Youtube comments of Geoff Lepper (@geofflepper3207).

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  31. There are a lot of other things that are going badly for Russia and were not mentioned. Russia has an incredibly low unemployment rate and every Russian who joins the military or goes to work at an arms factory or flees the country makes that labour shortage worse. Russia is quickly using up its liquid assets in its national wealth fund and is going to be facing a serious problem when there's nothing left. Russia is quickly using up its stores of army equipment in decent condition that it took Russia 80 years to accumulate. It may all be gone by next summer and then Russia is going to have a much more difficult time providing adequate amounts of military equipment to Russian forces. Ukraine is gradually damaging Russian oil refineries. Ukraine is gradually destroying Russian fuel depots and ammunition depots and anti-aircraft systems. Ukraine is getting better and better at producing its own drones and missiles to use in the war. Russian forces are suffering huge losses of men and equipment to take relatively small amounts of territory and control less Ukrainian territory than they did in May 2022. Ukraine now controls some Russian territory and that has led to a number of problems for Russia and Putin. - the need to use troops to protect the whole border with Ukraine. - an embarrassment for Putin being the first Russian leader since 1941 to suffer an invasion. - 200,000 Russians fleeing the region and telling people that Putin is doing a poor job protecting Russia. - the erasure of another Putin red line indicating that Putin's red lines are meaningless. - a lot of Russians and even some Russian state media personalities questioning how the war is going. Russia's arms export industry has collapsed. Russia's gas industry is in serious trouble with far less revenue and might take over a decade to recover and Gazprom is suffering huge losses. Canada, the United States, Guyana and Brazil have been increasing their oil production and now Saudi Arabia has indicated that it is going to do the same so oil prices are likely to be heading downward and staying there for the foreseeable future unless Israel destroys Iranian oil facilities and Iran responds by attacking Saudi oil facilities and trying to shut down the strait of Hormuz. The United States and Qatar have plans to significantly increase gas exports and Canada is building a huge LNG export port. China's economy has been stagnant and China has been quickly building up its renewable energy and dams and coal plants and seems determined to transition to electric vehicles. China also recently signed an agreement with Qatar to import a lot of Qatar natural gas for many years to come and signed a major agreement with Saudi Arabia, Russian infrastructure is no doubt continuing to deteriorate due to lack of maintenance and it's likely that Russians will be freezing in the dark in their apartments again this winter. I think that if Putin knew and understood everything that is going wrong for Russia he would not be happy at all with the situation. 2025 will be bad for Russia and its forces and for Putin. 2026 will be very bad for Russia and its forces and for Putin. Putin's only hope is a Trump victory.
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  91. ​​​ @Timbo_tango  One wonders how much the course of events in formerly colonized countries depended on the ratio of colonists from Europe to the inhabitants there before Europeans. In Africa and in South Asian countries the European colonists were relatively small in number and were vastly outnumbered by the number of inhabitants already there so when the era of imperialism ended it was inevitable that the inhabitants already there would end up regaining control over their own lands. (With South Africa being a more complicated situation) In Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States the European colonists ended up vastly outnumbering the inhabitants already there and so it was somewhat inevitable that the European colonists would end up retaining almost all of the power. But in Palestine/Israel there was much more of a balance between the numbers of the European colonists and the inhabitants already there and this has I think been one of the reasons why the region has nor reached a new stable situation but instead has stayed in a situation of conflict (active or frozen) for at least the past 80 years and likely will continue to stay in a situation of conflict for the next 80 years. It probably also doesn't help that Israel is so tiny and narrow and surrounded by countries that have been hostile in the past which makes the European colonizers very nervous about their security. Another factor is that like the South African Boers most of the Jewish people in Israel may have ancestry in Europe but don't feel that they have a place in Europe to go back to that they would see as their own country and so have no intention of leaving (in contrast to most European colonizers in Africa and South Asia who always identified with the European country of their ancestors even if they were born and grew up outside of Europe). And one can understand why Jewish people would not feel completely accepted in European countries after centuries of facing discrimination and pograms. The Boers in such a situation where there were large numbers of both European colonizers and inhabitants already there created a system of apartheid that was horrific and so has Israel. Apartheid and oppression of the weaker group by the more powerful group is nor a way to reach justice, peace and security. It's also the case that New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States were formed during the era of imperialism whereas Israel was formed after WW2 when the era of Imperialism was already on the way out as colonized countries were already fighting for and in some cases winning their independence. I'm trying to think of a country outside of Europe other than Israel that was colonized by Europeans after WW2 - Chechnya in a way I guess.
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  93. ​​​ @friedhelmschroter8124  NATO didn't move one millimeter. Countries in Eastern Europe asked to join NATO to have some allies in the event they were invaded by Imperialist Russia, a very wise decision given the number of times over the past few decades that Russia has launched unprovoked imperialist invasions against nearby countries to steal territory from them. If Russia doesn't want countries to join NATO then it should stop launching unprovoked imperialist invasions into nearby countries and become a modern peaceful democratic country that wants to live in peace with its neighbours the same way that other European countries do. I'm other words it's time that Russia moved out of the 17th century of European imperialism and moved into the 21st century inhabited by other countries. And obviously when Russia demands that countries such as Ukraine not join NATO it's because Russia doesn't want them to have any allies or support if Russia decides to invade them. It would be foolish for a country in Eastern Europe to agree to Russia's demand that it stays unsupported and vulnerable to a Russian invasion. Russia asking countries to not join NATO is like a burglar demanding that a home owner leave their doors and windows unlocked at all times so that it will be easier to rob their house. And as well Russia's invasion has nothing to do with NATO. Ukraine was not in NATO nor was it anywhere close to joining NATO. Every time Russia lsunched an unprovoked imperialist invasion it was against a country that was not in NATO and was nowhere near joining NATO. It's just plain old Russian imperialism as has existed at least since the 1400s.
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  100. I've read that Russia was still suffering demographic problems caused by WW2 losses right up to the 1990s. And then in the 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia struggled economically few Russians had babies and Russia had another demographic crisis. And then Russia got hit hard by covid and had another demographic crisis. And this war is creating another demographic crisis as so many young Russian men are killed, badly wounded, captured or flee the country. And even before WW2 Russia lost a lot of young men losing a war to Japan, losing WW1 to Germany, having a civil war, losing a war to Poland and being humiliated in a war against Finland. And that doesn't count all the Russians who died of starvation or disease or in prison camps or through being executed during the 20th century. And as well countless Russian people fled Russia's oppressive regimes from 1900 right up to February 2022 before the war even started. Russia seems to have a never ending series of demographic crises. And I don't think that is going to end. That is why Russia now has a population that is outnumbered by Americans by 200 million people and why that gap will keep increasing. And why by the end of the century there is a good chance that even the fast growing population of Canada will exceed the declining population of Russia. Even before the war one Russian demographer predicted that Russia's population will fall by half by 2100. It's not what all demographers are saying but if he's right then a Russia with an aging population of 70 million people is not going to be threatening the world and is certainly not going to be a super power.
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  142. Two things he didn't mention: 1. As Ukraine gradually puts out of operation Russia oil refineries Russia's oil sector is going to be in worse shape. Eventually Russia may have to export unrefined oil to be refined in another country and then buy it back at a higher price for Russian needs. That's an expensive inefficient way for Russia to use its own oil, especially given the added cost of two trips by ship. Russia might have to start limiting how much refined oil the military or the civilian sector gets. And repairing all those badly damaged refineries isn't easy or cheap, especially with western sanctions on parts and no western workers. I believe that the United States hasn't built a major new oil refinery since the 1970s. There is a reason for that. Refineries are complicated, expensive, massive things. 2. The many stories of Russians freezing in the dark last winter indicate that the shortage of workers in Russia is preventing proper maintenance and emergency repairs of basic infrastructure in Russia. In any country maintenance can be an expensive activity which doesn't seem productive because often no matter how much money you spend there seems to be nothing visible to show for it. A new bridge looks impressive but doing basic maintenance on ten old bridges doesn't produce anything new to look at. But leave the maintenance too long and you will regret it. So perhaps Russia's GDP and budget balance look good as it produces lots of military supplies and equipment to be quickly used and destroyed in Ukraine but as time goes on we may see clear signs that Russia's military production and near balanced budget and stable GDP have come at a cost of ignoring basic maintenance and that things in Russia are going to start falling apart as a result. I wouldn't be surprised if next winter we hear a lot more stories of Russians freezing in the dark plus other stories of Russian infrastructure breaking down. Putin can put out all the propaganda he wants and suppress all independent media but if Russian citizens are freezing in the dark they will know tbat the Russian three day special military operation in Ukraine is not going according to plan.
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  152. Only watched half of this so far but I'm very cynical about his conclusions. Just looking at his own stats on how many young European Catholics actually attend church weekly the average was only just over 13% and if Poland was not included the average drops to under 11%. The fact that of young Europeans who had parents who presumably baptized them in the Catholic religion only a tiny percentage bothers to regularly attend church shows that the retention rate is really low for the Catholic church in Europe. Technically these young people may be Catholic because their parents baptized them as Catholics but they're not going to church and I think many of them will never baptize their children and their children will likely virtually never go to church at all if at all and will not bother baptizing their own children. A 2018 study found that 16-29 year olds in the Czech Republic were the least religious group in Europe with 91% saying they have no religious affiliation so I don't know where the stats came from suggesting that university students in that country are becoming more religious but it's clear that unlike the case in the past very, very few young people in the Czech Republic are religious or conservative. Churches in Europe and other developed countries are filled with old people and the percentage of people who go to church or are very religious will continue to quickly decline even if religious people have more children because retention rates are low. And with modern media and an interactive world young people around the world are much less willing to accept the overly conservative, xenophobic, racist, intolerant, misogynistic views of their parents. Even in the less developed and more religiously conservative United States young people are becoming less religious and less conservative and a significant number of those born in extremely fundamentalist conservative churches with hateful views are walking away. Even in Iran young people are clearly fed up with the conservative misogynistic views of those in power and are risking their lives and their freedom to change things. They may be just as likely to be religious as their parents but are fed up with backward, intolerant views of an oppressive government that seems to represent the tiny percentage of Iranians who are over age 57 and remember the Shah.
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  206. So glad that he talked about the potential economic and diplomatic costs to China of an attack on Taiwan. The vast majority of videos and articles on the possibility of a Chinese attack on Taiwan focus on the military aspects of such a scenario but the economic and diplomatic aspects seem more important. Even if Chinese forces had quick and complete success in an invasion into Taiwan the loss of trade for China would be devastating. To be conservative imagine that developed countries in both the west and the east cut purchases of Chinese exports by 65% within 4 years, a very conservative number compared to the reduction of European purchases of Russian exports over the past two years and Russian exports of fossil fuels are much harder to source elsewhere than are most Chinese exports. Consider as well that whereas southern countries such as India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam may be neutral regarding Russian imperialism in Ukraine they may see increased Chinese imperialism as a threat to themselves and so may very well be supportive of western economic actions against China as they may see themselves as being on the front lines against China as countries in Eastern Europe see themselves on the front lines against Russia. Consider as well that the above countries and other southern countries such as Mexico and Brazil may be happy to take the place of China as suppliers of goods to western and eastern wealthy countries. China plays such a central part in world trade that it's hard to imagine it being sidelined entirely from world trade but certainly if China attacks Taiwan its role in world trade could be severely diminished. As well it's very possible that Chinese assets outside of China could be seized and possibly loans owed to China ignored while China might seize western assets in China. As well, following such an attack on Taiwan it's very unlikely that any companies in developed countries would invest any more money in China for decades to come. It's very hard to believe that even a successful attack on Taiwan is worth the economic and diplomatic cost for China and there is no guarantee that an attack will succeed quickly or even succeed at all.
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  226. As horrific and barbaric as are the brutal Russian terrorist attacks on Ukrainian civilians I keep remembering that as horrible as the London Blitz was the fact that the Germans started the Blitz was an acknowledgement by them that they had lost the Battle of Britain and knew they could not successfully invade Britain. I think that in a similar way the Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians as horrible as they may be are a recognition that the Russian military has lost to the Ukrainian military and thus that the Russians know that their invasion cannot succeed. A little trivia - the V2 rockets which the Germans fired at Britain about 80 years ago did at one point reach a speed of mach 5 which means that (according to Wikipedia) they were hypersonic missiles used in war 80 years ago. And yet the Germans still lost WW2 badly. Very badly. So the Russians can brag about their wonderful hypersonic missiles today but if having hypersonic missiles close to a century ago didn't save Nazi Germany from losing a war then its certainly no guarantee of victory for Russia today when the Ukrainians today have much better technology than the victorious British had in the early 1940s. To be accurate Wikipedia is not exactly right in saying that travelling at mach 5 are hypersonic because hypersonic missiles are also supposed to be maneuverable which I believe the V2 was not. Still, the point is still true that having fast missiles does not guarantee the Russians success on the battlefield and I bet they don't have many hypersonic missiles anyway.
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  244. The existence of a vast network of Russian minefields and other defensive fortifications is a very negative thing in that it is making the Ukrainian counter offensive so difficult but what has not been pointed out is that the fact that Russia has gone to so much trouble, time and expense to create these fortifications is effectively a Russian acknowledgement that Russia has lost the war. Not only has the Russian regime given up on its original goal of conquering Ukraine in days but now over 500 days into the war when Russian forces have not made a significant advance in well over a year the Russian regime is acknowledging that its forces can never succeed in achieving the goal of conquering Ukraine and are struggling even to defend against Ukrainian forces and so need to create vast mine fields between the two sides. If the Russian regime had any thoughts of making a significant advance then it wouldn't be building huge mine fields which not only make the Ukrainian counter offensive difficult but would make any Russian advance very difficult. Armies planning to advance don't build huge mine fields on the path of their potential advance. Russia has given up on trying to win the war and actually gave up quite some time ago as Russian forces started building defensive fortifications a long time ago. And this is when Russia doesn't control all of any of the 4 Ukrainian regions Russia claimed to annex this year. Clearly the Russian regime and the Russian military have come to the realization that Russia will never control all of these 4 regions let alone all of Ukraine.
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  260. I recall hearing a news story in the 1990s about how under communism East Germany had a strategy of arresting dissidents and then offering them a trip to freedom in West Germany but then when they got to the border their East German guards would surprise them by telling them that even though they were being forced out of the country their children would in fact not be going with them but instead would be taken for adoption by a good loyal communist East German couple. One woman who saw her son for the first time in 20 years in the 1990s said that what upset her wasn't just that she lost out on 20 years with him and that he had been fed East German communist propaganda so long but also because unlike the sophisticated, cultured life of books and music and art and intellectual pursuits she wanted to expose him to his adoptive East German parents had exposed him to nothing of value and thus he had turned into an ignorant, unsophisticated, thoughtless lout. Not saying that all communist East German parents turned out kids like that - Angela Merkle grew up in East Germany. But once the state kidnaps your children and gives them to parents they find more "ideologically appropriate" your children will not grow up to be the sort of people yiu had hoped and will become strangers to you. Let us hope that all kidnapped Ukrainian children are returned and that they quickly throw off the Russian indoctrination to which they've been exposed. It seems very unlikely that a 13 year old girl having endured months of Russian shelling and having lost her other to Russian bombs will ever swallow Russian propaganda no matter how long she is in Russia.
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  268. Ridiculous comment from the ultimate armchair quarterback. Pretty sure that you would do a much worse job protecting a small child or dog from a lion plus a group of other agressive predators (appeared to be hyenas). Perhaps you think that's unfair because you aren't as big and strong as a giraffe. Ok then - suppose then you are trying to protect a small dog from a group of coyotes determined to take down your dog except let's say that like the giraffe you aren't able to pick up the dog. If you have as much sense as the giraffe then you will stay right over the dog because you know (or should know) that the coyotes want you to chase one of them away so that the other coyotes can then attack your dog. In the video the giraffe understands that if it chases the lion or even moves away from the baby towards the lion the hyenas will quickly take advantage by attacking the baby. Even if there were no hyenas the giraffe would understand that it can't catch a lion that can run at 80 km/hr and that if it tried the lion might outmanouver it and run around to attack the baby. And frankly the strategy the mother giraffe was following was working fine until the baby made the mistake of falling down into a gully that was inaccessible to the mother (though I'm certainly not going to blame a baby a few hours old for accidentally falling down a gully when there are a number of predators around it distracting it). It was clear that until the baby fell down the gully the mother's strategy of standing over or right next to the baby was working well. The lion and the other predators clearly did not want to try to attack the baby when it was right under the mother as getting kicked in the head and ending up with a broken jaw and a major concussion makes eating prey a lot less pleasant and to be kicked to death by an angry mother giraffe can spoil one's entire life. Look at the video again. If you were the lion would you have tried to attack and kill the baby giraffe when it's mother was standing over it? Of course not because that would be foolhardy.
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  349. Know that he can't put everything in a small video but there are some other things he could have talked about. One thing is that until perhaps the 1880s or even 1890s many doctors everywhere in the world didn't really understand the concept of bacterial infection (and obviously knew nothing about viruses). That doesn't bode well for one's survival if one has an infected injury or if there is a disease outbreak in one's region of the country). And even if medical people were trying to do the right thing would you want to have an operation to remove your appendix in a small western town In the 1860s or have any of the other surgical procedures that are routine in modern hospitals done in a small western town in the 1860s? Another thing is that many people would have been working in rural, undeveloped areas and in such locations if one were to get injured while chopping wood or while doing farm chores or by falling off a horse or by getting trampled by cattle or by simply something boring like tripping over the front step or cutting themselves while doing the dishes .....there might not have been any help at all nearby. And one would not have had a telephone or even a telegraph to summon help on a regular homestead and would not have had a car to use to get to a doctor and riding in a cart or wagon over rough roads while badly hurt would not have been ideal. Even today farmers sometimes get badly injured by heavy equipment or farm animals. As well opium dens were not mentioned in this video. Some claim that in the old west cowboys were as likely to spend their time in an opium den as they were to spend time in as saloon. If true opium addiction probably wasn't good for one's health. As well, I'm not sure if he mentioned plain old exposure as being a risk in the old west. Cold can kill and heat can kill, especially if one is living in a shack or leanto or tent with very limited heating and no air conditioning and one is spending almost all of one's time working outside at hard manual labour.
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  367. A couple of points: 1: I wonder if there is a way to include a corruption adjustment to this calculation. If one third of Russian military spending is being wasted due to corruption that should figure into the calculations. On the other hand, there was a CBS news piece that investigated the problem that the American military has regarding sticking to just one manufacturer for some types of military equipment and (more importantly) replacement parts. Apparently decades ago the American military used multiple manufacturers for each type of equipment but somebody decuded that it would be simpler and more efficient to use just one supplier for each type of military equipment which means that if a part needs to be replaced the U.S. military must pay whatever price the company demands no matter how outrageous. That's not a very efficient way to spend money on a military. 2: As someone else has pointed out Russian forces are not just using and losing equipment produced now but also using a lot of equipment built over many decades. Based on some of the analysis available Russia seems likely to have used up all of its inventory of old tanks by spring 2025 if the war goes on that long and Russia might get to that point sooner than that given that it has certainly been refurbishing the old tanks in the best condition and the remaining old tanks must be in worse condition and possibly many of them are not salvageable. On top of that is the possibility that they have been cannibalizing the remaining old tanks for parts and don't have the spare parts for all of the remaining old tanks. Once Russia runs out of old tanks it's current tank production will have no hope of keeping up with immense losses of tanks and by the summer of 2025 Russia will likely have gone from having far more tanks than any other country to effectively having no tanks on the battlefield. And I assume that the same will happen with a lot of Russia's other heavy military equipment. Makes me wonder - Russia may be able to keep producing or buying artillery shells but when will it run out of guns to fire them?
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  383. @sktt1  if only Turkey had a credible court system that one could trust to dispense justice in a fair way .....but it doesn't. Turkey has a very low score on rule of law. Even Turkish people don't trust the country's court system with 69% of people in the country saying that they don't trust the judicial system. Absolutely judicial systems in other NATO countries have problems with bias based on race but Turkey's judicial system is simply too questionable to hand over anyone to it. A far better option would be for Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria to do the right thing and allow a new country for Kurds to be created using the territory of those countries where Kurdish people are the predominant group. That really is the best way to achieve peace and prosperity for everyone and then Turkey won't have to deal with problems with "terrorists" anymore. Problem solved. The Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without a country. Time that Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria stopped oppressing Kurdish people and let them have their own country. Gee, when Canada's French speaking province of Quebec had a government that wanted to separate from Canada they openly had a referendum on whether to separate from Canada and then had a second referendum and the Canadian government didn't beat up, arrest or kill the leaders of the Quebec government and the reality is that there is already a massive country filled with French people speaking French where Quebecers could go if they want to live in a French country. Kurdish people don't have a Kurdish country they can move to. Time for Turkey and its neighbours to learn a lesson in democracy from Canada on that and allow referendums in Kurdish areas to see if the people there want to separate from their current country and join a new Kurdish state. I will point out that Britain also allowed such a referendum as people in Scotland voted on whether to separate from Britain. Or do you think it is impossible to have any justice or democracy in Turkey?
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  463. @Erdin ERDEM  I don't understand why Kurdish people would resort to violence when Turkey is a country with a wonderful, fair judicial system and which ensures that Kurdish people have full human rights and that Kurdish language and culture are fully respected and has allowed Kurdish regions of Turkey to have free, fair and open referendums to let the people there decide democratically whether they want to separate from Turkey to form a Kurdish country just as Canada allowed Quebec to hold a referendum on whether to leave Canada and Britain allowed Scotland to hold a referendum on whether to leave Britain. Wait a second. Actually none of those things are true about Turkey. Then I'm taking a chance and guessing that the fact that Turkey brutally oppresses Kurdish people and does not allow them justice or democracy might be the reason why some Kurdish people resort to violence. The behavior and recruiting tactics of the PKK may be deplorable and even horrific at times but the Turkish government could fix the whole problem any time by changing how it treats Kurdish people. In particular if the Turkish government let Kurdish regions of Turkey hold a democratic referendum on whether the people in those regions want to separate and form a new Kurdish country then after that Turkey might find itself completely free of concerns about Kurds because Kurds would be living in their own separate country. In the 1950s the French government waged a barbaric and brutal campaign to suppress independence movements in Algeria and keep Algeria as French territory but eventually the French government got tired of the endless conflict and agreed to let Algeria become independent in the 1960s. Time that the Turkish government learned the lesson that the French government took so long to learn and stop brutally oppressing Kurdish people and let Kurdish people be free to have their own independent country in their own regions. Otherwise Turkey will be stuck in endless war against Kurdish fighters. France got tired of endless war against Algerians. Don't you think Turkey will eventually get tired of endless wars of oppression fighting to prevent Kurdish people from having freedom and independence? Do Turkish people hate Kurds so much that they are willing to have endless war to stop Kurds from being free?
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  470. Signs that Brics is sort of meaningless: China and India always seem on the edge of war. China has close ties with Pakistan. That can't make India happy. China claims a vast section of Russian territory and could invade Russia some day. Recently China has made efforts to increase gas imports from Qatar (not Russia). Recently China has made efforts to increase oil imports from Saudi Arabia. Recently China has made efforts to increase Chinese domestic coal production. Recently China has been building a massive new dam to provide water and electricity. Recently China has been building massive amounts of solar power plants. Recently China has been selling huge amounts of solar panels to the world. All of these Chinese programs are bad for Russian fossil fuels exports. In recent years India has been significantly increasing its trade with G7 countries. Russia is not happy that it is getting stuck with a lot of Indian currency it has no need for. The Russian export trade in military equipment to India is collapsing. None of the Brics countries have a strong currency. South Africa is sadly in economic trouble with basic infrastructure breaking down. And I don't think that China, India or Russia actually care much about South Africa. For that matter Russian infrastructure is breaking down. Economic relationships between Russia and China are getting difficult as Chinese banks try to avoid getting into trouble over breaking American sanctions on Russia. Russia and China are both facing demographic collapse. What the heck do Brics countries even have in common? Etc., etc.,
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  542. ​ @kolviczd6885 in the last 3 decades how many times has Imperialist Russia invaded other countries to steal territory from them? At least 6 times. Probably more. In its entire history how many times has NATO invaded other countries to try to steal territory from them? Zero. People in the global south need to understand that Russia has always been an Imperialist nation and that it is the last Imperialist nation on Earth because it's government (and a lot of its people) are stuck in an 18th century mindset of European Imperialism. How do you think Russia went from being a European country of about the same size as other European countries to controlling land all the way to Siberia and Alaska and down into much of Muslim Asia and as far west as Germany? And notice that unlike other European countries that have given up all or virtually all of their empires and shrunk back to their size in 1500 Russia has still hung onto a vast amount of its empire including a huge chunk of territory that Russia stole from China. Notice any democratic countries still occupying part of China as Russia does? No. Of course not. You think that the Russian airforce was bombing Syria to try to remove its barbaric dictator from power? Of course not. Rather the Russian airforce was slaughtering Syrian civilians to try to keep Syria's barbaric dictator in power. You think that Wagnar has spent a lot of time in Africa to help people and bring democracy and justice? Of course not. You think that Putin cares a whit that his pointless genocidal invasion of Ukraine and his efforts to destroy Ukrainian farms and ports and to block Ukrainian grain shipments caused food prices to skyrocket and created immense difficulties for the poorest, most vulnerable people on Earth and in some cases made people starve? Of course not. Putin is a barbaric dictator who cares only about himself and certainly doesn't care about the poor and the vulnerable of the world. If he doesn't care a whit about the Russian people and whether they live in poverty because he wastes money on his military and if he is willing to sacrifice the lives of countless Russian soldiers in his unprovoked genocidal invasion of Ukraine then he certainly doesn't care about people in other countries. You really need to recognize Russia for what it is - a brutal dictatorship that is the last colonialist European country and which is not the friend to any other poorer country. The fact that it has decided to be an enemy of democracies doesn't change that. And realize too that Ukraine does not have a history of colonialism and is currently the victim of a colonialist power. Did Ukraine ever invade the Americas, Africa, Asia or anywhere? No. Russia is the Imperialist country with a long history of colonialist behavior.
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  588. I see no problem with the United States giving Ukraine long range Himar missiles with the Ukrainians promising to is a them only to hit Russian built infrastructure on Ukrainian territory including the bridge in Crimea. If a neighbour invades my back yard by force and puts up a shed that I don't want on my property then I think that I have the right to destroy or tear down that shed as soon as I have the opportunity and it would be ridiculous for my aggressive neighbour to complain about it. Similarly as Russia built a bridge on Ukrainian territory that Ukraine neither needed or wanted I think that Ukraine has every right to destroy or tear down that bridge as soon as it has the opportunity (at least the section of the bridge in Ukrainian territory). One expert is saying that although he doesn't know what was the cause of this explosion it could simply be an accidental explosion of Russian military supplies that happened to be on a truck crossing the bridge as Russia has been transporting a lot of ammunition over the bridge. Such explosions do happen in war sometimes. In December 1917 the city of Halifax was destroyed in a massive explosion of a ship carrying munitions to Europe for WW1. And I believe that it was in Long Beach California that there was a similar massive explosion when munitions were being loaded onto a ship. In both cases it seems no enemy agent was involved. They were "just" terrible, terrible, tragic accidents. I don't know if this expert's suggestion of a possible accidental explosion on the Crimean bridge is plausible. The fact that it occurred early in the morning when civilian casualties would be limited and at a time when a train happened to be nearby suggests planning.
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  631. @Gorky D  the risk is stated as it really is by expert climate scientists because they are connected to reality and not interested in politics. 26,000 people died in the European heat wave last summer and far, far more experienced severe health consequences due to the heat wave and basically everybody in effected areas suffered immensely. But impacts of climate change go far beyond the deaths that occur. In the 2021 Texas cold snap when the power system broke down "only" about 250 people died but many millions of people suffered immensely due to having no power for days in frigid conditions and the property damage was estimated as greater than 195 billion dollars. Even if climate change doesn't kill many people in rich, privileged countries it will cause massive expenses in terms of damage done and it will make many areas unliveable due to sea level rise or salt water getting into the water table and will severely damage the ability of some agricultural areas to produce food due to extreme heat or lack of water or salt water infiltration or extreme storms and some places will become miserable to live in due to extreme summer heat and hurricanes will become more powerful and travel farther and cause much more death and destruction. Some countries in the middle east and some other hot areas such as parts of India could become too hot to be liveable by human beings. And in some poorer places on Earth such as Ethiopia and Somalia and parts of India farmers have had to abandon their farms due to extreme drought and heat and move to the city. And climate change that puts massive stress on human beings can lead to great increases in political turmoil and conflict as it did in Syria. And the above don't even include the massive impacts that climate change is having on ecosystems and the animals and plants that inhabit those ecosystems. I'm guessing that you care a whit about how many ecosystems are destroyed and how many species of animals and plants go extinct due to climate change but you might care if there is not enough fish and therefore not enough food to feed the world's population because the world's reefs have all died and because the ocean has warmed up too much and I'm guessing that you will care if you can't go outside for weeks because the air is filled with smoke from wildfires and I'm guessing that you will care if your food prices double due to food scarcity caused by climate change.
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  667. In the 1950s Canadian engineers designed the Avro Arrow which might have been the best interceptor/fighter in the world at the time given that it could fly at or above Mach 2 and had stealth characteristics and could reach high altitudes and reach them very quickly probably better than any other jet in the world. And then in 1959 the Canadian government suddenly cancelled the Arrow program entirely possibly partially for undisclosed suspicious reasons and for undisclosed political reasons and partially 🎉because in the era of Sputnik and intercontinental missiles an interceptor was no longer of use but also because the program was incredibly expensive and without any foreign orders the Canadian government did not think it could continue to justify the cost of development. If Russia isn't getting orders for its military equipment from abroad it's going to be hard for the Russian military to justify spending vast amounts of research dollars to develop new military technology (especially as the country's store of foreign reserves keeps shrinking quickly) which is a huge problem for Russia when its current military technology is clearly very much second rate compared to western technology. Then add problems such as the vast reparations Russia may be expected to pay to Ukraine and to poorer countries struggling with high food prices due to the war if it doesn't want to stay a pariah state and that Russian fossil fuels are selling at a vast discount on the international market and that likely over a million of the youngest, brightest Russian citizens have fled the country and more will do so if they have a chance - it all adds up to very little chance that Russia will catch up to the United States and the rest of Western countries in military technology.
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  671. Not true. Lots of people who think that Palestinians are human beings with the same rights as everywhere else in the world and deserve the same freedom in their own land as other people in the world have also condemned the atrocities of October 7th. But of course they understand why after 76 years of occupation, horrific oppression and apartheid and decades being locked in a prison camp simply because of their race some Palestinians might be angry enough to do horrific things against the people who occupy their land and oppress them. So understanding why Hamas did horrific things on October 7th doesn't mean that people support those things. I compare it to British Queen Boudica who fought against Romans who invaded and occupied Britain and oppressed its people. When she captured some Roman towns she killed every Roman man, woman and child in those towns. We condemn that brutal behaviour but given the horrific things that the Romans did to her people and in particular to her and to her family we can understand why she behaved that way. The big difference between the Israelis and the Palestinians is that the Israelis always have choices that the Palestinians don't have. The Israelis can always choose to leave Palestine and go back to their homelands or to do what other colonialist regimes did many decades ago and end all racist, apartheid laws and systems and let Palestinians have full and equal rights and freedom in their own land. And the Israelis can always win a conventional battle with a Palestinian force. The Palestinians are in their own homeland and have nowhere to go back to and they have no control over whether they gain freedom and full and equal rights and they know that they can never defeat the Israelis in battle given the immense charitable support Israel gets from the United States. Israelis have good options to end the conflict and instead choose to continue the conflict. Palestinians have no such options.
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  688.  @rumrain838  something like one quarter of the world used to be part of the British Empire and thus British but once the British gave up almost all of their empire and independent countries free of British control were formed people of British background who lived in that empire moved to Britain if they still wanted to live in British territory. Whether they lived in Canada, Australia, India, Kenya or any other former part of the British Empire they didn't demand that Britain invade their countries or regions again to make them British again or launch violent separatist movements to cut chunks out of their countries and make those regions new countries that are puppet States of Britain. Same thing when France, Spain and the Netherlands gave up their empires. People of French, Spanish or Dutch ancestry who wanted to still live in territory controlled by the country of their ancestors moved back to that country of their ancestors and didn't expect that country to re-invade their country and make it part of an Empire again because that would make no sense. If people of Russian heritage in independent countries that used to be part of the Russian empire want to still live in Russian territory then they should just move to Russia in the same way that people of British, French, Spanish and Dutch ancestry moved back to the land of their ancestry when those empires ended and stop supporting or demanding that Russia re-invade and oppress their now independent country or region. And if these people of Russian ancestry decide they don't want to move back to Russia then they need to accept that they live in an independent country free of Russian tyranny and not stir up trouble about it.
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  772. My first thought is to remember a man who talked about people who say "We should have a new subway here and another one here and another one here". The man said "Anybody can draw lines on a map and say we should have a subway there. But actually building subway lines is another matter entirely". In a similar way anybody can draw lines on a map and say "that's where the borders of countries will be a century from now" but that doesn't make it happen. Must say it's strange for this map to show so many countries or parts of countries joining other countries when in the 77 years since WW2 there seem to have been virtually no instances of this happening and I don't see why the next 77 years should be so different than the past 77 years. There have been cases in which a country has seized land that was historically part of the country (eg India seizing Goa or China seizing Hong Kong) but to imagine so many places deciding to join countries with which they have no historical connection? Don't see it happening now when it hasn't happened on the past 77 years. And frankly the age of empire and the age of countries invading other countries to take them over seems to be in the past. Other than Russia what country does that and other than seizing Crimea and I believe a bit of Georgia I'm not sure that Russia has seized significant new territory. Sure China is being aggressive in different places and may seize marginal bits of land from India or other countries but to seize much of Eastern Russia? I don't see it. China does claim that part of Eastern Russia was part of China unfairly taken by Russia in the 1800s and one blogger predicted that while Russia was busy invading Ukraine China would try to seize that territory. However that territory was not nearly as big as what is shown on the map and obviously China has not invaded Russia even though Russia moved a lot of troops from the East to the West and is mired in a quagmire in Ukraine. If China was going to invade Russia this was the ideal time so if they aren't doing it now they likely never will. There is also the fact China will lose half its population by 2100 so I'm not sure what it would need all that extra land for. It might want the resources but I am thinking that as Russia becomes a pariah, isolated from the west China feels that it can have immense power over Russia which will need connections with China so no need to invade Russia when one can just tell it what to do. Another problem with this map is that I don't think it takes into account climate change. Half of Florida is going to be under the sea by 2100 as will be many other places in the world. As well, much of the middle east, India, parts of Africa and possibly parts of the Sourhern United States and other places will likely be too hot or have too little supplies of fresh water or be hit too often by major storms to be inhabitable. And in terms of Canada splitting apart and much of it joining the United States there are serious problems with that prediction as support for the separatist party in Quebec is extremely low now and although some western provinces might be closer in values to the United States than the rest of the country it doesn't mean that they have American values. They like their public health care, hockey and CFL and history, etc and they don't want their children conscripted to fight in foreign wars or want American levels of gun violence. I think they also might wonder why the Unuted States is still stuck in the dark ages and hasn't gone metric yet. There is also the fact that western Canadian provinces know that they can have significant political influence in Canada but that if they join the U S. they will have much less political influence. Also, American culture is going to change drastically by 2050 anyway. This video may assume that the United States will have the same political culture in 30 years as it has now but that will not be true. Biden won by 65-31 percent against Trump in the under age 30 group. In 30 years if Republicans don't change rhen Democrats will get 65% of the vote of those under age 60 and will win all age groups under age 80. 80% of the people who listen to Fox TV are 55 and older so they'll almost all be dead in 30 years. In 30 years the Unitrd States will be more urban, much less conservative, much less religious, much more liberal and progressive so if people in western Canadian provinces want to join a conservative, Christian fundamentalist country in 30 years the United States won't be a good choice for them.
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  775. What? Putin fighting against colonialism? You can't be serious. Russia is the world's last full scale imperialist, colonialist country in that Russia still occupies a vast amount of its empire outside Europe and in the past 30 years has launched at least 6 unprovoked genocidal invasions of other countries with the intention of stealing territory from those countries. What other country in the world still launches such imperialist invasions to steal territory from other countries? None, because the age of imperialism is over. And don't know how you didn't notice but for the last 500 plus days Imperialist Russia has been carrying out a horrific, barbaric imperialist invasion against Ukraine intended to wipe Ukraine from the map and to eliminate Ukrainians as a separate people from the Earth. And one of the reasons why Russia is behaving so horrificly is because it wants to support violent insurrections in Ukraine who as Russian colonists are angry that Ukraine achieved its independence from the Russian empire. Ukraine, that as far as I know never had an empire or behaved in an imperialist, colonialist way. And it's clear that Putin was very angry at the freeing of many countries in the Russian empire 3 decades ago and wants to build back the Russian empire to a larger size. And of course Russia's despicable, monstrous Wagner group has been perpetrating violence in a number of African countries while taking as much wealth as it can out of those countries plus Russia and/or Wagnar have contributed to creating the horrific Civil War in Sudan. You're completely delusional if you think that imperialist, colonialist Russia is opposed to imperialism and colonialism when it is the most imperialist, colonialist country in the world. And regardless of what the French or others have done in African countries in recent years you're delusional if you think that Russia cares about Africans. Russia despises white Ukrainians who are Eastern Orthodox Christian whom it sees as too different than white Eastern Orthodox Christian Russians. Imagine then what Russia thinks of Black Africans who are not Eastern Orthodox Christian.
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  776. ​ @moonfly1 yes, more and more I think that in 2022 NATO should have quickly intervened to destroy Russian forces in Ukraine and drive all Russian invaders out of all of Ukraine and then set up NATO bases in Ukraine including in Crimea including at Sevastopol and then even though if technically speaking Ukraine was not yet a member of NATO basically create a situation in which that was effectively a fait accompli. NATO avoided getting directly involved to reduce the chances of nuclear war but I think that whether Russian invasion forces were on the verge of collapse in May 2022 due to NATO actions or Russian forces end up on the verge of collapse in May 2024 due to Ukrainian military actions doesn't change the fact that what ever time Russian forces face collapse is a time with heightened chance that Putin will resort to using a nuclear weapon. NATO forces deciding to not get involved hasn't got rid of that threat - rather it has just delayed that threat from 2022 to 2023 or 2024. Plus I think that every day delayed so that the war is still going is an extra day that has a tiny but real chance of Putin going nuclear. If NATO had got involved in the conflict early and driven Russian invaders out of Ukraine by June 2022 then after that the chances of Putin using a nuclear weapon would be basically finished. What would be the point of Putin using a nuclear weapon after his invasion forces had been destroyed and driven out of Ukraine forever and he no longer had a chance to ever occupy Ukraine? Another advantage of NATO getting involved early is that it would have sent a clear message to China that western countries likely would get directly involved to try to stop an invasion of Taiwan even though China has nuclear weapons. And another advantage would be that Russia would not have had so long to build up so many defensive fortifications to make a counter offensive difficult. Also, Ukraine would not have had to suffer so much for so long. Finally, if NATO had quickly got involved and defeated Russian invasion forces then disruption to world fertilizer, food and fuel markets would have been much shorter and this is not a trivial matter as likely many of the poorest, most vulnerable people in the world have suffered greatly due to this disruption but without getting the same headlines that people suffering in Ukraine are getting.
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  783. ​ @EmilyBieman  In 2021 Canada took in the same number of immigrants and refugees (405,000) it accepted in 1913 (405,000) except in 1913 Canada had only 7.6 million people. How is it extreme for Canada in 2021 with 38 million people to take in the same number of immigrants as the country accepted in 1913 when the country had only 7.6 million people to absorb that many newcomers? Even if Canada's level of immigration increases to 500,000 people per year as planned and continues for 21 years that would add only 10.5 million people to the population in that time period and natural population increase is virtually zero now. That's only a 25% increase over 21 years. In the 21 years from 1820 to 1841 Ontario's population more than tripled increasing by about 240%. How is an increase of 25% over 21 years a problem if an increase of 240% was fine? And in the 1800s there was no points system - basically anyone could come as long as they were the "right race" and from the "right country". Probably a lot of the immigrants then were barely literate. So the level of immigration is not really that high by historical standards (in percentage terms) There has been a vast increase in the number of foreign students lately but education is a provincial jurisdiction and federal politicians don't control that. And those foreign students are not immigrants - they are still foreign citizens with only a temporary residence in Canada just like Canadians working abroad often are in other countries.
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  788. The Canadian team, the defending gold medal champions, has effectively been disqualified from the Olympics. Imagine how bad that would look if eventually it comes out that most national teams engage in similar practices. In 1988 Ben Johnson was disqualified for using a prohibited substance and Canada had a major public inquiry investigating doping in sports. But eventually we found out that almost everyone in Johnson's race had prohibited substances in their system at one time or another. And that included arrogant Carl Lewis who derided Johnson but who it turned out shouldn't have been allowed in the 1988 Olympics at all given a positive test he had but U.S. Olympic officials covered up for him. According to one source there were more than 100 American athletes who had positive tests but who still ended up being allowed to go to the Olympics where collectively they won 19 Olympic medals between 1988 and 2000. But we don't hear about those athletes - we still hear only about Ben Johnson. Yes, Johnson had to be disqualified and I can see why FIFA and the IOC feel that the Canadian soccer team needs to face some consequences even though the players seem to be completely innocent but FIFA and the IOC should think long and hard about how bad they are going to look if they severely punish the Canadian team and then it turns out later that spying on other teams has been standard practice for national teams. I'd also like FIFA and the IOC to explain why they are severely punishing Canadian players who appear to be completely innocent while taking no apparent action against Argentinian players who were guilty of a horrific racist act and while FIFA and the IOC generally show few moral standards at all. Consider that the IOC demanded that Utah officials pressure the FBI to stop an investigation into doping at the Olympics for Utah to be awarded the 2034 Winter Olympics. That indicates that the IOC has very little credibility in claiming that the Canadian Women's soccer team must be severely punished in the interest of fair play. I fear that, just as in the case of Ben Johnson, in the current case as well there will be a serious investigation into practices of Canadians but that the IOC and FIFA and other countries will make no effort to find out if the problem is occurring with many countries.
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  794. @duncansmith7562  sure - cut trade relations with the biggest economy in the world that is just 34 km away and with which one has massive economic integration to make it "easier" to trade with distant countries even if those distant countries are much more focused on making trade deals with the economic union you are leaving than with you. Let's admit that even if there were economic issues like French fishing boats in British waters and too much protection for French farmers that the prime reason why a lot of old British people voted for Brexit was not about economics but rather was xenophobia and British arrogance fed them many decades ago when they were children and were indoctrinated with a belief in the "superiority" of the British race and civilization and regarding how "wonderful" the British empire was. Those old, xenophobic British people are dying fast and being replaced by new young British people who want to be connected to Europe and the rest of the world. Even before Brexit actually was implemented enough old British people had died off that a majority of British citizens were against Brexit. A poll I heard from a year or two ago said that those who think that Brexit should not have happened had a 14% margin over pro-Brexiters and from this video it sounds like that margin has now increased. Over the next 10 to 15 years as more and more elderly pro-Brexit people die off and are replaced by young anti-Brexit people and the British economy continues to struggle that anti-Brexit margin will increase past 20% and then past 25% and eventually past 30%. Even if British political parties are saying now that Brexit will not be reversed pressure to reverse Brexit will become overwhelming and there will be another referendum which will have a strong majority in favor of reversing Brexit. The only question is whether Europe will be willing to accept Britain back.
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  819. ​ @ejovo  Obviously fear of nuclear war is perfectly rational, especially when the adversary is led by someone as aggressive and unstable as Putin. But over the past 6 decades in the supposed post European imperialism era Russia launched at least 6 Imperialist invasions of nearby countries to steal territory from them and each time western countries did little or nothing to help the victims and focused on trying to avoid doing anything to aggravate Russia so as to avoid the possibility of escalation to nuclear war and each time the Russian government took that as a sign that the west was weak and thus felt emboldened to launch another unprovoked imperialist invasion of a nearby country. How many unprovoked imperialist invasions by Russia should western countries ignore and let Russia get away with out of fear of nuclear war before deciding that the west cannot just let Russia use the threat of nuclear war to avoid western response to an endless series of Russian invasions? Because if the west had again refused to do anything this time out of fear of nuclear war then Russia might have succeeded again in its invasion of Ukraine and then felt emboldened to invade the Baltic states and then Finland and then Sweden and then Poland and etc., etc. At a certain point the west had to stop letting Russia get away with using the nuclear threat against western countries thinking of helping one of Russia's victims and Ukraine was the best place to do that, especially as what the west did regarding Ukraine would send a message to nuclear armed China regarding its goals to invade Taiwan and to steal territory from other countries. The alternative is to just let Russia and China invade all the countries they want and steal all the territory they desire to avoid any chance that one of them does the insane thing and starts a nuclear war.
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  831. ​ @kenm4898  I don't think much of the religious extremism of Hamas and its violent tactics against civilians but the oppression of Palestinian people obviously didn't start just the other day when Hamas fired rockets into Israel as you seem to imply. Such oppression has been going on many decades. And although once again I don't support Hamas violence against civilians (especially children) I understand it. When invaders come and steal almost all your land and put your people into overcrowded, impoverished prison camps and regularly abuse your people just to show your people that they have no power and must put up with the oppression and abuse and the invaders make clear that that is how not only your life but also how the life of your children and grandchildren will be and the oppressed people can see how hard life is for their children while the invaders casually travel through the land living, working and traveling where they want and enjoying life it is possible to develop immense anger at all the invaders occupying one's land including the civilians. I can imagine that in Poland, France and other countries occupied by Germany in WW2 that any Germans who came in and occupied land taken from the original inhabitants would be seen as enemy invaders even if they were civilians. In London there is a statue of the British "hero" Queen Bodica who fought back against the Roman empire after Roman soldiers had abused her family. When Queen Bodica's forces captured Roman towns they would kill every single Roman citizen in town because they saw every Roman living on British territory as an oppressive invader by definition. When the Mau Mau rebellion occurred in Kenya in the 1950s they would sometimes kill every British person at a location because they saw every British person in Kenya as being an invader and the British treatment of the native people of Kenya was absolutely horrific on a huge scale. Again I am horrified by attacks on civilians but I understand that if a people is brutally oppressed and imprisoned in their own land by invaders then some of the people being oppressed will get extremely angry at all the invaders who are occupying the land and seemingly enjoying themselves with complete indifference to the suffering of the people displaced from their own land and sometimes that may lead to violence nor just against soldiers but also against civilians in the invasion group. Notice that the world used to be filled with white, racist, colonialist full fledged apartheid states but that one by one they ended either because of rebellion or because the leaders of such states realized that an apartheid, colonialist state would never have true peace and stability because the oppressed people will one way or another fight back and now with the end of apartheid, colonialist South Africa the only full fledged white, racist, colonialist, apartheid regime left in the world is Israel which explains why Israel is hated in so much of the world where people previously were themselves oppressed by white, racist, colonialist, apartheid regimes.
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  835. ​ BeNiceNoNeedToControlOthers  Yes, you're right that sometimes more attention is paid to the plight of Palestinians than to the plight of other people in other countries. But that's not always true. I would say that before the outbreak of violence between Hamas and Israel the Palestinians weren't getting a lot of attention in recent years whereas people suffering under repression in China, Mynammar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and Venezuela were getting a lot of attention. And persecution of people in Arab countries is and has been horrible in some cases but the oppression of Palestinians does stand out in some ways. As far as I know the Palestinians and Muslim people in Western China are the only people in the world to be forced to live in overcrowded, impoverished prison camps surrounded by walls and barbed wire fences in their own land by colonialist invaders and to have their movement and actions constantly monitored or controlled. And Palestinians have had to live like that for many decades. Israel is a white, racist, colonialist, fully apartheid state of the sort that used to exist all around the world but now Israel is the last one standing which is why it gets so much attention. One can talk about the white, racist, colonialist nature of countries such as Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand and about French neo-colonialism but I don't think there is still any country that matches Israel for the level of outright explicit full bore racist, colonialist apartheid.
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  854.  @gran3241  Iraq was run by a brutal butcher who committed horrific atrocities against his own people and attacked and conquered a peaceful neighbouring country to seize its oil to deal with massive debt he had built up attacking another country in an unprovoked attack and he threatened to invade Saudi Arabia and was firing rockets into Saudi Arabia. I know because I knew some foreign workers who stood on their balcony in Saudi Arabia and watched Iraqi missiles go flying by their building. Afghanistan was under the control of a violent drug cartel gang made up of violent, primitive, barbaric, misogynists who had invaded and conquered Afghanistan almost certainly with the financial aid of foreigners and that barbaric gang was sheltering a terrorist organization that had launched horrific attacks on the United States. Despite what you think the United States never invaded Libya. The United States did bomb the forces of the dictator of Libya whose forces were in the process of crushing a rebellion against the dictator. The United States had no interest in occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and just wanted to get the heck out as soon as they could but were stuck in both places for years trying to stop terrorists who kept committing horrific acts so that there could be peace and the Americans could leave. Russia on the other hand brutally and completely unnecessarily attacked a peaceful, democratic country with the intention of occupying that country permanently and wiping it from the map and in that genocidal Russian invasion Russian troops have systematically committed horriffic war crimes. Sure the American government lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and made a lot of mistakes in both Iraq and Afghanistan and some groups of American soldiers committed war crimes and got away with it and likely the United States should have avoided getting involved in the Libyan civil war (though there is evidence that the Libyan government was complicit in the bombing of a civilian plane). But stop claiming that elected president Zelenski and peaceful Ukraine compares to undemocratic Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and their violent dictators. You just make yourself look ridiculous by doing that. Now if you want to talk about a time that the United States has launched a totally unprovoked genocidal invasion of a peaceful democracy and systematically carried out war crimes there with the intention of permanently wiping that country from the map then do so. Obviously that is something the United States did countless times in the 1700s and 1800s against Indigenous nations and Northern Mexico but give me an example from after WW2 and not from the 1800s when countries were constantly invading other countries. Sure the United States has done many horrible things since WW2 such as conspiring with the British to get the government of Iran overthrown but give me a case where they did something like Russia is attempting to do in its barbaric invadion in the peaceful democratic country of Ukraine. Then explain how even if the United States has done such a thing how that justifies Russia doing the same horrible thing to Ukraine. Waiting for your answer that tries to justify the horrible genocidal Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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  882. ​ @ANDREW-ih7ku  True. Though it is worth wondering if the immense Russian casualty rate and Russian economic problems could lead to the collapse of Russia as the Soviet Union collapsed three decades ago. I believe that the Soviet Union had close to twice the current Russian population so if Russia today is suffering far more casualties than did the much more highly populated Soviet Union in Afghanistan does that mean that the Russian regime is in danger of falling and could Russia even fall apart? People in Russia's Asian territory who may not even be ethnically Russian must be wondering why so many of their young men have to die pointless deaths to try to conquer a country that is so far away from them. Add to that sanctions that are much greater than what the Soviet Union faced when it was in Afghanistan and the fact that Russia in recent years became more closely tied economically to the west so that sanctions have more impact than they would have had in the 1980s. I think as well that in the 1980s the Soviet Union did not have the current Russian problem of many hundreds of thousands if not millions of the most talented young men fleeing the country - not in the same numbers anyway. I also doubt that 1980s Soviet Union faced the same demographic collapse that Russia is facing today with a very low birth rate and relatively few young women to have babies. It can all certainly lead one to speculate if Russia is going to collapse based on how much worse things seem now than they were in the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
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  885. The nature of a peace deal is very simple and hasn't changed since Russia first invaded Crimea and Donbas in 2014. Russia stops its unprovoked genocidal invasion of Ukraine and removes all its forces from all of Ukraine including Crimea (including Sevastopol), publicly recognizes all of Ukraine as a separate sovereign nation and promises to never interfere in Ukraine again, agrees to hand over to the Hague or Ukraine all Russian troops accused of war crimes or terrorist acts for trial, agrees to pay full reparations to the people of the world (especially the poorest and most vulnerable) for any increases in food or fuel prices and food or fuel shortages they have dealt with due to Russia's unprovoked invasion and Russia agrees to pay full reparations to Ukraine as compensation for deaths and injuries, disruption of business, disruption of lives, mental health distress, destruction of public and private property and for de-mining and environmental restorations. And of course Ukraine joins NATO so that it is more secure and other NATO countries are more secure. The total reparations Russia will have to pay will certainly be trillions of dollars and it must be paid quickly as Ukraine and Ukrainians shouldn't have to wait years or decades to rebuild their country and themselves. Given that Russia is getting near bankruptcy this will mean that Russia will have to borrow almost all the money at high interest rates and it will take many decades for Russia to repay these loans but that's a good thing as it will help ensure that Russia doesn't have the money to rebuild its military for a very long time and that will make for a safer world. There is absolutely no reason for Norway or Saudi Arabia or any country other than Russia to pay for rebuilding Ukraine. The Russian military is like a gang of thugs that went into a shopping mall and for no reason at all attacked and killed and injured many people and destroyed much of the mall in an attempt to take it over. Obviously such thugs should pay fully for the damage done by their attack and should not be allowed to keep control of any of the mall. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was at least the sixth unprovoked genocidal invasion of a nearby country Imperialist Russia has carried out over the past three decades, each time intended to steal territory from another country. The previous 5 times the rest of the world just looked the other way and let Russia get away with it because the world wanted peace but each time the world let Russia get away with it the terrorist Imperialist Russian dictatorship just felt emboldened to carry out another invasion. The only way to ensure that Russia learns its lesson and finally understands that the age of empire is over is for Russia to suffer a complete defeat in this war and to retain none of Ukraine. And of course the rest of the world (especially China) must also learn this lesson. And obviously Russia cannot retain any of Crimea, not just because Crimea is part of Ukraine and Russia cannot be rewarded for its invasion but also because if Russia is allowed to keep Crimea then Ukrainian ports and grain exports will never be safe and Russia will be able to carry out food terrorism any time it wants. Obviously if Russia was a civilized, peaceful nation then that would not be a concern but unfortunately Russia is run by savage, barbarian Imperialists. Presumably as well Ukraine will demolish the bridge from Russia to Crimea. The above description of how the war must end may be achieved through Ukrainian victory on the battlefield or by Russia going broke (as seems likely to happen by next spring) or if necessary by NATO forces (especially air forces) assisting Ukrainian forces in destroying terrorist Russian invasion forces in Ukraine.
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  894. Aside from the fact that bombing Gaza, cutting off residents of Gaza including children from water, food, fuel, electricity and medical supplies, invading Gaza and then continuing with a racist, apartheid system that condemns Palestinians to spend their lives in crowded, impoverished prison camps will just cause more young Palestinians to become militants thus ensuring no future peace or stability for Israel there is another pragmatic matter to consider. If there is a full scale invasion into Gaza hy Israeli forces and they carry out massive raids into people's homes across Gaza then there is the possibility that any Hamas fighters who think they will be caught with hostages will decide to kill the hostages and get rid of their bodies and then try to melt into the Palestinian population. Thus I think that as in any hostage situation a blatant, aggressive effort to find and rescue the hostages can actually pose a great danger for the hostages. To rescue hostages one needs the element of surprise but with the whole world knowing that a large invasion into Gaza is likely there will be no surprise and the hostage takers will know well in advance that a large raid into Gaza is coming. That's very different than for instance the Israeli raid at Entebbe which caught the hostage takers by surprise. And Netanyahu should understand the difference because his brother took part in and died in the raid at Entebbe. I almost wonder if the Israeli government knows that an invasion into Gaza could lead to the deaths of many hostages but thinks that such deaths could be used to "justify" more brutal actions against the residents of Gaza and thus has decided to sacrifice the lives of many hostages to achieve their political goals. Or perhaps the Israeli government has made the decision that it would never accept the demands that Hamas will make for the hostages and thus has concluded sadly that the hostages are doomed anyway. Perhaps the Israeli government might have been willing to free 200 imprisoned Palestinians for 1 Israeli hostage but is not going to be willing to free 200 imprisoned Palestinians for each one of 150 Israeli hostages.
