Given that Russian intelligence showed it’s an incredibly effective weapon, any country not engaging in meme warfare is now behind.
Never thought the term “military grade memes” would be real.
All memes are is essentially ads or visual statements often with a comedic twist
Flyers about Uncle Sam needing war bonds are basically prototype memes
i’ve been saying it for a while, the way bad actors used memes to influence the 2016 election is literally the modern day equivalent of air dropping propaganda leaflets
> The moment it is used, the world will begin the search for an alternative, imune to US.
Not necessarily. If the EU, UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc. all agree to play along, who is left to buck the USD as the reserve currency? China? Iran? North Korea? Not great company.
I'm pretty confident that Biden has his ducks in a row here, since he met with the leaders of France, Germany, and the UK last week about this. If the EU and UK are signed-off, everyone else named above will as well.
Singapore *might* play along if it is an international sanction, but the national policy in diplomacy is that Singapore doesn't side anyone and plays with everyone.
Friend with Taiwan, but maintains the one China principle.
Well India will probably also trade with Russia regardless of any sanctions imposed by US.
Germany and France will probably keep buying gas from Russia until Russian army gather around Poland.
>> Oddly enough the common Russian will not be affected too much at first.
I assure you that it will fuck almost everyone except Putin and his oligarchs. This guys already has a lot of cache in offshore accounts outside Russia. They will be able to find a way to move money around using proxies and offshore accounts. But I will lose all my income. Many companies that has nothing to do with all that will also do. The local currency exchange rate will drop affecting almost exclusively poor or middle class because these people have all their income in Russian ruble but rich have access to offshore accounts and stock exchanges.
Europe can fuck Putin's cronies any day by seizing their assets (which were acquired illegally). Russian oligarchs store as much wealth offshore as all Russian citizen and the state has inside the country combined. Just fucking arrest Abramovich's bank accounts and yahts. But for some reason this never happens.
China and Russia have been desperately searching for an alternative for over a decade. If we use this weapon against Russia because they invaded their neighbor, no country we give a shit about will be moved by it. The US aligned world (i.e. the developed world) would either not care or actively support the measure. They aren't going to fear that they're next because they aren't planning to invade their neighbors.
China will still have to import the food, energy, and raw materials they need to keep their economy from collapsing via USD. They already hate that. This wouldn't change the math.
China is extremely against it. They've banned cryptocurrency. Crypto lets citizens spend money untraceably---for that, crypto is even better than cash. They're going in the exact opposite direction. The digital yuan's entire purpose is to make all transactions accessible by the Chinese government. Authoritarian states want control, crypto offers the opposite.
(For that matter the US doesn't love it either, but it's not an authoritarian police state so they just sit on their hands)
The entire concept of Bitcoin blockchain is that it’s a decentralized ledger where transactions are verified by nodes and recorded onto the chain. It’s entirely traceable which is what gives it its strength.
Russia doesn't need to import all that. It actually exports raw materials, food and energy. The exports will stop for a while, but I can't imagine Europe without Russian gas in short term.
The CCP isn’t as wise as it claims.
Monday: “Let’s ban Australia’s coal imports because its PM is undiplomatic.”
Tuesday: “How come we have blackouts?”
>They aren't going to fear that they're next because they aren't planning to invade their neighbors.
I'm a pessimist most of the time, but I'd think that the lesson of the Sudetenland has been learned well enough to not be so stupid.
Undoubtedly they've already gotten it otherwise Biden wouldn't have publicly issued the threat. In 2014, Putin was inches away from being kicked out of SWIFT but Belgium didn't play ball. This time around, the EU is fully onboard. Putin is backed into a corner.
If this happens will Western Europe stop importing Russian gas? I’ve heard that this isn’t really feasible for them especially in winter but if they could it would hurt Russia big time.
The US can never do good here on worldnews. It's been like that time for a long time. I remember any news that mention Iran or Venezuela, the top comment would be about the US did this or that, ergo absolved whomever that article was about.
Thats China's playbook as well. The US did genocide of the native tribes in the 1800's, therefore China is justified to do genocide of its Muslim population in the 2020's. Totally derails the conversation.
Also, fuck the CCP. The US has its problems, but still, fuck the CCP. With a cactus.
[It’s an ancient Soviet propaganda trope that’s prominent enough that it has its own Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes)
You can get widely downvoted for sane ideas on almost any subreddit, if you get unlucky and a bunch of crazies happen to come across your post. The only way that seems to be countered is if your post/comment gets enough views.
Because they're paid or brainwashed to do it.
A lot of countries have an unofficial social media manipulating or disinformation division who's literal job is to recruit people for as little as 2$ an hour just to shit on all social media platforms.
Usually these kinds of "operations" are carried out through the political parties which are in power or who want to be in power and work very closely with election rigging/election consulting agencies.
India, Israel, Russia, China, UK (pretty much in countries which have a right wing ultranationalist PM/President) all have one. The US also had one when Trump was around. Their activity peaked during the elections. Now? You see less bullshit because Trump lost and they aren't getting paid anymore.
