cichlisuite

Well Syria, and turning a blind eye on Israel vs Palestine and Saudi vs Yemen for instance, and leaving Afghanistan in complete disarray with increased corruption is right up there sharing the hall of fame with Putin's Ukraine adventure in my book. Actually, by yearly donations of billions of US dollars to Israel to continue its genocide is straight up proxy war financing... And with all the evidence of war profiteering, meddling and war crimes US committed in the middle east, north Africa and south America, the Hague is now preparing a dossier on Putin but not on any aforementioned US adventures is blatant one-sided policy that reeks of hypocrisy, and I'm being very gentle with my wording here. US foreign policy is very aggressive and completely self-interested in driving hard bargains with its "allies", which, for their lack of sovereignty in this case could be as well called vassal states and not allies. I'm yet to decipher the true intentions of Brexit, but I dare to speculate, that it was meddled by interest groups very keen on weakening the EU global relevance. It is well documented that the NATO expansion, direct meddling and lobbying, and increased military industry spending by US was aimed at weakening European military industry. US blocked France from selling military equipment to Australia. And now Germany is buying US 5th generation war planes. And now Javelin sales are skyrocketing. This is just too perfect to be a mere coincidence, isn't it? I'm not a militarist in any sense, but I support Macron's idea of an independent European defense force. Of course, with France being the only EU country with its military industry still more or less intact, this would play well for France, but taking the right steps, and the EU finally coming together, all nations could benefit from it, although it's hard for me to swallow this (military is nonetheless, a necessary evil, still).

It's not like that has stopped anyone before ? you just need a nice pretext that generates a lot of emotions. Certainly. But the main pillar of EU's existence is its post-ww2 EEC, and the EU is basically EEC with further consolidated laws to facilitate smooth trade. Coherent foreign policy was always coordinated (*cough* sprung *cough*) by US interests. The US also has individual agreements with individual EU countries, which do not always work in the interests of the EU as a whole, and if EU began working as a coherent entity, it would render some of the US co-dependent support roles moot. So, a certain level of EU divide is definitely in US' interest.

Well yes, but I know for a fact that US was actually involved in Ukraine as was the UK in the time when Putin installed his puppet leaders. They had their intelligence assets inside Ukraine (they still do), they all knew and were up to date what was going on there. Which leads me to my pre-conclusion that they were opportunistic and waiting for their moment as they always do. Selling weapons is a lucrative business. Perhaps they underestimated Putin's resolve, and thought that Putin's meddling could prepare ground for a "peaceful" NATO expansion, and the plan backfired. European Union, unfortunately, showed itself unable to form a coherent and decisive foreign policy, with each major member playing their own foreign policy game, and is able to step together only when US shows its interest, which further leads me to conclude that a disconcerted EU is in US (and Russia and China's) interest. So, the clusterfuck is most definitely part of the design.

I don't think Biden is a neutral party in this scenario

On a serious note, you mentioned a healthy debate, which means that all viewpoints have to be discussed and ruled in/out, even those that we might not like, Because the real truth is ugly on both sides (and most probably we're never going to know the real truth that is being discussed behind closed doors). The world has become so convoluted in agendas these days and no one is a saint: the 'west' has as much blood and shit on their hands, we cannot deny that, and it is being obscured as a form of narrative (e.g. "we are the good guys"). If we go by moral standards, no one should really be pointing fingers at this point and accusing the other for being a terrorist, because they all have blood on their hands. Russia is playing their propaganda game on whitewashing their moral standpoint against the west, but so does the west against Russia. But behind the curtains of this theatre, a different game is being played: that of opportunism. Can really anyone tell what news is "fake" and what isn't? The ugly truth is, unless one devotes a large majority of one's free time into analyzing all the different major and fringe sources and opinions from all overlapping fields, and invest some brain power into it, one is not going to be able to follow the thread of real truth, but instead just eat whatever suits one's preferred construction of reality. That is a problem. It's a symptom of a different reality. The real question is why didn't the west take Putin seriously before he started his shit in Ukraine? All the facts pointed in this direction, yet, the people in power did not act. I'm seeing multiple historical bells ringing here. Was it disbelief because of some sort of hubris? Was it opportunism? Incompetence? I'm going to refrain myself from telling my opinion on this.

During the weekend I watched this incredible 4-part epic War and Peace. This channel is full of gems. "My idea is that if evil men are linked with one another and therefore strong, the honest men must only do likewise."

Access to the Black Sea? that would require seizing control over the Bosporus, which would mean going to war with Romania, Bolgaria, Greece and Turkey, which is practically impossible for Russia (they are all NATO members). Not just in military terms, but also in political terms, as it would require a commercial passage through the Dardanelles or the Aegean Sea to actually make is feasible. They need a land route to Crimea if they want to make it strategically viable. That's why they are after the Azov land strip and the Donbass is an extra security buffer with a bonus.