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  937. ​ @jallopenoman1126  I don't even like the United States for a number of reasons but you've got it very wrong. Russia didn't just have one fail. Just in the 20th century alone it lost wars to Japan, Germany, Poland - then got humiliated by Finland, won WW2 only because of massive western aid and because it was actually the whole Soviet Union, not just Russia, and had the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and free French and Polish force's fighting with it and then lost so badly in Afghanistan that the Soviet Union disintegrated and then Russia somehow managed to get humiliated in its first war against tiny Chechnya. And now Russian forces have been humiliated in Ukraine well into their third year of a three day special military operation and so far coming nowhere remotely close to their goal of conquering Ukraine while suffering 500,000 casualties and losing half of the army equipment that took 80 years to accumulate and also while being chased off of the Black Sea by a country with no navy. And of course Russia lost the cold war badly. Remember when the Soviet Union had a far bigger population than the United States and Soviet GDP could to some extent compete with American GDP? Those days are long gone. Now the United States has 200 million more people than does Russia and its population is rising quickly while Russia faces the prospect of demographic collapse and the United States has a GDP something like 13 times as big as that of Russia. Russia simply is not in the same league economically as the United States and China and certainly is not in the same league as the United States militarily - probably not with China either anymore. The sooner Putin realizes it the better.
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  958. Fareed goes full bore "What's the matter with kids today" middle aged man rant. Criticizing people who speak out against genocide while he casually and predictably has Zionists and their supporters from the establishment on his show and makes no serious effort to question their narrative (though that approach is common in the media right now). And on top of that he thinks that there must be something wrong with young people if they are protesting against occupation, oppression, apartheid, war crimes and genocide. What a bizarre take. I think that it's admirable and a sign of positive change that young people are standing up for justice and in particular calling out their own government and institutions for complicity in genocide. Someone once pointed out that the student protesters in 1970 who protested against the Vietnam War had self interest in protesting against the war because they themselves or their family members or friends might be drafted to be sent to fight in Vietnam so it wasn't just about being idealistic. Today's young people protesting against the genocide in Gaza are on the other hand often not personally threatened or even touched by the conflict but still (despite Fareed's claims) are engaged with the world and with their community which is why they are risking arrest and expulsion from university to stand up for what is right. I can barely stand to watch Fareed anymore but then he's not alone in the media in that regard. The genocide in Gaza and the response of much of the media has made clear that a lot of media members who seemed decent, humane and fair are anything but that when it comes to a situation in which white European Jewish Zionists are committing atrocities against the Palestinian people whose land they have stolen. Suddenly 75 years of brutal occupation are forgotten and genocidal actions by the Zionist oppressors are seen as reasonable behavior and any attempt to protest against genocide that targets Palestinians (a Semitic) people is claimed to be anti-Semitic.
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  984. ​​ @delboyg01  It's really not hard to understand. When the Ruble falls significantly against every major currency every imported product goes up in price significantly in rubles - TVs, cellphones, etc., etc. Go to a large department store and look at the items - clothing, water bottles, radios, plastic storage containers, etc., etc. How many are made in Russia? Probably none to barely more than none. Virtually every non food item in a Russian store has to be imported which means that they are going up dramatically in price for Russians no matter what propaganda the Russian government puts out. And Russia may grow a lot of food but given the climate there's a lot of food products that Russia has to import. In 2021 Russia imported 34 billion dollars in food products. At the rate things are going the Ruble could lose half its value which means that the cost of that imported food to Russian citizens could effectively double. It's as if in a sense Russian citizens suddenly had to come up with 34 billion dollars to pay extra food costs and that doesn't count all the other imported non-food products that Russians buy and Russians are already impoverished. And that doesn't take into account all the products that the Russian government and Russian companies import. An effective doubling of those costs will ultimately have to be paid by Russian citizens. Russian imports in 2022 were about 350 billion dollars or about 20,588 billion rubles. If the Ruble drops in value in half from where it was in 2022 then those same imports will cost about twice as much in rubles - that is about 41,000 billion rubles. Ultimately one way or another Russian citizens will have to pay that huge increase in the cost of imports to Russia. Russia can't survive just making grain products and fossil fuels and minerals and not importing anything. Russia imports a lot.
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  1023.  @patclark2186  a few things. 1. Russia tried that in WW1 and lost badly. 2. Soviet troops in WW2 were peasants defending their homeland against a brutal invader who planned to make them all slaves. Today's reserves are likely university educated white collar workers being ordered to risk their lives to invade a peaceful country in which they possibly have friends and family in a pointless invasion intended only to compensate for the personal insecurities of an insecure, weak leader. 3. In WW2 Ukrainian troops for the most part fought on the side of the Soviet Union. Today Ukrainan troops are fighting against the Russians. Russia is not the Soviet Union. 4. In WW2 the United States and Canada sent vast amounts of supplies to the Soviet Union to help it out. Today the United States and Canada and numerous other countries are sending vast amounts of supplies to Russia's opponent and have brought severe sanctions against Russia making it hard for Russia to import necessary goods. 5. In WW2 the Gerrmans had to fight not only the Soviet Union but also had to simultaneously fight the British, Americans, Canadians, free French, free Poles, Australians and others. Today Ukraine just has to worry about fighting Russia and is getting help from almost all those countries Germany had to fight on the Western front in WW2. 6. Russian citizens today (especually young Russians) are much more connected to the Western world then were Soviet citizens in 1941 and a lot of them like being connected to the Western world and don't appreciate Putin's efforts to make Russia a pariah state. Reportedly millions of young, talented Russians have fled the country due to the war. I can assure you that not many young taiented Soviet citizens fled the country in WW2 due to disgust over the government's involvement in the war. So overall this is a very different situation for Russia than it was in WW2 for the Soviet Union.
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  1050. Russia went from trying to conquer Ukraine in three days to taking well over two years to conquer a town and we're supposed to think it's the end of the world? Nope. The percentage of Ukraine controlled by Russia has barely changed since May 2022 and in fact overall Russia has lost more territory than it has gained since then. The trouble is that when people look at extreme closeup maps of the area around towns it looks big but then so does a map of your kitchen table if it's blown up enough. Ukraine is a large country by European standards and the amount of territory it gained here is completely miniscule compared to the size of Ukraine. And it took Russian forces over two years and the loss of huge numbers of soldiers and military equipment to take the town. If Russia takes another two years to take the next nearby town that Ukraine fortifies than Russia is going to be in serious trouble because within a year Russia is going to run out of stored military equipment in decent condition and within two years at most Russia is going to run out of stored military equipment in poor condition. And Russia is quickly depleting the liquid assets in its national welfare fund and the Russian central bank keeps increasing interest rates to try to prop up the Ruble and keep inflation from skyrocketing. And with virtually zero unemployment Russia has basically run out of available men to join the military. Russia plans to mobilize another 133,000 men but that will likely mean another 270,000 more men will flee Russia which means that Russia's workforce will lose 400,000 more men when there is already a huge shortage of workers. And that 133,000 new men for the Russian army will be equalled by Russian casualties in just four more months so in four months the Russian military will have the same number of men as today but the Russian workforce will be down 400,000 men.
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  1104. Erdogan is behaving like the Chinese government and wanting to suppress human rights not just in his own country but also in other countries as well when people protest against his government. It's clear that Turkey and Hungary are led by demagogues with little respect for full democracy or human rights and shouldn't be in NATO and that their memberships in NATO amount to marriages of convenience and that Sweden belongs in NATO far more than they do. And I'm not convinced at all that even as marriages of convenience it benefits NATO to have Turkey and Hungary because the time NATO most matters is in a major crisis and I feel no certainty that in a major crisis Hungary and Turkey would be there to support other NATO members. If Russia invaded Poland or Finland or the Baltic states would Hungary and Turkey unequivocally condemn such an invasion and take military and other action to help their NATO ally fight off the attack or would they would act indifferently? I think that NATO countries other than Turkey and NATO need to give serious consideration to signing an agreement to all leave NATO and immediately join a new similar organization which has higher standards for human rights and which would not let a single loose cannon member from vetoing the entry of a new member and would allow NATO to expel a member that no longer lived up to the standards of NATO and has become a loose cannon. A much bigger problem would be if an American MAGA political leader became president again and tried to take the United States out of NATO or just tried to disrupt NATO because of the MAGA affection for demagogues such as Putin. Erdogan and Turkey are a significant problem for NATO but the election of another MAGA American president would be an utter disaster for NATO and for the security of all of Europe.
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  1128.  @ИгорьВолков-э4ю  Ukraine is not in NATO and there was no sign it was anywhere close to becoming a member of NATO. Look it up. Also this invasion has made clear the attitude of Russian leadership and why so many Eastern European countries asked to join NATO to have some protection from Russia. Events this past month have shown they were right to fear Russia. Some countries in NATO have done terrible things but accepting countries into NATO to protect them from Russian imperialism is not one of them. Or to look at it another way, for thousands of years European countries fought countless wars with each other until WW2 made them all decide enough with fighting wars - let's just get along. Britain no longer has thoughts or warring with Spain and France and Germany no longer want to fight and Italy and the Netherlands have no interest in fighting with each other. And although Hungary's demagogue may have fantasies about reclaiming territory and Yugoslavia had a horrific civil war it is really only Russia out of all European countries that decided that regardless of what it suffered in WW2 it still wanted to treat other European countries as adversaries. Twenty years ago Putin could have made Russia the same as western European countries- a democracy with human rights wanting to get along with the rest of European countries the same way all other European countries decided to get along but instead Putin decided to treat the rest of Europe as adversaries and dreamt of recreating the Russian empire in Europe. That is completely his choice.
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  1206. ​ @dreamcage1801  I think the NBA could logically add 4 teams. Seattle and Montreal because they are by far the largest cities in Canada and the United States without an NBA team, New York because it is such a huge, wealthy city that has already shown it can support 3 NHL team and Las Vegas because it has shown with its hockey team that it will support professional sports teams and because it already has ties to the NBA. However the case for Vancouver is actually about as strong as the case for Las Vegas. The cities are about the same size and both growing quickly. In Vancouver's favour despite what happened 30 years ago: The population has risen from 1.6 million to 2.7 million and continues to grow quickly. In the 1990s American players seemed terrified of going to another country and some seemed to have the delusion that Vancouver was in the arctic even though it hardly ever snows there and an average winter night in Vancouver is warmer than an average winter night in Memphis where the previous team relocated to. Vancouver actually has some palm trees growing along the shoreline. But Vancouver is highly unlikely to have the insane unbearable hot temperatures that can happen in Las Vegas. Vancouver is considered one of the best cities in the world to live in and with the sea and the mountains has gorgeous scenery plus a gorgeous skyline. Plus unlike in San Francisco and in Las Angeles the ocean water is actually warm in the summer. Despite the previous team's pathetic record Vancouver fans were quite supportive of the team and over the past 30 years interest in the NBA has dramatically increased in Canada. Then there are concerns about Vegas. It's one thing for the city to support the hockey team that has had winning seasons but with the not particularly huge city getting NHL, NFL and MLB teams in just a few years can it really handle also adding an NBA team? It's a massive experiment to add 4 major professional teams to an average sized city in a very short time and hope that all 4 teams will be supported. I still say Las Vegas is a good choice for a team and that Vancouver could get a team in 20 years when it has more like 3.5 million people but it will not be a surprise if an NBA team in Las Vegas fails in attracting enough fans away from 3 other major sports teams in an average sized city, especially if unlike the Golden Knights it struggles to make the playoffs.
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  1232. Same thing happening with Trudeau's events in Canada. And the apologists for the Liberal government's five months of unequivocal support for genocide in Gaza are complaining about the disruption of photo ops instead of questioning why the Canadian government has done nothing of substance to show that it cares about the deaths of 30,000 people and the horrendous suffering of 2.3 million people under genocidal attack. The other year the Canadian and world media was obsessed about whether 5 wealthy people who decided on a whim to take a submersible of questionable quality to go see the Titanic graveyard would make it out alive. A lot of the same reporters and other people who cared so much about whether those five people would make it out alive and shed tears when they did not don't seem to care much about the horrendous suffering of 2.3 million Palestinians and the deaths of over 30,000 Palestinians and the wounding of over 70,000 Palestinians. I know that people are also suffering horribly in places such as Haiti, Sudan and Afghanistan and those people matter too but what is especially notable about the suffering in Gaza is that we know that if Biden, Trudeau and Sunak actually finally did something to stop it and called up Netanyahu and ordered him stop it and made clear that if he didn't they would take measures against Israel such as stopping any money and weapons from going to Israel and putting sanctions on Israel, its politicians and military leaders and promising to arrest and charge or send to the Hague any Israeli compliict in the genocide then Netanyahu would take about two seconds to stop the genocide and let aid trucks go in. On the other hsnd I don't know of such a simple, fast way to end the suffering in Haiti, Sudan and Afghanistan.
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  1241. A couple of points: 1: The American government doesn't run or control oil production and can't suddenly change it. And each American oil company will always produce as much as it can and makes sense given prices and costs. And already the United States is producing record amounts of oil, more than any country ever has before. And Canada, Brazil and Guyana have been significantly increasing their oil production. As far as I know Saudi Arabia is the only country that has large amounts of unused capacity and could quickly and easily increase its oil production as it normally tries to restrict its exports to keep prices high. 2: Hind sight is 20/20 but if NATO had in 1993 said that it would accept Ukraine as a member and Russia then invaded Ukraine in response then western sanctions against Russia would have been much more effective in 1993 because at that time G7 countries really did dominate the world economy as I believe that at that time G7 countries and Spain had the 8 largest economies in the world. Certainly at that time China's economy was in the same range as that of Canada at most as was the economy of India. And at that time Russia's economy was in a very bad place and it almost seemed that the Russian government was on the verge of bankruptcy. On the other hand in 1993 a lot of people thought that it was "the end of history" and that capitalism had won and that Russia would gradually become like any modern peaceful democracy and integrate with the rest of Europe and stop trying to control other countries. It would have seemed hyper aggressive to try to take Ukraine into NATO just when Russia seemed to becoming a friendly nation. And as well I doubt that in 1993 Ukraine would have had much capability to defend against a Russian invasion then. If western countries had wanted Ukraine in NATO they would have needed to quickly send their own troops into Ukraine to defend it though Russia would have called that NATO troops occupying Ukraine.
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  1314. ​​ @hugoguerreiro1078  Yes, culture can make a difference as can urbanization but the cost of housing can be a big factor too. In 1963 Ontario brought in a minimum wage of one dollar an hour. Today the minimum wage in Ontario is $15.50 an hour so a bit over 15 times as high. Sounds good but.... There is a recent article showing a 1963 advertisement for a nice new detached Toronto house for under $17,000. Would cost under $20,000 with an attached garage. Today a house like that in that neighborhood would cost close to two million dollars or about one hundred times as much as it did in 1963. So wages may have gone up 15 times in the past 60 years but the cost of housing has gone up more like 100 times. That is why so many people in their mid 30s in Toronto now find themselves living in small condos and struggling to pay off their mortgage and not seeing any path to buying the sort of house their parents or grandparents owned which would give them the space to consider having children. Would you have 6 kids when you live in a tiny one bedroom condo? And although Toronto and Vancouver in particular have exceptionally high prices there has been a huge surges in prices in pretty well every Canadian city. It's one thing for people in 1910 living on a farm or in a small town or even in 1958 living on a large lot in the suburbs to have a large family but it's quite a different matter for a couple living in a small condo in 2023. So "lifestyle" may be part of it but urbanization and housing costs and women having equal rights to education and jobs also play a part. And when real estate prices are so high to have both partners working is generally not a lifestyle choice - it's a necessity if a couple wants to pay the bills. Sure a professional couple will eventually be able to buy a house in Toronto but unlike the 1960s guy working at a car plant who got married and bought a house by age 25 the modern professional couple might not buy a Toronto house until they are 34 or so which gives them a lot less time to have children.
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  1323. The post office isn't opening up and monitoring every letter nor is purposely trying to increase the number of letters people receive that spout hate or misinformation or encourage self harm based on characteristics of the people receiving the mail. Social media companies on the other hand can observe and monitor everything on their platforms and reportedly do regularly direct content to you if they think that will increase their profits even if doing so might cause harm to the person receiving that content. I've never heard of the post office purposely sending a person lots of letters that they didn't request and were not specifically sent to that person by the sender let alone doing that with letters that spout hate or medical misinformation or encourage self harm. I've also never heard of the post office trying to groom adolescents to get addicted to sending letters constantly to the detriment of other things in their life. And if dangerous or disturbing content is being mailed to people and the post office finds out about it I think that the post office would likely do something about it. Also, whereas the post office provides an essential service ensuring that people get important letters and parcels and is a government agency focused primarily on providing an essential service the social media companies are private organizations focused on maximizing profits by providing entertainment to people and at times providing content thst serves organizations with questionable motives. Let's stay connected to reality - vast numbers of adolescents and teenagers have become addicted to social media and in a significant number of cases that is leading to real harm to the young people. The number of young people who are addicted to sending and receiving mail and are suffering mental health problems as a result is miniscule in comparison. One might even wonder if there is a single young person in the United States who falls into that category.
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  1357. @patriayvida6850  and exactly how does what happened in those countries justify an unprovoked, barbaric genocidal Russian invasion of Ukraine including countless daily Russian terrorist acts and war crimes? Even if the Ukrainian government had committed atrocities in all those countries it would not justify oppressive dictator Putin's horrific invasion of Ukraine. But do tell us about the Ukrainian attacks on civilians you claim happened in Yemen, Afghanistan, etc. And don't include the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan when Ukraine was just a small part of the Soviet Union. I want to hear your evidence that Ukraine as an independent nation committed horrific attacks in all those countries and even if it did how that justifies Russia's barbaric terrorist attacks on Ukrainian civilians and Russian attempts to cut off Ukrainian food supplies to the world to make the most vulnerable people in the world starve the same Russian government which itself has committed horrific terrorist attacks on civilians in Syria, Georgia, Chechnya and in Donbas and kills and imprisons political opponents and brutalizes any Russians who make the slightest sound of protest or protest silently and brutally treats any people it sees as "undesirable" such as gay people. Waiting for your answer. Are you against terrorist attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure or are you opposed to it. You can't say you're opposed to it unless Russia does it and if Russia commits terrorism then you support it. Though I'm getting the feeling that might be your position. But that would make you a complete hypocrite. And the United States has many people and publications which speak out against American war crimes. Just where the heck are Russian people and publications speaking out against Russian war crimes? Because I'm just hearing silence on the issue in Russia.
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  1360. ​ @mariamuithya1671 you're saying that the Libyans and Syrians who started violent civil was I their countries and Iraq's Sadam Husaain who invaded Iran and Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia and who like Assad in Syria and Gaddafi waged war against their own people weren't saved from war by NATO? Well, that's not surprising as they are not in Europe and not in NATO. Now why don't you blame NATO for China's invasion of Vietnam or Uganda's invasion into Tanzania or Rwanda's genocide or Rwanda's military activities in the DNC or China's aggressive against India or India's conflicts with Pakistan or the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan? Fact is that these wars did not take place in Europe and did not take place in NATO countries. So you completely miss the point that NATO has prevented Soviet or Russian attacks against NATO countries for over 70 years and as well there have been no wars in Europe between NATO countries after those countries had spent centuries fighting each other so the original post is right - NATO has very effectively stopped any wars in Europe in NATO countries which is a remarkable achievement. The closest thing to an exception was the conflict in Cyprus with Greece and Turkey supporting opposite sides but that wasn't in Europe proper and it wasn't really a full war between Greece and Turkey themselves and I doubt that Turkey was even in NATO then. Other places around the world could learn from the NATO example and bring in democracy, human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and form collective groups in which they agree to live peacefully with each other after histories of fighting wars.
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  1380. According to Wikipedia for the extremely difficult Normandy landings battle the allies had about three times as many troops (not counting navy and air force) as did the Germans. But I suspect that given that only 10,000 out of 156,000 Allied soldiers became casualties it is likely that many of those 156,000 landed after the beaches had been secured because surely a lot more than 1 in 15 of the first waves of allied soldiers were wounded or killed. I believe that a book I read about the Normandy landings said that soldiers heading in on one of the first waves were told beforehand that likely out of every 3 of them only one would get through the battle unscathed while 1 out of 3 woukd be killed and 1 out of 3 would be wounded. The Allies did have immense ability to bomb from the air and to shell from ships but the Germans had a heck of a lot of guns too and a much better physical position up above looking down at Allied soldiers on the beaches. Overall I think that the Ukrainians are in a better situation to break through Russian lines then the Allies were to secure the beaches on D Day. On the other hand the Allies took a very long time to break out of Normandy and in fact even a month to just capture Caen even with many advantages and if the Ukrainians can gain only a short distance of a few kilometers and then stall for a month that won't be much good because they don't have the immense advantages that the Allies had over the Germans in Normandy. Though at least as far as I know Ukraine doesn't have those darn hedge rows. Plus the current Russian army is clearly much more incompetent and dysfunctional than the German army was in 1944 and the current Ukrainian army is generally much more experienced than the Allied armies were in Normandy in 1944. And I suspect that the Russian army will be running very low on tanks by September and I think that now unlike the Germans in 1944 the Russians have tanks that do very poorly against the enemy.
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  1398.  @drvirus7804  NATO and the United States should have done a better job of dealing with Russia in the 1990s when Russia was struggling in terms of its military and economy. Heaven knows the end of the Soviet Union gave western countries a massive peace dividend they could have used to help all countries that had been in the Soviet bloc of countries. But it is also true that in the end it was Russian leaders who chose the route of autocracy and corruption and a system if filthy rich autocrats running things after the Soviet Union collapsed and in particular chose not to follow the path that basically all other European countries chose after the horror of WW2. Basically every other country decided after WW2 that thousands of years of wars between European nations was enough and that it was time to forget grievances both old and new and get along in peace with each other and that is what they have done. Russia on the other hand seems determined to maintain a state of perpetual antagonism and of potential war with other European countries and it is clear that Putin is stuck in a different era and dreaming of being the leader of a new Russian empire and that he refuses to accept the reality that Ukraine is not part of Russia. Any time he wanted to he could choose peaceful relations with Europe. Most European countries have thrown away their old militaristic past and are more interested in peace and prosperity than spending money on their militaries and certainly no country otger than perhaps China has any interest in attacking a nuclear power such as Russia and frankly even if Russia did not have nuclear weapons it is pretty absurd that any country other than China would ever invade Russia and that is especially true for western European countries. Surely you don't imagine that Britain or France or Germany or Denmark or Ukraine would ever attack Russia. Both Britain and France have significant nuclear arsenals and could attack their old enemies such as Spain, the Netherlands or Italy or Germany with nuclear or conventional weapons but the people and politucians of Britain and France would respond to such a suggestion with a big "NO! Why would we do that" and they would respond in the same way to a suggestiin that they attack Russia. You surely must have noticed how NATO countries are bending backwards and being extremely careful to avoid confrontation with Russia the past month despite Russia's horrific, brutal, genocidal invasion of Ukraine. So it is Russia which has refused to follow the path other countries in Europe chose to have peace in Europe and that is why countries which were formerly controlled by the Soviet Union asked to be let into NATO for their own protection from Russia. Just like other European countries Russia can choose peaceful relations with other European countries and with NATO any time it wants. Non-NATO countries such as Austria, Sweden, Switzerland and Finland get along fine with NATO and unlike very insecure guy Putin are not terrified of being attacked by the power of NATO despite NATO countries on their door step having nuclear weapons. The basic reality is that Putin is an insecure, paranoid man with delusions of grandeur and fantasies of running an old time empire and ridiculous fears that every other country he sees wants to invade Russia. May his replacement choose peace with Europe. And yes I know that in many cases NATO countries, especially the United States, have chosen to go to war elsewhere in the world but I am talking only about their behaviour in Europe.
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  1411. Would you let a greedy, self centered child bully and abuse other children and steal their property just because the bullying child will have a tantrum and emotional breakdown if you stop them from bullying other smaller children? Of course not. If imperialist Russians are going to have a tantrum and emotional breakdown if the world stops them from occupying Ukraine and oppressing its people and stealing its resources that's on them and is absolutely no reason to let imperialist Russia invade and occupy any country it wants. Should the world let British people who miss the days of empire invade and occupy countries that used to be in the British empire so that those British imperialists don't get frustrated and angry that they no longer get to occupy the lands of other people and oppress those people? Of course not. Over the past three decades imperialist Russia has launched at least six unprovoked imperialist invasions into nearby countries to steal territory from them and it serms that imperialist Russian leaders stuck in the 18th century era of European imperialism are nowhere done with their invasions into other countries. In WW2 Britain, Canada and France decided to intervene after just three German imperialist invasions into other countries. Far past the time when western countries should decide enough is enough with imperialist Russian invasions and should intervene to help drive Russian invaders out of Ukraine so that imperialist Russian leaders finally understand that the 18th century is over. And also time that they made clear to Zionist colonists in Palestine that the era of European imperialism is long gone and that it's time for them to dismantle their racist, colonialist, brutally oppressive apartheid system and let Palestinians have freedom and their human rights respected. Both imperialist Russians and Zionist colonists seem stuck in the 18th century and need to move into the 21st century and recognize that they don't have the right to oppress other peoples.
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  1487. @StephenDavies43  the behavior of the United States towards Cuba has at many times been wrong but the Cuban missile crisis was about ....want to take a guess? Missiles. In particular nuclear missiles. Neither NATO or the United States have placed nuclear missiles in Ukraine nor do they have any intention of doing so whereas in the Cuban missile crisis the Soviet Union was actively shipping nuclear missiles to Cuba and installing them there. So there is a vast difference between the two situations. On top of that Ukraine is not in NATO nor was it anywhere near joining NATO so Russian claims that it attacked Ukraine because of anger at NATO makes zero sense. If the Russian government was so angry at NATO then the obvious and logical thing to do would have been to attack NATO, not to attack a country that is not even in NATO. Though the Ukrainian government understandably feels totally betrayed and lied to by the Russians because it gave up nuclear weapons in return for a Russian promise to not interfere in Ukraine and then the Russians have invaded Ukraine three times and currently are carrying out a genocidal invasion intended to destroy Ukraine as a country and terrorize and then enslave its people. Thus it won't be surprising if after this horrific terrorist invasion of Ukraine the Ukrainian government decides that it wants to install nuclear weapons again to deter the aggressive Russians from launching another invasion. Could you blame them for not trusting the Russians anymore? Of course not.
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  1545. A lot of people are already nervous about flying even though it's quite safe compared to other activities. If Airbus executives, PR people or other representatives were to talk a lot about the dangers of flying in a Boeing plane many members of the public might generalize that message to all airplane travel in any plane and dicide to fly much less or not at all. That obviously would be bad for Airbus in the long run. And as someone else implied in a comment, if Airbus was to try to make a big deal about "lack of safety" of Boeing planes and then shortly after an Airbus plane happened to crash that would make Airbus look pretty bad plus it would increase the chance that some members of the public to think, "It doesn't matter which company is the manufacturer - all aircraft are unsafe". Political parties sometimes have a problem in that in their leadership debates different candidates criticize each other and then eventually when one candidate emerges the winner that person might have trouble getting the public to vote for them because the public remembers all the criticism of them by other candidates for party leadership. In a similar way if Airbus, Boeing and other manufacturers are competing to take control of aircraft manufacturing if in that process they are all criticizing each other and talking about the dangers of each other's planes then even if Airbus were to emerge the victor which controls the vast majority of the aircraft market both airlines and potential passengers would remember the criticisms of Airbus planes made by other manufacturers during the fight for dominance. Mind you, "Where's the beef" seemed to work out okay but those TV commercials never questioned something as important as safety.
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  1553. Stunning how Zionists can delude themselves and not see reality when it is plain to see. Israel is just one of many white racist colonialist apartheid oppressive regimes that racist white European Imperialists set up all around the world after invading the land of non-white people on another continent with the attitude that non-white people are inferior and don't matter so it is ok for Europeans to invade and steal the land and oppress the native people. Arrogant racist white Europeans set up such racist colonialist apartheid states all around the world, Israel is different in that it was set up by extremist white Jewish Europeans who arrogantly thought that their religion was superior to the religions of the native people whereas other similar colonialist apartheid states were set up ny extremist white Christian Europeans who arrogantly thought that their religion was superior to the religions of the native people. Israel was also different in that it was set up ridiculously late in 1948 when European colonialism was on the decline and a number of other white racist colonialist apartheid oppressive states had already been dismantled and when within 17 years virtually all other such colonialist apartheid states would be dismantled. The other way in which the racist colonialist apartheid oppressive israeli state differs from all the other such states is that it still carries on its oppressive ways today whereas all other such colonialist apartheid states are now gone and in those places the native people now have freedom and equal rights in law. That third difference is of course the reason why there is never any peace or stability for Palestinians and Zionists in Palestine and has not been one day of peace and stability for 75 years. Only when there is an end to the racist, colonialist apartheid opporessive Israeli system and Palestinians have freedom and have their basic human rights recognized can there be peace and stability for the region.
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  1554. In a way I admire him for at least being honest and saying that Brexit has been an economic disaster for Britain but still it is amusing to hear him claim that Brexit leaders wanted to leave the EU but not leave the EU. This fantasy of some pro-Brexit politicians and their supporters that Britain could leave the EU club but still have all the rights of being in the club was a big part of the problem with the vote. Pro-Brexit politicians should have clearly said to their followers that if Britain leaves the EU then Britain will lose certain rights in the EU. Instead I think that some or many pro-Brexit voters had the delusion that one could get a divorce and lose all the obligations of marriage while still getting the right to drop into the old home anytime and get a home cooked meal and get one's clothes washed and have a relaxing bath in the Jacuzzi thus giving up nothing. That's not how divorces work. I had been wondering lately if there was a way that Britain could regain an open trade market with the EU without formally being a member but the article I read said that countries that are in that setup have no representation in the body that runs the EU and Britain may not be happy with that. In 2022 Russia effectively followed in Britain's footsteps cutting off virtually all ties with Europe,. its biggest and closest trading partner in what could be called Rexit and has thus created an economic disaster in Russia. One would have thought that after seeing how badly the British economy had been damaged by Brexit that Russian leaders would have been smart enough to not go through with Rexit but Putin and his colleagues have never shown themselves to be particularly bright. Just like the Brexit leaders they just thought, "We don't need Europe that much bevause we have the whole world to trade with". Big mistake for both Britain and for Russia.
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  1563. ​ @real_lostinthefogofwar  When the Soviet Union broke up the majority of people in Crimea and in every region in Ukraine voted to stay in Ukraine and not join Russia. People in Crimea who wanted to live in Russia should have done the same sensible thing thst people anywhere else in the world would have done and moved to Russia in the 1950s if that is where they wanted to live and certainly have moved to Russia by the 1990s instead of trying to start a rebellion. They needed to understand that Ukraine was no longer part of the Russian empire and go to Russia if they wanted to live in Russia. Imagine if people of British background staged a rebellion in Kenya and attempted to cut off part of Kenya to make it British again even though most people in that region had voted to stay part of Kenya and then imagine that Britain invaded Kenya again to help those British rebels steal part of Kenya. That would be ridiculous just as it is ridiculous for people of Russian ancestry in other countries that used to be part of the Russian empire trying to cut off and steal parts of those countries against the wishes of the local population to try to make those areas part of Russia again. That of course is ridiculous. Maybe Ukrainian people committed an atrocity out of their terror that Ukraine would again be under brutal occupation and oppression by the imperialist Russian regime and that is totally unjustifiable. But it doesn't change the fact that all of Ukraine including Crimea deserves to be free of Russian occupation and oppression and that people in Ukraine who want to live in Russia should just be logical and sensible and move there. There are a fair number of Germans who retire to Spain. Imagine if those Germans in Spain starting rebelling and trying to cut off and steal part of Spain to make it part of Germany. That would be ridiculous - just like it is ridiculous for people in Ukraine who want to live in Russia trying to cut off and steal part of Ukraine.
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  1587. ​ @incognito-px3dz  Actually inflation in North America was very low for decades and rose only recently because Russia and Saudi Arabia ended their production war for control of the oil market and cut oil production and because Russia invaded Ukraine and because China kept having lockdowns. Neither the government of the United States nor the government of Canada had anything to do with that. North American governments and other governments around the world understandably did have a lot of pandemic restrictions to save lives and that did cause a lot of well paid people to work from home and nof go anywhere for two years which meant that they saved a lot of money - money they started spending when pandemic restrictions were reduced and that contributed to inflation in the past 18 months but that doesnt change the fact that governments needed to have pandemic restrictions to save countless lives. It is also the case that in the past couple of years North America has come out of its deepest recession since the 1930s and it is understandable that that would cause prices to rise. Biden took over when the American economy was in a deep, deep recession and has brought the United States out of that recession and created a booming economy with great economic growth and virtually record low unemployment rates. That understandably means that prices have gone up since the depths of the pandemic recession but having a booming economy with record low unemployment is still a good thing and a lot better than staying in a deep recession. And now American inflation is back down very low so the recent inflation that occurred due to cutbacks in Russian and Saudi oil production and the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Chinese lockdowns and North America coming out of a deep pandemic recession is likely a temporary aberration in a long period of decades with low inflation rates. There are certainly places in the world where inflation regularly diminishes the value of peoples' savings but generally that has not been the case in North America for a long time as painful as the inflation over the past couple of years has been.
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  1646. Pick an American city - pretty well any American city. The United States has a huge problem with crime including violent crime including murder and aggravated assault and rape. Should the American government behave just as viciously as the criminals by putting walls and barbed wire fences around that city and preventing anyone from leaving and then cutting off all water, food, electricity, fuel and medical supplies from everyone in the city and then launching a huge bombing campaign against the locations of criminal gangs even if that means that vast numbers of civilians including many children will be killed and wounded? Should the government then launch a brutal full scale military invasion into the city to take out the criminals even it means that many more civilians will be killed or wounded? Apparently your answer is that yes American governments should do that even if as in Palestine the government ends up killing and wounding vastly more people than the criminals ever did because you apparently think that governments should behave in the same way as criminals and terrorists and not follow any rules. And of course you ignore the obvious fact as stated in the video that the white, racist, colonialist fully fledged apartheid Israeli state is not an innocent party but rather has brutally oppressed Palestinians in their own land for over 75 years. I condemn the violent actions of Hamas against civilians but you should understand that if colonialist invaders steal almost all the land and force the people who were there before into large, overcrowded, impoverished prison camps and regularly bully and brutalize them that after that oppression has gone on for decades then some of the oppressed people might want to respond with violence against the people occupying their land. If you and your family and almost everyone in your region were forced from your homes and land by invaders and forced to live forever in large, overcrowded impoverished prison camps and regularly bullied and harassed by the forces of the invaders how would you respond after being stuck in that prison camp for decades? I'm still saying that attacking civilians is wrong but can you see how some Palestinians who have suffered so much and had all hope taken away from them might turn to violence due to their immense frustration and resulting anger?
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  1651. I was wondering about the legal basis for such seizures though still feeling little compassion or sympathy for corrupt Russian oligarchs who took advantage of their close relationship with Putin to rake in huge amounts of money they turned into assets around the world. During WW2 the Canadian and American governments seized the assets of people of Japanese origin and although I believe that after the war the American government might have returned the assets or provided compensation the Canadian government did no such thing. And in many cases governments have put citizens from a minority in a position in which they have no choice but to sell their homes, businesses and other property in a very short time at a discounted price (e.g. people of South Asian background forced by Idi Amin to quickly leave Uganda) Though obviously corrupt Russian oligarchs in league with a horrible demagogue like Putin are hardly an oppressed minority. The question that came to my mind was "If governments of western countries were able to so quickly discover what assets Russian oligarchs had and seize them then why is it that they show such complete impotence in their failure to track down and seize or at least tax the massive assets hidden away abroad of wealthy western citizens". It's generally understood that governments and their revenue agencies tend to audit and go after ordinary middle class people but seldom go after wealthy people hiding assets overseas because those wealthy people have expensive lawyers and accountants capable of creating a maze of personal holdings so complicated that tax departments don't want to deal with it. And it is not as if there aren't very concerning relationships between politicians and wealthy people and corporations and their lobby groups. And so we seldom read or hear much about the holdings of western wealthy people and corporations unless something unusual happens like the leaking of the Panama Papers. If western governments have been able to so quickly seize the assets of Russian oligarchs then they need to be asked why they have been so inactive in seizing or taxing the assets of wealthy western citizens which have been earned and/or transferred abroad by questionable means.
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  1653. ​​ @Calebgoblin  True that it is not literally Karma in that the Russian citizens freezing didn't start the war and that Putin almost certainly didn't even ask his generals or members of his government if they wanted a war, let alone asking regular citizens. I think that it comes back to the fact that it's very hard to cause the overthrow of a foreign dictator by making him suffer becsuse he will be immune from being directly effected by actions against his country such as sanctions or bombing and thus whether rightly or wrongly some will suggest actions against a dictator's country that make the people suffer in the hope that the suffering citizens will respond by overthrowing their dictator. I think that people expressing amusement that Russia is suffering massive infrastructure, electric and heating problems after Russian leaders threatened to do that to Europe generally don't have a built in desire to see average Russian people suffering but do hope that this might cause Russian people to start opposing Putin's regime and also hope that the difficult situation in Russia will hinder Russia's ability to inflict more damage on Ukraine. Though of course when the internet is flooded with Russian trolls rejoicing in war crimes against Ukraine and regularly threatening nuclear war against western countries it is understandable that some people have begun to believe that all Russian people are supporting the horrific Russian invasion into Ukraine and thus have developed hate for all Russian people as unfair as that may be.
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  1668. ​​​ @Whoisthis1111  Actually this accomplished a lot of things already. Ukraine has shown the west that there is no red line against attacking Russian territory which is a good lesson for western countries which have been restricting the use of their weapons. Also, Ukraine has had to spread its forces along the whole border because Russian forces could attack anywhere whereas Russia could leave vast sections of its border undefended and concentrate its forces in active battle areas because western countries had indicated that they didn't want Ukraine to invade Russian territory. Russia has now lost that luxury and will now need to spread its forces all along the border the same as Ukraine has had to do throughout the war. Ukraine has now captured a huge number of Russian conscripts which puts Putin in a very difficult political position. Ukraine has shown the world including China that there is no red line against invading Russia. Surely someone in Putin's circle must be bright enough to understand that that is a horrible thing for Russia as someday China will take advantage of that and invade Russia and right now Russia has moved a lot of its anti aircraft systems and troops away from its border with China and Russia is very vulnerable to a potential Chinese invasion. Over one hundred thousand Russian refugees have now fled to Moscow where they will be telling other Russians that despite his promises Putin can't be relied upon to protect Russian people from Ukrainian forces. No doubt the families of captured Russian conscripts will be telling people the same thing. Ukraine has gained more territory in a week than Russian forces gained in the past 12 months at the cost of vast losses of men and equipment. Finally, Putin has been humiliated in the eyes of the world and in particular Chinese leaders will be exasperated by Putin's war and the pathetic performance of his troops. And by next summer a lot of things are going to be worse for Russia both economically and militarily. Putin has really gotten himself into a mess.
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  1686. This isn't about the border or fentanlyl. Very little fentanlyl enters the United States from Canada and I'm guessing that it crosses the border the other way as well as do migrants. For many years Canada has had a major issue with migrants crossing into Canada from the United States. Quebec in particular has at times been overwhelmed with migrants entering from the United States. Migrants would show up in New York or some other American city and head straight for the border. And it's the responsibility of the United States to control its own borders. Trump is upset about migrants being on American territory illegally but neither Canada nor Mexico can enforce American laws on American territory. And obviously if Trump didn't care about his own vice president Mike Pence being threatened with death by Trump's own mob he certainly doesn't care about poor, homeless people dying of fentanlyl overdoses. Trump cares only about Trump. By far the biggest problem on the Canada/U.S. border is the problem of American guns being smuggled into Canada and then being used in crimes. If Trump really cared about the border he would be announcing much tighter gun control laws for the United States to reduce the flow of guns from the United States to Canada, Mexico and other countries. So this isn't about the border or about fentanlyl. Nobody knows what it's about. Even Trump probably doesn't know what it's about except that he likes to smash and destroy things that are working well already. Imagine a chimpanzee with a hammer left alone to look after a watch and clock store. A chimpanzee that thinks it can "fix" the watches and clocks by smashing them with the hammer. That's how Trump thinks and behaves. Watch the Kids in the Hall skit about the completely incompetent car mechanic repeatedly smashing a car engine with a hammer to try to "fix" the engine. It's on YouTube. That's exactly the attitude and ignorance and approach Trump demonstrates any time he claims that he's going to "fix" something. Don't assume any knowledge, competence or coherent, logical thought, words or actions. Donnie doesn't know the meaning of those things.
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  1697. Early in the war someone said that NATO could help Ukraine simply by constantly flying groups of military planes towards Russia only to have them swerve away just before entering Russian airspace. The Russian government couldn't ignore that and would need to divert resources to be prepared in case one of those groups actually entered Russia with violent intent. I figure that the same tactic would work well against Belarus. Just keep sending groups of NATO aircraft towards Belarus constantly and tell the Belarus government that that NATO tactic will continue until Belarus moves its troops away from its border with Ukraine and Lukashenko makes a clear public statement that Belarus will not interfere in the war in Ukraine (for what that's worth). Perhaps even demand that Wagner troops move away from the border with Ukraine. I presume that the leader of Wagner troops in Belarus knows that his small force would quickly be wiped out if it ever invaded Ukraine and then was attacked by NATO air forces. Though personally I have no trouble with NATO forces invading Belarus to overthrow the dictatorship and bringing democracy to Belarus. I suspect that if they told the Belarus military to just stand down out of the way because the problem is with the dictatorship, not the Belarus military, that a significant proportion of the Belarus military would do just that. Russia certainly doesn't have the troops available to protect Belarus from Poland, let alone from NATO, so I think that Belarus would fall to a NATO force very fast, almost certainly within a week. And with Belarus a democracy free from Russian control Ukraine, Poland, Finland and the Baltic states would all be safer and Russia might realize that keeping Kalingrad no longer made sense. The Russian trolls would rant about NATO not really being a defensive alliance but the truth is that Belarus showed itself to be a threat by allowing Russian forces to invade Ukraine from Belarus in February 2022 and by continuing to have Russian forces on its territory during the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine and by its recent troop movements towards the border of Ukraine. I know that trying to intervene in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq to "build a democracy" did not work well but I think that there would be more success in Belarus.
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  1717. It's funny when American journalists looking at a situation on the far side of the world first ask about what recent events mean for American security. The United States currently has far more military and economic power than any other country in history has ever had. For a very long time no country has ever thought seriously about invading the United States. Certainly the various Syrian rebel groups that just overthrew Assad are not planning to invade and conquer the United States. It's really bizarre how paranoid and terrified of the rest of the world many Americans are. The more powerful the United States becomes the more paranoid Americans become in the delusion that lots of other countries around the world are scheming and planning to invade and conquer the United States. In the summer of 1940 Britain found itself facing German bombing raids and the potential of German invasion and had to worry about Germany's allies including Italy and the Soviet Union and also had to worry about what the empire of Japan was up to. Despite all that none of the British people whom I've known and who lived through that period in 1940 and 1941 talked as if they were as terrified then as Americans are now. And even today people in most countries aren't obsessed with fear about their country's security because of events in Syria. Are journalists from Ireland, Trinidad or Singapore asking "What do events in Syria mean for the security of our country?"? Of course not because even though these are tiny countries compared to the United States the people and journalists and politicians in them aren't paranoid and terrified that everyone else in the world wants to invade and conquer their countries.
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  1728. Have heard boxers say that being angry in the ring is actually a bad thing - that an angry boxer behaves recklessly and not with composure and control and so makes mistakes and leaves himself vulnerable to being hit back hard. As well his energy might be wasted as he takes wild swings that do no damage to his opponent. Maybe the same is true in war, especially for a country like Russia in which one man has a monopoly on power and nobody around him dares challenge him. The Ukrainians severely damaged Putin's beloved bridge on one of his biggest birthdays and that comes on top of his army running like scared rabbits in various places on the battlefield, Russian TV commentators openly criticizing the course of his war, 700,000 young men fleeing the country to avoid conscription on top of heaven knows how-many young people who had already fled the country, great resistance to the conscription from some communities and a war that was supposed to be a quick 3 day operation turning into a total disaster in which much of his army has been destroyed. Putin is angry that nothing is going right and so like an angry boxer he's making more and more mistakes. A good executive or politician needs to have enough self confidence to have high quality people around him and to encourage them to tell him when he is doing something completely stupid. Putin though is a weak, paranoid little man with no self confidence and so wants around him people of no particular great ability who are completely servile and spineless and will never question him when he does something stupid. That's not good for him or for Russia.
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  1744. ​ @jcym9058 leaving aside the Falklands/Malvinas, I find it amusing that Russian propagandists don't understand so many obvious things, one being that after terrorist Russian forces invade territories of Ukraine and murder or drive out many Ukrainians that a "referendum" done under Russian occupation at the point of Russian guns is absolutely meaningless. It shouldn't have to be pointed out that Russia is a brutal dictatorship in which democracy has been crushed and that no election or "referendum" in Russia or any Russian occupied territories has any credibility. One other obvious thing that Russian propagandists can't seem to grasp is that if someone living in Ukraine wants to live in Russia the obvious and logical thing to do is to move to Russia. Western Canada is filled with people who are of Ukrainian background and who love Ukraine but any of them who want to live in Ukraine just move to Ukraine - they don't conspire with Ukraine to launch a terrorist invasion to steal territory from Canada and even if they suggested that the Ukraine government would not be interested in that because like almost all non-Russian, non-Serbian governments the Ukrainian government doesn't think its right to launch unprovoked invasions of other countries to steal territory - for civilized governments(and even for almost all barbaric governments) that behavior ended long ago. Russia's government should learn from that example and stop invading other countries to steal territory, something it has now done 6 times in just the past 3 decades.
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  1792. The Americans spent a decade or so in Vietnam fighting and even though it was disastrous for the Americans they still maintained a powerful military in Europe, the United States, Korea, Japan and other places throughout the war. I'm wondering if much will be left of the Russian military if it tries to continue fighting this war into next summer just 16 months into the conflict. Russia would still have a lot of military planes and air defence systems and submarines and some ships and of course lots of nuclear weapons but orher than a token of troops alomg their southern border will anything be left of their land army by next summer? The UKs spy chief says that Russian forces in Ukraine are already running out of supplies and muniyions and that the war's costs to Russia in terms of men and equipment have already been staggering. This seems especially problematic for Russia as it seems to drawing on miltary equipment accumulated over decades during the Soviet era when of course the Soviet Union was a much bigger country than Russia is today. How long would it take for Russia to rebuild all those stores of equipment that it is losing so quickly? If it is true that the Russian army is already running out of supplies and ammunition then how the heck is the Russian military going to continue this campaign into next summer? (especially as Ukraine likely gets more and more Himars which have a habit of destroying Russian ammunition stores) This winter could be very hard for Europe as gas prices soar but it seems that might just be a one off because at this rate Russia's resolve to fight this war will be broken long before the following winter.
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  1807. As always the Zionists who invaded Palestine and stole and occupied the land and who have brutally oppressed Palestinians for 76 years have decided to follow a policy of more violence, war and oppression instead of choosing peace and justice for Palestinians. So the Zionists decided to choose the same policy of aggression that has always just led to more conflict and violence and never to peace. The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. According to a representative of Israeli hostages last October 10th Hamas offered to release all the Israeli hostages in return for the IDF not invading Gaza but Israel turned down the deal and instead chose to start a genocidal war against the Palestinians locked ij the overcrowded impoverished Gaza prison camp. That of course led not only to the Gaza genocide but also to conflicts between Israel and Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis. None of the war, conflict, violence, destruction and suffering of the last 12 months was necessary but these horrific things are what the Israeli regime chose over peace. Over a million Lebanese citizens have now had to flee their homes because of Israel's decision to choose conflict instead of peace but of course the leaders of the Zionist regime occupying Palestine are arrogant and racist and thibk that nobody other than Zionists matters or has any rights. Which is not surprising. If they felt otherwise they would not have so brutally oppressed Palestinians in their own land for the past 76 years. Of course ultimately the only way to achieve peace is to end the injustice and let Palestinians be free in their own homeland. As long as the oppression continues there will never be any peace in Palestine. Apartheid South Africa eventually figured that out but those in charge of Apartheid Israel still haven't figured it out.
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  1819. Iran, North Korea and Syria may not worry about western sanctions due to helping Russia because they are already international pariahs but China has to worry not only about international sanctions and the possibility of massive tariffs if it gave significant aid to Russia but also the possibility that non-Chinese companies would flee China and move manufacturing elsewhere even more than is already happening. A lot of companies got burned and suffered huge losses due to having investments in Russia and if tensions between wealthy democratic countries and China dramatically increased because China started helping Russia I think those companies would try to get out of China as quickly as possible to minimize potential losses. I hope that Communust China's leaders are very aware that helping Russia gives China no economic benefits and will actually potentially cause massive economic losses for China. It's actually in China's interest if Russia loses this war badly and is driven out of Ukraine because then Russia will be very weak and susceptible to control and influence by China and because China's economic interests are served best by global stability and if Russia loses that will be a lesson to Russia and other countries to not start pointless unprovoked wars. In fact (although I am skeptical about this) I have heard the theory that China tricked Putin into thinking he would have great support from China for this war whereas China's leaders never had any thought of helping Putin and hoped that Russian forces would get bogged down in a quagmire in Ukraine and thus Russia would become become weaker and thus more dependent on relations with China.
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  1823. I can't imagine the EU letting Turkey join for a number of reasons. One would be the massive financial payments that Turkey would receive as a member of the EU. Poland is now by far the largest recipient of such payments and Turkey has over twice the population of Poland and the Turkish population is growing and the gdp per capita in Turkey is much lower than that in Poland and the Turkish currency is collapsing and unstable. Can't imagine how big the EU payments to Turkey would be. Sort of makes me wonder how big EU payments to Ukraine would be if Ukraine joins the EU given that Ukraine has a fairly high population and was quite poor by European standards before the war and now the country has been devastated by war. Let us hope that Ukraine gets all the reparations it deserves from Imperialist Russia to rebuild fully and better along with getting full reparations for everything else (eg compensating families if a member has been killed or wounded). As far as Turkey joining the EU, I don't think that the EU wants to add a huge country run by a demagogue and with a justice system that even very few citizens of that country trust. As well Turkey shares borders with Iran, Iraq and Syria among other countries. Someone commented that the EU is not going to want to have a border with those countries and I think that they're right. As well, given the recent European political crises regarding refugees from the Middle East I don't think that Europe wants to add to that influx large numbers of Turkish economic emigrants whether or not one can ascribe that reluctance to racism, xenophobia or to more justifiable reasons such as concern about such an influx creating a downward pressure on wages. Again this makes me wonder about Ukraine joining the EU and how people in the EU and in Ukraine will feel if after Ukraine joins the EU large numbers of young Ukrainians leave Ukraine to live and work in Western Europe. I think that if both Ukraine and Turkey joined the EU then people in countries such as Germany and France would get fed up with helping to financially support those countries and demand that their countries leave the EU and then the whole EU would collapse. Better that Turkey (and possibly Ukraine as well) simply get a free trade deal with the EU.
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  1829. Pretty unfair of the west to delay sending so many weapon systems for so long and then complain about Ukraine not doing the impossible without having adequate weapons. If in April 2022 the west had agreed to send patriot systems, tanks, fighter jets, long range missiles, etc to Ukraine then the the Ukrainian military would control a lot more territory now. Frankly there was far too much worry about what might annoy Putin. It was clear early on in the war that Ukraine was fighting not only for itself but also to defend all of Europe against Russian imperialism and thus deserved all the support western countries could offer and as quickly as possible. All those western weapons built to defend Europe against Russian imperialism don't do any good just sitting in western Europe or in North America. I think that if western countries keep complaining about how slow Ukrainian progress is or complain about Ukrainian strategy then Ukraine should say to them, "Ok. Enough talk from you folks - come to Ukraine with your own forces and demonstrate how to advance quickly against massive fortifications with virtually no air power and very limited long range missile". Guess that wouldn't be very diplomatic. I think that the leaders of the Ukrainian military know the situation well and know the best strategy and don't need advice from anyone. Ukraine should also question why the heck western countries haven't done a better job of preventing western technological products from ending up in Russia and even in Russian weapons. Ukrainian forces and civilians should not be getting attacked by Russian weapons which include western components.
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  1840. You seem to forget that the Palestinians are a Semitic people with ancestral roots to the ancient Jewish people who lived in Palestine 2,000 years ago and that the ancestors of current white, Jewish Zionists were overwhelmingly white European people who converted to Judaism and that the few ancestors they hsve who were living in Palestine left that regions well over a thousand years ago. For a bunch of light skinned Eastern European white people to show up in a non-white region of the world and claim that it is their homeland and that they have the right to steal the land from people who stayed there over the centuries because those white people have a few ancestors who lived in Palestine and then left well over a thousand years ago is completely ludicrous and nonsensical. Still have yet to hear a Zionist make an argument that is logical or makes any sense. Probably because there is no logical argument to justify the Zionist invasion into Palestine and the attacks on Palestinians and the theft and occupation of Palestinian land and the brutal oppression of Palestinians by Zionist invaders for the past 75 years. 2,000 years ago a lot of cities in India were Buddhist and there have always been some Buddhists who lived in India but that does not mean that it would be right for American Buddhists to invsde India and steal and occupy the land and create a Buddhist state and force all the non-Buddhist people in India to live in overcrowded impoverished prison camps. 2,000 years ago the ancestors of Hungarians lived somewhere in Russia but that does not mean that Hungarians should invade, steal, and occupy that region of Russia. 2,000 years ago almost all the ancestors of people currently living in Britain were living somewhere else. If every group of people had the same fanatical ideology as Zionists then the entire world would be in a constant state of war as everyone tried to invade and steal and occupy any land where there ancestors or people of their religion or culture lived 2,000 years ago. And there is nothing special about 2,000 years ago. If people thought like fanatical Zionists they would be invading territory where their ancestors or people of their religion lived 10,0000 years ago or 20,000 years ago. At one time Palestine was controlled by Egypt - at another time by Persia. Why not say that Egypt or Iran should regain control of Palestine?
