Unfortunately these were debts that already had the potential to be cancelled due to existing rules. Turns out, just nobody has been following the rules and actually cancelling those debts for all these decades.
It kinda sounds like they wouldn’t have been canceled if he hadn’t made the effort. That’s no difference from any other debt forgiveness that’s within his power.
This is actually a remnant of his larger plan for cancelling student debt being blocked. So if it should have been done anyhow, we’re now…celebrating presidents for… doing their jobs?
No, I'd prefer if a president did his job to begin with and didn't try to take loud credit for a program that wasn't his when he finally gets around to doing his job.
Yeah, doing the bare minimum shouldn’t be newsworthy. “Hey boss, I showed up on time and got my day’s work done”? He’d probably say “Okay good? You want a cookie or something?”
Is forgiving $132 billion in student debt the bare minimum of the job?
Because if that's your bar, then Biden is the only president in history who has done the bare minimum. If that's your standard, I'd think you'd be jumping for joy that a president has finally, in the entire history of the US, done the bare minimum.
Sigh, it’s the people that don’t vote. One day, they’ll start reading the articles, and they’ll slowly form constructive opinions, and make a choice that’s actually a choice. But until then they’ll stick to how everyone is bad because it’s easier than learning the truth.
"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" is the operating phrase here.
There's a lot of people demonstrating a sort of purity cult here in the fediverse, where they think anyone who isn't the savior of all humanity incarnate is thus no better than the worst possible choice. There's no nuance, and no consideration for realpolitik.
Look at the reactions to this post for goodness sake... These same users whine and moane about Biden in every other thread, and then here's a story about how Biden doing something good that they actually wanted him to do, and they moan and whine about how it wasn't good enough.
That’s how you end up with things like the rail unions where nobody knows that the administration worked behind the scenes after the legislation to get the workers what they wanted from the companies – and they successfully did that.
The Executive Branch has checks and balances over both of the other two branches of government. Part of that is discretion.
The Executive is not, at all times, bound to the direction provided by Congress (see: lack of enforcement of Marijuana laws). This frustrates many when the wrong decisions are being made. And we love it when the right ones are.
So someone had stopped performing debt relief as instructed by Congress. Discretion, good or bad. Then Biden directs that the instructions be followed.
He kind of didn’t have to do that. I’m glad he did and I think it’s the basics of doing his job… But he could have just not done it and reminded entities that running a campaign is expensive or that he’ll be retiring at some point.
Right people make fun but this is a longer term strategy to make the poll workers quit so they can be replaced with actual fascists who will actually shred ballots of anyone who looks too Democrat.
I don’t really understand how the US voting system works. But if enough people in states he would have lost decide “Fuck it, not worth the risk of going out to vote”, even if that includes people who would have voted for him, would that benefit him? Reducing voter turnout across the board in states he’d have lost? Legit curious if that might be his goal or if that makes no sense.
When fewer people vote, Republicans tend to win. They’ve even outright admitted this at times. This is why so many Republicans are in favor of enacting rules that limit voter participation. If the Republicans can prevent enough people from exercising their right to vote, then they might win. If too many legal voters cast their ballots, the Democrats will win - and that can’t be allowed!
Republicans won’t stay home out of fear. They’re the ones with the bulk of the guns anyways and seems a large body of them are itching for a manufactured reason to use them.
It was a law Georgia added after Trump lost. Part of the “election integrity” things they were doing. People can literally wait hours in line at some voting locations. If they legislated that each precinct was required to regularly give out water to those in line, then it wouldn’t have been so bad. I believe it was a bad faith change.
To this day, Trump claims that he actually won in New York and California, among other safe blue states. Fit the record, the last time NY went red was 1984 and the last time California went red was 1988.
Trump’s convinced that there was “voter fraud” that turned those states blue, when they’ve been blue for over 30 years. He thinks that, if you removed all the “voter fraud,” he really won in every state.
My guess is that he thinks voting for a Democrat is voter fraud and wants his violent mobs to make sure no “voter fraud” takes place. If he’s elected President, I fear that we’ll still have elections, but in the way Russia holds elections. “Do you want to vote for Trump or do you want to be sent to prison?”
Exactly. We’d still have “elections” to “prove that we’re still free,” but it would be just for show. Even if you somehow didn’t face consequences for voting against Trump, your vote would be tossed for being voter fraud. (Because all votes against Trump would be called fraudulent.)
It’s not that simple. Swing states have a divide between cities and rural counties. If you scare enough voters away in cities, those swing states become easier to win. It has nothing to do with the states he will lose, and everything to do with the ones he needs to win.
Problem here is people in cities don’t scare easily. If a rural mob of ppl comes rolling through my city policing the polls, its going to cause a huge shitshow but it won’t keep anyone from voting. Hell, it might drive turnout among some that were planning on not voting out of apathy. We city folk fight back. Trump sends his brownshirts here, they’ll get bloody noses at the very least.
I don’t think they mean that as in “is up to the person but overall okay” but more so as in “is something that isn’t determined by anything other than conscious decision making”
Actually no, he does mean it in a sense such as: “the government shouldn’t interfere in people’s life projects. If you want to be with a man or a woman that’s your right. Heck even if you wanted to be with an elefant that’s fine with me as long as you have the elefant’s consent”
Even the video caption misrepresents his words imho. You can turn on translated captions.
As I said in another post, Milei is in the bottom right quadrant of the political compass. It’s a big mistake to directly compare him to neo conservatism.
His actual quote (translated to the best of my ability) is:
Homosexuality is fine, who am I to tell someone who can they have sex with? If they have consent I don’t care if they want to have sex with an elephant. Good luck proving they had consent, but if they do I can’t object.
What is the rationale behind switching to the US dollar? I sort of get why US libertarians are opposed to fiat currency (they don’t want the Fed to have the power to interfere in markets), but Milei just wants to switch to a fiat currency that someone else controls? What makes him think that would end well for Argentina?
Argentina’s runaway inflation is caused by the central bank printing money (to finance the government’s out of control spending). The rationale for dollarization is to remove the ability for the government to do this. It’s not an inherently crazy idea, since (i) there are smaller Latin American countries that use the dollar, and (ii) the dollar is already used de facto for many purposes in Argentina because of how debased the peso has been. But there are lots of practical problems; notably, Argentina simply does not own enough dollars in the entire country to keep the economy running normally if they switch (whatever “normally” means for an economy like theirs).
Which other countries use it in Latin America? There are places which have used it relatively successfully, and de facto usage at least gives people more confidence.
Argentina’s runaway inflation is caused by the central bank printing money (to finance the government’s out of control spending)
Macroeconomists don’t really agree that that issuing money in and of itself causes inflation, but it certainly can lead to it in some cases. Instead, if you issue money you need to spend it on something that increases the productivity of your economy, otherwise it can lead to waste and inflation down the line. You can actually use money issuing to fight inflation if you spend the money you issued on addressing the problem at hand - for example, the supply side problems we faced following the pandemic that caused the inflation we’re at the tail end of right now.
By adopting the US dollar, Argentina would effectively give up monetary autonomy to the US central bank (so, just another central bank outside of their control). In fact, the US central bank could decide to issue money in a positive way as mentioned above, without any of that having a similarly positive impact on the countries that depend on the US dollar.
Money & Macro (PhD Joeri Schasfoort) has made multiple videos on the topic, but here are two (the first one short, the second one a deep dive) if you want to hear this side of the story told in greater depth:
You might be confusing debt issuance with money issuance.
Governments often issue debt to fund various kinds of spending. And despite concerns about debt levels, they can have a pretty fuzzy relationship with inflation; Japan has public debt of over 200% of GDP, and an underinflation problem.
But issuing money for the purposes of government spending – the monetization of fiscal policy – is almost always a bad idea, outside of wartime. The practice is behind every single episode of hyperinflation in economic history. And governments know this. Fiscal monetization is only resorted to by countries that have exhausted their ability to borrow; if cutting spending isn’t politically feasible, the remaining resort is monetization. That’s basically how you get to Argentina’s situation.
As for giving up monetary autonomy, it is indeed a serious drawback to dollarization. But this is a second order problem compared to the kinds of problems facing Argentina, like findng a guy bleeding out after a road accident, and worrying about his obesity.
You might be confusing debt issuance with money issuance.
Nope. Let me quote Joeri from his second video (19 minutes in):
Let’s tackle the one that the internet loves the most first: money printing. To view money printing as the source of all price inflation actually has a very long tradition in economics. The most prominent economist to support this idea was Nobel prize winner Milton Friedman (11:49) who said that. […]
Crucially, Friedman inspired economists often assume that velocity and production are roughly constant. Remember that clip from Peter Schiff arguing that stimulus checks for people at home would be inflationary? Crucially, he made the implicit assumption there that this didn’t prevent a further collapse of production.
“Everything is getting more expensive. And if people think that is transitory, it is because they don’t understand the problem. In fact, they don’t even understand inflation or where it comes from because inflation is about money. You are inflating the money supply. That’s what’s being expanded and none of this is transitory because these deficits aren’t transitory. The money printing isn’t transitory. It’s here to stay. — and that means prices are going to continue to go up because we continue to destroy the value of the dollar as we expand the supply”
Sounds pretty convincing right? However, the monetary theory of inflation has almost completely disappeared from universities. Why? Well, because the data doesn’t support this simple explanation in most economies. For example, check out this graph of the CPI for Europe and compare it to the graph of central bank printed M1 money supply… You can clearly see that the money supply has accelerated while price growth has slowed. To a less extend this disconnect also exists for the USA. But, if you really want to see this simple theory fail, you only need to look at Japan. Even if we take into account the more expansive M3 money supply measure, which include money created by private banks, and compare it to the CPI. You can clearly see that while M3 kept going up, the CPI had its ups and downs. What can explain this disconnect?
Pointing to Japanese money supply versus inflation is irrelevant because Japan doesn’t fund its fiscal deficit via monetization. It issues debt, just like every other non-basket case economy on Earth.
The distinction is important. Debt is tied to a promise to repay later. Monetization has no such promise, so it’s functionally equivalent to issuing debt and then immediately defaulting. So long as lenders believe debt will be repaid, the effects are different from monetization.
It’s because every time the argentinian government needs to pay something, and don’t have the cash to do that, they print some billions and pay it. By literally printing monopoly money in huge quantity, they’re devaluing their currency every time they print a batch.
The rationale is that if they’re using the us dollar, the inflation will stop because it’s controlled externally
But by using the us dollar, every time the argentinian government needs to pay something and doesn’t have the cash to do that, need to borrow some heavy debt (at insane interest rate given their history where they didn’t repay previous debts)
And would need an huge quantity of them in a short time to exchange and dispose the pesos from people and banks
If it was as easy as “just don’t print monopoly money” they would have solved it.
Maybe it would be easier to just stop printing money than officially switching to a different currency
Politicians here don’t hesitate on printing money to pay for things. Always have, and probably always will. He wants to take that possibility from their hands.
Nothing inherently. Nature even does it sometimes, although it’s rare with larger complex organisms.
The problems with cloning arise when it happens in bulk. Instead of a single creature with a genetic abnormality or vulnerability to disease, you now have a whole population with those weaknesses. Look up monocultures or monocropping to read some horror stories. True cloning of e.g. livestock could take those issues to the extreme.
I’ve seen more than a few libertarians who are only libertarian because they’re also misanthropic. They’d love heavy government control, but they don’t trust anybody enough to have power over them, so they choose libertarian ideals. It’s a strange chain of logic, but I guess it’s logical.
