Man, I just don’t get how that many people would like coke. It’s a shitty high, that doesn’t last nearly long enough, that has massive implications for your long term health, and it costs way too much for what you get. $50 of weed = enough for a week+. $50 of coke = maybe 30m if you’re not sharing. I’m glad I never really got it, it’s too much of a rich persons drug for me to have ever been able to service an addiction to it.
Worth noting that a gram of coke currently goes for a nationwide average of around 100-150 USD in Switzerland, and about 200-250 in the US, per the data I looked up.
Different supply levels of and ease of access to various drugs make them comparatively more or less expensive. Combine that will a user base of above-average wealth and it makes sense.
I agree regarding the absolute value of the two drugs though. Coke is fine, I suppose, but nothing I want to shell out the money for - but then again, I’m not in Switzerland so who knows.
Holy fuck prices have gone up since I got sober. The current Swiss price is higher than the street price where i am in the US in 2012 when I last did the stuff.
Note: unless you know someone, MOST cocaine you get (especially in the US) is complete shit and has been for decades. Likely less that half actually cocaine.
So unless you have a contact up the food and I mean really up the chain. You’re not getting cocaine in the US, you’re get a mix of street trash with some Fentanyl to make you get the numb lips, vibrate sense. (unless they put too much in and then you die)
This is the main reason that legalization and regulation should be considered, at least in my opinion. People are going to do drugs, until the end of time. Even if it means playing Russian roulette with Fentanyl, they are still going to do it. We should focus on harm prevention and rehabilitation, not punishment.
Yup, I had a friend OD a few years ago. Had moved out of the city and got clean. Came back visiting and was just going to have “night” out and got bad shit.
Not really the same as cocaine, but I feel the same way whenever I see cigarette prices now. I remember being able to get a pack of GPCs for a dollar before I quit in 2000.
Always found coke highs were like an hour or two max, maybe mine wasn’t best but all night? Mean it wasn’t nothing after an hour but it was at the stage where coke’s name should be ‘more?’. If it did that to me in my party days I’d have said it was cut with some speedy stuff. That said I had a decent tolerance to most things at that point so my experience may not be usual either but it may not just be quality level is all I’m saying.
I’ve found the initial rush of coke to last for maybe an hour or two, but then there’s an afterglow where you’re still feeling it but not to the same intensity. The problem is that people will want to re-up as soon as the initial rush wears off which causes a much higher rate of usage.
You have it the other way around. Amphetamines last for QUITE a bit longer than cocaine does. Cocaine lasts like 90 minutes max, 30 minute peak at best if your body chemistry allows it. You can get high as fuck off a single dose of speed and be good for several hours, like a 4 hour peak.
Also, nobody is cutting that shit together, have you ever even done either of those drugs before? You’d know that you can’t mix the two, you’re either going to get high off the coke or the amphetamine, that’s because the coke will block amphetamines so you’re basically just going to get extra stimulation and that’s it.
I know this thread is about cocaine but you made a blanket statement about people using drugs having mental health problems. There’s plenty of recreational drugs out there and people use them for all sort of reasons, some of them might have mental health issues, none of them need your judgement.
And it’s not just the coke parties you don’t get invited to.
I didn’t say every one using drugs has mental health issues. Wrong user.
I will say that drug users live in this weird bubble that over normalizes it. Most people are “boring” and don’t do more than light drinking. We have parties. We have a good time. We don’t generally want to hang out with coke heads.
Sorry I thought i was replying to op’s smart comeback.
I will say that you too are putting “drug users” in one big bunch and judging them. No one wants to hang out with coke heads, I did mention recreational use. Your boring friends that only do light drinking are recreational drug users too BTW.
Just making sure you don’t claim something on people who didn’t say it.
Also, your stance on me and other anti-drug folks as boring nerds who know no fun is hilarious to say the least and only reinforces the notion about drug heads not imagining what genuine fun even is.
Imagine that for a second. No coke. No weed. No alcohol. Just a company of close friends, evening talks, board games, and tea. You don’t need to alter your mind in a slightest, because you have a completely real, not externally induced, fun. That’s the kind of parties I throw and participate in with my friends, and it’s lovely and creates a lot of moments we all cherish for long, long time.
What exactly does substance use have to do with mental health?
Nobody uses drugs as a way of having a good time, they are used to enhance a good time. If you aren’t having a good time sober, you aren’t gonna have a good time peaked either unless you took a LOT.
If you’re having a genuinely good time, there’s little in there to improve. If you’re actually happy, or actually relaxed, or anything, really, you can easily get even to overwhelming levels without using anything - assuming you have a healthy psyche and are currently in a good condition.