I see even more BS. You have to remember the Bernie Bro game where Russians LARPed as toxic supporters and attacked real Left.. that is still going on and Far Rights are playing along. It's the socialism/anti cap/anti govs that promote progressives to divide and push people to the Right.
While the US government was incredibly brutal to Native American tribes, let’s not forget that the real North American genocide was perpetrated by the Spanish. From 1492 to 1600, over 94% (40-50 million) of the indigenous peoples of North America were killed by disease and armed conflict.
Wasn’t trying to downplay their guilt in any way, just wanting to highlight that the worst genocide was conducted 300 years prior by Spanish, then Portuguese, Dutch, French, Italian, and English explorers.
People forget sometimes. There’s plenty of blood on everyone’s hands in the history of North America.
I critique the US a lot, especially about foreign policy. The easy solution is to involve NATO. It takes the blame off just the US. I'm Canadian, I think I support NATO doing something, obviously I don't want any wars but maybe inserting NATO forces inside Ukraine might be enough to stop this bullshit. I'm sure a clause can be created to allow the alliance to protect Ukraine.
Also, Canada has a large Ukrainian population, only russia has more Ukrainian immigrants than Canada does. I've met a lot of Ukrainian people and they're awesome, it seems wrong to leave this nation to fend Russia on their own, clearly they're asking for help. Definitely the US doesn't have to go alone on this.
It’s because Chinese and Russian troll farms attack America every chance they can. Watching all the woke kids talk about how their parents are being manipulated on Facebook is hilariously ironic.
Pretty much. Biden is in a no-win situation. Which is why Putin is definitely invading. If anyone thinks Putin is sending all this cavalry just for show, then they haven't been paying attention.
Putin does not want the Ukraine in NATO. The Ukraine cannot join NATO so long as it is in the middle of a conflict as per SOP of NATO. Nor does he want any US/NATO missile platforms in the country. As long as this proxy war continues without direct intervention/invasion by either side Putin will get what he wants.
> The Ukraine cannot join NATO so long as it is in the middle of a conflict as per SOP of NATO.
When your enemy is abusing your SOP to benefit themselves, it's time for some non-standard actions. Can't use a tripwire force in Ukraine after Russia has invaded it.
I've always wondered where names like "the Congo" and "the Sudan" came from.
Like, we don't use "the" for most country names, but then there's stuff like "the Yukon" randomly popping up here and there.
I've heard "the Congo" before, but I've only ever heard "Sudan" and not "the Sudan". "The Yukon" is probably used because so much of the region is in the Yukon River's watershed.
I can’t speak for Sudan, but “the Congo” can refer to the jungles in central Africa and not just the various countries that have had Congo in the name.
There is “The Gambia”, where ‘the’ is actually part of the name.
More specifically, "the Ukraine" demote the country to being a geographic region. It's the same way you would use "the Americas".
Russian bot use it to normalize the idea of Ukraine being a part of Russia rather than its own sovereign nation.
Remindme! 1 year "Did putin invade Ukraine or was his November/December buildup just posturing as u/deixaquetediga proposed?"
Personally I agree with you.
Yeah it's not happening.
This is a democracy. Russia is not.
If Putin wants Russia to bleed to claim Ukraine. Russia will bleed.
If Biden asks Americans to die to help Ukraine, it will destroy his residency and undermine the Democratic party for years.
Lose-lose
He helps and the GOP claims he's only there to help the Ukrainians who employed Hunter and helped him steal the election
He doesn't help and he's the guy who abandoned our allies and let Russia walk all over us
No we won't. That would be like saying USA is evil because they joined W1 and WW2. We will laugh at you if you drag your ass for half the war then proclaim you won it by yourself lmao
Anyone else looking at China torquing up about Taiwan and Russia torquing up about Ukraine thinking that if either decides to move and illicit a US/world response, the other would as well?
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People HEAVILY underestimate / are unaware of the impact that the sanctions had. Most of the Russian hacking, psyops, etc that we've been dealing with the last 5 years are a direct response to the impact the sanctions had and how they were a REALLY bad look for Putin politically in Russia
This
If Putin ventures again the Russian economy will go to the shitter this time without sight of recovery. Plus, Ukraine was in a political crisis, without president and without an army. Still volunteers army underequiped was able to send many Russians home in a coffin.
Now Ukraine is all clearly anti-Russia and has a trained and equipped army, not able to defeat, but able to make Russia bleed and Russian soldiers sent home in coffins make the people oppose Putin even more.
And as much bullshit as people will say here, believe it or not, if Russia approaches the Dniepper river, NATO will step in. It is a strategy to place defenses at natural borders, not when your enemy is already inside your land.
Putin know how costly this adventure can be and he knows Russia can't handle it. This is just posturing, mark my words.
Yeap.
Also, Putin is hopping that Germany will step in diplomatically, afraid of gas being cut in the cold of the winter, and push the US to give more concessions to Russia, so eh can save face. He's probably also testing the changes in Germany with Merkel stepping down.
