Ukraine-Russia War Take 2
Here is what the preliminary take on the Ukraine thread disappearing is:
The site was hit with a massive spam attack where hundreds of spam threads were created. In the case where, for example, I see a single spam thread and delete it, that is called a soft delete, and mods can still see them but forum members cannot. Those deletion can be undone.
When a massive attack hits with hundreds of threads, an admin uses a different procedure where the hundreds of spam threads are merged and then hard deleted, where the threads are gone, and no note is left behind. As I have mentioned with my own experience of just soft deleting a large number of posts, sometimes a post or thread gets checked or merged accidentally and is deleted by mistake. Dealing with hundreds of spam threads takes a sledgehammer, not a scalpel.
It appears that our Ukraine thread may have gotten caught up in that recent net of spam threads. If so, it is likely gone for good. I cant say this for sure, and am awaiting comments from admins on this issue. Yes, this sucks. And hopefully there was some other software glitch that caused the disappearance, and we may recover it in the future.
But in the meantime, I have created this new Ukraine-Russia War thread to enable the conversation to continue. Obviously continuity with earlier discussions will be lost. There is no way around that. So as best as possible, let's pick up the conversation with recent events and go from there.
If you have any questions about this, please post them in the mod thread, not here. Let's keep this thread going with posts about the war, not the disappearance of the old thread.
Thanks.
"no world leaders can be trusted" is absolutely licking Putin's boots. We've been over this. By saying Putin is as untrustworthy as the other world leaders, then he's on equal level as the other world leaders.
The truth is Putin is far less trustworthy. Stop using equivocation.
no I dont believe that. its you licking the boots of the West bc you have never once questioned your indoctrination.
It's not western indoctrination which makes me realize that saying you aren't going to launch an invasion for months then launching the largest invasion since WW2 is a lie far greater than anything other world leaders are doing today.
Add onto that the numerous other lies and Putin is objectively a larger lie, and less untrustworthy than other major leaders. They aren't all the same, pull your head out of the sand.
people that are fully indoctrinated arent aware of their indoctrination
"can't refute, just ad hominem"
"no world leaders can be trusted" is absolutely licking Putin's boots. We've been over this. By saying Putin is as untrustworthy as the other world leaders, then he's on equal level as the other world leaders.
The truth is Putin is far less trustworthy. Stop using equivocation.
Nah that politicians tend to be sociopathic isn't an endorsement of dictators, rather a reasonable reminder to give them modest powers and having strong checks and balances and whatnot.
But external pressure is materially different no matter what one thinks of the morals of the canadian PM vs Putin
bc most other leaders are comprador regimes for the West.
but as compared to the USA, absolute massive lol at this
objectively the USA does more war than Putin. you can argue it is justified or whatever but I like to work with facts.
Not to gain and control new territory no.
Fact is no major country ever annexes anything in the last decades; the empires, even the regionally hegemonic ones, are much softer. And yes that makes a very material difference (for the quality of life of satellite states to begin with).
Putin old school annexation of land using hitleresque justifications of russophonic residents has to stop at any cost and leaders the world over have to know we won't allow it anywhere full stop.
Not to gain and control new territory no.
Fact is no major country ever annexes anything in the last decades; the empires, even the regionally hegemonic ones, are much softer. And yes that makes a very material difference (for the quality of life of satellite states to begin with).
Putin old school annexation of land using hitleresque justifications of russophonic residents has to stop at any cost and leaders the world over have to know we w
so we install comprador regimes like Hussein and then when they dont do what the USA wants we invade.
although, since the Iraq war it seems the USA has opted for fomenting color revolutions and supporting proxy wars like in Ukraine and Yemen. its not any more "honest" (lol gmafb, honest hoo boy) than prior and certainly not any more humanitarian but USA soldiers dont get killed very often so its all good for the Supremacists.
Nah that politicians tend to be sociopathic isn't an endorsement of dictators, rather a reasonable reminder to give them modest powers and having strong checks and balances and whatnot.
But external pressure is materially different no matter what one thinks of the morals of the canadian PM vs Putin
I don't know what you're arguing. By saying Putin is as untrustworthy as all other world leaders, then he's no more or less of a liar than other world leaders. This is objectively false. Putin has lied more about significant things than just about every (probably every) world leader in charge today.
when the USA says they support International Law that is the biggest lie of all
The real question is who lies more: Victor or Putin?