But then people have anxiety disorders, they may be depressed, they might have BPDs, they may have extreme burnout - and then to curb it and have a truly good time they need substances - to let go, to induce positive emotions, to relax.
Honestly this shows even with casual alcohol drinkers - remove alcohol and the party will appear bland and empty to them, they won’t be able to open up and have equally good time. They would look for alcohol in order to make the party good again. This is very problematic. And the same goes for party drugs - go ahead, hold a party with friends into drugs, but remove the substances, alcohol, etc. Not such a wonderful time, huh?
People with healthy and good mental state and no addictions can absolutely have wonderful and amazing moments with their friends without “enhancing” their feelings in any way; there is no need to enhance anything, it peaks already. If it doesn’t, look up why.
I admit, I was surprised at how many people are indifferent to the truth (at best) regarding this conflict. I know some people in real life who see a lot of antisemitism in modern American society and I used to think they were paranoid but now I’m not sure what else could be motivating this sort of motivated reasoning.
The problem is, that Israel made it relatively easy to fall for these stories by doing similar things for real in the past.
So you’ve got a credible source (BBC) reporting something that’s not really unheard of (i.e. kind of plausible) and that’s happening to align with what you’ve already suspected. Bam, rumor is born.
BTW, you had the same mechanism shortly after the attacks with the “Hamas beheaded babies” stories.
His claim of it being flattened caused the BBC to report that it was likely Israel who did it because they were the only ones who had ordinance powerful enough to level a hospital:
In the first story about the hospital on the BBC on Oct 17, correspondent Jon Donnison suggested Israel was behind the blast. Speaking shortly after 8pm on BBC News, he said: “It’s hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes.”
These are teenagers - if you make a law telling them not to do something, you're just making them want to do it. There's a reason why young Russian hackers are some of the best - it's a direct result of the restrictions Putin put on the Russian internet. The CCP just made the dark web cool, and I have a feeling that once this law goes into effect, we're going to see a whole generation of Chinese hackers inspired to hone their craft as a result.
When I think “young Russian hackers” I think, “folks that broke into ATMs, Bitcoin scammers, and organized crime.” That doesn’t make them amazing hackers it just makes them unethical opportunists.
China: sends Russia six helicopters (before the war), some children’s toys, a box of consumer-grade hunting scopes, and metal. They are the bad guys who are prolonging the war.
NATO: sends Ukraine weapons and military vehicles worth more than China’s entire military budget, and provides training and logistics support. They are the good guys trying to end the war.
The liberals only read the titles and then come straight to the comment sections so they don’t actually realise any of this unless you spell it out for them.
Lol, if the tide of war is changed into Russia’s favor because of alibaba tier drones while Ukraine has western equipment entirely designed as weapons from the start, then the problem is a lot deeper than china supporting Russia’s invasion
Your original post makes it seem like you think NATO are the bad guys here because they are supplying weapons to Ukraine to defend themselves.
I asked “who attacked who” because to me, it seems pretty clear that Russia, a dictatorship whose government has a history of human rights violations and disregard for human life, is doing a bad thing when they invade a neighboring country and start shooting missiles at civilian homes on a daily basis for a year and half.
Could you explain how this is not a clear “Russia doing bad thing, we should help Ukraine” situation?
I understood. It’s an unserious question, so I gave an unserious answer. China isn’t militarily supporting Russia. They sent some kids toys and the same raw materials they exported everywhere anyway.
Ah, I see what happened. I didn’t address the China part of your original question because I actually agree with you there. They aren’t militarily supporting Russia based on this article. I don’t see why China would do that, since it wouldn’t really benefit them.
I was addressing part 2 of your comment, where you implied that NATO is doing a bad thing by supporting Ukraine. Unless I misunderstood - I assumed “They are the good guys trying to end the war” was sarcasm.
NATO is mostly responsible for the dead Ukrainians. Ukraine has no reason to fight this war. If they lose, fine, the Russian part gets renamed and a higher minimum wage. Only rich assholes lose out. If Ukraine wins they get dead sons and burned schools but the US oil companies are happy.
It is pretty clear Ukraine shouldn’t be fighting this war for the US companies.
While humorous, that isn’t actually how polls work. I’d suggest looking up the statistics. The majority of Ukrainians, even in the Eastern regions, still support defending themselves.
Does that mean that the majority of Ukrainians support fighting the war for the sake of US companies? Or could there be something else they are fighting for?
They are fighting for honor glory and pride. However they will die for it and get none. While all the worst people in mu country will buy a new jetski off the profits they made from the ordeal
Is it possible they are fighting to protect their freedoms and their families? Honor and glory is nice and all but I’d imagine that most of them aren’t Game of Thrones characters.