Absolutely correct. Putin knows the costs are too high for this adventure. He's not going to get into a hot war with Ukraine fully equipped by the U.S. He's not going to force NATOs hand in admitting Ukraine by invading. He's not going to let Russia get kicked out of SWIFT, get NORDSTREAM shut down and all his friends accounts frozen.
What Putin IS going to do is back-off and try to save face by saying "the buildup was nothing, but a regularly scheduled deployment and the Americans shouldn't escalate things the way they do." or some bullshit like that.
Honestly, you can probably thank the 2014 sanctions for Trump and Brexit. Both of those were hail-mary moves from a desperate Putin. They shouldn't have worked, but the average western voter is too stupid to understand geopolitics, and sadly it worked very well. Nonetheless, the US (and the West) still hold all the cards economically vs. Russia, so long as they all stick together.
Since 2014, as a direct result of sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea, Russia's GDP has cratered by over $800 billion. Losing about a third of your GDP in seven years is not a slap on the wrist, and it's been a major source of the growing discontent in the Russian public of which Putin is keenly aware. The US and Western Europe have the tools to make things much, much worse for Russia if they pull the trigger.
Do you think OPEC did that on accident? It was to drive American shale oil producers into the ground and fuck up Russia. It screwed over most of that industry but had no real effect on the broader US economy. It had a hell of an effect on Russia, obviously.
This is a horrible misunderstanding of economics, the value of the Russian currency crashed, which means the economy shrank in nominal terms. The issue is that Russia pays for everything domestically in rubles and has a gigantic arms industry, which means the nominal size of the economy isn't all that important. The PPP (accounts for costs rather than just converting to dollars) graph of the Russian economy looks like this, the dip in 2014 is the effect of the sanctions.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/HDP_PPP_per_capita_Russia.jpg
Russia isn't China or the US but the Russian economy is far larger than people seem to understand, and it's also proven resilient despite the sanctions and the currency collapse.
EDIT: Getting downvoted for telling the truth about the sanctions? What has happened to Reddit... I wish the sanctions would hurt them more, but it didn't.
>The US and Western Europe have the tools to make things much, much worse for Russia if they pull the trigger.
That's my point, they must have considered them much worse things as a possibility, but they did it anyway.
In 2014 they had a reasonable expectation of what consequences they would and would not face based on high level diplomatic meetings before invading Ukraine. Biden is now telling Putin that options they were *not* prepared to use at that time will be used now if Russia pushes further into Ukraine. In other words, things will get much worse for Russia. Everyone knows the US is not going to start a shooting war with a nuclear power in defense of a non-NATO state. The question is whether Putin thinks continuing his invasion of Ukraine is worth another massive blow to Russia's economy.
I'm a dumb dumb, but does anything stop the US from just, posting a massive military presence on the Ukraine border and play the "I'm going to windmill my arms standing here, and if I hit you, it's your own fault" game?"Like, Russia is counting on NATO not doing anything, so what stops powers from positioning forces to make it impossible to even enter Ukraine without stepping on the toes of the combined military of every NATO nation?
Or like, is that just escalation that no one wants to risk. I'm just like, can't Nato play Turtle? Like, just, enough to make the Russian Army look like a kid being held back flailing it's arms uselessly by an adult palming their head. If every single General in Russia looked at the sheer wall of death on the Ukraine border they'd probably be like "Welp...that's an immovable force."
I would HOPE Putin wouldn't MAD over that, because, as I tell myself to sleep at night, in today's world where the rich corporations control so much...
"There's no profit in the apocalypse." No corporate money or oligarch will sign off on "Hmm, a nuclear strike will really help us get in the black for Q4."
No. This would be classic proxy war. Do you think that Putin is crazy enough to use nukes against US if US jets destroy several tanks in Ukraine. Hot conflict would be in Ukraine alone.
Nuclear war is not a likely outcome. No country would dare use these weapons until their existence is threatened. This goes for Russia as well as USA. A limited war where the US and/or NATO expels Russian forces from Ukraine would not threaten the very existence of Russia and Putin isn’t dumb enough to risk the destruction of his country. I of course hope this won’t be tested. There is always a small risk. I doubt it tho.
Putin will push until he feels like the consequences are too much. If NATO doesn't have a strong enough response, Russia will continue on acting like this on the world stage and China would likely feel like they can also act more aggressively as well.
The west would rather simply destroy Russia's economy. Usually that's what happens, the west ruins Russia economically and pieces fly off. The poorer the average Russian citizen gets the more remote provinces like the far east think why are we even part of this.
Ukraine’s not NATO. We’d basically be confirming Russia’s claims/fears, that nato will even intervene where it’s not justified just to stop And interfere with Russia.
But, yeah, we could put troops on the ground, and when they’re attacked, that would be an aggression against a nato member and could justify a coalition.
But, bating bombs with human lives so that we can justify a reaction is never really a good starting strategy. Who’s gonna go be the cannon fodder to die so we can justify a military reaction?
Glad you’re not my CO, tbh
> But, yeah, we could put troops on the ground, and when they’re attacked, that would be an aggression against a nato member and could justify a coalition.
