops into Belarus to help or protect the people in Donetsk and Luhansk is frankly insulting (given hindsight).
> Russia built up its invasion troops months before attempting the invasion
In direct response to an official declaration of military action by Zelensky against legal Russian territory [1]. Sevestapol is a Russian city according to Ukranian law. When Russia did invade, it struck hardest at the neo-Nazi Azov battalion which was massing in Mariupol preparing to invade Sevestapol or outmaneuver a Russian counterattack.
Why do you consistently ignore these crucial facts, but for that they undermine the political narrative you are tirelessly pushing? You write many verbose comments on this matter but clearly don't have a handle on the basic facts beyond the same tired, opinionated talking points we've all heard a million times.
In direct response to an official declaration of military action by Zelensky against legal Russian territory.
It was not "legal Russian territory". The very edict you cite refers to it as "temporarily occupied". (It's also not why Russia invaded, but that's a side matter).
Sevestapol is a Russian city according to Ukranian law.
They should have solved it before 7th of October and if that was not possible they shouldn't have been committing AI assisted genocide. Sometimes you screw up with your intelligence and diplomacy, you take a hit and this still doesn't give you a right to genocide. The same for the Palestinians BTW, you screw up lose a war get occupied and you still don'y get right to do terror attacks.
I'm actually fan of Israel, It's a country I want to visit a lot and I actually admire the things they achieved in that barely livable land. Which makes me extra sad too see into what they have turned.
You don't get the three major religions with community at the core, in a place like Mars. It is Mediterranean coast with documented habitation spanning millenia. The incredibly dehumanising colonial propaganda, that is a land without people for a people without land, is just that; A dehumanising propaganda which reduces the native population to savages and not-human.
The new puppet government was ethnic cleansing the local Russian populatin. So
It's not so clear cut. The fact that's it a puppet government is easy to confirm. Just ask yourself where Zelensky came from and why he stashes his generational wealth in the states. Why ban elections if the Ukrainian people are still really behind them.
Also Ukraine is not getting helped for free. More like they've mortgage their land and resources to the likes of Blackrock and other banking interests. That will keep the future generations in indebted servitude, while they rob them of their resources. This is just Western colonialism. Ask any Indian how fond they are of British colonialism.
> The new puppet government was ethnic cleansing the local Russian populatin
Yes, this is what Russian state media insinuated.
If Russias utmost effort was to protect the minorities in Ukraines east, spearheading a peace-keeping effort would have made a lot of sense (even stationing army there, possibly).
But this is not what happened, Russia fanned the flames in that region instead, aiding the separatists with undercover soldiers and materiel `(this is very well documented because they shot down a civilian airliner by mistake, which pissed of the dutch victims and their government to no end, investigating the whole clusterfuck in excruciating detail).
> The fact that's it a puppet government is easy to confirm.
Insisting on Zelensky being a non-democratic puppet government is a bit rich after Putin had his last political opponent poisoned, but ok...
> Why ban elections if the Ukrainian people are still really behind them
Because they are at war.
> Also Ukraine is not getting helped for free. More like they've mortgage their land and resources to the likes of Blackrock and other banking interests. That will keep the future generations in indebted servitude, while they rob them of their resources.
So Russia trying to annex the Ukraine is actually a plot by western colonialists? Why is Russia helping those colonialists in your opinion? Who exactly are those colonialists? Germany? UK? France?
Navalny went through a trail (Russian legal process), was found guilty of corruption and died in prison of a blood clot.
Please provide proof of poisoning ...
Alexei Navalny's popularity within Russia was always a western media fabrication, and at best a whole lot of wishful thinking. Navalny was a fringe candidate, with about the same amount of popularity as Chris Christi, and pushed and financed be the same neocons.
To what degree Russia is democratic can be disputed, but the fact is that Putin still has the backing of a vast, vast majority of Russian people.
There are J6 political opponents still rotting in jail on decade long sentences over protesting a highly suspicious election. Some have been kept in solitarily confinement (torture) and some have also died in prison. So Jailing political opposition is done in the states at this point too. Trump survived two assassination attempts. Biden a less popular candidate (as proven by this election) had his justice department attempt to jail him for hundreds of years.
>So Russia trying to annex the Ukraine is actually a plot by western colonialists?
Russia voluntarily let Ukraine secede from the USSR under certain conditions, which they have not kept. If Ukrainians have a right to self determination. Clearly under the same principle that Russian majority that lives in eastern part of Ukraine does as well.
Russia voluntarily let Ukraine secede from the USSR under certain conditions, which they have not kept
Please identify the specific treaty/protocol you are referring to, and which clauses you believe Ukraine has violated.
Clearly under the same principle that Russian majority that lives in eastern part of Ukraine
There was no such majority before Russia's invasion of 2014 (as explained in the other comment). It seems you may be confused by the fact that there were higher numbers voting for pro-Russia parties, or who spoke Russian/Surgyk. But that's not the same as being, or identifying as "Russian" -- any more the fact that English is the dominant language in Ireland means everyone living there must be "English".
This is one of the most important things to understand about Ukraine.
> If Ukrainians have a right to self determination. Clearly under the same principle that Russian majority that lives in eastern part of Ukraine does as well.
Russians were not a majority in eastern Ukraine. The split was roughly 55% Ukrainian, 40% Russian, 5% other in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, and much less in other oblasts Russia has officially annexed - Kherson was 82% Ukrainian and 14% Russian.
The right to self-determination applies to distinct "peoples". It's not very well defined, but generally understood as a globally distinct ethnicity living on their historic territories. Native American tribes could exercise this. They are a distinct people living on their historic land and without their own established state anywhere else in the world.
This right does not extend to ethnic minorities living in other countries. Russians have already exercised the right and have a country, they don't get to claim any piece of land on the planet that has Russians living there. Russians have about as strong claim to eastern Ukraine than Israel has to Brooklyn (22% Jewish). I think it would be pretty insane to argue that Brooklyn "should belong to Israel" purely on this, and start a major war that drives away millions as refugees, kills hundreds of thousands, and razes many East Coast towns to ground.