No, none of that is at stake. Russia has better labor rights than Ukraine. So if they cared about their families, especially the people in the region in question, they would be slfighting for russia.
I have to push back on “none of that is at stake.”
When Russia sends missiles and drones into Kiev that hit civilian buildings, homes, and kill regular people on a daily/weekly basis, is the message they are receiving “Russia has better labor rights than Ukraine?”
They are at war. That is what happens during war. They are only at stake because there is a war on. If the war stopped those would go away. And as Russia would likely increase thr labor standards in territory under their controll things would improve on every front for the lives of the average Ukrainian if the didn’t do the war.
If it were up to Ukrainians to collectively decide whether or not to continue the conflict, Zelensky would not have canceled the elections for his position later this year.
The Ukrainian constitution does not allow for elections to be held during periods of martial law, which was declared at the start of the war.
If there is ever a good time to declare martial law, being invaded by a neighboring country might qualify as a justifiable time.
In any case, it’s constitutional, but Ukrainian political process isn’t what we are here to talk about.
Fundamentally, I agree with you - If the majority of Ukrainians were to decide they don’t want the war to continue, the war should stop. The number show, however, that the people are not ready to give up.
You don’t get to set the topic. If you don’t want to discuss it then nobody can compell you to do so. Don’t pretend it’s irrelevant to the topic you’ve chosen to engage with just because it’s inconvenient for your arugment to engage with it.
The topic is technically “did China supply Russia with weapons etc?” But the topic we’ve been talking about for a bit now is “is the invasion justified,” not “is the Ukrainian constitution constructed in an ideal way.”
The ideal-ness of the constitution has no bearing on whether the invasion was justified, because invading your neighbor and killing thousands of civilians, even if their constitution is not completely ideal, cannot be justified.
I’m officially announcing now that I am going to sleep. Goodnight, and I hope you can all do some reflecting on whether invading neighboring countries is good or bad. I’m done responding to all of this.
Does your definition of “attack” include locking people in a church and burning them alive? How about sponsoring Neo-Nazi paramilitaries to murder and rape people for seaking a language? Shelling cities and civilians in defiance of international cease fire treaties?
Ah, by argue I meant something along the lines of “have an upset and angry discussion.” I disagree with some of the premise of what he said though, so I am going to push back on that.
I wonder though - if Russia hadn’t illegally occupied Ukraine/Crimea, would that have happened?
If Ukrainian neo-Nazis hadn’t trapped ethnic Russians in a building and burned them alive, would Russia have invaded?
My point is: there are no good guys in this conflict. Just two bad guys duking it out, with regular schmucks like you and me getting murdered for no reason. Anything that prolongs the conflict is bad.
We’ve got a document that lays out the timeline in some detail, but I can’t find it right now.
The short version is that this is a continuation of a very, very long conflict between the western powers and Russia for control of Russia’s resources. Like in a broad sense this geopolitical conflict as been going on for hundreds of years - Europe and now the USA want access to Russia’s resources and to do that they have to get rid of the government currently in charge of Russia. In the past this was all kinds of great power bullshit, Napoleon’s attempt to invade Moscow. Then it was the Russian civil war, where all the Western powers invaded Russia to try to stop the Reds, then WWII when the Nazis and their allies wanted to conquer everything east of them, exterminate or enslave the Slavs, and do Westward Expansion 2.0: Eastward Edition. Then the Cold War, where NATO was formed to counter and eventually destroy the Eastern Block. Well, 1991 happened, the USSR was destroyed, A few coups and murders and the shock doctrine ensured that the capitalists could loot everything, but ultimately the West didn’t get the complete control of Russian territory and resources they wanted. Too many former Soviet Oligarchs and gangsters got in the way and control of the region stayed more or less in local hands - Russian Oligarchs in Russia, Ukrainian Oligarchs in Ukraine, and so on. NATO didn’t disband after 1991, and didn’t let Russia join when Putin tried a few times,because NATO’s purpose is conquest of Russia and they hadn’t pulled that off yet. NATO started annexing countries and moving it’s borders towards Russia, forward positioning troops and weapons, and gradually encircling Russia on it’s populous Western borders. When NATO started talking about moving in to Georgia the Russian’s responded, invaded Georgia, and put an end to that. At some point later NATO decided to move on Ukraine, take control, and use it as a proxy to weaken Russia. They used the same tactic by supporting the Islamists in Afghanistan decades prior, and they’d used it in the middle east and few other places. The basic program is - destabilize a country, flood it with weapons, then let their neighbors bleed themselves dry trying to contain the insurgency. In pursuit of this NATO deployed a bunch of Ukrainian Nazis they’d saved after WWII for exactly this purpose and were gradually able to expand their influence in the country. 