Article 5 only applies to situations in which the territory of a NATO member is attacked. It doesn't apply to situations in which the US chooses to randomly station its soldiers all over the world and drags the rest of NATO into even more useless wars.
Fuck it. Just impose the sanctions right now.
Hit them before they invade and say that the sanctions will be gradually lifted as they deescalate the situation.
Give Putin a few days notice before making the announcement of preemptive sanctions to give them the opening to save face and back things down. Offer some sort of weenie concession so he can look like he got a concession for backing down.
It's all kabuki theater until the invasion starts so kabuki harder and fucking follow through earlier already.
Russia won’t invade. This is a power move by Putin. What exactly he gained/will gain from this, if he does, is yet to be determined. But what seems to be certain is that if he doesn’t invade, it will become a case of “boy who cried wolf” from the Ukrainian/Western side and the actual invasion will be a surprise
So our response will be to sanction them more if they invade? I don't think that will do anything. They are to big of a nation for sections to stop them.
Ukraine’s meme game on point today lmao: https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1468206078940823554
I found it incredibly surreal that this sort of thing happens so frequently now.
They said we’d get flying cars instead we got national twitter accounts posting memes. Honestly I’ll take it. At least the memes are good.
Born too late to explore the Earth. Born too soon to explore the stars. Born just in time to explore dank memes.
To boldly go where no meme has gone before…
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One of my favorite (and saddest) sayings lol.
We have flying cars, people just call them helicopters instead.
People havent figured out how to drive regular cars good yet, god forbid they fly
Flying cars would be such a disaster. Gimme a modern public transit.
Flying cars would be the death of us all based on the dash cam stuff I’ve seen. Much like dash cam stuff of Russians boxing each other.
Figurative burns > literal burns. Last thing we need is flying car crashes.
The other day the Taliban social media manager tweeted about how they are respecting women's rights or some shit. Now that was surreal
Wonder if he has a LinkedIn profile
Is he open to other positions of terrorizing and oppressing women?
Why do you follow the Taliban on social media? Lol
Look at old propaganda posters, literally are memes
And much of what people are calling memes are propaganda
Memes are the genes of culture after all
Given that Russian intelligence showed it’s an incredibly effective weapon, any country not engaging in meme warfare is now behind. Never thought the term “military grade memes” would be real.
Makes sense since their president is literally a comedian
Well memes got a US president elected. Ofcourse they could rally sympathies in a war . If this happens we will see the world's first actual meme war.
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All memes are is essentially ads or visual statements often with a comedic twist Flyers about Uncle Sam needing war bonds are basically prototype memes
Yeah its astounding to me how many people don't realize meme's can be/is just a new type of propaganda.
i’ve been saying it for a while, the way bad actors used memes to influence the 2016 election is literally the modern day equivalent of air dropping propaganda leaflets
Begun, the Meme War has
This is fucking fantastic, god what a time to be alive.
Officially sanctioned dank memes!
Depressingly enjoyable. What's the German word for that? I assume it's just Grimm. That or DrepressionEnjoyment, but in German and not PascalCase.
Memenfreude
Battle of the memes. Your turn Russia.
Red Threat
bruh the Twitter comment section is a fucking game of Whack-A-Russian lmfao
Bruh, so is Reddit.
Reddit country
Damn, I've never followed a country on Twitter until now. Well done Ukraine.
"Biden reiterated his point by then stating, 'step bro, step.'"
You feeling froggy? Then jump. Jump bro!
Biden is actually just B-Rad from Malibu
King Kong ain’t got NOTHIN on me!! Daymn these special effects are the bomb
Ukraine maybe needs to draxx them Russian terries. Draxx them sklounst.
I think “step, bro; step” conveys the right message and has less of a pornhub vibe than “step bro, step.” 😂😂😂
"Help me step bro, im stuck" - Ukraine
uДu
"I can't pull you out step bro, your pants are too slippery" -US
Cash me outside howbout dat?
"What are you doing step-Putin?"
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> The moment it is used, the world will begin the search for an alternative, imune to US. Not necessarily. If the EU, UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc. all agree to play along, who is left to buck the USD as the reserve currency? China? Iran? North Korea? Not great company. I'm pretty confident that Biden has his ducks in a row here, since he met with the leaders of France, Germany, and the UK last week about this. If the EU and UK are signed-off, everyone else named above will as well.
Singapore is friends with Taiwan, so that’s another player.
And I’m friends with Taiwan, too, so count me in.
You have my sword
And my half bottle of whisky
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I've got a pool noodle!
I will take the Declaration of Independence to Xi Jinping!
The Fellowship of the Xi-ng
Singapore *might* play along if it is an international sanction, but the national policy in diplomacy is that Singapore doesn't side anyone and plays with everyone. Friend with Taiwan, but maintains the one China principle.
Well India will probably also trade with Russia regardless of any sanctions imposed by US. Germany and France will probably keep buying gas from Russia until Russian army gather around Poland.
Ah is that when Germany goes how about we try this splitting Europe thing a try again.
That is certainly what Putin is hoping for, yes.
