You’re either gaslighting or really ignorant about how protection rackets work.
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How do we even know it’s a video from this week? Tons of similar videos have already been proven to be out of context. I just get leery with the ease at which we spread information having zero idea if it is even remotely true. It’s totally unvetted.
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A lot of what’s been posted is coming from people who take OSINT (open-source intelligence) very seriously and have been doing a very good job verifying the information they share and issuing retractions where appropriate. This curated Twitter list has been a great aggregator to follow and overall I’ve been pretty impressed with some of the contributors.
Granted it’s still pretty noisy and a fair bit of crap does get through, but a bit of common sense skepticism makes it manageable. I feel I’ve been able to stay hours, if not days ahead of what’s getting reported in conventional media with a much clearer idea of what’s really happening on the ground.
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Ftfy but do we really want to tard up this thread with this?
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You guys seriously don’t think nations that have been invaded by Russia again and again and again over the past couple hundred years have their own self interested reasons for joining a military alliance with larger, more powerful countries, they must be being taken advantage of?
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Wut. The distaste is based on it being fossil fuels and also corporatist interests.
Interesting but devestating leak? I assume the 120k are mostly poor Russians, not like the oligarch’s children are fighting?
Perhaps in theory but keep in mind Putin already took Crimea and backed separatists who were trying to take the Donbas. He likely would have tried to continue taking Ukraine piece by piece.
The only way to avoid this was probably for Ukraine to recognize Crimea and the Donbas as Russian, thus being out of current conflict (which is a precursor to join NATO), then to join NATO faster than Putin could invade.
I want to be clear that I’m not blaming Ukraine, as that’s a process including a lot of appeasement to an evil dictator. I’m just saying that if the question is could they have done anything to avoid this, I think that’s the answer and anyone can evaluate the merits and drawbacks of that option.
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This is getting a lot of hate, but it’s absolutely true. Renewables are not near a point where they can replace oil and gas, and pipelines would absolutely reduce foreign dependence on that energy and weaken Russia/ other dictatorships.
One of Kasparov’s 6 points he made to stop Putin included building more pipelines including Keystone.
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I mean I think distaste sort of suggests the philosophical distaste which in my opinion is 100% well-founded. They have a distaste for fossil fuels run by oligarchic companies who wield huge political influence. Like I’m sure the American left dislikes foreign producers who operate like this just the same as domestic (definitely not less than).
Seemed like one fair criticism of the Keystone pipeline was that by routing it to the Gulf, it’d result in the oil just getting exported.
We are Sunni Arabs too so think allowed to say that? Not surprising at all that an insane dictator would claim contradictory things. This is the best source I can find for my claim via a Google search which also is in line with my dad’s thesis:
He said that during the run-up to the US invasion in March 2003, he kept up his bluster about weapons of mass destruction in order to appear strong in front of Iran. Saddam said he believed Iran intended to annex majority Shia areas of southern Iraq, and saw the country as the greatest threat to Iraq. He said he viewed the other Arab countries in the region as weak and unable to defend against an attack from Iran. He said that he refused to allow UN inspectors to re-enter the country not because he still possessed prohibited weapons of mass destruction (he ordered the stock pile destroyed after the 1991 Persian Gulf war) but because he wanted Iran to believe he did.
If you want, I’ll look harder for a contemporaneous (pre-invasion) direct quote from Saddam when I have more time.
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How does leveling cities blend in with Russia’s long-term plan of taking over the Ukrainian Government and showing everyone what a great country they have there? Don’t they have to be careful about what they destroy if they want a functional country once they install their puppets, if that comes to pass?
This is a check mark in the “Putin Has Gone Mad” column, because no matter how evil and ruthless you thought he was a month ago, there seemed to be some measure of rationality based on his end goals.
But I’m told that Putin is the first totalitarian dictator in world history who respects weakness and attacks strength.
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man just imagine the extent to which cia is currently doing a full court press on all the assets they have in russia and government institutions. every hacked smart tv and phone has got to be on and listening
Is this a genocide? Or just close to one?
Well Putin has obviously gone full autocrat and given up on getting Russian citizens to love him. So the plan is to just do the same with what’s left of Ukraine’s population, but probably worse.
Hell hath no fury like a lover scorned. That is definitely Putin’s position imo, not sure how quickly he will get to that point or far he can get his soldiers to push it. Also, I think if he can’t get his army to destroy Kyiv, he is fine with menacing it while he tramples through the rest of the country.