The exact percentage of Russian ethnicity is is a little hard to determine, and varies through out that region. The fact is that the Eastern region of Ukraine historically voted for pro Russian candidates. And after being annexed, again voted to be part of Russia.
Presumably the people that live there, hedged their bets on who would treat them best going forward, and came up with Russia multiple times.
We have a similar situation in Canada where the Province of Quebec has a large percentage of francophone speakers (French Heritage). If one day, Canada were to try to join the US, a large percentage of the Quebec region would either decide to form their own country, or link up with France in some way. Even more so likely if the Anglophone Canadians would start ethnically cleansing Quebecers.
If you believe in the principals of democracy, then you should support the will of the local population to self determination under such circumstances.
All this talk of democracy, but Zelensky's party will not hold new elections, because they've lost the support of the majority of Ukrainians. So if not the interests of the majority, who's interest does this party represent going forward?
> The fact is that the Eastern region of Ukraine historically voted for pro Russian candidates. And after being annexed, again voted to be part of Russia. Presumably the people that live there, hedged their bets on who would treat them best going forward, and came up with Russia multiple times.
That's simply not true. Pre-war surveys showed 1% support for joining Russian Federation in Kherson and up to 13% in areas with the largest number of Russians. So it was a fringe idea even among ethnic Russians. Leaked surveys conducted by Russian military admin after the invasion showed similar low levels. They got 99% support in their fake referendums only through extreme intimidation:
Moscow-backed forces are going door-to-door armed with machine guns forcing Ukrainians to vote in "sham" referendums that will annex newly occupied areas to Russia, sources have told the Telegraph. Voting began on Friday morning and is expected to continue until Tuesday, with polling stations featuring see-through ballot boxes and armed guards set up across Russian-controlled parts of the Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, as well as Russia itself.
Ukrainians living in territory that Moscow has taken since the start of the war have been told their families will be massacred if they refuse to take part, with soldiers sometimes even leaning over their shoulders and watching them as they vote. “We are forced to go under the pretext of being shot. If we didn’t go, they said that they would shoot or massacre the whole family,” said a resident in Severodonetsk, Luhansk Oblast, who wished to remain anonymous due to fears of reprisals. “We're scared. At the referendum, turnout is required or arrest or worse. Many are being forced with a threat to life.”
The exact percentage of Russian ethnicity is is a little hard to determine, and varies through out that region
But the comparative proportions identifying as "Ukrainian" or "Russian" in the last pre-war census is not, and in fact, in this wonderful utopian future we now live in. And even starting from scratch, you can easily zero in on a reliable answer to this question within minutes:
I invite you to look at the numbers for the 5 regions which Putin is currently intending to grab (and which the Trump administration apparently intend to just hand over to him, with an order of fries on the side), and tell us what you find there.
Even more so likely if the Anglophone Canadians would start ethnically cleansing Quebecers.
The thing is, under normal circumstances they most definitely would not. And if you were to go up there today, and tell them that 10 years from now they'd all be at each other's throats, with one side insisting it just had to ethnically cleanse the other and they no longer had any real choice about the matter -- they'd look at you like you were crazy.
And that was pretty much the situation in Ukraine, until very shortly before 2014. What changed that was (to some extent) various political events. But what pushed these changes of sentiment into violence was -- a tide relentless propaganda and disinformation.
"in this wonderful utopian future we now live in, you can easily zero in on a reliable answer to your question within minutes (even starting from scratch):"
Navalny was a patriot that fought corruption and abuse of power in his nation-- would he have won elections in Russia? Probably not, but he was most certainly highly inconvenient for the corrupt oligarchs there (Putin among them).
Regarding J6: I don't doubt that some of those protestors had good intentions. Do you suggest letting perpetrators go unpunished if their attempt at a coup is incompetent enough, and fone with "pure" intentions? Because I feel that sets a very bad precedent for a democracy in general; I don't think you would find a majority for this, either.
> If Ukrainians have a right to self determination. Clearly under the same principle that Russian majority that lives in eastern part of Ukraine does as well.
First-- the Donbas is not a nation, which is what makes it more complicated to exercise any self determination in general. So that situation is different from Russia vs. Ukraine already.
Second--
Russia being primarily concerned about regional autonomy of eastern Ukraine is a pretty transparent sham, because they never actually stood up for the autonomy of those regions-- they annexed them instead, after sending soldiers there to further escalate the situation.
> Not the same but when you pick something like "Russia must respect the internationally recognized borders" and you don't apply the same for Israel then you are a hypocrite
Ahem... You're suggesting that Ukraine killed over a thousand Russians and took them hostage, and thereby provoked a war?
That would actually be the correct analogy.
No, Russia simply invaded because it felt it could. The situation is very different to Israel and Gaza and you're deliberately leaving out the fine details that make the difference.
>Ahem... You're suggesting that Ukraine killed over a thousand Russians and took them hostage, and thereby provoked a war?
Maybe, just maybe you could have a look at what Gaza was like before the said event. It was blockaded by Sea, Air and Land. It was oppressed and occupied, not to mention the settler terrorism in West Bank. It is a myopic view to hold that it was peace before the Oct 7 incident.
> You forgot the Irak war and Afghanistan and the fake WMDs
Stop lumping Iraq and Afghanistan together. I see this everywhere and it's tiresome. It's either outright lying or people who weren't old enough to make memories when these things happened.
Afghanistan harbored Osama. They refused to give him up. NATO invaded the country to get him. It was justifed.
The fake WMDs were in Iraq (or not, since they were fake). Only the US, UK, Australia, and Poland invaded Iraq. Literally all the other "Western" countries were very strongly opposed and refused to participate. It was an unjust war.