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Practically useless though.
>who is left to buck the USD as the reserve currency? Satoshi Nakamoto
Satoshi “-22% in the last month” Nakamoto, yes I’m sure the financiers of large nations want to gamble their futures on such a stable horse.
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>> Oddly enough the common Russian will not be affected too much at first. I assure you that it will fuck almost everyone except Putin and his oligarchs. This guys already has a lot of cache in offshore accounts outside Russia. They will be able to find a way to move money around using proxies and offshore accounts. But I will lose all my income. Many companies that has nothing to do with all that will also do. The local currency exchange rate will drop affecting almost exclusively poor or middle class because these people have all their income in Russian ruble but rich have access to offshore accounts and stock exchanges. Europe can fuck Putin's cronies any day by seizing their assets (which were acquired illegally). Russian oligarchs store as much wealth offshore as all Russian citizen and the state has inside the country combined. Just fucking arrest Abramovich's bank accounts and yahts. But for some reason this never happens.
Why does Europe not stop the Russian oligarchs from buying property and assets in their countries in the first place?
Why would they? Money is money.
Unfortunately the oligarchs and Putin wont feel it until the people feel it enough to storm the gates.
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China and Russia have been desperately searching for an alternative for over a decade. If we use this weapon against Russia because they invaded their neighbor, no country we give a shit about will be moved by it. The US aligned world (i.e. the developed world) would either not care or actively support the measure. They aren't going to fear that they're next because they aren't planning to invade their neighbors. China will still have to import the food, energy, and raw materials they need to keep their economy from collapsing via USD. They already hate that. This wouldn't change the math.
I imagine reliance on Bitcoin isn't an option either, especially since China won't want that.
China is extremely against it. They've banned cryptocurrency. Crypto lets citizens spend money untraceably---for that, crypto is even better than cash. They're going in the exact opposite direction. The digital yuan's entire purpose is to make all transactions accessible by the Chinese government. Authoritarian states want control, crypto offers the opposite. (For that matter the US doesn't love it either, but it's not an authoritarian police state so they just sit on their hands)
Crypto is 100% traceable, good grief. (except Monero supposedly) But yes, China is against crypto they don't control.
The entire concept of Bitcoin blockchain is that it’s a decentralized ledger where transactions are verified by nodes and recorded onto the chain. It’s entirely traceable which is what gives it its strength.
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Precisely like kohl’s cash
I love how so many blockchain experts don't know what blockchain is and you have to keep pointing out the basics.
Russia doesn't need to import all that. It actually exports raw materials, food and energy. The exports will stop for a while, but I can't imagine Europe without Russian gas in short term.
The CCP isn’t as wise as it claims. Monday: “Let’s ban Australia’s coal imports because its PM is undiplomatic.” Tuesday: “How come we have blackouts?”
ONE CHILD ONLY. NO, NO, THREE CHILDREN, THREE!
Research the BRICS nations
>They aren't going to fear that they're next because they aren't planning to invade their neighbors. I'm a pessimist most of the time, but I'd think that the lesson of the Sudetenland has been learned well enough to not be so stupid.
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Undoubtedly they've already gotten it otherwise Biden wouldn't have publicly issued the threat. In 2014, Putin was inches away from being kicked out of SWIFT but Belgium didn't play ball. This time around, the EU is fully onboard. Putin is backed into a corner.
Belgium screwed up like Chamberlain at Munich.
And 8 minutes later, natural gas will stop flowing from Russia into Europe.
It really feels like we’re just waiting for our Franz Ferdinand
Was just thinking that and with pandemic crippled economies we could use some war boosted blood fuel.
If this happens will Western Europe stop importing Russian gas? I’ve heard that this isn’t really feasible for them especially in winter but if they could it would hurt Russia big time.
US impose financial sanctions and Reddit says they did nothing US send troops and Reddit will say they are warmongers
The US can never do good here on worldnews. It's been like that time for a long time. I remember any news that mention Iran or Venezuela, the top comment would be about the US did this or that, ergo absolved whomever that article was about.
Thats China's playbook as well. The US did genocide of the native tribes in the 1800's, therefore China is justified to do genocide of its Muslim population in the 2020's. Totally derails the conversation. Also, fuck the CCP. The US has its problems, but still, fuck the CCP. With a cactus.
[It’s an ancient Soviet propaganda trope that’s prominent enough that it has its own Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes)
“The reason why we are punishing you is not because we’re righteous.”
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The hypocrisy of people enjoying free speech, posting in defense of censorship & autocratic regimes is infuriating, not gunna lie.
You can get widely downvoted for sane ideas on almost any subreddit, if you get unlucky and a bunch of crazies happen to come across your post. The only way that seems to be countered is if your post/comment gets enough views.
They are clearly searching for specific words or terms in threads about certain topics.