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  1878. American forces won most battles in Vietnam. It's just that the American public was not as willing as the Vietnamese public to put up with the casualties in a long guerrilla war, especially as the Americans had the option to just leave and the Vietnamese did not. In Iraq and Afghanistan the Americans actually won quite quickly. In fact the Americans won twice in Iraq as later they defeated ISIS. Maybe the best thing to do in both countries was for the Americans to just leave after they had won instead of waiting years for local governments and militaries to get their act together, something that never really happened. Then we wouldn't have to see ludicrous comments like your comment that distort reality. And the Americans are not fighting in Ukraine. And if they did it obviously would be a very different situation than in Iraq and Afghanistan as Ukraine is a well organized united country fighting together against an invader whereas in Iraq and Afghanistan there was no well organized government or military and there was no national unity and rather than a united people fighting against invaders there was huge conflict withing the country and a significant percentage of the population didn't want the Americans there and in some cases saw the Americans as invaders even if the Taliban invaded Afghanistan from another country and a lot of ISIS members were probably not Iraqi. So Ukraine is a completely different situation. Iraq and Afghanistan were like going into a home where everyone is fighting with each other and trying to get everyone to stop fighting permanently so that one can leave. Afghanistan is like going to a home where all family members are fighting against some thugs who are attacking the home and helping the family fight off the thugs.
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  1888. It's still playing with fire for Putin to decide to launch even a limited attack on NATO while much of the Russian military is bogged down in Ukraine. If NATO countries did nothing in response other than cutting off supplies to Ukraine then it might help Russia but it would be naive of Putin to assume that will happen. If NATO countries in Europe instead decide to strike back while the Russian military is tied up in Ukraine then Russia will be in serious trouble. If I remember correctly even excluding Turkey and the United States NATO has more planes than does Russia. And Finland alone has vast numbers of reserves - 900,000 troops - and I don't think that includes the regular troops. Though a lot would be held in reserve those left in reserve would be available if Finland's war time force of 280,000 suffered deaths or injuries. If European NATO countries responded to a Russian attack with a full scale attack on Russia it's hard to imagine how Russia could muster enough trained men and equipment to fight that attack off. And surely Russia has to worry about the possibility that if all of its troops are occupied fighting Ukraine and NATO China might see that as an excellent time to take back all that land in Asia that China says Russia stole in the 1800s and China wants back. Not to mention the possibility that restive regions in Russia might start rebelling if they know that the entire Russian army is occupied. Of course, there is the worry that if NATO countries attacked Russia in response to a Russian attack on NATO then Russia might uee a nuclear weapon but frankly any restrictions on starting a war against a country with nuclear weapons should be gone once that country attacks you - You're not just going to passively put up with Russian attacks without responding. As well, even if NATO didn't respond with a full scale attack on Russia NATO countries would react by dramatically increasing expenditures on their militaries and although one can't snap one's fingers and double the size of one's military that would mean that Russia would be under immerse pressure to quickly defeat and subdue Ukraine and then launch a full scale invasion of Europe all the way to Spain snd Britain before European countries had built up their militaries. Given that Russian forces haven't made a significant advance in 20 months Putin is going to have to be very lucky for his forces to quickly conquer Ukraine even if Ukraine received no aid from Europe or the United States.
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  1889. Miron just doesn't get it. That's pretty pathetic for a military analyst. As another analyst said, it's much easier to hit the archer with a shot than try to hit every arrow the archer shoots in midair flying at speed. It is a waste of Ukrainian military resources to be forced to keep using military supplies to try to shoot down every Russian drone and missile fired from Russian territory rather than hitting the Russian sites from which those drones and missiles are being fired. Destroy the archer and then no more arrows come. Russia can then at high expense try to build new military sites further away but that expense takes resources away from the rest of the Russian military and it will be much more difficult for the Russians to attack Ukraine from further away. That will greatly reduce the number of Russian attacks hitting Ukrainian infrastructure thus saving Ukrainian resources which can thus be reallocated from repairs of infrastructure to other important needs. As well, one analyst said that Putin's goal is to knock out the Ukrainian power grid not only to damage Ukrainian morale and hurt the Ukrainian economy but also so that Ukrainian military equipment factories can no longer function. The Canadian gun maker Gerald Bull understood very well the principle that if one side of a conflict can hit their opponent with long range weapons but their opponent does not have the range to fire back then the force with the greater range has an immense advantage. Even in the War of 1812 the British and the French understood that basic fact. Even a child could understand that fact. It's stunning that Ms Miron does not understand that fact. And just as stunning that the media would bother interviewing her on the topic which she doesn't seem to understand.
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  1923. So the Israeli government has slaughtered over 40,000 people to save about 6 hostages but then have killed at least 3 hostages in the process so might actually have a net gain of 3 hostages at a cost of 40,000 people dead plus whatever number of IDF soldiers have died? And at the same time Israel is holding vastly more hostages than are being held by Hamas and the two million Palestinians locked in the Gaza prison camp have effectively been held hostage by the Israeli regime their entire lives so the hypocrisy of the Israeli government is sky high. The fact that the Israeli government would call that "success" shows the very distorted nature of the "moral" outlook of the Israeli regime. Obviously the Israeli war against Gaza was never about saving hostages nor was it about getting rid of Palestinian militants as the war crimes committed by Israel will create hundreds of thousands more Palestinian militants who are willing to fight against their oppressors to achieve freedom for Palestinians in their own homeland. The goal of the Israelis is clearly to sadistically make Palestinians suffer as much as possible. Sick and disgusting. Remember that the Israeli government tried to make Hamas stronger so as to weaken secular Palestinian leaders and divide Palestinians and to try to create a "justification" for saying that Palestinians were too extreme to negotiate with. Israel wanted extremists to gain power over Palestinians and to represent Palestinians and in that Israel got what it wanted. It's certainly worked out for Netanyahu who would be out of power and likely would be on trial if it wasn't for the war. Imagine if hostages were being held in New York and the American government did to the people living in New York what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians locked in the Gaza prison camp and if American government actions had killed over 40,000 New Yorkers while saving only 6 or so hostages and killing at least 3 hostages. Imagine how the American people wouid react to that.
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  1968. I don't think that a billion dollars a year is enough to lease Crimea and Russia won't agree to pay that because that would be acknowledging that Crimea is part of Ukraine. Obviously Ukraine and the world are not going to accept the results of sham referendums Russia has orchestrated in Ukrainian regions such as the Donbas. For Uktaine to accept "neutrality" means to give up any protection by NATO countries that it may need the next time Russia invades Ukraine intent on occupying the country and suppressing its people. That's definitely not happening. After this horrific, genocidal Russian invasion of Ukraine the country of Ukraine will never again be neutral. It will always be strongly in opposition to Russia or at least until the barbaric terrorist regime in Moscow is replaced by a progressive, peace seeking, democratic government that has no desire to expand its empire. It would be a moment of justice if Russia agreed to fully compensate Ukraine and its citizens for all of the death, injury, suffering, disruption, displacement and damage the barbaric, terrorist Russian invasion has caused in Ukraine and some day that hopefully will happen but right now I see no sign that Putin's government is willing to pay the trillion dollars plus in reparations this would amount to as you suggest. Some countries have given immunity for war crimes to get an agreement to end conflict but right now when Russia is every day launching brutal terrorist attacks on Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure in attempt to destroy Ukraine entirely there is no way that Ukrainians who are suffering from these Russian terrorist attacks would agree to give amnesty to the Russian terrorists committing these war crimes. Sanctions against Russia should not be lifted until Russia has not only ended its genocidal invasion but also made full reparations to Ukraine (which could be in the trillions of dollars) and as I said Russia has thus far showed no sign that it is willing to pay such reparations. Really the best and most obvious peace treaty is for Russia to agree to completely end its genocidal invasion of Ukraine and to remove all of its troops from all Ukrainian territory (including Crimea and Donbas) and to recognize Ukraine as a fully independent state and to promise to never again interfere in any way in Ukraine and to promise to hand over all Russians guilty of war crimes from the lowest soldier to Putin himself and to agree to pay full reparations to Ukraine no matter how many trillions of dollars that may be. In return Western countries can agree to consider removing some of the sanctions on Russia once Russia has done all that and completely paid all reparations owed to Ukraine. That is an agreement that is fair and reasonable and would achieve peace but as I said unfortunately Russia is still not ready to agree to such terms so unfortunately the war will continue until Russia finally realizes that it has no choice but to do the right thing and sign such an agreement which very possibly might not occur until Ukraine has retaken all of Crimea and Donbas and driven all Russian forces out of Ukraine.
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  2090.  @samuelskinner7704  economic freefall in NATO? That's a rather careless use of the term freefall. Let's be as big more accurate and say that the economies in Canada and the United States are more or less stagnant now due to supply shortages and most importantly due to labour shortages likely greatly due to a lot of baby boomers retiring because they don't want to work in a pandemic but also because the labour supply simply couldn't keep up with the incredible growth of the economy since the second quarter of 2020. And of course it is the United States which by far is the biggest supplier of arms to Ukraine so yes the U.S. economy is not growing right now but it is certainly not in the deep depression your words suggest so there is no reason why the United States can't keep supplying Ukraine with large amounts of military supplies. It should be pointed out too that gasoline prices have fallen significantly in North America recently and that the United States and Canada are perfectly capable of providing their own fossil fuels with no need of any imports from Russia so I really don't see what would stop the United States and Canada from continuing to help Ukraine even if NATO countries in Europe decide to stop sending arms to Ukraine and even in Europe not all countries need Russian fossil fuels. And it goes without saying that Russia refusing to send fossil fuels to Europe when it is those sales which are to a large extent funding its war may not be the brightest thing to do.
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  2093. My but your memory is poor. Massive recession under Trump and massive increase in government debt under Trump - course he had to have huge tax cuts for the wealthy. Of course despite claims by Republicans the economy almost always does better under Democratic presidents. The difference is huge. Unemployment fell to near record lows under Biden. Of course prices will go up when one comes out of the Trump recession. And world wide inflation will.happen if Trump's hero Putin starts a genocidal war in Ukraine and if there are covid outbreaks in China that lead to shutdowns but obviously Biden doesn't control what Putin does nor what covid outbreaks occur in China nor can he stop baby boomers from turning 65 and retiring which is leading to labour shortages. You seem to have already forgotten that the United States was fighting a war in Afghanistan was president. Though of course the "great deal maker" Trump decided to give the country to the Taliban getting absolutely nothing in return. And you forget that Trump started a shooting war with Iran in which American soldiers suffered severe head injuries and well over 100 Canadian citizens and residents were killed. Didn't expect an apology from Iran but if Trump had even the tiniest bit of decency he would have apologized to those American soldiers and to Canada and to all the families of all those Canadians were killed in his shooting war. Course Trump has no decency so he hasn't apologized. Finally, you forget the obvious massive war that Trump has started He has incited a massive war in the United States between the racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, far right, white supremacist American Taliban in his MAGA cult and the rest of society. Maybe you just aren't very perceptive or maybe you live out in the woods and have little connection to society but Trump has done many things to severely damage America and he may possibly destroy the country entirely and send it into civil war so don't say he hasn't started any wars. You really need to start paying attention to what's going on and please stop posting things online until you have some basic knowledge of the horrendous things Trump has done. Because right now your post effectively amounts to you telling the world that you have absolutely no idea what has happened in the past 6 years.. Don't humiliate yourself that way.
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  2177. I haven't seen a single online comment wishing harm on the children of MAGA cult members though I have seen a lot of comments expressing sympathy for the children of MAGA cult members who will suffer because of their parent's decisions. People outside the MAGA cult feel sorry for all children who will suffer due to Trump's actions. But don't expect people to feel sympathy for racist, xenophobic, misogynist, homophobic members of the Maga cult who delight in cruelty towards anyone different than them and want to see the suffering of people they don't like and who voted for Trump because they hoped that he would viciously attack and hurt people they don't like while leaving them alone. And two big reasons why people may even be happy that Trump's actions are hurting Maga cult members are 1 - it's more fair if MAGA cult members have to experience some of the suffering. and 2 - more importantly people are hoping that if MAGA cult members suffer due to Trump's actions they might finally clue into understanding how horrible Trump is and how horrible MAGA cult leaders are and stop supporting them and voting for them and they might even develop an understanding of how wrong it is to be cruel to people who are different and to make them suffer. (as unlikely as that is) I'm thinking of a MAGA cult member who reportedly was denied emergency state government support he was entitled to after a disaster but told a reporter that that was ok with him so long as his Republican governor still went after LGBTQ people and women who were seeking an abortion. He hated LGBTQ people and women so much that to him denying LGBTQ people and women their basic human rights was more important than getting the disaster relief he deserved. I can't have sympathy for people that filled with hate and cruelty. Don't blame people outside the MAGA cult for what happens to children of MAGA cult members. Blame people in the MAGA cult for the decisions they made to hurt their own children. People saying that they are glad that a serial killer is locked up in prison does not mean that they are happy about the suffering that the children of the serial killer are going through or that they want those children to suffer. Don't imply that just because people say that they are happy to hear that a serial killer has been locked up and will never again be free that they want the children of the serial killer to suffer.
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  2214. It can't be helping the situation for Russia and OPEC that western countries such as Canada, the United States, Brazil and Guyana are all significantly increasing their oil production thus diminishing OPEC's share of the market and its market power. It's pretty hard for OPEC members to follow OPEC rules and curtail production when major competitors in the west refuse to play by these rules and instead try to maximize their production. Some have suggested that Saudi Arabia might try to flood the market to lower prices and force lots of American fracking companies out of the market. That would be disastrous for Russia, especially if those American fracking companies just went back into business as soon as prices went up again. If Russia is already struggling to maintain its oil infrastructure after two years of western sanctions then that problem is going to be significantly worse after 5 years and much, much worse after ten years unless Russia can figure out how to train enough experts to replace foreign experts and also create enough capacity to domestically produce all the components it needs to deal with deterioration of equipment over time. I doubt that Russia can do that given the stresses on its economy. Whatever happens in the war the sanctions aren't going away. The ultimate disaster for Russia would be if China invades Russia to seize the territory that it says Russia stole in the 1800s and then decides to also occupy enough Russian oil fields to control its own oil supply. I doubt that Russia has much left over of its military to oppose a Chinese invasion, especially as in Eastern Russia there are few roads and railways to move troops and supplies whereas in Northern China near the border with Russia there are many transportation routes.
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  2216. Putin's forces are 30 months into their three day special military operation intended to capture Kiev and conquer Ukraine. They now have 10 more weeks of good weather to try to accomplish that this year and they haven't a remote chance of coming anywhere near doing that plus they have lost more territory during the short Ukrainian offensive than Russian forces have managed to gain in the past 12 months. By next summer things will be much worse for Russia in a number of ways plus Ukraine's military equipment situation will be better and western countries will do more to remove restrictions on the use of western weapons by then. Plus every day about 1,050 Russian soldiers are being killed and presumably even more are being wounded every day and huge numbers of Russian conscripts have been captured which puts Putin in a difficult political position. Putin has gotten himself into a heck of a mess and it seems that he can't figure out how to get himself out of the mess. The obvious solution would be to just end his invasion and pull all his troops out of Ukraine but his personal feelings of insecurity and inferiority and paranoia apparently mean that he will stubbornly refuse to do that. And even if Russia was to miraculously win the war and end up conquering Ukraine in two or three more years in the process Putin will have done immense damage to Russia plus perhaps worst of all for Russia he has now demonstrated to the world including China that there actually is no red line against invading Russia. Some day China will take advantage of that fact.
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  2236. ​​ @ItsReallyJackBlack  Ukraine doesn't even need a counter offensive. Russia and its military are gradually deteriorating and 2025 will be bad for them and 2026 will be catastrophic for them. Think about how Germany lost WW1 despite foreign armies never entering German territory. That will help you to understand. And given the size of Ukraine, Russian gains have been trivial. Russian forces control significantly less territory than they did in April 2022 and if you look at a chart of how much Ukrainian territory Russia controls the change since January 2023 us so tiny as to be impossible to see with the naked eye. Russia is facing a massive manpower shortage in Russia and is struggling more and more to get men to sign up for the war while at the same time losing vast numbers of soldiers every week on the battlefield. By next summer Russia will have used up all stored military equipment in decent condition that Russia took 80 years to accumulate. Russia's real inflation rate is probably over 20% despite a super high central bank interest rate that has hit 21% and will likely hit 30% by next autumn meaning that regular Russian people and companies will be paying 35%-40% interest on their loans. Russia's oil refineries are gradually being destroyed at the same time that oil prices are expected to collapse. Russia's gas industry is facing catastrophe as is Russia's military export industry. The Russian government's liquid assets have fallen in half and will be gone sometime in 2026. Russia's basic infrastructure is deteriorating and a lot of Russians will spend winter freezing in the dark again this winter. Russian oil depots and ammunition depots are gradually being blown up and destroyed. You probably should stop listening to propaganda from Russian state media so that you can learn how horrible everything is going for Russia.
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  2238. If Israel hadn't been carrying out a genocide against the people in Gaza there would be no violence in Gaza or between Israel and Hezbollah, Iran or the Houthis. According to a man associated with organizing and connecting family members of Israeli hostages by Oct 10, 2023 Hamas offered to release the hostages in return for the IDF not entering the Gaza strip but Israel refused to agree to that. Obviously none of Israeli actions since then have been about saving the hostages because Israel easily could have done that by accepting that deal with Hamas. Israel could have just agreed to the deal Hamas offered last October to exchange all the hostages and none of this violence would have happened but as always the Israelis chose to double down on violence and oppression so they started a brutal genocidal war against the Palestinian people they have kept locked in the overcrowded impoverished Gaza prison camp for decades. As always that strategy just led to more conflict and more violence - conflict with Hezbollah, Iran and the Houthis on top of conflict with Hamas for the past year plus all the horrific violence and suffering in Gaza. One would think that after 76 years of aiways using a strategy of more violence and more oppression and always getting the same result of more conflict and never any peace the Israelis would have finally figured out that their strategy doesn't work. But they're clearly not very bright and they always choose their rscism and arrogance and self entitlement over logic, peace and justice for Palestinians. Apartheid South Africa eventually figured out that always doubling down on using more violence and more oppression would never bring peace so long as the native people were still suffering brutal oppression and were not free in their own homeland. How long will it take apartheid Israel to figure that out? Always remember that the conflict started when white European Zionists decided to invade Palestine and steal and occupy the land and oppress the Palestinian people in their own homeland. When the white European Zionists lived in their own homelands in Europe there was no conflict between them and Palestinians or anyone else in the region around Palestine and if the Zionists had just stayed in their European homelands there would still be no conflict. The white European Zionists are the aggressors/invaders/occupiers/oppressors who started all this conflict when they left their European homelands to invade Palestine. They're somewhat like WW2 German Nazis who invaded and occupied the Netherlands and oppressed the Dutch people and then wondered why the Dutch resistance and Canadian, British and American troops started fighting them.
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  2254. If a private business had equipment depreciating at a rapid rate and also was losing a lot of assets then if its accountants were honest they would include huge negative figures for those things on the income statement. That is what is happening to the Russian state except I don't think Russia's government accountants are publicly acknowledging those things. Because of a shortage of skilled workers in Russia the basic infrastructure is deteriorating rapidly - that's why so many Russian citizens spent last winter freezing in the dark in their apartments. That's why a lot more Russian citizens will spend the upcoming winter freezing in the dark in their apartments. As well Russia is losing military equipment assets accumulated over 80 years at a very raoid rate and by autumn 2025 will have little if any remaining stored army equipment in decent conditions. So even if Russia's cash flow situation looks fine right now a fair and accurate income statement for the Russian regime would show that it is operating at a significant financial loss and that is unsustainable in the long run. It won't be surprising if by the winter of 2025-2026 Russia is struggling to get enough tanks and other military equipment on the battlefield and also finds a catastrophic collapse of its basic infrastructure. And ramping up production of military equipment is going to be very hard for Russia when it already has a very low unemployment rate. Where will it find the extra workers, especially if Russian forces suffer another million casualties by autumn 2025?
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  2257. For MAGA cult members who claim that Trump did nothing wrong because he hasn't been charged with insurrection: The obvious reason why Trump hasn't been charged with insurrection and avoided many other charges and why he is still walking around free and still able to spout nonsense is that he has a cult of tens of millions of gullible, slow witted, extremist, hate filled sheep and every time their cult leader tells them that someone is his enemy a significant number of those sheep will deluge that someone with hateful, disgusting messages, some of them containing horrific threats. It happened with the Colorado judges and it happened with the two election workers who just won a lawsuit and it has happened to many other people who stood up against Trump's evil and to those who simply did their jobs and refused to bow to Trump's pressure to do the wrong thing and to those people like Pence whom Trump's mob went after simply because he didn't do something that he had no power to do. Fear of Trump's mob is why Trump has not been charged with insurrection and why Trump is walking around free and why he is not in jail for contempt and is one of the reasons why Republican politicians are afraid of angering Trump. Though of course there is the other fact that prosecutors may feel that stupidly members of Trump's MAGA cult might be allowed on a jury for a Trump case and that some of them are so obedient to Trump that they would never convict even if (to give Trump's own example) he shot someone on a downtown street. But the fact that MAGA cult sheep who end up on the jury for a Trump trial might mindlessly and obediently refuse to convict him for insurrection does not mean that he did not commit insurrection. January 6, 2021 we saw a violent mob of extremist MAGA cult members attack the Capital and we know who called them to Washington that day and who told them to "stop the steal" and who sent them to the Capital building.
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  2266. Right now outside of Ireland virtually all politicians in white western countries support the racist, colonialist, apartheid Israeli state unequivocally regardless of what atrocities it commits and regardless of how brutality it oppresses the Palestinian people. But a current article by the Canadian broadcaster CBC says that sipport for Israel is declining quickly in recent years among citizens of western countries whereas support for the rights of Palestinians is increasing rapidly meaning that pro Israel western politicians (especially those in left wing parties) are starting to become out of touch with the citizens who vote for them. According to a survey this spring there are now significantly more American Democratic voters who support Palestinians than support Israel which is the reverse of what was the case a few years ago. In western countries young voters are much more pro Palestinian than are older voters and of course older voters tend to die off while younger voters grow in number. One analyst said that he expected the same thing to eventually happen as happened regarding apartheid South Africa - that at some point public support for Israel is going to be so low and public support for Palestinians will be so high that western politicians will realize that they are throwing away voters by supporting Israel and they will all flip and stop their unequivocal supoort for Israel and start to support Palestinians in their quest for freedom. If Biden loses next year because of his unequivocal support for Israel even while it was carrying out atrocities perhaps the Democrats will have a come to Jesus moment and realize that future Democratic presidential candidates had better support the rights of Palestinians. (though if Trump wins that could be the end of any semblance of democracy in the United States). According to the article Israeli lobbyists in western countries are already very unnerved by the size and number of pro-Palestinian rallies taking place in the past month in western countries and know that they can't get that many people to lobby in support of Israel and they are aware that they can't reasonably defend the actions of the current far right Israeli government, especially with some of its ministers making extreme statements.
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  2270. European countries that think, "Let's not bother giving enough aid to Ukraine to defeat the Russian imperialists who threaten all of Europe so that later we can spend a lot more money and lose a lot of our own soldiers fighting directly against Russian invaders" are certainly very penny wise and pound foolish. Overall Ukrainian forces have performed brilliantly against Russian invaders and are systematically destroying Russian military equipment built up since 1950. But if Ukraine falls Ukrainians will understandably feel betrayed by western countries that: 1 - Refused to fight alongside Ukrainians to defend Europe, even refusing to send NATO airforces which would have quickly devastated Russian invasion forces and let Ukraine avoid this horrific WW1 style attritional trench warfare. 2- Refused for a while to send any defensive weapons to avoid "antagonizing Putin" 3 - Refused for a very long time to send any offensive wespons and then finally sending them only very, very slowly like the dripping of a leaky faucet. 4 - Refusing to let Ukraine use western weapons to fire back at positions in Russia which are launching terrorist attacks on Ukraine. 5 - Being very slow or doing nothing at all to increase their military production and military budgets. 6 - Doing a disastrous job with sanctions on Russia so that Russia has been able to get around sanctions for the most part. 7 - Continuing to buy large amounts of Russian fossil fuels in 2022, effectively deciding that it was not worth it to have economic slowdowns in their countries to ensure that Russia didn't have the money to continue its terrorist, genocidal invasion into Ukraine in 2022. European countries didn't seem to appreciate that having an economic slowdown was a tiny sacrifice to make in comparison to the sacrifices Ukrainians were making to defend Europe. 8 - Letting adult children of members of the Russian elite continue to live the good life in luxurious lifestyles in Europe. 9 - American politicians practicing politics and taking an unnecessary two week vacation to serve a pro-Russian MAGA demagogue and block needed funding for Ukraine while brave Ukrainian soldiers die unnecessary deaths. If Ukraine loses this war Ukrainians will have good reason to feel betrayed by western countries that didn't do much to show they took the Russian threat seriously while Ukrainians fought desperately for their continued survival as a people.
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  2302. Trump supports Putin's unprovoked invasion into Ukraine that drove up inflation around the world including in the United States and he has encouraged Putin to launch more invasions to drive up inflation even more. Reportedly he would consider interfering with the central bank to lower interest rates further than the Fed's experts would recommend. Plus reportedly he would consider lowering the value of the American dollar and dramatically lowering income taxes and making up for the resulting loss of income by putting massive tariffs on Chinese goods. All these things will increase inflation significantly. Collectively they would make inflation skyrocket. But some voters have the delusion that Trump will bring back 2020 prices. Those voters also forget that the reason why gasoline prices were so low in 2020 was because the world was in its biggest recession in 90 years and because demand for oil and gasoline collapsed when vast numbers of people around the world were staying home and not going anywhere. Do MAGA voters really want a massive recession again and to have everyone stay home almost all the time just to have cheap gasoline prices that will be of little value because they're going to be staying at home all the time and not driving? MAGA voters also don't understand that gasoline prices are dictated by international energy markets and are not controlled by the president. And Vance sounds ridiculous complaining about Biden "restricting oil production" when under Biden American oil production has reached a level never seen in history in the United States or in any other country.
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  2308. Basically the MAGA cult has a lot of white, straight, conservative, "Christian" people who know that people like them have ruled the United States for 250 years and know that now they are a minority and a shrinking minority at that and know that that means they will lose their privilege of controlling everything and that they will have to share power with others the way things are going and so they have decided that they will resort to any means necessary to retain their privilege and power and deny any power or public voice to others. They are desperate to retain that power and control and to avoid sharing them. Ethics, morality, fairness, democracy and truth have no relevance to them in what they see as an existential battle to retain their privilege and power and not share it with others and to not allow others equal rights. Their goal is to retain their power and they will accept any lie or horrific act from their demagogue leaders or from right wing media if it aligns with their goal to retain all power and control over public discourse. (eg, don't say gay or ban "critical race theory" or insist Trump won in 2020) And of course they hate anyone who is different from them in any way as they see people who are different as "thieves" who are "oppressing them" by taking some of their power and so they will cherry pick any story or information that suggests that those who are different than them are horrible, sick, violent people and will defend horrific acts and words by people like them. They are very weak, paranoid, insecure people who are terrified of anyone who is different than them, especially if those who are different have a voice or power. Though they will put up with people who are different than them if those people silence their own perspective and spout the perspective of white, straight, conservative, "Christian", MAGA men. In fact it gives them a feeling of more power if they can for instance convince a woman to speak against the right to abortion or a Black person to say that Black people need to stop "complaining" about past injustices and take some initiative and make something of themselves. They also have a fake Christianity which is really an extremist right wing political ideology which focuses on greed and selfishness of the (white) individual, a complete indifference to doing anything to help those less fortunate, a fanaticism over guns, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, a hatred against government doing anything to make things better, a resentment against doctors and scientists who have great training and experience and so know and understand a lot more than do MAGA people and they have a hatred for any suggestion that everyone in society should try to follow simple courtesy and caring for others in society and for the environment and should be willing to follow certain rules to ensure that society runs smoothly and that everyone is safe and the natural environment is safe and protected. So they really don't care about the truth regarding the danger guns pose to society, human caused climate change, pollution, invasive species, environmental destruction, vaccines, pandemic masks, the existence and origin of covid, etc. They just know that they want the freedom as white people to do whatever they want and say whatever they want with no restrictions and have decided that they will thus will ignore any evidence that might endanger that freedom and will grasp onto any theory that aligns with their ideology no matter that it has no credibility.
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  2315. ​@luispnrf Where is Russia going to find the troops to take on the Polish army? They don't even have extra troops to spare to fight against Ukraine. Russia no longer has a significant number of troops on the border of Finland. I don't know if this is true but one person said that as well Russia no longer has a significant number of troops on the border with the Baltic states. Russia could take troops from Kalingrad but at least one analyst said that Russia would be hesitant to do that because the people in Kalingrad although ethnic Russian are getting fed up with being controlled by Russia and might rise up if most Russian troops left Kalingrad. And if Russia did remove significant numbers of troops from the war in Ukraine to go to Belarus that would greatly weaken the Russian military situation in Ukraine. Poland's military has become stronger and a Russian military that is already stretched to the limit just fighting against Ukraine will be in a really difficult situation if it tries to take on both Ukraine and Poland. As the video said, the other year Russia had no ability to protect Armenia. The Russian military is now stretched thin much more than it was the other year and it is hard to see how Russia could now protect Belarus if Russia couldn't protect Armenia then. And if Putin is nervous about having another mobilization of reserves to stop a Ukrainian invasion into Russia then it's hard to believe that he would have another mobilization to protect Belarus. And one has to wonder of Russia has enough military equipment to provide to a potential Russian force going into Belarus. And I believe that if Russian forces tried to enter Poland itself NATO would respond to that given that it would be Belarus that started the problem by threatening or even invading Ukraine which poses a threat to Poland.
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  2337. Agreed that Putin like Stalin would not like any general or military figure to become more popular than he is but if losing the war means he will likely be pushed out of office then I think he would prefer Prigozhin becoming more popular to that. There is also the possibility that Putin could purposely direct Wagner forces to a place in the front line where they will help the Russian effort but where they are unlikely to make any significant advances and will suffer horrific levels of casualties that otherwise the regular Russian military would suffer if it had that role in that place. Certainly when Wagner forces were fighting in Bakhmut at times Prigozhin seemed to be of the opinion that the leadership of the Russian military (and likely Putin himself) was purposely using Wagner in a position in which it was suffering great losses and that Russia's military leadership was indifferent to that and not giving Wagner enough support. So it is possible that Putin and the Russian military always saw Wagner's role in the war as to do really dangerous things and suffer really high casualty rates so that the regular Russian military didn't have to. And heard a reporter say today that when it comes to prisoner swaps Russian military leaders have made clear they have no interest in making captured Russians who had previously been in prison part of the deals. They don't really care much if they get them back. Obviously a lot of former prisoners were fighting for Wagner. Maybe even after the war they won't want them back and will be happy to let Ukraine be stuck with a bunch of criminals similar to what Cuba once did in sending a bunch of "refugees" who turned out to be criminals to the United States. I'm thinking that Wagner troops and Prigozhin may have come to the conclusion that the Russian military leadership just sees Wagner Troops as expendable and a group to be sacrificed one way or another with no concern or caring about these troops, especially those who were criminals. Not that Russian leadership cares much about regular Russian troops or regular Russian civilians either.
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  2342. An insane thought from a layman: (warning - this is probably an example showing why non-experts shouldn't go online offering opinions as to what happened in an accident or share their notions of how to make flying safer) Could lives have been saved in the recent disaster in South Korea if the pilots had decided to purposely clip a wing on landing so that the plane would tumble and release energy in the tumbling and thus come to a stop before hitting the barrier at the end of the runway? They must have realized that they were landing at too high a speed too far down the runway. Judging by the pilot who instinctively held his arm up in front of him for protection the pilots seemed to be aware that crashing into the barrier at the end of the runway was going to be a very bad experience. Another possibility would be for a pilot dealing with a plane travelling too fast too far down the runway would be to purposely steer right or left. I'm assuming that pilots have some ability to steer once they land. We know that steering hard left or hard right can cause a car to tumble. At a minimum it gets a plane off the tarmac onto soft ground with more friction. Though the Korean pilots had no landing gear so I presume that they couldn't steer. A regular person driving a car might instinctively pull the steering wheel hard over if they had a solid obstacle in front of them. That could of course be a good or a bad decision. Perhaps pilots are trained to try to always head straight down the runway. Though as well as this accident turned out for passengers and crew it should be pointed out that 20 years ago an Air France plane landed too far down the runway in wet conditions in Toronto and continued off the end of the runway and into a ravine and then burst into flames but evacuation was done quickly with perfect textbook technique and everyone survived. So the people on the Air France plane did quite well after their plane went off the end of the runway. So maybe purposely rolling a plane landing too fast or too far down a runway is a very bad idea. Any pilots now thinking " You figured that out all by yourself? Good for you" If I was a passenger I wouldn't want to hear the pilot say upon landing, "Whoops. We're landing with too much speed. I'm going to put the plane into a tumble". Obviously, for a plane that still has enough engine power and fuel aborting the landing and doing a go around seems like it would make the most sense. But in some cases such as the case in Korea the pilots may not have had that option.
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  2352. If Chinese fertility rates are down at 1.1 and there is a significant discrepancy between the numbers of Chinese men and women (both of which another blogger said were true based on Chinese government statistics) then each generation of children will have a population less than half of that of their parents' generation. Do that for a couple of generations and the number of Chinese children in 60 years could very well be less than one quarter the current number of Chinese children and after three generations (say in 90 years) the number of Chinese children could be less than an eighth of the number of Chinese children now. And that assumes that the birth rate in China doesn't continue to fall but I think that a lot of young Chinese adults who have two poor elderly parents and four very elderly grandparents to worry about on their own are not going to be keen to add to their burden by having children. One solution would be for China to take in immigrants but apparently China takes in virtually no immigrants while every year a significant number of people migrate away from China. Apparently China wants only immigrants of Chinese heritage and very few people of Chinese heritage want to move to China permanently. One source said that China takes in only about 5,000 immigrants per year which if true would be stunning given that Canada is taking in close to 500,000 immigrants per year. I don't think that number includes people moving from Hong Kong or Macau to China. It seems very possible that in a century the United States (which takes in a significant number of immigrants and thus will grow in population). will have a higher population than does China.
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  2382. Imagine how long a regular person would spend in jail for contempt of court if they repeatedly said in front of TV cameras that the judge was corrupt. Imagine how little leniency a regular person found guilty on 34 out of 34 charges would get if they had behaved the way that Trump has behaved during this trial. Treating Trump with kid gloves for half a century while he treated the law as merely a suggestion is what has made him think that he is above the law and that has contributed to his fascist tendencies. If a narcissist demagogue believes that they will face no legal consequences no matter what they do then they feel emboldened to do anything that will help them obtain and keep political power. If Trump had been locked up for a prison term decades ago then perhaps he would not now behave the way he does. Though of course there is no guarantee - plenty of demagogues and dictators were imprisoned at some point earlier in their lives. I do hope that the judge in this case gives Trump significant jail time for contempt of court plus gives him a prison sentence at least as long as what Michael Cohen received for carrying out shenanigans for Trump. I presume that jail time for contempt would have to be served right away whereas because the American court system gives special privileges to Trump he won't serve any prison time for his crimes for years if ever. One lawyer has said that Trump's appeals could take 18 months and that if Trump becomes president then he would not be ordered to serve his time until his term of office is over. Zero chance that Trump would be willing to leave office if he knew that as soon as he left office he would go to prison. As a non-American I find it insane that the United States has a principle that presidents are above the law and could commit any crime with no consequences until they leave office if ever. I have a fear that if it ever gets to the point at which Trump actually is going to face accountability by going to prison his lawyers will claim that he is too senile to go to prison, either because he actually becomes senile or as part of a blatant scheme to keep Trump out of prison with a wink to his cult members letting them know that it is just a sham intended to protect their cult leader from the "deep state". I'm sure that Trump is very familiar with the case of mobster Vincent Gigante who for years pretended to be senile to protect himself from criminal conviction. Also hope that the judge sues Trump for slander. Actually a lot more people should be suing Trump for things he has said or done. And there is a good chance that they would all win their lawsuits because Trump doesn't do very well in courtrooms where truth and facts matter.
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  2484. The other day War on the Rocks put out a video entitled "Russia is on a slow path to bankruptcy, but how slow?". They discussed a number of things regarding Russia's difficult financial situation but the following was the most important. They suggested that the Russian government has been depleting its National Welfare Fund, which dropped from $113 billion in reserves to $56 billion in reserves in just two years. In particular, Russia has using up a lot of its foreign currency reserves and gold. A lot of the rest of the National Welfare Fund is composed of stock in Russian corporations which may be significantly overvalued. Of course things are getting worse for the Russian government as oil prices are low and its oil refineries are being damaged and its infrastructure is deteriorating. War on the Rocks said there were three possible directions for the Russian government to go when it exhausts its liquid assets in the National Welfare Fund. 1 - Stop fighting the war and drastically cut military spending though this will still cost a lot of money as all the factories that were converted to produce military products would need to be converted back to produce civilian products. It seems unlikely that Putin would agree to this. 2 - Get massive aid from China in the form of money, military equipment and supplies and possibly Chinese manpower. This seems highly unlikely for a number of reasons. Chinese leaders would have to be insane to agree to this. 3 - Cut social benefits and salaries and raise taxes and also start printing lots of rubles which of course would make inflation skyrocket upwards. War on the Rocks thought that this was the most likely scenario though they also mentioned that this would create a situation similar to the economic situation that existed when the Soviet Union collapsed.
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  2508. The invasion of Ukraine has made clear that keeping countries near Imperialist Russia out of NATO to avoid annoying the Russian regime is not a way to peace. The only way to peace is to allow those countries to join NATO. The people and governments of Sweden and Finland saw that very quickly after the February, 2022 invasion of Ukraine and quickly tried to switch from being neutral to being members of NATO and it is obvious to the people and government of Ukraine who clearly want to be in NATO. To leave Ukraine outside of NATO and effectively still isolated after the war would simply be inviting Imperialist Russia to launch another unprovoked invasion against Ukraine once the Russian military had been built up again and once the Russian regime felt that western countries were distracted by some other crisis. This war has been devastating to Ukraine and to its people and to the most vulnerable people around the world who were hit by escalating fossil fuel prices and by increased food prices and food insecurity plus the war has been a huge distraction from other important matters such as climate change that it would be unthinkable to casually accept it all happening over again. As well the cost of the war and the effect of inflation on people have emboldened far right political parties that pose great risk from within to western democracies. In the United States in particular we see the perverse situation that a lot of voters see Biden as doing poorly on the economy even though the economy is actually vastly better than when Biden took office. Apparently voters think Biden's doing badly on the economy because of inflation caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and other international factors and because of higher interest rates needed to curtail inflation - all very strange because it is Trump who has a bromance with Putin and it is Trump who praised Putin for his "brilliance" as Putin maneuvered his forces to prepare for the invasion that caused world wide inflation. Some have suggested that Ukraine could be given some sort of security guarantee without actually joining NATO but Ukrainians have already seen how weak such a guarantee that is given that Ukraine was apparently given such a guarantee when it gave up nuclear weapons. Also, surely one would want Ukraine and its powerful and experienced military in NATO so that it will be obligated to assist if Russia were to attack another NATO country such as Finland or one of the Baltic states. It would seem that NATO would be promising a lot in return for nothing in return if NATO agreed to give Ukraine military support if it was attacked but didn't have Ukraine in NATO so that thus Ukraine would not be obligated to return the favour if a member of NATO was attacked. We must ensure that Ukraine and the world never go through the consequences of Russia's invasion of Ukraine ever again and the best way to do that is quickly accept Ukraine into NATO after the war so that Putin is afraid to attack Ukraine again.
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  2515. It would be a good thing for western countries including the United States to develop more of a ship building industry but I wouldn't trust Trump's claim to be bringing back the American ship building industry any more than the claim he made early in 2020 saying that covid would magically disappear in the spring in 2020 or his claim that Mexico would pay for a wall. Spoiler alert: According to an American doctor there are still 40 million new covid infections in the United States every month. Trump claimed that he was going to bring back coal mining jobs in his first term but coal mining jobs kept falling dramatically. He claimed that he was going to end the war in Ukraine his first day back in office but there is still no sign that the war is coming to an end. He claimed that he was going to bring down prices and get the American economy booming but prices are shooting up and the stock market is in chaos and consumer spending is down and the job situation is bad and the economy is heading for a sharp downturn and into recession. Trump is trying to turn the United States into a pariah state and to cut off trade with the rest of the world. That's hardly going to inspire American investors to spend the money to build new ships let alone to build new shipyards. No American trade with the rest of the world means no need for new American ships. It would be foolish for any corporation to spend billions of dollars on building new infrastructure in the United States now when Trump chaos reigns and Trump keeps changing his mind about things. Just one midnight tweet from Trump could signal a policy change that makes an expensive new ship building yard under construction next to useless. Trump is incredibly immature. He's incompetent and ran casinos into bankruptcy. He played a successful businessman on TV but it's not clear that he's ever been a successful businessman other than when he grifts off of MAGA cult members. He's unhinged and he loves to create chaos but investors don't like chaos, especially when deciding whether to spend billions of dollars on massive infrastructure that will last for decades. Anything Trump says or claims is almost certainly the opposite of reality and that includes any claims about bringing back ship building. If Sal was president and he said that he was bringing back American ship building I would believe him but I don't believe Trump.
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  2528. After each of Russia's other recent invasions (Georgia, Chechnya, Crimea, Donbas) the world said "Russia launched an unprovoked invasion and stole more territory even though it's a vast country that already had lots and lots of territory? That's OK. We'll let them get away with it and hope they are satisfied" and each time that weakness of other countries just emboldened Putin to launch another unprovoked invasion. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results and those who want Ukraine to just surrender all the land Russia wants because they think that will finally satisfy Putin and that he will then never again launch an unprovoked invasion are being quite naive and ignoring how Putin has responded every time the world looked the other way when he invaded another country. The only way to stop Putin from continually launching aggressive invasions of other countries is to ensure that he suffers a decisive loss in one of his invasions and the best place to do that is Ukraine and the best time to do that is now so Western countries need to give Ukraine all the military supplies it needs to score a decisive victory over Russia as quickly as possible. If that creates political problems for Putin then....well, that's his problem. Just make clear to him that if he dares to use a nuclear weapon out of desperation that then NATO will enter the war and destroy his army, navy and airforce to such a massive degree that it will make the destruction Ukrainian forces are currently inflicting on them look mild in comparison.
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  2543. ​ @robertarisz8464  Independence and dividing countries can get tricky. At times when the mainly French Canadian province of Quebec has considered separating from Canada some people have suggested that Indigenous nations in Quebec would want to stay in Canada and some have suggested that Quebec should be allowed to take only the territory it had when it entered Canada at a time when both Quebec and Canada were much smaller. People talk about having a two state solution for Israel and Palestine but I can't think of another situation in which white European settlers set up a colonialist system and when it was dissolved the white settlers got their own country separate from that of the natives. There is only one Kenya, one India, one Vietnam, etc. And countries where the white settlers were the majority such as Canada and the United States do to some extent recognize Indigenous nations and their territories but these are still not really two state solutions. The only real exception that I can think of is Ireland and Northern Ireland where possibly a lot of the people in Northern Ireland are of British ancestry and feel greater ties to Britain but Ireland is in Europe and Ireland actually now has closer ties to Europe than does Britain. It does seem that the greatest conflict takes place when both white settlers and the native people make up significant proportions of the population such as in Algeria and in South Africa and in this case. If white settlers are the vast majority over 90-95% or the natives are the vast majority over 90-95% it is obvious which group will ultimately end up controlling the country and that likely means that the group in the tiny minority will eventually accept that reality.
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  2560. The Jewish Holocaust survivor I met a few years ago told me that she condemned Israeli oppression of Palestinians because after what she and other Jewish people had gone through in the Holocaust she didn't want any group of people to be oppressed. Noam Chomsky who spent his teenage years knowing that Nazis in Europe were trying to exterminate people like him condemns the colonialist, apartheid nature of the Israeli regime and the horrific oppression of Palestinians by Israel. I think if they can see through Israel's pathetic attempt to justify it's racist, colonialist oppressive apartheid regime by painting anyone who opposes them as Nazis then surely the rest of us can not let Israel take us in with such nonsense. If we do then Palestinians will be living in prison camps under Israeli oppression forever. Hamas is a terrorist organization but it was not formed until after close to four decades of Israeli oppression and a survey done at the start of October found that Hamas is not even very popular in Gaza. Of course in the 1950s in Kenya and in the 1980s in South Africa and in Israel today the white colonists try to justify their racist regimes by saying, "If the native non-white people are given freedom and equal rights they will kill all the white people". Didn't happen in Kenya or in South Africa and the only place where a militant group is determined to kill the white colonialists is in Israel/Palestine because the native non-white people still don't have freedom and equal rights.
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  2665.  @alexsilent5603  sure Russian troll. Little Georgia attacked Russia thinking it could conquer and occupy the largest country in the world which has a huge military and thousands of nuclear weapons. Just to let you know, when you get out on the real internet that has people in the real world outside of Russia you just make yourself look ridiculous spouting absurd Putin propaganda. Though when you live in a country in which all information available to people is controlled by a very weak, insecure, paranoid man like Putin your bizarre belief that Georgia would attack Russia is understandable. When Putin is so paranoid that he thinks there is a danger Latvia might invade and conquer Russia it's understandable that you fantasize that little Georgia invaded Russia. Just so you know no country has attacked, invaded or threatened Russia since the Soviet Union fell apart. Russia on the other hand has launched completely unprovoked invasions of Moldova, Chechnya and Georgia and launched two unprovoked invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and a massive unprovoked invasion of Ukraine a year ago. Plus your terrorist leader Putin has repeatedly threatened to start a global nuclear war and has implied that he might use biological weapons against the people of Ukraine. So now you know a bit of reality. Best thing is for you to forget anything you heard from Putin's propoganda spouting state media in Russia and start listening to free western media to find out what the reality is. And until you do that stay offline so that you don't embarrass yourself online again by spouting utterly ludicrous Putin propaganda.
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  2689. I have read that one reason why Hitler declared war on the Uhited States was that he was getting fed up with American behavior on the North Atlantic with American warships escorting ships over a large stretch of the route to Britain. And certainly after war began between the United States and Germany the German submarines had a very successful campaign of sinking allied ships including along the American coast, especially given the mistakes the Americans made in refusing to listen to the British and Canadians regarding the need for blackouts on the east coast and the need to keep merchant ships in convoys protected by war ships. Sailors in the German U-boat fleet called this the second happy time. Also Hitler may have assumed that it was inevitable that the United States would enter the war and also thought that the United States was to some extent already in the war given the huge amount of supplies being sent from the United States to Britain and given the actions of the American navy and statements and threats by the American government. And given the situation in December 1941 Hitler may have assumed that by the late summer of 1942 he would defeat the Soviet Union and also blockade and starve Britain into signing a peace treaty before the United States military was able to have a significant impact on the war in Europe. I'm not sure of the situation in 1941 but in 1940 the United States had a smaller army than that of the Netherlands so it was going to take significant time for the American military to build up to the point that it could take on the Germans in Europe and of course the Americans also had to worry about the situation in the Pacific.
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  2705.  @mickelodiansurname9578  in June 2021 the Afghsn government thought it had a large army capable of waging a strong fight against the Taliban and then suddenly the army melted away and vanished. I'm thinking too about stories of Hitler late in WW2 in a war room with a big map of the battlefields reaching onto the map to "move" German army groups around and telling his generals to make it so when those generals knew that those army groups had been destroyed and existed only on paper and in Hitler's mind. I'm thinking that in many cases when a regime was on the verge of defeat and collapse political and military leaders found that suddenly their army had melted away as soldiers each decided it was in their best interest to become a civilian at that point. Saddam's powerful army ended sort of like that. Napoleon too had a bit of trouble figuring out why his army was not as big as it was supposed to be by the time he got to Moscow. I read a book about disease and its effect on Napoleon's army on its march towards Moscow. The book said that every morning when army units were called for inspection there were fewer and fewer soldiers present. Some French officers thought that the problem was that soldiers who grown up in urban settings such as Paris were too soft and just not up to dealing with army life. However, the book said that the problem was likely due to disease outbreak in the army - typhus in particular. That one by one soldiers were getting weak from disease and couldn't keep up and so would wander off the road to lay down and rest and then eventually just died where they lay. But Napoleon and officers weren't sure why their army kept diminishing.. All they knew was that every day they had fewer soldiers than they did the say before and that by the time they got to Moscow they had a significantly smaller army than when they started.. Needless to say the retreat from Moscow was more of the same but on a much worse scale as most of Napoleon's army disintegrated and Russian peasants exacted revenge on any laggard French soldiers they could get their hands on.
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  2736.  @sonofsomerset1695  yes the Bush administration contrived a false reason to invade Iraq (weapons of mass destruction) when likely the Bush administration invaded for some other reason such as to control more oil supplies or to make money for the American military industrial complex. But there are two vast differences between the two wars. One, that the Americans utterly destroyed and defeated the Iraqi army so quickly that there was no time for Russia to supply the Iraq military with weapons and even if they had the Iraqi army and air force still would have been destroyed by the U.S. military within days. Also, Russia is a lowly populated, impoverished country compared to the United States so Russia simply can't afford to ship out weapons to other countries on the scale the Americans can afford to do. Two, that the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein was an undemocratic, utterly brutal, genocidal, vicious regime that did unspeakable things to its citizens and which launched unprovoked wars on Iran and Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia, not becsuse of concerns about human rights violations in those countries but rather out of total greed. Obviously, the current Ukrainian government is none of those things. It may struggle with ending corruption and may have inappropriately taken the far right Azov battalion into its military but if you think that the Ukrainian government is comparable to the horrific Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein then you have no connection to reality. For western countries to send weapons to peaceful, democratic Ukraine to help defend itself against a totally unprovoked genocidal attack by a brutal, anti-democratic monster and demagogue like Putin wasn't a matter of having the right to do so as having a moral obligation to help the peaceful and innocent defend themselves against a larger, more powerful, brutal country that attacked them in a genocidal invasion.
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  2749. So Switzerland feels that it is ok to provide aid to Ukrainians who have had their homes destroyed by Russian drones or missiles or lost their water or power supply because of Russian attacks on Ukrainian water and power plants but not ok to provide Ukraine with defence systems that will shoot down Russian drones and missiles so that Ukrainians don't end up homeless or without water and power in the first place? I'm not sure that's logical at all. I can see why the Swiss may not want to provide Ukraine with defence systems that will be used to shoot down piloted Russian aircraft but I don't see why they can't provide purely defensive systems to shoot down Russian drones and missiles that are targeting civilian targets and which are destined for quick destruction in a crash anyway. Though even other western countries hesitated to provide Ukraine with defensive weapons for some time and still hesitate to provide Ukraine with all the Himars they need to destroy Russian drone and missile sites even though according to one military expert that is a lot easier way to stop Russian drone and missile attacks than is to try to stop all Russian drones and missiles after they are launched. I'd go even further and say that there would have been nothing wrong with the United States sending trained American crews with their defence systems to shoot down Russian drones and missiles heading towards civilian targets in Ukraine. Much better than wasting time training Ukrainians to operate these systems. And if Putin got upset that American troops were stopping Russian terrorist attacks on Ukrainian civilians and on basic Ukrainian infrastructure then I say the heck with him. I don't care if he's upset that third parties are stopping Russian terrorist attacks on Ukraine.
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  2751. Unless Russia gains new territory in Eastern or Southern Ukraine I can't see how Russia "wins this war" even in a limited sense. I compare it to a man named V being paranoid and greedy and wanting to be richer and being upset that his next door neighbour and his family are making new friends and developing new business relationships and V getting the paranoid idea that his neighbour plans to attack him and steal his house even though his neighbour already has lots of land and has no intention of attacking him or his home especially because V has giant bombs that could destroy the entire neighbourhood. So V sends his sons to kill members of his neighbour's family and to destroy his neighbour's house and property and try to take his neighbour hostage and steal his neighbour's land. And V's sons do destroy the neighbour's house and a lot of his property and kill and injure some of his neighbour's family but even more of V's sons are killed and injured and they are driven back off the neighbour's property with the loss of most of the weapons they had spent decades accumulating and now V and his family are pariahs in the neighbourhood and nobody wants to socialize with them or do business with them so V and his family are now stuck in impoverished, humiliating isolation hated by all around them. Sure the neighbour's house and a lot of his property are now destroyed and some members of his family are dead and their neighbour will now never attack V's family or home but then neither the neighbour nor his neighbour's friends ever had any intention of attacking V or his home anyway because they have no interest in attacking V or his home in the first place and because V has large bombs that could destroy the neighborhood. And on top of that V's neighbour has more powerful weapons than ever because they had so many shipped from other neighbours and captured so many weapons from V's sons plus V's neighbours now feel confident they can again defeat V's sons in any future battle whereas V has lost many of his strongest sons to death or injury and his sons are totally demoralized and now are afraid of the neighbour's family and V now has far fewer weapons to use in any future battle plus he knows that other neighbours will no longer sell him weapons or necessary parts for weapons and will strongly support his neighbour if V is ever stupid enough to send his sons to attack his neighbour's property again. So I really can't see even in a limited sense what Putin has won (unless Russia gains new territory). Though maybe in Putin's paranoid mind he will think he has won if in future Ukraine never attacks Russia but the idea of Ukraine ever attacking Russia never remotely existed except in Putin's delusional nightmares. And I don't think even Putin really believed that Ukraine was ever a threat to Russia or even to ethnic Russians living in Ukraine. He just wanted some propaganda excuse to justify his attempt to become the reincarnation of Peter the Great. So Putin has no more "won" than a thug who walks into a pottery ship and assaults the owner and smashes a lot of the pottery before the owner manages to physically drive him from the store. has won anything.
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  2752. If western governments condemned the white, racist, colonialist, apartheid regime in Israel as they did the white, racist, colonialist, apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1980s instead of saying that they will unequivocally support Israel at the exact time that Israel says it is going to stop all supplies of water, food, fuel and electricity for close to a million imprisoned innocent Palestinian children then maybe the Israeli government like the previous white South African government would eventually realize that those non-white children are not "animals" as apparently it thinks and end their brutal, racist, apartheid system and take down the walls and fences and barbed wire and let Palestinians be free to travel, live and work anywhere in their own land of Palestine. I would think it barbaric to cut off all food, water and medical supplies and treatment from even one imprisoned, convicted, adult mass murderer. The Israeli government has said it is cutting off all food and water from close to a million Palestinian children and has guaranteed that a lot of those children who are being bombed will not get the medical care they need by cutting off electricity to hospitals and showing indifference to letting medical supplies get into Gaza. What sort of monster does someone have to be to do that to a million innocent children? Hamas has committed some horrific acts of violence and I think little of its apparent religious extremism but even if every Hamas fighter disappeared tomorrow it would do nothing to secure long term peace and security for Israel because Hamas is simply a symptom of the real problem - white, colonialist, apartheid, oppression. As long as the Palestinian people are oppressed and forced to live with no hope in impoverished, overcrowded prison camps in their own land new militants will inevitably emerge.