2013, the President of Ukraine doesn’t want to sign a shitty deal with Europe both because it would fuck over Ukraine and it would fuck over Ukraine’s trade with Russia, and the Nazis, almost entirely headquartered in Western Ukraine, use this as an excuse to take control of popular unrest and stage a coup. It gets nasty, Ukrainian Nationalists burn a bunch of Russian speaking Ukrainians to death, they throw the president out, the new coup government immediately passes laws making the previously legal Russian language illegal. Out East in the regions where most Ukrainians speak Russian, they see a bunch of Nazis who want them exterminated couping the government, they see the new coup government passing laws against their language, they say “Fuck this, we know what comes next” and take up arms demanding that Kiev grant them autonomy - some government autonomy, guarantees on their right to speak their language and protect their culture, basic shit. Kiev says no, tries to send the army in to Donbass to crush them, the army tells Kiev “Fuck you”. Kiev isn’t giving up so they arm all the Nazis and send them in to Donbass and they start murdering people. This turns in to a civil war. During the civil war NATO moves in. They start re-structuring, training, and arming the Ukrainian military loyal to Kiev. They stockpile all kinds of weapons and shit. The Nazis are rotating back from the front lines with combat experience and are getting integrated in to army units while their civilian Nazi counterparts are getting more and more control over western Ukraine’s government, civic institutions, and culture. This goes on for years, Ukrainians kill thousands of Ukrainians. Meanwhile Russia, who doesn’t want any of this shit happening in their neighborhood, is trying to get some kind of peace negotiations going to stop the conflict and stabilize Ukraine before it falls apart and turns in to a failed state. Well, Ukraine and a bunch of NATO goverments say yes, we’ll talk, lets resolve this, then the Ukrainian Nazis break all the ceasefires and shitcan the peace talks. Happens twice, the accords were called Minsk I and Minsk II. We later find out that Germany and France, who were acting as restaurants of the peace talks, never had any intention of fulfilling the peace conditions and were just buying time to arm Ukraine. Eventually it’s 2020 or something. Ukrainians are sick of this, they don’t want to be at war with their own countrymen, they don’t want to get dragged in to war with Russia because of Nazi psychos, so they vote for Zelensky. Zelensky’s a very charismatic guy, well known from television, speaks Ukrainian and Russia. He runs on a peace platform, says he’s going to uphold the cease fire and start negotiations. Well, once he takes office he goes out to the front and tells the guys at the front to shot shelling Donbass. The guys who are running the Front are Nazi fanatics, they tell him he’s not in charge and he can go fuck himself and they keep shelling. So now Zelensky knows how Ukraine really works, he starts working with NATO and the Nationalists as basically a cheer-leader for Kiev and Galacia’s agenda. Doesn’t really have any power but he looks good on TV. This whole thing finally comes to a head when someone decides that the Ukrainian army, with all it’s NATO training and equipment and guns and NATO provided Nazis, is ready to go crush Donbass. There’s a big build-up - Ukraine is mobilizing it’s army to go in to the east of the country and fight the Donbass republics plus whatever Specops guys Russia has sent in there. Russia is mobilizing part of it’s army at the Ukrainian border and making threatening noises.
Now, it’s February of 2022. Russia has it’s troops on Ukraine’s border. Ukrainian troops are moving East in to Donbass. Putin is making threatening noises, but no one thinks he’ll actually pull the trigger and cross the border. Well, for whatever reason, and it’s still unclear what he was thinking, he pulls the trigger. He claims that he’s doing it to protect Russian speaking Ukrainians from the Banderite Nazis who intend to genocide them (probably in the driving them from their homes sense rather than the extermination of all men, women, and children sense but who knows with Nazis?). That might even be true. But other reasons are that he was finally sick of putting up with NATOs bullshit after decades of post-cold-war hostility, or he had a bad understanding of the situation and thought he could win a decisive victory with that swift attack on Kiev, or maybe he thought people in Ukraine were more angry with their government than they were and would demand some kind of end of hostilities? Who knows, high level commanders and presidents aren’t always very bright and aren’t always getting good intel. Whatever happened, Russia made us all look like idiots by invading (pretty much no one, including me, thought he’d actually do it), and now there was a hot war between NATO forces and Russian forces, except everyone inside NATO pretends that it’s between Ukraine and Russia.