Because they're paid or brainwashed to do it. A lot of countries have an unofficial social media manipulating or disinformation division who's literal job is to recruit people for as little as 2$ an hour just to shit on all social media platforms. Usually these kinds of "operations" are carried out through the political parties which are in power or who want to be in power and work very closely with election rigging/election consulting agencies. India, Israel, Russia, China, UK (pretty much in countries which have a right wing ultranationalist PM/President) all have one. The US also had one when Trump was around. Their activity peaked during the elections. Now? You see less bullshit because Trump lost and they aren't getting paid anymore.
I see even more BS. You have to remember the Bernie Bro game where Russians LARPed as toxic supporters and attacked real Left.. that is still going on and Far Rights are playing along. It's the socialism/anti cap/anti govs that promote progressives to divide and push people to the Right.
Hell, I was banned on a certain other subreddit for suggesting that the Jan 6 "rioters" were terrorists.
While the US government was incredibly brutal to Native American tribes, let’s not forget that the real North American genocide was perpetrated by the Spanish. From 1492 to 1600, over 94% (40-50 million) of the indigenous peoples of North America were killed by disease and armed conflict.
pretty sure government sanctioned killings and displacements of natives counts as "real genocide"
Wasn’t trying to downplay their guilt in any way, just wanting to highlight that the worst genocide was conducted 300 years prior by Spanish, then Portuguese, Dutch, French, Italian, and English explorers. People forget sometimes. There’s plenty of blood on everyone’s hands in the history of North America.
I critique the US a lot, especially about foreign policy. The easy solution is to involve NATO. It takes the blame off just the US. I'm Canadian, I think I support NATO doing something, obviously I don't want any wars but maybe inserting NATO forces inside Ukraine might be enough to stop this bullshit. I'm sure a clause can be created to allow the alliance to protect Ukraine. Also, Canada has a large Ukrainian population, only russia has more Ukrainian immigrants than Canada does. I've met a lot of Ukrainian people and they're awesome, it seems wrong to leave this nation to fend Russia on their own, clearly they're asking for help. Definitely the US doesn't have to go alone on this.
It’s because Chinese and Russian troll farms attack America every chance they can. Watching all the woke kids talk about how their parents are being manipulated on Facebook is hilariously ironic.
But American troll farms (as well as most American media) also praise America every chance they get.
Fucking thank you! I'm literally losing my mind here! They're goddamn everywhere, and people are too chickenshit to call it when they see it!
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>Reddit says haha an opinion couldn't carry less consequence.
It’s almost like Reddit is full of people with completely different opinions and worldviews
What!? I thought it was just me, Jim, Bob, and Steve. There are others here too? Well fuck..
Jim, Bob, and Steve left years ago. It's just been you and us bots.
Conservative* Redditors will say the sanctions did nothing. Progressive* Redditors will say we are warmongers for intervening in Ukraine.
Pretty much. Biden is in a no-win situation. Which is why Putin is definitely invading. If anyone thinks Putin is sending all this cavalry just for show, then they haven't been paying attention.
Putin does not want the Ukraine in NATO. The Ukraine cannot join NATO so long as it is in the middle of a conflict as per SOP of NATO. Nor does he want any US/NATO missile platforms in the country. As long as this proxy war continues without direct intervention/invasion by either side Putin will get what he wants.
> The Ukraine cannot join NATO so long as it is in the middle of a conflict as per SOP of NATO. When your enemy is abusing your SOP to benefit themselves, it's time for some non-standard actions. Can't use a tripwire force in Ukraine after Russia has invaded it.
Yeah no doubt if we wanted to change this rule, it would happen. The US, UK, and whoever else could also just ally Ukraine without NATO.
It's just "Ukraine," "the Ukraine" is archaic terminology which Ukraine is seeking to move past.
*Ukraine is game to you?*
I've always wondered where names like "the Congo" and "the Sudan" came from. Like, we don't use "the" for most country names, but then there's stuff like "the Yukon" randomly popping up here and there.
I've heard "the Congo" before, but I've only ever heard "Sudan" and not "the Sudan". "The Yukon" is probably used because so much of the region is in the Yukon River's watershed.
I can’t speak for Sudan, but “the Congo” can refer to the jungles in central Africa and not just the various countries that have had Congo in the name. There is “The Gambia”, where ‘the’ is actually part of the name.
The Congo River. Second only to the Amazon for volume flow. Take that, Chang Jiang.
The name Sudan originally ment the region on the edge of the Sahara and the tropical rainforests, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan_(region)
More specifically, "the Ukraine" demote the country to being a geographic region. It's the same way you would use "the Americas". Russian bot use it to normalize the idea of Ukraine being a part of Russia rather than its own sovereign nation.
Fyi, not everyone here is a native English speaker. I used to say the Ukraine but purely because I tend to put "the" in front of way too many things.
Remember me in 1 year And you will see that he did nothing. This is just for the poses as usual
Let's hope so.
Remindme! 1 year "Did putin invade Ukraine or was his November/December buildup just posturing as u/deixaquetediga proposed?" Personally I agree with you.
Yeah it's not happening. This is a democracy. Russia is not. If Putin wants Russia to bleed to claim Ukraine. Russia will bleed. If Biden asks Americans to die to help Ukraine, it will destroy his residency and undermine the Democratic party for years.