He was in Afghanistan when they invaded. Even the Taliban admitted he was in the country. He fled to Pakistan later. And the US did in fact capture him using military force inside Pakistan.
I really don't understand how this question can come up, honestly. This is 1 + 1 = 2 stuff.
Strange they didn't have to kill 40k+ civilians in Pakistan to capture him, like in Afghanistan. Which would have been totally justified, like GP claims. So, why not?
I'm sorry this is revisionist history. The Taliban offered to try him in an Islamic court of law, under the very same government that had offered him sanctuary while he trained terrorists. This was not a good faith offer. To be frank, they f'd around and found out.
You're conveniently leaving out the fact that his council recommended he expel Bin Laden and AQ , and he refused.
>On 21 September, Muhammad Umar rejected both Bush's demands and the advice of the council, again denying that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11.
Again, some lunatic from your country just attacks the world's strongest military power, killing ~ 3,000 people, and you refuse? The Taliban deserve exactly what they got.
The only mistake we made in Afghanistan was trying to build a 'nation' out of a geographic collection of hill tribes. We should have locked down the porous Afghan border and let SF and northern alliance troops declare open season. As it stands we didn't so much 'lose' the Afghan war as lose interest in imposing democracy on a people that had no desire for it.
> Stop lumping Iraq and Afghanistan together. I see this everywhere and it's tiresome. It's either outright lying or people who weren't old enough to make memories when these things happened.
They were both illegal wars that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians for no reason other than getting 1 guy. There were many ways to get him if your government really wanted to.
On a side note, it's pretty bold of you to assume I wasn't around when these wars happened.
> Afghanistan harbored Osama. They refused to give him up. NATO invaded the country to get him. It was justified.
Oh I see, is that how you justify a war?
Let's flip the script here. Ukraine harbors Zelensky as he is deemed a criminal by the Kremlin. Ukraine refuse to give him up. The war in Ukraine is justified.
Do you see the problem with your argument here?
If it's good enough for the west to invade a foreign, sovereign country in order to get 1 man, then it should be good enough for anyone else. You can't have double standards.
> Literally all the other "Western" countries were very strongly opposed and refused to participate.
The opposition from the other countries was a show. Nobody kicked the US out of the SWIFT payment system, nor were any sanctions places on the US.
> It was an unjust war.
The fact that you can't bring yourself to say that it was an illegal war is very telling. Using an euphemism here is rather bold if you ask me.
> You cannot be serious. The EU has put up tariffs on EVs because the EU car industry who had 10 years to get ready decided that it was better to keep building diesel engines than invest in EVs.
Voters in Europe are not screaming for cheaper Chinese EVs-- they want economies improved, mostly, and anything weakening the local (automotive) industry (even electrification itself) is regarded very skeptically (especially in countries like Germany, France, Italy).
> You forgot the Irak war and Afghanistan and the fake WMDs.
I'm not saying that those were justified (especially not in hindsight), but the Americans had gotten hit very hard before and had a somewhat credible justification at the start.
Russia, on the other hand, never experienced a Spetember 11-- they only shot down those civilian airliners themselves (MH17).
> Russia, on the other hand, never experienced a Spetember 11
Maybe not on that scale but they had a few major terror attacks of their own: Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis, the 1999 apartment bombings, the Moscow theater hostage crisis, the Beslan school siege, and most recently the Crocus City Hall attack.
Yeah sure, but those had absolutely nothing to do with the Ukraine.
And honestly, Russians have their current and past governments much more to blame for this, considering all the shit they did in Chechnya (starting with mass deportations in '44, followed by 2 wars and a bunch of warcrimes).
Not saying that the US was blameless with all the middle east messups, but IMO Russia collected a lot more karma debt in Chechnya over the last century by comparison...
> I'm not saying that those were justified (especially not in hindsight), but the Americans had gotten hit very hard before and had a somewhat credible justification at the start.
France had almost 200 people killed in 2015 at the Bataclan. They did not invade another country because of this.
> You forgot the Irak war and Afghanistan and the fake WMDs. It's funny how people are quick to point that Russia is the aggressor but when the US was invading countries, few people opposed them.
Pretty facetious comparison. Iraq and Afghanistan were on the whole a mistake, but completely different from Ukraine. There was never any idea that the US would take the territory. It was just a huge waste of money for the US.
The very best case scenario for the US (which everyone realized was never going to happen within 2 years) was something like Japan and South Korea, setting up US-friendly democratic governments and corporations. There was absolutely no element of expansionism. Ask the Japanese and the South Koreans whether they are mad about being oppressed under the thumb of "US imperialism".
Contrast this with Russia's actions in Ukraine. They are taking over economically and militarily valuable lands, directly expanding their borders, expelling or re-educating Ukrainians who won't pretend to be Russian, and nakedly pursuing the revanchist fantasy of reclaiming lands that were ruled brutally by a totalitarian Muscovite empire for hundreds of years.
Conflating the two situations betrays an extremely shallow understanding of current events and a complete ignorance of history.
> Pretty facetious comparison. Iraq and Afghanistan were on the whole a mistake, but completely different from Ukraine.
When I step in dog poo on my way to work, that's a mistake. When hundreds of thousands of people are killed by your actions, that is not a mistake as you put it. Especially when your legal standing to do so is shaky if not downright illegal.
My guess is that you agree with the saying: the death of 1 man is a tragedy but hundreds of thousands of them is a statistic.
> setting up US-friendly democratic governments and corporations.
Ok, lets flip the script here. When the US sets up government for their own interest, it's just helping democracy. When Russia does it, we call them puppet governments. Double standards much?
> There was absolutely no element of expansionism.
You are right, the US coalition simply installed military bases there for 20 years and propped up a government that was not capable of doing the job and was not popular either but all that mattered was that it was friendly to the US.
In Lithuania, when the Germans invaded in WW2, they consider that they were occupied by Germany for about 2 years.