So, that’s the very, very, very short, basically no details, rough sketch version of what lead up to the war. I didn’t even mention stuff like the activities of Ukrainian Nazis in Canada and the US, or all of Russia’s security concerns, or the weird fucked up relationship between the Russiand government and the US government, or how Russia didn’t really invade Crimea because the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet and tons of support personnel were already stationed in Crimea so they really just changed the flags, or the role of propaganda in NATOs decisions on which weapons to send and which weapons to withhold, or what Trump’s trade war bullshit likely had to do with all this, or a trillion other things.
Suffice to say, there’s a lot of history behind this conflict. And since it’s very unlikely either side will definitively win there will probably be more wars in this on-going geopolitical struggle between whoever is in charge of the west and whoever is in charge of Russia in the future, even if NATO and the Russian federation both collapse tomorrow. There’s no way we’re going to make it through the 21st century without intense wars over the vast unexploited resources of Siberia.
nah I’m just not going to read a novel to respond to you. I’m giving other people I disagree with reasonable replies. Your reply is unreasonable engage with though. Feel free to try again though with a more reasonable response.
I didn’t even post that. Very reasonable of you to not pay attention to basic details like who you’re responding to.
Almost as if you’re simply putting on a facade of open-mindedness to cover for he fact that you will not engage with any ideas more complex than “Russia bad, NATO good”.
Ah, sorry, you are right about getting the person wrong. The way lemmy is laid out on the app I’m using doesn’t show the post before you, so I just assumed you were the same person.
In any case, that doesn’t change what I said. I’m not going to read a novel then dissect it piece by piece when the premise of the entire post is “going to war and forcefully occupying a neighboring country can be justified.”
I’m not saying all of Russia is bad, by the way. I admire Russia for a lot of reasons. The decision to invade their neighbor, however, cannot be justified, in the same way that the vast majority of the United States’ wars cannot be justified.
that post was maybe 1500 words to summarize 100+ years of regional conflict with special attention on the last 10 years written in plain language. no special jargon or references to theoretical concepts. if that’s a “novel” for you, it definitely explains your grasp of this situation and affirms the critique that you are willfully ignorant and incapable of analysis beyond “russia bad.” and this is why people make fun of libs like you. many libs smugly dismiss conservatives as having “simple/childlike” worldviews and value systems. then they promptly adopt their own perfectly mirrored positions and petulantly stick their fingers in their ears like you’re doing here.
I read it. Same answer I’ve been giving the whole time still applies. Nothing justifies an invasion and the murder of thousands of civilians. The majority of the Ukrainian people support continuing to defend their homes, including in the eastern regions. It is up to them to decide what they want to do. If they want to concede, they will do that. It’s pretty simple.
Anyway, I’m done responding now. Good luck with your lives.
Ukrainians were couped every decade to make them hate Russians. 1991, 2004, 2014, and note how Zelensky was elected as a peace candidate, to stop the civil war. Instead there was a military buildup to invasion and multiple ceasefire breaches. In the meantime between those coups, Ukrainians seemed to gravitate towards at least neutrality and peace. Ukrainians will have been repeatedly violated by USA and now they are dying for Uncle Sam imperial interest while their country is being peacemeal sold for the peanuts and the war fervor as in every war ever fry their brains.
In any case, that doesn’t change what I said. I’m not going to read a novel then dissect it piece by piece when the premise of the entire post is “going to war and forcefully occupying a neighboring country can be justified.”
It’s like one page. You asked for an explanation of what’s going on. Take it or leave it. Sorry it’s not formatted very well I had to type it on the fly at like 3am.
Guys you can’t justify a war with hundreds of thousands of deaths where one side is sending missiles at civilian buildings on the daily, it’s just not going to happen.
His comment is quite literally a 5 minute read and gives a decent summary of three decades of complex geopolitical context. If you can’t be bothered to read for 5 minutes your opinion is probably worth very little and you should avoid sharing it.
In 2014, the Ukrainian government was overthrown and the new government shifted towards Western alignment while banning opposition parties. Many people in Ukraine, especially in the east, have cultural ties to Russia and disagreed with the change, but were left with no means of having their voices heard because they were cut out of the democratic process, and that’s why the resistance groups exist in the first place.
Good point never thought of it like that before. I love Bill Clinton, Neoliberalism is radical. Did you know he played the saxophone? So cool. Slava USA
Oh wow wtf is going on the UK. Prohibition never works , teenagers will be more interested in it. Ways to avoid and to overcome the system will appear.
Feelin the same here in the Land of Milk and Honey.
I know that people are scared and unsure, and that always leads them directly to authoritarianism (it did after the 1918 pandemic as well, seemingly). They want to feel safe. And any big liars and charlatans that tell them whatever they want to hear to satiate their fears, they’ll believe and follow. At this point I’m flummoxed. But I know that humans are built to adapt, and all this will all soon pass as well; in the big scope of things.