Misanthropy doesn’t make much sense as an argument, either for regulation or against it. You can say people suck so they shouldn’t be in charge of regulating anything, but you can just as easily say people need to be regulated because they suck.
Adopt the US dollar
In favor of drug legalization and to opening up immigration as long as it doesn’t cost the State.
In favor of people paying for sex
In favor of animal cloning
Good here? The rest is an interesting mix of outrageous and/or bizarre stuff.
Fun Fact: The more advertisers that pull out because they appear next to nazi shit increases the likelihood the remaining advertisers will appear next to nazi shit.
Not only are their fines small, but they also implicate others in their schemes that have to pay higher fines, so they also are able to prove the competition they conspire with out of the market
you don’t really have to support Putin per se, many of us including myself would feel glee watching him be put up against a wall by communist revolutionaries, but supporting NATO is a pretty big dealbreaker given NATO’s imperialist and fascist history. e.g. Several Nazi German officials being put into NATO’s government. Gladio and funding of fascist stay-behind groups in the event of Soviet invasion. Yugoslavia. Libya. I certainly want NATO to be destroyed, hopefully from within rather than without to prevent nuclear war, and unfortunately for us, the reactionary state of Russia seems to be the best bet to maybe have that eventually occur.
also, stop calling things “wars of aggression” unless you’re going to call everything a war of aggression, my god. what an annoying thought-terminating cliche.
Very typical lib talking point though. What socialist spaces do you get your news and information from? Any at all? Or do you just immerse yourself in liberal spaces then end up repeating everything they say and wonder why socialists all call you a liberal? Serious question btw. What socialist media and socialist spaces do you actually participate in and follow? How can you possibly consider yourself to have gotten rid of the liberal brainworms you’ve had your entire life if you continue to immerse yourself within the liberal superstructure?
I think you all made things pretty clear when you consider that the only thing I’ve actually done here is make it clear that I don’t support Russia in this war and am being blasted for being a “lib” for doing so.
You’re being delusional. I don’t owe you anything.
And not use misgendering language? We all make mistakes at times, it’s what happens, and it’s fair to ask questions to better understand, but being against it after you’ve been informed strikes me as silly
The only way I think it can be construed as misgendering language is if the parts of the idiom or turn of phrase are parsed individually, which is exactly the opposite of what you’re supposed to do with an idiom.
If this sentence is misgendering myself, then I’m the Queen of England. I get that this guy is a shithead but pretending that he’s also doing something wrong here seems to be playing for some esoteric own.
I don’t think ronjonguaido is a shithead, I don’t think that it was done on purpose or anything, and I can see what you mean - I didn’t myself pick up on it being misgendering language. I think maybe it comes down to intent? I dunno. On the one hand sure there are phrases, but on the other, maybe we should question the gendering of idioms? Way out of my league tbh.
The idiom isn’t gendered, a component of it is. Likening someone to ‘the little dutch boy with his finger in the dyke’ makes no claim on the gender status of the referent and is equally applicable across all genders. If they insisted on calling you Mr. Egon, then sure, that’s misgendering, but ‘go off king’ is a established turn of phrase that I have also seen generically applied because it likewise makes no claim to the gender status of the individual referred.
I’m not saying it’s not a thing, but I have literally never seen it used, and I couldn’t find an ngram viewer with a corpus end date after 2019.
It would never occur to me to say “go off queen” , in much the same way it would never occur to me to say “yass slay king” regardless of the gender of the referent, making them both gender neutral in my use.
There’s a lot of gendered turns of phrases, which doesn’t necessarily make them acceptable. I make a lot of mistakes myself it’s alright, it’s what happens.
Wait until you find out that “go off queen” is also a thing. I wonder why “go off king” and “go off queen” has to both exist. Could it be that this idiomatic expression is a gendered one and that using the expression on someone who doesn’t identify with that gender is a form of misgendering?
I haven’t seen either of these phrases, but in my experience even when something is supposed to be the equivalent versions of each other, it somehow feels different to hear and say. Like, it feels alright to call my group of friends “bros” but not “sisses.” Could it be that “go off queen” and “go off king” have different connotations despite the fact that they should mean the same thing?
The reason that one version of the “go off” phrase (identical in every way to the other except for one word that specifies gender) might feel to you like it has different connotations is because we live in a patriarchal society that doesn’t assign value the same across all genders. That’s not an excuse to use the version of that phrase which misgenders someone.
And your example is really weird and obscures what’s actually at issue. The difference in meaning between the words “bros” and “sissies” goes way beyond just a difference in gender. One is a common and generally affectionate term that men call each other when being friendly. The other is most often used as misogynistic term to insult men by disparaging their masculinity.
And your example is really weird and obscures what’s actually at issue. The difference in meaning between the words “bros” and “sissies” goes way beyond just a difference in gender. One is a common and generally affectionate term that men call each other when being friendly. The other is most often used as a misogynistic term to insult men by disparaging their masculinity.
I wanted to give a couple of other examples too, but that’s just what I thought of at the moment. “Hey guys” or “hey dudes” also works though.
That’s not an excuse to use the version of that phrase which misgenders someone.
Are the Hexbear users who are saying Ukraine is being ungrateful repeating Kremlin propaganda or are the Hexbear users who are saying Ukraine has a point repeating Kremlin propaganda?
Is Kremlin propaganda just ontologically what a Hexbear user says?
I’m referring to the concerning number of users from your instance who seem obsessed with parroting what has been confirmed to be Kremlin propaganda and lies spread through deliberate misinformation campaigns. Obviously, this isn’t all HexBear users, but you guys clearly have a general problem with this kind of stuff.
Edit: Lmao they’ve responded with a post that points out Ukraine has been killing people in the Donbas before the war started and a post that highlights the many offramps to the current conflict
Allright, I guess we’ll just wait until all the able-bodied ukrainians have been killed (despite themselves not wanting to fight) and then the land will be ceded. I’m sure its much better if thousands more die first!
Lots of assumptions on what would happen to Ukraine, and you are also implying that Ukraine is not an “authoritarian” (a word with no meaning) borderline oligarchy, so that’s fascinating.
But yeah, even if these assumptions were true, then yeah I think it’s better for people not to die in an unwinnable war, than for people to die and then for the same thing to happen. I’m a big fan of people Not Dying actually.
Good thing the bucha was debunked, but if it hadn’t been I’d probably have urged you to look inward since you’re the one who tried to use the tragedy as a way to score a cheap point, despite it not detracting from my overall arguement
Ok so why don’t you teach all us damn talkies a lesson and explain to us how you stop the war then other than libs usual line of Russia just gives up and goes home for no apparent reason.
Because currently either land changes hands at some point or everybody on one side dies and libs keep insisting the first option is a no go.
So please, inform us. We’re all very excited to hear what you have to say.
Ceding land to a foreign aggressor is not a viable off-ramp. Get real.
This is nationalist rhetoric. Claiming to be a socialist and yet obsessing over the borders of one bourgeois state over another bourgeois state is one of the reasons you are being called a liberal here. You are a nationalist cheerleading for one group of billionaires to rule over the people instead of another group of billionaires, all while hundreds of thousands of people get killed in the name of that. Meanwhile socialists are out here saying we don’t want people dying and do not give a fuck what borders exist as long as people aren’t dying, the best solution is the quickest and fastest way to minimise death.
You are defending the state, not people’s lives. You are sacrificing people for states and borders. You are a bourgeois nationalist, and you would have advocated for the same thing in every past conflict. You’re not even a social chauvinist and they were shitbags, you’re just straight up nationalist.
Ironic when liberals act how they claim communists act. I mean I know it makes sense logically, that it’s all projection with scratched libs, but it’s still so weird to see in practice
I mean the Ukranians are doing suicidal infantry attacks against entranched positions with conscripts ffs, it’s just too on the nose
In the post-ww2 period we had a long period of people being anti-nationalist as a result of experience of what nationalism and this obsession with borders instead of people causes.
The current crop of liberals have no experience or connection to this and are incredibly easily led by the ultranationalists into supporting them, because nationalists share a priority with ultranationalists.
The primary issue here is nationalism. We need an absolutely massive anti-nationalism movement. Anti-nationalism is anti-fascism.
it’s an extremely viable off-ramp in fact that’s how the majority of wars have ended
as Ukraine have tried military force and it didn’t work then an outcome that doesn’t relly on the Russians just deciding to give up on the whole idea for no reason might be better alligned with reality
The same group that did when the USSR invaded. The same group that did when the US invaded. They’re terrible people, but you can’t argue their strategy wasn’t effective.
That’s what Lenin did and it saved countless lives. The Tsar kept feeding people into a meat grinder and the communists took power of the promise that they’d end the war, and they had to accept heavy concessions but they did it. Which position do you agree with, Lenin’s or the Tsar’s?
Acting as if ending the war is Ukraine’s responsibility, rather than one of the country engaging in a literal invasion.
Anyone who doesn’t take the 2014 referendum with an extreme grain of salt is slotting nicely into Russia’s current playbook.
I seriously don’t understand why so many of you dickride Russia, other than “west bad”. The current Russian government is antithetical to so many of the values you claim to champion.
Numerous comments people claiming that the Maidan Revolution was actually a US backed coup, with zero evidence provided outside of Kremlin and state operated mouthpieces of course.
Possibly the most egregious yet: apparently the Bucha massacre was a hoax. Remember all those videos we saw of Russian soldiers gunning down unarmed civilians? Apparently they all must have been doctored, or were actually Ukrainian soldiers dressed up as Russian soldiers gunning down their own people.
One of my close friends is a Ukrainian photographer/videographer who was among the first on the scene after the Russians left Bucha. You’ve very likely seen some of his photos before. I can only imagine the rage he’d feel if he were to read some of the bullshit that these comments are attempting to spread.
Honestly, my opinion of HexBear has reached a new low after this thread. I used to be against defederation, but now I can at least understand why people don’t want to be associated at all with your instance.
EDIT 2: This post was locally removed on HexBear. I think that says enough on its own.
You claim that these are examples of “confirmed Kremlin propaganda”. What sources and/or authorities confirm the opinions contained in these posts as Kremlin propaganda?
Possibly the most egregious yet: apparently the Bucha massacre was a hoax. Remember all those videos we saw of Russian soldiers gunning down unarmed civilians? Apparently they all must have been doctored, or were actually Ukrainian soldiers dressed up as Russian soldiers gunning down their own people.
There is no video evidence of the Bucha massacre though? It is based on Ukrainian investigation and an Amnesty investigation. Granted I tend to believe it happened, or at least I disbelieve the counter narrative that the UAF did it, but I don’t know what videos you’re talking about
See, this is what everyone is talking about. At lest you believe it, but so many others only believe the Russian propaganda and when someone disproves it, they just say it’s western propaganda, which is apparently not true but Russian propaganda is?
There’s tons of photos, videos, satellite images, and accounts by locals. It’s been investigated by the UN Commissioner of Human Rights and numerous news agencies who published their proof. Most of the footage was of the aftermath but it’s still proof, especially when combined with drone and satellite footage from before the reporters got there. Or you think the bodies were faked (been disapproved) and reporters from CNN, BBC, AFP, and more didn’t see what they saw when they entered the area? They saw a bunch of fake Halloween corpses and couldn’t tell the difference between that and real dead civilians, who had been raped, burned, and murdered? Or actors? Some of The Russian lies are unbelievable so it’s incredible to me that people keep buying into them.