The US stayed there for 20 years but according to you, this was not an occupation. You just ran it, tried to change it according what the west thought was acceptable, and interfered in every possible aspect.
I guess I got confused between the two, after all the difference is rather slim.
> Ask the Japanese and the South Koreans whether they are mad about being oppressed under the thumb of "US imperialism".
I am sure the Japanese are rejoicing knowing the US turned two of there cities into ruble in order to test a new weapon.
Did any of the governments protesting the war decide to arm the Irakis while they tried and failed to defend their homeland? No.
SH was a dictator for sure but these wars were illegal just the same and I did not see the EU kicking the US out of the swift payment system of impose sanctions on them.
The moral posturing of the west is a show. The west is happy to go to war when it pleases it but should anyone else do it, then that is a problem.
"had 10 years to get ready decided that it was better to keep building diesel engines than invest in EVs". I actually think EU has no chance to compete with China on manufacturing. The energy is too expensive and taxes are too big. Maybe if they had built 100 nuclear plants (with the money they paid Putin in a year) they would have had a chance.
Believe it ir not, we've had superior electric vehicles for decades. They are called electric velomobiles and they are amazingly hard to google. You can buy them but they are made in such small quantities that they cost as much as a car.
They are not cars but for transporting yourself from a to b they should do more than fine. Almost no power consumption very little danger als they are to light to do the infamous car crash. They use almost no space on the road and the road lasts much longer.
You also get physical activity which extends life span. Travel normally consumes life span. Under 30 minutes per day you get to the destination in 0 minutes.
> You forgot the Irak war and Afghanistan and the fake WMDs. It's funny how people are quick to point that Russia is the aggressor but when the US was invading countries, few people opposed them.
This is not nearly as hypocritical as people want to think it is.
I suspect that the philosophical root of this position is cultural relativism. The idea that all countries, by and large, are both good and bad and that one country's politics and culture is not necessarily better or worse than another. That a country that throws journalists in prison and doesn't recognize freedom of expression or religion, for example, is on par morally with the United States of America.
Fuck that. That position is literally evil as far as I'm concerned, because it dispenses with the very concepts of liberty and morality, putting the worst of the worst dictatorships on a level footing as free, rights-protecting countries.
In my world view, government is a necessary good but it is necessary because human beings have the capacity for both reason and force. When people deal with one another through reason, we get peace, prosperity and life flourishes (reason is a human being's primary tool of survival). When people choose force we get gang warfare, anarchy, death, destruction and life struggles.
My working definition of "liberty" is an environment where all interpersonal relations are consensual. This is achieved by removing the element of force from civil existence, placed into hands of a monopoly (the government) that recognizes that an individual has rights and uses that monopoly to protect and defend those rights. Never to violate them.
Therefore, and I know this will be controversial (I'm certainly not trying to troll as I genuinely hold this position), a free, rights respecting country, even one that is imperfect, has every moral right to invade and liberate a dictatorship if and when it decides that it is in its best interest to do so.
A country that routinely infringes upon the rights of others is morally illegitimate. It is certainly unfortunate that every country in the world today does that to some extent (taxes are theft). Still, that doesn't mean that you can't evaluate a country based on how well it implements this raison d'etre.
So in any conflict between the USA (or any other rights-respecting country) and <pick one: Iran, China, Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq etc.>, I will side with the USA 10 out of 10 times and I see no hypocrisy. The USA, as a government, is imperfect but still better than China in every single possible way and I have no problem saying that, in my opinion, the Chinese population at large would be better off if the CPP were taken out by a free nation. And yeah, I know that the USA has ended up making things worse, practically, in many countries through interventionism. Iran is a great example. I'm not saying that they should invade any country and I'm not saying that they wouldn't screw it up if they tried. I'm just saying that morally and rationally I would be on their side every time.
I will happily criticize the USA when they lie to us about weapons of mass destruction or anything else. I think that any lie is immoral and they were wrong to do so. This is one of many things that makes the USA imperfect. But I also don't think that they should have NEEDED that lie to justify invading Iraq and ending Saddam Hussein's reign. There are valid arguments to be had about whether or not Iraq is better or worse for liberty today than it was pre-2003. But morally they had every right to go in and should have done it even harder.
Yes -- put another way, some cultures are better than others. I want cultures that prioritize individual freedom, liberalism, and egalitarianism to be "dominant" on a global scale, even if that requires some level of domination. Moral relativism is the true evil.
> For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are blocking the Chinese electric cars?
This is a very strange criticism. Why is it wrong to try to make impact on the environment without fully destroying the domestic industry? Let's follow up on this a bit further. If the EU counties did in fact become hardliners on the environment to the point of fully destroying their own industries, then you would no longer attack the perceived "hypocrisy" but would instead attack their policy of deindustrialization. So you don't seem to have problems with hypocrisy, you instead seem to have a problem with environmental movement/policies as such or at least insofar as they are implemented by the EU block.
If the EU countries completely abandoned their environmental slogans, and went on an ultra-industrial path, would you still be a critic? Given your other comments (why can capital travel but people cannot?), something tells me that yes, you would. It is difficult for me to perceive your criticism as anything other than coming from a supporter of an _ipso facto_ enemy economic block. You are not interested at constructively helping EU countries anymore, you are looking for a hammer to destroy your chosen target with.
One thing about social media is that it allows anyone to have a voice. The problem of "anyone" is that it ignores the fact that we do not live in a post-human utopia, we live in a real world where the concept of an "enemy" is real. There are real people out there who seek our destruction. This is not a pleasant thing to speak about but it is something that seems to be unfortunately the case. Because English is such a popular language, chances are the enemy speaks English and is on social media. What content do you think he posts?
This is a fallacy. People are not buying Chinese instead of European because they want destruction, they buy it because the European industry failed in making better or cheaper products.