I don't know what you're arguing. By saying Putin is as untrustworthy as all other world leaders, then he's no more or less of a liar than other world leaders. This is objectively false. Putin has lied more about significant things than just about every (probably every) world leader in charge today.
I think there are a lot of leaders that if they had the power putin has, would be as bad as him. A lot of leaders are psychopathic monsters tbh. Putin isn't special in that regard. Getting at the top of a power hierarchy usually requires being a sociopath/psychopath to begin with, as if you aren't and others are, they will eat you alive at some stage of your progress up the ladder.
Yes this mean i think Justin Trudeau (for ex) would assassinate people wantonly if he could (after all it runs in the blood).
What's special about Putin is that the usual ways we keep them contained internationally don't work with him, he got convinced he has to be a 19th century emperor anyway.
Which is why we have to not allow that, also as a message for all other psychopaths present and future around the world (and there are and there will be plenty).
The context our psychopaths operate in restrains them a lot more than it restrains Putin, because our societies built restrains for power (after we went through a lot of people worse than putin in our past).
I find it hard to believe that Trudeau for would wantonly assassinating people if he could. I also do not think he is a psychopath.
Different power structures require different skillsets to rise to the top. Even then, Putin's immediate predecessors were not as bad as him. He has built this system around him and another "leader just as bad as him" likely would not have actually been as bad as him and would have been far better for Russia and the world.
There are a lot of world leaders not embarking on imperial conquests and genociding their neighbors.
I find it hard to believe that Trudeau for would wantonly assassinating people if he could. I also do not think he is a psychopath.
Different power structures require different skillsets to rise to the top. Even then, Putin's immediate predecessors were not as bad as him. He has built this system around him and another "leader just as bad as him" likely would not have actually been as bad as him and would have been far better for Russia and
Putin immediate predecessors were worse than him for russians, they were the russian mafia. Putin re-united the power of the state (fairly weak in the 90s) with the actual power in the streets , in finance, and in markets (held by various mafia and mafia-like groups) under himself. The mafia groups did worse than Putin in their local feuds.
The above btw is why putin for a long while genuinely had significant popular support: he improved russians lives more than the predecessors.
Internationally of course the russian mafia(s) did less than Putin is able to do currently, that isn't the only axis to measure how bad people are though.
Russia for a loooong while selected people at the top particularly badly which is why they basically have an uninterrupted streak of horrific leaders (de iure o de facto, local and national) in the last 150+ years.
Putin isn't special in that regard, rather he for a while appeared to be far less disastrous (even for our standard) , which is why the like of Obama, Merkel and others thought things had fundamentally changed in Russia just 15 years ago.
Now we know that wasn't the case, but keep in mind a lot of "very serious people" only started talking about Putin like we do recently, because of the invasion. A lot of "very serious people" were in bed with him till recently.
The third economy in the world (or is it the fourth now?), Germany, bet it's whole economy on Russia and China. Russia for energy and China to sell them stuff.
At last, a lot of those "very serious people" understood you don't negotiate with terrorists nor with dictators that don't bend the knee to the american empire. Fine. But please no moral grandstanding, it's about us having a more functional and less violent empire because it works better, it's not like we are the angels and Putin &C are the demons.
They have to be crushed, he has to be crushed because our empire is better, but we have to prove it.
Putin's immediate predecessors were not worse than Putin for Russians. Putin also did not improve Russian lives more than his predecessors, oil prices did.
Aid is through the rules committee which was in question. Will be brought to the floor this weekend.
Probably the best sign yet:
A common mistake among commentators (both sides) is not to count what we are spending for Ukrainian refugees as part of Ukraine aid package.
We have approx 6 million Ukrainian refugees in europe and they cost north of 30/Eur/day each which makes it more than 5 billions per month
Even if aid passes EU will be ahead of USA in regard to spending. Putin absolutely would have invaded if Trump were in office. This post is complete nonsense.
The reason it's a good sign is even Trump realizes his propaganda campaign failed and there's too much support for the aid bill, so he needs to find a new tactic. Only the most far right MAGAs (and their equivalent far left Tankies) were susceptible to Putin's propaganda.
Luciom here's a video covering what we discussed:
Broken YouTube LinkI imagine we could destroy Russias economy if we wanted to. However they could **** us up bad OR, we don’t want to encourage them to seek stronger alliances with China, N Korea, Iran, Cuba and to a lesser extent , India and Brazil.
We destroyed it already.