Yeah I’ve seen a lot of the evidence, journalistic investigations, which were pretty compelling I just noted there’s no direct video evidence. But I do also believe UAF committed severe damage retaking the territory. There is a lot of evidence of civilian murders in UAF retreats in Mariupol as well. AFRF executing prisoners like in the NYT video, or the indiscriminate front line fire against civilians, the Kyiv corridor and southern campaign were a guerilla mindfuck. Civilian casualties are a lot lower now, but the urban conflict at its height was just incredibly brutal and indiscriminate.
It’s possible to believe both at the same time and I applaud you for being able to hold both thoughts in your head. I’m not even being sarcastic, I’ve never seen a hexbear user criticize Russia or say they’ve ever possibly done something wrong in the war or it’s lead up. So just by admitting the possibility that they could’ve done it, even if the UAF have done terrible things too, you’ve made me feel a little better. It’s nice to see some nuance finally lol. And ya, war is hell.
So a post that highlights the many offramps to the current conflict, and describes how Ukraine can no longer “win” is Kremlin propaganda?
The other is a post that describes that Ukraine has killed civilians in the Donbass under Zelensky, do you dispute this?
I seriously don’t understand why so many of you dickride Russia, other than “west bad”. The current Russian government is antithetical to so many of the values you claim to champion.
Seriously, who? Who is “dickriding Russia because west bad”? The current state of Russia is the result of the USSR’s undemocratic dissolution and the subsequent shock doctrine, obviously it’s antithetical to our values. Everyone knows that. People aren’t being blinded by “west bad” - because they generally aren’t literal children who can only understand the world in terms of good guys and bad guys. What they’re doing is critically analyzing media and history.
Hate to employ the dreaded whataboutism, but it seems to me this critique applies more to the opposite side. You say people are “Slotting nicely into Russia’s playbook”, “parroting Kremlin propaganda”. On their own, these are empty thought-terminators. You’re not concerned about understanding reality, just about making absolutely sure you’re 100% not on “Russia’s side” of this issue, because they’re the bad guys in this dichotomy.
I seriously don’t understand why so many of you dickride the west, other than “Russia bad”. The current western governments are antithetical to so many of the values you claim to champion.
You guys say that but I’ve never seen a hexbear criticizing Russia or their side of the story, only accept it as gospel. You say you don’t do that but then blindly accept their time line for the Bucha massacre or pretend their reasons for attacking a sovereign nation are real or ignore a bunch of irregularities in their 2014 referendum voting. Russia leaving is apparently never an option when they talk about possible solutions, only Ukraine giving up territory. You say the world isn’t only good guys and bad guys but because when the things you guys say are actually analyzed, it’s obvious that it’s a lie. The west is bad, everyone else is less bad. Therefore in any thread with Ukraine, because the west is on their side, they are the bad guys. Even though Russia also has a corruption problem and Nazi problem and has a history of invading their numbers for decades. But they have the bigger military, so I guess all their neighbors have to give up their best territory to Russia for free and their citizens shouldn’t expect to do anything about it and the the rest of the world has to let them.
Meanwhile, many of the people who criticize Russia in this attack don’t dickride the West at all and hate plenty of things about it and will say it in the same thread or tons of others. Like they should definitely decide whether they’ll fully support Ukraine or not, but we all know that to do that they’d have to get more support from their voters, which is often more difficult said than done, especially since Ukraine isn’t actually in NATO.
Russia leaving is apparently never an option when they talk about possible solutions
Yes… it isn’t. Thats how reality works. Russia isn’t going to just up and leave. They aren’t going to have thousands of their own people killed and then just… nothing. They have goals, they want to meet them, and if not then at least get somewhat of a victory. The people in Russia aren’t going to like “oh, we just left”. I don’t fucking understand how people can say “the war ends when russia [just up and leaves]”. This isn’t fantasy land, that isn’t how it works. Russia will leave, if Ukraine negotiates a peace with them. If Russia wants land then UK has to negotiate for that not to happen.
A ton of people in Russia don’t care that much about the war. They’ve had protestors and even people who report their news and propaganda speak out about it. There’s no reason they should be there. They can easily leave, it’s very much an option. Now the Ukrainians are fighting for their homeland, so they have just as much a motivation to not give up either. But they also have support from the strongest military in the world.
I do hope they come to some sort of negotiation soon, but saying it never would have been this bad if Russia got everything they want from the beginning and the world stayed out is appeasement and we already know how that ends with the Nazis.
spoiler> I seriously don’t understand why so many of you dickride Russia love how liberals manage to weave in casual homophobia whenever geopolitics comes up, you people make me sick
It’s not because of blind allegiance to Russia or anything like that, people have positions counter to your narrative as the result of actually paying attention to events, as they’ve unfolded, over years.
Impressive how mad you babies get when people don’t swallow the lies you’re peddling, expecting them to be taken as implicitly true or something.
Talk about swallowing lies after regurgitating Russian propaganda? You are all blinded yourself by your hate for the US that you are willing to deny massacres or genocides.
What Russian propaganda? I live in the US, I have more of a problem with my government than a government on the other side of the planet, no matter how scary the liberals try to make them sound.
And it’s not even an exhaustive list. I’ve seen others parrot the idea that Ukraine was doing a genocide in Donbas, a Russian accusation without proof, for example. This is what I mean about you guys skeptical about every side of the story except for Russia’s.
Also, which side do you think the Russians are supporting in the US? Because it’s not the left…
Just because they used the word “dick” doesn’t mean it’s homophobic/mysognist. Also it doesn’t detract from their other points.
The insurgents had been shooting people and using bombs or mortars and artillery since at least 2014. They even shot down airplanes back then. It wasn’t just the Ukrainian government.
OK, but why take the Russian propaganda for their word? And at some point you have to take some evidence of historical accounts or you’re just going going by conspiracy theories.
I don’t take Russian propaganda at their word, I also have decades of history to reference, all the rabid-ass Ukrainian propaganda, plus literally paying attention to shit going on in the last decade
The insurgents had been shooting people and using bombs or mortars and artillery since at least 2014. They even shot down airplanes back then. It wasn’t just the Ukrainian government.
Yes, since the coup shit has been absolutely fucked, and all diplomatic solutions have been derailed.
Just because they used the word “dick” doesn’t mean it’s homophobic/mysognist. Also it doesn’t detract from their other points.
I had to circle back to this one because the comment in question was not just misogynist for using " dick", but because of the implication that dickriding bad, why else use it in that context if it was intended to read as a positive connotation?
As soon as libs feel like it’s a “safe” target they just let loose with the misogyny and homophobia.
I didn’t address the threads they presented as evidence because I didn’t see anything wrong.
Also, which side do you think the Russians are supporting in the US? Because it’s not the left…
I frankly don’t care who the Russians are supporting politically in the US because their propaganda capacity is near insignificant. Also, the Democrats are a right wing political formation, they will fight to protect landlords and break strikes.
If they’re spending their time messaging to a bunch of powerless leftists on their own closed off server they’re wasting their time, what does that even accomplish?
Daily reminder that we all see this pop up on our feed too and you’re going to have a higher quantity of people from other federated instances commenting by virtue of their being more of them active. No one is getting pings telling them it’s time to go to X thread and post Y take, that’s just a main character mindset people get into when they want to think they’re the underdog and the ‘other side’ isn’t playing fair.
During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
You’ve all got to get used to the way federation works. Because everyone is federated with different instances the /all/ page is different for different instances. This means that when a thread reaches /all/ on a specific instance you will get a lot of their users showing up at the same time. This is true of all the large instances, lemm.ee and lemmy.ml pour into our threads all at once when they reach the top of their feeds, but it’s different for every site so you get this outcome where a lot happens all at once.
It’s funny seeing the replies to your comment crying about “not brigading” but then the vast majority of the comments in this post come from hexbear users commenting tankie shit
And why aren’t you responding to anything? So much for being a socialist, you have zero engagement with anything other than liberal beliefs and do absolutely nothing to defend your position or challenge yourself.
Lol, I’ve responded to plenty. Do you seriously expect me to respond to each of the 100+ comments that have been left by HexBear users? It’s not like any of you are capable of changing your mind about anything. Waste of time.
And again, all I have done is said that I support Ukraine. I also happen to be a socialist. Why is that so hard for you to wrap your head around?
Because you don’t support the people, you support the bourgeois state and your position boils down to “I am willing to kill hundreds of thousands of people to protect it.”
This is not socialist ideology. This is first and foremost nationalism, which variant of it I am as yet uncertain as you’ve said nothing about what your “socialism” entails. I am unable to assess whether you’re a nazi or a plain old liberal that pretends to be a socialist by saying you like welfare while still completely and totally supporting capitalism and liberal institutional design to maintain the bourgeoisie as the ruling class. The german gothic aesthetic you choose for your username certainly doesn’t help the suspicions I have over what you really are though, literally retvrn.
I have never seen one of these alleged “socialists” engage on this point. I would really like to see their rationale, and it’s really frustrating that none of them will respond.
They just dance around and repeat that they’re a “socialist”, but never point to a single socialist principle that informs their perspective
They never engage with it because they know damn well that they have no excuse. Rather than engage in something that they are completely caught out on they resort to non-engagement.
Ironically this strategy of online rhetoric is literally in the handbook from the 77th brigade that was leaked, British military psyops. However I suspect these people just learned it naturally from many bad experiences with how that went for them. This picture from their webpage makes me laugh every time because it’s literally fedposting : https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/6e61333c-3115-410c-9cf0-dddd01eda1e6.png
You know, thinking about it, i don’t think i have even seen a self-described “socialist” even bring up theorists or figureheads that they say influenced them. At most, it’ll be something like “someone told me they read Chomsky and they gave a quote that sounded pretty good” or “Bernie/AOC/The Squad say some pretty good things and i agree with them”. I don’t think i’ve ever seen someone talk about Kautsky or Bernstein or any of the other reformists.
The german gothic aesthetic you choose for your username certainly doesn’t help the suspicions I have over what you really are though, literally retvrn.
Fuck you for concerntrolling coward.
Why do you think it is a negative to have autism?
Why are you using terminology for autistic people being overstimulated as a way to insult me?
Why is that so hard for you to wrap your head around?
Because you were defending the US revolution to own more slaves and commit more genocide elsewhere in the thread, which isn’t a particularly socialist position.
Here’s you having it explained to you why the American Revolution was mainly undertaken so that the American ruling class could continue expanding and genociding and enslaving and then you refusing to even read it
Yea, they’re defederated from your instance. You can check it out in the instances list of each instance under “blocked”, here’s yours: lemmy.ca/instances
I do, but evidently you don’t since your comments make it pretty clear that you are on the side of literal self proclaimed nazis. And there’s nothing ok about that.
I really don’t understand how people still hang on to defending EGS. It’s been shit since release, it’s still missing basic features years later, and it’s been found doing tons of shady shit.
I’m all for more competition in these spaces, because, you know, competition pushes the companies to one up each other and build compelling features. But EGS is just blatantly missing shit and is explicitly user-hostile by buying exclusivity to their vastly inferior platform. Steam hasn’t had to react at all because they’re still so far ahead, and Epic is just fucking trolling users by forcing them onto their platform without working cloud saves or even non-buggy installs.
The irony that they flag-wave “user choice” while doing this just totally baffles me.