If we are bailing out an industry, this can't be on the shoulders of the public who doesn't have anything to do with the failure. If we are going to save it, make sure those responsible for the failure are paying too. You are asking for Europeans to pay almost half a year of their salaries to save these industries, then at least take away the properties of those involved in the failure. Maybe it wouldn't change much but are in this together or not?
Tell me again why 400M people should pay a half a year worth of salary as extra to buy an inferior car to save the jobs of those who failed to make a good product? Let them fail, pay them unemployment to prevent social issues then go get the cheap good cars and pay a bit more tax for social security. Cut out the shareholders and executives.
If you do that often enough, at some point the state won’t have enough money to pay the unemployed any more. Also, there are reasons why the same product can be manufactured more cheaply in China than (say) in Germany, that have to do with different standards for labor rights, safety standards, and so on, not with anyone failing to make a good product. And it’s not like China doesn’t subsidize its automotive industry as well.
A lot of the things that we buy in Europe are already manufactured cheaply in China with different standards etc. We are moving a lot of manufacturing back to Europe, mostly in the eastern part of it. That part is still 'cheap' aka they can put the made in eu logo on the box, pay employees eastern Europe prices and ask buyers western Europe prices.
The same thing with the eu car companies... they even took the money from the states where they had factories (Germany, Belgium, France) which greatly subsidized them, increased their profits and margins then moved to the next EU state and beyond.
At a certain point, if you don't approve of another regions labor policies, you have to buy less of their exports, otherwise you won't be able to produce your own goods.
Better? That needs a proof and I bet you won’t be able to find a peer reviewed example.
Cheaper? You raise an easy target here if you ignore the massive subsidies, completely different financial systems and politics. China ignores international trade rules and Europe, USA etc. can’t ignore this if they want to save their industry and - at the end - democracy.
The EU subsides their car makers just the same. Part of Renault belonged to the French government for the longest time and all the governments are providing incentives to drive the sales of new cars.
See the cash for clunkers program that was running for years after the 2008 crisis.
Using tax payer money to artificially reduce the cost of a new car, If that is not a subsidy, then what is it?
Peer review for cars? Interesting mental gymnastics. Just let people buy whatever they want.
> you ignore the massive subsidies, completely different financial systems and politics
Cool, China subsidizing EU's fight against climate change. Get the free money, save the climate and spend the money you saved on something that you want instead of forced.
Thank you for acknowledging that it’s not possible to prove that Chinese cars are better. After all, you’ve already retracted your initial claim.
> Cool, China subsidizing EU's fight against climate change. Get the free money, save the climate and spend the money you saved on something that you want instead of forced.
Your mental gymnastics needs some training if you think that importing cheap cars instead of selling and exporting your own cars and therefore protecting your own industry and jobs is a better deal or mechanic for EUs fight against climate change.
Maybe you are unaware of „The WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures disciplines the use of subsidies, and it regulates the actions countries can take to counter the effects of subsidies.“?
Incumbents losing elections is what is supposed to happen. It's a sign of normal times, not of a crisis.
One of the key principles of a republic – both ancient and modern – is that personal power is bad for the society. Leaders are a necessary evil that must be tolerated (if only barely), but they also must be changed regularly.
Incumbents losing elections can be fair. But only if the winner played by the rules at least loosely and the win wasn’t orchestrated by a foreign party, especially an adversary.
Unless you are Russian or Chinese you shouldn’t have a president ‘chosen’ by them. So props to the Romanian authorities for taking action and not allowing a president beholden to Russian interests.
Nobody is claiming the candidate didn't play by the rules. Rather, some agency has asserted there was "a mass influence operation" in his favor - apparently they're not even asserting an organized conspiracy.
There's a big problem with that claim. Intelligence agencies have a long history of making this claim of Russian control over elections all over the world, and it's always been lies and nonsense. What even is a "mass influence" operation? Sounds like the same thing as a political campaign to me? If it's really on a mass scale it should be pretty easy to prove and work out how to stop it next time, shouldn't it?
Such claims are never proven because they aren't true. Back in 2016 when Trump and Brexit were still fresh, the sort of people who didn't like those things were trying to explain their loss. The Clinton campaign came up with the Steele dossier and the American press ran with it. This was the origin of the "Russian influence" claim and back then it was usually described as being done through social media bots. Academics flooded the literature with papers that claimed to prove the existence of such Russian bots. I used to work in bot detection so was interested to read some of these papers, and found they were all based on academic fraud:
Given the long history of this type of claim, a rational person will have to assume that it's a plot by Romanian intelligence to overturn an election and treat it accordingly.
I’ll bite although this really feels as unlikely as trying to change the mind of a Russian troll. A few things really sunk your boat there.
First, you started on a wrong foot. He is literally accused of breaking the law by not declaring his assets. This is trivially proven by the fact that… he didn’t declare his assets. In my reasonable person circle that’s called “not playing by the rules”. Very Russian.
Second, at best you can say only “claims can’t be proven true” but you still went one step further to make multiple strong claims you yourself cannot prove (e.g. “because they aren’t true” or “intelligence plot”). “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, or “teapot calling the kettle black”, also good topics for your blog spam.
Third, you denounce people claiming conspiracies to get their way by claiming a conspiracy to get your way, like any “reasonable” person would. Romanian intelligence and constitutional court got together to overturn the people’s will to vote pro-Russia. Perhaps, to use your own words, your claims cannot be proven because they’re not true.
Lastly, going back to the Romanian elections and using very reasonable logic like the very reasonable people we are. Is it often the case that a pro-Russian extremist candidate nobody knows of, who polls close to 0, and basically campaigns only on TikTok, soars ahead in top position in any EU country that was historically and consistently pro-West for a long time? All without any outside interference?
My claims are all correct to the best of my knowledge. If you disagree with any, state which ones and why. You've engaged in a lot of handwaving and assertions that I must be wrong, but no refutations.
