u/gnuhaut

Also a common liberal tactic.

This is so stupid, what's Vietnam supposed to do? What stuff does America produce that they can export to Vietnam to offset this trade imbalance? The US is basically ruining that country, again. Because what, they stole jobs growing coffee, assembling phones and sewing T-shirts from the American workers? I'm sure the American worker would love to do that at competitive wages of like $200 per month.

Also, imagine this perfectly balanced trade scenario: Vietnam sells coffee to the US, gets dollars, uses these dollars to buy oil from the UAE, and the UAE then uses these dollars to buy American weapons or something. As per the braindead Trump administration, this would be a problem, because it involves a third country.

We knew about this stuff, but I guess it's really only official once the NYT writes it down.

Apparently the way to write about one nuclear power being heavily involved in strikes on another nuclear power, except for actually pushing the button, which they strongly advise their proxy to do, is to make it kinda cool and daring and not terrifying. This reads like some character drama. Note how the Ukrainian characters seem a lot more flawed.

That they used euphemisms, like "point of interest" instead of "target", to obfuscate what they're doing isn't that surprising, but seriously fuck these guys. Learn this one weird trick on how to avoid WW3: just call it something else. I wonder how insane someone has to be to be a general.

Also makes me wonder what they're leaving out of that story. The Ukrainians did *that* one on their own, trust us. Sink Russian flagship? No US involved. Invade Kursk? US didn't know about it. Attack Russian oil infra? Yeah not cool Ukraine, not cool. Also no word about who blew up that dam or Nordstream.

Everywhere else though? Yeah basically the US did all that. Total involvement.

We're told it only went south when the Ukrainians stopped following orders. Not doing exactly what the US says is bad apparently. It's either reckless or stupid, and it actually for real doomed their 2023 offensive. For sure that one would have succeeded if the stupid Ukrainians listened.

Great partnership guys, why oh why would anyone be wary if the US actually has their best interests in mind, let alone the best interest of the their soldiers or population? No, you see, you need to charge up that hill *now*! Don't look at it first! Don't shell it first! We swear it's just a small number of Russians. And no, we don't trust you enough to tell you how we know that. So risk averse these Ukrainians! And btw, I see a lot 18-25 year olds running around in Kiev, what's up with that? Looks like you are not taking this very seriously Mr. Zelensky! Looks like you don't want to win!

Obviously? They're not able to, and even if they were, the EU economy and population is so much bigger, Russia would become the backwater of its own empire. Why would they want that? The end result would look a lot like the EU admitting Russia.

This might be the greatest document of pro-Ukrainians-to-the-front talking points ever.

I'm not sure the Trump offer of getting 50% of Ukraine's mineral wealth was real. The idea didn't originate from the Trump regime, but it was Ukraine who brought that up first. They're throwing that back into Ukraine's face. It seems like they ambushed Zelenski with this ridiculous deal, which was a brazen insult really, and which was immediately rejected (correctly). It might have been the intention to mock them and show them what the actual bill of the US's Ukraine support would look like, and how Ukraine would never actually be able to pay this debt.

Trump has called for elections, and that's because they want to get rid of Zelenski. And I'm sure that will happen. They're basically overthrowing Zelenski.

Either there's a peace deal, and the fighting stops, or there isn't (like there isn't right now) and some poor saps get (insert your rape metaphor here) by the Russian and Ukrainian armies.

In opposite world, peace kills people, and war doesn't. Maybe you're from there?

No it isn't. They may think they have good reasons for not wanting peace talks (they don't), but definitely every big newspaper, almost all influential Western politicians and your average redditor were against peace talks this whole time. They relentlessly shouted down everyone who even tried to bring it up.

Of course the warmongers say they're for peace. Peace through superior firepower. Peace through victory. But *that* is disingenuous. That's called war.

And I'm no pacifist. I'm for having a war (a class war), but I'm not going around saying war is peace. That's fucked up.

People are telling on themselves for opposing \**gasp*\* peace talks. Oh no! Not peace!! We want war!!!

This Fehr guy has all the same talking points I've seen German politicians use as well. And that's essentially across all relevant political parties.

For example, Interior minister Faeser called the Palästina-Kongress, which they shut down last year, and which was organized by secular left-wing groups and a Jewish group, "Islamist". And the press loves to just repeat this stuff. And it's great propaganda. The average German is afraid of Islamists, hates Muslims in general, and will applaud when the authorities suppress anyone labeled as such, and never look into if it's actually true.

Foreign minister Baerbock claimed she personally saw, on video, evidence of rape on Oct 7, even though actual investigations by the UN and others have found no footage like that. She was being heckled at the time by pro-Palestine activists and just made that up, so it looks to an misinformed audience like they're booing rape victims. And people believe this because the press never pushes back on these false claims.

Just straight up inventing blatant lies to cover for the genocide they're committing. How tf can these people sleep at night?

The "Houthis" (Ansarallah) didn't shoot at ships without provocation. They did it as a response to the genocide in Gaza, out of solidarity, to implement a blockade. They said as much, and the article explains this.

The author seems concerned that if the people [...] are labeled terrorists, they might receive less aid, even though aid exemptions have been added?

First of all, the author is not (only, primarily) concerned with aid, but rather trade.

Secondly, and the article explains that but maybe not clearly enough, but sanctions cause lots of companies to stop all dealings with the sanctioned entity, *despite humanitarian exceptions*. This causes massive friction not just for trade, but also for humanitarian aid, as the humanitarian aid groups need to contract out e.g. logistics to companies, and they need to be able to do payments. Sanctions always cause collateral damage in this way, because they create lots of paperwork and legal grey areas, and companies do not want to deal with this.

Potentially receiving less aid seems like a reasonable consequence

You are aware that thanks to the previous Saudi (and US backed) blockade and US sanctions on Yemen, hundreds of thousands of people died, mostly due to starvation and such, and most of them *children*. Starving children may very well be the consequence of the US's actions. Do you really think that's fucking *reasonable?*

New criminal offense: Learning while Muslim.

There was a massive dip in all those places in the 90s with shock therapy. A lot of people are still worse off in a lot of ways and angry. Hence AfD, Orban, PiS and all those other angry nationalists.

Also, if you want to be fair, you should compare for example Poland to west Germany. Polish workers toil for German capitalists, and yet, somehow, they're getting exploited way more than the German workers. Less pay, worse services, worse infrastructure, less worker's rights. That whole arrangement is super-exploitative. Meanwhile foreigners bought most of that country. Treated like a colony basically.

The Russians got fucked even worse than Poland in the 90s, which resulted in a backlash which Putin made himself the head of. What Russia is doing is self-preservation. Any state with the means to preserve it's sovereignty from a hostile takeover would try to do so, it's not just something an imperialist state would do. Hence Russia is not doing an imperialism here.

That's because you don't understand what imperialism means. US/EU capital is looting and exploiting the former socialist block and controlling it through western capitalist media, NGOs, and military bases. *That's imperialism.* The Russians preventing Nazis from doing ethnic cleansing along their border and demanding not to be threatened with a gun to the head is not imperialism.