You don't have to love them but they're still the closest thing to any competition at all. You can complain but they're most likely to improve if they're profitable, and it would definitely hurt end users if they shut down. I get the "buying exclusivity" complaint, but honestly it's fucking impossible to get a foothold, I would do the same thing if I were them.
You don’t have to love them but they’re still the closest thing to any competition at all.
That’s arguably true. But as I said above, the only reason competition is good is if it actually is a reasonable alternative and the companies and products they’re competing with have to make changes to keep customers, which in turn benefits customers of both platforms. Steam hasn’t had to do a thing to deal with EGS. It’s brought no benefits so it serves no purpose Because of this, GOG is better competition in many ways.
On the other hand, as I said above, it has brought many disadvantages and actively harmed customers with unclear game ratings, lack of things like cloud save, fragmentation in their game libraries, and legitimately broken games and wastes of money.
You can complain but they’re most likely to improve if they’re profitable, and it would definitely hurt end users if they shut down
How would this hurt customers? There wouldn’t be EGS exclusives. People would have consolidated purchases. Steam wouldn’t change. GOG wouldn’t change.
The only argument you could make is the lost purchases on EGS, which wouldn’t have existed if EGS hadn’t started in the first place. That’d be a loss EGS created. So it only furthers the point. EGS pretty much only harms customers.
I get the “buying exclusivity” complaint, but honestly it’s fucking impossible to get a foothold, I would do the same thing if I were them.
Okay, sure, the company is working in their own best interest. And? It still actively hurts the consumer. There is no value they are providing to the consumer. If there was an exchange in which the company provided some value in exchange for that detrimental action, it would be warranted.
But EGS offers literally nothing but problems to the consumers.
Instead of shelling out millions to shadily buy themselves into exclusivity, maybe they ought to have invested in their platform? I feel the state of the Epic Games Store reflects their view of gamers - mindless moneybags drooling for the latest releases, not as customers using a platform to play games. I don’t think we’d be better off with them in the game.
Launching a game in steam: click game shortcut on desktop, let steam check for updates, if there’s an update wait a minute for it to download and the game to launch
Oh then the experience is exactly the same with Epic, don’t see the problem then!
I was obviously talking about the experience if you start your game by opening the launcher itself, if you don’t then I don’t know why people care which launcher their game is on, the experience is the same everywhere.
Of all of those only the first one ever happened to me, they have cloud saves, never had an issue with mods… I think you’re mixing up the experience on release vs the experience today, native you should refrain from commenting if you haven’t used the product in a long time, you’re like someone saying “I don’t buy Japanese cars because I had one and it had shit power compared to my friend’s American car!” and that experience dates back to the 70s.
you should refrain from commenting if you haven’t used the product in a long time
What makes you think I haven’t used it? Sure, cloud saves were added recently ish. They still released and pushed for exclusivity without it, and also had their fair share of problems.
Of all of those only the first one ever happened to me
On the other hand, maybe you should refrain from commenting if you are only going to go off anecdotal evidence. There are plenty of people who have had serious problems with EGS. And their support is notoriously pathetic.
Epic starts an update before it has loaded the UI, slowing your computer to a crawl. The UI now takes ages to load because of the update running. You can’t stop the update, that requires the UI which they haven’t loaded…
...if all I wanted was a game launcher, Playnite and pirated .exes are 100% free. Steam at least has features that you are paying for, nobody is forking over $60 for games on Epic just for the privilege of using their shitty launcher unless they are an idiot (or they got a lot of cash to spare I guess).
You might also want to support the devs that bring you those games? But from what you’re saying I guess you pay for games just to make sure Valve gets money and you don’t care about the people actually making the games 👍
So let me pirate it and then donate to the devs or something. Or let me purchase it directly from them. Why should Epic get 10% for doing literally nothing? People like to focus on Epic vs Valve, but Steam could literally not exist at all and Epic would fail. They don't offer a product that is better than piracy. That's the bare minimum standard they need to achieve and they can't even do that. A pirated .exe + Playnite is an objectively better product than a $60 purchase on Epic, it's just the facts. Anyone that spends money on that store is a fool.
lmao so features in a store are all of a sudden important now? That's not what you said before, you said all EGS needed to do is launch the game. It's almost like... features in a gaming platform are important. Like I said. Now if only you could take this newfound realization and apply it to Steam vs EGS....
You can set up auto-updates and cloud saves pretty easily, hell there's even some crazy stuff like this for achievements (EGS social features are so barebones, who cares about achievements on there anyway?).
Multiplayer is a given, everyone knows you can't pirate multiplayer games with official servers. But if you were to play a multiplayer game, it sure as fuck wouldn't be on EGS unless there was forced cross platform because you know it will be dead. I notice when I play Risk of Rain 2 that there will be hundred of Steam lobbies while the cross-play Epic lobbies are completely empty. Epic players literally cannot play that game online. Money well spent for the three people that actually bought that game on EGS, I'm sure they are really thankful they could give Epic their 10% cut for doing nothing when they could have just gotten the game for free or on Steam and had a better experience.
Well, it seems they’re important to you so I’m pointing out the hypocrisy that’s all 🤷 You buy from Steam because of the features, say pirating is better than buying from Epic because of the lack of features, I point out the features they have that you don’t get from pirating and now you’re still being disingenuous, so that conversation can end.
lol you mean your hypocrisy? You said features don't matter. "All Epic needs to do is launch the game, that's good enough!" But now you are saying features do matter. Which is it? Taking this new stance to it's logical conclusion, Steam would obviously be the superior choice, would it not? Steam has more features than Epic, right?
Pirated games have features that Epic games don't by the way, namely the fact that you own the game and you are not limited by DRM. In my personal opinion that is worth way more than EGS achievements which are completely useless on a store with no social features anyway.
You: If that’s all I wanted (implying that you want more) I would just pirate the games because Epic doesn’t offer a product that’s better than pirating
Me: Well, Epic actually offers more than pirating games does if your care about that
You: Oh now you care about the extra features!
No, I’m trying to show you that their product meets your demands, that’s how arguments work.
Then there is zero reason for you to buy games from Epic. That is a function that can be performed for free. It's like paying for air or sunshine. What kind of idiot pays money for something they can get for free?
You just seem to be completely ignoring the fact that I've already addressed all the features you brought up and most of them are pretty useless or are available to pirated games anyway. Certainly they are not worth actually spending money on when GoG and Steam do all those things and much more. Even if you had cash to spare and you just wanted those features with minimal hassle, there is still zero reason to buy from Epic.
jfc I've never seen someone defend so vehemently a product not having features. Epic is a multibillion dollar corporation with apparently thousands of employees, they don't need you to bootlick for them.
I buy my games where they’re the cheapest and I buy them so the devs can continue making games, you’re pretty fucking dumb to waste money to have access to useless features!
I buy my games where they’re the cheapest and I buy them so the devs can continue making games
Oh man, I'm about to blow your mind then!
STEAM KEYS
Devs get more money since Valve doesn't get their 30% cut and they are cheaper than the Epic counterparts! It's a perfect solution!
What is the status of Epic's key program btw, is that something they don't have? Shocker.
you’re pretty fucking dumb to waste money to have access to useless features!
I literally use Steam Proton, Steam Input and my Steam Deck nearly every day, and SteamVR at least a couple times a month. All things Epic doesn't have. Gaming would be super annoying if I was actually forced to use EGS. Billion dollar company with thousands of employees, btw.
I literally use Steam Proton, Steam Input and my Steam Deck nearly every day, and SteamVR at least a couple times a month.
Oh wow, so you’re part of the absolutely miniscule minority of players who need those features, congrats, it doesn’t justify all the hate for the alternatives when the majority doesn’t need it. By the way… how do you use those features on GOG exactly? 🤔
Linux users, Steam Deck owners, VR players and those with Playstation or other non-standard controllers account for a fuckton of people. Easily in the millions to 10s of millions. If you don't want to take advantage of those features, that's your problem.
Linux: 1.82% (going down in August, includes Deck users)
VR headset owners: 1.92%
And there’s overlap.
Controllers aren’t part of the survey but there are other options to use a PlayStation controller on other platforms… I mean, you use GOG too, you said it yourself!
And by the way, no one believes for a sec that you send a single cent to devs whose games you pirate and no, pirating a game doesn’t legally make you an owner of said game.
I don't pirate games, I buy them from Steam or GoG like everyone else because I'm not an idiot. I have absolutely zero incentive to buy from a platform with no useful features.
Which will requires to download the game beforehand so what’s the difference between downloading and installing right away vs downloading to install later? You can still launch the games without logging in.
It’s not 2006 anymore, high speed storage is cheap.
That's a terribly wasteful way of thinking, why can't we just download something once and have access to it forever? Steam allows local network installs and GoG has installers, what's Epic excuse? Don't forget, billion dollar company with 1000s of employees :)
My point is that no matter which option, the data is on your computer, it’s no more wasteful to download and install right away vs download the installer and store that data to install it offline later. Heck, you’ll need more space with the second option as it requires the installer AND the installed game to be stored.
But they are great for indie developers. They’ve done a lot to serve the indie community by buying their games and distributing them as a free game. It gets indie studios out of the hole and into the public eye.
EGS itself is a graveyard for indie games, game discovery is complete shit and they have no plans on improving it..
When it introduced Steam Direct, Valve prioritized the development of Steam features that helped users discover games they might be interested in, such as the Discovery Queue. The Epic Games Store will continue to get interface updates, but as a matter of principle, Allison says that Epic will not track user behavior and use it to algorithmically recommend games. Epic has said in the past that it's more interested in supporting the game discovery that already happens outside of stores, such as on Twitch and YouTube.
Steam has great features to advertise indie games such as dedicated events and such so a lot of indie hits have come from it, like Valheim, Fall Guys, Among Us, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Rimworld, Factorio, The Forest, etc.
It may have been great, but not in a sustainable way.
For Epic those exclusive contracts were part of their advertising budget.
I honestly wonder how many indie games that started as an epic exclusive are still around today because of that exclusivity deal or if they only survived because eventually the exclusivity expire and they were able to list on other platforms
Leave your reviews wherever you want and check your reviews wherever you want, there’s tons of websites to do so, you don’t need to leave your reviews where you own the game.
Fucking hell, what you guys want is for Steam to have an absolute monopoly over everything related to PC video games! Here’s hoping no one ever takes the helm off Valve and makes decisions you disagree with because we’ll be stuck without any alternatives if it were only for you guys!
How old is Gaben? 60? He’s obese and has been for ages? Yeah bud, I don’t want to be a bringer of bad news but I wouldn’t expect him to be in control for the next 15 years!
You literally can’t leave a review on steam unless you purchase the product. So your solution for me is to rebuy a game I already own just to leave a review? You don’t even know what you’re talking about. Enjoy your devil’s advocacy because that’s all it is.
So your solution for a massively profitable company that’s laying off employees, is to instead of implementing a feature the user’s request, just shirk the paying customers desires and leave it up to some third party website? What if I don’t want a review of the game in general, what if I want a performance review of the game as it runs through that specific launcher? I don’t believe that you believe that review sections in stores aren’t useful. I think you’re just being a contrarian. And I think it’s very strange You’re going to bat so hard for a company that doesn’t give two shits about you, but have fun with all your disagreeing with everyone I’m sure you’re getting quite the high.