> Is it often the case that a pro-Russian extremist candidate nobody knows of, who polls close to 0, and basically campaigns only on TikTok, soars ahead in top position in any EU country ... without any outside interference
Yes. This has been happening across the world, and in every case it results in the same kinds of attempts to void democracy by the incumbents. Other countries where this has happened: Germany (AfD), France (RN), the UK (Reform), the USA (Trump), and so on. All accused of being popular only due to shadowy, unspecified manipulation by Russia, all with zero evidence. In most cases the claims don't even make logical sense to begin with.
So there's nothing unique about Romania in this regard. Incumbents collaborate with journalists to force through unpopular policies without allowing any coordination against them, social media takes up the slack. It's just a really good way to spread messages outside the control of local governments. Of course politicians use it.
> He is literally accused of breaking the law by not declaring his assets
We're talking about the BBC story which covers annulment, and it says: "The court's decision comes after intelligence documents were declassified, suggesting Georgescu benefitted from a mass influence operation – conducted from abroad – to interfere with the result of the vote." Nothing here about tax or assets. Maybe he has broken the law, maybe he hasn't. Given the rate at which bogus show trials are deployed against political outsiders these days, I'd reserve judgement on that.
You presented your opinion as incontrovertible fact, and everything else as lie or conspiracy because you didn’t see proof. Then you put the caveat that it’s “to the best of your knowledge” which basically turns the incontrovertible fact into common opinion. What’s more, best of your knowledge also incentivizes having little or selective knowledge in order to be able to claim anything as fact.
Case in point, you made such a hard case for everything being a conspiracy involving constitutional courts and intelligence agencies, all claims of foreign interference being lies because you haven’t seen proof, and everything you say is solid... until it turns out your only source of information was a single partially read article.
And you still maintain that you’re right despite still not reading anything else on the topic because it must be disinformation.
The candidate himself declared 0 campaign expenses despite obviously spending for a campaign. The court also noticed this obvious fact. Foreign interference doesn’t only mean someone hacking a TikTok algorithm but also external parties illegally funding a foreign agent’s election. With large amounts of undeclared funds you can sway an election which is illegal for obvious reasons. Being foreign funds just makes it worse because they sway the elections towards foreign interests. Do you expect a country to just ignore that, whether people on the sidelines who read one article proclaim it’s totally fine?
P.S. Someone is trying to set your house on fire. When you try to top him he says it's his right and wants to see evidence from a court showing that it isn't because he read an article that says otherwise. That's where yours and fellow "freedom fighter's" comments are right now. Except in this case the court actually already spoke and you're still sure you know better.
My blog posts go over the factual ways in which the claims of Russian bots on social media have been incorrect in the past. Bad use of statistics and logic, things like that. To my knowledge there are no factual errors in my analysis but if you find one, let me know.
To make this clearer: if someone asserts something objective about the world and their proof is invalid or missing, we have to assume they are wrong. There have been many claims about politicians being successful only due to Russian influence campaigns, and each time those claims were investigated the proofs were invalid or missing. That is a factual claim.
What's a subjective opinion is that this generalizes: if the last 99 times were wrong, the 100th time is probably wrong too, even without a deep investigation. You can disagree with that, but why would you? Your priors should be strongly against these claims having any merit by now.
> The candidate himself declared 0 campaign expenses despite obviously spending for a campaign. The court also noticed this obvious fact.
And yet that's not the justification for annulling the vote that's being presented. The rest of your paragraph slides smoothly between assertions of fact and speculation - that he must have spent lots of money, that the money must have been coming from foreigners, that those foreigners must be Russian, and that such funds are the reason he won. Those are all very subjective. For instance, Trump was outspent massively in both elections that he won. Apparently you can't just "sway" an election with money: other things matter more.
>One of the key principles of a republic – both ancient and modern – is that personal power is bad for the society. Leaders are a necessary evil that must be tolerated (if only barely), but they also must be changed regularly.
In Romania not only we change them regularly but we also have PMs and ministers in jail for crimes they commuted, we are not like other countries where same president or prime Minister was in power for 30 years.
> For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are blocking the Chinese electric cars? Can't stand others making the world better place better than they do?
Personally, I think that the goal of a vibrant, thriving democracy is to allow and encourage participation from many groups of citizens. This will result in the government pursuing multiple objectives at the same time.
This necessarily means that you're going to have to make trade offs. Is it more important to have cheap EVs or is it more important to keep good jobs in country?
Maybe in this case we'll decide on good jobs in our country, and then look at other ways that climate change can be addressed. Maybe we won't.
Asking why an entire country doesn't do 100% of the things it could to address a single issue seems almost intentionally naive.
Maybe it's the idea of a "country" that's flawed? Certainly it is, we live on a planet and are all impacted by the environment. Previous social structures are no longer applicable and are causing damage. It's only a matter of time before they're rethought.
The world sucks for most people. The world is better than its ever been for most people. The world can be improved a lot for most people. Those three things can and are all simultaneously true.
Unfortunately, improving the world requires engaging deeply with issues and many people now prefer to speak in terms of grand historical narratives and emotional arguments that stitch sparse data points into a large story far vaster than the data can support.
Economy doesn't perform, but ideology has collapsed only in minds of ordinary people. Politicians, stakeholders and various media outlets are very much invested, and still push that the current course is the only correct way and the bright green future as designed is unstoppable. Reminds me of the arrogance of the ruling party slogans from before 90s.
> Russians didn't discover magic words that they use to hypnotise people and make them vote for pro-Russia candidate
Well, someone else discovered not the magic words but the magic timing of when to tell them and how to surround people with the right words: i.e. the social media algorithms.
More transparency is a good thing, even if that comes from "international interference". The problems exist, try to hide them at your own political risk.
It's not "dangerous" to expose the truth, even selectively. More information is better, especially when it pertains to things our government is keeping from us.
Not always, as cherry picked information is, in essence, a lie: it misrepresents reality by showing a narrow sliver of it that supports an argument that's not supported by the full set of observations.