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  2753. ​ @gregzoller9003  You're right in a way but not 100% correct. I remember reading a story about a couple who had two relatively small events of damage in a fairly short period of time. One was something like a broken window in their front door - possibly kids throwing stones for fun. They called their insurance company to ask about making two claims but the insurance agent said that although the claims would be covered it would lead to their insurance rate going up significantly the next year ....and presumably for years to come. Because the total cost of the two incidents was under $1,000 they decided to not make a claim and just pay the bills themselves. When their home insurance was up for renewal they got a letter from the insurance company saying that their policy was being canceled. That might be a third hand story from years ago but as was said in this video if your home floods a second or third time you are likely to lose your insurance because of what happened to your home in particular. And sometimes the flooding of a particular home may be something particular about that home such as being built in a spot where an old stream used to flow. Once on a walking tour that I took the guide was explaining that one or two homes that were located at a dip in the road almost certainly had trouble with basement flooding because there used to be a stream through that spot before the city tried to bury the stream or some such thing. I had walked down that street many times before and had no idea of that situation for those homes and I'm guessing that neither the people living there had no idea of that when they bought the house. Another example is homes built at locations at which cars or trucks sometimes fly off the road into the parked cars or houses of the home owners simply because of the design of the road. And obviously if home owners have habits that tend to lead to property damage happening repeatedly it's likely that their insurance rate will go up regardless of the type of home they are in or what neighborhood they are in. I suspect that with a lot of insurance having a perfect record may not lead to a reduction in rates but making claims can lead to higher rates or termination of the insurance policy.
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  2776. I question how this trade corridor makes sense for a number of reasons. Transporting oil by train is much less efficient and much more hazardous then transporting oil by ship and I'm sure that transporting grain by ship is cheaper than by rail even for longer distances. And the idea of transporting oil or grain by train, then by ship, then by train and then by ship instead of just transporting them completely by large ships at sea seems ludicrous and awkward and involves far too many transfers. And let us say that about the only things Russia has to export in quantity are military goods, grain and fossil fuels. India has learned lately that given Russia's status as the last major Imperialist country and Russia's habit of regularly launching unprovoked invasions of other countries Russia is not a reliable supplier of military supplies because at any time it might decide that it needs all those supplies itself. As well, even if India didn't figure it out after the American invasion of Iraq, India should have figured out after the current Russian invasion of Ukraine that Russian military equipment is of poor quality and is unreliable. As for grain - India produces a lot of grain and as far as I know doesn't need grain from Russia or anybody else. As for oil or natural gas why the heck would Iran (or for that matter Azerbaijan) want to help its competitor Russia ship oil or natural gas from the same port from which Iranian oil and natural gas would be shipped, especially when Russian oil and natural gas are selling at about a 50% discount? Makes no sense at all. It would be completely illogical for Iran help Russia take sales of fossil fuels away from Iran.
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  2782. ​ @JakeBroe  The Soviet regime was horrible and contributed to some conflict around the world and the Russian regime is horrible and contributes to some conflict around the world and you do an excellent job in analyzing Russia and its actions but I think it's going too far to say that Russia is causing most of the conflict in the world or that the Soviet Union was responsible for most conflict when it existed. As you said yourself, just because Asaad and Russia are being pushed out of Syria that does not necessarily mean that there will be peace in Syria. And even if Russia disappeared from the Earth there is no reason to think that means that there would be peace in the Middle East in general. Not as long as Israel, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other players exist. Nor does it mean that there will be peace in the Congo or Ethiopia or Nigeria or even in Sudan - Russia is not the only country contributing to the Sudan civil war. Nor would having Russia disappear eliminate conflict in Afghanistan or make India get along with Pakistan and China and with its religious minorities. Nor would having Russia disappear lead to peace in Mynamnar or lead to China and North Korea giving up their imperialist goals of taking territory from other countries. Regarding the Soviet Union: Decades ago I read a book about the CIA. Ronald Reagan had said in speeches that the Soviet Union was fermenting revolutions around the world so CIA director William Casey ordered his his top CIA personnel to find proof of that to back up Reagan's claims. A while later at a meeting Casey's top CIA men told him that they had been unable to find any proof that revolutions around the world were instigated by the Soviet Union. Apparently revolutions were happening simply because people didn't like living under oppression. Casey got angry and suggested that his top men were useless and he held up a book and said that for the price of buying that book he had found out more information about Soviet involvement in instigating revolutions than he had found out from his top men who were getting paid very well to do their jobs. Trouble is that it later turned out that the writer of that book had based it on newspaper articles (in Italy I believe) that the CIA itself had planted as part of a propaganda campaign. Casey had been fooled by the CIA's own propaganda.
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  2786. You forget that Syria, Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan were led by horrific dictators who had done horrific things and Libya was led by a dictator who was ahout to brutally crush a rebellion against his dictatorship and might of been on the verge of carrying out a massacre of those rebelling against him. After WW2 the United States should have worked with Ho Chi Minh to establish Vietnamese independence but you should still remember that 25 years later Ho Chi Minh was a dictator trying to take power over all of Vietnam by force and that his troops were quite brutal when they first took over and that today Vietnam is still not a democracy. And the situation in Ukraine today is very different to any of those other cases as Ukraine is a peaceful democratic country that is valiantly fighting for its survival against terrorist, genocidal invaders sent by a brutal dictatorship. I suspect though that you don't do nuance, complexity or circumstance which is why you just list off a bunch of countries by rote without bothering to think about why the United States or NATO got involved in those places. The United States has done a lot of horrific things around the world. There is no need to start disingenuously listing places the United States sent its forces while ignoring the context of those situations. And the obvious important thing about Ukraine is that Russia's unprovoked genocidal invasion into Ukraine to steal territory is its 7th such unprovoked invasion to steal territory from a nearby country over just the past three decades and just ignoring these invasions to "have peace" emboldened imperialist Russia to continue carrying out more such invasions. The last 6 times western countries decided to do nothing and let Russia get away with its imperialist invasion to steal territory from a country and each time the Russian government took that as a sign that the west was weak and so launched another such invasion. One would have to be gullible and naive to think that if the west does the same thing and lets Russia succeed in its invasion that Russia wouldn't respond in the same way as the past 6 times by launching another invasion.
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  2805. ​​​ @justsomeguy5063  How would that statistic change if 2.3 million people starve to death in Gaza because Israel blocked deliveries of food and water? And you don't seem to understand that the Zionists have stolen almost all of Palestine from Palestinians and clearly want to make Palestinians in Gaza so miserable that they flee Palestine thus giving the Zionists an opportunity to steal more Palestinian land, something that the Zionists are also trying to achieve in the West Bank. And you don't fully understand the term genocide. If racist, religiously fanatical invaders steal and occupy all the land of a people and force them to live in overcrowded impoverished prison camps thus destroying the society that is a form of genocide. Imagine if people as barbaric and violent as the Zionists came from another continent and invaded France and pushed a lot of the people out to become stateless refugees in refugee camps outside of France and forced almost all remaining French people into overcrowded, impoverished prison camps and intended to keep the French in those prison camps forever. Even if there were still lots of French people left alive after such horrific things happened that would still effectively be genocide against the French people, even more so if the invaders then ruthlessly bombed one of the prison camps and cut off basic supplies to the prison camps leaving the French people homeless and starving and being constantly terrorized. I think your problem is that you can't recognize genocidal Zionist actions even when they happen right in front of you when the perpetrators are white and the victims are not white.
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  2809. The MAGA Trump cult differs from traditional Republicans in many ways. Traditional Republicans did not call people losers because they were captured while serving their country. Traditional Republicans did not call all those serving in the military suckers. Traditional Republicans did not avoid going to war cemeteries simply becsuse of concerns they might get their hair wet. Traditional Republicans did not avoid going to church to pray and then drag a military commander along to a church for an idiotic photo opp. Traditional Republicans were not utterly indifferent if a group of soldiers suffered serious head injuries in a shooting war a Republican president started with another country. Traditional Republicans did not rant about alien DNA, demon sperm and fictional space lasers. Traditional Republicans did not think that pandemics would magically end. Traditional Republicans were not anti-vax and pro-pandemic. (though admittedly this is the one MAGA philosophy in which Trump has to follow the base instead of the other way around) Traditional Republicans were connected to reality. Traditional Republicans did not lie about stolen elections or launch dozens of pointless lawsuits due to being tiffed about losing an election badly nor did they incite violent insurrections nor did they name fake electors because they didn't like the real electors. Rather they had the maturity to not have a Trump toddler temper tantrum and instead conceded when they lost elections. Traditional Republicans did not try to destroy democracy and destroy the United States. Traditional Republicans did not have bromances with brutal dictators in Russia, China and North Korea and did not try to cut ties with progressive, liberal democracies. Traditional Republican presidents were not seen as complete idiots by people around the world and were not subjects of mockery and hysterical laughter by other G7 leaders having conversations. Traditional Republican presidents were not clowns. Traditional Republican presidents did not engage in a collection of shenanigans that caused them to be the subject of many legal investigations over civil and criminal matters. The traditional Republican party was not an extremist cult of servile, delusional, idiotic yahoos. The traditional Republican party did not run idiots as candidates simply because they were famous and belonged to a cult. I could go on quite a while but that's enough. (well except for that using a horse deworming drug for a dangerous disease based only on nonsense they heard from other random fools and no evidence - Traditional Republicans did not do that)
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  2818. Surely the most important significance of the placement of Russian nuclear missiles in Belarus is that Russia is sending a message to both Ukraine and NATO that any attack by Ukraine or NATO on Belarus could be seen by Russia as a threat to sites which have Russian nuclear weapons and could cause Russia to respond with a nuclear strike. In other words the message is "don't touch Belarus". This is now a red line for Russia and ignoring that red line could have catastrophic consequences. One can see why Russia would want to ensure there is no western invasion of Belarus. The control of Belarus by a dictator who is essentially a client of Russia presents a major security problem for Ukraine, the Baltic states, Finland and to some extent the Scandinavian countries. We've already seen that in the Russian attempt to take Kiev initiated in Belarus. If Ukraine or NATO were to invade Belarus its small, weak army would quickly collapse and might even cooperate with a change to a democratic, pro-European government and it seems like much of the population in Belarus would welcome the end of pro-Russian dictatorship and the beginning of democracy which would have much more opportunity to trade and interact with Europe. The Europe connected Baltic states now each have a GDP oer capita many times that of Belarus which is virtually cut off from Europe and highly dependent on Russia for trade. Belarus citizens must be very very aware of how poor they are compared to their Europe connected neighbours. And if Belarus did through Ukrainian or NATO invasion gain democracy and ties to Europe and no longer serve the wishes of Putin then Ukraine, Sweden and all the NATO countries in the region would then become much safer from Russian attack and the Russian enclave of Kalingrad would be much more isolated from Russia and less of a threat to other countries. Really, even if NATO didn't want to get directly involved with conflict with Russia it likely would have been a good idea for NATO to quickly conquer Belarus some time last year as punishment for Belarus' complicity in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and then replace the pro-Russian dictatorship with a democratically elected government that is either pro-European or neutral. Such an invasion by NATO into Belarus likely would have finished successfully within days or a couple of weeks at most and any Russian troops in the country could have been told to not intervene unless they want their groups to be completely destroyed and to risk war between the already over stretched Russian military and the overwhelming might of NATO forces. Now that Russia is locating nuclear weapons in Belarus I fear that there is no longer the possibility for Ukrainian or NATO troops to rescue Belarus citizens from oppression and to end the risk that Belarus poses to all European countries in the region by being a potential route of Russian forces to launch another unprovoked genocidal invasion of a European country. I know that NATO and American military interventions to free people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya did not end up well but i think things would go betfer in Belarus. Pethaps I'm being naive..
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  2842. ​ @davidc3943  Trump had 4 years as president to secure the border and didn't do it, didn't come remotely close to finishing his wall and didn't get a cent from Mexico to pay for it thus breaking his promises and now he is pressuring Republican politicians to block legislation to better secure the border showing that he doesn't want to secure the border - he wouid rather just talk about it. And while president he increased the deficit every year, something your grandchildren are going to have to pay for, and like all Republicans he worked to help the rich at the expense of the middle class. However, the American economy has been booming since Trump left office and is now in much better shape than it was then. Unfortunately Putin's unprovoked invasion which Trump expressed support for has driven up inflation around the world including in the United States which in turn caused the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates as a result - obviously the president does not control interest rates. But obviously as it Trump, not Biden, who supports the Putin invasion that drove up inflation and interest rates that is a very bad mark for Trump. And of course there were many wars around the world when Trump was president and Trump must take a significant part of the blame for Putin's invasion in that if Trump and his cult hadn't been so pro-Putin then Putin would have known that both American political parties opposed him and he would have been much more reluctant to start a major invasion. And as well Trump has recently encouraged Putin to invade some American allies and in trying to block aid to Ukraine Trump is greatly increasing the chances that Putin's forces conquer Ukraine and of course that would embolden Putin to launch more invasions very possibly including attacking a NATO country which would mean that the United States would be at war with Russia. And of course if Trump's actions lead to Russia conquering Ukraine that will embolden other dictatorships like those in China and North Korea to launch their own invasions into nearby countries. And of course just like when Trump was president before there will undoubtedly be other wars around the world. In other words all of your comments are completely ludicrous and disconnected from reality and in making them all you have done is show that you have no idea what has occurred over the past 8 years and thus all you have accomplished is to publicly humiliate yourself. Best that you stay offline for a while and focus on replacing your ignorance with knowledge by making a basic effort to learn what has happened over recent years. That's a lot better idea than just making ignorant online comments and humiliating yourself again.
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  2843. ​ @KTX_kSAL  Trump broke his promises and didn't build a wall across the entire border, didn't get Mexico to pay for it and didn't secure the border when he had four years as president to do those things and now he is pressuring Republican politicians to block legislation to better secure the border because Trump doesn't want the border to be secured - he just wants to talk about it. And it is Trump (not Biden) who supports Putin's unprovoked invasion into Ukraine that drove up inflation and thus interest rates around the world including in the United States and it is Trump who is now encouraging Putin to invade American allies, invasions which no doubt would increase inflation and interest rates again and it is Trump who not only has a bromance with Putin but who also seems to adore the dictators of China and North Korea which combined with Trump's support of Putin's unprovoked invasion could cause those dictatorships to launch invasions that drive up inflation and interest rates. And of course any expert will tell you that gas prices are not controlled by the president but rather by international energy markets and occasionally by major weather events or wars (and remember how a Trump presidency could lead to more wars). Instead of embarrassing yourself again putting out posts that demonstrate that you have no idea what you are talking about it's best that you stop putting put any posts and make a small effort to actually learn about events in recent years and about what is going on now. That's a lot better than embarrassing yourself again.
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  2869. ​​ @sleepyjoe7843 id you hear the news that the terrorist dictatorship of Russia launched an unprovoked genocidal invasion of Ukraine over a year ago? Based on your comment, apparently not. Do try to keep up with things. Anyway now that you're caught up a bit with the rest of the world perhaps you can understand why Ukraine would conscript men into their military when hundreds of thousands of barbaric, savage terrorist Russian invaders are currently in Ukraine committing countless terrorist acts and war crimes against Ukrainians every day and attempting to conquer Ukraine and murder all its leaders and wipe Ukraine from the map and oppress the Ukrainian people forever and steal all of Ukraine's resources. Perhaps you can also understand why Ukrainian political parties that support the unprovoked genocidal Russian invasion of Ukraine are banned. And given that you have the delusion that Russia has democracy you need to look up what brutal measures the terrorist Russian regime uses against any Russian who even says that there is a war in Ukraine or who even holds up a blank piece of cardboard. Or even warptch the above video (which you clearly haven't done) to find out more about brutal repression in Russia. And you really need to stay off of the internet because although you don't seem to realize this because you are posting about Russia and Ukraine without having the faintest idea what is going on you're just humiliating yourself spouting utter nonsense disconnected from reality. Stop embarrassing yourself like that. Really stunning that you hadn't even heard about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Do better. We can see by your title that you tend to be very sleepy and not really aware of what's going on but that's really not an excuse for spouting utter nonsense online.
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  2878.  @commonsenseintellectual5769  NATO has not really been "pushing East". That makes it sound almost as if NATO forces were invading Eastern Europe. Rather, one by one Eastern European countries asked to join NATO for their own protection against potential attack by Russia. The fact that so many countries that know Russia so well each felt that there was a significant chance that Russia would invade them and the horrific, unprovoked, genocidal invasion of Ukraine by Russia shows that they were right to fear invasion by Russia. It should be pointed out also that Switzerland and Austria don't fear having NATO on their borders or even surrounding them and unlike Russia they are small countries with no nuclear weapons to threaten invaders with. Sweden and Finland were independent countries for many decades and they weren't terrified to have NATO on their borders. As for Putin's paranoia about a European country attacking Russia because it has happened long ago - that possibility exists only inside of Putin's disturbed mind as a reflection of his personal insecurities and lack of self confidence. No European country country has any interest in invading Russia and you know that. You don't seriously think that Macron has illusions that he is Napoleon and plans to lead a grand French army in marching across Europe intent on capturing Moscow and conquering all of massive Russia do you? Of course not. And even if a European country did have such a ludicrous idea they certainly aren't going to do so when Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons and you know that too. Basically after WW2 Western European countries decided they were tired of fighting each other have many centuries of countless wars and would rather live in peace with each other and when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact broke up Eastern European countries made the same decision with the exception of Russia (and possibly Hungary which seems to be eyeing land in Romania and its other neighbours). So the only European country that wants to maintain the belligerency and constant threat of European conflict that existed for centuries until WW2 is Russia. If Putin and Russia get rid of their belligerent, paranoid attitude then problem solved- Russia can have peaceful relations with the rest of Europe any time it chooses just as every other European country chose to do. Gee, Germany invaded little Belgium twice in the last century and the leaders of Belgium aren't paranoid about Germany possibly attacking Belgium because Germany has no interest in attacking any other country. Little Netherlands is surrounded by much bigger more powerful countries with which it had many conflicts over the centuries- France, Germany, Spain and Britain. But Dutch leaders and Dutch people don't live in a paranoid state terrified that their old enemies will attack. And yet Russia, the largest country by far in Europe and with the largest population and with the largest number of nuclear weapons of any country in the world is terrified that another European country is going to attack them and so lashes out at everybody and refuses to live in peace with its neighbours. Just ridiculous and pathetic but also tragic because it has led to a horrific genocidal invasion of Ukraine and to so much money in Russia and in Europe being wasted on weapons instead of being spent on more useful things like green energy. All the fault of Russia and Putin. At one point in the 1990s I might have had sympathy for Russia's desire to negotiate to get Crimea back but given Putin's actions since he took power any such thought has disappeared from me. Finally, I don't know about any such promise by Ukraine to stay "friendly" to Russia. It seems that none of the ex Soviet countries that asked to join NATO ever heard of such a promise so I am wondering If you are imagining it. And I see no sign that the Ukrainian government or people ever said they were going to be unfriendly to Russia. That was Russia's choice when it invaded Ukraine in 2014. Sure Ukraine may have decided it wanted to have other friends and to trade with countries in Europe but that's not being unfriendly. Russia is like a possessive, abusive husband who gets upset when his spouse gets fed up and leaves and then decides to make some new friends. Countries trade with many other countries around the world. That's just how the world economy works today.
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  2884. ​ @Ross-e5r  Do your employers and your family members and your neighbours know that you not only support genocide and terrorism but also that you spout propaganda for the genocidal, terrorist Russian dictatorship that routinely carries out those things - the dictatorship which regularly threatens to start a global nuclear war and which threatened to fire a nuclear missile at London in particular if anyone got in the way of the dictatorships' latest Imperialist, genocidal conquest? They might not share your support for a monstrous dictatorship that is seriously thinking of destroying London with a nuclear weapon for no reason whatsoever. You claim that you're not getting paid for writing nasty, cruel , sadistic comments about the Ukrainian soldiers defending their country against barbaric, genocidal, terrorist Russian invaders who were sent into Ukraine in an unprovoked invasion by a brutal, oppressive, Imperialist Russian dictatorship and that you're not in Russia so you're not forced to write such horrific comments but rather you just like unprovoked genocidal invasions by brutal dictatorships and terrorist attacks on innocent people by barbaric invaders so that is why you put out your posts? And you have the delusion that putting out such horrific posts just because you like horrific things and not due to any financial incentive is going to make you look better? You better think again. If anything it makes you look worse than a Russian troll who might get sent to the front if he doesn't obediently spout Putin propaganda. And claiming that the internet isn't filled with Russian trolls obediently spouting nonsense propaganda for the Russian dictatorship is like claiming that there are no snowflakes in a blizzard.
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  2921. In the years leading up to WW1 Canada took in vast numbers of immigrants. Canada took in 405,000 immigrants and refugees in 1913 alone even though at that time Canada had only 7.6 million people and had a very high fertility rate which was already driving up the population. Somehow Canada handled that ok. In 2021 when Canada had 5 times the 1913 population and had a much lower fertility rate the country still took in the same number of immigrants as in 1913 - 405,000 people. So if 1913 Canada with only 7.6 million people and with a high fertility rate could handle 405,000 immigrants and refugees then why can't modern Canada with 5 times the population and a low fertility rate handle the same number of immigrants and refugees? Maybe universities and colleges are taking in too many foreign students but that is a separate matter from regular immigrants and refugees and is the jurisdiction of the provinces who control post secondary education. Let's not blame refugees fleeing a genocide for provinces letting post secondary institutions take in vast numbers of foreign students to make up for inadequate provincial funding. If the problem is lack of housing starts perhaps a big part of the problem lies with provincial governments that complain that the federal government is doing nothing on housing even though it's not really a federal responsibility and then who refuse to work with the federal government on housing and then complain that the federal government is interfering in an area of provincial jurisdiction when the federal government then decides to work directly with municipalities. And no - I don't like the Trudeau government - not at all.
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  2930. Despite the title the video gave the impression that Russia is doing pretty well despite sanctions. And yet reports are that the Russian government had a deficit of 30 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2023 and is heading towards running out of reserve funds by sometime between this December and mid-2024 at which point it would be effectively bankrupt. And as well the Russian ruble has been quickly losing value as it seems that Russian authorities have given up trying to keep it artificially high by wasting precious foreign currency buying rubles. And it seems that Russia has exhausted its stores of missiles and is now firing only what it can produce and that Russia will effectively run out of tanks by sometime later this year and even that Russia is firing fewer shells presumably because its stores are getting depleted. Plus its soldiers keep dying or getting wounded or captured at a very high rate. It costs a lot of money to produce or buy new tanks, missiles and shells and to train and equip new soldiers to replace those that are lost. If Russia really is running a deficit of 10 billion dollars a month and its reserves have been greatly depleted then it is very hard to imagine how Russia can continue to fight the war past the first quarter of 2024 unless it introduces huge tax increases on Russian citizens and companies and I don't think that would go over well and that could push Russia into deep recession and I doubt that impoverished Russian citizens have any money to spare, especially as they deal with high inflation and interest rates.
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  2945. He was sounding ok until he started claiming that it will be very hard for Ukraine to take back Crimea and the Donbas because according to him these are Russian and according to him military analysts all agree with him. That's when he started to sound like a Russian propagandist. Very disturbing. When the Soviet Union broke up a majority of people in Crimea voted to be in Ukraine (not Russia) and the vast majority of people in Donbas voted to be in Ukraine (not Russia). I really don't care what fake referendums under Russian occupation happened after Ukrainans had been thrown out by terrorist Russian invaders and replaced by Russians flocking in to steal Ukrainian property. And to say that Russia should get Crimea back because it was part of Russia in the 1940s is ludicrous. Is he next going to say that India should again be occupied by the British because it was in the 1940s? And if he wants to complain thst Crimea is different because it was "always" part of Russia the Tatars and the Turks would point out that that is not true at all. And stunningly he doesn't understand that just letting Russia steal and keep the territory it invaded will not bring peace. At least 5 times in the past few decades the terrorist, imperialist Russian dictatorship launched unprovoked, genocidal invasions of other countries to attempt to steal territory from them and each time the west said, "Just let the Russians have that territory. Then they will be satisfied and we will have peace" and each time the Russian dictatorship was emboldened by this and carried out another unprovoked genocidal invasion of another country to steal territory from them. To think that again just letting Russia have the territory it invaded is going to lead to a different result is naive. Let Russia steal territory again this time and sure enough once Russia has rebuilt its military it will once again launch an unprovoked genocidal invasion of another country to try to steal territory from it and that could very well be a NATO country. And obviously despite what he says lots of military experts disagree with him.
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  2962. ​ @goenzoy Russia lost its closest and biggest customers for fossil fuels and now is forced to sell fossil fuels at a deep discount elsewhere and hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded and Russia has not succeeded in any of its territorial objectives in Ukraine and over a million of Russia's most talented young men have fled the country and many millions more will leave Russia if they get a chance and Russia has become a pariah state and Russia has been cut off from many high tech components it needs for industry and many Russian oligarchs have lost their possessions and are banned from traveling the places they want to go and most Russian citizens can no longer go the places they want to go and much of Russia's military equipment has been destroyed and much of Russia's military supplies have been used up and Russia's military has become the laughing stock of the world and countries which were close to Russia are turning to China and Finland has joined NATO and soon Sweden and Ukraine will as well and Russia is likely to lose control of the Donbas and Crimea including Sevastopol and Russia is going to be on the hook for vast amounts of reparations Russia will have to pay and Russia is quickly exhausting its foreign reserves and likely will be bankrupt by the end of this war and now India and other countries no longer see Russia as a reliable supplier of military equipment. But you think that Russia is better off strategically than before the war? Lol. Lol. You really need to stop posting online.
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  2971. ​​ @hymns4ever197  First of all, in 2014 and in 2022 Ukraine was not in NATO nor was it remotely close to joining NATO. The Russian invasion into Ukraine is not about NATO. It's about Putin's concerns about demographic collapse and his concerns after there were protests in Belarus and about his nostalgia for the days of the Russian empire and about a desire to steal Ukrainian resources and about Putin's personal feelings of insecurity and inferiority and his attempts to over compensate for that by pretending that he is Peter the Great - "strongmen" tend to actually be very weak, insecure people. In the past three decades imperialist Russia has launched at least seven unprovoked invasions into nearby countries to steal territory from them. Has the United States done that even once in the past three decades? Has the United States done that even once in the past 100 years? And actually Russia has been involved in Cuba for as long as Cuba has been communist. And countries in Eastern Europe have been under Russian occupation before whereas to my knowledge Mexico has never been under American occupation other than the territory that the United States stole from Mexico almost two centuries ago. Plus Putin has made clear that he misses the days of Russian empire and would like Russia to occupy countries in Eastern Europe again. Countries in Eastern Europe hsve a real danger of being invaded and occupied by Russia. Mexico has no significant chance of being invaded by the United States unless Trump does that as president but if Trump does that then his buddy Putin isn't going to stand with Mexico against Trump's invasion. I also somewhat doubt that Trump's buddy Xi would stand with Mexico against a Trump invasion. Plus Mexico benefits immensely from trade with Canada and the United States. I doubt very much that a Mexican government would want to jeopardize those relationships by inviting Russian or Chinese troops into the country. Now it is true that the United States again might invade countries to overturn their left wing governments - Venezuela and Nicaragua come to mind. Perhaps Putin might send troops to be stationed in those countries though politically they are far from Russia's extreme form of crony Capitalism. Xi might do the same. If it happens it happens.
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  2983. ​​ @ignatiusryd2031  Okay brilliant Zionist, explain exactly how regular Palestinians are supposed to overthrow a large, powerful, well armed group like Hamas? If you were a Palestinian who is struggling just to survive in the overcrowded impoverished Gaza prison camp into which the racist violent extremist Zionist invaders forced Palestinians after stealing their land exactly how would you seize power from 30,000 well armed Hamas militants? Because right now your talk is cheap and meaningless and ridiculous. And in 2006 fewer than half of Palestinians voted for Hamas and it was because they thought it would reduce corruption, not out of a desire to go to war with Israel. And there hasn't been an election since so there was nothing that Gaza residents could do to remove Hamas from power. And a survey done early this autumn before Oct 7 found that Hamas was very unpopular among Gaza residents. And many reports say that it was Israel that promoted Hamas to weaken secular Palestinian leaders and to divide Palestinians and to try to find an excuse to claim that Palestinian leaders are too extreme to negotiate with. Must be annoying for Zionists when the facts keep contradicting their extremist ideology and nonsense propaganda. And of course Zionists always miss the important thing - that the basic fundamental reason why there is conflict between white European Jewish people and Palestinians is because white European extremist, racist Zionists invaded Palestine and stole the land and forced Palestinians into prison camps and has brutally oppressed Palestinians for a long, long time. Palestinians did not invade Europe and attack white Jewish Europeans and steal their land and put them in prison camps. If Zionists had never invaded Palestine there would be no conflict.
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  2986. Launching an attack to retake Bakhmut would in a sense be a waste of resources for Ukraine when offenses elsewhere would have much more strategic value. However, if the Ukrainians did recapture the entire city it would have a massive psychological effect on Russian soldiers and officers and the Russian regime and on regular Russian people and especially on Russian trolls who brag ahout the "wonderful victory" Russia has achieved by seizing part of a very small city within 10 months at great expense of men and military supplies. Bakhmut is the only "Russian victory" that Russians have to be happy about affer Russian forces have been pushed back long distances on all 3 fronts. Take that victory away and they have nothing left but suffering, defeat and total lack of success and more Russians will wonder why the heck their military is fightihg in Ukraine and will wish that the war just end. I assume that if Ukraine did try to take back Bakhmut instead of fighting house to house through the city at great cost Ukrainian troops would try to advance quicky on either side of Bakhmut with the goal of encircling and trapping Russian forces in the city. Imagjne the psychological impact on Russians if after hearing for months that Russian forces were achieving great victory in Bakhmut they suddenly learned that Ukrainian forces had advanced and encircled the city and that large numbers of Russian military and Wagner troops along with their equipment were trapped in the city and cut off from supplies. I imagine that if they heard that Russian people would feel about the same as the German people felt in early 1943 when they heard that the precious German 6th army had been encircled in Stalingrad and were forced to surrender to the enemy. Some might ask how Ukrainian troops could make a sudden advance and encircle Bakhmut when the Russians have had no success at that in 10 months of trying but the Ukrainian military is clearly very competent and very thoughtful aboit the tactics it uses whereas the Russian military has shown itself to be incompetent and to use very poor tactics.
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  3017. ​ @glibsonoran  This is the second time lately that I have heard the claim that during WW2 the allies made the decision that they would not try to assassinate Hitler because they figured that Hitler's bad decisions were hurting the German military's results in the field. Don't know if the claim is true but I think that there is a good chance that bad decisions would continue after Hitler was dead because it was likely that if Hitler was killed he would not have been replaced by a general or group of generals but more likely by another leading Nazi extremist from Hitler's group of cronies - a Nazi extremist just as likely as Hitler to make more mistakes. Also, Hitler's death could have touched off chaotic infighting between Nazi leaders, each one wanting to take Hitler's position. I've read that after WW2 started Hitler never had a regular cabinet meeting because he didn't want all of his cabinet ministers to have a chance to talk together and possibly scheme together. That would suggest that leading Nazis were distant from each other, physically and otherwise, and so might not cooperate too well if they suddenly had to decide who should replace Hitler. Chaos and confusion and infighting among the Nazi elite would have been good for the allies. It's also true that the German officers who tried to assassinate Hitler seemed to feel that Hitler was the biggest obstacle to them trying to negotiate an end to the war though perhaps a new Nazi leader would be just as much an obstacle and perhaps the German generals were never going to agree to the unconditional surrender that the allies would have insisted on anyway.
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  3070. ​ @joebidenisyourpresidentget2481  Just saw a TV news piece about young indoctrinated Russian people who believe all of Putin's lies and have the delusion that the whole world is against Russia for no particular reason and that the Russian military is bravely defending the motherland against attack from the west. In other words they are xenophobic, gullible people completely disconnected from reality and living in the fantasy world of Russian state media. Seems that it is time for NATO to send at least their airforces to quickly destroy the terrorist Russian invaders in Ukraine to the point that Ukrainian troops can quickly retake all Russian occupied territory in Ukraine without many casualties and once again control their entire country and end the war. That would be a good reality check for the Russians slow witted, xenophobic and gullible enough to believe the nonsense on Russian media. If they saw that Putin was lying when he claimed that the Russian military was strong enough to take on NATO and lying about Russia being a great power and lying about NATO intending to invade Russia itself then maybe they would finally realize that Putin lies about everything. Although these people are really gullible and slow witted so maybe they would still believe whatever lies the Putin regime spouted. No doubt if NATO did get involved in the war and help Ukraine to win quickly Russian trolls would just lie and say that Russian forces still controlled southern and eastern Ukraine or say that Russian forces had not been defeated and had not retreated but rather had just strategically repositioned themselves.
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  3094. ​ @CaptainChaooooos  You don't understand but then Maga cult sheep never do. Canada imports as many cars from the United States as the United States imports from Canada. There is no imbalance. And if a car company tries to move all its production to the United States then Canada won't buy its cars anymore. The Canadian and American car industries are integrated like conjoined babies and separating them would cost a vast amount of money and accomplish nothing. They are set up in the most efficient way now with car parts usually crossing the border about 8 times during production Government forcing a change ro that efficient system is of course going to make things less efficient. The auto production system is now set up to be as efficient as possible. That's how private companies behave to minimize costs. And don't assume that car manufacturers are going to spend billions of dollars on unneeded new car plants when Trump is completely unpredictable and unstable and could change his mind about policy at any moment. Trump loves chaos. Investors thinking of spending billions of dollars on building new factories don't like chaos, especially when they know that those new factories aren't even needed. And why spend four to six years spending a fortune building unnecessary factories when Trump will be gone in less than four years and his crazy tariff war could be ended? Two thirds of Americans oppose putting tariffs on Canadian products. One assumes that the next president would get rid of them if they even last through Trump's term.
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  3126. So many people claiming that he was a prison guard. Nonsense. Prison guards knew that the rebels were closing in on Damascus and that the regime was crumbling. Choice 1 taken by all the other prison guards : Get the heck away from the prison and get into civilian clothes and pretend that one had nothing to do with the prison. Choice 2: Get into clothes that were turning into rags and lock himself in a prison cell and hope that somebody showed up to let him out before he died of thirst and hope that none of the prisoners in the prison identified him when he was found. You people seriously think that a prison guard is going to pick choice 2 when all the other guards are picking choice 1? You're delusional. Then the bizarre comments that he doesn't look like someone who just spent years in a WW2 Nazi concentration camp. He didn't spend years in a WW2 Nazi concentration camp. Then the comments saying that he is so clean. How do you know how clean he is? You don't. And if he had access to any water at all over the past few months he may have used some to try to clean himself. I met a man who had lived in Somalia for decades and he said that when water was scarce some people were able to clean their entire body with one cup of water. All you see are his face and hands which would need even less water to clean. And to many people cleaning oneself is an extremely important part of their routine related to their religion. Cleanliness is next to Godliness. As for him briefly looking up at the sky after not being outside a long time. We cannot imagine his emotions at suddenly being freed and being able to see the sky when he may have been thinking that he would never see the sky again. And he looks only briefly. Every time there's a solar eclipse some people stare at the sun too long and damage their eyes. Sometimes people look at brightly lit things even though its hard on the eyes. Then the comments that a Syrian man wouldn't kiss a strange woman. The fact that he did that and clung to her is evidence showing that he was a prisoner and has been through a horrific experience and is emotionally completely overwhelmed by the experience of suddenly being freed. A Syrian actor just being paid money to portray a prisoner isn't going to kiss a strange foreign woman he doesn't know. And it probably wouldn't occur to an actor to vomit after having a bit of food and neither Clarissa Ward or the rebel soldiers would want an actor to do that. If this was a pure propaganda video with an actor then it would have shown him enjoying and relishing the food given to him by the rebel soldiers. As to the bizarre comments saying that he should be leaping for joy. He's almost certainly in no condition to do such a thing. And he's understandably very confused about what is going on and about who these strange people are. And when strangers with powerful guns suddenly appear and wake you up when you have been sleeping you're not going to start jumping around. If you were in the bank and men with powerful weapons suddenly walked in are you going to move around a lot or stay as still as possible? And why the heck would the media and the rebels need to stage a video to show a prisoner being freed? Nobody denies that there were huge numbers of political prisoners being held in Syrian prisons. It's not as if the rebels would struggle to find such a prisoner. In fact I believe that a plea was put out by the rebels asking for someone (presumably a former prison guard) to let them know the passwords for a lot of prison doors behind which many prisoners were trapped and abandoned when the guards all fled. And Clarissa Ward might be criticized for injecting herself into news stories too much but there is no doubt that she is a serious journalist and is willing to risk her safety to go to dangerous, unstable places to report what is happening. It's not a new thing. In the 1930s Spanish Civil War Ernest Hemingway did the same thing. As someone else commented, all the posts in which people claim that this is all fake are similar to the posts people put out in which they claim that there is no genocide occurring in Gaza despite all the evidence to the contrary.
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  3136. ​ @trebordrum  After the failed attempt to rescue the hostages Iran scattered them all over Iran. The idea that a mission could sweep into Iran and save all the hostages held all over the country and safely bring them out of Iran without having them killed is frankly insane. It's simply not something one can do in a foreign, hostile country that is on alert for such an attempt to be made. American forces couldn't travel all over Iran undetected and simultaneously raid every location with an American hostage and once the first attempt is made to rescue the first hostage other hostages might very well have been quickly moved or killed. And according to some credible sources Reagan or his representatives made a deal with the Iranians demanding that the Iranians not release the hostages while Carter was still president so it didn't matter what American negotiators under Carter tried in talking to Iranian representatives. The horrific Iran Contra deal made by the Reagan team was very real and the fact that the Iranians immediately released the hostages when Reagan became president is incredibly suspicious and strongly suggests that something very nefarious was going on. The fact is that you are criticizing the Carter administration for not carrying out a rescue mission that was impossible and for not making a deal that was impossible to make unless Carter was willing to stoop so low as did Reagan and agree to something as horrible as the Iran Contra deal. It's really not appropriate to criticize someone for not doing the impossible. Far better for you to criticize Reagan for his disturbing Iran Contra deal or blame Eisenhower and the British for subverting Iranian democracy and installing the Shah in 1953.
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  3158. ​​​ @Leon-en9il  I would agree that Jewish people forced to leave Arab countries or leaving because of persecution should be entitled to compensation (or their family members should be compensated if they are deceased). But if they left simply because they were pushed to go to Palestine by Zionist representatives or left simply because they heard that Jewish Europeans were stealing Palestine from the Palestinians and stolen land would be available then they deserve no compensation. And of course wrongs by governments elsewhere to Jewish people don't justify Jewish Europeans stealing Palestine from the Palestinians, especially as those wrongs by Arab governments generally happened after white Jewish Europeans invaded Palestine. It would be pretty bizarre for white Jewish Europeans to claim that it was ok for them to steal Palestine from the Palestinians because in doing so they think it will make Arab governments so mad that they will take actions against Jewish people in their countries in the future. Notice that Jewish people lived for centuries in Arab countries and began a mass exodus out of those countries only after white Jewish European colonists announced that they were forming a country on land stolen from Palestinians. If there had been no white Jewish European invasion into Palestine one has to assume that the Jewish populations that had lived in Arab countries for centuries would still be there. Still not justifying the actions of any Arab governments or people who persecuted Jewish people in Arab countries but the order of events should be understood.
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  3235. I always find it bizarre that in the United States basic human rights such as the right to health care or to paid maternity leave or to decent schools or to affordable university education or to walking down the street or going to elementary school without being shot don't seem to be priorities but that the two main "rights" in the U.S. seem to be the right for anyone to carry any gun anywhere and the right to have insanely low gasoline prices - things that are not real rights at all. It seems that a lot of Americans base their presidential vote on whether or not gasoline prices are higher than 4 years previously and if gasoline prices are higher they don't bother to think about why gasoline prices are higher. The main reason why gasoline prices are up is that Trump's bromance partner Putin launched an unprovoked invasion into Ukraine, an invasion which Trump likely supports as he praised Putin's military moves on the eve of the invasion. Obviously Biden is not to blame for Putin's invasion. I believe that Bernie Sanders blames oil companies for raising prices to increase their profits. If so then there is no sign that Trump would bring in regulations to cut corporate profits if he was president again. As well in general prices have gone up because Xi had lockdowns in China (not Biden's fault) and because Biden guided the United States out of its deeoest recession since the 1930s and took the economy from recession ro become a booming economy with low unemployment. (that's a good thing) On top of that any European or even any Canadian could tell Americans that American gasoline is still insanely cheap. And again that's not a basic human right. Hopefully some day the United States will develop to the point that voters stop basing their vote on a simplistic question regarding whether insanely cheap gasoline prices are higher or lower than the insanely low prices 4 years earlier and voters will instead cast their ballot based on more important things.
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  3272. Get the feeling that generally older Russians support the war whereas young Russians are much more likely to oppose the war (even if they don't say so publicly to avoid imprisonment). Think if there is going to be an increased mobilization the just thing to do would be to send the old people who support the war to fight and let the young people who oppose the war stay at home. Course one could say that about a lot if wars and it never happens and Putin doesn't do justice. I have no qualifications to say whether 300,000 conscripted reservists will benefit the Russian army at all. I do suspect that having hundreds of thousands of soldiers who disagree with the war (especially when they personally might end up dead) and thus hate Putin more than they hate the enemy and possibly hate their officers more than they hate the enemy is not a good thing for army morale. Perhaps once they see their comrads killed by the Ukrainians they will start to hate the Ukrainians But perhaps like many WW1 soldiers (especially French and Russian soldiers) the more if their comrads who are killed the more they will hate their government and their officers. In 1917 Russia had not one but two revolutions and I have to think a big part of the reason was that so many Russian soldiers and civilians were fed up with the war. Know nothing about this but have heard the claim that France too came close to revolution because French soldiers were fed up with being used as cannon fodder by stupid generals in a stupid war. Perhaps new conscripted Russian soldiers today being used as cannon fodder by stupid generals in a stupid war might decide like some WW1 French troops to stir up a lot of trouble for the Russian army and the Russian government and refuse to keep being used as cannon fodder. One soldier who refuses to fight can easily be dealt with but if 300,000 soldiers in the field refuse to fight thats a big, big problem for an army (especially one that is losing a war right now) and for a government. Think it would be very unlikely to see a mass rebellion of Russian troops but if it happened it would suddenly create massive problems for Putin. Apparently existing Russian soldiers are already upset that they are now being told they must stay on the front lines when earlier they had expected to be given leave after months of brutal fighting. If they now see a lot of new soldiers who refuse to fight then the existing soldiers may possibly get fed up and decide that they too are tired if fighting and dying. Highly unlikely but one can dream. And will 300,000 new troops wven show up if so many young Russians have already fled the country. Even before the recent mobilization there was a claim that as many as 3.8 .million young Russians had already fled the country. Even if the true number was half that number with that many young Russians gone and many more fleeing now I suspect that a significant number of young Russian men won't be there when the army comes calling at their homes.
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  3273. Every day brings more proof that NATO should be sending vast numbers of planes with NATO pilots and NATO ground support crews to destroy the Russian defensive networks and artillery pieces and fuel depots and ammunition depots in Ukraine and of course as well the Kerch Bridge and any rail lines from Russia that Russian forces are using to transport supplies. Time to stop worrying about what worries Putin and help Ukraine quickly achieve victory and drive the Russian terrorists out of Ukraine and end the war so that Ukraine can have peace and start rebuilding and the world market for food and fuel can return to normalcy. Make clear to head terrorist Putin that if he uses a nuclear weapon or takes any action (military or otherwise) against any NATO country then NATO forces will respond with force against Russia and will target military bases, bridges, roads, railroads and military production factories in Russia and would even consider targeting him personally due to his terrorist activities. Putin was upset by a couple of drones buzzing the Kremlin just to remind him that the war is real. He wouldn't deal well with a real attempt to end his terrorist career. Everyone should get a fair trial and I think the daath penalty is barbaric and it would be great if Putin would do the right thing and turn himself over to the Hague for trial but that seems highly unlikely. At heart Putin is a weak, paranoid, insecure man who values his own skin and who knows that a Russian military that has been humiliated by Ukrainian forces would be destroyed by NATO forces and knows that if NATO started destroying infrastructure and the military in Russia then his whole pretense of being a "strong man" who will protect Russia against outsiders would be shown to be a complete lie. That wouldn't go over well with the Russian public because that delusion is about all that Putin has to keep public support.
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  3299. Russia has for a year been carrying out a genocidal invasion of Ukraine involving hundreds of thousands of Russian troops, massive Russian conscription of civilians and prisoners, virtually all its planes, tanks and other military equipment, armed teams intent on assassinating the Ukrainian president, massive shelling of Ukrainian troops and cities, countless terrorist attacks and war crimes against Ukrainian civilians, sending planes, missiles, drones and shells to try to destroy the Ukrainian electrical and water systems all done with the intent to destroy Ukraine as a country, murder its leaders and occupy it with brutal oppression forever and then Russia tells Ukraine that if it gets any help from anyone to better defend itself that Russia will "escalate things". What the heck is left for Russia to do to "escalate things"? Ban Ukrainian dancers from Russian dance festivals? Time for Western countries to stop listening to or paying attention to Putin's rants and give Ukraine everything it needs to drive the Russian terrorist invaders right out of Ukraine and that should include long range missiles to destroy all Russian drone and missile sites being used to attack Ukraine whether those sites are in Russia, in Crimea or in Donbas. And if Russia responds by attacking NATO or attacking infrastructure in NATO countries or in Sweden or Finland then NATO should oblige Russia's desire to fight NATO by sending its airforces to Ukraine to destroy Russian terrorist invader forces. Given the power of NATO airforces and the power of the Ukrainian military on the ground it wouldn't take long to end the Russian invasion using NATO air power.
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  3324. There are engineers who hope to create designs for thermal systems that could be used anywhere in the world to provide a steady power supply 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. These thermal energy systems (not to be confused with ground based heat pumps) would involve drilling down great distances under ground (e.g. 6 km) and then using the heat down there to generate energy. This would be a natural technology for oil companies and their workers to transition to as they are used to drilling down to significant depths - much more of a logical transition than for them to transition to making wind turbines or solar panels. The technology is not ready yet, especially as the high temperatures create problems for equipment and materials but some engineers claim that the engineering challenges involved in developing such technology are straightforward problems that should have solutions that can be found (unlike say the situation with nuclear fusion). Deep thermal energy could be used to provide steady power supply to every place on Earth meaning that every country would be much more energy independent and not reliant on other countries and not worried about whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing and not needing to store vast amounts of energy. Also, since it is a technology which involves putting a shaft straight down under ground I suspect that thermal energy may be more popular with residents than is filling areas with obtrusive wind turbines or even filling fields with solar panels. Perhaps thermal energy could become the main supplier of energy or perhaps it could become the back up energy source for when solar and wind energy production is low and stored energy has been almost used up. Now what it would cost I can't say.
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  3340. The longer this war goes on the longer the Ukrainian people have to suffer horrific things such as lack of power, constant fear of terrorist Russian attacks, family separations, disruption of every aspect of daily life and horrific mental health trauma ( especially for children, the elderly and those who have serious health needs) and the more Ukrainans will die or be wounded and the longer the most vulnerable people around the world will suffer from food shortages and higher than necessary food and fuel prices. Thus the sooner western countries give enough military supplies to Ukraine to enable it to win the war and drive Russian forces right out of Ukraine the better. Western countries need to stop worrying about whether what they do annoys or provokes Putin because he's a very weak, insecure, paranoid man who is going to be annoyed and provoked by the very existence of independent Ukraine, Latvia, Poland, etc anyway. There's no point trying to make Putin happy because he's never going to be happy and he's going to keep invading neighbouring countries as he has done since taking office until he suffers a decisive, devastating defeat and the best time and place for that is now in Ukraine. Really at least by April once it was clear Ukraine was going to drive Russian forces right out of northern Ukraine NATO countries should have taken the attitude "The heck with what Putin wants" and given Ukraine all the tanks, planes, artillery, missiles, drones and other supplies it needed to destroy Russian terrorist forces in Ukraine as soon as possible. In particular one military expert said that the most effective time to stop Russian missiles and crimes used in terrorist attacks is before they leave the ground so hopefully western leaders will listen to that advice and give Ukraine the weapons to destroy drone and missile launching sites in Crimea and in Russia instead of expecting Ukrainians to put up with constant terrorist attacks without firing back at the launch sites responsible for those terrorist attacks. And for heaven's sake at least give Ukraine a few long range Himar missiles to take out completely the Crimean bridge the Russians illegally built on Ukrainan territory so that Russian military supplies no longer can cross that bridge.
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  3376. I try to tell people to distinguish between regular devout Jewish people living regular lives in rhe west and the horrific colonialist apartheid oppressive Israeli tegime that is doing such horrific things just as I would tell people to distinguish between people of any religion or race living regular lives and governments made up of leaders of their religion or race. You should not blame anyone for the actions of others and nobody should be subject to angry words simply because of their race or religion. But some Jewish people in rhe west like the young woman interviewed don't help things by displaying Israeli flags just as the racist, colonialist, apartheid oppressive Israeli regime is carrying out war crimes and genocidal actions against rhe Palestinians it has oppressed for 75 years and from whom it stole the land of Palestinians and after Israel has slaughtered close to 5,000 children and destroyed or damaged the homes of over a million Palestinians. When they wave flags of the monstrous oppressive colonialist Israeli regime Jewish people in the wsst tie themselves to that horrific regime and its atrocities and understandably that will make some people angry at them which leads to terrible shouting matches. So for heaven's sake people, stop waving the flag of the horrific colonialist oppressive Apartheid Israeli state - frankly it's a sadistic thing ro do as so many people are feeling traumatized about the horrors Israel is inflicting on the Palestinian people. One would think Jewish people of all people would understand how nasty and horrible it is for someone to wave the flag of a racist oppressive regime as it commits atrocities against helpless people. In the 1930s a 2 day brawl between thousands of people started at a baseball game in Toronto becsuse some racists in the crowd waved a Nazi flag to taunt the Jewish players on one of the teams at the same time that the German Nazi regime was doing horrible things to Jewish people. Waving an Israeli flag today is just as hurtful to those people who are Muslim, Arab or from a people who experienced colonialism so let's pass on the Nazi and Israeli flags that do nothing but increase trauma and conflict between people. And for that matfer for the same reason let's not see any Russian flags anywhere but at the Russian embassy.
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  3381. ​ @michaelhowell2326  You were doing so well with your comment until you suggested that Ukraine chose to get invaded instead of choosing peace, an utterly ludicrous suggestion. Ukraine just wanted to live in peace free of Russian domination. It's not Ukraine's fault that the Russian dictator is a weak, insecure, paranoid man who feels the need to cover up for his personal insecurities by trying to expand the Russian empire by repeatedly launching unprovoked imperialist invasions into other countries. Nor was it Georgia's fault or Moldova's fault that they were invaded by imperialist Russia. And I don't know what you mean by saying that Ukraine is enjoying the aid. Ukraine isn't receiving Jacuzzis and 19th century French wine. It's receiving desperately needed military equipment and supplies that it is using to stop a genocidal, terrorist Russian imperialist military from conquering Ukraine and wiping it from the face of the world and oppressing its people till far into the future. If you think that's enjoyment then you have a strange idea of enjoyment. You remind me of the kid in a cartoon I saw. The kid was jealous of his sister getting her mouth wired with braces. Perhaps you also think that spending time at the dentist getting braces attached is the height of enjoyment equaled only by the thrill of being a Ukrainian artillery man trying to fire at Russian positions while hoping that none of the Russian shells falling from above score a direct hit. To me a strange interpretation of enjoyment.
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  3422. You're very naive. The children often know more about the technology than do the parents and telling children thst they can't have any tech devices is not practical in an era when for a long time in many places all school teaching was done remotely via the internet. And good luck to the parent trying to stop a child addicted to the internet from going on their friend's phone at school either at lunch or in a spare period or just after school two or three hours before the parent gets home from work. Of course a parent can tell a child about the dangers of the internet and tell the child not to take negative online comments too seriously and can tell their child they are not allowed on social media and can try to place limits on screen time and can even deny their child a smartphone but a parent can't watch their child 24 hours a day and they can't stop other children from talking about their child on social media or even posting photos of their child on social media. A child who isn't even on social media and doesn't have a cellphone can just trip in the school yard and fall and within an hour or two have a picture of them sprawled in a mud puddle on half the cellphones in the school through no fault of their own.....and gossip about them can spread just as fast. Telling a young adolescent or teenager in school to not have anything to do with social media is a bit like telling someone living in a small town to have nothing to do with town gossip. The people gossiping in a small town aren't going to give special immunity to someone who themselves doesn't gossip and the kids at a school on social media aren't going to make a rule to not talk about the kids who are not on social media.
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  3424. Don't trust this channel or any media source that doesn't regularly cover the war to get things right. Watch the videos of people who focus on the war. Ukraine Matters or Covert Cabal for instance. Territorial gains have been tiny compared to the size of Ukraine. As last reported Russian forces still controlled less territory than they did in May 2022, almost three years ago because their gains are so small. Last August Russian trolls kept saying that Russian forces wouid recapture Kursk in August and capture Prokovsk in September. Obviously they were completely wrong. This is a war of attrition in which neither side is making significant advances and neither side has any prospect of making a major advance. Both sides are suffering but there is a difference. Ukrainians are fighting for the survival of their country and to avoid being under horrific Russian occupation and oppression. That can give them great motivation to continue. Russian soldiers on the other hand are fighting and dying in vast numbers simply because Putin is greedy and has the delusion that he is Peter the Great. That's not very motivating especially when the Russian government and military leadership treats Russian soldiers as pawns to be casually sacrificed in vast numbers. As weĺl by just surviving three years of Putin's three day special military operation to capture Kyiv and conquer Ukraine the Ukrainians have accomplished a lot. On the other hand Russian soldiers who thought they would be having victory parties in Kyiv in March 2022 with Ukrainians welcoming them as "liberators" must be very depressed now and wondering why the heck they are in Ukraine. When you're still struggling to complete a three day job three years later and you see no sign that you'll ever be able to finish the job you're going to have immense feelings of failure. Remember how the war of attrition in Vietnam ended for the Americans and how the war of attrition in Afghanistan ended for the Soviet Union. Not very well.
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  3466.  @mrgabagoo580  I can understand why people living in Kaliningrad who are loyal to Russia and even how patriotic Russian people living in Moscow might be unhappy to hear a western commentator talking about the possibility of Kalingrad becoming independent of Russia but there is a vast difference between a academic in the West talking about the possible independence of Kalingrad and a commentator (especially a government commentator) talking about the possible independence of a region in a western country. The difference is that the western academic is living in a country with freedom of speech and giving their own personal opinion wheras the Russian commentator is living in what has effectively become a brutal dictatorship run by a repressive demagogue and which no longer has freedom of speech so that even if the Russian commentator is not a state actor they are restricted to saying only things in line with Russian government propaganda. There is also the difference that in western countries people seeking independence for their region generally have the freedom to publicly express their desire for independence so they don't need that message to be spread by Russian people stating positions that line up with the position of the Russian government. Nobody in Quebec is going to go to prison now for saying that they want Quebec to be independent of Canada (though the temporary round up of some separatist intellectuals by police in 1970 when a terrorist separatist group was setting off bombs and kidnapping politicians was disturbing). So Quebecers who want independence as an example are quite capable of freely and openly developing a campaign for independence. They don't need Russian help. On the other in Kalingrad where people do not have freedom of speech and where people can go to prison for an extended time simply for peacefully protesting or even for saying that the war in Ukraine is a war any local people who might favour independence are obviously not free to say that aloud without fear of prosecution and would need the support of commentators in free western countries to put out their messages supporting independence. I have no idea what percentage of people in Kaliningrad support independence but I do know that in Russia territory where nobody can safely tell a survey taker that they don't support Putin that it would be virtually impossible to get honest answers from people regarding whether they want to be independent of Russia. I do suspect that most people in Kaliningrad want to stay part of Russia but if the people there find themselves suffering badly for the next ten years not just because of the usual problems in Russia caused by western sanctions but also due to constant supply shortages of goods from the rest of Russia maybe eventually the people in Kaliningrad will get fed up and say enough with this - let's leave the brutal backward looking, inward looking autocracy of Russia and become a more free, well off, democratic independent country in the EU with ties to the west just like countries around us. Why anyone in Kalingrad would want to stay in xenophobic, backward, isolated, pariah state, undemocratic, brutally repressive Russia instead of becoming a more prosperous, open, democratic country in the EU is beyond me. Pretty sure that it's mainly older Russians who are cool with Putin's attempts to return Russia to the bleak, repressive, isolated days of the 1970s and that younger Russians used to scrolling the internet are much more likely to want Russia to become a modern, democratic, progressive state that is very much connected to the rest of the world not just through selling fossil fuels but also connected through culture and travel. Because not just in Russia but around the world young people who spend their time online connected to the rest of the world want to throw away the xenophobic, ultra nationalistic, conservative, backward looking culture of their parents and to be full citizens of the world and akthough populist leaders in some countries are relying on the support of older people to try to turn back the clock in the end these older people will be replaced by newer more progressive, more open, less xenophobic generations in a demographic wave that is unstoppable.