The annoying thing is that we haven’t really voted for conservatives.
Because of FPTP, it’s normal that ~35% of votes translates to having 100% of the say in governance, which is crazy.
And the worst part is that when multiple parties have anti-Tory stances, all that does is split the anti-Tory vote and hand the Conservative party more power.
I’m looking forward to next year when after 14 years of their bullshit it seems like they’re finally going to be forced out.
I mean I read it. It seems like his highest ranking role was in chemical and biological hazard containment and management. He did see some action in the first gulf war, but it’s not clear to me his experiences with mercenaries then.
He alluding to and projecting the knowledge of what a group of mercenaries will do in this situation. I think it’s highly speculative.
You should probably pay a bit closer attention to his title and responsibilities during the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war that used quite a lot of Wagner-style mercenaries
So many, in fact, we don’t actually know how many died, because using disposable and desperate troops makes for cleaner official casualty reports.
It’s okay to admit you made a bad assumption, fam, it’s definitely an understandable one.
In 1991, he saw active service in Iraq with the 14th/20th King’s Hussars as part of the First Gulf War.[11]
He was a captain in a British regiment during the first Gulf war. As far as I know no mercenary on either side of that conflict. I think he’s being highly speculative.
It’s enough for me to know that he has a long and distinguished career in the military, combat zones, and weapons design to allow him to make a casual comment like “in my experience, mercenaries will take anyone’s money.”
This is not some bold claim that requires extraordinary evidence.
That I should not speculate on the motives or incentives of groups that I don’t have direct experience with. It causes me to make assumptions that aren’t validated by reality.
Edit: To be clear, I didn’t write the article. My bona fides don’t have any bearing on this because I’m not the one writing articles for the Telegraph suggesting I can predict the actions of mercenary groups. My read is that the author shouldn’t be speculating either (without providing additional information).
Dude has a problem with his question being answered.
The guy who wrote the article has experience in a combat zone and has seen more military action than he will ever have.
By any standard these are speculations but they are presented by someone who has direct knowledge about these kind of groups, therefore they might be slightly more reliable than the average person’s point of view.
If you are not happy with this explanation I’m afraid I cannot provide you with anything else
There's also probably a lot to be said for his 3 or so years at HQ Land Command as assistant director intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. While I don't have any personal experience to speak of in this regard either, "intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance" at his level seems like he would have seen a lot of paid informant sources on the ground and been involved in analysis in terms of both intelligence and counter-intelligence of those sources. That could have been both sources being paid for information and to give misinformation, evaluation of who might be paying those sources to give you misinformation, and reports on a variety of mercenary activities. That experience might be doing the heavy lifting here.
And, there's always the chance that he's still involved in some capacity post retirement. If that continuing relationship did exist, it could mean he has information he's been asked to speak publicly from or it could be he's asked to spin public narratives.
What he has to say probably means something, but there's probably no way to tell what exactly that is. I mean, there's a wikipedia page about this guy's career. That's not true for most people.
The guy who wrote the article has experience in a combat zone and has seen more military action than he will ever have.
I served in the US military around the same time period this guy did. I was on active patrol. I worked with contractors. Does that make me qualified to discuss the potential leanings of a private mercenary army in Russia?
No. It sure as fucking shit doesn’t. I could comment on signal propagation or beam formation, or heterodyning, or many other things. But I would be unqualified to speculate on all things ‘military’, such as relationships with mercenaries. The author made a speculative point that I think warrants criticism, and based on the limited information about their background, I don’t think is particularly well informed.
Its make a critical reading of things because its too easy to make colorful or convenient assumptions.
While you were on active duty and patroling the streets this dude has been (and I quote) “from 2007 to 2010, he was based at HQ Land Command as assistant director intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance”.
Do you think in this timeframe and under this qualification he might have had the chance to gather information and intelligence on some of the most well-known paramilitary and private mercenary armies such as Wagner?
IMHO I reckon he had more knowledge about these issues than a grunt on the groun so, if you aren’t qualified to speak about these issues, I don’t see the same situation with Mr. Gordon.
Then again these are just speculations on his side but they are far more informed than what you are trying to sell me with your (willingly?) limited and inaccurate analysis of his career.
If you make a claim like that you need to back it up with evidence. If it was that simple, the west could simply have covered Wagner’s costs and removed them from the engagement. That’s not how the real world works, at all.
His Wikipedia shows no evidence of extraordinary experiences with mercenaries. It’s some basic on the ground service during the Gulf war as a captain and later being an officer in charge of hazmat management. In metaphor, working in a hospital doesn’t mean you are qualified to comment on aspects of open heart surgery, even if your job is also important.
