Quote from: paxmao on October 14, 2022, 07:20:13 PM

Quote from: DaRude on October 14, 2022, 02:50:47 AM

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Not sure if your assessment could be anymore wrong. If you really want to solve the problem, you need to start at the root cause of the problem, and not at its symptoms. You cannot box by the rules when the other guy is twice your size and doesn't follow them, that's just not how the real world works. US having a full hegemony put in place some terrible precedence, "operations" instead of wars, private military companies, use of nukes, financial and political coercion of other governments, disregarding international laws, sanctioning international court judges, human rights abuses, bombing of other nations infrastructure without UN etc etc etc... And now when (so far) local conflict touches you personally you cannot possibly act surprised when the world doesn't rise up on your calls that NOW suddenly everyone should start to care about the rules and start changing things Roll Eyes

We're back to the ‘For my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law’ logic. Laws either have to be consistent or shouldn't exist. Arbitrary application of laws, double standards and hypocrisy just makes a mockery of the whole system. Biggest players should start following laws before trying to shame others, it's akin of discussing global police abuse and starting with Ukraine while not mentioning police issues in US/Russia/China (cause suchmoon would be yelling whataboutism). It would be obvious to even casual observer that there's agenda at play and Ukraine is being used as a scapegoat.

It's an illusion, Ukraine is not big enough to hold on it's own, so it must submit to one Tzar or the other. Ukraine is already in shackles with A $20 billion programme would be the second largest currently active loan from the IMF after Argentina. All of this is outside of Ukraine's control, and i have nothing but pity for the people, as they're just pawns in this big game. But at the same time when two behemoths are battling it out, I'm very skeptical of any small nation that would willingly make itself into a battlefront proclaiming that it's protecting/fighting for the survival of one of the behemoths. Smart thing would be to stay quiet and watch how it plays out (like almost everyone else is doing). Either Grandiose delusions or people have been brainwashed into doing someone else's bidding by constant propaganda of being "de facto" in NATO and fighting for Poland/NATO/EU/Papua New Guinea/the World. Outcome is already shaping out and this is how it'll be sold to the people:

Russia-we got more land out of this and kept our dominance on EU resource markets
US-with only few billion spent and minimal losses we set Russia back some X years
Europe-WTF just happened!?!
Ukraine-Sure with the great decisions by our leadership we lost more of our population and land than was even discussed and agreed to at the beginning during negotiations, but take comfort in knowing that we saved Galapagos islands, we realize that this hypothetical cannot possibly be checked, so population just needs to trust us when we say if we haven't thrown tens? hundreds? of thousands of our soldiers at this, Orcs would've taken over Lviv and Galapagos islands would be next! Hooray to great decisions!
China-

Human rights in middle east is shit. But now ask yourself why is it so? Then ask what is the currency in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, UAE (Dubai), Bahrain, and Qatar? Surely they are not all pegged and completely reliant to USD couldn't be right?? Now ask yourself why there so much human rights abuse in those countries? Is that cause with total financial control US just can't do anything about it? Or because US doesn't want to do anything about it, all of the money it sends there for oil still stays in it's own financial system anyway, which US can later use to offer bigger cookie to Ukrain/Belarus/Kazakhstan/Taiwan countries surrounding other world powers. And people, people just want to live their lives and are easily influence by a talking head on their TV box offering a bigger cookie until suddenly they find themselves fighting for their lives. Now ask yourself how are your proposals for "changes" will break this cycle and prevent this from happening over and over and over... again, or are these just superficial changes really intended to just prolong the current status quo

Could you please stop wall-texting to basically say nothing or state facts that are contrary to what we are seeing?

Again, you have to concede to anyone that is bigger. False, when someone is bigger and you concede you become a slave. You fight, you look for allies and you let the bastard know that there hell to pay for aggression. That is what you are looking at in Ukraine.

Again, you have been living for too long under despots and thieves - you have lost you will to fight and you think the rest of the people are like you.

Russia diplomatic stance has been fucked. Land? It is still yet to see what do they hold to - bearing in mind that the Donbas is not even a rich region.
Europe has been damaged, now it finally gets the incentive needed to diversify energy and suppliers.
US is super happy of fucking Adolf Putin's army.

My apologies if I do not go through all your wall... it is just repetitive and very biased.

I'm sorry that you're struggling to read few lines of text, following your logic, regardless how you feel about them, you think Cuba is so much better off now that they decided to stand up and fight US? Or now you're going to explain how that's somehow completely different?
Have you considered that if Europe could stay competitive while importing US freedom LNG, no one would bother to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO in the first place? Geography can be unfair, there are costs to hedging and sometime those costs can be prohibitive.
Russia is lining up with Iran and China, enemy of my enemy thing. It would be very short sighted for US to be happy about that.