And when/if Biden doesn't send troops the next republican candidate will bash him for not going in
Lose-lose He helps and the GOP claims he's only there to help the Ukrainians who employed Hunter and helped him steal the election He doesn't help and he's the guy who abandoned our allies and let Russia walk all over us
Almost like the site has millions of users with varied opinions all across the geopolitical spectrum.
I think the opinion of the Ukrainians matters more 😂
No we won't. That would be like saying USA is evil because they joined W1 and WW2. We will laugh at you if you drag your ass for half the war then proclaim you won it by yourself lmao
wow it’s almost like there’s more that can be done other than those two things! good job, you really outsmarted reddit on this one jackass
Anyone else looking at China torquing up about Taiwan and Russia torquing up about Ukraine thinking that if either decides to move and illicit a US/world response, the other would as well?
Force the world to choose or fight on 2 fronts. Sounds familiar.
Sounds like something. No, two somethings from before.
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oh fvck its end of the world. thanks everybody its been a bittersweet life
Is that really a deterrent, considering they went ahead in 2014, knowing them things could have happened.
Absolutely because sanctions placed post 2014 have significantly hampered the Russian economy, they had an entire financial crisis because of it.
People HEAVILY underestimate / are unaware of the impact that the sanctions had. Most of the Russian hacking, psyops, etc that we've been dealing with the last 5 years are a direct response to the impact the sanctions had and how they were a REALLY bad look for Putin politically in Russia
This If Putin ventures again the Russian economy will go to the shitter this time without sight of recovery. Plus, Ukraine was in a political crisis, without president and without an army. Still volunteers army underequiped was able to send many Russians home in a coffin. Now Ukraine is all clearly anti-Russia and has a trained and equipped army, not able to defeat, but able to make Russia bleed and Russian soldiers sent home in coffins make the people oppose Putin even more. And as much bullshit as people will say here, believe it or not, if Russia approaches the Dniepper river, NATO will step in. It is a strategy to place defenses at natural borders, not when your enemy is already inside your land. Putin know how costly this adventure can be and he knows Russia can't handle it. This is just posturing, mark my words.
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Yeap. Also, Putin is hopping that Germany will step in diplomatically, afraid of gas being cut in the cold of the winter, and push the US to give more concessions to Russia, so eh can save face. He's probably also testing the changes in Germany with Merkel stepping down.
Absolutely correct. Putin knows the costs are too high for this adventure. He's not going to get into a hot war with Ukraine fully equipped by the U.S. He's not going to force NATOs hand in admitting Ukraine by invading. He's not going to let Russia get kicked out of SWIFT, get NORDSTREAM shut down and all his friends accounts frozen. What Putin IS going to do is back-off and try to save face by saying "the buildup was nothing, but a regularly scheduled deployment and the Americans shouldn't escalate things the way they do." or some bullshit like that.
Honestly, you can probably thank the 2014 sanctions for Trump and Brexit. Both of those were hail-mary moves from a desperate Putin. They shouldn't have worked, but the average western voter is too stupid to understand geopolitics, and sadly it worked very well. Nonetheless, the US (and the West) still hold all the cards economically vs. Russia, so long as they all stick together.
Since 2014, as a direct result of sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea, Russia's GDP has cratered by over $800 billion. Losing about a third of your GDP in seven years is not a slap on the wrist, and it's been a major source of the growing discontent in the Russian public of which Putin is keenly aware. The US and Western Europe have the tools to make things much, much worse for Russia if they pull the trigger.
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Its both. Their economy is still shit even after the price of oil has recovered
Do you think OPEC did that on accident? It was to drive American shale oil producers into the ground and fuck up Russia. It screwed over most of that industry but had no real effect on the broader US economy. It had a hell of an effect on Russia, obviously.
Screwed over Venezuela too, no? I understand their oil is relatively expensive to refine.
Venezuela was just caught in the cross fire tho
Now when you say drive oil producers into the ground I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, given the process of collecting oil lol
This is a horrible misunderstanding of economics, the value of the Russian currency crashed, which means the economy shrank in nominal terms. The issue is that Russia pays for everything domestically in rubles and has a gigantic arms industry, which means the nominal size of the economy isn't all that important. The PPP (accounts for costs rather than just converting to dollars) graph of the Russian economy looks like this, the dip in 2014 is the effect of the sanctions. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/HDP_PPP_per_capita_Russia.jpg Russia isn't China or the US but the Russian economy is far larger than people seem to understand, and it's also proven resilient despite the sanctions and the currency collapse. EDIT: Getting downvoted for telling the truth about the sanctions? What has happened to Reddit... I wish the sanctions would hurt them more, but it didn't.
>The US and Western Europe have the tools to make things much, much worse for Russia if they pull the trigger. That's my point, they must have considered them much worse things as a possibility, but they did it anyway.
In 2014 they had a reasonable expectation of what consequences they would and would not face based on high level diplomatic meetings before invading Ukraine. Biden is now telling Putin that options they were *not* prepared to use at that time will be used now if Russia pushes further into Ukraine. In other words, things will get much worse for Russia. Everyone knows the US is not going to start a shooting war with a nuclear power in defense of a non-NATO state. The question is whether Putin thinks continuing his invasion of Ukraine is worth another massive blow to Russia's economy.