You mentioned having product reviews as a “basic feature” they should be working on instead of laying off employees, I’m pointing out how ridiculous it is to consider that a necessary feature and how ridiculous it is that you’re complaining that you can’t leave reviews on Steam unless you own the game there when there are plenty of other places where you can leave your reviews.
I’m only disagreeing with people who have idiotic arguments against a product I consider perfectly acceptable.
Let us celebrate the achievements of the world’s nations, in the middle of one of the most oppressive, authoritarian dictatorships on the planet. But hey, they are the nice dictators, with oil. So, we’ll overlook little things like murder.
somehow I’m not surprised that you can’t even think about science and how it contributes to civilization. you are being intellectually dishonest by claiming that we are all equal and then you pick the worst possible example from the group instead of picking the best representatives of nobel prize winners before comparing them with terrorists.
but sure I’ll take anyone from the list of nobel prize winners (which in my opinion are usually political) over someone that puts babies in ovens and burns them alive. it’s not really that complicated as you are trying to make it seem, even when you pick a strawman interpretation of my comment.
EDIT: In a way I’m not surprised that the very people who defend hamas think that rapists and terrorists have the same worth as a nobel prize winner.
All things being equal, the IDF are bigger and more successful terrorists than Hamas and their response to the October 7 attack was a disproportionate response, despite the IDF also conducting operations in the west bank at the same exact time.
Comparing actions being taken in a war being fought over an area larger than that of Delaware to that of a bank robbery is too reductionist to give any sort of meaningful response to.
War fucking sucks, and sometimes the only way to save 10,000 lives is to end 100. Every country has limited resources to deal with hostage situations in active warzones.
The thing though is, that this is not the case with IDF. They have plenty resources, enough to be selling to the rest of the world actually, and they are not preventing an impending attack. It seems like their motives are somewhere else
Hamas doesn’t care… They are terrorists. It is incumbent upon the “good guys” to be better than the terrorists. We really don’t want to go back to the time when war was a race to the bottom of the atrocity ladder.
Yup. Hamas is a shit organization who only the Palestinian people to further their wealth and trash ideology. Gaza hasnt had an election since Hamas barely came to power. Their leaders live a life of luxury while their people suffer. That said, netanyahu has been a fucking asshole himself – he caused this attack as much as Hamas.
However, this is an ongoing war that was started by two assholes where the only suffering happens to innocent people. Civilians die in war, while they are not primary targets (except by terrorists), they will be caught in the crossfire. If a major leadership cell is at a hospital – the hospital is a target and the leadership will be taken out, even in the laws of war – you CAN target hospitals. If a hospital is “untouchable” then the enemy will use it. War is horrible, but when you are in it – you fight.
Its best to focus on the failed policies of the USA, Isreal and the authoritarian, terrorist Hamas government that led to this mess in the first place and find some path for peace to ultimately stop all this bloodshed.
How this can be done? No idea, but whatever has been done isnt working.
I’ve been in a few war zones… I know the rules. The point isn’t whether it’s legal… Israel has the resources to clear these places on foot. Yes, it sucks and yes, it will result in higher IDF casualties. Just like clearing Falluja building by building led to higher coalition losses there. Soldiers dying is better than civilians dying…especially when you’re fighting terrorists. Every dead civilian has family, friends, lovers, etc, that will become more sympathetic to the terrorists and make killing the ideology that much harder.
“Its best to focus on the failed policies of the USA, Isreal and the authoritarian, terrorist Hamas government that led to this mess in the first place and find some path for peace to ultimately stop all this bloodshed.”
The policy that led to Hamas was the apartheid system imposed on Palestinians by Israelis, not to mention the continued theft of land over the last 70 years. Nothing changes without that system being dismantled.
You dumb. Correct, they haven’t had an election within the lifetime of over half the population of Gaza so they aren’t duly elected and there’s little evidence to support Palestinian support of Hamas specifically. Netanyahu had been caught paying hamas cash on multiple occasions, didn’t must cause it he paid for it.
You cannot disproportionately attack a hospital, there are 5000 people known to be in that hospital and a claimed sub 500 Garrison below that they refuse to get into his or why they know about. You can’t kill 5000 to kill 500 you don’t actually even have proof exist.
You seem to gloss over the literal terrorist roots of the IDF, lehi, irgun, haganah age others were all terrorist organizations involved in self claimed acts of assassination, civilian bombing and religious purge of secular leadership.
No shit? Bombing civilian industry and controlling the population of an open air concentration camp isn’t popular? Whoever would have guessed that?
Imagine for a moment, if you will, the United States in the present day. Imagine a bill reaches the US House of Representatives called “America the nation state of white people”. In its basic principles it states “the right to exercise National self-determination in the United States is unique to white people”. Further down a clause for White Settlement “the state views the development of White Settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation”.
Outraged a coalition led by the Congressional Black Caucus initiates a challenge to the bill and proposes a bill of their own where it calls the United States “a country for all its citizens” but the speaker of the house unilaterally disqualifies the bill before it’s allowed to even be debated.
The house General counsel explains in a statement the bill includes several articles that are meant to “alter the character of the United States from the nation state of white people to a state in which there is equal status from the point of view of nationality for whites and people of color” the bill is dead.
“America the nation state of white people” passes through both chambers of Congress unchallenged it’s then signed into law.
US President Joe Biden would invoke the law in a tweet a year later saying “America is not a state of all its citizens according to the nation state law we passed America is the nation state of white people and not anyone else” As one Rights group put it “there is no Democratic constitution in the world that designates the Constitutional identity of the state on racial grounds as serving one ethnic group”. There is now this disconcerting scenario, it is anything but imaginary.
It’s completely real and happened just a few years ago to little coverage and little condemnation in Israel.
That is who you are defending, like a golem set to task by its master, thoughtless and without morals.
I’ll ask again… maybe you’ll answer (nobody else I’ve asked has). It seems you support Israel, so why don’t you think they should be held to a higher standard than a literal terrorist organization?
So you’re just being a contrarian/troll then? Seemed like a pretty emotional defense of their actions for someone who doesn’t support them. Guess that’s the internet for you.
Probably shouldn’t use paywalled sources to prove your point bud, especially ones that don’t seem to be in amnesty.org (the official website, not an wapo editorial.)
Those all seem to be attacks of opportunity not thought out, well supplied hit and runs like you would expect for “thousands of miles of tunnels” or a “sizable underground garrison”. You’d expect combat closer to Vietnamese rat nest attacks of Israel were at all correct.
Ed: you last source doesn’t even say it’s happening, it says they condemn it, essentially “if your doing it, stop doing it”.
Your link goes to a page about Palestinians being tortured.
I haven’t seen anything but condemnation because no one has actual evidence it’s happening, Israel who are the most adamant that it’s happening won’t show proof.
That article also condemns using hospitals, it didn’t however say it is happening. They are couching statements because Israel says it is happening and the concept is at the very least plausible and condemnation appeases Israeli allies.
You haven’t provided proof, you’ve provided statements of condemnation, that’s different. I can condemn the use of the trashcan at the end of the alley as a toilet, that doesn’t actually mean anyone’s been shitting in the trashcan just that I think if it happened it would be abhorrent.
Notably absent any actual evidence and it’s not like the US would lie to exert influence and justify international conflict.
I remember we stormed that one country because they had “weapons of mass destruction” and 20 years later we found so goddamn many… No wait we found none and were proven to have known there weren’t ever any.
I never said they didn’t use tunnels. I said the only evidence for the hospitals being used is “Israel Says”. You can’t just throw random articles as “sources”. They need to actually back up your point and credibly. A tunnel in visual range of a hospital is not it. A blog with unsubstantiated claims is not it. A major news article that doesn’t say anything about hospitals, is not it.
And please stop trying to reply to me in two places with the same thing.
One video of them shooting at a hospital, one video of tanks in alleys, and one video of a single man in a street with an RPG.
This is not evidence of anything. It’s as much evidence of hospitals being command centers as a picture of an RV was evidence for mobile chemical weapons labs in Iraq.
Sure bro, I have more sources. Just tell me which site or source I should actually use so you don’t call me a mindless idiot and downvote me. Challenge accepted
No Russia is completely responsible, if they hadn’t occupied it, Ukraine wouldn’t have to fight to get it back. Fuck Russia your rhetoric is stupid. The Russians are the Nazis and Putin will die in a bunker.
…I’m hoping for Putin to be brought in and put on alcatraz. Yes, I know it’s been abandoned as a jail. I figure fuck it, put him in, lock him up, and then absndon it again. If he lives he lives, if he starves, he starves.
If the previous few dozen ethics violations have had literally no consequences whatsoever and there’s absolutely no sign that anything is about to change on that front, I feel like the only purpose of these stories is to desensitize us to it and make it feel normal.
Who said anything about despots? These are opinions of people, not rulers. Citizens of Africa, Asia, South America have suffered under US hegemony, so they view the Russian State different than you do.
Nearly half (46%) globally said that the European Union, United States and Nato were doing too little to assist Ukraine, while 11% said they are doing too much
Yet among the 6.3 billion who live in the world’s remaining 136 countries, the opposite is the case – with 70% of people feeling positively towards China and 66% towards Russia.
Or in other words, the majority of the world supports Russia.
As your quote shows the article you’re citing from doesn’t only look at peoples’ views of the war in Ukraine, but shows a big divide between progressive and conservative nations. Eg. the majority in SE Asia, the Middle East and Africa doesn’t care as much for Putin invading Ukraine as they do for him stomping on the gays and progressives.
American cultural conflicts are not world politics. This has nothing to do with “the gays” or progressives (meaning less term).
Cuba is against NATO expansion. If you think it’s because Cuba allegedly hates gays you need to study both history and recent events before forming political opinions.
Sure, for what it’s worth I could concede that a global majority might approve of support for Ukraine according to this data. Looking at raw data from: www.allianceofdemocracies.org/…/dpi-2023/
That figure may not be accurate however, especially because I can’t see that they computed a weighted global total by population. They extrapolate to obtain each “nationally representative result” by taking into account the respondents’ age, gender and education to mitigate selection bias. I have my doubts about extrapolating like that, but okay. The main problem is when you check the global total, it’s just an unweighted average of all nations. https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/ab265cc9-6893-4f32-b8e9-8799dc5337db.pngHighlighted in orange: Top - unweighted average of all nations, Bottom - reported figure from the author
Each country has ~1000 respondents, so there isn’t a proportional representation of each country based on its population - small countries (mostly imperial core, as it happens) have an outsized effect on the average.
Nearly half (46%) globally said that the European Union, United States and Nato were doing too little to assist Ukraine, while 11% said they are doing too much
I do think the paper is flawed but not useless. I wasn’t really the one who posted it though, it’s the primary source for this claim in the other article.
A compromise now is bad for russia, russia basically has to be able to extort Western Europe to not to be crippled for decades. Germany is apparently working to that end now.
It’s so fucking funny when the geopolitics understanders who have been drip-fed NATO propaganda state the clear opposite of reality and think they made an insightful comment.
Russia has all but won the military conflict, as has been made clear by this utter failure of a “counteroffensive.” Russia is doing better economically than before the SMO, despite the supposed economic wunderwaffen sanctions that only backfired and hurt NATO countries. Russia has only gained support by most of the rest of the world and has showed the global south that the US/NATO are indeed paper tigers. Russia has all the leverage now. So yes, for Russia to compromise right now would be bad for them because they don’t need to compromise, they can keep going as they have been and eventually have their demands met, or Ukraine/NATO can recognize they’ve lost and make a bid for peace by acquiescing to Russia’s demands before more lives are needlessly lost.