Quote from: TwitchySeal on October 14, 2022, 08:36:18 PM

Quote from: DaRude on October 14, 2022, 08:12:55 PM

Quote from: TwitchySeal on October 14, 2022, 03:42:04 AM

Quote from: DaRude on October 14, 2022, 02:50:47 AM

Ukraine-Sure with the great decisions by our leadership we lost more of our population and land than was even discussed and agreed to at the beginning during negotiations, but take comfort in knowing that we saved Galapagos islands, we realize that this hypothetical cannot possibly be checked, so population just needs to trust us when we say if we haven't thrown tens? hundreds? of thousands of our soldiers at this, Orcs would've taken over Lviv and Galapagos islands would be next! Hooray to great decisions!

Or : Sure with the great decisions by our leadership, we still exist as a country, closer to the west with hope of joining EU and eventually NATO, and don't have to live in a Kleptocracy.

The whole "they should have just let Putin win" is such a stupid argument.

Sure, technically such logic could still be used to explain not following Minsk agreements even if Russia takes Kyiv and capital moves to Zakarpattia. Should hold in all cases unless leadership is completely dismantled, then it's back to we were protecting NATO with out lives. I guess that's where negotiations come in all sides will need a way to sell this as a victory for their people.

Quote from: suchmoon on October 14, 2022, 04:10:44 AM

Quote from: DaRude on October 14, 2022, 02:50:47 AM

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Or maybe Ukrainians just don't want to be in or with Russia, just like nearly all countries in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet block.

You can yell "cookies" all you want but anyone following politics in the aforementioned countries for the last 30 years could see that these countries had all sorts of issues, pendulum swings left and right, pro- and anti-EU/US/NATO etc, but most still somehow ended up on the western side of the newly-being-erected iron curtain, with exceptions being authoritarian shitholes like Belarus and the like.

There are many good reasons for this, all vividly illustrated now in Ukraine. Who could have know that people might not like to be invaded and ruled by a KGB psychopath. But wait, no, it must be some evil US plot. Maybe Clinton installed Putin back in 1999 and is puppeting him into doing all these evil things.

Just need to oppress other continents/countries to channel the cookies to the "right" places to keep up their standard of living, what idiot wouldn't want to be on the cookie receiving side?!?! To rip the benefit you just need to make sure to be born in the right place closer to the demarcation line. I'm sure your set commitments won't let you agree to that, so let's try to relate to Crimea, surely you'd agree that lots of money was channeled to that region to make it more "appealing" most likely at a cost of other regions. That's how geopolitics work, and the benefit of hegemony is the ability to do that on a much larger scale, bigger cookies with bigger oppression. If Ukraine is to be split you can be sure that both sides of Ukraine will benefit generously from both world powers and receive creme de la creme at cost of others, as both sides need to make an example out of it

Are you saying that you think the general population of Ukraine doesn't want to join NATO, the EU, embrace western values and instead would prefer to become part of Putins Kleptocracy?

It's a loaded question, your phrasing makes it rhetorical. e.g. Would majority like to live in Luxembourg or in Siberia without central plumbing. Or would majority prefer to live in Moldova with ~10% of population in absolute poverty or in Crimea? Speculating that what general population thinks it wants would directly correlate to the mass media covering their region. That is, regions with UA media coverage are probably brainwashed to think that they'll become next Germany just if they join EU, and RU coverage side probably believes that they'll have no poverty, cheap resources, cheap education, stability, family values etc... To be realistic, i don't think any country can be successful and share a boarder with a super power while being anti that super power. Essentially it would be a ticking time bomb, look at Cuba/Taiwan, history shows that no power would accept that in it's "backyard" and they're dooming themselves into perpetual struggle and first point for any conflict. Plus direct proximity naturally leads to intermarriage, mixed families, language culture etc... Honestly best outcome would've been a buffer state, neutral like Switzerland used to be, but seeing how we're reaching the pinnacle of escalations that ship might've already sailed.

Quote from: suchmoon on October 14, 2022, 09:28:39 PM

Quote from: TwitchySeal on October 14, 2022, 08:36:18 PM

Are you saying that you think the general population of Ukraine doesn't want to join NATO, the EU, embrace western values and instead would prefer to become part of Putins Kleptocracy?

Apparently all they want is cookies.

But for some inexplicable reason Putin can't give them cookies while (allegedly) being capable of boosting Crimea's economy and the imaginary Russian side of the future split Ukraine.

It's almost as if Ukrainians don't like Russian cookies. I wonder why that is.

Regardless how many times you continue to repeat that, facts will continue to prove otherwise