I like My Sharona

https://roland50.studio/ quick electro/acid to mess around

is Putain too obvious? I know we have some french speakers here...

well to be fair the russian military did an abysmal job (fortunately), so firing the commander-in-chief is really not surprising (i'm surprised putin didn't do it sooner tbh) involving FSB into the matter, however, inclines me to believe the c-in-c might had been doing some sabotage-ing because russian operations operations in ukraine are that bad, it would be surprising if that wasn't the case (can they really be that bad?)

Funny how the sociopathic politicians do a 180 kick-flip benihana over the ramp when they smell their opportunity for shameless self-promotion for the sake of political points and, in our case, pre-election maneuvering. After Salvini's promo trip to Ukraine from which he was deservedly ousted by the mayor of Przemysl, now our prime minister Janša also went to visit Ukraine to show his unwavering support. He even published a picture of himself as the defense minister from 1991, dressed in a military camo uniform, along with Zelensky's picture when he was dressed in a helmet and a body armor, as if they are brother in arms, birds of a feather. It's completely fine and welcome for him to offer support if it wasn't for the complete change of his political narrative that was going on for the last several years: feeling his best among the likes of Le Pen, Meloni, Salvini, Orban, etc, who sympathized with Putin and even received his funds for their political campaigns. He wants us to forget his life work on eliminating free press, meddling in state legal authorities, cleaning up opposition, curtailing personal and political liberties, etc. He will now receive 100,000 Ukranian refugees with an open heart, after he spent years building an argument of a radical nationalism against dark-skinned refugees from Syria, Afganistan, north Africa, etc. The war in Ukraine now became one of his pre-election promotion strategies. "Heroes don't run, heroes fight." lmao, sure Janša, sure.

^....or in her case, surrounded herself with people who work for her so she doesn't have to

your heart must be fresh broken in order to enjoy Pierrot Le Fou and Le Mepris. I'm speaking from experience, there's no other way.

I'll vote for the next asteroid the size of a continent to just obliterate the whole thing. there's no other way.

But not everyone fights on the same side though. As ww2 history showed us, every country under Nazi occupation had a resistance and a collaborationist movements. Even neutral or un-invaded countries had volunteers who fought on both sides. And the messed up thing about the collaborators was that they legitimately thought they were fighting for a good cause, e.g. anti-communist. Unfortunately, this divide is still present today, and it further messes up things. New generations don't have the experience of the horrors of past wars. One would think that a country such as Ukraine, in which nazi pogroms were so terrible, they would be extra vigilant towards nazi ideologies, but it evidently (and unfortunately) isn't so.

right on, cloud storage baby. what's next... my call is agro-corps with climate change, followed by robot dogs because of "civic unrest"

since pharma made money off covid, and now that weapons inc. and oil guys are making money off putin and ukraine, who's next one the list of big spenders? we might be able to predict the next crisis!

this looks like fun.... BUT OF COURSE IT'S AN AMERICAN MOVIE SO THERE MUST BE SHOOTING

two gigs in italy in the cities relatively close by to each other...weird so the closest to me is about 600 km from here, and it's in autumn so no road trip flavor here, damn

yeah you can eat all the burgers you want and talk shit and probably wont get arrested, but disclose any shit that goes on behind the scenes and you get panama papered or Snowed-in ;). if you steal 100 bucks, you'll go to jail for 10(+) years, but if you commit a millions-heavy federal fraud and you're a "part of the tribe" you'll get a silly tap on the wrist and get to keep the money. if you become an (allied!) country leader, you'll receive a memo in a few days outlining what you can and can't do as a "sovereign" nation. and if you don't stick to the memo, you'll get gaddafied. oh you want to unionize for worker rights? haha, nice joke fella, billion dollar corporations are the only one on social welfare, here, fight a platoon of million-dollar lawyers, while you struggle to keep your kid in college. i can go on all day about this. no nation is perfect, and yes, there are shittier countries than usa. but saying someone should stop exercising his constitutional citizen rights and strive to have a better society is just the worst case of peer repression imaginable. see, you don't even need state repression. the sheep do it for you.

well it's not just oil that's on the table, and if i'm not mistaken, usa has enough oil reserves for themselves. yeah it was both gaddafi and hussein who wanted to trade oil in euros as far as i remember.

joke's on them i do neither of these things yeah the game is rigged, that's why bush, rumsfeld and cheney and every cia director since never got to hague

if shit happened in U.S. like it did in Russia with Putin and all, would the rest of the world have the power to cut them out of the Swift system? Asking for a friend.