Ukraine on the other hand will be crippled for decades regardless of how things pan out. Ukraine is now deeply indebted to Western countries, has already had all national assets sold off, has had a major chunk of its working-age population killed or maimed, and is beholden to a fascist, nazi-worshipping government.
As for Germany, yeah they have been working to the end of hobbling themselves for decades too by allowing their remaining industrial capacity to be completely gutted, kowtowing to their US masters that bombed their infrastructure to prevent them ever again getting oil from ‘The Bad Country,’ they have irreparably removed nuclear power as an option even as they’re facing an impending energy crisis (in large part because of aforementioned no-oil-from-bad-country), and are right now also sliding towards right wing populism.
Yes, but the liberal pro-EU protestors got sidelined by literal neo-Nazis. The following President was basically handpicked by the US Ambassador. There’s plenty of western media from 2015-2021 about the integration of Azov into the Ukrainian military structure, the rehabilitation of World War II collaborators, and the suppression of the Russian language. The people of the East are, in principle, just as entitled to wish to join Russia as western Ukraine is to join the EU.
Look, the heckin’ wholesome slava ukrainis didn’t know where he was so they had to shell everywhere! It’s like playing Battleship, except it’s mostly other random innocent people that you hit
Ukraine escalated by violating the ceasefire. Russia escalated further by sending in troops. I didn’t say it’s “okay,” but the blame isn’t just on their side.
If Russia wanted to ensure the safety of the people of Donbas (which is a big if tbf), what should they have done differently, at any point leading up to the conflict? Because I’d like to condemn Russian escalation, but it’s a little hard for me to do so if I don’t have an answer to that question.
Which one(s)? There were so many from 2014 onwards that I lost track. I’m always skeptical anytime one side gets all the blame for violating a ceasefire.
If Russia wanted to ensure the safety of the people of Donbas (which is a big if tbf), what should they have done differently, at any point leading up to the conflict?
If it really is about the people of Donbas and not annexing the land itself, they could have done what every country is supposed to do when the safety of people in a region is jeopardized – open their borders to refugees and asylum seekers. It would piss off Ukraine, but they could have just been like “Come across the border and we’ll set you up with a Russian passport”.
Which one(s)? There were so many from 2014 onwards that I lost track. I’m always skeptical anytime one side gets all the blame for violating a ceasefire.
Minsk II was the one I was referring to, but it’s a fair point.
If it really is about the people of Donbas and not annexing the land itself, they could have done what every country is supposed to do when the safety of people in a region is jeopardized – open their borders to refugees and asylum seekers. It would piss off Ukraine, but they could have just been like “Come across the border and we’ll set you up with a Russian passport”.
Ok, let me rephrase that then. Do you believe that the people have Donbas have a right to self-determination and representation in government, and that that right would include having some possible roadmap to joining Russia, or should they be forced to either go along with whatever the new government wanted or abandon their homes and flee the country? Because I think that a lot of this mess could’ve be avoided if Ukraine had simply given them a referendum, but instead they banned opposition parties, which says to me that they knew how the people there would vote.
This is like saying that the US should’ve invaded Cuba when they started taking nationalizing property instead of doing what the other person said and accepting refugees and asylum seekers. There’s always another way besides war and violence.
There isn’t always another way besides violence. The German invasion of the USSR was a war of extermination. Laying down and dieing is not morally superior.
Fair enough. If you’re defending yourself, then I suppose that’s true. Which is incidentally another reason Ukraine has the right to defend themselves.
I don’t think the US dumping tons of weapons is actually helping defend themselves, it just seems to be getting conscripts killed. If they had actually negotiated after that karkiv offensive maybe you could have made the case?
Well it’s keeping them having some sovereignty over their own country instead of it falling in 3 days like everyone thought. Does Ukraine want to lose a bunch of their territory? That’s the question and considering how hard they’re fighting, it doesn’t look like they do. If the average Ukrainian wants the ability to defend and keep their home, then I want that for them, too.
And war is unpredictable. Maybe Russia will lose the appetite for war soon, or maybe Ukraine will want to negotiate (but I’m sure they want to take what they can before then). Winter is coming.
Does Ukraine want to lose a bunch of their territory?
It already has, and not in the way you think. In 2013 Ukraine had a president unwilling to take an IMF deal, and opted for the Russian one. The maidan coup happened and now they have a president who does whatever the money men want.
Even now there’s a website up for openly privatizing Ukraine, and the ultimate outcome in a NATO victory explicitly is going to be the privatization of the breadbasket of Europe.
I mean, ya, the IMF sucks and further privatization of Europe is bad. But that doesn’t mean you have to support Russia while they bomb and kill civilians or make fun of Ukrainian citizens for trying to defend their home and their lives.
The extent of “support” for Russia has been extremely critical on hexbear. You all just say that anyone not falling over themselves to slava ukraini is a Russia supporting Putin bot.
Not in any of the threads that hit the defederated servers at least. I’ve seen maybe two people from hexbear ever criticize Russia or mention something they did bad, while everyone else constantly shits on and memes on Ukraine and their defense effort. You guys say you do, but don’t actually do it.
Well you’ve been on lemmy for 3 months, and just started running into us in only the last month, meanwhile we’ve been chatting and having struggle sessions about this type of shit for years to various degrees. (especially since 22)
Ever since the illegal dissolution of the USSR, Russia has been a capitalist shithole, the treatment of LGBT people there sucks. They are what we made them, politically.
You construe a lack of support for Ukraine with ‘shitting’ on them. I want to see the US drop support for Ukraine because it would mean that people like you and I stop dying on a daily basis for lines on a map. There have been many chances for a negotiated end, and from where I’m sitting the US went out of its way to blow those opportunities.
The US did blow those opportunities because the people who own the US government profit wildly from this conflict. With no Afghanistan, they need another endless war to fill their wallets up with.
Have you considered that maybe that’s because of the threads that you pay attention to? Step outside of the Ukraine war stuff if you want to actually test that hypothesis of yours.
If Russia was after lives they would be bombing the shit out of Ukrainian infrastructure. They currently hold the territories where the people who were being bombed by the Ukrainian government live.
They have been bombing tons of infrastructure. They’ve been hitting all over cities, hospitals, dams and reservoirs, etc. They’re probably not going to bomb the places they currently control for obvious reasons but that doesn’t mean they’re not hitting places with civilians they don’t currently control.
Right, but they didn’t full out invade, like Russia is doing. They definitely considered it, though lol. And it would’ve sucked for the people of Cuba if they did, just like it did for Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, or the populace of every other country that’s ever been attacked.
I mean the US didn’t. US-backed Cuban exiles did. There’s a big difference. If US had attacked with it’s full might, you guys would’ve been saying Cuba should surrender as much as Ukraine should right now, because there is no way they would have won. They would’ve been a smear of an island, probably closer to Haiti. They goodness Kennedy didn’t listen to his warhawk generals on this point at least.
Putting American boots on the ground is not the only way that the United States brings death and destruction to a region to further (or protect, as some Amercan politicians call it) American, and more broadly western, hegemony (or American interests, as craven ghouls call it). The use of proxy forces like in Afghanistan during the 80s, coups like those carried out in Chile in 73 and, well really most of South America in the latter 20th century, sanctions against countries like Cuba, Venezuela, and the DPRK (which are explicitly put in place to make life worse for the people living there and produce people who would be willing to commit violent acts to overthrow the local government not adequately subordinate to the United States), facilitating the mass murder of people opposed to the pro-america regime or too supportive of communism like in Indonesia and South Korea several times, all bring massive loss of life and terrible suffering. The crimes against humanity carried out by the United States and on their behalf are so terrible and widespread that it is difficult to name a country that has not had blood spilled to advance American hegemony in it. Like Cuba.
At that though, the United States is no stranger to directly deploying troops to crush opposition to American hegemony. Like in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan again, and the RSFSR immediately after the revolution. War is terrible, but it is not out of the question to enforce American hegemony.
In Ukraine, the United States is not interested in preserving democracy or the self determination of the Ukranian people. It never has been in any of the countries or among any of the organizations that receive its support. The United States ultimately wants to have control over the Russian economy to use as a source of cheap labor and resources. That was the USSR and later Russia were denied, several times, entry into NATO, an ostensibly defensive alliance for the region that Russia is in, and the purpose of the rapid privatization of post-soviet economies after ‘91. Ukraine is caught in the terrible position of being used to advance the United States’ goal in the region. Support for Ukraine will be dropped when the United States government believes that it is no longer useful or viable to support them against Russia, after who knows how many people are dead and permanently injured, and how many more whose entire lives have been destroyed.
Russia has fought through proxy forces and propaganda a ton as well. They were doing the same thing in Ukraine in Crimea and the Donbas regions and it’s partially what led to this whole mess. Yes, America bad I would love for them to leave all those other countries alone. But that doesn’t mean no one else can do evil in the world. Blame the people causing the dead and permanently injured, bombing out whole cities with civilians, not the ones giving Ukraine a chance to defend against it. The difference is the US was the aggressor in those other scenarios while in this one they are just helping out the defender. Yes it’s to help their own interests, but the Ukrainians don’t care, they just want someone to help them defend their land and home and families.
Oh! Well then we see eye-to-eye in that case. I think Western support to Ukraine should be limited to accepting refugees and providing humanitarian aid, not weapons. I think Ukraine should be open to ceding territory in negotiations in order to end the war and prevent further loss of life. There’s always another way besides war and violence. I’m all about peace, glad we’re in agreement.
There are countless of well-documented examples of the American empire sponsoring terrorist attacks, sabotage and assassinations against Cuba. To this day the American empire upholds an illegal an unprovoked blockade of the island as well as occupying the land on which the Guantanamo naval base and torture black site is placed.
Before the revolution, America ran Cuba as a colony, leeching off the hard work of Cubans. If anything, the history of American relations with Cuba has been one of profound violence.
But okay, most of the times they made sure to put in a middle-man to do the actual dirty work which absolves them of all sin I guess.
That’s basically what Russia was doing in Ukraine by propping up pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine. But I guess it’s fine when they do that, bendy they succeeeded, it’s only bad when America does it, because they failed.
And are you saying you would’ve been fine if the US did a full-scale invasion of Cuba then, because they did all that other stuff? Otherwise, that was all unrelated and besides the point.
Do you believe that the people have Donbas have a right to self-determination and representation in government, and that that right would include having some possible roadmap to joining Russia
Of course. They just don’t have a right to drag the rest of Ukraine into Russia at the same time. On principle, I support pretty much any separatist movement on the grounds of “why should I care if a country’s capitalist class loses some of its economic base?”
should they be forced to either go along with whatever the new government wanted or abandon their homes and flee the country?
No, but if that’s what was happening we could all then be criticizing a peacetime government for acting injustice upon segments of its population, instead of advocating for an end to a war. The idea that a country should intervene militarily in order to “save” a group of people isn’t one based on honest, good-faith altruism on the part of the country that wants to intervene, if it were, then wouldn’t we be in a constant state of war everywhere? (Since there’s pretty much at least one oppressed group in every country worldwide at least one other country could claim a right to “protect” them based on shared heritage or language.)
Just because Russia (might) have the military capability to do so when all these other countries might not doesn’t mean they should.