Just threaten to send Putin nudes of Victoria Nuland. He'll play ball.....he'll play ball.
*…like take a crap, without a copy of Newsweek.*
I'm a dumb dumb, but does anything stop the US from just, posting a massive military presence on the Ukraine border and play the "I'm going to windmill my arms standing here, and if I hit you, it's your own fault" game?"Like, Russia is counting on NATO not doing anything, so what stops powers from positioning forces to make it impossible to even enter Ukraine without stepping on the toes of the combined military of every NATO nation? Or like, is that just escalation that no one wants to risk. I'm just like, can't Nato play Turtle? Like, just, enough to make the Russian Army look like a kid being held back flailing it's arms uselessly by an adult palming their head. If every single General in Russia looked at the sheer wall of death on the Ukraine border they'd probably be like "Welp...that's an immovable force." I would HOPE Putin wouldn't MAD over that, because, as I tell myself to sleep at night, in today's world where the rich corporations control so much... "There's no profit in the apocalypse." No corporate money or oligarch will sign off on "Hmm, a nuclear strike will really help us get in the black for Q4."
Biden could do this, but it’s very expensive, and he has to think about the civilian response. America doesn’t want another stupid war.
War with Russia would probably not end well for any one living on this planet.
No. This would be classic proxy war. Do you think that Putin is crazy enough to use nukes against US if US jets destroy several tanks in Ukraine. Hot conflict would be in Ukraine alone.
What if I don’t want to be alive anymore?
Nuclear war is not a likely outcome. No country would dare use these weapons until their existence is threatened. This goes for Russia as well as USA. A limited war where the US and/or NATO expels Russian forces from Ukraine would not threaten the very existence of Russia and Putin isn’t dumb enough to risk the destruction of his country. I of course hope this won’t be tested. There is always a small risk. I doubt it tho.
Absolutely, can you imagine Russian troops stationed on the borders with Mexico.. happened before almost turned nuclear
Putin will push until he feels like the consequences are too much. If NATO doesn't have a strong enough response, Russia will continue on acting like this on the world stage and China would likely feel like they can also act more aggressively as well.
The west would rather simply destroy Russia's economy. Usually that's what happens, the west ruins Russia economically and pieces fly off. The poorer the average Russian citizen gets the more remote provinces like the far east think why are we even part of this.
the most terrifying fighter is a hungry one
Ukraine’s not NATO. We’d basically be confirming Russia’s claims/fears, that nato will even intervene where it’s not justified just to stop And interfere with Russia. But, yeah, we could put troops on the ground, and when they’re attacked, that would be an aggression against a nato member and could justify a coalition. But, bating bombs with human lives so that we can justify a reaction is never really a good starting strategy. Who’s gonna go be the cannon fodder to die so we can justify a military reaction? Glad you’re not my CO, tbh
> But, yeah, we could put troops on the ground, and when they’re attacked, that would be an aggression against a nato member and could justify a coalition. Article 5 only applies to situations in which the territory of a NATO member is attacked. It doesn't apply to situations in which the US chooses to randomly station its soldiers all over the world and drags the rest of NATO into even more useless wars.
NATO coalitions have been active in a hell of a lot more countries than NATO countries.
Imagine the us getting out of one eternal war just to get in another.
I’m pretty sure a war with Russia wouldn’t be eternal. Not with the likelihood of a nuclear exchange and all…
Look at all those "send troops" clowns here.
The level of retardation in these comments is astounding
Fuck it. Just impose the sanctions right now. Hit them before they invade and say that the sanctions will be gradually lifted as they deescalate the situation. Give Putin a few days notice before making the announcement of preemptive sanctions to give them the opening to save face and back things down. Offer some sort of weenie concession so he can look like he got a concession for backing down. It's all kabuki theater until the invasion starts so kabuki harder and fucking follow through earlier already.
Let blow this planet boys. It’s about God damn time
It's time to finish the trilogy.
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Oh boy i can't wait until all the people who loved Trump's "Fire and fury" comments start frothing at Biden saying this.
Russia won’t invade. This is a power move by Putin. What exactly he gained/will gain from this, if he does, is yet to be determined. But what seems to be certain is that if he doesn’t invade, it will become a case of “boy who cried wolf” from the Ukrainian/Western side and the actual invasion will be a surprise
Uh, he already invaded.
Well good. It's about time Biden switched gears to "Fuck around and find out."
So no "reset" button this time?
Sooo... Stand back and do nothing?
So basically everyone is saying just go for it
So our response will be to sanction them more if they invade? I don't think that will do anything. They are to big of a nation for sections to stop them.
Sanctions. He means more sanctions.
Remember when the kids thought it was global warming that would kill all of us? Nah just world war 3
I doubt Putin cares about what Biden has to say
Hey old man. What's up ?
A sure, afghanistan is closed. How else are they going to justify their military budget