> The west is in crisis, the ideology doesn't hold and the economy doesn't provide
So democracy (the ideology) doesn't hold? And the US economy is currently the envy of the world - yes there's a big housing problem that needs addressing, but if anything the losing party was the one that put up some kind of plan to deal with it, I don't see the winning party reducing housing/rental costs as they're from the landlord class.
> Can you tell me if US is about freedom and respect of the international law, borders and trande? If so why they support Ukraine against Russian invasion
Because Ukraine was invaded by Russia thus impacting Ukrainian freedom and borders? It seems pretty obvious.
“ For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are blocking the Chinese electric cars?”
This is talked about in many treasury departments. China supports some businesses an order of magnitude beyond the competition because they are a state/corp hybrid model and this allows those businesses to sell below material costs. This eventually destroys competition for future price raises and is a good long term strategy that only authoritarian countries can afford.
Other Countries like in the EU are hesitant to let China destroy war machine production capability so they apply tariffs to right-size the actual cost.
Each of these are a result of neo-*ism constituencies failing. Dialectically, we've reached the point where the contradictions are so great they have become impossible to maintain. Each of these crises are a direct product of those contradictions. The only viable path forward is addressing these contradictions head on. Any attempt at doubling down on existing ideology will inflame the contradictions further.
>>For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are blocking the Chinese electric cars? Can't stand others making the world better place better than they do?
Because China Gives Two Shits about the environment. Them and their "developing country" tag. They will burn the coal until there is no more, along with India.
Because China Gives No Shit about democracy, or human rights.
China isn't shy to show force. The "west" is already at war with China but hasn't realized it. Heck, they still don't accept war with Rusia started over a decade ago
Technology has changed the landscape of possibility very quickly, and our institutions are not keeping up.
The world will need to figure out ways to deal with the new reality. Social media have made it far more lucrative to make up whatever than to report on facts. Meanwhile it's harder than ever to run a sustainable business in journalism.
Meanwhile autocrats have noticed that it's cheaper than ever to run massive campaigns of propaganda and misinformation abroad, because they don't have to involve anywhere near the number of local accomplices.
LLMs are accelerating the trend.
You're right that the US democracy is in crisis as well.
> Russia appears to be able to propel politicians who are closer to the their politics
Not really, they propel useful idiots. In the US that would have been Robert Kennedy Jr. In Germany it's whatever clows AfD has, in Austria it's the FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl. Basically anyone that would either auto sabotage that country, the EU, like Viktor Orbán or be pro-Russia, like the Georgian Dream.
In Romania it's a RFK Jr. like nutcake figure with new age, peace and love, vaccines bad, water has memory, nazis are patriots, etc beliefs and with a discourse that sounds all right at the surface but practicaly says absolutely nothing except that it's littered with trigger narratives, just as if it were the Heaven's Gate website. His campaign was pumped by Russia on Tiktok using dormant accounts two weeks or so before the election. Also on other US based social networks and on Telegram to a lesser extent. 2M people voted for him out of 9M, some because they hate the current establishment, others saw him as an outsider, when in fact he's actually part of an old boys network, others actually believe his mumbo jumbo. It turns out he's also linked and promoted by fascist groups, some of which are actual former French Foreign Legion soldiers, run a mercenary group in the DRC and survival training workshops in the mountains. These are also linked to a rather controversial Eastern Orthodox bishop who is known to be pro Russian, so this candidate also got promoted through church networks. His campaign was in part financed by a crypto entreprenour with dual Romanian and South African citizenship who currently resides in ZA. The candidate declared zero political advertising expenses.
Anyway, I hope Tiktok gets massively screwed by the EU after this. Because this is in the Comission's hands now. The candidate's fascist friends might be soon visited by a SWAT team and they'll probably find firearms. The candidate, I dunno, he's probably going to flee to another country if he ever gets indicted.
In Germany the AfD rose to around 10% after Merkel let in millions of refugees in 2015. It had nothing to do with Russia at all. It is currently polling around 18% because the economy is bad and people are tired of U.S. subservience and want Germany to make its own decisions.
The concept that right wing parties are somehow beneficial to Russia in the long run is absurd to the extreme.
In Ukraine, literally the Bandera supporters are the best fighters and the most anti-Russian. When in history has it ever been beneficial for a country to support nationalism in an enemy country. It does not make any sense.
This whole thing is just a narrative of the forces who want to keep down "EU-first" movements.
> This whole thing is just a narrative of the forces who want to keep down "EU-first" movements.
Sure. There is documented evidence of both FPö and AfD ties to Russia. Maybe it was different in the '90s but now Russia promotes a similar conservative agenda and it's in most cases financing the European far-right. There is no easier way to destabilize a country than to make it implode by polarizing its society, as seen in Syria, Georgia.
1 there is well known that social media and itnernet companies can target content for each person
2 we known from Cambridge analitica and similar that if social media company wants he can make a user depressed, sad etc
3 we also observer that irelevant bullshit is pushed very hard in social media, as an example transgender stuff, it is pushed so hard that my family thinks that Romania is in danger because of EU and their transgender agenda, children will be manipulated to change their gender, You can see how fake stuff about thois topic is pushed on social media, my family never had contact with transgender people, maybe they know one gay person in their entire live but LGBTQ is such an important topic in election that they might decide whot o vote based on this Ruzzian bullshit
4 we also seen same shit with COVID , yes the virus exists even if the pro Ruzzian candidates do not belives it or thinks God send him the naturalistic cure, based on how hard this conpiracies were pushed in last years you have conspirationist vote conspirationists, so if you want their vote you either lower yourselves to that level or try to fight Ruzzia and china to bring a bit of intelligence back.
5 anti emigration is a big push on social media, and fascists in Europe really push on this, but tell my, will italians or Spanish people in the city that studied at the university go and work in the farms, in the hot summer instead of the poor immigrants?