On principle, I support pretty much any separatist movement
The idea that a country should intervene militarily in order to “save” a group of people isn’t one based on honest, good-faith altruism on the part of the country that wants to intervene, if it were, then wouldn’t we be in a constant state of war everywhere?
I don’t see how you can hold these two positions simultaneously. If part of a country wants to leave, and the government of that country says, “No, and we’ll use force to stop you,” and another country says, “Hey, seperatists, we’ll support you,” then where do you stand on all that? You’re pro-seperatist while being anti-supporting seperatists? That doesn’t make any sense, you could look at just about any successful seperatist movement and see that they recieved foreign backing from someone and that it was likely a crucial factor in winning, for example, French support in the American revolution. This foreign support is generally less motivated by altruism and more by the assisting nation’s geopolitical goals, but it’s all the same to the seperatists who need it to survive.
To me your stance is coming across as, you support the seperatists, but also they should’ve backed down immediately when Ukraine used force to avoid a war, but in that case it seems like you don’t actually support the seperatists in practice.
I don’t see how you can hold these two positions simultaneously.
They’re about different things. One is an opinion about bottom-up, community activism and the principle of self-determination, and is a belief that exists independently of the material conditions and reality of global politics. France only supported the Americans in order to “get back” at England. They later regretted it when the Americans supported the French Revolution. When I say I support separatism, I am thinking specifically about how Lenin released all of the Russian Empire’s colonial nations, regardless of how it might adversely impact the Soviet states’ security prerogatives.
If part of a country wants to leave, and the government of that country says, “No, and we’ll use force to stop you,” and another country says, “Hey, seperatists, we’ll support you,” then where do you stand on all that?
Like I said with France and the 13 colonies – no country is actually saying that or has ever said that. France didn’t go “yeah, we love what you’re trying to do 13 colonies and support your beliefs wholeheartedly”, they went “oh cool, this will help us regain New France one day and really piss off our archrivals.” Likewise, Russia, having lost Ukraine (and the Eastern Bloc), is trying to regain its lost glory, and it just so happens that they can exploit Donbas separatism in order to do so.
My understanding of the Donbas is that it was largely populated by Russians from the Russian SFSR during the era of open borders within the Soviet States, which also makes things different than Catalans, Kurds, and Scots, for example.
Like I said with France and the 13 colonies – no country is actually saying that or has ever said that. France didn’t go “yeah, we love what you’re trying to do 13 colonies and support your beliefs wholeheartedly”, they went “oh cool, this will help us regain New France one day and really piss off our archrivals.”
Saying “oh cool, this will help us regain New France one day and really piss off our archrivals” is still supporting them. That’s my point, seperatists often rely on geopolitical rivals supporting them for ulterior motives. You can’t really cleanly separate bottom-up political activism from opportunistic rivals with ulterior motives, because in practice the former will generally rely on the latter. Generally when you’re fighting a civil war, you don’t have the luxury of turning up your nose at offers of assistance for the sake of purity. So if your position is supporting seperatists movements except when they recieve foreign backing, you’re not going to find yourself supporting many seperatists movements in practice, at least in cases where they have to fight.
If this was still like 2018, I’d be out there supporting the various brokered deals that included Russia at the table. Framing the current conflict as a civil war is inaccurate, as it lost the characteristics of a civil conflict when Russia attacked the rest of Ukraine in February 2022. What was a protracted, simmering war between a fraction of the Ukrainian army and Russian-backed Separatists on the fringes of the nation’s territory, with a dynamic akin to plenty of regions around the world throughout the latter half of the 20th century and the start of the 21st.
So if your position is supporting separatist movements except when they receive foreign backing, you’re not going to find yourself supporting many separatist movements in practice, at least in cases where they have to fight.
I wouldn’t say that’s my position. I support separatism, but I also oppose war in most of its forms, since it means the destruction of people’s livelihoods, and heritages, which of course cost many lives in the process too. People here often talk about ending the war in Ukraine as fast as possible because of the violence, so wouldn’t the morally and ethically consistent viewpoint be to support what would prevent war too, not to argue for or justify foreign interventionism? No war but class war, you know?
Within the context of Ukraine, the DNR and LPR didn’t have the relationship with Russia that, going back to the French and American Revolution example, the American colonists had with the French. American separatists didn’t become subordinate to French military leadership or to French foreign policy goals. The newly-independent Americans didn’t then ask to join the French Empire.
As an aside, France’s support for the Americans failed them in their ambitions and led to the collapse of the Ancien Regime, which if we’re to take it as indicative of the outcome and legacy of foreign-backed separatist conflicts, means that this isn’t gonna be good for Russia long term.
I support separatism, but I also oppose war in most of its forms
Ok so what happens if a government says, “No you can’t secede and I don’t care how many of you want to?” Nations aren’t generally keen on giving up territory, especially in cases where the relationship is exploitative. Renouncing force means renouncing the threat of force, which can often leave very little leverage for a seperatist movement to work with.
Personally though, I’m inclined to agree somewhat with your point that seperatism isn’t always worth the conflict, and for that reason I wouldn’t necessarily agree with the stance of being predisposed to support seperatist movements. Imo, it’s better to take a pragmatic view, evaluating the specific conditions on a case by case basis.
I would argue that if Russia withdrew and the seperatist movements surrendered, there would still be a conflict between the Russian speaking population and the Ukrainian government. I suppose it’d be possible for Russia to offer citizenship and relocation assistance to everyone, but it would mean displacing a lot of people and I’m not sure it’s realistic. Do you have examples of historical precedent in a comperable situation?
Within the context of Ukraine, the DNR and LPR didn’t have the relationship with Russia that, going back to the French and American Revolution example, the American colonists had with the French. American separatists didn’t become subordinate to French military leadership or to French foreign policy goals. The newly-independent Americans didn’t then ask to join the French Empire.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable that the DNR and LPR would want to join Russia for legitimate security reasons at this point. If you want to label them as Russian proxies and Ukraine as a US proxy, I don’t mind, but I think the reality is that while both are influenced by foreign governments, they also both represent some degree of genuine support.
As an aside, France’s support for the Americans failed them in their ambitions and led to the collapse of the Ancien Regime, which if we’re to take it as indicative of the outcome and legacy of foreign-backed separatist conflicts, means that this isn’t gonna be good for Russia long term.
I don’t think you can extrapolate like that from a single data point under pretty different conditions.
what if…no you can’t secede and I don’t care how many of you want to?
This is what happens with every seperatist movement pretty much though, and yet i dont see many calls for arms and civil war Cascadia, Scotland, Catalonia these days. The people there know it would mean the destruction of everything they hold dear.
…possible for Russia to offer citizenship and relocation assistance to everyone, but it would mean displacing a lot of people and I’m not sure it’s realistic. Do you have examples of historical precedent in a comperable situation?
I mean, I don’t think there’s any way of getting around displacing people - if it joined Russia I’m sure there are people who’d want to leave for Ukraine, and of course we’re already talking about the reverse.
I can’t think of specific examples but there’s definitely been examples of mass migration or offering of citizenship due to “political solutions” meant to avoid conflict and reduce the spectre of war. Just off the cuff though, I can think of how people of Northern Ireland are able to hold Irish passports, or the numerous migrations that happened in the 20th century when borders were changed or imposes as parts of treaties (the part of Germany that is now Poland, the Muslim/Hindu migrations between Pakistan and India during partitioning, etc)
These aren’t good or something I’m arguing for, but I believe that it was preferable to all out war.
I don’t think you can extrapolate like that from a single data point under pretty different conditions.
Me too, that’s why I said it at the end as an aside, it was more of a glib comment than an actual thesis.
I’m perfectly fine with a negotiated settlement. Ideally, the areas where more people want to stay in Ukraine should stay with Ukraine and the areas where more people want to join Russia should join Russia. That would minimize the amount of displacement while allowing people to live under the government of their choice. My real issue is that Ukraine won’t negotiate at all, even on Crimea, and I just think that’s unreasonable.
the Muslim/Hindu migrations between Pakistan and India during partitioning
This was the biggest example that came to my mind and it’s not exactly comparable but it’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of relocation.
My real issue is that Ukraine won’t negotiate at all, even on Crimea, and I just think that’s unreasonable.
For the same reason that every country tells its own seperatist movements “no”. I believe that Russia should’ve waited things out because its the open state of war that gives Ukraine enough diplomatic cover to push to its pre-2014 borders. Had it done so I think given another decade or two, Ukraine would have to accept reality and cede it formally in exchange for concessions of some sort (again, thinking of historical precedent).
While I’ve been describing and explaining sovereignty as a concept I do believe it presents inherent flaws indicative of its origins with European royals and its having been imposed across the world.
it’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of relocation
Of course not, but a war with shifting frontlines (since I was suggesting it as an alternative to invasion) would be inherently more destructive. (Although forced relocation can be committed as a war crime too).
I believe that Russia should’ve waited things out because its the open state of war that gives Ukraine enough diplomatic cover to push to its pre-2014 borders.
That’s kind of a fair point I think but I don’t think the Donbas would ever be able to join Russia in this timeline. Without Russian intervention, the separatists likely lose and the years that follow establish precedent for Russia control of Crimea but also for Ukrainian control over Donbas. I think it’s a valid, if cynical, argument to say that Russia should’ve cashed out with Crimea instead of going all in to try to take Donbas, but it means leaving the separatist out to dry. I do kind of agree with it though, I guess it comes down to what happens to the separatists if Ukraine wins, and I’ve seen people say they’d be genocided but I don’t really buy that, seems speculative and like propaganda.
Valid, but cynical arguments make up a lot of foreign policy takes :/. Part of why I speak how I do is because I want to live in a world that one day won’t be ruled by realpolitik and for people to matter when it comes to the foreign policies of nationstates.
I guess it comes down to what happens to the separatists if Ukraine wins, and I’ve seen people say they’d be genocided but I don’t really buy that, seems speculative and like propaganda.
They did do that. My coworkers aunt was finally granted Russian citizenship and was ecstatic. They granted citizenship to a number of refugees in the war.
Most of the people I’m talking about were either born there or have lived there for longer than Ukraine has existed as a state. Those people should be the ones in charge of the fate of Crimea, regardless of their ethnicity. I don’t believe in blood and soil nationalism where only certain ethnicities get to be full citizens.
By “the Uighers” I assume you’re talking about Xinjiang? The most serious separatist movement there is the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, the US recognized these guys as a terrorist group in 2002. The US continued to recognize them as a terrorist group until 2020, when the US decided that it would be more politically convenient for them to not be terrorists anymore. The overall populace supports the central government. It’s 90+% approval for China overall, I can’t find a breakdown by region. If the people of Xinjiang were to lose faith in the central government and decided to go their own way then I would support them. The important part is that is has to be the people, not terror groups, not US-backed NGOs, and not US-backed protest movements, that support the separatism movement.
“My terminally online movement is not full of fascists and useful idiots parroting fascist propaganda because of, uhm, history” Yes, tell me again about the freikorps while every day I see another hazoid being besties with Nazis, or being a fascist themselves.
I don’t know if you’re a fascist, I’m currently not interested enough to go checking.
how you call me terminally online
Because you’re on Lemmy defending legacy of a pejorative identifier when confronted with the fact that the modern online tankie community has produced a number of fascist-aligned notable persons over the last years, and keeps spreading and regurgitating fascist propaganda because of the common alignment against the West.