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  3559. It seems that some tire manufacturers are trying to respond to the problem of pollution particles from tires but given the scale of the problem we really need revolutionary changes in tire composition, design and structure whether they be for electric vehicles or gas powered vehicles and whether they be for cars, trucks, buses or for other vehicles. Montreal subway cars use tires rather than steel wheels which might be quieter and possibly may give a smoother ride but it does make one wonder ahout the level of particulate from tires in the subway stations and tunnels and the impact on customers and maintenance workers. In defence of electric cars, they almost certainly don't contribute as much to global warming as do gas powered cars and global warming can lead to more powerful wildfires that produce toxic contaminants into the air over huge areas, sometimes even hitting areas thousands of km from the fires and on rare occasions even effecting people on another continent. In 2023 the area burned by Canadian wildfires destroyed the previous yearly record with the area burned being six times the long term average and a significant number of the fires still burning as of February 2024. This led to horrific smoke conditions in many American and Canadian cities for significant periods and being a long way from the wildfires apparently makes things worse as the smoke undergoes chemical changes as it travels and thus it becomes more toxic as it travels further. This has been a mild, relatively dry winter in much of Canada so there is low snow cover and some authorities are warning that the 2024 Canadian wildfire season could be worse than the record setting 2023 season. So I get your point that electric vehicles are not a panacea but given how gas powered vehicles likely contribute more to climate change and thus to wildfires it can at least be argued that in the long run electric vehicles are better for air quality than are gas powered vehicles.
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  3595. Nonsense headline. A very misleading headline. And very naive questions. Don't get your information here. Get it from expert military analysts who are regularly putting out videos explaining the situation in Ukraine. And don't get fooled by nonsense Russian propaganda from the many Russian trolls putting out online posts. Understand that the reason why the Russian government hires so many trolls to spout propaganda online is that the Russian three day special military operation has taken over 1,000 days so far and is going very badly and its only hope for any success is for Russian trolls to convince weatern people and governments to stop supporting Ukraine. Otherwise the Russian military and the Russian economy are doomed to collapse some time in 2026. Countries that launch successful invasions have no need to hire vast numbers of trolls to spout propaganda because the success of their invasions is obvious to everyone. Russian forces are not advancing on all fronts and the gains they are making are trivial compared to the size of Ukraine. At this rate the Russian three day special military operation will take centuries to achieve its goal of capturing Kyiv and conquering Ukraine but the Russians don't have centuries left to do so because the situations of the Russian military and Russian economy are getting worse and worse and face collapse and catastrophe in 2026. The Russian military controls less territory than it did 30 months ago and hasn't made a significant advance in 30 months. Don't get fooled by stories of Russian troops gaining relatively tiny amounts of land. Ukraine has 600,000 square km of land. It's a very big place. Ukraine is very wisely giving up small amounts of territory when necessary to preserve Ukrainian lives while inflicting vast numbers of casualties on Russian forces and destroying massive amounts of Russian military equipment. By next summer Russia will have used up all stored military equipment in decent condition accumulated over 80 years and by spring 2026 will have used up all stored military equipment in poor condition. Despite moving troops from the borders of China and Finland to the war and using criminals in prison and sailors and technicians and poorly trained 18 year old conscripts on the front Putin has now resorting to paying a huge $30,000 sign up bonus to Russian men in their 50s and 60s amd even 70s to fight in the war even though according to younger Russian soldiers these older men who make up half of new recruits have all sorts of health problems and can't do anything. Putin has also resorted to recruiting soldiers from North Korea and other countries. It's going to get harder and harder for Putin to find replacements for the maasive number of Russian soldiers being lost. Russia now faces a massive labour shortage and infrastructure is not being maintained and is falling apart because there aren't enough workers to maintain it. Russia's natural gas and arms exports industries have collapsed and its oil industry is struggling with damaged oil refineries and is about to face a dramatic decline in the price of oil. Russia's central bank has had to raise its base interest rate to 21% and yet the Ruble is still declining and the real Russian inflation rate is still over 20% and over the next two years Russian interest rates and inflation rates will continue to increase while the Ruble will continue to fall. Russia's situation looks very, very bad. Due to very bad military and economic situations Russia experienced revolutions in 1905, in 1917 (twice) and in 1990. Don't be surprised if there is another Russian revolution in 2026. Again, don't get your information on the war from random journalists doing a story on Ukraine before moving onto a story about the latest Hollywood scsndal. Get your information from experts who are focused on following the war and who understand what is going on in the war on a larger scale.
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  3611.  @ThatOneDudeSaid  funny how people in the Trump/Putin cult have such a tenuous grasp on reality and don't even realize how ridiculous they look to normal people outside the cult when they post Trump/Putin propaganda. The war isn't taking place in Russia - it's taking place in Ukraine and Ukrainians have experienced Ukrainian winters for at least a thousand years and certainly know how to deal with Ukrainian winters. And Ukrainian troops (unlike Russian troops) are being supplied with good winter coats and other winter clothing. This is not the same as poorly clothed troops of Napoleon and Hitler freezing to death outside Moscow - these are Ukrainian troops who are very used to Ukrainian winters. And you seem to forget that many Russian troops are being sent to the front lines without being supplied with proper winter clothing or food and water supplies and that last winter many, many Russian troops involved in the invasion suffered from frostbite and that Russian columns ground to a halt stuck on roads in long vulnerable columns that were destroyed in Ukrainian attacks because Russian vehicles got stuck in the mud if they tried to leave the roads and because the Russian invasion force didn't have adequate supplies of food and fuel and because Russian military vehicles had not been maintained properly and their tires just fell apart. And of course this winter a lot of Russian troops on the front line are conscripts with little or no military experience and virtually no training and inadequate supplies of food, water and clothing and poor quality military equipment - conscripts who have no desire to be on the front line or to fight Ukrainians and certainty no desire to risk their lives for Putin and who generally hate and despise their officers. This contrasts completely from Ukrainian troops who are well provided with food and winter clothing and highly motivated to kill Russian soldiers and to force the entire barbaric Russian invasion force out of their country and who are by now highly experienced at fighting and killing Russian soldiers. Russian soldiers who fought French and German invasion forces were fighting to save their country from foreign occupation so were highly motivated. Russian soldiers in Ukraine today aren't motivated and are just thinking "Why the heck are we in Ukraine? I don't want to die in a stupid, pointless invasion". That's not being motivated to fight. It is true that Ukrainian civilians will have a very difficult winter because of regular Russian terrorist attacks on the Ukrainian power grid but that simply makes Ukrainians more determined to drive out the genocidal, terrorist Russian invasion force. But these Russian terrorist attacks are just one more reason for Western countries to supply Ukraine with more air defences against Russian terrorist attacks and more weapons to drive out or destroy the terrorist Russian invaders.
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  3629. ​ @letsplaywithmegacyborg3098  Many decades of brutal oppression by Assad and his father before him. Peaceful protests of Syrian citizens begin - citizens who were inspired by the Arab Spring protest movement which in turn was inspired by a Tunisian street vendor who publicly killed himself to protest against corruption and harassment which he had been subjected to by Tunisian police and government officials. Assad sees other Arab leaders being overthrown and decides that he has no desire to have that happen to him so he begins a brutal crackdown on protesters and increases oppression in Syria. This results in some people taking up arms against the government. Other countries got involved in the conflict after it started but the fault for the creation of the conflict lies with Assad. Western countries may have caused a lot of problems and you can talk about the dividing up of the world by European powers after WW1 if you want but still this horrific conflict could have been avoided if Assad had responded differently to peaceful protesters. The Arab Soring has not worked out well in the end but in no other country involved in the Arab Spring did things turn out remotely as bad as the horrific things that have happened in Syria since Assad began his brutal crackdown on protesters. On top of the devastating events in Syria Assad's decision to crackdown on protesters and the civil war it led to caused a massive flow of Syrian refugees to other countries and that in turn has led to problems in other countries including a shift to the far right in European politics - a shift which has given greater prominence to politicians who are sympathetic to Putin and his imperialist ambitions.
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  3652. ​ @ロクアンドロールしかないでも好きだ you're forgetting a number of things. First, the United States has signed treaties with a lot of countries in recent years and the unprovoked genocidal Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought democracies together more than they have been in many decades. Second, demographics. According to data from a Chinese statistical agency by 2016 the fertility rate in China had fallen to 1.05, half the level needed to reproduce the population. As well because so many female babies were aborted in China there are far fewer young Chinese women than young Chinese men (about 20% fewer). This means that in 2046 (one generation after 2016) the number of young Chinese people of child bearing age will be significantly less than half of the number today and that by 2076 (two generations after 2016) number of young Chinese people of child bearing age will be less than one quarter of the number today. And despite Chinese government illusions that the low fertility rate will change if they just tell young women to start making more babies that has not worked for any government that has tried that tactic and certainly won't work in China where women may be dealing with helping out two elderly parents and four elderly grandparents due to the one child policy.. or even possibly if they get married with four elderly parents and 8 elderly grandparents. Plus those women are living in a very misogynistic society plus unlike western countries that have low fertility rates China is still comparatively a very poor country with very little in the way of pension security to help out old people and take the burden off of children. Some forecast that China will lose half its population by 2100 but the numbers suggest that it will lose significantly more than that. Plus China will have a very elderly population very different than the young population it has had over the past few decades that enabled it to grow fast. Just in the past 3 years China's working age population fell be 38 million while the number of elderly Chinese increased dramatically. The United States on the other hand is expected to gain at least a hundred million people over the next 100 years and it would not be entirely surprising if by the 2123 China and the United States both have about the same population of 500 million or so people or even that by then the United States will have more people than China has. The difference is that the xenophobic Chinese government doesn't want immigrants that would reduce China's "racial purity" while hundreds of thousands of people leave China every year when at the same time vast numbers of immigrants move to the United States every year. So China's advantage of having a huge, young population is going to evaporate over the next century. 3. One reason for China's fast industrial growth was its very low wage rates but in the past few decades its wage rates have increased dramatically. While still well below American wage rates this combined with the United States developing cheap fossil fuels from fracking means that the cost of manufacturing in China and in the United States is about the same and especially after covid disruptions there is little reason to risk building a factory in China instead of in the United States, Mexico or China and of course Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and India have lower wage rates than China. We've all seen this movie before in the 1970s and 1980s when everyone was sure that Japan would replace the United States as the greatest economic power in the world due to its lower wages and superior technology and better organized factories and more work oriented culture and then as Japanese wage rates rose and Japan hit the same demographic collapse that China is facing now Japan's rise to dominance ended and by now the idea that Japan's economy could surpass that of the United States is not a serious thought. China is admittedly a much more populated country than is Japan but it is also much poorer and more backward than Japan in much of the country plus unlike Japan in the years since 1990 China is hated by people around the world and seen as a danger and not just in the west. People in India, Vietnam, Japan and other countries near China see China as a threat, the people in Sri Lanka have no love for a China that they now must repay vast amounts of loans to, despite the questionable behavior of some Muslim governments Muslim people around the world hate China for the genocide against Chinese Muslims and people in Africa don't entirely appreciate the blatant racism of Chinese people doing business or creating projects in Africa. Nobody really likes China - any relationships with China are purely economic in nature and that may sound fine but as China's population becomes a much smaller, older one China may find that behaving in ways to cause people around the world to hate China was a very bad idea.
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  3668. Trump should be put in jail for contempt of court and told he will stay there until the trial is over and that he will be denied any access to social media. He shouldn't be able to get away with a threat that can be seen as a threat against jurors, witnesses, prosecutors, judges, police, etc. What other defendant could get away with threatening to go after anyone involved in their prosecution? Nobody else could get away with that. And Trump shouldn't be allowed to get away with it, especially given his history of behaving like that. And of course a large fine would be appropriate. And since it would be incarceration for contempt of court the time served would not come off his sentence. And the judge should make it clear that if anyone connected to Trump posts comments similar to Trump's comments then they too may end up in jail for contempt of court and facing a large fine and may find themselves sued for slander. Trump would cry and have a tantrum like the toddler he is but he does that all the time anyway. And he would scream that it is all being done to prevent him from becoming president again but the situation is all his own fault. In the past politiical candidates from both parties who got themselves into legal trouble stepped down and focused on clearing up their legal problems and delayed any plans to get elected until future elections. That of course is the right thing to do and what Trump should do. We all know anyway that the charges against Trump aren't being brought to prevent him from being president. Rather it seems that he wants to become president again to gain some sort of immunity from prosecution. Trump being in jail for contempt until the trial is over would also be a good way to end his habit of trying to delay, delay, delay his court dates.
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  3749. And what Mr. Friedman seems to forget and any European or American politicians who want to stop support for Ukraine seem to forget is that if Putin is allowed to keep some of the territory he has invaded this year with no consequences then that will just embolden him to launch more invasions in future whether it is of Moldova or the Baltic states or Ukraine again or somewhere else. So far he has managed to invade Georgia, Chechnya, Crimea, Donbas and now the rest of Ukraine with no personal consequences to himself and if he is allowed to gain more territory from this invasion then he will think "Why not keep invading other countries? I can't lose. Can only win". Of course many Russian soldiers have died in these invasions but that is of no consequence to him. He doesn't care about them. And there is always the possibility that if he thinks that NATO has backed down and let him take territory from Ukraine that he will think that in future he could take back Ukraine, Poland and the whole Eastern Bloc while intimidating NATO by threatening to use nuclear weapons. Far better if he suffers a complete and massive defeat in Ukraine due to unequivocal NATO support for Ukraine and loses all of Donbas and Crimea and is forced to recognize Ukraine as an independent country and to agree to pay massive reparations to Ukraine before any sanctions come off of Russia so that he learns the lesson "don't invade other countries". And of course after that Ukraine should be be given a guarantee of full NATO protection if Russia should invade again in future. Better to stop the Russians cold in Ukraine them to end up fighting them in Poland or further west.
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  3801. ​ @jmhorange  You seem very naive and delusional and you don't seem to understand the imperialist terrorist Russian dictatorship at all. This is at least the 7th imperialist Russian invasion into a nearby country over the past few decades in an era when countries don't do imperialist invasions anymore. The first 6 times western countries decided to just let Russia succeed in its invasion and steal territory from its victim thinking each time that then the Russian dictatorship would be satisfied and there would be peace and each time western countries did that the Russian dictators took that as a sign that the west was weak and then felt emboldened to launch another imperialist invasion. You have the naive delusion that for some inexplicable reason that if the west does the exact same thing for the 7th straight time and lets imperialist Russia succeed with its invasion that the Russian dictatorship will respond differently than the last six times and then there will be peace. Even Charlie Brown wouldn't be so stupid and gullible as to be fooled 7 straight times and keep trying to kick the football. Even Charlie Brown would tell you that if western countries for the 7th time let Russia get away with its imperialist invasion rhen Putin will respond exactly the same way as before by launching another imperialist invasion and of course next time the victim will likely be a NATO country which means that NATO countries will be at war with Russia which will cost a lot of money and cost the lives of NATO soldiers. It's quite stunning that you need this explained to you. Over the past two years Ukrainian forces have proved incredibly successful at stopping the Russian "3 day military operation" and have destroyed about half of the military equipment that Russian ground forces spent 75 years accumulating and have killed or wounded vast numbers of Russian soldiers and have destroyed much of Russia'a Black Sea fleet and destroyed a significant amount of Russia's airforce and are now causing havoc for Russian oil infrastructure and due to the war many Russians spent a lot of the winter with no heat and no electricity. What you don't understand among other things is that the Russian people have a history of rebelling against Russian tyrants when foreign wars go badly and some day that may very well happen again as Ukrainian forces continue to make Russian terrorist invaders suffer. Now that you finally understand a little for your own sake stay offline and stop embarrassing yourself and destroying your reputation making ignorant comments that make you appear to be an amoral propogandist for a barbaric terrorist dictator.
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  3851. ​​​ @pinoyRN67  Trump supports Putin's unprovoked imperialist invasion into Ukraine that drove up the price of food and gasoline and other things around the world including in the United States plus he has encouraged Putin to launch more invasions that will cause more inflation. Biden on the other hand has been trying to help Ukraine end Putin's invasion that increased the cost of your food and gasoline and other products. So why the heck would you support Trump when he supports the Russian invasion that increased your costs on food and gasoline?.. And given that the price of gasoline is controlled by international energy markets and not by the president why the heck would you vote against the Democrats based on gasoline prices?. That's completely illogical. Every expert on energy markets says that presidents don't control gasoline prices. Next you'll tell us that you're voting for Trump because there were too many sunspots while Biden was president. And remember why oil and gasoline were so cheap when Trump left office. People around the world were staying home because of a global pandemic so demand for oil and gasoline collapsed in the biggest recession in 90 years. We can have those low oil and gas prices again but only by going into a deep, deep recession again and by having everyone stay home. You really feel that nostalgic for the 2020 deep, deep recession thst you want to have it over again?. Next time you're thinking of putting out a post think first. And think before you vote. It's disturbing that you value your vote so little that you are quite happy to vote without even thinking about things.
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  3931. ​​ @michaellaudermith  As a non-American I'm baffled why Americans see having insanely cheap gasoline prices as a fundamental human right instead of real basic human rights that are respected in developed countries such as paid maternity leave, access to health care, decent schools and the right to be in public places such as schools without being shot. But don't worry - any European or Canadian can assure you that American gas prices are incredibly cheap. They may have been cheaper when Trump was president but that wasn't his doing. It was because Russia and Saudi Arabia were in an economic war both boosting oil production to try to steal some of the oil market from each other and then because during the early part of the pandemic economies shut down and people stayed at home and so demand and prices for oil collapsed. Trump had nothing to do with the lower gas prices. As for the southern border: Did Mexico pay for a wall as your cult leader promised? No. Did Trump build much of the wall? No. Did MAGA leaders try to grift the MAGA sheep and get them to send money to "build the wall"? Yes. Did a number of the MAGA leaders involved in that scheme end up being charged for diverting money from the fund? Yes. Has the number of people entering the U.S. at its southern border dramatically decreased recently due to Biden policies? Yes. The MAGA cult isn't about securing the southern border or about gasoline prices. It's about trying to go back to the 1950s when only straight, white, able bodied, Christian men had rights and everyone else "knew their place" and stayed quiet or (in the case of MAGA cult members who wave Confederate flags) it's about feeling nostalgic for the days when Black people were in chains in slavery. And of course it's also about preventing any reasonable public health restrictions in a raging pandemic and about ensuring that there are no gun restrictions that might reduce the vast amount of gun violence in the United States. And of course for the leaders of the MAGA cult it's about fleecing the gullible, slow witted, servile MAGA sheep of their money and getting rid of government regulations that might hinder very wealthy business people from getting richer.
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  4064. So you're saying that if the North Korean dictatorship is insane enough to start a global nuclear war then a lot of Americans will die? That's pretty obvious but even if the United States spent ten times as much on its military the United States would still suffer a lot of deaths in a nuclear war so that's nothing to do with military preparedness. Remember that in 1939 the United States had a very small military, smaller than the armed forces of Portugal at the time I believe. And the American economy was in really bad shape in the 1930s. Today the United States has an extremely powerful military and a booming economy. And I question how much the American production of artillery shells matters. If the United States goes to war it's not going to be fighting a WW1 trench warfare type of war like has been happening in Ukraine. The United States has three of the four most powerful airforces in the world and I believe also the 6th most powerful airforce in the world and would dominate the skies in any conflict. A concern might be needing to fight both Russia and China simultaneously but Russia is very kindly and considerately steadily destroying its own military in Ukraine. I don't think that Iran would play any significant part in a war against China. It would be a challenge to fight against both China and North Korea at the same time but the United States would have the support of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Australia and also likely the support of Canada and New Zealand plus Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia which all have had trouble with Chinese aggression. Even India has pretty antagonistic relations to China despite supposedly being "allies" in Brics.
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  4090. @user-xi1to4sh2k  you mean they are majority ethnic Russian since terrorist Russian invaders occupied Crimea and parts of Donbas and drove out people of ethnic Ukrainian territory. And even if they are majority ethnic Russian that doesn't change the fact that Crimea has been part of Ukraine for 70 years and the Donbas has been part of Ukraine much longer and Russia accepted those facts when the Soviet Union dissolved. If ethnic Russian people living in Crimea or anywhere else in Ukraine want to live in Russia then the obvious thing for them to do is to move to Russia. Parts of western Canada are primarily Ukrainian but it would be utterly ridiculous for Ethnic Ukrainians in those areas to start a violent war to separate from Canada and join Ukraine and it would be ridiculous for the Ukrainian government to send invasion forces into Canada to start murdering Canadians and committing war crimes to help out the ridiculous attempt by Ukrainian Canadians to separate from Canada and even more ridiculous for Ukrainian forces to try to conquer all of Canada because the country tried to stop Ukrainian Canadians from using violence to steal part of Canada. Again Ukrainian Canadians and the Ukrainian government aren't doing those things because they would be ridiculous but that is what ethnic Russian separatists and the Russian government have been trying to do in Ukraine. Again, if ethnic Russians living in Ukraine want to live in Russia the answer is simple - just move to Russia. Gee, even President Zelensky grew up speaking Russian so the claim that ethnic Russians are being persecuted in Ukraine is utterly ludicrous. Of course the Ukrainian military responded in 2014 when ethnic Russian separatists started murdering people and tried to use violence to try to steal Donbas from Ukraine but any government anywhere in the world would respond that way to a group of violent extremists trying to murder people and steal part of the country.
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  4091. @malcolmb3744  so Russia has lost over 100,000 dead and no doubt at least twice that many wounded plus a million plus fleeing the country and then you say "Ah, that's not many"! That does show that you take the typical Russian government position that the lives of Russian soldiers don't matter and that using Russian soldiers as cannon fodder is fine. How did you descend to the point that you value the lives of your own countrymen so little? In other countries that attitude would be seen as horrific and yet for some reason in Russia it seems common. Maybe you would care more about the many lives of your countrymen being thrown away if you realized that Ukraine has about ten million men eager to fight to defend their country from the terrorist Russian invaders whereas Russia has basically zero men who want to go fight and die in Ukraine. Sure Putin could have another conscription but the last one caused a lot of anger in areas where men were conscripted and caused possibly 700,000 men to flee the country on top of those who already had fled the country. Now people across Russia have heard the stories of the first conscripts and how badly they were treated being sent untrained with inadequate clothing, food, water and equipment to be used as cannon fodder and now Putin will likely need to conscript more privileged Russians from the big cities so the political backlash to another conscription drive could be huge. Russia has a history of overthrowing its leaders who get the country stuck in quagmires in stupid foreign wars.
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  4093. @antyspi4466  nobody has attacked Russia nor is anyone talking about invading Russia and taking Russian territory so you're talking about a complete fiction ....though that is standard for Russian propagandists. Ukraine did not attack Russia. Russia attacked Ukraine intent on stealing territory from Ukraine in a completely unprovoked, genocidal invasion and just as Russia launched similar unprovoked invasions of Georgia, Chechnya, Crimea and the Donbas. Also typical of a Russian propagandist is your threat that Russia will use nuclear weapons if anyone interferes with its genocidal invasion of Ukraine. Frankly that threat is horrific and shows a complete lack of morality but that threat is also wearing thin. Russia keeps stealing land from other countries and threatening nuclear weapons if anyone interferes but if other countries now know that if they sit idly by then Putin will just keep invading more and more countries to build up his 18th century style empire to try to make up for his personal insecurities. If the world does nothing and allows Putin to occupy Ukraine then next time he will be invading the Baltic states and then it will be Poland he will invade, etc., etc. If he wants to kill himself than Putin can just use a revolver. There is no need to start a nuclear war if he wants to die. And I don't tbink he wants to die so i don't think he's going to start a nuclear war but regardless the west can't let him invade and occupy all of Europe step by step just because he threatens to use nuclear weapons against anyone who tries to stop him. His deranged fantasies or 18th century empire building need to be stopped and the sooner the better so let's stop him in Ukraine.
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  4181. ​ @dekismokton2407 No. Trump has a long time bromance with head terrorist Putin and praised Putin for his "brilliance" in his maneuvers of troops to the border of Ukraine right on the eve of Russia's unprovoked invasion. In other words Trump loves it when Imperialist Russia led by his buddy threatens unprovoked invasions of other countries. That's not pro-peace. That's pro war. And of course we have seen over the past 3 decades that every time the west did nothing after one of Putin's unprovoked genocidal invasions of other countries intended to steal territory Putin then felt emboldened by the weak western response to launch another Imperialist invasion to expand the Russian empire. Trump would let Putin take Ukraine and might even do things to sabotage Ukraine's war effort and would keep looking the other way over Putin's invasions and very possibly would pull the United States out of NATO all of which would pretty well guarantee a long line of Russian Imperialist invasions of other countries. Which of course is not peace at all. The only way to get peace is for Western countries to help Ukraine enough to ensure that Russian terrorist invaders in Ukraine suffer a complete and devastating defeat and are pushed right out of Ukraine permanently and then for Ukraine to join NATO so that the Russian regime finally understands that the days of imperialism are over and that it is a very bad idea to launch Imperialist invasions into other countries. The British and French figured that out over 60 years ago when they left places like Kenya and Algeria after fighting against rebellions. Those in the Russian regime may not be very bright and may be very slow to understand things but it is time that it was made clear to them that the era of Imperialism is over.
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  4259. ​ @TizBaz5  The arrogant white racist Europeans who invaded lands all over the world and set up racist colonialist apartheid oppressive regimes all thought that their regimes would last forever and now other than Israel there no longer are such regimes in which the native people have no freedom and no rights and just like similar regimes around the world the racist colonialist apartheid oppressive israeli regime will one day disappear and Zionist extremists will have to accept living in a country in which non-white people have freedom and human rights equal to theirs and if they cannot accept that then the Zionists will have to go back to their homelands in Europe, North America and other places. Or perhaps the Palestinians will understandably be so angry at suffering so much pain from arrogant Zionist invaders for so long that they will demand that the Zionists just leave Palestine. There is not one other place in the world where white colonist invaders still have their own country separate from the non-white native peoples so it's very hard to see why there would be such a situation continuing in Palestine. The only other place where such a thing sort of happened was in Ireland but Ireland is a white European country and even there Northern Ireland has lots of native Irish people with deep Irish roots and it seems very likely that Ireland and Northern Ireland will unite within 20 years. To think that there's going to be a two state solution in Palestine when it would basically be unprecedented and Israel has shown no interest in a two state solution is naive. To think that such a two state solution with the white colonists having virtually all the land will be permanent is just plain delusional.
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  4263. ​ @rockyjohnson9243  There is no end to what Zionists will make up. Genetic experts say that scientific evidence shows that Palestinians have been living continuously in Palestine for at least 4,400 years. And no doubt their ancestors were there long before that. Though I don't think that Zionists have any interest in facts or logic or justice so you will probably try to ignore the reality of the evidence and the history. Obviously Palestinians weren't Christian or Muslim before the birth of Christ because there were no Christians or Muslims in the world in the year 10 BC and in any year before that. Like all Christians and Muslims the Palestinians are descendants of people of other religions who converted and no doubt some off their ancestors were Jewish people who converted. The main thing is that the presence of Jewish people in Palestine thousands of years ago is no justification for white European Jewish Zionists to have invaded and stolen and occupied Palestine - no more than it would make sense for Buddhists in Europe and the United States to invade, steal and occupy much of India because a lot of India had Buddhist populations 2,000 years ago and because the birth of Buddhism was in South Asia. If every group of people had the same bizarre, self centered ideology 9f Zionists and thought they had the right to invade, steal and occupy any land where people of their race, religion or culture lived sometime in the past 50,000 years then there would be constant war and chaos everywhere all the time. At one time Palestine was controlled by ancient Egypt. At one time it was controlled by ancient Persia. At one time it was controlled by ancient Rome. At one time it was controlled by Greece. If who controlled Palestine long ago mattered as much as you claim then Egyptians, Iranians, Italians and Greeks have as much or more of a claim to Palestine as do white European Jewish Zionists.
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  4273. ​​ @baronvonjo1929 ll the things you mention are important and I would add that high levels of immigration can contribute to higher rent and real estate costs which in turn can discourage people from having children and i would also add that a big way for government to fix the oroblems you talk about is to create more equity in wealth and income as we seem to have returned to the inequity of the robber baron age when one wealthy person has higher wealth and income than thousands if not millions of working class people. And just adding immigration does not fix the problems you mention, especially if immigrants are treated like cattle by government and business leaders so that immigrants face unfair barriers to successful integration in a new country. However, immigration is not just a band-aid. South Korea now has about 12 million more people than does Canada and an economy of roughly the same size but as South Korea has a much lower level of immigration than does Canada its population is likely to fall in half by the end of this century whereas Canada's population will likely double due to high immigration levels so almost certainly by 2100 Canada will have a vastly bigger economy than does South Korea, very likely 4 times as large. Contributing to that as well is that Korea will have a very old population with a forecast of more people over 65 than in the working age population by the 2070s. Canada's population will also age but due to continually taking in young immigrants the situation will not be as challenging. South Korea with 51 million people today has an economy slightly smaller than does Canada with 39 million people. However in 2100 South Korea with a very aged population of 26 million people will certainly not have the economic and political power of Canada with 79 million people. So immigration can make a difference. Of course countries with much greater population density and much less water and much less natural resources and much less infrastructure than has Canada and with a less organized and competent government than Canada would not do as well doubling their population.
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  4305. Three takeaways: 1: I thought that if Russia effectively ran out of tanks by October then at that point any thoughts of Russian advances would disappear and only Ukrainian forces would be able to advance from then on but if Russia is already down to 500 tanks that situation could happen as early as August. When it gets to the point that Russia has only the same number of tanks as does Ukraine then the superior western tanks Ukraine has alongside the Bradleys they have will have a huge advantage over the inferior Russian tanks and those remaining Russian tanks will suffer high rates of attrition. 2. The fact that Ukraine is running very low on anti-aircraft and/or anti missle defence projectiles is another reminder that western countries have not taken this war as seriously as they should have and done everything to ensure that Ukraine wins the war as soon as possible. If western countries had taken the war more seriously then they would have sent far more military equipment and supplies to Ukraine much earlier and ramped up their own military production much faster. 3. It wouldn't entirely surprise me if autocracies like those in the the UAE and in Egypt decided to to things to help another autocracy such as Russia. Of course autocracies can be in conflict with each other (Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union being a prime example) and autocracies and democracies can be allies out of convenience but I can still imagine dictators in the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and in other countries not entirely liking the idea of a massive win for democracy over autocracy in the total defeat of Russian forces in Ukraine. And Egypt in particular has had varying attitudes regarding whether to be an ally of western democracies or of Soviet/Russian autocratic state.
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  4323. @1ewi5  think I'll believe the health scientist who said that Omicron is "mild" only in comparison to Delta and is likely just as severe as the original covid strain from Wuhan that devastated the world in early 2020 and not believe a random person on the internet like you. Sounds like you like many people have the illusion that if you pretend the pandemic is over that it will magically be over but covid doesn't care what you and others want to pretend and so it is still sickening and killing huge numbers of people each day plus leaving vast numbers of people with long term health damage whether they are aware of it or not. In the United States alone each day about 400 people die from covid and of course the number of Americans who each day develop long term health problems from covid is a vastly higher number. And of course in China alone lately vast numbers of people are dying and overwhelming funeral homes so not all Chinese people are getting covid and then quickly returning to normal - not by a long shot. If you are too afraid to deal with the reality covid is still inflicting on the world and just can't handle it and so you have retreated into a childlike make believe world where you pretend covid is not killing vast numbers of people then do so if that is the only way you can cope with things but if you do then you need to avoid posting your nonsensical childlike fantasies online as if they are real because a lot of gullible people will believe you and not protect themselves from covid and then possibly suffer severe consequences as a result. If you have a sense of morality then you won't recklessly spout medical misinformation online.
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  4369. @MrThartofwar  so you're saying that in Russia's unprovoked genocidal invasion of Ukraine it's fine with you for Russia's military to commit countless war crimes and terrorist attacks against Ukrainian civilians and Ukrainian infrastructure but you are horrified at the idea of Ukraine firing back to destroy the Russian missile and drone sites that are launching countless terrorist attacks on Ukrainian civilians? Do you even realize how ridiculous your pro-terrorism statement is? Do you bother to read what you write before posting it to make sure it's not utterly ridiculous? Apparently not. And what the heck are you talking about when you say Russia will use more force? Putin has been totally humiliated in that his "military operation" that he said would conquer Ukraine and overthrow the Ukrainian government in a few days has turned into a disaster with Russian forces looking inept and disorganized and needing to retreat on all fronts and now finding themselves stuck in a quagmire a year after the short military operation was supposed to be over. He has had to drag prisoners out of prison and office workers out of offices and send them untrained and poorly equipped, clothed and fed to the front line to be slaughtered. In other words if Putin had had more forces available he would have used them. And exactly when did you lose all sense of morality and humanity and decide that you would cheer on terrorists committing genocide and why haven't you clued into the obvious fact that it is a very bad idea for you to publicly tell the world and authorities that you support terrorism? You may live to regret that very poor decision.
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  4373. ​​@SelfProclaimedEmperor Nobody should be expelled from their own country but it is interesting that as a Zionist you admit that Jewish people were expelled from Arab countries only after the religiously fanatical racist, white, European Jewish Zionists invaded Palestine and stole the land and started 75 years of brutal, horrific oppression of Palestinians. In other words if the Zionists had not invaded and stole and occupied Palestine and treated Palestinians so horrificly for the past 75 years those Jewish people would all still be living in those Arab countries as they had for centuries. As always the biggest enemy of Jewish people is the state of Israel. And don't forget that a huge proportion of the Jewish people who left their homelands in Arab countries were not expelled - rather they went enthusiastically to Palestine when Zionist agents told them that Zionists were stealing lots of Palestinian land so there would be lots of land available. And you made a huge but typical Zionist mistake in saying that Jordan is the homeland of Palestinians. When the racist, colonialist oppressive apartheid Zionist state is dismantled and Palestinians including Palestinian refugees have full human rights the Zionists may find themselves to be a minority in Palestine just as happened to white colonists when similar colonialist regimes were dismantled in other countries. When you say that Palestine is just part of Jordan you are arguing that when the Zionist regime is dismantled Palestine will just be re-united with Jordan which of course will make the Zionists an even smaller minority. At least you didn't make as big a mistake as the Zionists who said that all Arabs including Palestinians are one people because that implies that Zionists would become a very, very tiny minority in a huge Arab state once the racist, colonialist oppressive apartheid Israeli regime was dismantled. Egypt alone has over 100 million people.
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  4475. Sad thing is that the need for European countries to spend vast amounts of money on the miltary is virtually only due to a paranoid, belligerent, aggressive, threatening Russia. No aggressive, threatening Russia would mean no need to waste money on huge, well equipped militaries. I think that in developed countries people and givernments realise that spending money on the miltary is an incredibly expensive, unproductive and wasteful way to spend money and that's why so many countries spend less on the military than the United States would like them to spend. Have just been reading about political fights in the United States after WW2 and at that time President Truman had a devil of a time convincing American politicians to accept high military spending in peacetime or to support the creation of NATO but of course American political support for constant high levels of military spending did become the norm. In other wealthy democracies this generally never happened. Other than helping out in natural disasters the military is just a big drain that sucks money out of society while producing nothing and of course even in helping in a natural disaster the military doesn't need expensive guns, bombs, jet fighters, destroyers or other weapons of war. For many centuries European governments spent a lot of their budgets on the miltary because they were regularly attacking each other to try to steal territory but in recent decades it's clear that they thought it was better to live in peace with their European neighbours and that a much better use of government money was to build roads, hospitals, schools and to provide financial support for the poor rather than to spend exorbitant amounts of money on very expensive military tools such as jet fighters. Unfortunately though the Russian dictatorship does not take the same view. Because Putin is a very weak, insecure, paranoid man who thus has the delusion that every other country threatens Russia and who wants to make up for his personal insecurities by expanding the Russian empire every country in Europe faces the threat of potential attack by Russia and so has little choice but to waste a lot of financial resources on military spending. The closer geographically countries are to Russia the more they appreciate the threat posed by Russia and understandably the more money they decide they have to waste on military spending to be prepared for potential attack by Russia. Basically it's only Russia (in particular weak, insecure, paranoid Putin and his delusions) that create the need for European countries to waste money on miltary spending when that money could have done so many more productive things. If there was no Russia or if Russia replaced Putin with a stronger, non-delusional leader who wasn't constantly terrified of his own shadow and every other country and thus was willing to live peacefully with other European countries instead of threatening them then the need for large militaries for European countries would disappear. Russia and its weak, insecure, paranoid leaders are THE problem for Europe. Nobody else is going to attack European countries (with the possible exceptions of Russia's friend Serbia and demagogue run Hungary which seem to have desire to steal territory from their immediate neighbours). If Russia behaved as peacefully as did other European countries imagine how many wonderful things could be done with all that money currently used for strong militaries.
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  4505. I don't think people in Western Europe and Canada and the United States are naive. They know that Putin is a power hungry demagogue with dreams of re-establishing the Russian empire. It's just that people in those countries feel safer and know that it is highly unlikely that Russia would try to conquer not only Eastern Europe but also Western Europe. They feared the large powerful Soviet Union but they know that Russia has far fewer people and a far less powerful military and has no hope of defeating not only all Eastern European militaries but then to defeat all Western European militaries and the war in Ukraine has proved them right. Sure they are going to bulk up their militaries now but does anyone think that even if the Russians won a massive war of attrition they would still have enough military strength left to conquer Poland and then defeat the combined militaries of Germany, France, UK, Spain and likely the United States and Canada as well? Of course not. The idea is ludicrous. Plus Western European countries know that Putin doesn't see them as parts of the Russian empire to be reconquered because they weren't part of the Russian empire. I know there is the exception of Eastern Germany and Angela Merkle who grew up there. Maybe she was naive about Putin and Russia but given that she grew up in East Germany when it was controlled by the Soviet Union that is more a case showing that even people who grew up in the east under Soviet control can also be naive about Russia and Putin. Of course unlike Western Europe people in Finland and Sweden have been more in danger from attack by Russia but I would think that the people in those countries were aware of the dangerous balancing act they had to maintain.
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  4508. ​ @joeblogs6598  Yes the source countries will eventually also be faced with demographic decline. Virtually every region in India already has a fertility rate below replacement levels... though India has a young population so it will continue to grow in population for quite some time. I don't believe that India will see a decline in population until late in the century and other countries that still have high fertility rates may not see population decline till past 2100. So yes sometime after 2100 this will be a concern but in this century it will not be a concern. I have no doubt that in 2080 there will still be lots of people who want to move to North America or to Europe. As for immigrants not helping because they too will have low fertility rates. Countries receiving immigrants will still benefit because immigrants tend to be young adults with many years of work ahead of them. Though to be honest one immigration expert said that immigrants don't change the balance between workers and the elderly because so many immigrants eventually get their elderly parents to join them (as he himself had done). I beg to differ with him as I think that in most cases the parents of immigrants stay in their home countries for various reasons - not everyone wants to leave their home and their community and their country and their friends and the rest of their family to move to a brand new land where they may not speak the language. Old people generally don't want radical change to their life. And spending their days sitting at home alone while their son and his wife are at work and the grandkids are at school half a world away from one's life long friends is not the dream way to spend one's golden years.
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  4595. If the NATO estimate is correct and Russian forces are suffering 1,200 to 1,500 casualties a day just around Bakhmut then in the 8 months they have tried to take the city they must have suffered immense losses to take a city with a pre-war population of 72,000. 8 months have about 240 days so even at 200 casualties a day average that would be 48,000 total casualties and they still haven't even taken the town and even if they take Bakhmut it will just be rubble they capture and most sources say that there is nothing of strategic value in capturing the town. And if Russia has been suffering an average 1,000 casualties a day at Bachmut over 8 months that would be an insane cost of 240,000 casualties to capture a pile of rubble of no strategic value. And it's not even clear right now if Russia will succeed in taking Bakhmut. At that level of casualties to capture a small town of 72,000 it's clear that at that rate Russia can't handle the casualties it would sustain trying to conquer the entire country of 40 million people. And given the estimates from a month or two ago that Russia had already lost most of its tanks to destruction or capture by Ukraine it's clear that at some point within the next 12 months Russia will effectively have no tanks left to use in attempts to advance while Ukraine will get more and more quality western tanks. Also, given the arguments between Wagner and the regular Russian military about supplies of ammunition, it seems that Russian stores of ammunition are not inexhaustible and that Russian industry cannot keep up with supplying new ammunition to match the vast use of shells by the Russian military. The arguments between Wagner group and the regular Russian military could be a trick to try to lure Ukrainian forces into complacency hut I greatly doubt it. Not when those running Wagner group and the regular Russian military have throughout the war proven over and over again that they don't know what they are doing.
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  4617. This might be a time for Canada's NHL teams to separate from the American teams to have a separate Canadian league. Add a second team in Toronto, a second team in Montreal, a team in Hamilton or Kitchener and possibly a team in Quebec City to have 10-11 teams in the Canadian league. I think that Canadian fans prefer to see their teams play against other Canadian teams and American fans prefer to see their teams play against other American teams. So it might make everyone happier regardless of the current political situation - a situation which could lead Canadian fans to keep booing the American anthem as long as Trump is in office and possibly even after he leaves office. Players might like to be able to avoid dealing with regularly crossing the border. There would certainly be better team rivalries in a league with just 10-11 teams as opposed to a league with 34,36,38 or 40 teams (whatever the NHL is currently heading towards). Of course the Stanley Cup would have to stay in Canada as it was donated by Lord Stanley for the hockey champion of Canada. Let the Americans complain about that if they want but they can create their own trophy. The Canadian teams should even try to keep the league name because obviously when the NHL was formed the term nation was referring to Canada. It is true that this plan would mean that Canadian hockey fans might never see some Canadian stars if they are playing on American teams but as the NHL is slowly moving towards having 40 teams a lot of Canadian players can already go an entire season not playing in some Canadian cities because of injuries. This season within a few days in October the Penguins played in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. Those are the only regular season games this season that the Penguins are playing in those Canadian cities. So if Crosby happens to be injured the week of the Penguins swing through western Canada then fans in those cities who want to see him aren't going to get to see him that year even with the current joint Canadian/American league. Unfortunately, I doubt that the owners of the Canadian teams would agree to such a plan. The owners of the Leafs and Canadians would not want new teams in their areas competing for fans and revenue. Though they might be happy to pay players in Canadian dollars if the players wouid accept that. One problem is that the Americans might respond to such a plan by kicking the Raptors out of the NBA and the Blue Jays out of MLB.
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  4634. Things are actually worse for the Russian fossil fuels industry than mentioned here. As well as the problems outlined in this video Russia also has trouble maintaining and repairing energy infrastructure without western workers and western parts - though Russia is evading sanctions by getting parts through third parties that makes things complicated. As well without western help Russia is struggling to build LNG export ports. As well, according to some sources, without western help Russia is struggling to design a system to "pump" natural gas through pipelines. As well Russia is struggling to maintain heating and electricity infrastructure in its cities - presumably due to a shortage of skilled workers. Evidence of this was seen in the fact that many Russian citizens found themselves freezing in the dark in their apartments last winter. If the war continues this problem will continue to get worse year by year. As well Europe has been developing renewable energy at a rapid pace and has decreased its demand for natural gas. And of course everywhere in the world renewable energy will continue to get cheaper and cheaper. As well the United States and Qatar have plans for vast increases in their exports of natural gas over the next ten years and countries are signing very long term contracts with Qatar for natural gas, a product that Qatar can produce at low cost. Some say that it will take ten years for the Russian gas export industry to recover. Some say it will never recover - that seems the most likely scenario.
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  4677. ​@2x2is22 Actually a serious economic analytical firm said that by 2033 (just 10 years from now) there will no longer be any coal produced in the United States to be burned to create energy. And other serious economic analysis has shown that it makes no economic sense to build any new coal plants and that it already makes economic sense to close down the vast majority of current coal plants. These conclusions are not about saving the environment or pursuing a "left wing" agenda. They are based on the simple fact that economically thermal coal no longer makes sense and can't compete with cheaper alternatives such as gas and solar. Trying to pursue his right wing agenda Trump said that he would bring back jobs in the coal industry but while he was president the number of coal miners continued to dramatically decline because the market says thermal coal just doesn't make sense any more and even when coal is produced it makes economic sense to have more machines and fewer workers. And solar will continue to decrease in cost while gas will continue to be cheaper than coal. I think it's horrible that a lot of ex coal miners are out of work with few job prospects and that their former employers sometimes played games with their pensions and sick benefits and left environmental disasters for poor impoverished communities to deal with but thermal coal still no longer makes economic sense. Governments should be helping out ex coal miners and should be changing laws so that big companies can no longer reap huge profits from mining and then just walk away and shirk their responsibilities regarding workers and the environment.
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  4738. ​ @Chris-bn5xg  Actually Trump is wealthy because he was born already wealthy and because he has never had any business ethics or ethics at all. How couid you not be aware of the huge legal problems his main business enterprise got into and his Trump university and Trump charity got into? How could you not be aware of how little taxes he paid when he basically bragged about it himself? How could you not be aware of the fact that it was his business managers and accountants and lawyers who actually carried out the schemes he wanted done? He's not an accountant. He's not a lawyer. How could you not be aware of the racist rental policies that got him into legal trouble half a century ago? How can you not be aware of his habit of not paying his bills? How can you know so little about your own cult leader? Well of course that's not surprising because MAGA cult sheep couldn't be the dupes regularly fooled and conned by toddler grifter Trump if they were bright enough and aware enough to see Trump for what he is. Successful businesses? You mean schemes to con and grift gullible, slow witted, servile MAGA cult sheep who are so slow to figure things out that they let toddler clown grifter Trump con them out of their money over and over and over again with no apparent limit. That's not a sign that the reality TV personality is a good businessman. That's a sign that he has no ethics and is extremely greedy and self centered and is quite happy to continually scam the same gullible, servile MAGA cult sheep who would do anything for him while he would never do anything for them. You're in a cult. Your one of the marks of a conman but you don't understand that because you're in the cult and no longer connected to reality and because the marks of sonmen never understand that there is a con going on or they couldn't be conned. MAGA cult sheep are particularly clueless marks as they keep letting the same conman con them repeatedly with no end in sight. You're only hope for connecting to reality and doing what is best for you instead of what is best for Trump is to start thinking for yourself and see Trump as he really is and for you to leave the cult.
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  4789. Even if Communist China was stupid and violent and greedy enough to attack Taiwan and even if Communist China managed to conquer Taiwan the result woukd be economic catastrophe for China. Demand for China's exports wouldn't likely fall to zero but it could easily fall by 70%. When Russia invaded Ukraine European inports of Russian fossil fuels fell by 90% or so in a year. Fossil fuels can be produced only in certain countries. The vast majority of Chinese exports on the other hand can be produced anywhere in the world. G7 countries have about half the GDP in the world but other countries such as Australia and South Korea and those in the EU would likely drastically cut jmports from China. And countries such as Russia, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam have territory that Imperialist China has indicated it wants so they won't be happy to see Imperialist China invading another country to steal territory. China's economy is already dealing with a number of major problems and demographic collapse has started in China. To launch an unprovoked invasion into Taiwan would be making China's serious economic problems much, much worse. And I can imagine it causing the United States, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and other countries to form a military alliance against Chinese Imperialism similar to NATO. Plus there is always the chance that the invasion fails and Communist China and Xi are humiliated and then Xi is overthrown and possibly imprisoned as I believe happened to his father 60 years ago. Surely Xi can see that Putin is in a much more precarious position than he was before he decided to invade Ukraine plus Putin is now wanted for arrest for war crimes plus Russia is now a pariah state.
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  4804.  @champtech8755  you seriously think that peaceful Ukraine was intending to invade and try to conquer Russia, a country that has far more people, that is vastly larger than Ukraine, that has a far larger economy than has Ukraine, a far larger military than has Ukraine, that had before the war far more planes and tanks and long range artillery and missiles than had Ukraine and when there was absolutely no reason for demographically declining Ukaine to want any Russian territory and when the Ukrainian government (unlike the Russian government) has shown no interest in invading other countries and when both Napoleon and Hitler with extremely powerful armies failed miserably in trying to conquer Russia?????? Seriously? Seriously? Seriously? Seriously? Lol. Lol. Lol. By being gullible and buying into nonsense Russian propaganda you have managed to separate yourself completely from reality and publicly make a complete fool of yourself. Okay, let me help you by explaining some basic facts to you. Russia invaded Ukraine, both in 2014 in Crimea and Donbas (where it has been carrying out an invasion for 8 years) and in 2022 across the whole of Ukraine. Ukraine had absolutely no intention of invading Russia or any other country. Since WW2 the only European countries showing any interest in invading other European countries are Russia and its friend Serbia and its ideological compatriot Hungary. And here is some simple advice to help you out. If Russia launches a genocidal invasion of Lithuanian and claims that it did so in self defense because Lithuania was planning to attack and conquer all of Russia please don't repeat that nonsense Russia propaganda and make a complete fool of yourself again. You've made yourself look ridiculous enough already. In fact, given your gullible acceptance of utterly absurd Russian propaganda and your desire to repeat that nonsense online I suggest that it really would be best for you to stay offline permanently.
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  4805.  @usman3583  ah, another gullible fool who believes nonsense Russian propaganda and who thinks that Ukraine was intending to invade and conquer Russia, a country with a much larger population, which is a vastly bigger country with a much larger military with many more planes, tanks, missiles and long range artillery and which has nuclear weapons and which has a much bigger economy than has Ukraine and when unlike Russia the Ukrainian government has shown no interest in invading other countries and when both Napoleon and Hitler with extremely powerful armies failed miserably in trying to conquer Russia. You seriously believe that Russian propaganda? Seriously? Seriously? Lol. Lol. Lol. Lol. Lol. Lol. Here are some basic facts for you. Russia invaded Ukraine both in 2014 and in 2022 and has actually been carrying out its invasion of Eastern Ukraine for 8 straight years. Ukraine did not invade Russia nor does it have any intention of invading any other country. Since WW2 the only European countries who have invaded other European countries or have considered the possibility are Russia and its two ideological compatriots Serbia and Hungary. Given how gullible you are when consuming Russian propaganda I strongly suggest that you stay offline from now on to avoid any further public embarrassment and humiliation. And if Russia launches a genocidal invasion of Estonia and claims that it did so in self defense because Estonia was being aggressive and intended to invade and conquer Russia please don't be so foolish as to believe that nonsense and please, please don't be so foolish as to humiliate yourself by repeating that nonsense online. Some basic common sense and logic would go a long way for you. Consider trying them.
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  4893. ​ @chairforceoneYT  Palestinians already have their own land - it's called Palestine. Unfortunately Palestine is still under a racist, colonialist, oppressive apartheid, Zionist regime. Demanding that Palestinians leave Palestine is similar to a white American demanding that native Americans leave the United States and go to other countries or if in the 1940s British colonists in Kenya had demanded that all Black African people in Kenya leave and go to other places or if in the 1940s French colonists in Algeria had demanded that all Arab people native to Algeria leave to go to other places so that the French colonists could have all of Algeria to themselves. And yes, I know that the Americans did brutally invade the lands of many Indigenous nations and force the native people to leave their lands but when the United States expanded as far as the Pacific even they weren't as monstrous as the Zionists by demanding that all Indigenous people native to the United States leave and go to other countries. Plus as horrific and inexcusable as treatment of native peoples was in the era of European imperialism by the time the Zionists declared their official racist, oppressive, colonialist apartheid state in 1948 such things as invading a land and expelling all the people was not supposed to happen any more. It's 2024 - when you start demanding that horrific things be done to Palestinians now because that is what some monstrous white imperialists did in the 1700s or 1800s you show that you need a moral checkup.
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  4910. ​ @DHEAS11  Actually since WW2 the only territory in Europe seized by a country by force is Rockall, a tiny uninhabitable rock in the ocean that the UK claims is part of the UK and Ireland is part of Ireland. And likely the UK would claim that it was always part of the UK. All other border changes were countries breaking up or countries voluntarily handing territory to each other or land taken as part of the process at the end of WW2. So there is no precedent for Russia or any European country to take another country's inhabited territory by force and keep it. After centuries of endless wars in which European countries invaded each other to steal each other's territory after WW2 they decided it was betfer to live in peace and so stopped doing that. In fact that sort of expansionist invasion hardly ever happens any more anywhere in the world as the age of imperialism is over and even some really nasty governments recognize that. It's really only a few aggressive countries such as Russia and communist China that are stuck in the past and dream of stealing territory from other countries. So it is highly unlikely that any Ukrainian territory will ever become part of Russia as Ukraine has no interest in giving any land to Russia and that is especially true after Russia's three barbaric unprovoked genocidal invasions into Ukraine. Putin's announcements of annexing Ukrainian territory are just delusions in his head, just a few of the many delusions Putin has. I don't think that Putin has a very good grip on reality.
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  5122. ​ @Sarappreciates  There is a vast difference between MAGA epublicans who have abandoned morality and will do anything they can to gain and retain power regardless of ethics, morality, truth, oath of office, basic decency and are happy to cater to racists, white supremacists, misogynists, xenophobic extremists and homophobic extremists and are willing to punch down and bully the weak, the vulnerable and the marginalized and who never admit the horrific behavior of other MAGA politicians but instead mislead and deflect and behave hypocritically on one hand and on the other hand Democrats who hold their own responsible for wrong doing. The Democratic governor of New York found out real fast that Democrats have a lot higher ethical standards than do Republicans. Sure the messed up American election system which relies so much on huge financial donations and doesn't restrict business activities of politicians even when those business activities are related to the legislative votes of politicians but the difference is that Democrats actually have some limits on what is acceptable. I see no such limits for MAGA Republicans. The fact that many Republican politicians whose lives were threatened by Trump's mob on January 6 still refused to certify Joe Biden's election a few hours later and still bow down to Trump and cater their words to what Trump wants them to say shows that Republican politicians have few if any ethics. I wonder if Trump demanded that a certain racial or religious group be restricted to certain ghettos as Jews were under Nazi German rule in the 1930s how many MAGA Republicans would stand against Trump on that horrific policy.