Did you also seen how crimes are immediately blamed on the immigrants by the internet trolls before the identity of the criminals is known, and sometimes the criminal is a native, but the trolls pushed so hard on the fake news that it was immigrants that sometimes the immigrants were attacked based on fake news started by Ruzzians and belived by right wing less inteligent people.
So in Romania the people that voted for the Kremlin guy , voted him because they want a strong man that is anti transexuals and LGBTQ, anti minorities, that belives in the same conpirations and hate same groups as they hate all because Ruzzia trained them to hate those groups of people and believe those conspiracies.
They did not vote because of economical policies the fascist guy proposed.
I did not defend Russia. Let's stop pretending that everything is perfect but the adversary found magic words that can show to people and sway their opinions. Influencing people is indeed possible and Russia definitely doing it but this tale about showing social media posts and making them vote the way they like is just a caricature.
They are able to do it only because of the failure of the others to address the concerns of the electorate. Sure, they lie but they all lie. The Russian propaganda is very well crafted and does address the concerns that others don't want to touch. It's not a spell, it's not magic words, its not hypnosis.
You are under the impression that the Ruzzian influencisg started a few weeks ago.
Since you are so smart and see the reality I am to blind to see,
show me with facts the damages the transexualss done to Romania sto make a large part of population to vote an anti LGBTQ person. There should be some examples you can find since this is a major thing this traditional voters are talking about and is important on who they vote.
If geopolitics predating the Roman Republic by 500 years justifies kicking people off land they were born in, then I have bad news for almost all of the Americans in the audience. Probably quite a lot of the English too, though with less certainty as nobody's quite sure when even the Celts arrived.
Why don’t stick with modern history and internationally recognized borders? Forget about the deeds of the long gone people, they are not around so it’s irrelevant.
Exactly. When there's no morality then there's no social contract and when there's no social contract you don't have a society that can function without explicit stick or carrot. This is a horrible way to live.
The funny thing is that I can't tell what side you're supporting from your statements.
I agree the west has lost its morality.
I disagree the average person is seeing reality with their own eyes. The average person is seeing whatever some interested party wants to frame as reality.
That's why Russians support Putin. In their reality they are fighting Nazis in Ukraine and protecting the rights of ethnic Russians. And there is some stream of social media you can be on where that is reality.
What you have right now is that state actors and money shapes reality. Do you want China to say what reality is or do you want democracies in the west to say what reality is and specifically the US.
With all the problems, I prefer to have the Americans be the source of truth if I have to pick between them, Russia and China.
I reject the framing around "elites" shaping reality. While we've always had issues around this the western democratic way is the best we know, with all its issues. Moving this power to China and Meta is making things worse.
It is a known fact that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.
While Ukraine is tip toeing a very fine line defending itself and Europe against Russian aggression (e.g., barely allowed to neutralizing military targets in Russia).
The United Nations General Assembly, Amnesty International, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, The Committee to Protect Journalists, and Medicins Sans Frontieres are all worth listening to.
It's important to note all of those are political.
It's also important to note free democracies are a minority in the world.
The ICC and the ICJ didn't rule on this.
I don't think either the CPJ or the MSF have voiced a specific opinion on this question either. The CPJ specifically counts media people in the Islamic Jihad or Hamas as "journalists" which is extremely questionable. Many western countries would consider them to be "terrorists". They are hurting the cause they are meant to champion by pursuing a political agenda and they're being used.
All of that doesn't change the reality that a high casualty count in a war or that civilian population is suffering in said war does not constitute a genocide. It's a reality of war. A war that can end this second by Hamas surrendering and returning the hostages.
Israel's critics also always fail to provide some reasonable alternative course of actions that would lead to very different outcomes. I think it's fair to critique some specific decisions, like targeting, the use of heavy munitions etc. but some small changes there still all result in the same outcome, a prolonged war amidst civilians that is primarily the goal of Hamas. Hamas wants to hide amongst civilians and keep fighting until Israel is destroyed.
I'm not convinced that these attacks on these institutions aren't simply because they don't condone everything Israel does. In short: it looks like it's just "working the refs". Regardless, the opinions of these multinational organizations outweigh the opinions of any single nation, to say nothing of the opinions of you or me.
Speaking of, the rest of the post is opinions and unconvincing claims. They mirror the same rhetoric which has already been said by Israel, which the aforementioned organizations have already heard and carefully considered. Your opinions I respect, because I respect you as a person whose life is exactly equal in value to mine. Just like 1 Palestinian civilian life is exactly equal in value to 1 Israeli civilian life, and even more important to protect than 1 combatant life (from either side). After all, protecting civilians is the most important thing, even more important than achieving tactical or strategic objectives and goals.
Again, though, the opinions of the aforementioned organizations outweigh yours or mine or Israel's.
Russians didn't discover magic words that they use to hypnotise people and make them vote for pro-Russia candidate. In fact, everywhere in the world the incumbent politics are losing ground because the system is in crisis and people are looking for a change everywhere and Russia appears to be able to propel politicians who are closer to the their politics simply because the incumbent ones screwed up.
Is America different? Just a month ago in the American election – those who are anti-establishment and pro-Russian won.
US and Europe will go through a soul searching and hopefully will come out of this in a better shape. It has to go through this because the ideology collapsed, economy doesn't perform and the hypocrisy is unbearable anymore.
For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are blocking the Chinese electric cars? Can't stand others making the world better place better than they do?
Can you tell me if US is about freedom and respect of the international law, borders and trande? If so why they support Ukraine against Russian invasion and then support Israel who occupies Palestinian territories since many years?
Can you tell me why people should drink from paper straws when the rich fly private jets?
Can you tell me why the capital can go anywhere but people should be stopped at the borders?
Can you tell me how the economy is s great when so many people suffer?
The west is in crisis, the ideology doesn't hold and the economy doesn't provide and all the Russians have to do is to point it out. They don't use spell, they just tell what everyone sees. This needs to get fixed, let's hope that the damage wouldn't be too big.