In hindsight, Russia biggest success was the twenty-year long psyops campaign about mighty Putin the protector of âshared Judeo-Christian valuesâ and the supposedly modernized and therefore invincible Russian army.
It wasnât only the tankies (leftards who love anything/anyone that opposes the West) who fell for this BS, but also self-hating defeatists among the Western elites, notably âmilitary expertsâ.
Edit: Looking at this clip of Kadyrov Iâm half-expecting Sacha Baron Cohen as General Aladeen to appear in the frame.
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Defending democracy, huh? St. Zelinsky banned all opposition political parties and free speech with his emergency powers.
Long live democracy.
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âItâs just for 2 weeks, to slow the spread⊠of disinformationâ
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Donât know this guy but seems to have been a commander of large us and European forces.
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They are, you see, under invasion and martial law.
Good lord.
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Yes, in a middle of a life-or-death struggle with Russia you need to allow pro-Kremlin parties (that got less than 10% of the vote) to spread propaganda. Opposition block is run by Putinâs best friend Medvechuk (Vladimir himself is his daughtersâ godfather)
To be honest, if a country is under invasion and you have parties within your own lines that are pro-invader - I donât see why not to label them as enemies and deal with them accordingly.
Not saying I approve of a government executing itâs citizens, but I think the term âcitizenâ no longer applies if you are rooting for the people killing your neighbors.
They arenât âdealingâ with individual members, theyâve banned organized (mostly fringe) pro-Russia parties, during a war with Russia. And evidence on the ground shows that almost all pro-Russian sentiments both among the general public and the political class disappeared with the first Kalibr missiles that landed on residential areas.
Donât forget that a couple of years ago Zelensky himself was seen as âpro-Russianâ (his mother tongue is Russian and he speaks halting Ukrainian).
But Russia is doing an amazing job of uniting Ukraine in their hatred towards them.
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This is a silly argument that gets made. Trump wasnât dismantling NATO. He was demanding that all members of NATO invest 2% of their GDP in defense spending as mandated by the NATO agreement. And European countries were acquiescing to the demand. The claim that Trump was weakening NATO is revisionist wishful thinking by those who want to undermine the fact that Trump foreign policy results were actually very impressive.
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I wouldnât agree on Trumpâs foreign policy assessment, but Biden had a pretty low bar to clear - âdo not have a first major conventional war in Europe in 77 years on your watchâ - and spectacularly failed at that.
So what would you do now, if you were Mr. Biden?
Raise taxes and shut down gig jobs?
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You mean âProtect the rights of gig job workers.â
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I never could understand why Americans donât unionize and protest more, or why Washington DC doesnât constantly look like Ottawa did during the truckers protest - but thatâs for an entirely different thread.
You guys have congressmen making millions off of insider trading, but in my country political careers are ruined if itâs discovered that you cheated a few thousand on your taxes 15 years ago. lol
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Because unions in America are frequently doing nothing for the workers while using their union dues for political purposes (teachers unions are one of the worst with this). Also, protesting is typically done by those who donât have jobs.
Our politicians are supposedly looking into banning political figures from trading stocks, which will likely result in insider trading being accomplished via 3rd party or spouses of politicians (reference Nancy Pelosi and her husband).
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First of all, he should shut the fuck up with repeatedly saying what heâs not going to do, as itâs a godsend to Russian decision makers. In addition, he should shut the fuck about how the US is âconsideringâ this or âexaminingâ that. These leaks that provide an illusion of doing only telegraph weakness in the Russian mind.
Itâs worth considering GWBâs actions during Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 (below), when US deliberate ambiguity helped stave off Putinâs takeover of the entire country (Iâm not advocating for a similar approach, but US was a milliontimes more assertive).
Not instead Secretary Blinken brags how he âtook a few steps into Ukraine as a show of solidarityâ on the Western border crossing 400 miles away from the front.
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