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  5132. ​​​ @solandri69  You have the bizarre idea that the United States is importing huge amounts of oil from Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela? Only 7% of American oil imports come from Saudi Arabia and there are certainly other countries that want Saudi oil. Since 2022 the United States no longer imports oil from Russia. Some Russian oil gets to the United States through third countries but the amount is a drop in the bucket compared to total oil imports. The United States imported less than 4 billion dollars worth of oil from Venezuela in 2023 which sounds like a lot but is tiny compared to total American oil imports. Most oil imported into the United States comes from Canada. That's especially true for heavy oil. The United States hasn't built a major oil refinery in almost half a century. Why the heck would American oil companies suddenly decide to invest money in building new oil refineries when for half a century they felt it made no financial sense to do so and when they have a secure supply of oil from Canada for decades to come? Canada has the third highest amount of oil reserves in the world. It's not running out of oil soon. You're saying that if you ran a major American oil company you would spend a vast amount of money building new oil refineries that you don't need and just scrap and write off perfectly functional valuable refineries for heavy oil that you already have? And that you would do that even though you have no idea if there will still be nearly as much demand for oil in 30 years as the world switches to more renewable energy? That's why it's a good thing that you're not running a major oil company. You're not even thinking about the problem that American oil pipelines are currently set up to bring in oil from Canada and that if you want all areas of the United States to use American oil then new expensive oil pipelines are going to need to be built to move oil on new routes. Probably best that you don't comment again on matters that you don't understand.
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  5234. If Ukraine's offensive fails to gain significant territory that is absolutely not a sign that western countries should give up on possible Ukrainian victory and then push Ukraine to accept a "peace deal" in which Russia is allowed to continue to occupy a significant amount of Ukrainian territory. Over the past 30 years Russia launched at least 5 other unprovoked invasions of other countries intended to steal territory from them and each tims western countries basically did nothing in response and said, "Let Russia keep the territory it invaded so we have peace" and each time that weak western response to Russian aggression led the Russian regime to think the west was weak and afraid and so it just emboldened the terrorist Russian regime to launch another unprovoked invasion of another country. If the west lets Russia steal territory again then Russia will again see the west as weak and will again feel emboldened to launch another unprovoked invasion of Ukraine or another country once its military is rebuilt. The only way to ensure that Russia stops attacking other countries so that Europe can have peace is to ensure that Russia suffers a decisive defeat in this war and that all Russian troops are pushed out of all of Ukraine. So if the Ukrainian offensive does not gain significant territory then that is a sign that Western countries need to supply Ukraine with all the jets and tanks and long range missiles that are normally required to have a successful offensive and also to take away any restrictions preventing Ukraine from hitting military sites in Russia and transportation networks in Russia used to transport military equipment, supplies and troops so that Russia is soundly defeated. And at a very minimum western countries should keep supplying money and military equipment and supplies to Ukraine until Russia goes bankrupt and can no longer afford to fight the war which should happen within 12 months.
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  5277. I would like the committee to be audacious and send a subpoena to Trump ordering him to testify under oath in front of the January 6 committee. And when declaring that they will sending Trump a subpoena the committee should say "So Mr. Trump, you love to issue angry denunciations and insults and claims regarding those people who have shown loyalty to their country and who have honoured their oath to the constitution and who have been brave enough to testify under oath to help reveal information about the January 6 insurrection and what led up to it but we notice Mr. Trump that you have always cowardly made your statements away from these hearings instead of coming here to testify under oath so in issuing you this subpoena we are giving you the opportunity to correct this by coming here and taking an oath to tell the truth and testifying under oath knowing that there could be severe consequences for any perjury". In other words the committee would be saying to Trump "You think you're such a big strong man viciously attacking those who have testified while you sit safely in your living room? Then prove how big and strong you are and how truthful your horrible comments are by coming here and testifying under oath as so many others have done". Call him on his bluff. Of course Trump would humiliate himself and show that his accusations against those testifying in front of the committee are not reliable by refusing to testify under oath but it would still be good to have his refusal on the record. And frankly if Trump did refuse to obey such a subpoena then if I was Attorney General then I would toss him into a jail cell until he agreed to testify and if members of his cult respond by wailing about how unfairly their cult leader is being treated then let them wail. And of course it is in a jail cell where he deserves to be.
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  5291. It seems that today's demagogues and dictators often try to follow a populist strategy of spouting hyper nationalistic rhetoric with elements such as racism, xenophobia and religious fundamentalism and a claim that all those dangerous people who are foreign or immigrants or refugees or are different in some way are a threat to the "mainstream" people of the country and that the demagogue/dictator is strong and is the only person who can save the people of the country from destruction. These despotic leaders tend to talk a lot about traditions and family values. And these dictators and demagogues do succeed in hoodwinking a lot of people who thus actually do support the leader and would vote for him so it is not as if these populist demagogues and dictators have no support. Putin, Xi, Modi, Trump, Netanyahu and so on appeal to scared, nervous people with feelings of insecurity who are terrified of anyone who is different than them and are terrified of demographic change and changes to society in general and just want a strong leader who will magically take their country to a past time that they feel nostalgic about even if the perfect past never existed in reality and is a product of their delusions. I wonder if dictators of the past had as much support from the populations they ruled or just ruled through fear and intimidation. Was Henry the eighth liked by many average English people or did they see him simply as their oppressor? There might have been an aspect of the Stockholm Syndrome to it. Even as the people of the Soviet Union lived in terror of Stalin could they look at all those posters showing him without partly thinking that Uncle Joe was their mentor and protector?
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  5301. ​@HypermarketCommodity There are a few huge differences between the United States of the 1950s and China of today. One, in the 1950s the United States had as allies basically all the wealthy developed countries in the world including those that still had large empires wheeas China has as its allies impoverished North Korea and relatively poor and unstable Iran and Pakistan and I think that at least for Iran and Pakistan it's more a marriage of convenience. Consider as well that one serious study came to the result that three of the four most powerful airforces in the world are American and China's airforce was not the other airforce in the top four. That's hardly Chinese dominance. Two, in the 1950s the United States population was growing at a very fast rate with large families and massive amounts of immigration whereas today China is in demographic crisis with extremely low fertility rates and a huge shortage of young women and large amounts of emmigration and little immigration so its working age population is dropping quickly and it's population is quickly aging. One recent report indicated that the Chinese working age population had fallen by 38 million people in just 3 years - extrapolate that for 3 more decades and China is in trouble. Three, in the 1950s the United States was one of the world's richest countries with its people having one of the highest standards of living in the world if not the highest whereas China is still a middle income country with many countries having a much higher per capita income. Four, in the 1950s the United States economy was close to half the size of the world economy in terms of GDP and no other country had remotely as large an economy whereas today China's GDP is less than 18% of world GDP and still significantly less than that of the United States and even the GDP of the European Union is in the same ballpark as Chinese GDP so although China is very important to the world economy it is not remotely as dominant as was the American economy in the 1950s.
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  5320. Glad that he mentioned pharmaceuticals. It concerns me that for many critical medications and medication ingredients many western countries depend so much on China (run by a brutal, Imperialist dictatorship) and India (run by a xenophobic demagogue who has at times shown indifference to human rights). I fear a scenario in which communist China launches an attack against Taiwan and western countries at first say that they are going to send military support to Taiwan and to boycott some Chinese products and then China says "Well in that case we are stopping our shipments of medicines including life saving drugs" and then western leaders cave to Chinese pressure and announce that they will not give military support to Taiwan because they are terrified of the political implications for them if some of their citizens start dying because they have lost access to medicines produced in China. No doubt medicines produced in China and India are cheaper than western made medicines and so western governments and companies think that it's best to buy those medicines from China and India but it does make western countries very vulnerable. Then there is the concern that in weaning itself off of Russian fossil fuels Europe has greatly increased its solar power production capacity which is a good thing but it does come with the fact that China dominates the production of solar panels. Plus China and Russia have control of a lot of the minerals required by countries that want to go electric. Is Europe just jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire?
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  5331. Lots of people are expressing condolences to comfort the family of the murdered executive. How many of those people have expressed condolences to comfort the family every time someone dies due to being denied medical coverage by a private insurance company? The family of the murdered executive is no doubt suffering emotionally but presumably they've got lots of money and they're going to be just fine financially and will continue to live a very comfortable life. On the other hand the families of people who died due to being denied coverage for medical care are generally in poor financial shape - otherwise they would have paid for the medical care themselves. They often are in debt due to medical bills and often their financial situation gets worse due to the loss of an income earner in the family. So the financial situation for families who lose a family member due to denied medical coverage is much worse than it is for the family of a wealthy executive which means that they are even more in need of receiving condolences than the family of the executive but no politician expresses condolences for them. There's something very messed up with public discourse about health coverage and about who gets sympathy and attention and who doesn't. Express condolences for the family of a murdered wealthy private health insurance executive if you want but only if you are also willing to express condolences for the families of all the people who died due to being denied medical care by a private insurance company because they are going through a much more difficult financial situation and they have likely watched their family member die a very slow, painful death over months or years.
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  5356.  @briexbye9597  no doubt soldiers of the United States and other NATO countries committed horrible acts in Libya, Syria and Afghanistan and covered them up and no doubt the reasons why they took military action in those countries are not necessarily the reasons they give at press conferences. But there is still a vast difference between an oppressive autocrat like Putin launching a brutal, extremely destructive, murderous invasion of Russia's peaceful, non-threatening neighbour just to try to make up for Putin"s personal feelings of insecurity and to try to play out his fantasy that he is the reincarnation of Peter the Great and on the other hand American intervention in Afghanistan which was ruled by the Taliban, a vicious, primitive, criminal, misogynistic gang of thugs that was sheltering a terrorist group that had launched a major terrorist attack on the United States and when the American intervention actually allowed many people, especially women, to actually live as human beings for 20 years. I don't think that Ghaddafi was ever as bad as western propaganda suggested but he was a dictator involved in a civil war before the United States got involved. And I think it was a mistake for NATO to get involved in Libya and it has created chaos in Libya but to compare the American bombing of Libyan soldiers to the seeming attempt of Putin to destroy every, house, building or other structure in Ukraine and try to slaughter as many Ukrainian people as possible? No, not the same. As for Syria, there we had an utterly ruthless dictator who responded to peaceful protests with extreme brutality, mass arrests, torture, murder and destruction before the United States got involved. If you really think that the government of Ukraine is similar in nature to the government of Syria and that the government of Syria was democratically elected and not brutally crushing any dissent before the Americans got involved then I think you are badly misinformed. So yes, no doubt American and NATO soldiers did some horrific things in Libya, Syria and Afghanistan but for you to suggest that the peaceful, democratically elected government in Ukraine compares to the governments that existed in Libya, Syria and Afghanistan is utter nonsense. And the nature of government in a country and how it was behaving does have some significance on the morality of talking military action against it. There is a heck of a lot of difference between Germany deciding to invade Belgium in WW2 and Canada deciding to send troops across the ocean to attack German troops during the war and if you can't see the difference then probably there is no point explaining it to you further. Oh yes and Russia invaded Ukraine a much smaller country that never had any intentions of attacking or threatening Russia so pretty clearly it is Russia and only Russia which is responsible for its own actions in invading Ukraine.
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  5359. I'm trying to decide if the MAGA cult members who were trying to overthrow the election are more dumb or more corrupt. It's a bit of a tossup. It's almost as if the "woke radical left" has infiltrated far right media so that it can get MAGA leaders to say things on tape and on camera because their lawyers would never be stupid enough to let them testify under oath. But I would still love to hear them testify under oath. By the way, in 1960 by the time that it got to Hawaii Kennedy had already won the electoral college so what happened in Hawaii wasn't going to effect the election anyway. And not only was the original vote count in Hawaii incredibly close but in the recount the Hawaii result was reversed and Kennedy did end up winning the state, something that was never going to happen in the states that had fake electors for Trump after he had lost by significant margins. And I believe that Nixon as vice president accepted the democratic electors from Hawaii even though the recount wasn't done till after the deadline for deciding state electors. Guess that tricky Dickie wasn't so tricky yet. Though the Rube Goldberg American election system is still insane. The electoral college needs to be replaced by a simple popular vote and federal elections need to be run by an unbiased, non-partisan national election commission with standard rules across the country and with no voter suppression or gerrymandering. Leave partisan elected state officials and politicians out of running elections.
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  5361. In 1962 Saskatchewan made a significant step towards full public health care. Not only did Saskatchewan doctors go on strike and threaten to leave the province but private insurance companies were obviously very unhappy about such a precedent occurring in North America. Eventually Saskatchewan doctors ended their strike and did not leave the province and within a few years were happy about public health care - no more having patients offer to compensate doctors with a chicken because they were poor. Politician Tommy Douglas had started the move towards Saskatchewan public health care when he was Saskatchewan premier and although he had moved to federal politics before it was implemented in Saskatchewan he then while in opposition managed to pressure the Canadian government to implement public health care across the country. As was the case in other developed countries public health care became very popular among the people of Canada. A few years ago a contest in which Canadians voted for the greatest Canadian ever had Tommy Douglas as the winner. The Canadian health care system is struggling now with a shortage of primary care doctors and long waits in emergency rooms but the vast majority of Canadians still wouldn't want to go back to the health care system of the United States that costs so much and yet leads to poor outcomes such as relatively short life expectancy and leaves so many people not getting medical treatment because they can't afford it. Canadians and people in other developed countries with public health care cannot imagine not getting to have critical medical treatment simply because of the whim of someone at a private health care insurer. But half a million Americans work in the private health insurance industry and other wealthier Americans own private health insurance companies. If the United States developed public health care then almost all those people would need to find new jobs or new investments in other industries that produce goods and services for Americans. Wouldn't that be terrible?
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  5377. ​​ @truthsearch2366  Truthsearch? Lol. That's amusing. The trouble with you people who simplisticly want Ukraine to make huge concessions to end the war is that you don't know about or understand Russian imperialism over the past three decades and over the past 500 years and you don't know about or understand what is going on in the war that is happening now. Even the majority of the media doesn't know about or understand those things. Appeasement doesn't work with the Russian imperialists. That's been proven over and over and over again. Reward them for their imperialism by giving them land and they will feel that the west is weak and they will feel emboldened to launch more unprovoked invasions into nearby countries to steal territory. This is a war of attrition. That means that it takes a long time to win the war, especially against the biggest country on the planet. The Russian military is in much worse shape than it was three years ago and so is the Russian economy. Both are heading towards collapse and catastrophe. But that takes time. By sometime this year or next Russia will be in such horrible shape that it will be unable to continue fighting the war without risking a popular uprising or revolution. There's lots of knowledgeable people regularly putting out videos on the war. Suggest that you look at the videos put out under the title Covert Cabal. They carefully analyze the situation for Russia military equipment as Putin quickly uses up military equipment that was accumulated over 80 years. Three years into WW2 in Europe was 1942 when Nazi Germany still looked invincible. If you had been around in 1942 you would have said that the allies such as Britain should just sue for peace and make whatever concessions Germany wanted. And you would have been wrong.
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  5389. The casual talk about negotiating peace with Russia seems very naive. During the last six unprovoked invasions Russia carried out over the past three decades to steal territory from nearby countries western nations tried appeasement and decided to let Russia steal territory so that its dictators were satisfied and then there would be peace. Each time the Russian government took that as a sign that the west was weak and thus felt emboldened to launch another unprovoked invasion to steal more territory from a country. Do the same thing again and let Russia keep territory from this invasion and Russian dictators will respond in exactly the same way as they did the past six times and before too long launch another unprovoked invasion to steal more territory. Likely in this case Russia would try to rebuild its military and then when Russian dictators thought the time was right would recommence their invasion into Ukraine. Right now Russia basically has 2 to 3 months to achieve a major victory before miserable autumn weather starts and there is no sign that is going to be happening. By next summer Russia will have pretty well exhausted all its stored tanks and other military equipment in decent condition and will likely have had another 800,000 or so casualties. And given that Russia's unemployment rate is just 2% and its basic infrastructure is quickly deteriorating due to lack of workers it's very hard to see where Putin will find another 800,000 men to replace the ones he's going to lose by next summer. And if he tries to conscript more soldiers he may lose one man fleeing the country for every man he conscripts. And to make things even worse for Russia by next year Ukraine will have a better situation when it comes to military equipment. The next two months may be the last time Russian forces have a hope of achieving a major advance and given that they haven't been able to do that since May 2022 it seems highly unlikely that that will happen in the next two months.
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  5407. ​ @chrism7969 one area in which a trade war between the west and China (or possibly the west and India) could possibly hurt the west is in essential medicines. The west relies on China and India a lot for essential medicines. It's understandable that people want cheaper drugs and if the cheapest sources are China and India then those are the places where production is cheapest then those are the places that will produce medicines for Western countries but if there ever was a sudden shutdown of trade for any reason a lot of people in the west would suddenly find out that they couldn't get medicines essential to their health and possibly their life. I think that Western countries should seriously examine the risks and vulnerabilities of continuing with this arrangement. I worry somewhat as well about the dominance of China and Chinese companies in producing solar panels and their great control over precious metals. And even cutting off the supply of a huge percentage of the items we buy in the store would have a huge impact. Very quickly our stores would be half empty. Once over the course of a month or so every time that I was in a store tried to find a water bottle not made in China. Couldn't find one so eventually I bought a water bottle made in China. As well a lot of sophisticated electronic products such as Apple products are made in China. We saw how lockdowns in China messed up supply chains. But that was tiny compared to what would happen with a complete trade war.
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  5411. I agree with what you said except for the implied suggestion that the American revolution was about freedom and democracy. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and a significant number of other leaders of the revolution were brutal slave owners who certainly didn't want freedom or democracy for Black people or other non-white people. They didn't want non-white people to have the vote. They didn't want women to have the vote. They didn't want white men without property to have the vote. Don't believe that they even wanted people born outside the country who moved to the United States to have the vote. The founders of the United States were afraid of "mob rule" (even by regular poor property owners) and so instead of doing the obvious and creating an election system in which an unbiased, independent elections commission runs national elections with standard rules across the country and in which the winner of the popular vote automatically becomes president the fathers of the United States gave states a lot of power over running elections and created a bizarre electoral college system in which there are many opportunities to subvert or distort the will of the voters. They didn't want a true democracy at all and they succeeded in that as the United States has never become a true democracy and the constitution makes it almost impossible to turn the United States into a true democracy. The founders thought that with the complicated election system that they the elites would control and decide who became president - they didn't want regular people doing that and might be shocked at the concept many Americans have today that regular Americans should choose the president. Washington was upset at taxes that Britain felt entitled to levy given that it just waged a long and successful but expensive war to defeat the French in North America thus finally making British colonists in America safe from French attack, a war started by a young, reckless, inexperienced,ignorant, overly aggressive British officer named George Washington who in peacetime attacked a French expedition, slaughtering many of its members. Yes war was probably inevitable anyway but it was Washington who decided to start violent hostilities against a French expedition that very possibly if not likely had no intention of engaging in conflict.. Washington was upset not only at taxes that helped compensate Britain for the costs it incurred fighting the war Washington himself started with the French but he was also very upset about new British laws which protected the sovereignty of Indigenous lands created by the British because they were tired of conflict with Indigenous nations sparked by aggressive behavior by American colonists in Indigenous territory. Washington was upset because he had significant investments in enterprises which planned major economic activities on Indigenous land. Of course we all know that once Washington won his little revolution the new United States Washington and his colleagues created had no such restrictions on people interfering with Indigenous nations and in fact from the time of American independence to at least 1900 the United States was constantly invading Indigenous nations (and Mexico) with genocidal invasions of smaller, weaker nations and slaughtering many people, committing economic terrorism, destroying much, taking everything of value including land, wiping these nations from existence and trying to completely destroy the cultures of these nations all the while running a constant propaganda campaign saying that such invasions were for the good of the conquered Indigenous peoples - in other words behaving just as Russia is behaving in Ukraine now. So no Washington and his colleagues did not stage a revolution intending to create freedom and democracy. They had very different goals and reasons for their actions.
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  5427. A few comments: Russian military spending based on PPP is likely exaggerated for two reasons. One is that Russia is known for having vast amounts of corruption. How much of that military spending went straight into the pockets of wealthy Russians to be spent on luxury items instead of being spent on actual military equipment? A second reason to question Russian figures based on purchasing power is that Russian officials are likely greatly underestimating the Russian inflation rate and thus are underestimating the Russian cost of living and thus are exaggerating how much military equipment can be bought with a given number of rubles (or dollars). The Russians claim that the Russian inflation rate is about 8% but one American economist said that the true Russian inflation rate is almost certainly higher than the Russian base interest rate of 21%. His argument is that if Russia's inflation rate was really 8% then people in Russia wouldn't bother investing in any businesses because they could instead just buy Russian bonds or put their money in a savings account at a high interest rate and make a huge real return with no risk at all. Since that's not what all Russians are doing it's obvious that making a return of 21% or so in interest is not any higher than the true Russian inflation rate. Russian citizens don't believe that getting 21% in interest is giving them a huge real return above inflation because they don't believe that the real Russian inflation rate is just 8%. If the true Russian inflation rate is over 21% then the truth is that a ruble or a dollar can't buy as much military equipment in Russia as the Russians claim because the cost of things in Russia is higher than the Russian government claims. However, Europe does need to increase military spending now. Waiting until Russian tanks roll into a NATO country will be too late. Also, it's really important that Europe ensures that Ukraine survives and eventually joins NATO because Ukraine has a large, very capable military and because unlike Europeans and Americans and Canadians the Ukrainians know how to produce vast numbers of very effective air and sea drones for a small per unit cost and they know how to use them effectively and efficiently. And in general the Ukrainians know how to fight against Russian forces. If Ukraine survives then Europe survives. If Ukraine does not survive then Europe may not survive. Every European should know that and understand that and think about that. As Zelensky said Europeans have a choice between ruled by leaders in Brussels or ruled by leaders in Moscow. They better make the right choice.
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  5429. After Russia launched their third unprovoked invasion of Ukraine (after invading Crimea and Donbas in 2014) with the intent of murdering or kidnapping Ukraine's leaders and wiping Ukraine from the map and stealing its resources and brutally oppressing the Ukrainian people forever and with countless Russian war crimes and terrorist acts against Ukrainians every day........ to say that Ukraine shouldn't hit back at military targets in Russia is utterly ludicrous. And those military targets inside Russia and in Ukrainian regions occupied by Russia should include arms factories and bridges and railways being used to transport military supplies and troops to be used by Russia in Ukraine and especially any military bases from which planes, missiles or drones are launched against Ukraine. As one military analyst said "The best place to intercept a missile or drone is on the ground before it has been launched". Imagine if your neighbour for no reason started throwing rocks at you when you had just been peacefully sitting in the back yard. Then imagine someone telling you, "It's ok to throw rocks to try to knock down your neighbour's rocks but only after the neighbour's rocks have crossed over the fence. Absolutely do not throw any rocks back over the fence to hit and damage your neighbour's rock pile or to hit your neighbour or to hit one of your neighbour's rocks flying through the air before it crosses the fence line because then you would be carrying out a dangerous escalation of the conflict".
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  5451. Spoiler alert: The United States didn't exist until 1776 and is not responsible for Russia becoming an aggressive Imperialist power in the 1400s even before Columbus sailed, nor was the United States responsible for Russia continuing to be an aggressive Imperialist power from the 1400s until now. The United States has done a lot of horrible things but it didn't do that. Russia is to blame for Russia being the way it is. Though Trump right now seems to want to enable Russia to continue to be an aggressive Imperialist power. Over the past three decades Imperialist Russia has launched at least seven unprovoked imperialist invasions to steal territory from other countries. In every case the country was not in NATO nor was it anywhere near joining NATO. Just at the time Finland joined NATO Russia removed almost all troops on its border with Finland because the Russian dictatorship knows that NATO is not a threat to Russia. This has nothing to do with NATO. It's blatant Russian imperialism. Putin wants Ukrainian resources. Putin wants more people to compensate for Russia's demographic decline. Putin doesn't want a large, free, democratic, prosperous Ukraine on the border to let Russian people see what he is denying them. Putin has delusions that he is Peter the Great and is greedy to increase his power and he doesn't understand or doesn't care that the era of European imperialism ended eight decades ago. People need to stop spouting Russian propaganda. Esstern Europeans in the Baltic states and Ukraine and in Poland understand the dsngerous, aggressive nature of imperialist Russia. The whole world should understand that.
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  5467. Obviously the genocide in Gaza is on another scale. You have one of the world's most powerful militaries committing genocide by brutally attacking the people whose land was stolen and who were forced into an overcrowded impoverished prison camp and who have been brutally oppressed for decades and who have no way to fight back - people who have almost all been made homeless and who have been deprived of water, food, electricity, fuel, medical supplies and shelter and are terrorized every day by drones, jets and bombs that they have no way to escape from. Something like 138 children are dying every day in Gaza which has a population of 2.3 million people. In Ukraine about 2 children are dying each day in a country of 40 million. Close to a million Palestinian children have been deprived of water, food, electricity, fuel, medical supplies and decent shelter and are being terrorized every day by drones, military jets and bombs. Some Palestinian children have had to have limbs amputated without anesthetic and after the many thousands of wounded Palestinian children get limited medical treatment they have no safe or comfortable or sanitary place to go. So what is happening in Ukraine is horrific but what is happening in Gaza is savagery on another far higher scale. And it should be pointed out that a lot of people (especially western politicians) who have expressed a lot of concern about the death of Ukrainians have been completely indifferent to the deaths of Palestinians. And that is part of the reason why some people in the global south or from the global south have been reluctant to wholeheartedly join western efforts to support Ukraine - because they see western leaders as racist and hypocritical and don't trust western leaders and the indifference of western leaders to the slaughter in Gaza has proven that correct. Western leaders care about white people being killed but don't care about non-white people far away being killed if caring would interfere with their political interests. That's really quite horrible and unfortunate for both Palestinians and Ukrainians. By showing indifference to the slaughter of Palestinians western leaders have badly sabotaged international efforts to support Ukraine and isolate Russia.
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  5473. Putin can choose to do nothing special in response to this Ukrainian invasion and thus prove that his red lines and threats of escalation are meaningless and thus show that there is no reason for western countries to put restrictions on how and where Ukraine uses western weapons. Or Putin can do something crazy and horrific and monstrous such as using a chemical weapon or biological weapon or a "tactical" nuclear weapon which presumably would lead to NATO and in particular the United States getting involved in the war and wiping out Russian forces in Ukraine. No doubt Putin doesn't like either one of these choices. I expect very likely the former scenario is what will happen. Though one thing that Russian leaders and planners need to worry about is that if Russia does nothing special to respond to this invasion and demonstrates that Putin will not use nuclear weapons even if Russia is invaded then that sends a message to China that invading Russia does not lead to nuclear retaliation. China will see very little risk to invading Russia to capture the port of Vladivostok for itself and to capture the huge expanse of Asian territory which it claims Russia stole in the 1800s. That would especially be true now that Russia has moved virtually all if not all of its air defense systems on the border with China to western Russia and likely has also moved a lot of troops away from its border with China. Chinese forces might be able to just walk right into Russia and now may no longer worry about an invasion into Russia leading to Russia using nuclear weapons.
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  5482. Most western leaders are still sleep walking through a situation which poses an existential threat to the west and to democracy and human rights and freedom. They seem more concerned about keeping taxes and deficits low than they do with giving Ukraine adequate support to achieve a definitive victory over Russia so that Europe can be safe again and other tyrants learn that naked aggression and imperialism to invade other countries and attempt to steal their territory will not be rewarded. If western voters don't understand why their taxes need to go up to fund more support for Ukraine and to build stronger militaries then it is the responsibility of western politicians to explain to their voters why this is so important. And as well western leaders must make clear to Putin that every time he escalates or does anything aggressive against western countries there will be a major western response such as providing Ukraine with more weapons. Eastern European leaders who know Russia best have made clear that the only thing that the Russian dictatorship understands is force. And western leaders must also make clear to Putin that the longer his invasion into Ukraine continues the more support western countries will give to Ukraine and they must also make clear to Putin that Russia is in a battle of economies with western countries - a battle that the Russian economy cannot win and a battle that will end when Russia leaves Ukraine or when the Russian economy collapses. In other words it must be made clear to Putin that this is a war that Russia cannot win.
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  5501. I doubt very much that China will have as many as 800 million people in 2100. The fertility rate is down to 1.1 or lower and as well there are far fewer women then men so each generation will produce a new generation with fewer than half as many people. And as young Chinese people struggle more and more to care for the rapidly growing population of elderly people they will become less and less inclined to have children so that the fertility rate will keep falling and won't bounce back up again as some models assume. More important than population decline (especially a drop of fewer than a million people) is decline of the working age population of China. The working age population of China (age 16 to 59 by their definition) declined by 38 million people in just the past three years. If that rate of decline continues for the next 30 years then the Chinese working age population will be another 380 million. I believe the current Chinese working age population is about 850 million or so a decline of 380 million by 2052 would obviously have a massive impact on the Chinese economy. On top of that a lot of the Chinese people passing age 60 won't be dying for a while but rather will be continuing to live as elderly people and so the number of elderly "unproductive" elderly people (especially those over 80) who will need to be supported by that quickly shrinking working age population is going to skyrocket. The obvious solution would be massive immigration to China but like many governments the Chinese communist party is xenophobic and so doesn't want immigrants while at the same time hundreds of thousands of Chinese people leave the country every year. It seems that there is no way that a China with a quickly shrinking working age population can ever displace the United States with its growing population as the most significant economy in the world.
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  5592. ​@user-ds8rj2vc4v I'm not sure what bias you are referring to but I'm not British so maybe it's more obvious to you. They seem fairly neutral and objective and seem to try to avoid taking sides or saying what the best path to resolving conflicts is. Don't hear them talking about "the glorious British Empire bringing civilization to the world" or about "our British boys defeating the Huns in two world wars" or complaining about Europe because "it has so many bloody foreigners" or saying about the British royal family, "Aren't they wonderful?" or complaining about an "influx of non-British people to the home islands". Perhaps they don't always talk about the ways in which actions of the British empire long ago have contributed to current political problems around the world but to be a bit fair to them they don't have a lot of time in 8 minutes to explain not only the current situation somewhere but also the history. How about - The British and Americans overturned the Iranian government and installed the tyrannical Shah in 1953 which ultimately led to the 1979 Iranian revolution which made Saddam launch a disastrous invasion into what he thought was a weak, chaotic Iran which cost Saddam a lot of money so he invaded Kuwait to get more oil which led to American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia which led some Saudis upset with that to carry out the 911 attacks which led to the United States sending troops to Afghanistan which ultimately led to American troops leaving Afghanistan in somewhat chaotic fashion which led Putin to believe that the United States and the rest of the west didn't hsve the stomach for long term conflict which among other things led Putin to launch a full scale invasion into Ukraine.
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  5598. ​ @dengist8172  after 75 years we can keep the illusion thst Taiwan is part of China even though it has been united with China for only about 4 years in the past 150 years and has never been part of or connected to communist China - not even for a second. But that doesn't change the fact that it is a completely different political entity than mainland communist China and should only unite with mainland China if a significant majority of people in Taiwan support that in a democratic referendum (something that seems highly unlikely) and if a significant majority of people on mainland China support that in a democratic referendum (something that seems even less likely as there have not been any democratic votes of any kind in mainland China since 1949). And we should remember at all times that whereas the leaders of Taiwan have credibility and legitimacy as representatives of the Chinese people because they were elected in democratic elections the leaders of communist China have no credibility and no legitimacy as representatives of the Chinese people because they have never been elected in democratic elections. They're just a gang of thugs who took over by the use of violence and who rule and oppress Chinese people by the use of force and violence and if they launched an invasion of Taiwan it would just be an attempt by this gang of thugs to use violence to gain control over more Chinese people and then to control and oppress those Chinese people by the use of force and violence just as they do in mainland China. Anyone who cares about the Chinese people would be horrified at the prospect of the gang of thugs invading Taiwan and then oppressing more Chinese people and would appreciate any efforts by any country to help the Chinese people of Taiwan to remain free of being taken over by the thugs running communist China. Don't you care about Chinese people at all? Why not?
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  5599. ​@danielhalachev4714 well for one thing countries in Africa and South America suffered horribly under European imperialism and colonialism so it would be reasonable for them to want to do what they can to help Ukraine soundly defeat Europe's last imperialist colonialist empire - Russia. A devastating defeat for Russia's imperialist forces might convince Russia (which keeps getting away with unprovoked genocidal imperialist invasions of other countries) that it's time for Russia to settle down like a normal country and give up on imperialist empire building and that would be the end of European imperialism and colonialism which would be a day to celebrate for people in Africa, South America and other places that suffered through European colonialism (with the exception of all the people in Asia who still live under the occupation of the Russian empire). . As well helping Ukraine win and achieve peace is of critical importance to people in Africa and in South America and other places because Putin's unprovoked war in Ukraine has devastated Ukrainian food exports and caused many vulnerable people around the world to struggle to pay higher food prices or to find food at all. Even this year many Ukrainian farmers can't grow crops because their fields are littered with land mines and unexploded bombs. That can't be fixed until Ukraine wins the war and Ukrainian refugees can return home and Ukrainian men can go back to their regular jobs and damaged farm equipment and buildings can be repaired or replaced and fields can be cleared of mines and unexploded bombs.
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  5675. Under Biden the United States is producing more oil than it ever did under Trump or any country has ever produced. Though Trump's planned policies will make American oil companies think twice about their previous plans to drill new wells. Trump gave away Afghanistan to the Taliban and supported Putin's invasion into Ukraine and has encouraged Putin to launch more invasions and has bromances with the dictators of imperialist Russia and imperialist China snd the dictator of North Korea who wants to invade South Korea. Trump has also tried to hinder American support for Ukraine - support that is needed to help Ukraine defeat imperialist Russia and end the series of unprovoked imperialist Russian invasions into other countries. And Trump has already threatened to invade three American allies with absolutely no provocation or justification. So Trump is very much pro-war. Trump didn't build a wall across the entire Mexican border and didn't get Mexico to pay for it. Recently Trump pressured Republicans to block legislation that would have better secured the border so Biden had to go around Trump and Republicans to better secure the border and now the number of migrants crossing the border has dramatically decreased. Why can't you MAGA cult sheep ever say anything that is connected to reality? Would you really be kicked out of the cult if you did? Remember, the reason why MAGA cult sheep supoort Trump has nothing to do with economics. They support Trump because he hates the same people whom they hate. That's not a secret. Everyone knows it. Stop wasting your time pretending that MAGA cult sheep love Trump because of his economic policies.
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  5676. As a Canadian I find the situation with Speaker Johnson trying to delay or block a vote on Ukraine funding bizarre. In the Canadian Parliament the Speaker (although an MP for the ruling Liberal party) must be absolutely neutral at all times. Recently he got into a huge controversy simply because he wished a provincial Liberal politician a happy retirement while dressed in the speaker's robes. The idea of him interfering with the business of Parliament is unthinkable. I also don't understand the strange combination of Ukraine aid with border security, a completely different issue, and aid to Israel, a regime which is behaving in Palestine very much as is the Russian regime is behaving in Ukraine. To be consistent, an aid package for Ukraine should be combined with an aid package for the Palestinian people who are like the Ukrainians suffering horrific occupation, bombing, war crimes and genocidal actions and on a much worse level. To be clear aid for the oppressed Palestinian people or aid groups that can help them, not Hamas. It is as if Biden and many other Democrats can't decide if they want to oppose or support invasion, occupation, oppression, war crimes and genocide. Right now by giving unequivocal support to Israel they and the Canadian and British governments are making themselves look like racist hypocrites who care only about the suffering of white people such as Ukrainians and not ahout the suffering of non-white people such as Palestinians and that is destroying any hope they have of getting people and governments in the many countries in the Global South to join western efforts to support Ukraine. Thus, in unequivocally supporting Israel despite Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank the United States, Canada and Britain are not only abandoning Palestinians to unspeakable horrors but are also severely damaging their own status in relationship to most other countries and are also undermining efforts to get international support for help for Ukraine.
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  5724. @Socially Distant  I doubt very much that Putin will purposely target any NATO country (at least not in such a blatant way as to fire missiles into a NATO country). Even though he must be surrounded by yes men who are understandably terrified to tell him how pathetic has been the performance of Russian forces after a year of Russia's forces failing entirely in its mission to conquer Ukraine in a few days Putin must by now have figured out that his military is struggling against Ukraine's military and is far less powerful than it appeared on paper and thus that his invading forces would quickly be destroyed by a combined Ukrainian/NATO force. Thus Putin is likely terrified of the possibility of NATO joining the war and will try to ensure that he does nothing to provoke NATO into joining the war. I saw a list of the most powerful airforces in the world put together by a military publication which took into account not just the number of planes but the type and quality of planes. The top 3 ranked airforces were all American. Sounds strange but I guess the United States has at least 4 airforces. One each for the navy, marines, army and regular air forces. As well other NATO members and Finland and Sweden have significant airforces. And of course NATO has many troops and many resources on top of its airforces. Not sure if it is true but some claim that Finland and Sweden alone could put up a tough fight against Russia given the very high quality of their forces. Add their forces to those of Ukraine, the United States and other NATO forces. Putin doesn't want to deal with that. On the other hand I can imagine Russia trying to damage the power grid or other infrastructure in NATO and denying responsibility. That too could be dangerous though if they get caught - that might cause NATO to join the war. I believe that in WW2 German submarines refrained from attacking ships in American waters until the United States joined the war ... though after the United States joined the war German submarines had a period of "good hunting" because the Americans at first didn't fully appreciate the value of convoys and blackouts, I guess because they refused to listen to advice from the British and Canadians. Eventually with their bad experience of many ships sunk they figured it out.
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  5738. I'm afraid that until the Russian government runs out of foreign reserves and goes broke and faces economic catastrophe and can no longer afford to continue to fighting the war no Russian regime will agree to recognize Ukraine as an independent country including Donbas, Kherson, Crimea and Sevastopol and agree to hand over Russian war criminals and agree to pay full reparations to Ukraine and to the poorest, most vulnerable people in the world who have struggled to find and pay for food and energy because of disruption caused by the Russian invasion. And absolutely Russia must in the end do all of the above at the end of the war and these will not be thngs that Russia chooses to do - rather Russia will be ordered to do them. The problem is that if a bankrupt Russia with a destroyed military and a mass exodus of its brighest, most talented young people and with massive demographic problems feels it has no choice but to sue for peace and agree to pay massive reparations then who the heck is going to be willing to lend that broken down, broke Russia vast amounts of money so that Russia can pay those reparations? Even China will say that that would be taking friendship too far, especially as apparently Russia already owes a huge amount of money to China. And for anyone who says Russia should be allowed to take decadss to pay reparations to Ukraine and to poor people around the world, I would say that that is not a reasonable idea. A Ukrainian farmer who has had his house blown up, his land badly damaged, his tractor stolen, his wife killed and his child badly disabled by a Russian shell and who has lost two years of income cannot be told that he will have to wait 20 years to get any financial help. That Ukrainian farmer will deserve to be compensated by Russian reparations as soon as the war is over and he shouldn't have to wait for compensation or spend his savings or borrow money for expenses that the Russian regime should be covering.
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  5783.  @timkbirchico8542  the United States has done many horrible things around the world and has a great deal of hypocrisy. The sales of military supplies to Saudi Arabia by the United States, Canada, France and Britain despite the horrific Saudi bombing of Yemen is just one example. But one can condemn NATO for supplying Saudi Arabia and still agree that it is right for NATO to support Ukraine when Ukraine is fighting for its survival after a totally unprovoked horrific, genocidal invasion by Russia. Also, there is a big difference between NATO or American involvement against brutal regimes carrying out violence such as in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Serbia and on the other hand Russia launching an unprovoked, brutal, genocidal invasion of a peaceful, democratic country. Even in the case of Libya where perhaps NATO should not got involved there was already a civil war occurring before NATO got involved. Two points should be made absolutely clear. One, if Russian leadership was so upset about NATO expanding to Russian borders then if Russia wanted to start a war over it the logical thing to do would have been to attack NATO and not Ukraine which was not in NATO and was nowhere near joining NATO. Two, we know Putin's a weak, paranoid man but nobody in their right mind could have thought that Ukraine intended to attack and conquer a massive country like Russia which is armed with many nuclear weapons. Ukraine never showed the slightest sign that it planned to invade Russia, nor has any country in Europe. The only country that has given an indication it might invade Russia is China which feels that a lot of Eastern Russia is land stolen from China in the 1800s that should still be Chinese territory.
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  5791. ​ @jacobnash9755  United States? That's the country where police kill a thousand civilians a year, women are treated as baby factories with no rights, doctors can go to prison for treating pregnant women, children and teachers are not allowed to say the word gay even when describing a family member or friend or themselves, Black people and other non-white students aren't allowed to give their own viewpoint on history in high school or university classes, children and teachers have to go through metal detectors and risk getting shot just going to school, Trans people are banned by government from being themselves, more people are incarcerated than in any other country, politicians pass all sorts of laws to stop citizens from voting, politicians gerrymander like crazy so that they pick the voters they want instead of voters picking the politicians they want, Muslim people can be banned from entering the country and a random small group of anti-freedom, far right religious fanatics can interfere with student freedom and parental rights and free speech by getting books banned for an entire school board just because there is a character in the book they hate for no justifiable reason? Sounds like all those guns you Americans own to be ready to shoot each other any time you wish aren't doing anything to protect Americans from government. In fact when you add it up Americans have less freedom and are far more like slaves than people in developed countries which have much more freedom. Though I will admit that Americans have the right to die because they have inadequate pre-natal care or because they have no maternity leave or because they have no health coverage at all. So you do have that freedom. And let's not forget the right to work for a ridiculously low minimum wage with no union protection because some states passed anti-union laws so that one never gets out of extreme poverty.
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  5793. I don't know about that. There's still a significant amount of hate for the Japanese among countries which the Japanese empire invaded and where the Japanese treated other races as being "inferior". And the Japanese don't get a pass for how they've treated people of Korean background who have lived in Japan for generations. And the Chinese don't get a pass for how they have treated Tibetans or even less light skinned people in western China. And Africans don't necessarily appreciate arrogant, racist Chinese business managers in their countries any more than they liked arrogant, racist white people running things in their countries during European colonialism. And on top of that South Korea which has a significantly higher population than Canada now will be dropping from a population of 52 million to 15 million people in 2100 with half the people being over age 62 by 2070. Canada on the other hand will likely go from 41 million people now to over 80 million in 2100 due to immigration. Do you think that in 2100 South Korea with 15 million people, at least half of them elderly, will have as much influence in the world as will Canada with over 80 million people? And if you don't care about world influence then think about the fact that the South Korean government is increasingly worried about whether it will have enough young people to have a big enough army to hold off a potential attack by North Korea. Frankly, the prospect of having a diverse population increased by immigration sounds a lot better than becoming a citizen of an expanded North Korea.
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  5794. Western leaders are idiots if they don't recognize the existential danger of the situation for Europe and the uselessness of giving imperialist Russia territory to buy "peace". Rewarding Russia with territory will just tell Russia once again that the west is weak and will always in the end just let Russia steal territory any time it invades a country. That will cause more Russian invasions. Russia's military equipment accumulated over 80 years is being destroyed and Russia is running out of men to fight and Russian infrastructure is deteriorating and breaking down and Ukraine is gradually destroying Russian oil infrastructure and the Russian government is running out of foreign reserves and heading towards bankruptcy. All western countries need to do is to keep supporting Ukraine and outlast Russia economically which they are certainly capable of doing and Russia will within the next two years get to the point that it is about to collapse and can no longer continue fighting the war. At that point Russia will sue for peace and that will finally teach Russia that it needs to stop invading other countries. If Ukraine is willing to keep fighting until Russia can no longer continue then it's not a big request to ask western countries to keep supporting Ukraine until that happens. And Canada and European countries have had 30 months to understand the gravity of the situation and ramp up military production so that they can give Ukraine enough support even without American involvement. They have no excuse for not having done that - they knew that Trump or another MAGA Republican politician might become president again.
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  5828. According to an article in an Israeli publication a representative of the Israeli hostages said that on October 9th or 10th 2023 Hamas offered to release all of the Israeli hostages in return for a promise from Israel to not invade Gaza but Israel refused to agree. All of the horrific destruction in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen and Iran that has happened since then has been completely unnecessary and all of the suffering of Palestinians and Israeli hostages and their families and of people in Lebanon and in Yemen that has occurred since then has been completely unnecessary. The horrific attacks by Israel on Gaza and Lebanon and Yemen were never about saving the Israeli hostages nor were they about destroying Hamas, an organization that Israel tried to promote to weaken secular Palestinian leaders and to divide Palestinians. The goal of the horrific war against the Palestinians in Gaza was always about making Palestinians suffer as much as possible and to break them as individuals, families, communities and as a nation of people and to teach Palestinians that any resistance to Zionist invasion, occupation and oppression in Palestine would lead to widespread and immense and horrific Palestinian suffering. In October 2023 Biden could have threatened to cut off all weapons and money to Israel and to end American recognition of Israel and to cut off trade ties with Israel and to arrest any Israeli guilty of war crimes and then he could have ordered Netanyahu to end the genocide and to end oppression of Palestinians and Netanyahu would have had no choice but to agree. But Biden is a Zionist so he never did that. Biden and members of his administration patting themselves on the back for this peace deal is as ludicrous as the British patting themselves on the back for ending their involvement in the slave trade or a violent domestic abuser talking about how "wonderful" a guy he is because he finally stopped beating his wife. Instead of patting themselves on the back Biden and members of his administration should get down on their knees and beg Palestinians for forgiveness after all the Palestinian suffering that the Biden administration is complicit in. And racist, xenophobic Trump who caters to white supremacists and regularly spouts hate for Muslims and non-white people should just stay quiet about this deal.
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  5835. Trump didn't win because of MAGA cult members supporting him. They like him and will always vote for him because they like that he is such a horrific person and because he hates the same people they hate. They voted for him in 2016, 2020 and in 2024. They did not vote for Biden in 2020. The reason why Trump won in 2024 is that a significant number of non-MAGA voters have the delusion that Trump was responsible for low pandemic recession prices in 2020 and forget that those low prices came due to everyone staying home and not buying things and they have the delusion that Biden and Democrats are fully responsible for the world wide inflation that took place from 2021 to 2023 and they have the delusion that Trump will bring back 2020 prices. The fact is that although Saudi Arabia is giving Trump a Christmas present by significantly increasing oil production starting in December to drive down oil and gasoline prices Trump has at least six planned polices that will each cause higher inflation and which collectively will make inflation skyrocket upwards. On top of that Trump's plans to start a major trade war with every country in the world that will not only contribute to increased American inflation but will also cause economic stagnation and disruption (in a bad way). Non-MAGA Americans who held their nose and voted for Trump simply because they wanted 2020 prices and increased economic growth are going to be extremely disappointed and unhappy by four years from now. Serves them right.
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  5850. Would be wonderful if NATO had the courage to draw a line from Kharkiv to Odessa and tell Russia that all territory to the west of that line is under NATO protection and that if even one Russian soldier, tank, plane, missile, bomb, missile or shell travels west if thst line then NATO airforces will quickly destroy all Russian military units which are located anywhere in Ukraine. And to back that up by sending huge numbers of NATO planes and anti-aircraft systems and significant numbers of western troops to western Ukraine. Let Putin be afraid for a change. If a significant number of NATO troops were based around Kiev to ensure its protection rhen that might free up some Ukrainian troops to move down south and east to take part in actions against Russian forces. This would allow the Ukrainians west of that line feel safe again and would let all Ukrainians know that their country will definitely survive and will allow the Ukrainian army to be able to repair tanks and other equipment more easily without needing to send them all the way to Poland for repairs. It would also make it much more convenient for Western military trainers to train Ukrainian military recruits in Ukraine instead of those recruits having to travel to England or some such place to train. The idea is that NATO troops would not be the ones fighting with Russia (it would still be Ukrainian troops pushing Russian forces back) but that the presence of NATO forces in western Ukraine guaranteeing its sovereignty would be of great help to Ukraine. And the further back the Ukrainians pushed the Russians the further east would move the line of Ukrainian territory protected by NATO. No the line would not be on the front line. Perhaps 50 or 100 km father back but that would still he of great help to Ukrainian forces as Russia would lose the advantage of using its vast artillery to hit Ukrainians far behind the front line. I would also suggest thst NATO send warships to escort and protect Ukrainian ships traveling to and from the country with grain or other products. Course Turkey would have some say on whether western warships could travel to Ukraine. Hopefully this would change things so that Putin would realize thst the only direction his troops would he able to go the rest of the war is backward because if they push forward into NATO protected territory then NATO will quickly assist Ukrainian forces in destroying Russian forces in Ukraine through the use of overwhelming power. . One military magazine ranked the power of the world's airforces and all three of the most powerful airforces were American as it has 4 airforces in different services ...... and as well other European NATO countries have powerful airforces. Somebody said that if NATO airforces tried to attack area controlled by Russia they would not succeed for the same reason that the Russian airforce has not succeeded in controlling the skies over Ukraine.. Because anti-aircraft defenses would make it too dangerous for NATO planes to fly over Russian controlled territory.. Hope that's not true.
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  5868. One thing to add to what he said. Not only would stopping the supply of weapons to Ukraine not lead to peace and likely lead to renewed Russian gsins but it could also lead to complete Ukrainian defeat and then to an emboldened Imperialist Russian regime deciding to invsde the Baltic states or Poland next under the assumption that western countries are weak and impatient with conflict and prone to just letting Russia have what it wants in the end. In the past few decades Russia launched Imperialist invasions to steal territory from Moldova, Georgia, Chechnya (twice) and Ukraine (in 2014). Each time the west said, "Let Russia have what it wants and then it will be satisfied and we will have peace" and each time Russia saw western inaction and indifference as a sign of weakness and felt emboldened to launch another unprovoked imperialist invasion to steal territory from another country. Cut off supplies of weapons to Ukraine and let Russia conquer Ukraine and there will be same response by Russia as the previous times - Imperialist Russia will then like before feel emboldened to launch more invasions of more countries which obviously is not peace. The only way to convince Imperialist Russia that the west is strong and determined and thus that invading other countries is a bad idea and thus to have peace is for the west to supply Ukraine with enough military supplies and equipment and financial support to defeat Russian forces in the field or cause the Russian government to plunge into bankruptcy due to the cost of the war (although more effective sanctions on Russia would also help). The other alternative is for NATO airforces to get involved in the war and destroy the Russian invasion force in Ukraine. A Russian loss in Ukraine is the only way to peace as contradictory as that may sound at first.
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  5878. It's not happening. Trump says a lot of things that are disconnected from reality. He said that covid would magically disappear in the spring in 2020 five years ago and now in 2025 according to one doctor every month about forty million Americans get a new covid infection. Even if the figure isn't 40 million it's clear that covid is still raging through the population. It would cost an estimated 180 billion dollars to fix Venezuela's oil infrastructure but that figure is very uncertain and could be as high as 250 billion dollars. And that would take ten years to get production up to pre-sanction levels. And those levels would not be enough to replace all oil imports from Canada and it's not clear that they even would go to the United States. Even before sanctions on Venezuela's oil Canada was supplying a lot of oil to the United States. And likely new pipelines would need to be built in the United States. What American oil company is going to invest all that money when there is already a safe, secure, established supply of oil from Canada that requires no major investment funding? Consider also political problems in Venezuela and the feelings of animosity for Venezuela of both Republicans and Democrats. Consider the very real possibility that at some point the Venezuelan government might expropriate any new oil infrastructure built by American companies. Consider also that the oil industry has created a massive environmental disaster in Venezuela that will cost heaven knows how many billions of dollars to clean up. Consider also the difficulty of finding all the skilled workers needed to repair Venezuela's oil infrastructure. Consider also the high per barrel expense of developing new oil fields for heavy oil. It no longer makes financial sense in Canada. It's hard to see why it would make any more sense in Venezuela. Fracking oil fields and lighter oil fields are cheaper per barrel and easier to develop. Consider also the prospect of peak oil consumption - that world demand for oil may start to decline by 2030. Why would anyone invest over 180 billion dollars to fix Venezuela's oil infrastructure by 2035 when doing so can't possibly make financial sense unless there is going to be strong demand for that oil for at least 30 or 40 years (until 2065 or 2075)? A lot of countries are trying to achieve net zero by 2050, just 15 years after 2035, ths earliest possible date to get Venezuela's oil infrastructure back in shape to produce the amount of oil that Venezuela produced before sanctions. Consider also that Trump is an old man who is going to be out of office in 4 years and very possibly will have passed away by 2035, the earliest date at which Venezuela's oil infrastructure could be repaired. Who is going to invest 180 billion dollars to fix Venezuela's oil infrastructure by 2035 to respond to a random comment by Trump when by 2035 Trump will have been out of office for at least six years and could very possibly have passed away by then? The Venezuelan government certainly doesn't have the money. The country has become desperately impoverished. And even if miraculously Venezuela's oil infrastructure is repaired by 2035 it's oil might go to China or another country and not to the United States and it won't have remotely enough production to replace American oil imports from Canada.
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  5904. ​you might be right but frankly most of the MAGA members will never return to reality and decency and humanity and don't want to. They like the pro gun, anti science, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic MAGA message and are very gullible, slow witted people easily tricked by charlatans and grifters who convince MAGA members that everyone different is indeed their enemy and not the wealthy Trump supporters who benefit from Trump policies. Probably most members of the MAGA cult have relatives or friends who tried your suggested approach and tried to logically explain the absurdity of MAGA beliefs but got ignored because MAGA members don't care about logic or decency - they just care about keeping power for straight white Christian conservative men and not letting anyone else have any power. When the minority of Canadians who are MAGA types occupied Ottawa some reporters tried to talk to members of the mob and ask them what they wanted but the reporters gave up because the extremists kept responding by spouting completely ludicrous conspiracy theories. Remember, these were far right extremists who because the "People's Party" they supported had not been able to win a single Parliamentary seat in 2 elections thought that they had the right to go to Ottawa and terrorize the population until all members of Parliament stepped down and were replaced by a dictatorship made up of deranged anti vaxers which would then somehow magically get rid of vaccine rules created by the provinces and the American government. Whether in Canada or the United States MAGA cult members are so removed from reality and so filled with intolerance and hate and unjustified anger that one cannot talk to them logically.
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  5920. To a non-American it appears that as much as the source of this insane situation can be blamed on Trump and the Supreme Court the blame is much more wide spread as it seems that the country has had the disturbing, absurd idea that presidents and ex-presidents and presidential candidates are above the law for a very long time and it still seems a common belief in the United States. Evidence for that is that in all the many, many times that commentors have said that if Trump wins the election he can make this case go away not a single time has the commentator said that if Trump as president made this case go away that he would or should be arrested immediately for corruption. For Trump to make this case go away would be the most extreme example of political corruption in American history and yet not one American political commentator has said that he should be arrested and charged for corruption for doing that as apparently all American political commentators think that presidents should never face legal accountability for corruption no matter how serious and extreme the corruption is. Maybe the United States would have gotten over this ludicrous concept of presidential immunity if Richard Nixon had gone to prison. I imagjne that a big reason why Americans think that presidents should have presidential immunity is that so many presidents have done so many illegal and horrific things in other countries or have given support to foreign regimes that have done illegal, horrific things. One can't help but notice that the United States does not recognize the International Criminal Court as having jurisdiction over American citizens and the United States even has a law that if any country arrests an American and plans to send that American to the International Criminal Court the United States will invade that country to "rescue" that accused war criminal. Obviously its most likely high ranking officials who might be tried by the International Criminal court and there is no American official higher than the president.