The history is important. In this conversation, history is irrelevant. Stop making it about your honor
“Please stop pointing out we’re friends with fascists, it hurts our feefees. Don’t you know that muh history means I’m very cool and honorable despite being an internet warrior”.
You’re one step removed from a nationalist. Except you’re feeding your insecurity with a different flavour of a myth.
You’re not beating the allegations, you’re treating this the same way a nationalist would. If you don’t see the irrelevance of historical anecdotes here, well, I guess that explains why you’re a tankie.
Haz, Maupin, Dore and all their sphere are fascist. One guy literally went through being an “anti-imperialist” tankie to going to Tucker Carlson and talking about how wokeness is destroying West or something. Even in comments here I see tankies gladly buying and spreading Russian bullshit about Ukrainians being Nazis. Or how when I recently mentioned Russia making genocidal policies against trans people, a lot of people from a tankie sub began whataboutisming me about that. The fact that you totally ignored my larger point (tankie community producing fascists), which you apparently know about and “dunk all the time” on. The fact that you tried to deflect from that by bringing up 50-years-old historical anecdotes which are irrelevant to this particular context. It’s in the same vein as when Israel tries to deflect from accusation of fascism and apartheid by bringing up antisemitism and Holocaust. Of course, what Israel does is much worse than being a breeding ground for online fascists, but the mechanism of deflection here is similar. Don’t try to strawman me on this. No matter which honorable or victimized identity you use, this remains a deflection.
You really need to start using real words for things. You are using “tankie” to describe everything under the sun right now and I literally have no idea what you’re saying anymore.
I’ve actually been extremely consistent with my usage of the term throughout this conversation. The people I’m talking to keep using it for everyone under the sun, that’s true. From a member of a third-world communist party 50 years ago to themselves to Joseph Stalin. My focus is currently on the online English-speaking community/ies of the last 5-10 years who would fit the term
Who else would we talk about in a Lemmy conversation about people on Lemmy supporting Russia? I’ve been telling you the Vietnamese don’t matter in this context from the very beginning.
EDIT: I’ve made myself clear what I was talking about. The context was there, you were the first one to bring up the 20th century people. I could take some responsibility as the term is vague, but too many of you went for the dunks and posturing, making up shit about what I meant on the fly. The problem that truth here is relative and if enough of you decide that is what happened, whatever context I had in mind wouldn’t matter. It’s easy to be cynical about the whole interaction for both of us. Also good for the ego, as being wrong hurts and we all know it. I’m off to bed, will see if you add something else here later. It wasn’t nice to talk to you, bye.
Please learn reading comprehension in regards the article in question. Or to my message. You seem to have trouble understanding at least one of the two
I don’t like being lied about. I assume it’s you not understanding either what I wrote or the article. Or you just don’t care and I’m just feeding a troll
Gaslighting is when someone shows you your own copy and pasted words and then tells you that an article is a relevant reply to your statement.
You’re a fucking baby. If you can’t engage with something so basic without having a tantrum and pulling reddit debatebro cliches out of a hat then why the fuck are you still here? I told you to act like you gave a shit or shut the fuck up. Why do you refuse both?
This is literally the gaslighter tactic. The moment you call out the behavior you’re framed as the unstable one. I think I’ve made it clear that you’re either wrong about the meaning of my words or you’re actively lying about them, which I think is the most probable here as you keep being a POS about all of this. If you think there is a literal one-to-one correlation between the article and my words, you could’ve shown it to me hours ago. You didn’t. I did read the article, it’s not there. You keep pushing your bullshit without elaborating, so yeah, you’re a troll.
One last try before I block you and go with my day, this is not productive at all.
Gaslighting is when you make someone question their own senses. I quoted your exact words to you.
Stop draping yourself in the cloak of abuse and mental health issues just because you’re a fucking lazy idiot who wants an easy way out of being criticized for your nazi propaganda talking points.
It’s really fucking gross, you should be ashamed of yourself and fuck you.
Oh no what will I do without your continued petulant intransigence and mocking of abuse victims
Thank goodness you made a dramatic pronouncement like that instead of just fucking off hours ago like I suggested. Imagine being the main character and not having a mic drop.
Pretend I’m talking about all communists. If I wanted to do so, I would use the term “communists”. But I don’t see a reason to attack the group I myself belong to
Oh, which successful communists are you talking about?
Also, double genocide theory being holocaust trivialization still applies as it refers to calling the USSR fascist, if you think it is an irrelevant insuniation take it up with the Jewish holocaust scholars.
As I said to the person below, learn reading comprehension or fuck off. I don’t want to engage in a conversation when I’m repeatedly being gaslit on what I said.
It’s impossible to insult successful communists, as there are none. Unless you lower your bar enough to ignore glaring issues like ethnic cleansing of “unloyal” peoples and recreation of the capitalist mode of production.
I’m not interested in the “no U” back-and-forth. If you want to defend online tankie community producing prominent fascists, then do so without deflecting. If you don’t, then stop acting indignant
I didn’t mention Holocaust anywhere you paranoid fuck. Stop deflecting. If you link the double genocide thing once more I will assume you’re just here to defend the resettlements. Which kinda proves my point.
Do you have anything to say about the prominent online fascists or fascist Russia apologists coming from the tankie community, some still publicly identifying as tankies?
I literally lost ancestors to the holocaust. Stop carrying water for fascists by equating the people who ended the holocaust to them. You’re doing work to trivialize the holocaust, according to literally every prominent Jewish historian who studied the holocaust and has spoken about double genocide theory. This is literally a mainstream position outside of communist circles.
Either learn to prioritize not giving the nazis ammo over your desire to be a mini-mcCarthy or learn what the actual differences between communism and fascism are instead of relying on propaganda that benefits the nazis.
Fuck off you gaslighting fascist pig, losing ancestors to Holocaust doesn’t prevent you from being a fascist POS which you proved enough to me already. I have zero respect for you as you keep lying about my words without a pause and kept deflecting criticisms of fascist behavior and ethnic cleansings by deceptively framing my position as something it is not. Which is the same egregious thing fascist supporters of Israeli apartheid are known for. Fuck off and go deport Kalmyks or whatever your favourite hobby is
I am not lying about your words. I am telling you that equating communists and fascists (which you have repeatedly done) is incorrect, and holocaust trivialization, according to mainstream liberal historians, which you could literally look up right now instead of continuing to show your own ass and be incredibly offensive to a communist organizer who lost family to the fucking holocaust.
Is double genocide theory in the room with us now? Why do you keep bringing this irrelevant shit up? How do some fucks equivocating USSR and Nazi Germany relate to the repackaged Russian fascist propaganda I see coming daily from the tankie community? How does it justify the defense of ethnic cleansing you’ve engaged in this conversation? A whole bunch of people sharing community with you came out of woodwork to lie about me the moment I mention the really bad fucking things I see daily among people like you. You all lie, you reframe my words into something entirely different, you keep bringing stuff from time periods completely unrelated to the fucked up shit I see in front of me. My original message had nothing to do with neither USSR nor Nazi Germany, it’s you who decided to push the conversation towards “successful communists” and the DGT. I see the same fascist tactics of deflection as I’d see from Nazis or Israel apartheid supporters. “Oh, you’ve criticized our fascist behavior? But we’ve suffered greatly from Nazis, so it’s you who’s the real fascist actually”. Your offense should be directed towards yourself internalizing fascist tactics and not me calling you out on them.
Is double genocide theory in the room with us now?
Yes, you repeatedly are equating communists with fascists which is the main rhetoric it uses to advance holocaust trivialization, you ass.
How does it justify the defense of ethnic cleansing you’ve engaged in this conversation?
Didn’t you just accuse me of gaslighting?
Lmao.
repackaged Russian fascist propaganda I see coming daily from the tankie community?
You need to open a history book specialized in how fascist systems exist and operate. Russia is literally just a belligerent bourgeois democracy. Putin is beholden to the oligarchs, a word for capitalists with an orientalist connotation. There is not the transition from primarily extracting increases of productivity from abstract surplus labor value to concrete labor value which marks fascism economically.
What “tankie community” lol? There isn’t a unified one. Do you mean us, who generally oppose the war and want a negotiated peace so Ukraine stops losing the war so expensively (in blood of conscripts)?
There’s no equating, I specified which things I have issues with. You’ve been deflecting from those things by bringing up Holocaust, which is a tactic used by fascists. Also saying that there are prominent fascists who call themselves tankies or communists is not related to Holocaust in any way. The only way you can link it is by malicious use of the aforementioned tactic.
defense of ethnic cleansing
When I bring up ethnic cleansings done by USSR and the first thing you do is deflecting by lying that I said they were equal to Holocaust, this is defense of ethnic cleansing. When called out on that, you continued to do so, so I can’t write it off as you being unaware of what you were doing. The moment you called me out on the thing you thought I was doing, I corrected you. When you got called out, you just ignored it and kept doing the same thing.
Russia is just a […] democracy
Thank you for verifying you don’t know shit. Trivializing fascism we go.
You need to open a history book specialized in how fascist systems exist and operate.
Generally it’s a bad idea to hinge the whole question of whether a country is fascist on a single esoteric economic factor. Which part are you talking about: the slave labor? the war economy? You’re a bit word salad-y there.
What “tankie community” lol?
The one which decided to come out on me with your fascist deflections. Or the same which keep calling Ukrainians Nazis, following the same propaganda tactic used in the War on Terror. The same from which fascists like Haz, Maupin, and Hinkle sprouted and got popular in. Or the same which tried to do whataboutism when I brought up Russian genocidal policies on trans people around a month ago. Those which pretend that created via a Nazi coup DNR is actually an embattled Russian minority defending itself and not a blatant puppet-state. The one that tried to justify Russian invasion to me countless of times, the one that parroted Russian narratives on Bucha. What I’m doing here is basically describing my every second interaction with tankies to you.
Obviously there’s not a single community, but there are large nodes, and even if there were none, this wouldn’t mean the patterns of behavior can’t be criticized.
Haha, you think I’m gonna defend nazis? Nah, they were worse than the soviets, but not by much. You tankied are about equivalent to neo nazis in my book
I think it’s bad for thousands of ukrainians to die in war they cannot win, which they do not want to fight, purely so NATO can accomplish some esoteric geopolitical goal, but that’s just me shrug-outta-hecks
Why would I hope people die? And in what way is Ukraine doing well? Even Western sources agree the counteroffensive is a failure. It has yet to break thru the Russian lines
Because they’re banned from leaving and are being forcibly conscripted. If they wanted to fight it would not be necessary to ban them from leaving (trying to flee conscription) and it would not be necessary to forcibly conscript them.
I think they should surrender because the Ukrainians being forced to fight obviously do not want to fight, and because they have no chance of winning, so this is just senseless.
No they’re also conscripted, but we’re discussing Ukraine which is checks notes a different country, specifically a country which is losing people at an alarming rate.
So if a bigger country conscripts their people to invade you you should checks notes take the moral high road, get overrun and surrender as soon as possible
If a country is throwing thousands of people to their death against their own will in a futile attempt to win a lost war, then I think it’s better those people get to go home and live, rather than die, since the end result is the same.
Had the situation been reversed then I would have called for Russia to accept a peace deal as well.
Do you have any idea how many people Russia sacrificed to repel the Germans? Do you think the world would be better had they just followed your advice?
Lmao new tagline dropped.
No one on hexbear supports Russia, it’s a neoliberal hellscape that’s somehow even worse than the us on LGBTQ rights. We just dont uncritically consume state department propaganda.
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