Funny isn’t it…all the time our right wing assholes talk about foreign traitors but in the end it’s always them. I bet their Nazi grandfathers are rotating in their graves at lightspeed 😂
The US should lead a vast effort by the West (broadly construed to include allies like Australia, Japan, etc.) to deploy all covert means and significant overt means, short of a shooting war, to destabilize and ultimately destroy the russian state.
Fuck russia. A million times over, then once more, for good measure, fuck russia.
Macron, Scholz: it is going to be on you to lead if the most fucktarded of my compatriots succeed in their “real men wear diapers” campaign. FFS.
deploy all covert means and significant overt means, short of a shooting war, to destabilize and ultimately destroy the russian state.
While they kind of maybe wanted that, they fear all the nukes getting to worse hands than they already are right now. At least Putin is sane enough to not use them, but more extreme leader might.
why would he say the quiet part out loud? how would this not make him seem like a piece of shit?
i tried to read in the article where he might say something about why but it really is just 'profits at all costs'.. wants to avoid the use of words like 'ethical'.. gotcha. i understand what kind of person you are now.
I think the article paints a pretty good portrait of a complicated but socially responsible business owner, even though I do think pulling out of Russia was the right thing to do even if it wasn’t what he would’ve chosen.
I think this is misrepresenting what he said. His stance is basically that he felt like they were punishing honest workers and business partners, people who never lied or cheated or hurt anyone, for something that they had no part in due to public pressure. He’s not wrong either unless people have some kind of explanation for how a cosmetics manufacturer is supposed to stop Putin from murdering innocent Ukrainians fighting against his pointless war and innocent Russians who don’t want to fight for him.
So, considering it hasn’t made a difference and Russia is still attacking Ukraine and Putin is still in power, how do you reconcile what you just said with the reality of the situation?
The only thing that’s changed is that Lush’s partner in Russia and all their employees have no income now.
Lush did this in March of last year. I’m just asking what you’re expecting from this considering that they did do what you suggested. When is the effect you’re saying is supposed to happen going to happen?
You don’t have to be an asshole. It’s a legitimate question based on your assertion that all that needs to happen is pressure needs to be put on people.
Yes, but no one has explained how the economy is harmed by harming individual Russians. If it’s not making a difference so far, how long do Russians who have nothing to do with the war suffer before we decide it’s a failed strategy? How long do Ukrainians suffer while we keep doing things that are not having an effect?
Just because things don’t turn out how you hoped doesn’t mean you didn’t make the right decision at the time with the information that was available.
Too often we judge past actions only through the lens of hindsight. It’s useful for learning what went wrong but it’s not useful for judging if something was the right decision or not.
I agree but that’s what I’m failing to understand. How does hurting the working class a tiny bit and making their lives harder do anything to stop Putin? Clearly the founder of Lush doesn’t and didn’t feel like it was the right decision at the time. It also not having the intended effect seems like a confirmation that it wasn’t the right decision rather than an indictment.
Bowing to public pressure doesn’t make the public right. If anything, it’s virtue signaling to keep your customer base instead of it being the right thing to do.
It was all part of an effort to economically hurt Russia in response to the war.
Best case scenario was Russia deciding the hit to their economy was not worth the war and back pedaling. No one realistically thought this was going to happen though.
The next best case scenario was for the changes in quality of life for the average Russian would create enough internal pressure that the war would be called off.
This hasn’t happened yet but internal support for the war has been dropping over the last year and some of that is attributed to the dismal state of the Russian economy, which is a direct result of things like Lush pulling out.
And even if neither of these come up fruition, the more Russias economy is damaged the harder it is to fund their war effort. This gives Ukraine a bit more breathing room in their war effort.
While the effect of a single company like Lush is unnoticed, it’s the collective effect of everything from these pullouts, to trade sanctions and other soft power diplomatic plays which total up to a noticable effect.
If stopping Putin from being in government is the only fix, the only possible action anyone could take would be ending Putin. Anything else would be useless.
It isn’t though, non-offensive actions have effects too.
So all the western companies that did leave at the start of the war… what effect has that had? The war still continues, Russia took over copyrights and trademarks to continue global brands going internally, and Putin is still President.
When is this economic hit supposed to happen and when will its effects cause this change everyone is claiming? It’s nearly 2024 and these companies left in March of 2022.
Russia’s GDP increased by 3.1% this year compared to last. The sanctions you mention did far more than western companies pulling their business from the country.
I’m not expecting an overnight collapse. I’m expecting quantifiable effects, such as those from the sanctions from other countries and the EU, that are actually measurable after 2 years.
You’re a little flog sitting in your western first world nation home that mum and dad likely own and you’re judging people on the other side of the world living under a dictatorship.