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  5957. ​ @specialforce8486  Your comment makes no sense in numerous ways. It is the horrific oppression that Israeli leaders such as Netanyahu and Israeli forces such as the IDF have inflicted on Palestinians for 75 years that has led to terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens such as on October 7. When a people's land is stolen and they are brutally oppressed for 75 years and they are forced to live in prison camps for life and all hope is taken from them that will obviously make some of those people turn to violence against members of the group that oppresses them because they see no other way to move towards freedom and because of the simple anger caused by being oppressed and locked in a prison camp all of one's life. Also, it's quite obvious that the horrific attacks on Gaza have done more to cause the deaths of hostages than to save them. The Israeli regime should have focused on negotiating to save the hostages back in October instead of cutting off food and water and other essential supplies to the place where the hostages were being held and then brutally bombing that place. Surely anyone with a relative held hostage in Gaza would want them to get food and water and medical supplies and to not be bombed. Notice that family members of hostages have for a long time been pleading with the Israeli government to seriously negotiate to get the hostages back. And also, obviously there have been horrendous war crimes in which Netanyahu and the IDF are complicit. You can't defend that.
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  5968. The simple solution would be to eliminate stupity and ignorance about inflation among the American public and American media. Unfortunately both the American public and media both look at inflation with a very simplistic inaccurate perspective like a a 3 year old child watching a motorcycle go by and saying, "Look! Motorcycle!" and having no understanding of what propels a motorcycle. Saying, "Look! Inflation! President bad" is just as pathetic and inaccurate. The media and the public should be thinking about inflation and understanding that the president has no control over most of the factors causing inflation. Coming out of the pandemic depression csused inflation to rise but that's good - it's not sustainable for the world to have oil prices near zero. So maybe coming out of a depression is Biden's responsibility but that is something to give the Biden government credit for, not to blame them. Gasoline prices are controlled by international energy markets, not by the president. Every newspaper should be required to print that on the front page at least once a week the year of an election. The president doesn't run the American oil industry and in fact American oil production is at the highest level ever achieved by any country and is increasing. And any European could tell Americans that U.S. gasoline prices are not high - in fact they are extremely low. Labour shortages increased because baby boomers are retiring. Biden didn't force couples to have babies 65 years ago. China had lockdowns causing shortages of goods. Biden doesn't control that. American ports on the west coast had problems but obviously Biden doesn't run the port of Los Angeles and no doubt the problems were decades in the making. Biden may have run deficits but it's also true that Trump increased the size of the deficit every year he was in office. The biggest reason why energy, food, fertilizer and other prices went up was the Russian invasion into Ukraine but that obviously is not Biden's fault. In fact Biden and Democrats have been trying to help Ukraine end the Russian invasion that drove up inflation around the world whereas Trump praised Russian preparations for the invasion as brilliant and never seems to have condemned the invasion and Trump reportedly pushed Republicans to block aid to Ukraine that might help Ukraine end the Russian invasion that has increased inflation. One wonders if Putin would have lsunched his inflation causing invasion at all if he had not had his friend Trump to undermine American support for Ukraine. And as well Trump has now encouraged Putin to launch more inflation causing invasions into Europe. If you want Russian inflation causing invasions to end then the obvious choice is to vote Democratic. If you want Russian inflation causing invasions to continue and multiply in number than vote for Trump and Republicans. That is what the media should be explaining to the American public.
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  5977. ​ @jasperchance3382  Nonsense. The homeland of white European Jewish people is ....surprise, surprise....Europe. According to genetic experts Palestinians have lived continuously in Palestine for at least 3,700 years. Likely some of their ancestors living in Palestine 2,500 years ago were ancient Israelites because there were no Christian or Muslim people in the world at that time. Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinian people. In the year 1800 only about 2.5% of the population in Palestine was Jewish. For those particular Jewish people their homeland was Palestine but to claim that Palestine is the homeland of white European Jewish people who were living in Europe is nonsense. And don't start ranting about the fact that some European Jewish people might have some ancestors who were living in Palestine 2,000 years ago. To say that a place is one's homeland because maybe a few of one's ancestors lived there 2,000 years ago is ludicrous. Almost all the ancestors of today's white British population didn't live in Britain 2,000 years ago but for a British person to claim that their homeland is in Sweden or Denmark or France or Germany because some of their ancestors lived in those places 2,000 years ago would be ridiculous. If everyone in the world tried to claim that any place in the world that some of their ancestors lived 2,000 years ago was their homeland and that any place in the world where people of their religion lived 2,000 years ago was their homeland and then everyone in the world tried to invade and occupy those places they claim are their homelands then the entire world would be filled with constant war and chaos all the time. Thankfully, only Zionists have such a ludicrous, self centered view. And that attitude has brought the Zionists occupying Palestine endless conflict as was easily predictable when any people arrogantly invade and occupy the land already belonging to and occupied by another people.
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  5978. ​ @jasperchance3382  You can bring up endless stories of colonialism that happened in the far distant past and which it would be insane to reverse now. Maybe you think that the descendants of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings and Normans should still be considered invaders and should be kicked out of Britain or that another group of people from outside Britain should invade Britain and steal and occupy the land of those people and put them in prison camps but that would be a crazy idea. And in general it would be crazy to call anyone in the world an invader because their ancestors lived somewhere else 2,000 years ago. And it makes no sense to call Palestinians colonialists in Palestine because according to genetic experts Palestinians have been living continuously in Palestine for at least 3,700 years. Presumably a lot of current day Palestinians had ancestors who were Christian living 1,500 years ago and ancestors who were Jewish or another religion 2,500 years ago. Over time a lot of Palestinians must have converted from one religion to another. The important thing is that it was a ridiculous idea for white European Jewish Zionists to think they should invade Palestine and create a white colonialist regime on land where other people were already living simply because a lot of Jewish lived there 2,000 years ago. And that was especially true in 1948 when already a lot of similar colonialist regimes had been dismantled and the era of European imperialism was coming to an end. Within 15 years virtually all similar racist, colonialist apartheid oppressive regimes in the world had been dismantled.
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  5979. Imagine if there was a violent, aggressive, greedy thief in your city and every time he invaded someone's home and stole something authorities said, "Just let him get away with it with no consequences and then the thief will be satisfied and we won't have any conflict with him". Would that make the criminal thief stop invading homes to steal things? Of course not. That would just embolden him to invade more homes and steal more stuff. Before the 2022 Russian invasion into Ukraine Russia launched six other unprovoked imperialist invasions into nearby countries to steal territory from those countries over just the past three decades and each time western countries said, "Just let Russia get away with it and then imperialist Russia will be satisfied and we will have peace" and each time the Russian government took this as a sign of western weakness and felt emboldened to launch another unprovoked imperialist invasion. If the west responds the same way for the 7th straight time and lets Russia get away with it again and gives Russia Ukrainian territory as a reward for its invasion then imperialist Russia will respond exactly as it did the first six times and launch another unprovoked imperialist invasion within a few years. Even Charlie Brown wouldn't try to kick the football 7 times in a row. Fool the west once - shame on Russia. Fool the west seven times - shame on Trump or anyone else who falls for it. And even if Russia never launched another invasion, why should Russia get all that Ukrainian territory and all the resources under the ground in that territory? No doubt getting control of those resources was one of the prime reasons for Russia's invasion. And another problem is that if Russia is allowed to keep all the territory it is occupying then there will always be the threat of another Russian attack in future so people will be afraid to invest in Ukraine and its economy will always be stagnant and the country will have very poor prospects for the future.
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  5997. Some possible problems with hexagon road patterns. It may be that for a diagonal trip (which almost all trips are) the distance travelled is less and that each intersection is safer but it does mean a much more complicated trip with many more turns. In a grid system when someone gives you directions they just say, "Go 10 km north on Elm Street and then turn left to go west 4 km on Maple Avenue and then turn right on Birch Crescent to get into our neighbouhood". With a hexagon pattern the instructions would involve many left and right turns and would be too complicated to remember. Also, naming streets would be incredibly complicated. Would every side of every hexagon have a different name? That's a lot of street names for everyone to deal with. Rught now someone can tell you that they live near the intersection of Thompson Boulevard and Smith Avenue and you have an idea where they live but if street design was completely based on the hexagon there would be no long main streets that everyone would know the name of. Also, I can see how these intersections would reduce the chances of horrific car crashes involving cars meeting at right angles (just as round-a-bouts and other road patterns can reduce the chance of such major crashes). However a street pattern based on the hexagon means that people need to make a lot more turns and anytime that people need to turn the chances of an accident increase. Would having a hexagon street pattern result in more crashes but less severe crashes?
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  6047. It is horrific but true that it would not be entirely surprising if Putin blew up the nuclear plant to purposely contaminate a huge area of Europe for hundreds or thousands of years. He has repeatedly implied that he might use nuclear weapons and it is common for Russian trolls to threaten the use of nuclear weapons against anyone who expresses opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Russian trolls don't seem to care a whit that such an act could easily escalate to global nuclear war which would wipe out humanity including all Russians which in turn includes themselves and their cult leader Putin. And the reason why those lunatics so casually suggest wiping out all of humanity including themselves is not because any country has attacked or invaded Russia or has any intention to do so but simply because the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine might be thwarted and the terrorist Russian regime might not succeed in expanding the already vast Russian empire by wiping Ukraine from the map and committing genocide against the Ukrainian people. This level of insane desire for destruction of the world based on no justification at all is at a level of madness usually seen only in mad super villains in B movies. One has to wonder what the heck happened in life to these Russian trolls and their cult leader Putin that they are willing to casually threaten the destruction of hunanity simply because their genocidal invasion of Ukraine has failed. There is clearly something very wrong with them.
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  6090.  @Akela25  not that I believe American government claims as to why they get involved in conflicts around the world but if you are equating the situation in a peaceful country like Ukraine to the situations that existed in those other countries and if you are equating the nature and behavior of the democratically elected government in Ukraine with the brutal, nasty governments of those countries you mention then you are just publicly embarrassing yourself and too disconnected from reality to make a useful comment. With the posdible exception of Libya the governments of those countries you mentioned were horrific and doing brutal and barbaric things to their own people and/or to other peoples. The equivalent to your comment would be responding to a complaint by somebody about police arresting a Black man just for peaceably walking down the street by you saying "Well how come you don't complain about that other police officer who has been arresting people who committed crimes?". Understand now? And no I don't want to get into a discussion about the hypocrisy of western countries that ship weapons to Saudi Arabia despite its brutal bombing of Yemen or about whether the United States is or should be a sort of world policeman. I'm just saying that when you equate the government and situation in Ukraine before February 24 to the givernments and situations in Syria, Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan before American intervention you are just making yourself look ridiculous. Try to do better next time.
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  6092.  @Akela25  okay, let's compare Russia and the West. In 1450 Russia like other European countries was a relatively small country in Europe (or partially in Asia if you wish). After that Russia like a number of European countries invaded many places and developed a huge empire. However eventually other European countries let almost all of their colonies go free retaining only tiny bits of their former empires if anything at all of their former empires. Russia, on the other hand, is still occupying virtually all of the empire they built up since 1450 and Putin clearly is upset that any of the Russian empire was lost and wants to gain back former parts of the Russian empire by force and of course Putin launched invasions of Georgia, Chechnya, Crimea , the Donbas and the rest of Ukraine to attempt to take back former parts of the Russian empire. Notice that in contrary to that you don't hear the British government talking about taking over Canada again or hear the Dutch government talking about taking over Indonesia again or the Portuguese government talking about retaking Brazil. So in its refusal to give up its empire Russia has behaved far worse than its European counterparts. When I see Russia return to its 1450 borders then I might give it some credit. Yes, it is true that the United States like Russia still occupies most of the empire it acquired through invasion but when it comes to willingness to let parts of its empire go free Russia still looks very bad comoared to its European counterparts.
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  6135. ​ @gregoryadair3223  But the Japanese government didn't surrender after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. It did surrender after the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. It is true that the emperor told the Japanese people that the country should surrender because it could not hope to continue to fight when confronted with nuclear bombs but it is not clear if that was the real reason for the surrender or if it was the Soviet declaration of war and that saying that the reason was an incredibly destructive super weapon gave an honourable reason to surrender. It's hard to believe but some say that the destruction of Hiroshima was no worse than the destruction suffered by some other Japanese cities. I believe that the fire bombing of Tokyo killed over 100,000 people but that did not cause Japan to surrender. And of course some Japanese leaders still opposed surrendering even after Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war. I think that the emperor and some other Japanese leaders knew that to be invaded by the Soviet Union would not only be horrifically devastating and cause mass casualties but would also end any semblance of independence for Japan which would end up in Soviet control indefinitely. They chose well to surrender to the Americans, British, Canadians, Chinese, etc and not wait to be invaded and occupied by Soviet troops. In the end nobody can ever know for sure to what extent the atomic bombing, Soviet declaration of war and a really bad economic situation in Japan influenced various Japanese leaders to support a surrender. Finally, Putin is not going to be dropping a nuclear bomb unless he wants to be fighting all of NATO and really become a complete pariah virtually everywhere in the world.
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  6171. Actually people are calling for a ceasefire precisely because they very well understand Israel and its white, colonialist, racist, fully apartheid nature and its complete indifference to the lives and health and well being of Palestinians. People who see Israel as it really is can see that without a ceasefire all Palestinians in Gaza could end up dead, wounded or as stateless refugees and the leaders of the oppressive, racist Israeli state likely wouldn't bat an eyelash and according to one recently revealed Israeli document would in some cases be happy that more Palestinians were out of the way and more Palestinian land could be stolen. And if Israeli leaders think that Israel can achieve peace and stability by simply imprisoning, killing or sending into exile lots of Palestinian militants and activists then they are fools because as long as the apartheid Israeli state brutally oppresses Palestinians in their own land there will always be more Palestinian militants and activists. In the 1980s the leaders of white supremacist apartheid South Africa finally figured that out but in 75 years the leaders of Israel have never had the wisdom to understand that and so have kept doing the same thing for over 7 decades constantly expecting different results which never come. The only way for Jewish people to ever have peace and stability is for Israeli leaders like white South Africa leaders in the 1980s to support political change which gives Palestinians basic human rights whether that be to accept having one unified secular state through all Palestine or to have a two state solution in which Palestinians have one large connected country as oppoeed to the disconnected Palestinian territories they have now and Jewish people have their own connected country but much smaller than the territory it has now.
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  6179. ​ @tavaresfp  You sound very ignorant and confused. Why should white European Jewish Zionists invade Palestine and steal and occupy its land because white European Christians persecuted them? If white European Jewish Zionists deserved a homeland of their own it obviously should have been in Europe, not on land of non-European people who had nothing to do with the history of persecution of Jewish people in Europe? It's like a man who has abused members of his family for many years says that he feels sorry and so is giving his family members permission to go to another city and invade and by force occupy the house of another family. Makes no sense at all. And all Palestinians must be given full and equal rights before one can say that it is no longer an apartheid state. It is not remotely enough to say that some Arab people have some rights when the vast majority of Palestinians do not have their rights respected. Israel is an apartheid state until all Palestinians including those in Gaza and in the West Bank and those living as refugees outside of Palestine have full rights to live, work and travel anywhere in historical Palestine including the area claimed by Israel and to do so without needing to go through checkpoints and without harassment by police and soldiers and to travel on any road and to vote and run for office in elections. If that all happens and Israel gets rid of all of its racist and discriminatory laws then it would no longer be an apartheid state. But one would need to be completely delusional to believe that is the case now.
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  6201. ​ @tictoc5443  White, Jewish European colonists invading Palestine and driving Palestinians out of their homes and forcing Palestinians to live in overcrowded, impoverished, unsustainable prison camps surrounded by barbed wire fences and walls and brutal Israeli police and soldiers is not "fighting back". The idea that white Jewish Europeans had the right to aggressively invade and conquer Palestine because there were a lot of people belonging to the Jewish religion there 2,000 years ago is as nonsensical as claiming that Buddhists in Japan and the United States have the right to invade and occupy certain regions in India because those regions had a lot of Buddhists 2,000 years ago. That is religious fanaticism and racism and imperialism. And the fact that there might have still been a tiny number of Jewish people living in Palestine in 1890 surrounded by Palestinians and a tiny number of Buddhist people in those regions of India surrounded by Hindu or Muslim people doesn't change a thing. What is so special about 2,000 or 3,000 years ago anyway? Why shouldn't the people or religious group that was in Palestine 10,000 years ago or 20,000 years ago have the right to invade and occupy Palestine? Do you realize how the entire world would be plunged into endless war if every racial group or religious group thought illogically like white Jewish European Zionists and decided that they should aggressively invade and occupy the territory where people like them lived at some time thousands of years ago?
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  6225. Western leaders need to get rid of the idea that they should pressure Ukraine to agree to a bad deal just to save themselves money helping Ukraine. Because getting a peace treaty (especially a bad peace deal) won't save western countries money. If Ukraine gets a bad peace deal and Russia gets to continue to occupy a lot of captured Ukrainian territory then almost certainly Russia will start rebuilding its armed forces and preparing for its next attack against Ukraine in a few years. That means that even if there is a peace treaty western nations' expenses helping Ukraine won't end because they will still need to send weapons and other support to Ukraine so that it is prepared to fight off the next Russian invasion and/or they will need to send their own troops to Ukraine to be prepared to fight off a Russian invasion. Western governments may complain about needing to spend money indefinitely to help defend Ukraine from Russian attack but imperialist Russia poses a threat to Europe indefinitely and Ukraine is the wall that protects Europe from imperialist Russia. Western countries have no choice but to keep spending money maintaining that Ukrainian wall to protect Europe as long as imperialist Russia continues to be imperialist and threaten Ukraine and Europe. There really is no other choice unless Europe wants to submit to Russian imperialism and given the impoverished and backward and devoid of freedom nature of Russia it would be insane for Europe to submit to Russian imperialism. Even Ukraine, which is not a rich country economically, clearly does not want to submit to Russian imperialism so why would wealthy Europe want to do so? As long as Russia remains an aggressive, warlike, imperialist country western countries have no choice but to continue to spend money maintaining and building up the Ukrainian wall that protects Europe from imperialist Russia.
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  6300. Organizations representing both Black and Hispanic people have made the exceptional step of warning the people they represent to not go to Florida because their rights will not be respected there. Undocumented workers are fleeing the state because of DeSantis' laws which reportedly have led to housing construction sites shutting down and could lead to crops rotting in the fields because there won't be workers to pick them. Lgbtq people no doubt will avoid Florida now that it has homophobic laws and is run by a homophobic government. Many women will understandably not want to move to Florida when it has a misogynistic government which does not respect the righrs of women and girls. Disney has just cancelled a major investment in Florida and this will cost the state many, many jobs. Anyone who is a decent person and believes in human rights for all and wants freedom and does not want to live under a government that seems to want to follow the example of the Taliban will not want to live in Florida. Anyone who wants even a minimal amount of gun laws so that they will not be shot on the streets will not want to live in Florida. DeSantis may be making the fanatical MAGA base happy now but in the process he seems determined to destroy the Florida economy. In a century Florida will be under the sea. Florida has now become so horrific that it mighf be best if the eea just swallowed up Florida now and eliminated the wretched place (giving just enough time for the residents to pack up and leave)
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  6318. @alexxela9502  utterly ridiculous and horrific and distorted and untrue Russian propagandist comment of yours. Par for the course for a Russian propagandist. The only "provocation" in Ukraine was that it was developing into a more free, more democratic, more progressive, less xenophobic country than is Russia. Putin's terrorist regime had absolutely no justification for his genocidal invasion of Ukraine and attempt to destroy Ukraine as acountry and steal its territory as he had no justification for similar invasions in Moldova, Georgia, Chechnya and his two invasions into Ukraine in 2014 in Crimea and Donbas. All these invasions were unjustified and unprovoked and intended by Putin to try to create an 18th century style Russian empire because he's mentally stuck centuries ago and because that in brutally invading other countries he can somehow compensate for his personal insecurities and constant weakness, paranoia and xenophobia. He can't. Everyone sees him for the weak, insecure, paranoid, little man that he is. Of course in the case of Ukraine he's not only invading to play make believe and pretend he's Peter the Great but he's also trying to steal all of the resources of Ukraine and as I said he's very worried about the fact that Russian people seeing a free, democratic, progressive country next door might decide they want the same thing. Your claim he has justification for using a nuclear weapon is absurd nonsense and a barbaric statement. Nobody has attacked or threatened Russia - Putin and Russia are completely responsible for the war. For you to claim that Putin has reason to use nuclear weapons simply because Ukraine is defending itself against an unprovoked, genocidal Russian invasion is completely ludicrous and a very distorted view of the world. And no - Putin's genocidal invasion of Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO as Ukraine was not in NATO nor was it anywhere close to joining NATO. Though this unprovoked genocidal Russian invasion has shown the world that other Eastern European nations were right to join NATO for protection against potential invasion by Russia. They knew Russia and its empire building fantasies best.
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  6324. Flipped the channel to CNN and the first thing I hear him say is basically that there is not much that the United States can do to reduce gun violence. And then he showed that like many American politicians he doesn't even understand that his own country's 2nd amendment is talking about state militias and saying that the people of a state as a whole have the right to have a well trained and organized armed militia to protect the state and was created at a time that arms meant muskets and does not give every Tom, Dick and Harry the right to carry a powerful semi-automatic rifle to a library, store or university. It's not mental health or anything else that causes gun violence in the U.S.. Every country has lots of people with mental health challenges and lots of people who have disputes and get angry but in other countries people don't shoot each other because they don't have guns. It's the vast quantity of guns in the United States that's the problem. Anyone from a developed country can tell Chris and other American politicians how to end the gun violence. It's simple. Get rid of the regularly misinterpreted 2nd amendment, bring in tight gun restrictions and get rid of the guns. This works in every developed country and it will work in the United States. Unless Chris and other American politicians are saying that Americans are naturally more primitive and violent than people in other countries. People who don't have guns don't shoot other people. And if every Tom, Dick and Harry didn't have guns then American police wouldn't be so paranoid thinking that everyone they meet might pull out a gun and then they won't kill as many people. American police kill about a thousand civilians a year. British police who don't have to worry about civilians carrying guns kill only about 3 civilians per year. I don't know why it is that once they start talking about guns so many American politicians start saying ridiculous things.
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  6346. Prigozhin said that over 20,000 Wagner troops had been killed in the battle for Bakhmut. One western military expert said that that is likely a significant underestimate and given all the Russian lies about this war he's probably right. If the true number of Wagner dead during the Bakhmut battle is 30,000 then likely at least 60,000 Wagner troops have been wounded in the battle which makes for 90,000 casualties - add the number of Wagner troops who surrendered or deserted and Wagner might have lost close to 100,000 men fighting for Bakhmut - possible only because for a while large numbers of men in Russian prisons kept volunteering or being conscripted into Wagner. If as well regular Russian forces lost a total of 40,000 dead, wounded, captured or deserted in the battle that would make for 140,000 total Russian men lost in taking 9 months to capture 42 square kilometres of ruins out of over 600,000 total square kilometres Ukrainian territory and wasting vast amounts of ammunition and having huge amounts of equipment destroyed in the process. And Ukrainian forces still control the high ground to the west of city so can easily rain shells down on Russian troops occupying the ruins of Bakhmut. And this from a Russian military which Putin thought could easily conquer all of Ukraine within a couple of weeks. It's very clear that as long as the west continues to send Ukraine enough military supplies and financial aid to continue to fight Russia has no hope of winning this war and at best can hope that Russian forces can resist Ukrainian offensives and hang on until Russia runs out of foreign reserves and can no longer afford to keep fighting which should happen within 12 months and possibly as early as this December. I wonder if Putin is willing to wait until Russia is effectively bankrupt and virtually its entire military is destroyed before pulling out of Ukraine. One military expert said that it is going to take 10 years for Russia to rebuild its military after the losses it has sustained in this war. Perhaps if this war goes on another year it will take 20 years for Russia to rebuild its military after this war .......though if Russia is bankrupt and still selling its fossil fuels dirt cheap in a year perhaps it will be incapable of rebuilding its military at all. Plus 20 years is a long time for a country such as Russia which is facing demographic decline. Russia won't have nearly as many young men to conscript in 20 or 30 years, especially with so many young Russian men wanting to leave the country. If this war goes on another year before a bankrupt Russian government has no choice but to pull the battered remnants of its military out of Ukraine that might be the end of Russian delusions of empire forever.
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  6375. ​ @Ryanlexz first you would be more accurate if you simply said that white Americans from all parties care more about foreigners who are white. Second you should have pointed out that whereas Biden and Democrats have made efforts to support more justice for non-white people Trump has regularly spouted hateful rhetoric about non-white people and been happy to have white supremacist supporters and has created an environment in which xenophobic white supremacists feel emboldened to launch verbal and physical attacks on people who are non-white and non-Christian and you should have pointed out that following Trump's lead the MAGA Republican party has shown itself to be the party of racism, xenophobia and intolerance. If Democrats have been unable to achieve the very difficult goal of peace and justice between Israel and Palestinians there is no doubt that the MAGA Republican politicians and their racist white, Christian fundamentalist base don't give a heck about Palestinians and are much worse than the Democrats on the issue. Third, there is hope for solving the problem of the terrorist Russian invasion of Ukraine which of course is ensuring that Russian terrorist forces are pushed out of Ukraine. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict though has gone on at least since the late 1940s and really for half a century before that and so far no diplomat or politician from any country has been able to resolve the conflict but if you think that you know better than the Democrats or any other person in the world over the past century how to fix the conflict then do it and stop wasting time.
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  6392. One "good thing" that makes this crazy Trump idea dead in the water is the extreme difficulty it is for Canada to get any constitutional change agreed to let something as unpopular, divisive, complicated and significant as joining the United States. Thirty years ago Canadian politicians gave up trying to negotiate constitutional changes because the process was so long and difficult and never succeeded in changing anything. Guaranteed Quebec would never agree to this because joining the United States would doom the French language in Quebec. It's very hard to see any province other than possibly Alberta agreeing to this. And at least two provinces if not all would have referendums on the issue before agreeing to join the United States. Then as well the courts might say that as well as the provinces and the federal government the First Nations of Canada must agree, something that seems very unlikely. And even if miraculously Canada agreed to negotiate a union with the United States the American Senate would need to agree by a two thirds majority to accept 10-13 new states only one or two of which might vote Republican and to accept 42 million new people very few of would vote Republican. That seems highly unlikely. Canada's MAGA like People's Party hasn't been able to win a single seat anywhere in Canada in two straight elections even in 2021 when its votes were boosted by anti-vaxers. That's a record of zero wins out of 676 chances for a Canadian MAGA like party. Why the heck would American Republican politicians want all those Canadian voters voting in American elections?
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  6471. Two points: One: Some in the west may want to end financing of Ukraine and push Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire because they figure that the conflict is frozen and nobody can win but Trump and some of his supporters would likely be happy if Trump's buddy Putin was able to conquer Ukraine because Ukraine lost support from western countries. Two: I think it's misleading for Russian supporters to claim that this is a proxy war that the west launched against Russia as obviously it was Russia that chose to invade Ukraine three times and Russia could end the war any day by simply leaving Ukraine and ending attacks on Ukraine. However, given that Russia has decided to wage this war some in the west can't help but notice that for an expenditure that is a tiny percentage of American military spending the aid given Ukraine has been very effective at destroying much of the Russian military and with no NATO soldiers injured or killed as well. So from that perspective, Russian human wave attacks that cause huge numbers of Russian casualties may make some in the west think that continuing to support Ukraine is a very good idea because it ensures that the Russian military will continue to suffer massive losses which means that Russia will pose less of a threat to other countries. There is also the extra effect that because of all the casualties more talented, educated young Russian men are likely to flee Russia and this will deplete Russia's potential supply of military recruits, damage the Russian economy and make Russia's demographic crisis worse. There is a bit of a caveat in that if those Russian soldiers being killed are criminals or people from non-Russian ethnic groups in Eastern Russia or Ukrainians conscripted from Russian occupied areas then Putin may be happy to have members of those groups killed off, especially if some Ukrainian troops are killed in the process. Of course nobody thinks that Putin has any moral standards that would stop him from having people he wants dead fight Ukrainian soldiers whom he wants dead.
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  6504. New military technologies don't necessarily make the old technologies disappear. In WW2 German forces actually did do most transport of supplies using horses. The WW2 German soldiers involved in that horse drawn transport probably did work that would have been quite familiar to a 1910 soldier or an 1810 soldier or a 1710 soldier and possibly even familiar to some soldiers from over a 1,000 years previous. And it was swordfish biplanes that looked very outdated that disabled the Bismark and North Korea successfully used biplanes in the Korean War and likely still has biplanes ready to use in the next Korean war. The ancient technology of kayaks was used successfully at times in WW2. Also in WW2 British forces used 250,000 homing pigeons. Modern American technologies didn't manage to destroy Taliban forces in Afghanistan even if they surely led to victory in standard set-piece battles. And ever since the tank was invented there have been claims that the era of the tank is over because the weapons used to disable or destroy tanks have almost always been much cheaper than the tanks themselves. But the era of the tank might actually be over for real this time. We have seen how relatively inexpensive Ukrainian sea drones have driven the Russian navy off of the Black Sea. Even if it makes sense to keep using tanks that one already has it simply may not make financial sense to keep building them when one can produced 1,000 tank destroying drones for the cost of one tank. And while tanks need a lot of maintenance the Ukrainian military probably doesn't bother spending much money or time maintaining drones once they are built. An army is going to want to maintain a five million dollar tank that was a big investment but when a country is producing over a million drones a year it's probably not worth the time to maintain and fix old drones when there are so many more drones being produced (at least for the 5,000 drones).
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  6514. People who feel weak, insecure, paranoid, inferior and afraid are sometimes willing to do horrific things to "protect themselves" from those other people who create such fear in them. Despite claiming to be strong and independent people that describes members of the MAGA cult. They are afraid of Black people. They are afraid of people of Asian background. They are afraid of people of middle east background. Thery are afraid of anyone else who is not white. They are afraid of Muslim people. They are afraid of Sikh people. They are afraid of athiests and agnostics. They are afraid of other non-Christian people and even of real Christian people who don't share their extremist, right wing views. They are terrified of people who are childless or are single for life. They are afraid of LGBTQ people and of any book or other media which portrays LGBTQ people and in general don't like books very much. They are afraid of vaccines and science. They are afraid of experts who know more about things than they do. They are afraid of women who want equal rights and want to control their own bodies. They are afraid of people who dress or act differently than they do. They are afraid of change. They are often afraid of people who live in urban areas. They are afraid of people who are better educated than they are. They like to have guns and to carry guns not because they are strong and fearless but rather because they are weak and paranoid and constantly terrified of the world. They hate democracy which gives all people equal rights and power and desperately want to hang onto their political power by any means possible not because they are angry the system is rigged but rather because they know the system is rigged in their favour and want to keep it that way and because despite their claims to be the majority they can see that over time demographic change is making them more and more just one more minority among many minorities. They value the fact that the system gives them far more power than their numbers justify and want to maintain that power by whatever means possible and democracy, ethics, morality, justice and fairness do not enter into their calculations.
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  6530. ​ @pablo1236-z8g  Of course we should also remember the actions of Zionist terrorists in Palestine in the first half of the 20th century. The British haven't forgotten that. Also: In 1800 only about 3% of people in Palestine were Jewish. Even before 1948 that percentage had increased significantly as Zionists flocked to Palestine regardless of the wishes of the Palestinians or even of the British who controlled Palestine for decades. Not going to claim that there are no intolerant, xenophobic Arab leaders now in in the early 20th century but one has to think that the Zionist invasion into Palestine that started in the 1800s was a significant reason why anti-Jewish sentiments and actions increased dramatically in the 20th century in the Arab world. For many centuries Jewish communities existed in Arab Muslim countries including in Palestine and in fact some Muslim countries had taken in Jewish refugees who fled persecution in Christian Europe but once Zionists started pouring into Palestine and especially after 1948 when they openly declared that they were stealing over half of Palestine from Palestinians intolerance in Arab Muslim countries for Jewish people increased and a lot of of Jewish people moved from Muslim Arab countries to Israel, either because of persecution by Arab governments or by Arab people or because Israeli representatives convinced them they had a great opportunity to get some stolen Palestinian land for themselves. If Zionism had never been created those Jewish communities would still exist as large as they had for many centuries. It wasn't right for some Arab people and governments to persecute their own Jewish populations because of what Zionists did but that certainly seems to be what happened. The creation of Zionism and especially the creation of Israel was the worst possible thing for Jewish people. And not just in Arab countries - around the world now there is always the risk that hatred for Israel and Zionists for their horrific actions can lead to hatred for regular peaceful Jewish people who are not guilty of anything. Sort of similar to how some regular people of Chinese background have faced racism due to the actions of the Chinese communist government.
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  6539. ​​​ @bethelight162  It's absolutely nothing to do with religion. That tired excuse for Israeli occupation of Palestine is getting stale. As one Palestinian activist said, "We don't care what the religion is of the invaders who invaded our land and who oppress our people. We just want them to stop occupying our land and oppressing our people". Do you think that Eastern Orthodox Christian Ukrainians care that the invaders who are trying to wipe Ukraine from existence are of the same religion? Do you think that Christians in countries invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany were ok with that because a lot of the German invaders were Christian? Think. Just think. The Palestinians haven't had a chance to be free and live a good thriving life since 1948 when invading white European Zionists declared that they were stealing over half of Palestine from Palestinians. Imagine if instead of invading Palestine the Zionists had decided to invade Britain and steal over half the land and drive out almost all the British people living on that British land. Do you think that the British would have meekly and quietly accepted that or would they have responded exactly like the Palestinians and tried to fight back against the invaders stealing their land? The British weren't willing to put up with Nazis stealing their land and weren't even willing to put up with the Nazis invading Poland and occupying Polish land so they also wouldn't have put up with Zionists invading Britain and occupying British land any mire than the Palestinians were willing to meekly accept such an invasion into their homeland. Why would you expect the Palestinians to react to a Zionist invasion any differently than the British would have reacted to a Zionist invasion? Think. Just think.
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  6556. If true this doesn't put China in a difficult position. Any time it wants it can stop acting like an adversary to its neighbours, stop thinking of trying to steal their territory, give up Imperialist ambitions and just live in peace with the rest of the world. Even if this story is true no other country is going to attack or invade China given the size of China and its huge population and huge military and nuclear weapons so China has nothing to worry about. Both Japan and Germany actually developed much more and became richer since WW2 after they gave up their Imperialist dreams. Italy too. I'm almost certain that Russia would be doing a lot better economically and in terms of standard of living if its leaders had followed the same course as the leaders of Poland and focused on building its economy and improving the lives of its citizens instead of focusing on building up its military and invading other countries in an attempt to restart the Russian empire. Another obvious example is North Korea which has had leaders who focused on building a powerful military ready to take on the world while South Korean leaders focused on developing its economy and improving the living standards of its citizens. Some will disagree and point out that China has impoved the living standards of its citizens while building up its military and of course the Germans and Japanese also improved their economies in the 1930s but the German and Japanese people became much richer after WW2 after their countries turned away from Imperialism and the increase in living standards in China since 1949 have been impressive but not as impressive as the increase in living standards of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and South Korea since 1949 and those countries didn't waste energy trying to become Imperialist powers. The people in the latter countries are considered wealthy by world standards while the people of China are considered middle income and the people of North Korea are considered poor. So I think that the leaders of China and North Korea (and Russia) made the mistake of focusing on becoming or staying major military powers when they should have focused on living in peace with their neighbours and improving the standard of living of their citizens.
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  6562. As a Canadian I can say that obviously it is a major crime to be out in a normal urban public place carrying a gun and ten times as bad a crime if the gun was loaded and ten times as bad again if the weapon was being used to intimidate voters. The police on the scene messed up by not arresting the armed thugs. And for people who claim it's different in America- NO! Human beings around the world have the right to clean water, to education, to health care and shelter. But in no country in the world do people have the right to use loaded guns to threaten and intimidate voters. And for people who still claim it's different in the United States because the right to bear arms is supposedly guaranteed in the constitution I suggest that you look up the 2nd amendment. You will notice that in black and white it includes s the word "MILITIA". If the fathers of the United States had thought it a right for every Tom, Dick and Harry to carry a gun to the local market or library or park or town square they never would have put the word militia in the second amendment. Yes they thought that the people of a state as a whole had the right to have an amed state militia to defend the state in emergencies, especially against foreign invaders but random extremist armed thugs intimidating voters is not that. It's quite amazing how many Americans and even American judges don't understand that. Remember that the United States is a country which has imprisoned vast numbers of Black people for simple possession of drugs or even for just being in the wrong neighbourhood and that the United States imprisons far more people than any other country, even brutal dictatorships such as China. So it's not like American police and authorities are hesitant to imprison people and I can't think of a better reason to imprison people than if they are hanging around voting locations with loaded guns intent on terrorizing and intimidating voters with the hope their party of violent insurrection intent on ending democracy and destroying the United States gains power. But even if the second amendment had claimed that every Tom, Dick and Harry did have the right to carry loaded military guns everywhere and use those guns to threaten, intimidate and terrorize other people including voters that still wouldn't make it a "right" in any logical sense. Suppose that an amendment to the constitution said that every American had the "right" to sacrifice their first born baby to carnivores or to drop local young virgin girls in the nearest volcano or to kill a member of the family of the boy who slept with your daughter would you really think that people have the "right" to do such things? Of course you wouldn't think or say that these are rights of people because the idea is ludicrous, horrific and monstrous. And in a similar way if you had any sense and decency you wouldn't say that people have the right to purposely hang around voting locations with a loaded gun with the intention to terrorize and intimidate voters no matter what the second amendment said.
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  6731. ​ @CASA-dy4vs  It would amount to "terrorist" attacks on Russia by Ukraine but after 30 months of Russia launching countless terrorist attacks against Ukraine every day in an attempt to wipe Ukraine from the map and turn Ukrainians into slaves it's getting harder and harder to demand that Ukraine keep fighting at a huge disadvantage by sticking to Marquess of Queensbury rules when their barbaric opponent follows no rules whatsoever. Ukraine is like a boxer trying to follow the proper rules against an opponent who put razor blades in his gloves. Every death in the war is tragic and any suffering in the war is tragic especially if innocent, vulnerable civilians are effected but given the immense suffering that Ukrainians will suffer indefinitely if they lose this war the lesser evil may be to use some of the despicable tactics that Russia has been routinely using to help ensure that Ukraine does not end up losing the war and suffering horrific Russian occupation forever. Damaging the Russian power grid so that Russia is less able to continue its monstrous campaign against Ukraine would save many Ukrainian lives. We can realize how unfair it is that such actions may lead to suffering and even death of some innocent Russian civilians and appreciate how horrible that is while also realizing how unfair it is to keep telling Ukraine that it must always stick to rules that its opponent completely ignores. War creates really difficult choices. In WW2 in Normandy Allied attacks caused massive damage to some French towns and killed many innocent French civilians but from what I've read the local French people were not angry about that because they knew it was necessary to gain them their liberation. Ukrainians are fighting to keep their liberation from Russian oppression.
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  6733. ​ @paulorr9262  I guess you're a,sheep in the MAGA cult that worships the constantly crying toddler clown grifter fascist and like all sheep in the cult you are easily conned into believing simplistic explanations and you don't really understand anything about anything. The last six times Russia launched an unprovoked genocidal imperialist invasion into a nearby country the west did basically nothing and let Russia get away with it and essentially rewarded Russia for its invasion by letting it steal territory with the hope that the Russian government would finally be satisfied and there would be peace. Every time the Russian government saw that as a sign that the west was weak and would always let Russia steal territory and that emboldened Russia to launch another unprovoked imperialist invasion into a nearby country to steal territory. Six times in a row that happened. Every time appeasement turned out to be a disastrous strategy to follow with Russia. And yet you think that magically if the same strategy of appeasement is used for the 7th straight time and Russia is rewarded for its invasion by giving it Ukrainian land that for some bizarre reason the Russian government will respond differently than it did the last six times and won't launch any more invasions? My but you are incredibly gullible. Putin loves gullible people like you. Even Charlie Brown wouldn't try to kick the football seven times in a row but obviously you would and you would get fooled every time and end up landing flat on your back every time.
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  6749. You could create a video about the environmental aspects of migration (whether migration to the EU or to anywhere in the world). Some would say that demographic decline in EU countries is actually a good thing in that the fewer people there are the less strain they put on the world's environment, especially people in such high income, high consumption countries as in Europe. It could be pointed out that although people may think of other places in the world as having overpopulation Western Europe actually has very high population density compared to most other places in the world. You could also discuss how climate change will play an increasing part in motivating people to migrate from where they live now and that in many cases that will be people in poorer countries wanting to leave areas badly effected by climate change to move to rich countries such as those in Europe and that it is people in rich countries who are most responsible for that climate change that will create climate change refugees. I believe that in the climate disaster movie The Day Affer Tomorrow Mexico kindly takes in the American people and American government affer much of the United States becomes uninhabitable. If half of Bangladesh ends up under water or too exposed to typhoons to be safe due to climate change caused by people in wealthy countries will people in wealthy countries be as kind as the Mexicans in the movie and take in half of the population of Bangladesh? It would seem the moral thing to do if the people of those wealthy countries caused the climate change that drove those citizens of Bangladesh from their country.
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  6755. ​ @Jen-lg4hp  First of all - nobody was forced to get vaccinated. I believe that even in authoritarian China nobody was forced to get vaccinated. Sure, in some cases it was a requirement for certain jobs or for traveling certain places but that's not new. Employers often have requirements for a job and sometimes create new requirements like telling employees that they must upgrade their qualifications to keep their job which might entail taking a course. Asking an employee to take 15 minutes to get a vaccine shot is not nearly as much an ask as requiring an employee to take a new course. George Washington demanded that men joining his revolutionary forces be vaccinated. It's not a new job requirement. As long as I can remember people must have certain vaccinations to travel to certain countries. Schools have quite reasonably required students to have certain vaccinations for a long time. And asking someone to take 15 minutes to get a quick vaccination is an incredibly tiny request compared to forcing a woman or girl to be pregnant for 9 months and then to spend 20 years raising a child. And that vaccination will actually help that person stay safer so it's bizarre that they would object, especially when many of the extremist anti-vaxers who refuse to get vaccinated are quite happy to put in their bodies unproven, potentially dangerous substances simply because a random untrained person told them to try it. Finally, the biggest difference between requiring someone to get vaccinated and telling someone to be pregnant for 9 months is that the unvaccinated person was at least at first in the pandemic more likely to spread the virus to other vulnerable people and was also more likely to waste a hospital bed whereas by not being pregnant for nine months a woman impacts nobody else in the community.
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  6762. ​ @bhaashatepe5234 so in 2014 Russia launched unprovoked invasions into Crimea and into Donbas and then held a gun to Kiev's head and said, "Sign this agreement or else" but you think that agreement should have any credibility? Seriously? Imagine that a gang of thugs invaded has your house, occupied and stole part of your house and at the same time your one son who is very violent attacked and killed some of his siblings and tried to take over control of another part of the house with the help of the thugs and then he drove other members of the family out of that part of the house and then the thugs held a gun to your head and ordered you to sign an agreement giving control of that part of the house to your violent son or you would face severe consequences and so to save your life and under coercion you signed the agreement. Do you really think that agreement you signed at gunpoint should have any legal validity? Would you really be ok with that plus giving up the other part of the house to the violent gang of thugs who years earlier had signed an agreement in which they promised to never interfere with your house in return for you giving up powerful weapons you had? I can assure you that there is not one chance in a billion that you would be ok giving up part of your house to those thugs and another part of your house to that violent son and there is not one chance in a billion that you would say later that the agreement you were forced to sign at gunpoint was valid and of course nobody else other than the thugs and their buddies would say that that agreement has legal validity. Well, of course that is basically the same situation as when Russia launched unprovoked genocidal invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and then forced Ukraine to sign the Minsk agreement at gunpoint. So your ranting about the Minsk agreement is meaningless because anyone who is logical and decent and ethical would agree that the Minsk agreement was signed under coercion at gunpoint and thus has no validity. Only a Russian troll would rant about a pro-Russian agreement which has no credibility because it was signed at gunpoint and under the threat from Russian invasion forces after Russia had in the Budapest Memorandum said that it would never interfere in Ukraine. If you're not a paid Russian troll then you can prove that by admitting that the real problem is that the Imperialist terrorist Russian regime violated the Budapest Memorandum and launched unprovoked genocidal invasions into Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 and admit that a Minsk agreement signed at gunpoint has no validity and also that that agreement to let a gang of thugs and your violent son steal part of your house has no validity because you were forced at gunpoint to sign it. Otherwise do tell us how many rubles you get paid per post. Just curious. And as you clearly don't understand the overall picture in Ukraine I'll explain it to you. Starting in the 1400s a number of European nations became Imperialist on a grand scale and started building huge empires. Around the middle of the 20th century for various reasons all but one of those Imperialist European nations started giving up their empires and going back to just being small European nations no longer having any significant territory outside their countries. However, Imperrialst Russia was the exception and refused to give up much of its empire for many decades until a man called Gorbachev came along and realized that the era of empire was over and so gave up a lot of the colonies of the Russian empire while still keeping some of the Russian empire. In every former European colony there were citizens of the European colonial power left behind but at a certain point Britain, France, Spain, etc told those colonialists that where they lived were now independent countries and that if they still wanted to live in British, French, Spanish territory then they had to move back to the country where they or their ancestors came from. However, a lot of Russian colonialists in now independent countries that used to be part of the Russian empire refused to accept that they were no longer living in Russia and that the vast majorities of people in those countries wanted to be independent of Russia and so instead of doing the logical thing and moving to Russia as British people had left Kenya to go to Britain and French people had left Algeria to go to France those Russian colonialists acted irrationally and launched violent insurrections in places like Moldova and Ukraine and attacked their neighbours and drove them away and tried to subvert democracy by creating fake independent states that would really be client states of Russia. These violent Russian colonialists didn't care that when Ukraine became independent the majority of people in Crimea voted to stay in Ukraine and that in the Donbas the vast majority of people voted to stay in Ukraine, nor did they care that both Crimea and Donbas had been part of Ukraine a very long time. To make matters worse Russia got a new very Imperialist leader named Putin who is living in the 17th century and who wanted to reconquer independent countries that had previously been part of the Russian empire and so he decided to invade countries such as Moldova and Ukraine to help those violent Russian colonialists steal territory from those countries. Those violent Russian colonialists and the Imperialist Russian regime also clearly didn't understand that the reason why almost all of Europe has been at peace since 1945 is that other European countries gave up the idea that they should be constantly attacking each other to try to regain territory they used to control. Obviously some governments of Serbia have also not understood this and it is not clear that the current leader of Hungary understands this. So many Russian colonialists in Moldova and in Ukraine refuse to accept the reality that they no longer live in Russia and because they don't care what their fellow citizens want and because they are very violent and aggressive and because Russia now has an aggressive Imperialist dictator who has the delusion that it is still the 17th century era of empire and so has repeatedly launched unprovoked genocidal invasions of other countries ..... As the resukt of all that we have seen wars and violence in parts of Europe not seen anywhere else outside of areas attacked by Serbia. The solution is simple. The Russian regime must like other European countries move from the 17th century to the 21st century and recognize that the era of empire is over and must end its invasions of Ukraine, Moldova and other countries and take its troops back to Russia and then hand over all Russian war criminals to the Hague and pay full reparations to anyone hurt by their actions and then start behaving like other European countries and just live peacefully with its neighbours the same way other European countries do and then those Russian colonialists who are violent and extreme need to do the logical thing and move to Russia once they have served appropriate time in custody for any violent actions in their uncalled for insurrection they may have committed. The Russian government, Russian elites, Russian military, Russian people and Russian colonists in other countries must do the same thing that happened in other European colonial regimes and with other European colonialists 60 years ago and come to grips with the reality that the era of empire is over and that it is not the 17th century anymore. And then finally Europe will have peace again.
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  6768. One might have hoped that a two state solution might have been possible with the Zionists keeping 20% to 25% of the territory around Israel's two main cities but as the war crimes and genocide in Gaza have continued for ten months it has become obvious that as long as the Zionists continue to occupy any territory in Palestine ongoing conflict is very possible, likely or probable and Palestinians deserve peace. More and more it's clear that the best solution to the conflict is for the Zionists to end their invasion, occupation and oppression in Palestine and leave and go back to their homelands in Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia or wherever else they came from and finally let the Palestinians have peace and freedom in their own homeland. There was no conflict between Zionists and Palestinians when the Zionists still lived in their homelands before they invaded Palestine and if the Zionists went back to their homelands the conflict will end and both Zionists and Palestinians will have peace, something that neither side has had since the Zionist invasion started in the late 1800s. It goes without saying that before they go the Zionists should pay for the establishment of a fund to rebuild Gaza and to provide regular mental health support for all Palestinians for the rest of their lives and to compensate Palestinian families of those innocent civilians who have been injured or killed. It will be a vast amount of money for Zionists to pay but finally they will be doing the right thing. A United Nations agency could administer the fund. The endless conflict between Zionists and Palestinians and the oppression of Palestinians has gone on far too long and if the Zionists continue their occupation of Palestine the conflict and oppression will never end. After 76 years of conflict let's admit that the creation of the colonialist state of Israel on territory already occupied for at least 3,700 years by Palestinians and at a time when the era of European imperialism was starting to wind down was a huge mistake that needs to be undone. Already it will likely take another 100 years for Palestinians to recover from 76 years of occupation and oppression. Let's not make it worse by continuing the disastrous experiment of creating a white, European, Imperialist, apartheid, oppressive state on Palestinian land.
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  6839. Putin is in serious, serious trouble. He has no good choices other than to end his stupid war and pull all Russian troops out of Ukraine and it seems that he is too stupid to do that. Even if Putin wanted peace and even if Ukraine was willing to sign a peace agreement that Russia was willing to sign as soon as the war is over Ukraine is likely to be on the fast track to joining NATO and Putin will soon see NATO bases within a short distance of Crimea and Donbas. But if Putin doesn't sign a peace treaty then by next spring at latest his government will run out of foreign reserves and be bankrupt and will no longer be able to carry on the war. Guess he could try to conscript another 1.5 million men into the Russian military but that would anger a lot of Russians and likely another couple of million young talented Russians will flee the country which will make Russia's demographic collapse even worse. Men who have left the country won't be having babies in Russia and men stuck in trenches aren't having babies and those that die will never have babies. And then there is the fact that Russia probably is incapable of providing another million plus Russian soldiers with the clothes, food, etc., etc they would require and that Russian forces have shown no ability to make a significant advance anyway and as well Russia would be heading towards bankruptcy even faster with that many men taken out of productive jobs and put in the army where they are a drain on the economy. Really Putin's best strategy would be to fly to China for talks with Xi and then when he's in China to announce that he's retiring and will be staying in China for his retirement. Of course before doing so he should make sure that he has a nice big bank account in a Chinese bank.
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  6859. ​ @ГеннадийШуплецов-р8п  Russian trolls lie because that is what Russian trolls do. Ukraine hasn't lost a single region to Russia, Not in 2014. Not in 2022. Not in 2023. Every square cm of Ukraine still belongs to Ukraine no matter what Putin lies you have been gullible enough to believe. You are right that the terns of the peace will be very hard - in fact devastating for Russia but I don't know why you would be happy about that. Russian forces are like a gang of thugs that for no reason at all went into a shopping mall and destroyed a lot of things and killed and injured a lot of people because they thought it would be fun. But there are huge consequences for thugs like that - imprisonment and massive fines for all damage, death and injury caused. So Russian politicians and soldiers and civilians may have the delusion that Russia can commit such a horrific unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and face no consequences but that's not how things work, either for an invasion of a shopping mall by thugs or an invasion of Ukraine by terrorist Russian forces. Russian troops complicit in war crimes and terrorist acts will be required to travel to Ukraine or to the Hague for trial and given the destruction, deaths, injuries and disruption of life in Ukraine and the horrible effect of reduced world food supplies on the world's most vulnerable people it is very possible that Russia will need to pay 3 or 4 trillion dollars in reparations shortly after the war is over. Plus Russia will likely be bankrupt by the end of the war and so will have to pay extremely high interest rates to get someone to lend Russia that money so that it can pay those reparations. Plus by the end of the war much of the military equipment and supplies Russia spent 80 years building up will be used up, destroyed or captured by Ukrainians. Plus vast numbers of Russia's brightest and most talented people have fled Russia and aren't going back. Plus Putin has stupidly lost his best customer in Europe and now must sell oil and gas at a huge discount elsewhere. So given that it is likely that Russian soldiers you know will end up spending a very long time in prison after the war and that you will be burdened with very high taxes and will get very little government benefits the rest of your life as your country struggles to pay off its debt over the next century it is very hard to understand why you are happy about that. But then Russian trolls are very strange people who love to live in impoverished conditions under a brutal dictatorship while the elites in Russia skim off almost all of the money. You really do love suffering don't you?
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  6881. ​​ @limedickandrew6016 ave you always struggled with logic so much? We all have to worry about your thought process when you blame someone else for their "lack of logic" when they said something quite logical. They quite logically pointed out that the person insisting that there is no chance that Russia blew up the pipeline is wrong because there is no such proof. Despite your utter confusion they never claimed that Russia blew up the pipeline. And then you decided to double down on looking ridiculous by talking about the possibility that the Pope blew up the pipeline. The Catholic Church has done a lot of horrific things hut I can assure you that it didn't blow up the pipeline - hope that will help you to sleep nights. The barbaric, terrorist dictatorship of Russia is however an obvious possibility for being the culprit behind the explosion. The terrorist Russian regime has spent the past year carrying out countless terrorist attacks and countless war crimes every day including often attacking infrastructure and has made many threats against Europe. Plus the terrorist Russian regime lies constantly and certainly has no moral compass that would stop it from blowing up the pipeline and then trying to put the blame on others, especially if it realized that its days of having European countries willing to buy its fossil fuels were numbered. I don't know who blew up the pipeline but the gentleman was perfectly right to suggest that Russia is still a suspect and you look absolutely ridiculous in claiming that he is being illogical in pointing that out. You look even more ridiculous when you suggest that the Pope is as likely as the terrorist Russian regime to have blown up the pipeline. Do better. Stop making a fool of yourself online. And if you do insist on making a fool of yourself online then don't make things worse for yourself by insulting someone for "being illogical" when they have said something perfectly logical. For your own sake please consider giving up the internet and taking up a nice quiet hobby like gardening - much less likely that you'll publicly humiliate yourself gardening in your back yard.
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  6908. The advisor to Ukraine's defence minister was great. Everything he said was accurate and to the point. He makes you realize why Ukrainian forces have done so well in the war. Getting tired though of interviewers like these two and others who keep stupidly saying, "Well, why not make a deal and let Russia have the land it invaded and occupies to end the war?". First of all there's never been any sign the terrorist Russian regime would agree to that. More importantly though is the fact that prior to this unprovoked genocidal invasion over the past three decades the terrorist Russian regime has launched at least five other unprovoked genocidal invasions of other countries to steal territory and each time the west said, "Well just let Russia keep the land it stole so the fighting can end and we can have peace" and each time the terrorist Russian regime was emboldened by that and decided that the west was weak and indifferent to Russian invasions of other countries and so the terrorist Russian regime then proceeded to launch another unprovoked genocidal invasion to steal territory from another country. Let the Russian invaders keep any Ukrainian territory and the terrorist Russian regime will feel emboldened and will behave exactly the same way as it did the previous times the west let it steal territory and within a few years once it has rebuilt its military Russia will launch another unprovoked genocidal invasion of another country to steal territory. It is incredibly naive of these interviewers to believe otherwise. Aside from that it's objectionable how easily they are to say what Putin wants to hear in saying "Well just make a deal to let Putin keep the land he has stolen". How would they react had Russia stolen a significant part of their country and committed countless war crimes and acts of terror against their people? In that case would they have said, "Whatever. Let Russia have that land. We look forward to Russia's next attempt to take more of our country in a few years"?
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  6920. It's one thing for families to get a notice that their sons were killed fighting in Ukraine when they were trained soldiers who had been in the military for years. However the reaction of families might be much more of anger if their sons die fighting in Ukraine just weeks after being conscripted and when the families know their sons didn't get any decent training, clothes, equipment or supplies and know that the Russian army is doing very badly on the battlefield. In one Russian city families were offered boxes of cabbages and other vegetables in exchange for their conscripted sons who are being sent off to die in a horrible, pointless war started only to boost the ego of one very vain and weak man. I don't think that cabbages are going to sooth the pain and anger of parents whose son has been taken from them to die in a stupid, pointless war. If Putin doesn't end his stupid war soon and order his troops to leave Ukraine then anger in Russia against Putin is going to increase significantly as more and more recently conscripted soldiers are killed, wounded or captured. Imagine if in March Putin has to order another mobilization of another 300,000 civilians because the 200,000-300,000 conscripts he has recently forced to fight have almost all been killed, wounded or captured by then. Somehow I don't think that would go over well with the Russian people. Plus it seems that Russia is exhausting its supplies and military equipment built up since the Soviet Era. So Ukraine and Europe face a difficult winter but Putin too is going to be in serious trouble if his forces don't win this war in the next few months and I see no sign that they can do that - quite the opposite.
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  6930. I question whether China's economy will be larger than that if the United States in 2075 or at any time. China has four times the population of the United States but that's going to change drastically. China's fertility rate is half of the normal replacement rate of 2.1 babies per woman and keeps dropping. Plus there is a huge shortage of young Chinese women because 25 years ago a lot of Chinese couples wanted one boy and not one girl under the one child policy. To make things worse about 300,000 people migrate out of China each year while very few people migrate to China. Each generation will be less than half the population of their parents' generation so that one generation from now in 25-30 years the number of young Chinese people will be at most one half the number of young Chinese people today and two generations from now in 50-60 years the number of young Chinese people will be at most quarter the number of young Chinese people today. And I think Chinese fertility rates will continue to drop making things worse because young Chinese women having responsibility for 2 aging parents and up to 4 elderly grandparents are not going to be enthusiastic about adding to their responsibilities by having children. China is a country that will be dealing wirh a rapidly aging population before it has become a wealthy country. It's still a middle income country. On the other hand the United States has a population that will be growing dramatically in size and which due to a higher fertility rate and immigration will not be aging as much as the Chinese population plus it already is a wealthy country. It is very possible that in 50-60 years the United States may have as many young people as has China or at least almost as many young people as has China. So for China to surpass the United States in GDP 50 years from now it would probably have to achieve a GDP per capita close to or above that of the United States while dealing with having an old population and I think that is unlikely. However, given that India's population is expected to continue growing for a while and given India's current young population it would not surprise me if by 2075 India had surpassed both the United States and China in terms of GDP.
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  6975. Aside from the unreliability of any economic data coming out of Russia, analysis of Russian GDP needs to include all the negative components in terms of loss of assets and deterioration of assets in Russia. This may not be normal for calculating GDP but it is significant enough in the case of Russia that it cannot be ignored. If you on a personal level were making a good income for a few years but at the same time you were using up or losing a lot of your assets and your other assets were deteriorating quickly then you're not getting richer - you're getting poorer - and in a sense your net income is negative. Same for a corporation and the same for Russia. For instance a massive amount should be subtracted from Russian GDP for the rapid loss of military equipment and artillery shells accumulated over 80 years. It seems likely that if the war continues within a year or two Russia will have used up all of the army military equipment and artillery shells that it took 80 years to accumulate. That huge loss of assets should be considered a huge negative to GDP. As well it's clear that due to shortages of labour depreciation of basic infrastructure in Russia is happening at a fast rate - evidence of that was seen in all the stories of Russian citizens freezing in the dark in their apartments last winter. That deterioration of Russian infrastructure should also be seen as a huge negative to be subtracted from Russian GDP. Corporations routinely consider depreciation of assets when determining net income. Countries including Russia should do the same when calculating GDP if they really want to get an honest assessment of how things are going. As well Russian energy infrastructure is deteriorating due to Ukrainian attacks or lack of access to western workers and technology and some of Russian energy infrastructure has become stranded assets as it was designed to ship oil and gas to Europe but now is being used little or not at all. These things also effectively are a huge loss of the value of Russian energy assets and that loss should be counted as a huge amount to be subtracted from Russian GDP. As well vast numbers of Russian men have been killed, wounded or have fled the country. How much future production from these men has been lost? That also might be considered a loss that should be subtracted from GDP. (though one has to be careful to not double count this loss - once when the men are lost and once again in decades to come when Russian GDP is lower because these men were lost now) Finally there are all the Russian assets that have been seized and also the possibility that every time Russian terrorists kill or wound someone in Ukraine or damage anything in Ukraine they are effectively increasing the amount of reparations Russia will have to pay at the end of the war. If Russia ends up owing two trillion dollars in reparations by the end of the war that obviously would effectively make a huge negative to GDP and would make an increase in reported GDP of 3% trivial in comparison. Overall even if Russian GDP figures were reliable any increase in Russian GDP is meaningless because much of it is military spending of no real value and also because any growth in Russian GDP is trivial compared to all of the above asset losses that Russia is suffering and which should be subtracted from GDP. Russia is not getting richer - it's getting poorer. Always remember that despite what the Russian trolls say if Russia being cut off from the west really is of great benefit to Russia then Russia would have voluntarily cut itself off from the west decades ago or never would have become economically integrated with the west in the first place. Being subservient to China (and to some extent to India) is certainly not something that Putin desired when he thoughtlessly invaded Ukraine.
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  7023. In 1930 American politicians decided to impose massive tariffs on imports. That didn't go well. 25 other countries promptly put massive tariffs on American products. The depression ended up being a lot worse than it had to be. In 1930 1,000 economists signed a letter asking president Hoover to veto the tariff legislation but he refused to do so. A senate website describes the tariff legislation as being one of the worst pieces of legislation in American history. There is a heck of a lot more trade now than there was in 1930. Trump's tariffs (along with his other policy plans) would cause dramatically higher inflation and economic stagnation and the loss of jobs in export industries. The idea that the United States can instantly replace all products made in China and in Mexico is insane. And the auto industries in Canada and the United States are completely integrated. Separating them would be like separating Siamese twins. And as Canada's deputy Prime Minister pointed out Canada is by far the biggest export market for American products. I believe that she aaid that Canada imports more American products than China, Britain and a couple of other major countries combined. Does Trump really want Canada to stop buying American made products? And how is the United States going to instantly replace all the valuable minerals and oil and gas and other natural resources coming from Canada? And how is the United States going to replace all the critical medicines that come from China and India and other places? The United States doesn't even make penicillin anymore.
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  7024. There's some basic things that Trump doesn't understand. Actually there are vast numbers of basic things that Trump doesn't understand but there are some related to this issue. One is that Canada (unlike North Korea) is not a prison. There is no law against people leaving Canada. Another is that Canadian police cannot arrest people who are legally in Canada and who have not committed a crime. And that includes people who are quite close to the border. If being close to the border was a crime then every day there would be arrests of vast numbers of people in Niagara Falls and other places next to the border. People who illegally cross the border into the United States haven't committed a crime until they enter the United States and at that point it's up to American authorities to deal with it. Trump says he is concerned about people breaking American law by being in the United States without proper legal permission - in other words he's concerned about people breaking American law on American soil. But it's not the responsibility of Canada or Mexico to enforce American laws on American territory - when Trump becomes president that will be one of his responsibilities. And if Trump wants Canada to do any more to secure the American border then in return he needs to promise to do more to secure the border to deal with migrants entering Canada from the United States and he needs to bring in tight gun control laws across the United States to stop the flow of American guns into Canada, Mexico and other countries which is leading to so much violence and crime. If he's not willing to do his part to fix the border problems he claims to care about so much then he's proving that he actually doesn't care about these problems and he should just shut up about it.
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  7040. ​ @argentaegis  Science changes based on evidence, not on social change. Darwin realized the history of evolution because of evidence he found, not because of what vision he had for society - in fact he was afraid to present his theory because he knew it would upset people. Belief of scientists in the age of the Earth, the speed of light, the theory of relativity, quantum physics, Newton's laws of physics, a solar system centered on the sun, planets and moon orbiting according to the laws of physics (not pulled by chariots), quantum physics, the existence of other galaxies, atoms, molecules, quarks, the Periodic Table, etc., etc., etc. have nothing to do with social values or ideology despite what you imagine. And that includes the complex nature of gender and sexuality. Logical people believe that gender and sexuality are a lot more complex than the simplistic story we were told when we were three years old because that is what scientists who are experts in the field have found, not because they have an ideological bias desiring to have such things. I don't have an ideological bias in fsvour of their being nuance and complexity to gender any more than I do regarding the existence of quarks. Frankly the world would be simpler if there were only two straightforward genders and if we could just think about electrons, protons and neutrons and no quarks but scientists have to describe the world as it is, not as it would be simplest for us to understand and to relate to what we were taught at age 3. Even saw a quote from a physicist complaining about all the new sub atomic particles that kept being found - but although the physics may have become more complicated than he would like he still wasn't going to pretend that reality wasn't reality because that would be illogical. Unfortunately right wing extremists don't like or can't handle complexity, nuance and sophistication and want everything to be as simple as what they were taught at age three.
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  7083. Remember that the past year's exchange of attacks by Israel and Hezbollah started because Israel is carrying out a genocide against the Palestinians it has kept locked in the Gaza prison camp for decades. If Israel had agreed to a ceasefire and hostage exchange with Hamas last October then none of this would be happening. I'm no fan of Hamas or Hezbollah but it's clear that once again Israel has chosen to double down on violence instead of seeking peace. It's probably worse than ever now because Netanyahu fears that he will face personal legal and political problems once there is peace but still it's how Israel has always behaved. For 76 years the Zionists who invaded, stole and occupied Palestine have been doing the same thing and always turning to violence in their delusion that doing so will bring peace and stability and it has never worked, not even for a second. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a form of insanity. Obviously, the source of the problem is the Zionist occupation of Palestine and the oppression of Palestinians and so long as the freedom of Palestinians is suppressed Palestinians and their supporters in the region will not not accept that situation and conflict will continue. If you were a Palestinian whose land had been stolen by invaders from another continent and you and your family and your people were all locked in overcrowded impoverished prison camps for life and your people had suffered brutal oppression from the invaders for 76 years would you and your people meekly and passively accept the situation? Time for the Zionists to solve the root of the problem and let Palestinians be free in their own homeland so that the conflict and violence can finally end. After 76 years the conflict has already gone on far too long. We may not agree with the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah but we need to be logical and understand that as long as the Palestinian people are not free in their own land Palestinian militants and their supporters in the region will try to use violence against the Israeli regime that used violence to steal Palestine and still uses violence to oppress Palestinians and deny them their freedom.
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  7088. ​@giuseppecappelluti3626 And Lithuania once combined with Polish forces to occupy part of Russia. And Mongolia once occupied not only current Russian territory but also China. But if Russian leaders were in touch with reality they would understand that neither Lithuania nor Poland nor Mongolia pose the slightest threat to Russia today and that China is the only country that has the slightest interest in invading Russia and that China is the only country that poses any threat to Russia, especially given that China still wants back a huge chunk of territory that it says Russia stole in the 1800s and given that China has a huge military and given that China is led by dictators who may not care much about how many Chinese soldiers are killed in a war and given that China has been acting more and more in Imperialist ways against their neighbours. If the Russian government is stupid enough to keep fighting in Ukraine another 18 months it won't have much of an army left. I don't know what it would do then if China took advantage of that situation to invade Eastern Russia and take back all the territory it says it deserves back. European countries would be happy to have good relations with Russia if Russia was willing to have good relations with other European countries. Notice that all the European countries that fought each other for centuries basically stopped doing that after WW2. In being hostile and belligerent against other European countries Russia is an outlier in Europe by its own choice.
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  7089. ​ @giuseppecappelluti3626  You're delusional. No country in Europe is going to attack Russia or has any desire to. It's actually Russia that causes problems in over the past 3 decades launching at least 7 Imperialist invasions of nearby countries with the goal of stealing territory from those countries. No country other than possibly China has any intention of invading Russia to take territory from Russia. Imperialist Russia needs to stop launching Imperialist invasions of other countries and live in peace with other countries, especially European countries, and focus on protecting its borders from China. The problem is that Putin is a very weak, insecure, paranoid man who seems to suffer from the traditional Russian leader characteristic of feeling inferior to other countries in Europe. In WW2 Germany invaded and occupied a lot of countries including Belgium which Germany had invaded before in WW1 but unlike Putin other European leaders don't fret and cry about the "threat" of another German invasion because they're in connection to reality and are not weak, insecure and paranoid like Putin and know that Nazi Germany is long gone and that's even though their countries are not massive and highly populated and having a massive nuclear arsenal like Russia. Think about the fact that tiny Belgium is not afraid of a German invasion but Putin is terrified not only of a possible German invasion but also of a possible invasion into Russia by Lithuania or Finland and still is obsessed with the French invasion into Russia over 200 years ago. Quite pathetic. Russia is like the 6 foot tall, 220 pound guy in elementary school who keeps attacking kids one third his size and claims that each of those tiny children is secretly planning to attack him and destroy him.
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  7171.  @Invisiblehand123  the United States has the wealth, the scientists, the writers and artists in every field, the academics, the resources, the geography and the activists to have the potential to be the "greatest country" on Earth if such a phrase means something which it does not really. However the United States is not remotely close to being the greatest nation on Earth because it is not yet a developed country and it will never be in the running until it becomes a developed country. To become a developed country the United States would need to have paid maternity leave, universal health care, lower rates of infant mortality and deaths of mothers in pregnancy, value human lives more than guns, have far fewer homicides, have police kill far fewer people, imprison far, far fewer people, stop thinking metric is part of a communist plot and go metric, have far fewer religious fanatics and become a true democracy which it has never been. To become a true democracy the United States needs to have federal elections run by an independent, unbiased, neutral election commission with standard rules across the country instead of the bizarre system of having partisan elected officials and state governments run and manipulate the federal election process in each state. Also to have true democracy the United States needs to get rid of any significant gerry meandering, greatly reduce the influence of big money in elections, have automatic voter registration, get rid of the senate or base it more on population and get rid of the entire absurd electoral college system and let the winner of the popular vote become president. And of course the same changes need to happen for state wide elections. By many measures the United States is similar to very poor, impoverished, undeveloped countries instead of being like other wealthy countries.
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  7173. @user-ph5ul3mm4b  leaders have a habit of being killed by their own security guards or soldiers or right hand men. It's certainly not out of the question for Putin as he doubles down on trying to destroy Russia permanently. There's got to be a significant number of people in the elites and in his inner circle and among his personal security personnel who are getting more and more fed up watching Putin do more and more and more damage to Russia. Plus one of them might happen to have a friend or relative in Ukraine who has died or suffered horrific loss due to Putin's terrorist invasion of Ukraine. Plus right now Russia is in danger of becoming so weak that it becomes a client state of China and Chinese leadership that does not like the disruption caused by this war may decide it wants Putin out of leadership and his war over. Does China have enough power over Russia to get its leader removed? We will see. Or possibly China may at some point may decide to take advantage of the situation and invade Russia to seize territory it lost to Russia in the 1800s and which it still feels it deserves and it's clear that the incompetent, disorganized Russian military which can't even cope with fighting against Ukrainian forces has no reserves left to mount more than a brief, token defence against a Chinese invasion and if Putin loses Eastern Russia to China on top of the disaster he has already created for Russia then it's clear that even if he had a personal security force of a million people he will be thrown out of power.
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  7174. Time for Putin to head to North Korea to spend his retirement while hopefully new more sane and logical Russian leaders realize that Russia's terrorist invasion of Ukraine is severely damaging Russia in many ways and then end the invasion and remove Russian troops from all Ukrainian territory. One can hope so anyway. It sounds very unlikely but on the other hand Russia's chances of winning this war and conquering all of Ukraine seem even more unlikely and as long as there is still a Ukraine and Russian troops occupy part of Ukraine Ukrainian troops are not going to stop fighting against the invaders. As Sherlock Holmes said once you eliminate all options that are impossible then whatever remains must be the truth no matter how improbable it at first appears. (Or something like that). Total Ukrainian victory and Putin fleeing Russia seems very improbable but it must be the truth of what will happen because other options are impossible. Russia is not going to conquer all of Ukraine and Ukraine will not stop fighting if part of its territory is still occupied by invaders and this war can't keep going for ever. And Russia with a GNP smaller than that of Canada simply cannot keep up with arms production of all of NATO plus of Ukraine, especially as NATO countries significantly increase military spending and Russia runs out of military supplies built up in the days of the Soviet Union. Of course if China committed completely to selling vast amounts of military supplies to Russia that might not be true but I don't think China will do that because it doesn't like this war and may fear sanctions by all its best customers in the west if it helps Russia.
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  7175. @Senninhamcl  you mean that a few dictators and demagogues support Putin and his unprovoked genocidal, terrorist invasions of a peaceful democratic country. The fact that some dictators and demagogues support Putin because they want to buy weapons or fossil fuels from Russia doesn't mean that the people of their countries support the terrorist Russian invasion. And for people who say that Russia was never an aggressive empire that invaded and colonized other lands so people around the world should support Russia .... actually Russia built one of the largest empires in world history - that's how it went from being a small, average sized European country in the 1400s to controlling a vast amount all the way through Asia to the Pacific ocean and into Alaska and later on effectively conquered and controlled all of Eastern Europe and many Muslim areas to the south of Russia. The Mongols, Poles, Bulgarians, Latvians, Finns , Afghans and many, many others would certainly say that the Russians were colonizers who invaded and occupied the land of other nations to build a vast Russian empire. The difference between the Russian empire and other European empires is that other European nations for the most part gave up their empires after WW2 and retreated to the small bits of land they had centuries ago whereas the Russians have not done that and still control a vast empire across Asia and seem to want to expand that empire by conquering countries in Europe. And of course unlike Russia... Ukraine never developed a vast empire by invading and occupying other countries. So if anyone around the world is against empires and Colonialism they should support Ukraine, not the new Russian empire of Putin.
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  7213. One article explained how Florida homes could become uninsurable even before climate change greatly increases the risk to particular homes. If at a certain point it becomes obvious that things are going to get worse in coming decades then potential home buyers who want to stay in a home for 25 years aren't going to be willing to buy a home in that region even if so far flooding, contamination of drinking water, hurricanes and extreme heat are not yet really bad. That causes the prices of homes in a region to fall - in particular to fall below the cost of rebuilding the home which is reflected in the insurance policy on the home. Once the insured value of the home is higher than the resale value of the home some people might decide that it is in their financial interest to have an "accident" such as a fire in which their house is destroyed. Once that starts happening insurance companies decide that they no longer want to insure homes in that area. Understandably, no insurance company wants to insure home owners who would be better off financially if their home was destroyed. Can't blame them for that. Presumably this is a problem in any region or city in which property values have significantly declined (eg, due to the mine closing in a single industry town). I'm taking a guess that by 2045 it will be obvious to virtually everyone that things are getting worse in Florida and that they will continue to get worse. And then young people thinking of buying a house to live in until 2070 or 2080 will decide that Florida is not a good place in which to buy a house ... or at least not areas in Florida near the water. And then house prices will start falling and private insurance companies will all abandon Florida entirely at some point. I'd be surprised if house prices in Florida don't fall between 2045 and 2065.
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  7232. @Buckshot99  when Trump was elected I feared that he would attack Iran and that such an attack would rally young Iranians to hate the United States and support the Iranian regime and military defending the country - young Iranians who don't remember the time of the Shah. I figured that the best way to achieve change in Iran was to let all the old people who remember the American backed Shah to die off and be replaced by young people who don't remember the Shah and so hate the Iranian regime and not the United States. But given the lengthy and widespread Iranian protests against the regime and the horrific crackdown by the Iranian government I wonder if the majority of Iranian people would be upset if American or other NATO forces started bombing the Iranian police and military who are brutally oppressing them. Still I doubt that anyone is going to attack Iran. Right now nobody in Iran under the age of 58 or so remembers the Shah and in 12 years nobody under the age of 70 will remember the Shah and in a country that has a large young population that is used to scrolling the internet and being aware of lifestyle around the world I doubt very much that the elderly men over 70 will be able to stop a cultural and political revolution by those under 70 who want to live like people in the rest of the world. Likely most people will still be religious and possibly most women will still wear a hijab but I think that at a certain point Iranian people will insist that these be personal choices and will no longer be willing to put up with government controlling these aspects of their lives or suppressing democracy in general.
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  7248. Apparently the Canadian government was told that it would cost a huge amount of money (one or two billion dollars) to build a plant to manufacture artillery shells and that it would take a long time to build the plant and so the government decided to not build such a plant. Government politicians may have assumed that the war would be over or almost over by the time that the plant was built and, given that there has been no need for such a plant for almost 80 years until this war and there likely will be no need for such a plant after the war the government politicians were possibly afraid that opposition parties would say that the government wasted money on a useless plant. The government already got attacked by the opposition for putting a lot of money into a vaccine plant that never got built. So no artillery plant got built and that's even though the Deputy Prime Minister is of Ukrainian background and reportedly speaks Ukrainian in the home at times and even though before the war Canada had more people of Ukrainian background than any other country other than Ukraine and Russia. Frankly, spending two billion dollars on an artillery plant seems a small cost to increase the chances that Ukraine wins the war and Europe stays safe. It might have been just over a year into the war that a news report stated that Canada's military production had not increased at all since the war started and I suspect that still is the case. The Canadian government has donated a lot of money to Ukraine and did initiate the freezing of Russian assets in western countries but just doesn't have a lot of military assets to donate to Ukraine and doesn't seem interested in changing that wuth new military production.
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  7275.  @lf725n  I could go into a shop with valuable pottery and break every piece and then say that I won my war with the pottery shop but that would be a ridiculous thing to say as how am I better off or a winner due to breaking a lot of pottery and as well shops have an old expression, "You break it. You bought it" and whether or not Russia stupidly tries to occupy the country they have destroyed Russia will pay the cost of the destruction they have caused many times over. The bond between Russian and their brothers in Ukraine had had for a thousand years was broken by Putin within days, Russia has become a pariah state and Putin is now a pariah, Russian people can no longer travel almost anywhere, Russian people are going to find they can get few foreign goods and afford even fewer, the vast country of Russia is likely find it doesn't have a working airline system within a year as it runs out of spare airplane parts, Russian inflation and interest rates are skyrocketing, Russian athletes are being banned from many sporting events such as the Paralympics, the World Cup and the World figure skating championships, Russia is reverting to life similar to dull, dreary, repressive, isolated life in the 1970s Soviet Union and worst of all huge numbers of the most talented young Russian citizens are fleeing the country thus aggravating a severe demographic problem Russia already had (by one estimate 200,000 young Russians fled the country in the first two weeks of the war). Oh yes- and Russian leadership seems to have significant problems as a leading political figure close to Putin has fled the country, The man in charge of foreign intelligence publicly got dressed down by Putin and is now reportedly under house arrest as is his deputy and the defense minister has mysteriously disappeared from sight and most other Russian political leaders seem to avoid saying anything as opposed to supporting Putin and oligarchs have criticised the war. And the Russian economy is about to drop dramatically and Europe is planning to transition away from Russian gas supplies and NATO has become a lot stronger than it was 5 weeks ago and Finland and Sweden are now seriously considering joining NATO. Russia is likely going to suffer economically for at least 30 years if not for 100 years due to its invasion of Ukraine. And in the war itself up to 15,000 Russian troops are dead and no doubt many more are wounded and those will not dead or wounded are frostbitten, poorly fed, miserable and angry that Putin sent them into a pointless war. And countless Russian tanks have been lost, missles wasted and the weakness of the Russian military has been made clear to the whole world. But you say that Russia has won? Utterly ridiculous claim.
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  7282.  @urgreatestenemy3044  there is a great deal of hypocrisy from the United States and its western allies who no doubt did a lot of damage in Afghanistan and who have been happy to make money selling military supplies to Saudi Arabia even though I have yet to find someone who can explain the difference between the nature of the Saudi bombing of Yemen and the Russian bombing of Ukraine. However there are vast differences between the situation in Afghanistan and the situation in Ukraine. The Taliban is a religiously fanatical militia group that has some foreign funding and support and which harboured a violent terrorist group which committed horrific terrorist acts in various countries. The Taliban rule with utter brutality, especially against women or minorities they don't like and disdain democracy whereas for all their faults the Americans did try to replace the Taliban with a democratic system and for the 20 years that the Taliban were out of power many girls and women had much better lives than they had under Taliban rule before American intervention or now. Ukraine on the other hand was not harbouring terrorist groups committing terrorist acts in other countries. Ukraine is a democracy which yes has a problem with racism as seen by the experience of non-white people trying to flee this invasion but certainly does not have a government which is engaged in the misogyny and brutality of the Taliban. There is a massive difference between the Americans invading Afghanistan to deal with a large terrorist organization based there and to replace the brutal, undemocratic, misogynist, religiously fanatical Taliban with a democratic system (no matter how flawed and corrupt) and on the other hand Putin invading Ukraine and trying to overthrow its relatively liberal democratically elected government which does not engage in extreme brutality or misogyny and replace that government with a puppet of Putin simply because Putin is a very insecure guy with fantasies of having an empire.
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  7299. Funny how in their religious fanaticism Zionists make up things as they go along and ignore facts and logic. Actually genetic tests have shown that Palestinians have significant ancestral roots in the ancient Jewish people and no doubt are the descentants of ancient Jewish people who converted to Christianity or Islam. And who cares who lived where 2,000 years ago anyway? Human groups have moved around for hundreds of thousands of years. The idea that in the 20th century every religious and ethnic group should invade and occupy the land where people like them lived 2,000 years ago is insane and would lead to constant wars and chaos everywhere. A lot of India was Buddhist 2 000 years ago. I take it that the Zionists think that Japanese and American Buddhists should invade and occupy Indian towns and cities that were Buddhist 2,000 years ago . . at least if Zionists are going to be consistent. And what's so special about 2,000 years ago? Why not have groups of people "reoccupy" land based on where people like them were 10,000 years ago or 20,000 years ago or 50,000 years ago? Insanity! But somehow the Zionists think it makes sense for every group of people to reoccupy any piece of land that people like them occupied some time in the past 300,000 years or Zionists don't think that and are complete hypocrites and think that this strange rule should apply only to Jewish people and only looking back to the time period 2,000 years ago and not to any other time period in the past. Maybe the ancestors of the current Jewish people were living in Afghanistan or Siberia 40,000 years ago so the Zionists should move to Afghanistan or Siberia.
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  7358. @blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311  when the Soviet Union came apart the Ukrainians gave up their nuclear weapons in return for a Russian promise to not interfere in Ukraine and to recognize Ukraine's territorial integrity. After Putin invaded and stole Crimea from Ukraine and then sent invading forces into Donbas (forces Ukraine has had to fight against for 8 years to protect itself) is it any surprise that Ukraine would not trust Russia to keep its end of the bargain after Russia had been continually breaking the agreement for 8 years and was led by a brutal despot like Putin who talks about re-establishing the Russian empire? Of course not. Only a complete idiot would trust Putin. So if it is true that Ukraine wanted its nuclear weapons back its not surprising. As for Ukraine joining NATO and the United States installing nuclear weapons there ....I don't believe you. Ukraine was nowhere near joining NATO and even if it did I highly doubt the United States would install nuclear weapons there because they already have lots of nuclear weapons elsewhere so there is no need for the United States to put nuclear weapons in Ukraine. This horrific, terrorist, genocidal Russian invasion of Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO. If Putin was so upset with NATO the obvious thing would have been to attack NATO, not another country not in NATO or nowhere near joining NATO. Rather this war is about one weak, insecure,,paranoid little Russian dictator who thinks that he can make up for his personal deficiencies by launching unprovoked invasions of other countries and seizing their territory and suppressing their people and stealing their resources because apparently that Russian dictator has delusions that it is the 18th century and that he is Peter the Great building a Russian empire.
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  7378. ​ @boota1979  Over the past three decades Russia has launched at least 6 unprovoked, Imperialist, genocidal invasions with the goal of stealing territory from other countries. Only Serbia, Iraq and China have done similar things although not on the same scale as has Russia. Name one case in the past 30 years when the United States has launched an invasion intended to steal territory from another country - you know? Imperialism? Russia has launched three unprovoked Imperialist genocidal invasions of peaceful, democratic Ukraine. Name one peaceful, democratic country that the United States has invaded over the past three decades. Sorry but not sorry if it hurts your feelings but Russia is the world's last Imperialist nation (though China is clearly thinking of becoming one). Notice how other than Russia every other Imperialist European country gave up all or almost all of their colonies long ago and went back to being small European countries but that Imperialist Russia still refuses to give up most of its empire and clings to huge amounts of territory that were not originally part of Russia including vast areas of Asia that the Russian empire took by force. And your ranting whataboutism doesn't justify Russia's Imperialist genocidal invasions of other countries one whit. Nice try to distract but as always you failed. You're still an amoral propagandist for a barbaric,terrorist, Imperialist Russian dictatorship that oppresses and brutalizes both its own people and the people in the rest of its empire and is carrying out countless terrorist acts and war crimes in Ukraine every day. That makes you a savage barbarian. Quite disgusting.
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  7416. Bob Rae is no hero. In October 2023 he refused to support a neutral, plainly worded United Nations resolution to end the fighting in Gaza. He was angry that the resolution was neutral and didn't blame Palestinians for the fighting. That's a really illogical, unjust approach to take given that it was the Zionists who chose to invade, steal and occupy Palestine and to drive Palestinians off of their land and to brutally oppress Palestinians for the past 76 years. That's how the conflict started Mr Rae. Palestinians never invaded Europe to attack Zionists in their homelands. If the October 2023 ceasefire that Ray refused to support had been implemented vast numbers of deaths and injuries woukd have been avoided and vast amounts of suffering would have been avoided and Gaza would not have been destroyed. As well vast suffering and death in Lebanon wouid have been avoided and missile attacks between Iran and Israel would have been invaded and intentional shipping would not have been disrupted by Houthi attacks. But Bob Rae and others didn't want a ceasefire in October 2023 and so a vast amount of horrific things happened as a result. As well in September 2024 Rae refused to support a United Nations resolution demanding that Israel end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza within a year. That is an incredibly tame resolution requesting that the Zionist invaders end occupation of just a small proportion of Palestine and even giving them a year to do so. It's sad that almost all the Canadian politicians who are defending Canada from American imperialism support the racist colonialist oppressive apartheid Zionist regime occupying Palestine. One notices that when the United States government wants to do to Canada what the Zionist invaders have done to Palestine suddenly the pro-Zionism Canadian politicians say that they are opposed to imperialism. It would be nice if they opposed imperialism when the victims are Palestinians.
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  7435. I'm not sure that Putin can afford to patiently wait months to deal with the situation. Not unless Trump wins the election in November or creates civil war in the United States if he loses. At best Russia has about ten more weeks this year before bad weather sets in to make a significant advance or to try to drive Ukrainian forces out of Russia. By July next year Russia will have used up all of its stored army equipment in decent condition whereas Ukraine will have a better situation in regards to military equipment. As well by next year Ukraine will likely have significantly more western military jets and will have destroyed virtually all Russian air defense systems which Russia doesn't seem to know how to protect. As well by next year likely there will be even fewer restrictions on Ukraine's use of western weapons. As well by next summer Russia will have used up all of its stored artillery shells of decent quality (though Russia will still be producing a lot of shells). As well by next year likely all Russian oil refineries in western Russia will have been knocked out of use which will make both Russia's financial situation and fuel situation worse. As well by next year Russian citizens will have suffered through another winter of freezing in the dark in their apartments and won't be happy about it. As well by next year Russia's unmaintained infrastructure will have broken down further. As well by next summer Russia might lose another 400,000 soldiers dead and 600,000 soldiers wounded so even if 100,000 conscripts are added to the fighting forces Putin will still need to find an additional 900,000 extra men to join the war, a seemingly impossible task given Russia's labour shortages. As well if Putin starts using conscripts in the war many more young Russian men will flee the country making labour shortages worse. As well, if Russian conscripts become more involved in the war and every day 100 are dying and 200 are getting wounded and 50 are getting captured then Putin will soon have a lot of very angry Russian mothers to deal with. Of course the two things that could be worse for Ukraine by next year are possibly Russia controlling more Ukrainian territory by then and the problem of shortages of Ukrainian men available to fight in the war. Russia is gaining territory only slowly so likely any territory gain (that would need to happen in the next 10 weeks) is not going to make up for all the things that are going to be worse for Russia next year. So the only major concern is whether Ukraine will manage to recruit enough new troops to maintain a big enough fighting force. I hope that western countries do whatever they can to help Ukraine with that such as providing Ukraine with more financial assistance. There are crazy rumours that troops from the Baltic states will join the war. That would certainly increase the number of troops available. If Finland, Sweden and Poland sent troops to fight then the Russian army would be in serious trouble.
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  7505. I'm not one of those people who keep saying that China is going to collapse but I'm not going to take literally any economic data coming out of China. It's an oppressive state run by an authoritarian dictatorship which has decided that no truth on important matters is valid unless it is the truth that comforms with what the CCP is saying. And although China is having a lot of success with production of electric cars and solar panels and precious minerals and is building a lot of renewable energy infrastructure it is still the case that the working age population of China is falling by 38 million people every three years and the Chinese fertility rate has fallen to 1.05 and there is a serious shortage of young women and every year hundreds of thousands of people leave China while almost nobody moves to China. Demography is destiny. And the vast numbers of Chinese people retiring each year are almost certainly going to decrease their consumption given the very low pension payments in China as will their children and grandchildren who may have to help support them. So I see little chance that consumption in China will rise. To the young children around the world, don't be entirely surprised if by the year 2100 when you are elderly the Chinese workforce has fallen to the point that it is smaller than the American workforce. John Maynard Keynes reportedly said, "In the long tun we are all dead" so some may say who cares what happens in 2100 but a lot of young people around today will still be around in 2100 and the dramatic collapse of the Chinese workforce and the dramatic increase in the population of elderly Chinese people who need to be supported by the shrinking Chinese workforce have already started.
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  7544. It must be ensured that nobody in the MAGA cult is allowed on the jury. By definition in any cult the cult members worship the cult leader like a god and accept and support anything the cult leader does or says without question and thus are incapable of being unbiased jurors. There is not one cult one can name for which it would be appropriate for a cult member to be on the jury when the cult leader is on trial and there is absolutely no justification for making an exception to that for Trump and his MAGA cult. And as well it goes without saying that any judge who is in the MAGA cult cannot be involved with any of Trump's cases and that includes Supreme Court justices if they are in the MAGA cult. Trump's lawyers may complain and demand that the jury include his cult members but the prosecution should then use Trump's own words against him because Trump's words indicate that members of his cult cannot be unbiased jurors. He once said that he could shoot someone and not lose any voters indicating that he thinks that members of his cult are so servile and obedient to him that they are indifferent to whether he has committed a crime. So if Trump himself has shown with his words that he thinks that members of his cult would be indifferent to whether he blatantly committed a crime then based on Trump's own words members of his MAGA cult cannot be unbiased jurors. And notice that he didn't say that he wouldn't lose all his voters if he shot someone, meaning that some but not all of his voters would no longer vote for him. Rather he said that he wouldn't lose any voters meaning that he thinks that all of the members of his cult (not just some of them) would still support him even if he blatantly commited a crime which implies that all of his cult members are indifferent to whether he committed a crime if we are to accept Trump's view of his cult members. So again, based on the words of Trump it appears that no member of his cult could be an unbiased juror.
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  7551. Two possible simple goals of the Ukrainian invasion into Russian territory (though there could be others) 1: Capture Russian conscripts who will be very valuable assets in prisoner swaps. 2. Some experts say that this year is the last year in which Russian forces have the advantage and that next year Ukrainian forces will have the advantage so that if Russian forces want to make a major advance they have only 2 more months to achieve that. Perhaps Ukrainian leaders carried out this advance simply to force Russia to move a significant number of its troops to deal with this this Ukrainian invasion which will reduce Russian troops left over to try to make a major advance elsewhere. Even if Russian forces can drive Ukrainian invaders back into Ukraine in four weeks that then leaves Russian forces only 4-6 weeks after that to make a major advance before the weather starts getting bad and such a major Russian advance seems highly unlikely as even after driving Ukrainian forces out of Russia the Russian military will still need to keep significant forces in this area to protect against another Ukrainian invasion in the area ..... plus Russian forces haven't made a major advance in the past 27 months - succeeding in getting one between mid-September and mid-October or even the end of October seems unlikely. According to some experts next year (especially if Harris wins the election) Ukraine will have a better situation in regards to military equipment whereas Russia will be in a worse situation with pretty well all of its stored military equipment in decent condition used up. One comment by a military analyst that ties into the above is that Ukraine might just be playing things by ear when it comes to the invasion into Russia. If things go well and the Russian response is slow and incompetent then Ukrainian forces will take more territory and stay in Russia longer. If the Russian response is swift and competent then Ukrainian forces may retreat more quickly from Russia to avoid major casualties or capture. The way things are going so far I think the latter is unlikely, especially if Russian civilians fleeing from the region start clogging roads and creating logistical problems for Russia in terms of caring for the evacuees. If ultimately 800,000 Russian civilians were to flee from the region that would not be a trivial number of people for the Russian government to deal with.
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  7572. ​ @gordonr505 over the past 3 decades the Imperialist Russian dictatorship launched at least 5 previous unprovoked invasions of countries to steal their territory and each time the west said "Let's just let Russia keep the territory it stole. Better than having more fighting and then Russia will be satisfied and we will have peace". And each time the west did that the Russian government thought "The west is weak and will always give in" and felt emboldened to launch another unprovoked invasion of another country to try to steal territory. It would be extremely naive to think Russia will respond any differently if a 6th time the west gives in and says "Just let Russia have the territory it stole so we can have peace". Russia will behave exactly the same way as the first five times and once it has built up its military again will feel emboldened to expand its empire by launching another unprovoked invasion to steal more territory either from Ukraine or another country. The only way to achieve peace in the future is for Russia to suffer a devastating defeat in which it not only loses the territory it stole last year but also loses the Ukrainian territory it stole in 2014. That is something that might get the Imperialist Russian regime to realize that it can actually be hurt a lot if it launches another invasion and maybe even to clue into the fact that the 18th century is long gone and that the era of imperialism is over. And to ensure that Russian loss the west has to ensure that Ukraine has the financial and military support that will enable it to decisively win this war.
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  7614. ​​ @Normandy-e8i  The person didn't say that Russia split up. They said that the Soviet Union split up just as places like Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Macau and other places in China could separate from Chinese control if they had the freedom to do so and Taiwan would declare independence and be recognized as an independent state by countries around the world if the CCP didn't have such an Imperialist, bullying attitude. If China is more united than the United States then why is the CCP terrified of allowing freedom of speech, freedom of the press and free elections and why is China's head dictator terrified of sharing any of his power even with other CCP leaders? You basically have one guy terrified of letting anyone in China but himself have any power or any real right to speak their mind because of fear the whole place could rip apart if people had freedom. That's not my opinion - that's the educated analysis of people who know China a lot better than I do and who think that if China had democracy the whole country could fall apart and that that is a big reason why the CCP will not allow democracy in China. And the leadership of the CCP is so terrified of China breaking up that it ruthlessly harasses and bullies any country, company or other organization that suggests that some territory controlled by the CCP is not part of China. So as divided as the United States is with the America hating anti-democracy, insurrectionist MAGA cult there is no sign that China is any more united than that . If China brings in freedom of speech, freedom of the press and free elections and still sticks together another 50 years then I'll consider it united. But again the CCP and in particular its leader disagrees with you and doesn't think that China is united enough to withstand democracy.
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  7656. ​​ @Slav4o911  Any war between imperialist communist China and Taiwan would 100% be the fault of communist China. Taiwan is not going to attack communist China. It's imperialist communist China which keeps claiming territory in virtually all the countries around it - Taiwan, Japan, Russia, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, etc., etc. and keeps threatening to attack Taiwan and keeps sending ships and planes around Taiwan as a threat. Communist China needs to learn to end its imperialist thoughts and dreams of invading almost all countries in the region to take territory from them. The era of blatant imperialism to steal territory is over. And obviously Taiwan has never been part of Communist China and has barely been part of the same country as mainland China for the past 150 years so it's frankly none of communist China's business if Taiwan decides to declare independence. Plus the Communist China dictatorship has never been elected in a proper democratic election so has no real legitimacy to speak for or rule the people of the mainland let alone the people of Taiwan who are ruled by politicians who actually have legitimacy because they were elected in democratic elections. My advice to the Communist China dictatorship is to stop obsessing about Taiwan so much and focus on creating truly democratic elections on the mainland with freedom of speech and freedom of the press and international election experts monitoring the election so that the Chinese Communist Party can find out if it even represents the people of the mainland or is simply ruling by force.
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  7669. ​ @ScottyCof93  Do you think you MAGA cult members could say something connected to reality and that makes sense just once just for a change? Please consider it. Presidents don't control gasoline prices - international energy markets do. And gasoline prices were low when Trump left office because the world including the United States was in its biggest recession in 90 years and people around the world were staying home due to a pandemic so demand for gasoline and oil collapsed. And the unemployment level was much higher when Trump left office but Biden got the unemployment rate much lower while creating a booming economy. And if you don't like higher prices in general then obviously you don't want to vote for Trump who supports Putin's unprovoked invasion that drove up inflation around the world and who has encouraged Putin to launch more inflation causing invasions. Plus a number of policies Trump has said he would carry out such as dramatically increasing tariffs will make inflation skyrocket. You're never going to see 2020 recession level prices again especially if Trump wins the election. If you think that Trump can bring 2020 prices again then you're living in a fantasy land And there were plenty of wars around the world when Trump was president and obviously Biden didn't start the war in Gaza or the war in Ukraine although war in Ukraine might never have happened if Putin hadn't known that his bromance partner Trump would try to undermine American support for Ukraine. In general you need to start thinking before you post online and you need to learn more about the facts before posting online. I know that you MAGA cult members don't like thinking and you don't like facts but people would take you more seriously if you were able to do those things. Right now nobody will take you seriously. Do better.
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  7696. This is worrying. I had thought of a more limited scenario in which Russia accidentally, on purpose, sends a missile into Poland to hit a farm field just to see what NATO would do and if NATO did not respond with any action then Russia might gradually work up to more serious attacks on a NATO country hoping that as long as it does so gradually NATO countries will never see a sudden dramatic escalation by Russia that makes them all get involved. Sort of like the "friend" you have who starts out by asking you for small favours and keeps asking for slightly bigger favours until one day he's living in your house and asking you to loan him money to help him make his car payment for the month. Most countries in Europe have presumed that the days of fighting a major war with massive casualties in Europe are in the past and certainly may be reluctant to get involved in a major conflict with Russia over a relatively minor incursion in a remote area. Though especially if Ukraine does get aid and continues to fight on at least another year I would think that the Russian military and Russia in general will be in such bad shape that even risking a war with NATO would seem to be very reckless for Russian leaders. I'm thinking of how after the Spanish civil war Spain was in such bad shape that Franco refused to get involved in WW2 even when it appeared that Germany and Italy were achieving great success and dominating Europe. It's true that as there has been little fighting on Russian territory Russia is not in as bad shape as was Spain in 1940 but then Russia risking a war with all of NATO is a much bigger risk than Spain appeared to face if it had joined Germany and Italy in the summer of 1940 when they had no serious opposition in mainland Europe. On the other hand Putin is an Imperialist and I think that by 1940 Spain had given up serious Imperialist ambitions. One thing is that it's hard to see even Putin risking getting tangled in a war with NATO while the Russian military is still struggling in Ukraine and it's not clear yet what would lead to the Ukrainian war ending unless Trump wins the presidency and actively supports Russia in the war but I believe that a majority of American politicians still do not want Russia to win the war. Especially if Biden wins the election the war in Ukraine could still be going on three years from now and I don't think that much at all would be left of the Russian ground military by then. For that matter even if the war goes on another 18 months I don't think that there will be much left of the Russian ground military. Maybe that would make China think that it is the perfect time to invade Eastern Russia and take back the territory that Russia took from China in the 1800s.
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  7698. In every national election in a "developed country" this year the party in power received a smaller share of the vote than it received in the previous election. And that happened regardless of where the party in power is on the political spectrum. That has never happened before in at least 120 years. And in other countries as well parties in power generally had bad elections this year. And this trend was happening last year as well. A lot of people around the world were upset by increased prices and blamed their own national governments (and even more local governments) even though none of these governments can be said to have caused global inflation. Well, Putin's government can be blamed for a significant proportion of global inflation given the impact of Russia's unprovoked imperialist invasion into Ukraine but of course the Russian people don't have the option of voting out their dictator. Other issues such as the war in Gaza hurt Harris badly. Trump actually got almost exactly the same number of votes as he did in 2020 so there was no significant surge in voters for Trump. But Harris received about ten million fewer votes than did Biden in 2020. So a lot of 2020 Biden voters just stayed home and didn't bother voting. Democratic voters turned up in large numbers in 2022 when inflation was high but didn't turn up this time so sonething changed. That something is very possibly the unequivocal support for Israel and its war against Gaza that the Biden/Harris administration has given for the past 13 months. And Harris didn't help with that when she said that she wouldn't do anything any differently than had Biden. Any voter who opposes apartheid, oppression, theft of land, war crimes and genocide had no competitive candidate to vote for and those are really hard things to overlook.
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  7700. ​ @reteptetep5078  Why do you Russian trolls never mind publicly humiliating yourselves spouting utter nonsense that you know is utter nonsense? Quite sad to see you reduced to this. The Baltic states were already in NATO and on the Russian border. And there was no sign that Ukraine would be accepted into NATO. Nor is there any reason to think that the United States would put nuclear weapons into Ukraine - if there is a global nuclear war it's not going to matter much if Russia is destroyed a few minutes earlier because missiles come from Ukraine rather than from western Europe. I don't understand why you Russian trolls are so obsessed with nuclear war, talking about it all the time to threaten anyone who opposes Russian imperialism. Is life in Russia so horrible that you Russians wish for a global nuclear war to end your misery? People outside of Russia don't obsess about nuclear war all the time - not the way that Russian trolls do. If this war was about NATO then Russia would have attacked NATO countries, not Ukraine that was not in NATO. And what you don't understand is that countries join NATO not out of any desire to attack and conquer Russia but because they want protection from Imperialist Russia which has launched at least 7 Imperialist invasions of nearby countries in the last few decades with the goal of stealing territory from those countries.... and when the era of European imperialism is long over. Other than Russia countries don't invade other countries to steal territory any more. (with China potentially following Russia's example) If Russia wants countries to stop asking to join NATO for protection from Russia then Russia should stop launching Imperialist invasions and agree to live in peace with its neighbours. At least now you can feel a bit safer knowing that Lithuania did not join NATO with a goal of conquering Russia. Does that make you feel better?
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  7720. ​ seanpritchett-b3f  No,obviously that's not what we mean by cult and that is not how sheep in the MAGA cult behave or think. A cult such as the MAGA cult has a demagogue leader who is bullying, indifferent to the truth, demands absolute loyalty and obedience from the cult members and tells the slow witted, gullible cult members that they are superior to everyone else and that anyone outside the cult is evil and dangerous and a threat to the cult and should be hated and attacked by cult members if that is the desire of the cult leader. Cult members such as the sheep in the MAGA cult are weak, insecure, paranoid individuals with an inferiority complex who are terrified of anyone who is different than them in any way and so hate anyone who is different than themselves and they join the cult because they feel very insecure as an individual thinking for themselves and they like the fact that the cult has weak, insecure, paranoid, afraid, angry people like themselves and a cult leader who will do their thinking for them and will tell them how special they are even though they are not. Both cult leaders and members are effectively like small insecure children afraid of rejection and desperate for approval and are extremely uncomfortable with complexity snd nuance and sophisticaticated ideas and with people who are better educated than themselves or smarter than them or who think about things. Cult members like simplistic, childlike answers to everything and get angry and lash out when people outside the cult explain that situations and problems and solutions are complex and not simple. Thinking is strongly discouraged and effectively banned within the cult. Things like science, logic, evidence, careful analysis and expert education and experience are not given any weight, especially if they lead to conclusions that contradict cult ideology. In a cult the leader must always be believed and considered right no matter how many times he lies and says things that have no connection to reality and the members must bow down to the cult leader and submit to him and serve him. In cults members come to conclusions based solely on the ideology of the cult and the desires of the cult members and leader and any evidence that contradicts those conclusions is ignored. Very often the leader of the cult is a grifter and conman and a hypocrite who unlike the sheep in the cult knows that what he claims about the cult serving the needs of cult members and what he claims about the specialness of cult members and anything else he says is utter nonsense and that the true goal of the cult is to give him a chance to benefit himself at the expense of gullible, slow witted cult members who are naturally servile and obedient and don't like to think for themselves. That is what we mean when we call the MAGA cult a cult. Whatever you're describing, it's certainly not the MAGA cult.
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  7729. ​ @meganalves9967  To claim that Palestine is Jewish and Jewish people have the right to invade it and steal the land and drive out all the people living there simply becsuse Jewish people were living there 2,000 years ago is illogical and absurd. If every group of people decided to invade and seize any territory where people of their religion lived2,000 years ago the entire world would become complete violent chaos with senseless wars everywhere. The only reason why Europe has had peace since WW2 is because pretty well all the countries gave up trying to recapture territory they had previously controlled decades or a century before. If other peoples can give up trying to recapture territory they held a century before it shouldn't be hard for a people to give up trying to recapture territory that their ancestors or at least people of the same religion controlled 2,000 years ago. Let's be clear. Centuries of horrific oppression and mistreatment and genocide against Jewish people in Europe was absolutely inexcusable and monstrous but that doesn't change the fact that Israel is the last white, racist, colonialist, apartheid state on Earth. The world used to be filled with such apartheid states set up by white European colonizers but one by one they disappeared until finally white apartheid South Africa ended its regime leaving Israel as the only full fledged, colonialist apartheid state on Earth. The non-Jewish people in Europe amd North America who oppressed and persecuted Jewish people for centuries must take a lot of the blame for causing Jewish people to wish for their own homeland but that doesn't change the disturbing colonialist, apartheid nature of Israel today.
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  7773. ​ @rufanuf1  Putin appreciates your support but your claims are utter nonsense. There is zero equivalency between the EU and Russia when it comes to Ukraine. The imperialist Russian dictatorship wants to occupy all of Ukraine and wipe it from existence and steal its resources and effectively enslave its people against the wishes of Ukrainians. EU countries want Ukraine to remain free and independent and sovereign from occupation by any foreign power and for Ukraine and its people and culture to continue to exist. If you can't see that then you're extremely gullible and the Russian dictatorship is playing you for a fool. Also, the Russian government lies constantly. Quite bizarre that you think it is more honest than western governments. And also strange that you had the delusion that Britain could belong to the EU and yet not need to follow any collective EU rules and still do whatever it wants. That's not how associations, clubs etc work. I know you may have that delusion because of history and being British and thinking that Britain is the most important country and so should control everything but that's not the reality of being in an association with other countries. When there is an association the countries involved must collectively make decisions and abide by the rules and no country is going to get everything it wants and no country is going to be allowed to get the benefits of being in the association while ignoring the rules. Sounds like you should declare your house and property your own country so that you don't need to follow any of the rules created by the collective of people in Britain. You won't need to follow any of the rules but then you won't get any of the benefits. But that seems to be what you want.
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  7866. ​@scotthullinger4684 control of crime? Trump and the MAGA Republicans? Lol. Lol. These are the people who are saying Defund the Police and saying that Trump and his cronies shouldn't face legal consequences no matter how many crimes they commit. Look at all the legal problems Trump has got himself into. All the women who say Trump sexually assaulted them, Trump's sham university, Trump's Foundation to "help charities" that didn't help charities, Trump and his father discriminating against Bkack people seeking housing, Trump successfully sued for slander and sexual assault by E. Jean Carroll, Trump bragging on tape he could get away with sexual assault, Trump trying to extort a political favour out of Ukraine government, Trump sending a violent armed mob to atrack the Capital, etc., etc., etc. And of course Trump's company was involved in all sorts of shenanigans and was convicted of running a tax fraud scheme for years. Trump said that his voters would still support him even if he shot someone on a downtown street. Clearly a cult leader and cult members who don't care about crime. From your indifference to Trump's illegal activity I take it you're one of those cult members whom he thinks is incredibly gullible, servile, obedient and amoral so that you don't care what crimes Trump commits. And let is not forget Trump and the Republicans consistently fighting against tighter gun laws that would decrease gun violence in the United States. There's a reason why developed countries have vastly less gun violence than does the U.S. It's because they have much tighter gun laws than the U.S. because those countries don't have a gun fanatical Republican party that thinks that guns should have unlimited rights at the expense of children and other human beings. And let's not forget the disturbing behavior among some Republican Supreme Court justices with their willingness to accept free trips and other things from wealthy Republicans. Trump and the MAGA Republicans who support him obviously don't give a hoot about crime. And obviously withholding weapons shipments to Ukraine in an attempt to extort the Ukrainian government to make up a criminal case against Biden's family was a reason for Trump to be impeached and removed from office. A typical and extreme case of Republicans politicizing a legal system. And it goes without saying that Trump sending an armed mob of deranged extremists to attack the capital, threaten his political opponents including the Vice President and to stop the transfer of power and subvert democracy and keep Trump in office was one of the worse attacks on the United States in history and should have got Trump thrown out of office and put in prison for life. Imagine if in 2016 Obama had sent a violent armed mob to attack the capital, threaten Republican politicians, try to stop the transfer of power, end democracy and keep Obama in power as a dictator. You wouldn't want Obama impeached if in 2017 he did what Trump did in 2021? As for the economy, every single recent Republican president has increased the deficit - Trump did so every year he was in office. Democratic presidents on the other hand decrease the deficit. Unlike Republicans they don't give big tax breaks to the wealthy. Plus Obama had to rescue an economy that was a disaster when Bush left office and Biden had to rescue an economy that was a disaster when Trump left office and now inflation caused by Chinese lockdowns and the country coming out of a deep recession and Trump's bromance buddy Putin's invasion of Ukraine is way down and unemployment is incredibly low and the economy is booming despite Republican efforts to destroy that including a Republican threat to default on paying the government' bills many of which came from expenses during Trump's presidency. You really need to start thinking for yourself again and crawl out of the slime of the MAGA cult. MAGA cult leaders are focused on helping themselves and their wealthy friends at the expense of regular working class people like you and grifting to get slow witted, gullible MAGA cult members to send them money. Very sad that those MAGA cult members get suckered like that all the time and everybody but them understands that they are getting taken advantage of and played by wealthy MAGA leaders who don't care the least bit about them. Stop being a gullible sheep and stop letting MAGA cult leaders take advantage of you and start supporting Democratic politicians who actually care about working class people. And absolutely stop destroying your reputation defending Trump online.
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