Judging by your name, you’re an Aussie and I’ve got to say, disappointed in your complete writing off of the entire Russian population. How the fuck is some young girl working at Lush supporting Putin or deserving of suffering if they don’t revolt?
Her taxes directly support the war. It’s not as easy as people are good and bad. Good people can be in bad situations. Sanctions are supposed to hurt all people. That’s how they work. It’s seen as a lesser evil, rather than a good. They are damaging for both sides.
And at the end of the day if that interpretation is true, your essentially saying ‘bad fucking luck’ to all the Russians who lost their jobs while living in a country perpetrating a war that if they speak out against, they’ll be jailed at best.
You’re right, there’s no convenient sanctions but if that’s really what old mate Lush is saying, he’s got a point.
i mean, this is one way to win a war. the other is with bombs and death. Russia chose to enter this war, it shouldn’t be surprised when it affects its citizens.
no one should get to keep their war over seas and out of their own borders.
imagine a future where we could stop wars by just taking people’s jobs…
Sanctions are typically the acts of a government state not the actions of a business. Businesses have to comply with them but only if they’re bound by them. That wasn’t the case here. Lush did this based on public outcry, not sanctions.
The article is not about Russia or Putin. It’s an interesting interview with a man who leads a company that tries, in his own words, do to what you’d expect of anyone. He explains his position intelligently, you don’t have to agree with him.
The main takeaway here is the ugly headline to draw clicks using negative bias - something that’s talked about a lot these days but is as old as time. No one made a successful newspaper headlining good news, unless it’s an enormous event like war victory or a royal wedding, and they tend to be magazine-style souvenir editions.
Being serious about it for a moment, it’s extremely unlikely that it’s a false flag attack. It’s fun to joke about the idea, but the reality is that it doesn’t appear to be staged, and he’s far too much of a coward to agree to have somebody shoot at him.
Besides that, there’s plenty of politically-unaffiliated groups or individuals who would probably want him gone just for how his last term contributed to the abortion bans, reunification of church and state (in some states), government corruption, etc.
No one needs to actually shoot at him, he can just have a capsule of fake blood in his hand and smear it on himself at the right moment. It’s so easy even he can do it.
The Pentagon is mad that Congress forced them to stop buying Chinese drones. Apparently there are no available replacements in some categories and even where there are, they are many times more expensive.
Rural communities have been using Huawei equipment for internet because it’s cheap and fast. The federal government became upset and demanded they rip everything and replace it with American parts. I think it costs like $12 billion, but the US didn’t even give the communities 50% of the required amount to switch over
Genius move by Intelligent American Government Officials to make the economy flow while throwing out Chinese Spyware. Commies can only dream of this level of efficiency.
Banned from tendering in the National Broadband Network in 2012, banned from participating in the 5G network in 2018, called for removal of surveillance/security cameras in 2018, funded undersea cables in the pacific to block Huawei in 2018, purchased Digicel to prevent Chinese involvement in 2021
US, UK, CAN & AU, 5eyes has been frothing over this for a while
The $2.1 billion deal to acquire and run Digicel Pacific is being funded largely by the government, which will provide $1.9 billion toward the acquisition.
Telstra said it would contribute $360 million and own 100 per cent of the company’s ordinary equity.
“Australian officials were concerned about whether a Chinese company or potentially a Chinese state-owned entity might look to buy Digicel’s Pacific arm and there were some geopolitical and geostrategic concerns about a Chinese company owning a major telecommunication company in the Pacific region, which is of course so close to Australia,” said Amanda Watson, an expert in Pacific communications at the Australian National University.
That’s especially since Digicel Pacific uses a 4,700km undersea cable from Sydney that was largely funded by the Australian government in 2018 in an effort to prevent PNG and the Solomon Islands from contracting Huawei for the project.
Somehow on my phone in :estonia-burning: I can access RT and came across this article where the US was coping at South Africa to abandon it’s partnerships with Huawei because “you need to use :lmayo::amerikkka: technologies”. Anyways, South Africa told :amerikkka: to :PIGPOOPBALLS:
I love watching Congress fuck over the Pentagon. Just the worst people in the world slapfighting over fake money. Probably a bad idea to let hundreds of lead huffing jet ski dealers whose only qualification is buying more TV add time than their opponents run a global empire.
My favorite instance of this was the US Army begging congress not to buy more Abrams tanks because they were already too expensive to maintain but congress overruling them and ordering them to buy more to keep the factories open.
99% of the resistance to doing anything good is because the current bad thing provides jobs for like 500,000 people and no one wants to make an effort to help those people
telegraph.co.uk
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